2 Years In The Village

A Memory of Iford.

Sometime around 1956, for about two years, two of us shared a cottage in Iford village (one of the first two as you came off the main road from Lewes). We worked for Mr Robinson milking his Guernsey herd and doing the dairy work for one of the Shorthorn herds, in those days there was a bottling plant at the other end of the village and the milk was taken to Hove each day to be sold. I can remember occasionaly getting a lift and spending time on the beach.
I kept my horse in the village and would ride him on the downs or should I say try and ride him as his greatest aim in life seemed to be to unseat me.

Two village names I can remember working with were Denyer and Honeysett, I think we were regarded with great interest when we arrived, '2 young girls' living in a cottage on their own and outsiders at that.

There used to be a dance at Rodmell once a month which we used to attend, it always seemed to be the Saturday before it was my time to start work at 5 the next morning!  I can't remember any drink-related problems but then the dance might have been in the Church Hall, how times have changed!

Looking back at my time in Iford it was hard work but fun, how did we manage without any shops, fridges washing machines etc? The hot water system for a bath was to light a copper boiler in the kitchen, the water was piped through the wall into the bathroom, when we had finished if there was still a good fire going we would go next door and see if anybody would like to use the hot water. This was fairly primitive for those days, and not what we were used to. The only transport was a bus into Lewes on our half day a week off. Wages were low but so was the rent on the cottage, about 5 shillings a week I think, but we managed.
I left to emigrate to Canada, met and married a Welshman and subsequently returned to the UK.