What life is all about, story so far.
Life, I would say on the whole, has been pretty good to me. Not as glamorous as some lives, but, it has been very interesting and full, and it has been very good. First and foremost, I was lucky to find a wonderful partner in my wife Anita. She has been the one who has the fortitude to stand along beside me all these years, and has given me the encouragement when I needed it most. I can tell you, I needed that help and encouragement many times during our married life.
People have different ways of planning their lives. Some stay at their occupations for life and will be secure in their retirement, good for them. However, one has to make a choice of what to do. I know I made a hell of a mistake when I left selling Real Estate, I know I would have been very comfortably off today. We are however, allowed one mistake in life, mine was a doosey.
Chapter One
The reason for writing the following, has been generated by the memory of one man; that man was my Grandfather. He left this world after having quite a full life, and yet it was untold, except, for the few tales he told me. Those very few are all I have. I would have wished to know much more what he had done in his lifetime, in fact I would have given anything for him to tell me all. What he did tell me, was wonderful to hear, and really something to remember.
As I have done so many varied things in my life, I don’t want my children or grandchildren to be uninformed of what happened during my time. Therefore, what follows, I know will be of great interest to them.
Let me tell of my Granddad. Granddad, Tom (Tot) Morton never became wealthy or in fact could be said to be poor but, only in monetary wealth. He did however, become a beautiful person, loved by all. He had quite a few adventures in his lifetime, which, unfortunately, were never put down on paper. He traveled, fought in a war. Then lived most of the rest of his life in the County of Durham.
I feel it a shame that so little was passed on to his kin; so, with this in mind, I am hoping this little autobiography will be of some interest to those that follow me. I hope this little bit of history of the Morton family will be worth while to our offspring, they will know something of their beginnings.
Granddad worked down in the mine most of his life, digging coal from far below the surface. I believe he started work when he was 9 years of age. Way back then, young people from poorer families did not get very much education. They had to work as soon as possible. When Granddad started at the mines, he probably was doing the same type of job as I did when I started at the age of 14.
Granddad married my grandmother, Bella, and raised a family of 4. Their children names were, Jack, Tom, (my Father), Hilda and Betty. They were a very happy family, and I’m given to understand they were never rich, and at times did not have enough to eat due to the small wages earned at the pits. My Uncle and Aunts were very close to each other, and they loved each and every one of us kids, they were nice people. My Uncle Jack went down the pit the same time as my Father. My Aunt Hilda married and became a Spiritualist. She became quite involved in the community, My Aunt Betty went to London and got small parts acting on the stage.
I am getting ahead of myself. When Granddad was young and working down the pits, the miners were not paid at all well. In those days there were no unions to help out. It is now said the Unions today, cause too much trouble with their strikes and what have you. However, in Granddad’s day, the only way the workers could get anything done to raise wages and better their working conditions was, to collectively go to management and put their grievances to them. Invariably the pit owners turned a deaf ear to their requests, and told them to get back to work or be fired. Also in those days, there was no such thing as safety precautions down the pits, the owners just did not care what happened down there, as long as the coal came to the surface. Working down the pit at that time, was very dangerous. In order to get changes, and make conditions better, the workers had to protect themselves as well as they could. They would beg and plead with the owners to give them better working conditions and wages, but they, the owners would refuse and continue to take their profits and to hell with the workers. It wasn’t just the owners of mines who badly treated their workers, factory workers and others were all treated the same way. Workers, back then, did not have a lot of benefits at all.
It is no wonder in later times the unions got a foothold, and became the strength they are today, for in the 1920’s all workers were treated as second rate citizens. There are many stories about how the workers suffered, before, and after the first World War of 1914 to 1918.
When Grandfather reached the age of 27, war was declared. Germany had decided they wanted to rule more of Europe and proceeded to invade adjoining countries. History will tell of other reasons for the war. It still boiled down to the fact they wanted more of Europe. England and France would have none of this, and declared war on Germany. Like many other young men in England and France, volunteering was the only honorable thing to do. Grandfather, with very little training, left home for the trenches in France.
He had to leave his children and go to the front knowing very little of what war was all about. Germany had to be stopped as soon as possible. The song the soldiers sang as they went to the front was…
I’m going to hang out my washing on the Siegfreid line
If the Seigfreid line is still there.
The Tommies, as the English soldiers were called, really believed that it was just a matter of them showing up to fight, and the Germans would run. Little did they guess how hard the next 4 years would be.
In those days, horses were used to pull the wagons and cannons through the mud up to the front-line. They would be under gunfire whenever they did this work. Granddad said the screams of injured soldiers and horses at the front still remained with him those many years later.
Unlike, World War 2, the war was fought mostly in the trenches. One side would launch an attack and win a few yards, then the other would reverse the procedure and win the few yards back. In the meantime, the soldiers were dying in that “no mans land” between the two sets of trenches. Because of snipers who would kill anyone venturing out to help the wounded or to collect the bodies, many of the dead were just left to rot. Granddad said the rats would come out in droves to eat the bodies soldiers.. He said it was terrible to see buddies of his, lie there, for he could do nothing to help them.
