Living At No 4 1947 1965

A Memory of Barrington.

We moved to No 4 Barrington Court Cottages (the first cottage right of centre) in 1947. My father arrived as head gardener in April and mum arrived in July when I was three weeks old. Mum was disappointed to find she was a mile from a bus stop and that the cottage had no electricity. At that time No 2 was occupied by Metcalfe Bailey the handyman, No 3 by Charlie Bowdrey, the chaffeur and his wife Alice, and No 5 by Len Martin the retired head gardener who soon moved away when the cottage was taken over by the new second gardener Leslie Nunn and his wife Mabel and son Rodney.
You will notice the thatch is in poor condition and we were troubled with leaks and falling ceilings until the thatchers moved in about 1960. They were on site for eight weeks and used many lorry loads of Norfolk reed.

That's an elm tree in right of shot which had to be felled in about 1970. Because of surrounding trees, garages and orchard it had to be felled towards the cottages and cleared the wall of No 6 by about six feet.

Because we lived in number four we had an extra room over the central passage. A room thirty feet long and four feet wide was very useful to someone with a clockwork train set!

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Added 06 July 2012

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My first memory of Court Cottages must have been about 1952, when I was about 6yrs old and my brother about three. You don't mention who lived at no 6. It was my grandparents, George (gardener at the Court) and Edith Huxford. I don't remember any leaks in the thatch. To me, a town child, it seemed idyllic. These are some of my memories - the noisy geese on the farm, the bull in the orchard, sheep on the green, hay bales and a hay stack for us & our Barrington cousins to play on, hens in the garden, fruit & veg too, seeing the hunt gathering outside, grandad coming home on his sit-up-and-beg bike, a bus once a week to Taunton. Also, one day I was takento a house a couple of doors away to play indoors with a little boy about my age and feeling a little awkward about it, as I didn't know him! Maybe that little boy was you?

It felt very nostalgic to visit again but I miss the bull and the geese and the farm smell, also the hay bales etc. It all looks very tidy, perhaps a bit too tidy? Ann Cross

By annkellowx on Sat Jul 4th 2015, at 6:24 pm

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Good to hear from you Ann. I did not mention your grandparents because I could not remember their name or what their job was. As you say it was an idyllic place, indeed I spend my retirement giving talks about my childhood there. I have also recorded about 80 brief spots on Angel Radio Havant. They are still repeated at 9.15 on a Friday morning.

I think that little boy was me as the only other child in the row was Rodney Nunn at No 5 who would have been nine or ten in 1952.

Talking about the thatch I can remember going to bed one night only to find about a yard square of the ceiling in my bed.

My parents were living at the White House in Gibbs Lane when Dad died in 1975 and Mum was moved to no 6, your grandparents old home.

By Richard Burton on Sat Jul 4th 2015, at 7:36 pm

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