Gardener's Boy

A Memory of Hope under Dinmore.

My father went to work at Hampton Court as a gardener's boy when he left school at the age of 14 in 1917. By then, it was in use as a convalescent hospital for soldiers. I remember my father saying that he had to put little leather boots on the pony's hooves to mow the lawns with the horse-drawn mower, and that one of his jobs was to wash the leaves of indoor plants with milk. Many of my ancestors came from Hope under Dinmore and worked on the Hampton Court estate as woodmen, labourers, gamekeepers etc in the 19th and early 20th century. The children went to the village school which was provided by the Arkwrights free of charge before free education was available generally.