A Yokels Tale

A Memory of Owslebury.

A Personal Recollection of growing up during the last days of the pedestrian era in rural England by Tom Thornton
A Yokel's Tale

My earliest recollection of my Thornton grandparents, Alice and Tom, dates back to my pre-school years, when my Mum and Dad occasionally visited them at May Cottages, Longwood Dean. They lived at the south end of a group of four tied Mock Tudor cottages which had steep brick steps leading up from the narrow lane to the heavy wooden gate which opened onto a long narrow garden sloping up past the house, probably about ¼ of an acre. In front of the house to the right and stretching 50 yards up to the hen house was Granddad's immaculate vegetable garden. To the left of the seemingly long gravel path was a beautifully manicured lawn with steep banks down which we rolled and tumbled on while the grown-ups had tea in the house and conversations that we were never allowed to hear.
Children were required to be “seen and not heard” in those days. In fact my memory has it than Granny was a fearsome woman while Granddad was a much kinder and jolly gentle man with a warm grin which he wore permanently under his mustache. Us brats were only allowed into the stone-floored scullery at the back of the house, never into the company of adults who were in the parlour or front room. In one corner of the scullery stood two large oak barrels which held the days water supply drawn by the bucket-full from the well near the back door which was shared by the four families.

Granddad was said to have started work on Longwood Estate when he was 11 years old as a Pit Saw boy and that he walked from Twyford or morelikely Morstead to work at Longwood 6 days a week. Back then, before power saws, logs were cut by hand lengthwise down to the required sizes using long two-handed ripsaws. The log was placed on a rack over a pit the sawyer stood on top of the log and applied the downward thrust to the blade with his Tee-handle. The Pit boys job required that he spent most of his day in the sawdust pit beneath the saw bench, his task was to throw the saw back up toward the sawyer, and this would be dirty and exhausting work. He went on to become an estate carpenter and later worked in the sawmill. He died aged 73 shortly after retiring from the sawmill, having worked over 60 years on the estate.

My parents Cath and Tom met about 1934/5 when Dad was working at Longwood House as a maintenance electrician and carpenter. Mum's friend Molly described her, as a very pretty but very shy young woman when in her early twenties. Mum was born Catherine Munley and was the second daughter of an Irish coal mining family Anti and Catherine Munley Anti hade had migrated to Bedlington, Northumberland in the late 1800s from Mayo in Eire. Mum had been hired into service as a scullery maid for the Roman Catholic family of Lord and Lady Eldon, the owners of Longwood estate.
As part of the war preparations the estate was sold to Arnold Laver, a Timber Merchant of Sheffield, and Longwood house taken over by the Ministry of Defence and used as a billet by American servicemen. The Eldons moved to a safer to a property in the West Country I believe. Dad then became manager of Longwood Sawmill and Mum moved to Hazelmere where she worked for Mrs. Forbes at Sussex Belle, a ladies boarding school. They were married on Easter Monday 1940 at the Catholic Church in Hazelmere and moved into the Red Bungalow, Stagg's Corner, Owslebury Bottom, which was at the SW corner of the estate.

The Red Bungalow a corrugated galvanized iron clad dwelling painted with naturally Red Oxide. Originally it consisted of three small rooms, in the centre the living room with black cast iron wood/coal cooking stove and a bedroom at either end the slightly large one at the south end was our parent’s bedroom. Outside under a lean-to roof was a scullery with a brick larder on the shady NE corner. I was about four years old when the Aladdin and Tilley oil lamps were replaced with electricity, 12v and very few watts, generated by a single cylinder stationary engine turning several ex-army dynamos and charging a set of Knife submarine batteries.

At the back of the bungalow was a concrete slab and at right angles to the house was a gray weathered wooden clad building with a corrugated iron roof. The first section, The Washhouse held the wood fired “Copper” and the water tank in the roof, the next section of the building was the Wood and Coal shed, which also housed in winter our stock of root crops and chicken feed. and at the far end the “Lavi”, a single hole bucket toilet found somewhere on every rural property in those days. A lean-to shed was built on the north side an was dads first workshed

Dad extended the house to better accommodate his growing family several times. Firstly the scullery was enclosed to become the kitchen and the Primus stove installed to augment the wood stove for cooking. Next it was further extended to put in a Rayburn to replace the old Primus, now the luxury of hot free running water,and indoor W.C. That also brought an end to the seemingly endless pumping of water from the well up into the water tank, this had been my first chore of on arriving home from school. And lastly a real bathroom instead of the weekly tin bath in front of the fire

