Life On The Forest 1940s On

A Memory of Colemans Hatch.

We moved to Yew Tree Cottage, out on the Forest, in December 1940, when I was 20 months old, and my father finally sold up in the early 1980s.

I loved the Forest, and was allowed to roam free from an early age. I have many memories of the wide open spaces [yes, they were then, when the smallholders cut and gathered the vegetation for their animals' food and betting, and cut birch for firewood]. Once, when I'd wandered off [aged about 4] to meet the postman, who came from the Forest Row direction, when he didn't come apparently I just kept on walking. I remember feeling sleepy and lying down by a bridge to sleep, and being woken by the search party, probably Dad [Tom Townsend], Mr Card and Mr Everest. I wasn't at all bothered, just loved the attention.

Everybody knew everyone in those days, and houses weren't generally locked up. If you went to see anyone and they weren't in, you just went in and sat down on the nearest chair, didn't nosy around ever. You could read the local paper if it was on the table.

The biggest problem was forest fires, in the spring. Some just occurred, but I think others were deliberate. We often abandoned what were were doing in the evenings to go out with birch brooms to assist in putting them out. Unfortunately my cat tended always to follow me if I went out, and I so was frightened for her with the fires. Luckily she was otherwise sensible and never came to harm.

I remember the greens on the golf course - they were beautiful, many more men to attend to them then than now. I can still see one with grass the texture of velvet, all close cropped to the same height and lying the same way. Not a weed to be seen! There were a lot of sheep on the Forest then, and cows, but I doubt that particular green attracted them as it was so even and close.

When I was very young my mother had a house cow, but she gave too much milk so she was replaced by goats. We also had chickens and pigs and bees, and there were fruit trees and a vegetable patch in the field. It seems idyllic and often was, but my parents had to work hard [Dad had a job too, and often Mother did]. Mother was an excellent cook, and jammed and jellied and bottled fruit and vegetables, although the salted beans were never repeated. No gas or electricity, and coal delivered once a year when the coal lorry could get down. Water was broght from the spring in the field until it ran dry in summer, when you had to fetch it in buckets, with a yoke, from half a mile away. That one never dried up, and was reputed to have served the whole village in the past. It was necessary to shoo away the frogs etc. before you filled your bucket, and it was still full of tweasly things, but tasted very good. Evening light was by paraffin lamp [and the glass always went on a Saturday night].

In those days the village shop was run by the Divall sisters, in what is now also a private house. We used to be able to leave our wellies in an outhouse there if we wanted to take the bus to Forest Row or East Grinstead, and on return pick up milk, which we had to buy after my mother died, from the Heasman's farm next door to them. Can't remember much about their cows except they were big, and probably brown and white. They gave lovely milk which was just cooled and bottled, unpasteurised. You can still buy unpasteurised milk now, and it still tastes much better!

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