After months in the trenches, the rain came down in torrents, the trenches filled up with mud. In order to get out of the mud, the soldiers dug slots in the walls of the trench, just enough so they could slide in, and lie down. They lived in these conditions for months on end. Historians say the war of 1914 to 1918 was much more severe on the common soldier than World War 2, as so many perished due to the terrible conditions, as did by the enemy. All soldiers, the enemy included suffered so much.
After the war Granddad was reunited with his family. He believed wholeheartedly, that as the war had been won by the Allies, they would receive a wonderful welcome back as conquering heroes. They felt they would be better appreciated, they also believed they would receive a better wages and better conditions at the pits.
They received the wonderful welcome, however, the conditions at the pits were actually worse. The owners wanted to make up for all the money they had lost during the war, and the workers received less than they had before they left. Poverty once again ruled supreme and remained so for many years.
My Grandfather and other miners, in 1926 had enough. The whole mining industry was closed down because noone would work for wages, so low, that, if you had an average family, no matter how hard you worked there was never enough money to feed everyone. Yes, people were starving, even those that had a full time job. Those same conditions had lasted a very long time.
Things were getting worse, a number of the workers took control and decided enough was enough. If they were starving while they were fully employed, why not starve while fighting for better conditions?. So, a General Strike was called. All the workers in England went on strike, Railwaymen, Miners, Bus Drivers, the whole work force joined in and everything stopped. They decided it was time the workers had better wages, and the working conditions had to change.
It was thought at the beginning, the families would go through a bad time being short of food; however, soon the food kitchens were formed and families were fed, some say even better than they were when the workers were fully employed. The do-gooders supplying the food never realized how little these families had been living on.
Granddad was not happy with having to live on charity, so he decided to go elsewhere to find work to feed his family. He went south to London, but there was no work to be had, as everyone there was on strike also.
He had the opportunity to go to Canada, so he went leaving all his family in England. He worked his passage and was able to send money home. He arrived in Canada and as far as I can remember what he told me, he went to Edmonton to work for a brother who had emigrated years earlier. Granddad’s brother owned a farm in Edmonton and was doing very well. He offered Granddad a reasonable wage, so he could send money home to the family. He was able to save enough to send for Grandmother. The plan seemed pretty feasible, she would leave the children at home until they were settled and then send for them. However, unfortunately she was always ill in Canada and couldn’t stand the cold weather in Edmonton. So she returned home.
I must tell you what Granddad told to a young kid, who always hung on to every word he said. When the rivers and lakes were frozen in Edmonton, the poor people who could not afford ice skates, would grow their toenails and curl them under their feet to use for skates. As you can see he liked to pull my leg for I really believed him when he told me.
Granddad took his leave of Edmonton and continued around the world. Unfortunately, I never heard from him any stories of this part of his life. How I wish he had told me.
During the time he was away, the strike had got worse in England. The workers, now frustrated with the lack of progress in the negotiations, began to cause havoc. They attacked the mine offices, and in order to keep warm at home, raided the coal heaps to heat their homes . Remember, in those days, the only heat and cooking facilities they had, came from the fire place.
The British Government, guided by Winston Churchill, who was then Minister of Labour, turned the troops out against the workers. Yes the same Winston Churchill who led England during the war and was a wonderful leader. Churchill, was always hated by the miners, then and forever. He did great things for England during the war, however, the miners never forgave him for turning out the army against them.
Anita recalls her Dad telling her that he went to a big strike rally in London in support of all workers on strike, for no reason the police on horseback just rode into the crowd swinging batons and pushing people down to the ground. Many times this type of thing happened, times were not the best in those days.
The workers eventually had to return to work, practically with the same terrible conditions they had endured for so many years. The strike had done them no good at all. It was at this time, the workers got organized and the beginnings of unions were being formed.
Eventually Granddad returned home to his family, his children had grown up and were now working, so the family were much better off financially than they had ever been. There were now a number of wage earners in the house.
Chapter Two
Eventually, the owners had to close down certain mines, as all the coal had been worked out. One of the many unemployed miners looking for work at that time was my Father. He had heard there was plenty of coal mining in Rossington a small village near Doncaster in Yorkshire, so he went to there to find work.
How fate works, he took lodgings with a family by the name of Taylor. Little did he know that it was in that home he would meet his future wife.
I don’t know how long he was in Rossington, however, he was there long enough to marry my Mam (May), and take her back to Durham. Now the situation had changed, and there was lots of work once again.
My father’s job down the pit when he first got married was that of a putter. To explain, those days there was little machinery down the mines. The height of the working area at the coal face was governed by the height of the coal seam, therefore, if the seam was 4ft that was the working area. Generally, it was 5ft and working in that height was not too bad. In later years when the coal was running out, the workers, would work in areas where the coal seam was only 3ft. This was pretty hard on the miners having to work in so little headroom, they had to pick at the coal laying on their sides. This did not last for long, an entirely new method was used when the seams of coal were only 3ft. For this type of mining, conveyor belts were introduced.