As was usual then, Dad rode his bike to and from work at the sawmill, where he was the working mill manager. The only public transport was the weekly bus on Saturday that took you to Winchester to do your shopping. We didn’t own a car until about 1950. Our milk came fresh daily from Bill George’s farm across the lane and on each Tuesday Mr. Fry brought the groceries from Eastleigh that Mum had ordered on his previous cal a fortnight before and the baker also from Eastleigh came twice a week. Mr. Fry owned a classic Morris Commercial van which looked more like a Victorian horse drawn cab with cast spoke wheels and may well have been a relic from WW1 such as an ambulance.
The Red Bungalow was a corrugated iron clad timber framed three-roomed dwelling on a half-acre lot. Water was collected from the roof, passed through a sand box filter and stored in a cistern in which the previous occupant was said to have drowned him self in.

I am the eldest of five, equi-spaced my eldest sister Elizabeth Ann 1943, Catherine Mary’45, Michael Anthony ‘47, and Martin 1950,we lived what now seems to be an idyllic lifestyle. We were pretty much self-sufficient thanks to Dads huge capacity for hard word. He biked to Arnold Laver's Sawmill at Longwood with a lunch tin of sandwiches and two bottles of tea to sustain him until he returned around 6 o’clock. When he would begin his essential chores, pumping the water from the underground cistern up into the header tank in the roof of the washhouse, feeding the live stock and splitting logs for the fireplace before “tea” which was our hot meal of the day cooked on the double burner Primus stove.
About half of the lot was devoted to a vegetable garden hand dug for the first several years, before the arrival of the Antzani Iron Horse a walk behind tractor. A quarter of the property was an orchard with plumbs eating and cooking apples, raspberries and fenced area enclosed about 200 chickens. We also had up to six pigs which we killed and processed salted and smoked to make into bacon ham and sausage which with fresh wild rabbits was virtualy our only meat supply. Because we had no refrigeration the meat was very heavily salted to preserve it before being smoked in our smakehouse fueled with oak sowdast from the mill then hung in the outdoor meat safe. The meat safe stood up th garden near a the big workshop, it was raised off the ground about 3ft and was a fine mesh wire cage about 4 foot square and 7 feet tall inside and could easly hold 4 sides of bacon atd several hams. I was well into my teens before I returned to eating bacon or smoked meats. The garden provided everything we needed literally tons of potatoes and root crops, carrots turnips and swedes celery and sugar beets for the pigs which we stored in huge bins, plus a steady supply of greens, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts and savoys mostly.

For my 2nd birthday I received a Gresham Flyer tricycle on which I spent thousands of daydreaming hours. Mostly peddling around the grassy part of the garden while making loud engine noises and pretending to be ploughing like my cousin Les Thatcher, who worked for Bill George on the farm down the lane. I made perfectly straight lined tracks as any master ploughman would in the early morning frost by very carefully in aligning one wheel in the track of the previous pass so as to ensure complete coverage of the lawn. Through the summer we ran like a bunch of gypsies naked and playing in the pond opposite Bill George’s farm. First the frogspawn appeared which we eagerly watched until the tadpoles emerged and by the time the summer holidays the marl-bottomed pond in which we waded chest deep teamed with frogs and pond life. We also caught newts, the now almost extinct butterflies of the south downs, I new where to find all of natures treasures, cowslips, primroses, white and blue violets, bluebells, primroses, hazel nuts and blackberries mushrooms. Birdsnesting was a serious pursuit for the country boy “Yokel” was my nickname when I was moved from Owslebury village school to receive a “Catholic Education” at St. Peters in Winchester. I even went bird nesting in Winchester where I went each Saturday morning while undergoing training to become an “Altar Boy”. Instead of hanging around waiting for the bus home I would head for the water meadows in search of the nests of Coots, Moorhen, Rails and Red Shanks Herons and Ducks and Swans. I had a huge collection of blown eggs and knew by sight and sound almost every British bird and where to find them within a few miles of home. I must have caused my mother so much anxiety because I would simply wander off and be gone for sometimes all day wandering totally immersed in the natural word around me.

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