Thursday, July 06, 2006
Was very probably much as was everywhere else at the time? Others have better tales to tell than I, for mine is but a child’s eye view.
We arrived somewhere between 1939 and 1940. Coming from a Mill House my Father had converted just outside Newbury. It was an unnecessarily large house. Presumably requisitioned, it became the Head Office of a Midlands Steel Company. Father had suggested that we accommodate sixty evacuees there, but mother was less keen. We never went back there after the war.
My Parents bought Tidmarsh House, then as now a gracious Queen Anne property. It too a large house. Our immediate family consisted of my parents two older half brothers and me. Father’s older offspring were variously away, mostly fighting the good fight. Again there was room to spare. So it was the Drawing Room and another room were used to store other peoples more valuable household goods; for running Depositories had been our family trade for some two hundred years, our London Warehouses seemed very vulnerable, but survived unscathed to become the Hammersmith Flyover and a Sainsbury Super Market. The ultimate place of safety was the wardrobe in my father’s bedroom, home to an allegedly very valuable stamp collection. There was still the matter of evacuees, we however accommodated two ‘Tommies’ instead whom we treated as family, letting them have my eldest brother’s bedroom whilst at the time he was fighting with the Oxon and Bucks Light Infantry. I recall the subsequent gem of knowledge that he was in the same platoon as the post war manager of Messrs Stowells the Wine Merchant in Pangbourne.
It was not only the fine furnishings that came down from London but too my Father Ernest Pope, and his Secretary Mrs Hilda Browne, ‘Brownie‘. She in turn brought her Mother with her who sported the unlikely name of Mrs Green, both Londoners to the core. Hilda remained the back bone of our family business until her death in the 1970s. The other peculiarity of their circumstance was that they boarded with an unrelated Mrs.Green and her son Jimmy, who lived in the Tidmarsh Manor Lodge at the end of Mr Shulman’s drive abutting Tidmarsh Hill., seemingly now Tidmarsh Lane. Father’s office was at first in the Dining room of Tidmarsh House, but after a while it transferred to a small back room to the rear of the Greyhound at the centre of the village. This was a more convenient location for my father. More furniture followed us down, after filling some of the stables at Hardwick House, it overflowed into the large barn at Manor Farm immediately opposite the Church. This seems now to front a farmyard development.
At the time we moved into Tidmarsh, the village had only recently been broken up. The name of the previous ownership if I remember correctly involved a Mr. C.A.Vandervel and possibly another Green! I probably don’t remember it correctly, but how will most people ever know in this day and age.
Important persons in the Village included Mr Shulman at the Manor. My brother and I never trespassed too far into his wood, because the gentleman was an unknown quantity so far as we were concerned. Then there was Mr and Mrs Page who with their son Tony ran the village Bakery. In those days all the bread was baked in their faggot oven; and was an un-rationed delicacy. The same ovens baked Lardy Cake if one provided the lard and fruit; and it obliged those of us who took up our war time entitlement to keep a pig, in so far as the actually ham wrapped in dough could be cooked in Tony’s oven after the bread came out. ‘Pages ‘was also the Village shop. Shelves of the left as you went in, with the counter to the right. There was always plenty of ‘Pop’ available and all manner of things amusing to children. There were sweets there but there was a war on. Here one might mention Mrs Davis in Sulham. She knew about confectionary and was in receipt of a sugar allocation, because she made sweets and sold them on ration from her own home.
The other three main men at the village centre were Don Piggot and Family. What ever else he did, he was the man with the humane killer gun, who would kill the aforementioned pigs, and butcher them too. There was Mr. Champ. He was an agricultural worker and helped some with their gardening. Was someone a Special Constable? But more than these was the Gale family. They lived en famille Mr Gale senior, and his son Sid and his wife in the round toll cottage. Mr Gale senior was a Game Keeper and Water Bailiff. His mode of transport so too then, as was everyone else’s a bicycle. His had a basket on the front so substantial that it may once have been a delivery bicycle. In that basket was his Terrier dog. The whole ensemble was never seen separately so far as I was concerned. Mr Gale’s remit seemed to run from Englefield Estate for the length of the river near enough to Pangbourne. A Mr Lamb was the Bailiff running Home Farm at Englefield. During the war Mr. Benyon’s Englefield Park was a Military Hospital filled with those familiar blue uniformed wounded Service men.