The workers at the coal face would hew the coal with picks and shovels and load it into small tubs. To get these tubs to the gantry, where they were taken to the main shaft; a man was employed to push these tubs, this man was called a putter. When a man was young he did this job; as it required lots of muscle and energy, then as he got older he then became a hewer at the coal face. A putter usually worked with 4 hewers, which kept him pretty busy. This is the job he had when I was a child.
Should the gantry be a great distance away, ponies were used to pull the tubs. There are many stories about these ponies, they would work in the dark with the putter helping to push from the back of the tub or tubs.
It was usual to move three or four tubs on at one time. The story of ponies used down the pit is not very nice. Some of these would be down the pits for 10 to 20 years without seeing daylight. These poor ponies were more than once beaten by some of the putters. However, on the other hand, some putters really felt for them. They tried to make their lives a little better. The only time many of these ponies got to the surface was when they were dead.
Eventually it was unlawful to have ponies down the pits. After this law came along, when the ponies came to the surface, they suffered terribly with the brightness of the sun and they even got sunburned. They had been down below far too long, and by bringing them to surface, even that was cruel.
It was not long before our family began to arrive; 5 of us very rapidly, me being the eldest. Reginald, Norma, Alan, Peter and Betty. By having a big family, we never had money to spare for those extras. Dad loved to gamble, but, of course could not afford it. Now and again Mam would let him keep a florin (two shilling piece) to play pitch and toss. Occasionally he would win, which of course was rare. I can remember on one occasion he must have won quite a bit of money, for each of my brothers and sisters received a set of new clothes. This was a blessing for the young un’s, for clothes were always repaired to the extreme and handed down.
During my growing up years we moved a few times, as work in the mines ran out. Moving was, and still is a bit of a pain. One of the reasons I hated it, every time I started at a new school, there was always that bully who had to tell you he was boss, and of course, you had to fight him to gain respect of the other kids; I always got beat up, no kidding. Sometimes other kids would want a piece of you, so you had to fight them as well. It was the same every time I moved. It was not often I won, for I was not very tall or even had much weight.
Growing up in Durham was not the same as it is today; in those days, you were either playing soccer, street games or raiding the next village, and fighting the kids that lived there. (So much for violence being blamed on T.V. shows these days) We had no entertainment, other than what you made ourselves. Going to the movies was the only break a kid got, and that was not very often.
I was better than average at school, however, they had a system in those days, to sort out those who got a higher education. During your 11th year, you sat an exam, which should you pass, you would at the age of twelve go to high school. I wanted desperately to continue school, but I failed the exam and had to stay where I was. This was a disappointment to me, and my family, including my Grandparents. Everyone felt I had the ability. Many people felt the kids that went on for higher education were picked long before the exam. It could have been, some that went really were not very smart. It depended on who you were in the social grade.
In 1939 war was declared again; Germany once again, led by Hitler, invaded Poland, Holland, Belgium and France. France and the other Allies would suffer so very much during this war. You can read elsewhere how terrible it all turned out.
In the north east of England, we saw very little of the bombing, in fact we saw little of the war at all; we just read how it was progressing through the newspapers, and watch the newsreels at the movies. Friends older than myself were called up to fight in the war, however, I was at an age where I completely missed having to join the army. As coal was needed for the war effort lots of miners retained their jobs..
The war was completely different for Anita. When war was declared, it was felt the children of London would have to get out of the city. So thousands and thousands of kids, including Anita were sent to small towns and villages so they would be away from the bombing, that everyone knew was coming.
As it was such a big job to organize, lots of parents were not informed where the kids had been sent. Anita’s parents knew the town where she was, but did not know where she was staying. So her dad got on his bike and peddled about one hundred miles to that town to search for her, as he was so worried about his little girl. There were very few cars around in those days, so the push bike was the only way he could make the journey.
After making enquiries, her dad found her in a home with 11 other children. All these children were sharing one bedroom. The bedroom door was locked at night, and the children had to stay there until morning. Her Dad found a very upset little girl who he immediately took back home.
Understandably, a total blackout was imposed for all the buildings in London, and the police could fine any home-owner if the smallest crack of light could be seen at a window. Of course, no street lights were allowed, everywhere was pitch black at night, for any light at all would tell the German Pilots where the buildings were.
During the next few months, the bombing started each and every night. Anita and family would go into their Anderson Air Raid shelter, a corrugated iron building that was set in the ground so it would protect them from the bombs and shrapnel. This building was just enough to house four people. Of course the building would not be of much use if they were to suffer a direct hit by a bomb. Every night when the bombers came over, the sirens would sound, this told everyone it was time to get into the shelters.
Eventually, the nights were spent much more comfortably in a basement of a school with a hundred other families. Other people in London would go and sleep in the underground railway, as some of these stations were pretty deep underground. Those days, it was also against the law to go anywhere without your gas mask for it was felt the Germans would begin using poison gas.
