Mainstone In The 50s When Time Stood Still

A Memory of Mainstone.

My mother grew up in the Mainstone area in the 1930s and went to the village school there (by the Churchtown turn) for a number of years. Twenty years on, my brother and I would spend most of our summer holidays in Mainstone, staying with an "auntie" (as we called her: not really a relation, but my mum's best friend from her childhood days, and as good an auntie as anyone could wish for).

And my vivid memories of Mainstone in the 50s make me think that the place at that time could really have changed very little from the way it was before the war. When I read accounts today of what country life was like in the 20s and 30s, I always think (even though I wasn't born until the end of the 40s): Yes, I know - I lived through that time too!

Here are a few of my memories of Mainstone in the 1950s:

My earliest recollection is of travelling by pony and trap. It was a big step up at the back for a little lad. And the pony always farting its way downhill...!

Watching reaper-binders at work in the fields, some still pulled by horses, though tractors were fast taking over (the names Ferguson, Fordson, and Massey Harris stick in my mind - have I remembered them correctly?)

One bus a week: to Bishop's Castle ("The Castle"), each Friday (market day) and operated by Valley Motors. Miss it and you'd have to walk or bike it. But I don't think anyone did ever miss it because if Mrs Jones, say, wasn't at her gate when the bus came by then someone would be sure to get off and go and knock on the door to see if she was alright! Nobody paid until we got to town where the bus would pull in on the short gravel rise in front of the Castle Hotel and the driver would give you a ticket after he'd handwritten the details through a little window in a sort of box-like ticket machine. On the way back the bus would really struggle sometimes up "the bank", the steep road leading up to Bishop's Moat - till you'd wonder if it had any more gears left to change down to as it nearly came to a halt.

Clun was definitely a place you had to bike to, but we'd never miss Clun Show. Lolling with our picnic sandwiches on the steep slope below the castle, watching the "jazz bands" playing the likes of "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" on massed kazoos.

By the time we'd biked home it was dark: pump up the Tilley lamp and put the big black kettle on the range. There were tall glass-chimneyed oil lamps too, but I always loved the comforting soft hiss of the Tilley. No electricity, of course: it was candles to bed; round loaves of bread homebaked in a fireside oven in the kitchen; a fierce fire in the wash-house on Mondays to heat the copper; the dolly-tub, washboard, and blue bags; wireless, yes, but it had to be powered by an immensely heavy wet battery that needed to be re-charged from time to time at the motor garage in Bishop's Castle. No mains water either: a pump in the garden that had to be "primed".

Carrying cans along the road to Davies's farm to fetch milk after the afternoon milking (in fact, often getting there in time to see the milking itself), Standing at their kitchen door and watching the butter being churned, then turned out and patted into shape. Seeing chicks peck their way out of their shells under hatching lamps.

Just about everybody in Mainstone was involved in agriculture in some form or another, but a couple of other jobs I remember were: 1) the postman - there was no post office, but the postman had a little hut near the chapel to which he retired between collections and deliveries, presumably eating his sandwiches and brewing his tea, and I seem to remember that you could buy stamps off him when he was there; and 2) the roadman, who always seemed to be hard at it keeping the verges in trim, planting a red flag at the roadside behind him to warn (the very light) traffic of his presence.

Building dams in the brooks (the "river" Unk and its sidestream coming down from above Offa's Dyke at Churchtown) in order to create our own swimming pools. "Tickling" for fish under the banks in the same pools. Harvesting the fruit in the hedges: tiny, sweet wild strawberries and sharp-tasting hairy "goosegogs". And, of course, day-long expeditions up "Wimberry Hill" (almost certainly not its official name!) high above Churchtown, to pick basins full of the delicious berries. We were under strict instructions to come home with enough to make at least one pie, but of course we also ate our full up on the hill and came home with blue teeth and bright purple tongues.

Sunday services in the little Methodist chapel (my brother and I were officially Catholics, but we went anyway!); later in the week playing chapel with our "cousins": we'd sit on the stairs at home and sing (while someone pretended to play the harmonium): "Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light".

Well, I did intend this to be just a few sentences - but recollection has run away with me. Needless to say, I'd be delighted to hear from anyone anyone who also has memories of this time and this (to me) enchanted part of the world...

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