How About Some Name Dropping?

A Memory of Iden Green.

I was born in Hawkhurst at some ungodly hour on October 5th, 1949 at the Little Fowler's nursing home, which is why I probably inherited some of its smuggling influence! At that time my parents were resident at Diprose, nothing more than a row of cottages with no electricity and one cold tap next to General Newman's farm along Foxholes Road. We lived here until 1953/4 and I always remember harvest time in the cornfields behind the cottages when my parents and grandparents helped the General with, in those days, manual stooking. Colonel Reid had a cottage further up the lane. In the 50's the area was populated with ranking Army and Airforce personnel.
Leaving the somewhat spartan amenities of Diprose behind we moved to an Airey house in Iden Green, No. 6 Oakfields to be exact. If I remember correctly it was Nurse Day who drove us those couple of miles as we had no means of transport other than bikes. How the furniture, Tilly lamp and bakelite radio with rechargeable accumulators made the passage is unknown to me. Nevertheless, we now we had electrical current that made bulbs glow at night, somehow-or-other produced hot water and allowed mother and I to enjoy 'Listen with Mother' on a radio that was connected to the wall by a length of wire. Couldn't get much better in 1954! Unfortunately for mother, the washing still had to be done outside in the shed in a copper tub above a fire and squeezed thereafter through a mangle.
After the war, father had taken up teaching and in the early '50s was a master at Benenden village school. After the death of Headmaster Cleary, father took over this position until 1957. The school was divided up into four classes, Miss Nancy Brooks (infants), Mrs Leggett (2nd class), Mrs Rose Boxhall (3rd class) and the top class was the head's domain. The caretaker was none other than the 'Mayor' of Benenden, Henry (Pop) Horton and our dinner lady was Daphne Moore who in later years pulled pints for me in the Bull.
Living in Iden Green made it somewhat easier for Dad and I to 'commute' on bicycle; me sat on a cushion draped over the crossbar, despite having to traverse Hilly Fields adjacent to Lord Keyes's country home, Benenden Place. Lord Keyes had a daughter, Virginia, of my age and we would sometimes be allowed to play together in the little white gate house under the watchful eye of her German nanny who would think nothing of it to publicly spank poor Virginia should she be unruly. As an aside, does anybody remember the Welbys who lived down Woodside, that little, now gated, drive before Keyes's mansion? Mrs Welby drove a posh silver Bentley(?)
Back to Oakfields and some more names this time of kids on the block. How about Christopher Head, Gary Woolard, Linda Coley, Brenda Dowzell, Mervyn Pollard, Deidre Hadaway not to mention Mrs Clarke, Mrs Pett (ran the sweetshop in Benenden) and the Bests who were also childless, me thinks! There was another family living next to the Woolards, who incidentally spent their summer hols at Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey, but for some reason the name escapes me. I've just thought of the Hogbens who had the village shop which I recently perceived to be in great need of renovation and habitation! I generally visit once or twice a year, parking the car up at St. George's church, where my grandparents, Daniel and Isabell O'Donovan, are buried and walking down the meanwhile extremely busy New Pond Rd dodging 'Chelsea tractors' that use the village thoroughfare as a racetrack on their way to-and-from work. In the 50's we would play on this road that was frequented only by Turk's Transport, the occasional bus and the AA man on his yellow motorbike complete with sidecar! Practically nobody on Oakfields possessed a car and we certainly didn't until Dad got a headship in far-off Aylesham, near Canterbury, driving over Mondays and returning Fridays with a few Dandys, Beanos and Toppers donated by his host's son. Great days!
My grandparents lived in 'Hillcrest' at the top of Mounts Hill in Benenden just up the road from Frank Cheeseman's garage. Grandfather was an ex-Metroplitan police Chief Inspector and was Village spokesperson at the time of the Coronation. The Queen Mother visited Benenden around that time, big do on the village green, and he was presented to her. Talking of the Coronation, if anybody cares to inspect the village school wall next to the staired entrance you will find, at head height, rusty old nails hammered into the cement between bricks. On these nails my father hung plaques of heraldry and suchlike in commemoration of the crowning.
On my first day at the school, Dad, already Headmaster and who would be teaching me at various intervals of my primary school life up to the 11+, was out in the yard at the back playing conkers with some of the top class lads, what a likeable headteacher did in those days! Unfortunately, I was standing too near to one of father's swings that missed his opponents 'cheesey' completely and hit me in the eye producing a wonderful black one and tears to boot. We still had a chuckle over that until his passing at age 94 in October 2012. I'm extremely saddened at my loss and not having recorded or remembered all the things that made his and, therefore, our lives so memorable in this divine corner of the Weald.
But a lot of things I have managed to retain which is one reason for my putting these thoughts into words; another is to stimulate my readers out there who, when confronted with a name and place, are catapulted back in time to their own childhood.
Apart from the gang at Oakfields that also attended the village school, where else could you go, here are some additional names that might spark the Benenden crowd's imagination!
The gatehouse to Benenden Girls' School was inhabited by the Bridgelands, Cherryfields was home to Graham Moore whose mother I mentioned above and also to his pal (christian name forgotten) Freeman, who I remember as always having a runny nose. Moving down towards the Bull-and-beyond end we have the Burtons (Barbara was my absolute fave at age 6), Julia Backhaus, Jillian Stannard, Deidre Hadaway before the move to Iden Green and the Potters down Walkhurst Lane. Mrs Leggett also lived just off the main drag.
Grown ups? How about Albert Stannard who staggered past the school every morning with a yoke on his back and two pails of milk in the balance? Fuggle of bus fame, Rawling the butcher and Cherry Orchard who kept horses on the farm on the top of Hilly Fields. Nowadays the 'corral' is home to two retired donkeys! Lady Ledgard lived in the large house and grounds between the school and the cricket pavilion together with her major domo Danny Sullivan who, being one of Benenden's few Catholics, was a great friend of our family and most important for us kids a veritable source of Clarnico Mints! Mrs Pett had the sweet-cum-newspapershop where we could, should chance prevail, buy gobstoppers, sherbert fountains or mint humbugs for a threepenny bit. The Post Office was manned by a Mr Ledger, I believe, and the hairdresser, referred to as barber in days of old and sporting a pole, rampant, from the shop front, was Mr Baldwin.

I have been living in Germany now for the last 40 years and amazing as it may seem, have met two very special, now elderly, female friends of my Californian wife who were both, in the years between ’47 and ’52, in and around Benenden!
The great Wagner Helden Tenor of Bayreuth fame, Jean Cox, married Anna Reynolds, a mezzosoprano who in her day wooed the Met and prior to her claim to fame was a pupil at the Benenden School for Girls subsequently returning there to teach. She became my wife’s vocal trainer during her 10 year stint at the Frankfurt Opera.
Ingrid Schleep from Kärnten in Austria, her maiden name escapes me, spent the years ’47-’49 as maid to Brigadier General Yorke at Summerhill House on the Smallhythe Road out of Tenterden. Today at 85 her English is still more than excellent and is an avid reader of the Maisie Dobbs detective series written by our one-and-only, Hartley, Cranbrook born-and-bred, authoress Jaqueline Winspear who admits to having a pint in the Prince William when home from California.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten more than a few folks by name who were influential to school and village life during this era but if my readers could fill in a few gaps then please do!

Yours,

Paul O’Donovan, son of Jerome & Joyce O’Donovan
Brother of Celia & Clare
Grandson of Daniel & Isabell O’Donovan
Nephew of Patrick O’Donovan