As Germany were losing so many aircraft to the Allied Airforces they introduced the Buzz Bombs. These were called the V1 Rockets, and were pilotless planes loaded with bombs. The engines of these rockets were very loud, and everyone prayed they would keep going, for once the engine stopped the Buzz bomber would fall to the ground and explode. These things were terrible, for there was no warning at all that they were on their way. With the bombers at night the warnings came with the sirens. These things arrived at any time, day or night. It was impossible for people to spend all day and night underground so the bombers caused a lot of deaths. Hitler had tried daylight bombing but had suffered so many casualties, therefore, with the introduction of the Buzz bombers he did tremendous damage.
The next weapon introduced by the Germans to bomb London was the V2 rocket, it was more destructive than the V1. It was much faster in the air, it was silent, could travel much further, and carried a bigger load of bombs. It is well known, these rockets were the beginning of space travel.
It was decided, Anita and her mum would have to be evacuated to East Anglia away from the bombs, they were sent to a little village by the name of Swaffam. Eventually Anita’s Dad joined them and began working on the local airfield as a painter. The family all lived there until the end of the war, when it was safe to go back to London. Anita had seen first hand what the bombs and the rockets had done to London.
Jack, Anita’s brother who is 8 years older than her, was called up and went into the army, he went to Europe and spent two years in action against the Germans. Jack had many stories to tell of the war.
After I had failed to gain a better education, I had to stay at the elementary school until the age of fourteen. A day after I left school I went to work at the pit. Of course like all the young kids I was excited to go, for now I would have my own money in my pocket. Today when I looked at my Grandson Joel, at the age of fourteen, I think, how could I go to the pits at that age and size, it makes one wonder. Times change so much. I guess, I still can say I didn’t have to start at the age of 9 like my Grandfather.
Chapter Three
Work, at the age of fourteen did not turn out to be very nice. It was horrible and filthy dirty. Like all of the kids there, I hated it. Coal dust was in the air for the full eight hours we worked. We were breathing it all day, the dust filled our mouths and throats. We had to spit deeply to get rid of it, that is the only way I can say it, for the dirt was way back of our throats. A person would get rid of it, just in time to start work the next day. Our clothes were filthy within minutes of getting to work, it truly was horrible.
To describe the work, I have to explain further how the system in the mine works. A mine shaft is driven into the ground, the depth depends where the coal seam lies, anything from 200 ft to some mines in Pennsylvania, which go down a mile.
Coal seams any closer than 200 ft to the surface are usually mined by driving a shaft, a tunnel to enter from the surface at an angle to go down to meet the coal seam.
When the coal seam is within 30 ft of the surface, the coal is mined simply by removing the soil and rocks to where the coal seam is. The coal is dug out, then the rocks and soil are replaced to their previous position.
Back to number one, the shaft system. After the shaft has been dug and re-inforced, steel guides are installed. On these steel guides, cages are fixed. A building is placed next to the shaft, in which a Pulley Engine is installed. This pulls and lowers cages into the mine. The cage acts like an elevator taking workmen and the empty tubs down, then the cages bring up the full ones. Imagine an elevator shaft, this is how it works, only the one at the pit goes down into the ground.
It is necessary to make the roof high enough for the workers at the bottom of the shaft to work comfortably. The workers would then drive gantries in different directions, taking out the coal and rocks, which they would load into the tubs. The rocks would have to be taken to the surface as well as any coal, for of course they had no where to store them. Later there was a system introduced so they would not have to take the rocks to the surface.
During the preliminary work on the surface, drilling had taken place to find where the best coal seams were to be found below. With this established, the miners knew in which direction to take the gantries. I must explain gantries are the tunnels to where the coal is to be found. The workmen would install tracks for the tubs to run on.
The idea was to take the gantries to the furthest point where the coal was to be mined. The reason for this, was, once the coal had been extracted the miners then would take out the supports and let the roof cave in. In this way, once the gantries had been established, sending rocks to the surface to be disposed of was not required, they would leave all the rocks behind them where the coal had been extracted.
Now to explain what I was required to do in my first year or two at work. When the tubs arrived on the surface, they were taken to a tipping machine, then the coal was dropped onto a metal conveyor belt. First cause of dust. As the coal went along this belt, it was my job to pick among the coal and remove the many stones that were in among the coal.
As the hewers at the coal-face were paid by the weight of the tubs, they would load a few stones among the coal to get that weight. They would do it to the point, that if too many stones were found in their tub, they would lose the payment on the whole tub as punishment.
All the young kids would stand beside the belt all day, in that dusty building picking stones off the belt and throwing them on the floor. Eventually, we would be standing on a big pile of rocks. When the pile of rocks got too high to get stones off the belt we would have to bend down, almost touching our toes. When it got to this point, the work became very back breaking.
The coal traveled down the conveyor belt, at the end it went down a chute to an awaiting coal wagon. There was always a breeze coming up from the wagon end of the conveyor, second cause of coal dust flying all over the place.