At that time a length of the fishing on the Pang was hired out to Harold Holt, the then famed Impresario. But such is fame; many years later chatting to a young lady who then worked for the firm still bearing his name, I was able to thrill her; but only with the information that we had known Harold Holt. Seemingly her Office had little concept that his was anything more than a business name without recent substance
At that time Tidmarsh Mill was in the possession of an Mr.Arbuthnott. I do not know if he had taken the house over when the more famous Lytton Stracheys left or whether like us he had but recently arrived. He however was an Artist, and collector of many pipes, these he was inclined to hand on to friends. I see on the Internet that The Mill is again mentioned as the home of a member of the Arbuthnott family.In those days, as no doubt now, the Pang in front of his house was where we the village children caught minnows.
I think the Mill Gardens backed onto land belonging to Mr.Burgess, there was a Mrs. Burgess, and Anne Burgess. Their land reached up to the Church. Mr Burgess was a very capable Blacksmith and Farrier, and he had his own spreading Chestnut tree to verify his status. One was permitted to spend hours watching his forge at work. I had good access to view in those days before Health and Safety because one knew Anne, who was a trifle older; but mainly because the Blacksmith’s Boy as someone waggishly described him, was our good friend Sid Gale. Sid was the one usually in possession of the Forge and seemingly was the Farrier. There were plenty of Farm Horses needing his attention.
The two local Farmers then were Mr.Tomlinson who had the farm that surrounded Tidmarsh House. (I believe we had one of his barns too as a warehouse?) The other Tenant Farmer was Mr.Waite. He was a man of variable temperament so far as young children were concerned. His son Willie was a friendly well built young man in whose company, I as a child was often entertained. There were opportunities for a ride in his horse and cart, and endless entertainment to be had slicing mangles with their chopping machine. The milk parlour delightfully old fashioned. I don’t quite recall whether that was before or after we had seemingly filled their barn with moth balls, so necessary when storing goods.
At some stage in the war it was obligatory to make provision for accommodation in an air raid shelter. We had at one time retired to the Cellar of Tidmarsh House, where we sat raids out, sitting on Calor Gas Cylinders, but after a while few bothered. My brother and I spent ‘raids’ beneath the kitchen table for the war did come to Tidmarsh. Eventually Father reached an understanding with Mr.Waite, that should Armageddon come we would share his newly dug shelter. I am not sure that it would have been a good arrangement; it was possibly a matter of pleasing officialdom. Manor Farm had an over friendly large black dog that used to jump up and put his front paws on my shoulders, this tended to terrorise me as a seven year old. The Waites eventually left and the farm sold.
Things would go bump in the night. Land Mines fell in Sulham Woods. Occasionally the area would become littered with reflective foil that had to do with Radio possibly Radar. We had a scare one day when a German Fighter Plane seemingly might have taken the chimney off Tidmarsh House, but it had one of our fighters in hot pursuit. The scare was that such an enemy plane had machine gunned Newbury. Later in the war our sky would be packed with scores of British Bombers about their business wherever.
Manor Farm was bought by one of My Father’s better friends Melville Jones. He had been Master at St Paul’s School Hammersmith, where much of ‘D’ day had been planned. Melville was a regular compiler of the Telegraph Crossword Puzzle. Father had stood down on the purchase of Manor Farm, to let him buy it for his retirement. (Was the price under two thousand pound?) He never turned up, and soon let it on to a Family called Crook. Probably they latter bought the place for I believe it was they who first started to redevelop Manor Farm. They were hard workers and at some stage, after our vacation of the barn, they let the place to an Mr.Robinson a dealer in War Surplus, Chiefly Barrage Balloons, and the fabric from which was in great demand as waterproof sheeting.
Depositories apart, my father actually made his living as what the Wokingham District Planning Officer termed, one of the very first ‘Fringe Developers’. In business it might be known as asset stripping but it was not that. Ever since the First World War Estates were being sold on as Estates. He realising there was no longer any call for such property, occasionally bought the odd affordable one, and divided it up. We still had tenants paying less than a pound a week for houses until about 1960. Some tenants with security of tenure furnished their houses, and sublet at market rates. All this did nothing for our solvency after father had died.
