Betton A Rural Idyl

A Memory of Market Drayton.

I literally stumbled upon this website and have been interested to read the memories of people who lived in Betton, a place well known to me. I lived there as a wartime evacuee in the 1940s, and Marc Chrysanthou's recollections were of particular interest as I know well the black and white cottage where his mother, whose name I forget, and his Uncle Michael lived as children. I also remember his grandparents, George and Winifred Lowe. His grandfather, George, was a gardener at Betton Hall where I and my three brothers lived as wartime evacuees. Prior to living at Betton Hall, we lived at Betton House with the Hon Mrs Edwards-Heathcote. She was the aunt of Sir Oswald Mosley who, contrary to common belief, was not born at Betton Hall, though he did live there for a while as a boy. He was born at Rolleston Hall in Staffordshire.
At Betton House I knew Marc's great-grandfather who was the gardener there and I have a photograph of the two Georges - father and son. After the death of Mrs Edwards-Heathcote in January 1940, old Mr Lowe went to live at The Burgage in Market Drayton. He was a really lovely old man.
The memories of Brenda Bailey, nee Holland, remind me that I knew her family. Her father worked on Mr James's farm in Betton and I have a photograph of him with the local Home Guard. I also have one of both her parents pictured with the congregation outside the old Chapel at Betton. Her sister, whose name I think was Margaret, used to recite with astonishing accurancy the Nativity Story from memory at our Christmas parties in the old village hall. Electricity had not yet reached Betton and the hall was lighted by oil lamps and heated by coke burning stoves. The old chapel at Betton became very derelict and might have been condemned to an inglorious end, but instead it has been converted to a private residence following complete and careful restoration by Mark Rowbottom and Nikki Mason who deserve all our thanks for doing such a magnificent job.
I used to attend the chapel as a boy when the vicar of Market Drayton, Rev Mervyn Charles Edwards, who later became the Bishop of Worcester, took our monthly services. The organist was the redoubtable Mrs Bourne. There were several Bournes in the area so she was known as Mrs 'Bungalow' Bourne because she lived in a bungalow called 'Glaslyn' on the Market Drayton Road. When playing the hymns in the chapel she sometimes had to compete with the noise of the rain on the corrugated iron roof which threatened to drown out the hymns. The harder it rained the louder she played and needless to say Mrs Bourne always won. In old age she entered a care home and often on my business visits to Market Drayton I took her out to tea and to visit old friends. She was 104 when I last took her out, I think in 1987, and she lived to be 106.
Marc Chysanthou is right in reflecting that Betton, of which I have the happiest of childhood memories, seems to exist in a softer, pastoral age. May it long continue to do so.

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