When the stones on the floor became too high, we were required to shovel them on to the same conveyor belt that they had come off. We would load a special wagon which when full would be taken and dumped on the waste heap not far away.
During the time we were picking stones off the belt, the kids would throw quite a number of pieces of coal on the floor. When we loaded the wagon with the rocks, we would be adding coal. The reason for this, if we were short of coal at home for the kitchen fire, we would be required by our parents to go to the tip and pick for coal. By cheating a little at work, it made it a lot easier to get coal for home. As Dad worked at the pit, one of the perks, was, we received a load of coal every month. Usually the coal ran out before the month was up. That is when we would go and pick coal from the tip.
I really was looking hard to get away from my job on the belts, for it was a nightmare. Unfortunately, finding work away from the pit was not easy, and I tried and tried. There were a lot of us out there doing the same thing, looking for other work.
I knew my education skills were not the best, so I went to evening classes and took a course in bookkeeping. After I had taken a full year, I went to the pit offices and applied for a job in there. Unfortunately there was nothing available, however, someone must have seen something, for I got a job as token boy which eventually gave me the job of Assistant Master Weighman.
Now, another explanation. At the coal face, the man who hews the coal, places tokens in the bottom of the tub on a ring. These tokens are made of metal, attached to a strong piece of string. He places one of these for himself, this shows who loaded the tub, and one for the putter, which shows who got it started to the surface. The hewer of course, keeps a record of how many he loaded, and the putter does the same. These tokens are collected after the tub had passed through the tipper. If the token boy is short at the end of the day there was hell to play.
This was my job for a while, even though I was still amongst the dust; it certainly was not as bad as on the belts. Believe me, I appreciated being away from some of the dust. It did not take too long before I was asked to train as Weighman. The man who’s job it was, didn’t have the best of health. It was felt I should be ready to take his place if necessary. I still had to do the work of the token boy while being trained, but I didn’t mind that in the least.
The Weighman’s job, was to weigh as many of the tubs that came from below as he could. As the pit was open 24 hours a day he could only weigh a few during his 8 hour shift. His responsibility was to find the amount of coal dug by each and every hewer, by using the average weight of coals weighed. He would come up with a figure on which the man was paid. Sometimes, it became very awkward to tell a worker he wasn’t filling his tubs up enough, in which case he would lose some of his wages. As you can guess, sometimes, there were some very frustrated workers.
After a while, it became my job to be the Master Weighman, this, at the age of eighteen. It was pretty hard to compete against these men, for should I back down, it would soon get around you were an easy touch. At this time, in order to make myself look older I decided to grow a mustache, this may or may not have been very successful, however, I still have it to this day. Anita trims it, and says it grows so fast, in 57 years I wonder how many yards or miles it has grown.
Chapter Four
In 1943, years before I had this promotion at work we suffered a tragedy at home. My Father left home as usual at 11 o’clock in the evening to go to work. When on the night shift he would ride his bicycle to work. Mam had put up his sandwiches, and he said goodnight to us. He was in his usual good mood even though he hated night shift.
I would like to say a little about Dad. He never smoked or drank beer like many other miners. He liked a little flutter on the horses, and did a little other gambling. He loved his family very much, and we all loved him. He was a good man. He didn’t have a great education, but he knew how to bring up his family. I remember once a kid told him I said a bad word, he never swore so he was mad and upset with me to think that I had sworn. I will say what the kid had said was untrue, nevertheless, I remember how Dad was unhappy, today I do not swear and use bad words. I don’t know if it makes me a better person, but I know I feel better for it.
Anyway, at two-thirty in the morning there was a knock on the door; both Mam and I were there to answer it. There was a policeman standing at the door, and he informed us Dad had been killed on his way to work. He had been hit by one of the very few cars that were in the village. The car belonged to the local doctor.
As I was young at the time, I never heard the true details of the accident, only that Dad had been hit, and went through the windscreen. He was killed instantly. In later years, it was said, the doctor was drunk, at the time of the accident and he should have been charged. We should have received benefits from the doctor’s insurance. We did receive some money, but it was very little, for it was not very long before we were in dire straights.
At this time I was all of 15 years of age; the eldest of 5 children. Mam had to survive on her widow’s pension, and the little I received as my wages. We never had money to spare at all. How Mam kept everything going I’ll never know, she was wonderful. I had to grow up in those few months, however, the kids were still rascals and could drive Mam and me nuts very easily. Mam, however handled everything, as well as she could and kept us all together.
To bring just a little more money in, I took an evening job as an assistant projectionist at the local movie house. Actually, I think half the reason I took it, was to get out of the house away from the kids; how Mam stood them all the time, is beyond me. I saw lots of movies and enjoyed the job very much.
I really don’t remember too much about the other children for they had their friends and of course did their thing. We all of course had our own friends, and spent time with them. But, you know, I can say this, we never at any time had to worry about them at all. Each was reasonably good. I cannot remember ever getting real upset at any time. Of course there were those squabbles that kids have, I guess at times I was a bit of a pain as well, but, I don’t ever think that any of us ever gave mam trouble.