He had latterly sub-divided in Wargrave, and Newbury. When at Tidmarsh House he took a fancy to a range of Agricultural buildings on the far side of the Tidmarsh House Land, this was immediately adjacent to Manor Farm. Circa 1941 was not a good year for doing up property, especially something in the poor state these buildings were in. The redevelopment involved cannibalising one of two granaries, and doing everything but putting in a damp proof course. Panelling and Mahogany doors were installed from his London office this in in later years I have seen mis-ascribed as coming from Tidmarsh Manor. It really was not the idea to stay in this particular house. At the time he died in 1943 he was about to exchange contracts to buy most of ‘The Street’ from the Bakery up to and including the old Chalk or gravel pit, on the Pangbourne road. I still have plans; on the back of an envelope, for the round house with a glass ceiling he was to build in there. My mother had the option to complete the purchase but the money was no longer available so to do. Any of my readers who have doubtlessly since paid the earth for some of this property, you too may weep to hear the money involved was less than five thousand pound. Well of course few Village houses were connected to the water main. The Village pump supplied most of those properties with the water. This might account for the price! After the war at the end of the Street, maybe opposite the then new village Hall a local man set up in business making building blocks out of old ash and clinker. Everyone knew it would not catch on! His factory is now seemingly the site of Strachey Close. Further along towards Pangbourne at Flowers Hill, Cedar Close is built on what used to be the field belonging to Arthur and Beatrice Woodberry. As for that area between Pangbourne Hill, Bere Court Road, Green Lane and the Tidmarsh Road, that was at worst but a sparcity of frontagers’ Houses on unmade roads.
An important man in the Village then was our very own Rector George Walters, who had a son called Norman. He was a young man with Downs Syndrome. As is usually the case, he was very agreeable and friendly even to those of my age. The Rector of Sulham was Rev.Wilder, our sole contact with him was that when he was a young man he had often been a guest at a Villa, my half brother’s family had then owned in Baveno. A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since then. Until the Catholic Church built their own place of Worship in Horseshoe Road Pangbourne, Sunday Mass was shared with the Naval College in a room over their boathouse.
Other Sulham Residents included Mrs Peart a good friend, and her adult daughter May who married into the RAF, but unfortunately lost her husband in the war. There was a young son, who when I last heard of him was working at Marlborough College. On a corner between Mrs Peart’s flint cottage and Sulham Church, lived Mr Trevor who at least once, hosted the fete. I have the impression that he was a partner in the London Estate Agents of that name.
Father had been buried in Tidmarsh Church, in a grave dug by our friend Sid Gale, his coffin carried there on I believe Willie Waite’s Horse and Cart. Some fifty burials and thirty years after, the Church appeared to have recycled his plot, thus managing to accommodate several members of another family on site. I did complain to a previous Vicar, he wanted to know what I intended to do about it, but then what should one do? An acknowledgement of error would have been welcome.
Circa 1943 the Americans arrived. They occupied the Grange, built tank traps and pillar boxes between the Grange and Sulham; and they shot George our Peacock. Someone reckoned it was a Turkey that squawked too much at night and kept them awake. There were Americans camped on the fields of Manor Farm, and for decades after none in the Village went short on telephone cable. These troops opened everyone’s eyes and had in their midst the Village’s first Black Man. Their combat rations, their uniforms, and socks that they didn’t bother to mend were also a source of fascination. They had access to Jeeps to take them and their supply of Nylons into Pangbourne. There, one once offered me a dollar to take a message up to the house of a young lady who worked at the ‘Beauty Parlour.’ I was too young to understand what all this activity was about. The Riverside at Pangbourne between Whitchurch Bridge and maybe Hardwick House opposite was more or less full of parked equipment for presumably D day. Pontoons and Ducks mostly. One day the Yanks were with us being hospitable, inviting us their friends to the Garrison Cinema in the outbuildings at the Grange, the next they left throwing handfuls of gum to all they passed. I recall that they had dumped a whole lot of very expensive looking aluminium engine parts into an old excavated burrow way up above the village. Regrettably I do not recall where!
After the war the Grange was re-inhabited in it’s entirety as the home of a scientist named Dr.Leman. He involved himself there in I believe the study Cosmic Rays and as a side line invented the trusty Lemon ‘Grease-spot Photometer’ a boon to the Amateur Photographer. He had an Amateur radio transmitter and managed world wide communications. It was sometime after him that the property was sub-divided.
During the course of the war my mother registered our garden in Manor lane that now accommodates seven houses, as a small holding. This entitled us to buy chicken food maybe that was how we came by the pigs. Things were desperate for others, and it was hard to deny less fortunate what ever the regulations said. I recall one of the Cadets from the College always came to acquire an egg off the ration, so too a lady who had an egg for ‘me Yorkshire’ on Sunday. Rationing was severe, eggs unobtainable. George our Peacock ate our Cheese ration seemingly being of the opinion that was what Peacocks liked best. (After the war there was talk of one of the village farms being seized by the Ministry which considered it might be more efficiently farmed.)
