School Holidays In Wartime Shutford Nr Banbury Oxon

A Memory of Shutford.

My earliest memories of Shutford date back to around 1944, when as an eleven year old schoolboy I spent summer holidays with my grandfather Fred Turner (son of plush weaver Amos Turner), who at that time lived in Weald Cottage. Grandfather Fred was my mother's father, and my mother would bring myself and my two sisters, Shirley and Pamela, to spend part of the summer holidays in Shutford. We had a number of relatives in Shutford in those days and we were living in north London during the war, so a visit to Shutford gave us all a break. My father would spend a small part of our holiday with us and had arranged a train journey that got us to Banbury without having to travel into London to the station at Paddington! This route headed north west out of Watford via Bletchley, Winslow and Buckingham and eventually arrived in Banbury via a single-track line with many stops at tiny halts, and I can remember the peace and quiet of the countryside as we waited for any passengers from the adjacent villages. The only noise was the gentle hiss of steam from the waiting engine and the sound of the birds - how things have changed. From the station we walked to board the Midland Red bus for the final leg of our journey. With its engine groaning up the steep climbs through North Newington, it finally reached Shutford. We were dropped off at the George and Dragon, run by Mag and Gordon Miller, mother's cousins. A short walk along Ivy Lane and we were at Weald Cottage, named by grandfather after Harrow Weald in Middlesex where he served with the Metropolitan Police. As a young man, he left Shutford with my grandmother, Alice Coles. They were married in London, his base before being transferred to Harrow Weald, which was a small rural village, ten miles north of London. He returned to Shutford towards the end of the war.
Shutford had no services of any kind. Water was from wells for some cottages, the others fetched it from the Tite. This was a natural spring coming from a pipe at the lower part of the village. Oil lamps were the light source and cooking was by open range or paraffin. Radios were battery powered and required a glass cased battery called an accumulator. This was recharged from a mains electrical supply and was taken into Banbury for this. The Radio Times was torn into small squares hung in the outside loo.
The village milk lady was Alice Mann, my mother's cousin who lived with my mother's aunt, Miss Sarah (Sally) Coles, at the old Quaker Meeting House along Ivy Lane. Alice transported the churns with a pony and trap and carried the milk to the customers using a yoke and two closed buckets with the measuring ladles hooked around the tops. Along Malthouse Lane from Weald Cottage was Harvey's shop. For a penny or so, my sisters and I would buy our lemonade there and drink it through a straw stolen from the thatch roof overhang before escaping down the slope to Ivy Lane. A great source of interest for a ten-year-old boy was the village waste recycling centre. This was a large crater at the top of a ridge known as Thistley, this contained many years' worth of old prams and bikes that had seen better days and was a good place to obtain the odd wheel or two.
Another place where I spent many hours was in the blacksmith's shop at the end of Percy Turner's orchard at Orchard House. Percy was my grandfather's brother and he and his son Jack ran the Smithy. They were kept very busy with horseshoeing, wheel building and other engineering work. The furnace was bellows powered using a hand pumped bellow and this was my job when watching wheel rims being heated, before fitting to the wheels using the concrete jig outside in the orchard. The old corrugated sheds still exist today.
At the top of Cooks Hill lived Bill and Hilda Compton and daughter Beryl. They lived in the cottage on the right, next to the post box. Yes, this was another cousin of mothers. Bill kept a couple of pigs under the government scheme where on slaughter one half was allowed to be kept and the other half went to the government. These were kept in a sty at the foot of his allotment next to the path up Thistley. Us children would assist with preparing the swill in the shed at the end of the garden after boiling potatoes in the old copper, fitted in the corner. The swill was then transported down the hill to the allotment to be enjoyed by the pigs who, after eating, would have their sides scratched until they fell over completely helpless.
The skies above the village were busy with aircraft from Shenington carrying out gunnery practice as well as their normal operational activities. This was also a time when the Women's Land Army was very active. Horses were still the main power source but the Fordson Major tractor was beginning to appear.
My father worked with horses in London and enjoyed a busman's holiday helping with the harvest by harnessing and driving the odd horse and cart, working alongside the girls in the fields. In the evenings, we would walk to Balscote to the pub, and have lemonade and Smiths crisps, complete with salt in a blue bag. On other occasions, we would attend the George and Dragon and enjoy Mag Miller's lardy cake to accompany yet more lemonade.
Well, all good things end and we eventually had to leave Weald Cottage with its manicured garden full of vegetables, Canterbury Bells and Sweet Peas (Grandfathers speciality), and board the Midland Red bus to start our journey back to London.

Brian Wyatt Grainge.
Bury St. Edmunds
Suffolk.
1st. July 2007.

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