We all were aged close together, so we actually all grew up at the same time. Girl or boy friends and that sort of thing. When I think of it, I believe Norma married her very first boyfriend. In fact after Reg came back from the army he married the girl friend he was going out with at that time.
Eventually Reg started work, then Norma, so a little more money was coming in. However, kids sometimes don’t understand, and really want just that little much for themselves. We were better off, no doubt, but not enough for any of the good things in life. Everything was a struggle to keep enough on the table. I remember how Mam would make lots of yorkshire puddings and gravy to eke out the meat at dinner time.
Mind you we loved her yorkshires. She also made her own bread every day.
She had to do all her cooking on the fire and in the oven next to the fire. It is hard to understand how she could bake bread every day and cook a meal for all of us just with a coal fire.
Anita remembers in her childhood, her mam had to cook with the fire, while they were living in Swaffam they used oil lamps to light the home, there was no electricity.
At this time mam did not have a vacuum cleaner, but, the house was always spick and span, even with all us kids around. I must mention she never had a washing machine either, but I remember all the whites were boiled in the cauldron each time wash day came around. All clothes being washed had to cleaned by using a method and tool known as a posst stick. The clothes in the cauldron were worked and cleaned by the posst stick being pushed up and down, then the clothes were put through a mangle then hung to dry on a line. If it was raining, clothes were hung indoors to dry, I can tell you it became a bit of a game dodging in and out of the hanging washing.
Eventually the kids grew up and started to leave home; Reg joined the Army, and went out to Singapore, Norma went to London in service with a hospital, Alan also joined the Army and went to India.
So now there was only Betty, Peter and me left at home with Mam. One of the reasons for everyone leaving home was that Mam had taken up with a man by the name of Joe Hindmarsh; the kids and I never liked him from the minute we met him. Certainly, there was resentment towards him for taking up lots of Mam’s time, also, the man was not nice to us kids. Mam eventually would marry him; I guess we could not blame her, she needed a bread winner in the house. They eventually had one child, a son by the name of Colin.
I continued working at the pit and was eventually promoted to the Head Office. To further my education, I went down the pit to see the conditions the men worked in. I had worked on the surface for nearly 7 years, but truly never understood or imagined what the conditions down below were like.
Where to start?. First when I went to the bottom of the shaft there was a blaze of lights with the full tubs going into the cages and being hauled to the surface. When the cage came back down, the empty tubs were moved smartly to the coal face. There was also noisy stationary machinery hauling the tubs from deep in the mine. In this confined space the noise was unbelievable, and to think people worked there all day. It is different these days, people just don’t know what it is to do a hard physical day’s work. If anyone needed a stress leave, it would have been those miners.
We proceeded to the coalface, travelling through the gantries. In some areas the floors of the gantries were like flowing rivers, water was everywhere. There was no place to go other than plow right through it. We were shown where men hewed the coal by hand. If the coal seam was about 4ft, the men would drill holes at the bottom of the coal, place dynamite in the holes, then fire them to bring down the coal. Then the coal was loaded into the tubs by hand. I suppose the workers doing that considered they were lucky, for the height in the work area was not too bad.
We were then taken to where a different method was used to get the coal. This method was used when the coal seam was less than 4ft high. The miners would drive two gantries fifty yards apart into the coalface. This would enable them to mine the coal in between these two gantries. They would begin, by driving a working area from one gantry to the other. This working area would be at the furthest point away from the main shaft that took the coals to the surface. The idea was to mine the coal, working towards the shaft, allowing the workers to collapse the roof behind them.
After the working area had been dug and cleared between the two gantries, the miners would then take in a machine known as a cutter. This machine would cut an area at the bottom of the coal face of 2 inches high by two feet deep. Then the workers would place drill holes and place charges at the bottom of the coal face in readiness to explode them. A conveyor belt was placed in position to be ready for the coals to be loaded. The dynamite would be then fired bringing the coals down. Now, the coals could be loaded onto the conveyor belt. When I watched the coals been loaded on the conveyor belt, the men were using their feet as well as shovels to push it onto the belt.
About two feet of coal was removed by this method every day, and every day a team would use the cutter followed with drilling more holes, and before the dynamite was fired they would move the conveyor belt closer to the coal face. They would repeat this every day; also putting in pit props as they went along to keep the roof from falling in.
When there was an empty space behind, where the coals had been removed, the props keeping the roof up were removed, and the roof would collapse to the point where the new props were installed. This was a scary thing to do, however, the workers had been doing the same thing for so many years, so they knew what they were doing.
During the 7 years I was working in the mines I would say 10 men lost their lives in the mine I was working at. We were fortunate, one pit had an explosion, which killed quite a number of the miners. The explosion was caused by the build up of gas, deep down in the pit. Many years ago, the practice of checking for gas, was to use a canary in a cage. As the bird, would be affected by the gas long before man, they knew, if the bird died, the workers had to get out of the pit quickly. There were still many serious accidents, due to this coal gas.
