A Strong Memory

A Memory of Walkford.

I was born in 1931. During the war I spent about 1 year in Walkford, at the home of a great aunt in the village of Walkford. The maternal ancestry of my family is in Walkford. My great aunt had a house on I guess the Ringwood road. She had a hand laundry and at that time she would collect linen from the big houses in a van. Mondays, I believe was the day the linen soaked in an outhouse, the following day boiled, the next dried, the next ironed and finally delivered back.

I do not know my great aunt's family name, as I never knew my grandmother's maiden name. I remember the name `Cuppage' or perhaps `Cubbage', and their descendants still lived, and continued to live I guess, in Walkford. There was a daughter, and the daughter's son was named Dennis. I believe he moved to Highcliffe in later years. As you walk down Ringwood Road from Highcliffe end towards Hinton Admiral, they lived in a house on the left - maybe it was called Sunnyside - the memories come back as I write. The house is well before the corner shop which is shown in one of the photographs.

My sister and I and our mother stayed with my great aunt. We were from Birmingham, which had become the home town of my grandmother. In 1944 I would have been 13, but I think I must have been younger, so the year must have been nearer 1942. My sister, 6 years younger, could not have been more than five. We went to school in Hinton Admiral, an old schoolhouse which I think has now been pulled down. It was next to a cemetary.

The walk to the school is one of my vividest memories. We walked down the road, past the shop, past the railway station (is it Hinton Admiral). There were lots of rhodendrum bushes in the driveway of a largish house on the right hand side. We continued down until we came to a cutting from the Ringwood road on to the Lyndhurst Road. This cut the road off on its way to Hinton school. Had we continued the Ringwood Road, the Cat & Fiddle Inn would have been on the left. The cutting went through trees and we were always a bit frightened. There was a house on the right about half way along the cutting, a house where we never saw any sign of anyone.

Opposite the cutting, there was water (a pond?) which froze over in winter. I think there were two ways to go to Highcliffe, and I think one could walk across the common branching from the pond. A common full of heather and bracken, the occasional adder.

I also saw an adder while walking along the railway line. Another way to walk to Highcliffe was to go in the opposite direction from my great aunt's house until we got to a main road where, I believe one could take the bus to Christchurch. Once we crossed the road we would enter a wooded area, and for me the walk was very dark and mysterious. There was a dip where I had heard a body had once been found. A scare story - a bit of truth, no truth.

We would play in the woods just after the shop, probably further down. The wood was full of bluebells and primroses. There was a circle of cut logs.

Sometimes we would return from school in Hinton another way. Continue up the road a bit beyond the school and churchyard and you come to a cross on the opposite side of the road. This led into a path through some woods. Along the path there was a cottage on the right in which there was an old woman often tending her garden. We imagined she was a witch, and one day we knocked on her door and asked to see her garden.

Beyond the cottage, there was a style over which there were fields. I think we had to walk across two fields in order to reach the back end of Walkford village. I have memories of cows and memories of corn in those fields. Those two things do not seem compatible.

There is a ballad I remember learning while in Walkford, and being fascinated by. But it is at the back of my mind but I cannot recuperate it. It is about the daughter of a family, who, on her wedding night, while playing hide and seek, disappears. Years later her remains are found in an old chest in which she has hidden. I wish I could remember that song, but I cannot.

If anyone remembers the family I would really like to know - the problem is that it is the females that were doing all the work, and I can't trace because they took the names of their husbands, while I am tracing through a female line. I live in London now. I am an ex-teacher and an ex-secretary of the United Nations, so much water has passed beneath the bridge since my time in Walkford, but Walkford is the most vivid memory of my childhood. It was a time full of beauty, sunshine and mystery.
I am very surprised that I am the first person to write an entry here.