There was direction of labour. Mother was allocated obligatory work in Theale. Was it a refrigerator concern? She never went because she was at the time doing voluntary work at the ‘French’ Hospital in London. She being of French Birth. It was a matter of writing letters for wounded French Soldiers, and visiting in general. Should you wonder what happened to such letters? Those that didn’t go via the Red Cross were parachuted into France with Secret Agents. Can so many films be wrong? Thus my Grandmother had news of her English Family, posted to her from Vichy France to avoid the Germans having knowledge of her involvement with the Enemy. This was how we came by our better acquaintanceship with Harold Holt. He would provide free Theatre and Concert tickets for mother to hand on to patients At the Hospital.
We celebrated the end of the war against Japan with a village bonfire in the field behind Mr.Tomlinson’s Barn, away opposite the pub. I recall dancing the Hokey Cokey en masse, but got spirited away too soon after putting ones left arm in and shaking it all about. My innocence apart there were still many sons and fathers away, my brother for one in Burma. I had celebrated the earlier VE day at my Prep school then evacuated to Bradfield, so missed out on those Village celebrations.
We had sold Tidmarsh House to a Major Mynor who was I believe in the Guards. Maybe it was he who sold the property to Sir Harold Graham Hodgson; the then recently retired Royal Family Radiologist. Sir Harold came complete with a small grey tractor allegedly given to him as a retirement gift. He became very much the gentleman Farmer, and local grandee, it was only recently I read in the paper that his daughter was more accustomed to play in the Park with our Queen, when she was but, H.R.H The Princess Elizabeth of York.
Speaking of Grandees. I believe that the Fiona Campbell Walter, the model, later to become Baroness Thyssen was as a child resident at Courtlands? If so I never met her, she was two years my senior. Admiral Boscowen lived at the Lodge as one went into Pangbourne, and some years later Air Marshall Sir Wallace Kyle in a house opposite the Pumping Station. He was an Australian who came out of retirement in the New Forest, to be the Governor of Western Australia. Commander Hutchinson in Pangbourne, later assumed command of R.N.C Greenwich. Everyone knows of the Kenneth Graham connection, Mrs Graham was still a Village resident early in the war. Their house had the gift of the ‘Church Living’ ascribed to it. The Thimbleby Family of Thimbleby and Shorland owned the property later. I believe they sported a grandfather, was he a retired Actuary, then living in the Mews behind the Pharmacy, as did Mr Talmidge the proprietor of the local Taxi.
The ‘main man’ in Pangbourne was Mr. Tidbury proprietor of the News Agents. He was the wireless engineer, and charger of wireless accumulators for those without electricity, he seemingly had a helpful finger in every pie. Before Martin and Pole took over the Estate Agents it was run as John Peters, named after the proprietor’s two sons by an earlier marriage. The first a man of the cloth was imprisoned in Changi, of variable reputation some tell it was the most benign of Japanese camps, however! John eventually became Rector of our Church in the New Forest, there instituting the Annual Memorial Service for those who gave their lives when HMS Hood was sunk. Messrs Budgens by Station Garage was managed by Mr. Butterfield and his wife. Their son John later became something rather important in Railway bridges. His appointment had a Status that entitled him to first class Travel on the train. Another important passenger was Mr. Burridge (e&oe) then the Proprietor of Harrods. In those times what became The Copper Kettle was called the Elephant; hopefully the old name is restored? The George still supplied customers with Clay Church Warden Pipes, not sure that had anything to do with the serious fire there. After the war there was a large development of Prefab accommodation on what is now the Bourne Buckley Avenue area. These seemed to be there for ever.
There was a Prisoner of War Camp at the top of Pangbourne Hill. I believe inmates had to stay on after the war ended, possibly by way of reparations. It was possible to hire them as workers at a minimal wage. They were all out on trust; we had several in succession helping with our garden. They were still prisoners, so each wore roundels fore and aft, to ensure none escaped. I suspect most were relieved not to have to try to do so. By then Times were difficult everywhere. Even so staying on was hard for men with a family needing them elsewhere.
Not strictly Pangbourne, but the Royal Veterinary College used to be dotted about Streatley until the 1950’s.
When my mother was at her hospital task, I spent a lot of time at a friend’s home in Pangbourne. We had been introduced to them, the Launay Family by Doctor Clifford Thomas the local GP, on the basis that both mothers were French by birth. They owned the lovely ‘Weir Pool’ overlooking the Swan Hotel. The house was otherwise filled with all manner of interesting folk. My visits there culminated with access to a party thrown by the ‘Woman’s Sunday Mirror’ on Satan Island in the Weir Pool. I was older by then, so guess what? I got to dance with Diana Dors. With who? Ask my grown up children. J.B.P.
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