. We had no idea where we would go, we never had really thought it out. We did however, make the decision to go to an area known as Cricklewood, which was pretty central to everything.
We had decided before we left Durham, the cheapest way to live, would be by finding a boarding house. The Landlady would feed and house us. We wouldn’t have to worry about getting food and all the other things we would have to find if we had our own place. We found just the place, we paid by the week, and it worked out great.
In the Cricklewood area, there were many big houses, which, were used solely as boarding houses, so it was easy to find what we needed. I guess we had our first bit of luck.
We were rather fortunate to find a home with a nice lady who realized we were new to London. She kind of took us under her wing. It was very nice to be lucky enough to land as we did. In this boarding house there was a total of sixteen lodgers. Where they all slept I’ll never know, however, when meals were to be served they all showed up hungry as wolves. They arrived in the dining room from all nooks and crannies.
There was this huge table, everyone sat around, and as the food arrived there was one big grab. Luckily there was loads of food, so we all had enough in the end. We always had tons of mashed potatoes and lots of other vegetables, it was good wholesome food and we never went hungry. You had to be on time, or you did without. I soon learnt what the “boarders reach” was.
As this was our first time in London, my friend and I naturally wanted to see the sights. It did not take us long to understand the underground railway. In just a few days, we had seen Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace, Regent Park Zoo and Hyde Park. I also got to the point, I was spending all my Sunday mornings listening to the soap box speakers at Hyde Park Corner. It was wonderful listening to them, lot of them spoke a lot of sense, while others were chastised for their ideas. They were heckled, and they did not mind. It was all good wonderful fun, I got some good ideas from there. It was my first start in a new education, and a start in my new thinking. I was twenty one years of age and all of this was a great and wonderful adventure.
My friend and I got so we loved to sightsee, so we decided to just enjoy ourselves for a while. We supplemented our money by gambling. As I had mentioned, I had always enjoyed a gamble, sixpence here and sixpence there, on dogs, horses, anything.
We first began playing snooker for money, I was pretty good at the time. You have heard of the saying, “a good player must have wasted his childhood”. Well, my Granddad, for a few years owned a billiard saloon, and of course I spent a lot of time in there. Granddad paid me for sweeping up and generally keeping the place tidy. I had the chance to play a lot of billiards and snooker, in fact at the age of 10 I won some sort of boy’s championship so I was handy with the billiard cue.
Well, I started winning a pound here and a pound there, enough to pay my board money. Eventually, we decided to go to the dog racing. In Durham, we had just one track, if you weren’t in the know, you never could win anything because the place was crooked. In those days at home, it was well known, if they did not want the favorite to win, it was fed a pork pie before the race then let nature take it’s course.
In London there were many tracks, however, the two which were only a little crooked, were White City and Wembly. Instead of just a hundred or so people watching the races, we found that in London it was big business, thousands would go.
I don’t recall how many times a week we went to the dog races, we went whenever the tracks were open. Sometimes we lost, but mostly we won. We were always well off financially; not rolling in money, but to us it was a bonanza. We did not go overboard with spending, we just had good food, and lots of beer.
As Epsom Downs was close, we decided we would go to see the Derby and make a few bets. This meant getting on a train and travelling to Epsom. We were really getting adventurous. This was our first trip outside of London. When the Ascot races came along we decided we had to go and see the Royal Family as they always attended. I can’t remember if we saw the Family, but I do remember we backed a few winners.
After three and a half months, my friend wanted to go back home to Durham. He was a little home sick. I suppose I was too, so I agreed to go with him. We had never worked one day while we were in London, and we returned home with a little more money than we had when we left. Most of all, which was so fortunate, we had grown up quite a bit.
Of course we had great stories to tell our friends, real or not. It was great to give an account of what we had done, and the many things we had seen. I suppose they got fed up with our stories after a while, as some of them were married and could never hope to take the chance we had.
Life at home was not working out, it was not long after I got back, I realized I should have stayed in London. The thought of looking for a job close by was not to be relished. I guess there was only one thing to do, and that was to return to London.
Chapter Seven
I knew, by returning to London, I could not continue my old style of gambling, and just having a good time, I needed to find a job.
I returned to my old digs, and was welcomed by the old Landlady. I just joined in as if I had never been away. She realized that once I got my feet wet in London, Durham would never satisfy me. She was a wise old dear.
All the guys in the boarding house knew I was looking for a job, one of the fellows told me they were looking for helpers at his plant.
I applied and got a job right away. In the plant they made all kinds of fertilizers. There were different stages in the process of making these, one of them was to put the finished material through a crusher. Yes, you figured right, this was my job, I fed the lumps of fertilizer into the crusher, and there was so much dust, only this time the dust was white. By the end of the day I was covered in the stuff, and should have been charged by the company for how much I swallowed and took home on my clothes.
You can well imagine, I wasn’t in the least happy about this job. It reminded me too much of the pit; only this time I was white when I finished work, not black as before. I swallowed so much coal dust and fertilizer. No wonder today I suffer today with chest infections.
