Horney Common As A Child

A Memory of Horney Common.

I was born in London in 1938. When war broke out the following year my father sent my mother and myself down to Devon but soon after that he, and many of his regimental colleagues in the Army, rented a large country house in Horney Common and put the mothers and children there for the duration of the war. It was pure bliss as a child - there was the company and fun of other children in the house and every time one of the fathers came home on leave another little one turned up nine months later! The cottage was Woodstock just down the hill from the Common itself. What a treasure that was - wonderful garden, fruit growing lushly in all seasons falling from the trees, the meadow in front with the garage at the end of it and the spoiling of a dear couple, Mr and Mrs Furst, who lived in the cottage next door. My favourite flower is still the polyanthus which grew each spring in a riot of colour down either side of the garden path leading to the front gate. The local farm folk spoiled us too by providing some of things that they could get which we could not because of food rationing - milk, the occasional egg and anything that was going. I had my first ever piano lessons from a lady who lived facing Horney Common itself and attribute my love of music to her guidance and skill. We had friends further up in the Nutley Village - the Cox family - and they lived in a beautiful big house on an unmade path towards Ashdown Forest.  We were friends with a boy called Corky who lived in a big house up the hill from Woodstock and there was so much to explore - lovely little lanes with secret places, the forest and a trip to Maresfield was always a treat. I recall my cousin Judith, who was evacuated over in Kirdford, falling in the lych gate of Maresfield church as we waited for a bus one day and having a profuse nosebleed over everything and everyone! There were no boxes of tissues in those days and hankies were few and far between due to clothes coupons.
Going back to Woodstock, I have a photo of my father digging a hole for the Anderson Shelter near the kitchen door by the orchard before he went off to war and I can still smell the earth as we would go down into it when the sirens sounded. We also had a Morrison Shelter in the living room and to young children it was not frightening - it was an adventure. I am 71 now, disabled and cannot get anywhere very much, but am planning, sometime, somehow, to get back just once more for a final look around Horney Common, Nutley and those magical places of my early childhood.

Juliet Baxter (nee Reckitt)

---

---