Every night when I got home and bathed, I would answer every add in the newspaper. Every night it was the same, I knew I had to get out of that job and get on with my life I was feeling pretty miserable for I really didn’t have any close friends in London.
I had made my mind up, I was interested only in an office job of some kind,. I applied for a job at banks, but because of my lack of education I felt I did not have much of a chance. One job I spotted, I felt it was the kind of job I would kill for. The company advertising wanted someone as a timekeeper for a construction site in East Anglia. The advertisement said there would be a certain amount of traveling attached to the job. This would suit me fine, for I had not seen much of England and this would give me a wonderful chance.
I wrote the letter along with the others and awaited a reply. A few days later I was shocked. Here was an answer from the company I dreamed I would love to work for. The letter asked me to attend the company’s offices in Mill Hill, a suburb of London for an interview. I can’t recall now, but I don’t for one minute believe I owned a suit, so I would have had to buy one. I was on hot pins until the day arrived for my interview.
I don’t think I slept the night before, this was my first interview ever. I arrived at the offices of John Laing and Son Ltd., one of the largest Construction companies in England. Far too early for my interview, I just hung around and viewed the building. I remember the man’s name that interviewed me. His name was Saville, I however don’t remember much about the interview. I must have come across well, for he hired me on the spot, gave me a travel voucher with some money and told me to report to an airfield near Bury St Edmonds. I left the office approximately 3 feet off the ground, I was walking on air. I got a map and had to look up Bury St Edmonds, for I had no idea at all where it was.
My salary was exactly double the sum I was earning in the factory. I was singing like a lark when I left John Laing’s office, there wasn’t a happier person in the whole of England. Here, I had got an excellent position on my very first interview. Me, who really couldn’t speak good English, for my Geordie accent was so thick, most people couldn’t understand me, but Mr. Saville must have.
Chapter Eight
So now starts a new chapter in my life. I gave my notice at the factory, packed my clothes, said goodbye to my landlady, and looked again at the map to find which direction I was to head. Checked the train schedule, and I was on my way.
I arrived in Bury St. Edmonds, then telephoned the site office, the manager sent a truck to pick me up and I arrived at the airport. Yes, the construction site was at Bury St. Edmunds airport. The company had already arranged accommodation in a local home. The people turned out to be very nice, they were an older couple, who were very happy to have a little extra income.
Fortunately, the person who was being relieved by me, was there for a few days to give me some sort of training. When I was hired, I believed my job was just to see that the workers got to the construction site on time, and to work out how many hours they should be paid. The last thing I expected would be for me to actually take over the whole cashier’s department, handle all the money. I had to handle all the money, and make up the wages the workers would be entitled to.
As you can imagine, my trainer was anxious to get to his next job, so he left much too early for me. I was just thrown to the wolves. Here’s this Geordie, who did not know a great lot, in complete charge of wages for about two hundred and fifty men. I have to say I was more than a little worried. I had seen what happened on one pay day, and that one time only, for two of us, my trainer and myself it was hectic, so when he left I was in for a very quick education, for now it was all up to me.
The normal day began with the men coming to my office calling out their number to me. Each man had been given a number, so I would know that when he called it, I would know he was at work. In those days, there were no clocking in and out machines. This was called checking in, or clocking in. No system is perfect, for some men would miss clocking in and would argue with me that they had. My job was to make a decision, and it had to be the right way, for if they thought for one minute they could get away anything, life would be hell and I would also lose my job. So, if they had not clocked in, and clocked out at night, they would not be paid for that day. They could have been half an hour late or more, and that’s why they did not clock in, and I would end up having to protect my position. I had a few arguments when I first started, for some workers were trying me out, and I knew it. I don’t know where it came from, but I stuck to my guns, and I found that these men came to respect me. I would also do a site check during the day to spot a few of the many workers. This was done so that some of the workers did not clock in then take off for the rest of the day. Some workers tried many things on me, but we got to know each other.
All week I seemed to be thinking what Friday would have for me. Remember this was my first Friday on my own, the previous Friday I had my trainer and that was hectic. As I said, the big day was Friday; each and every week the workers had to be paid, in those days we did not write checks. Banks were not used as they are today, every worker had to receive his wages in cash. I paid Two Hundred and Fifty workers by cash each and every Friday. Each worker earned so much per hour. This was calculated with the hours worked, less the deductions. When the final total of monies needed to pay all the workers was arrived at, I would go to the bank draw out all this money, I knew how many pounds I needed, how many florins, same with shillings and pence. I would go back to my office and lock the door. Remember, in those days there were no such things as calculators, we had to use our noggins to make all the calculations.
I knew what coins and notes were needed in and every pay envelope. It was supposed to work out, that after stuffing the envelopes with money, there should be no money left on my table. Of course, not many times did it work out correctly, no matter how careful I was. Should there be money short or some left on the table when I finished; I would have to open the envelopes until I found where I had made the mistake. Sometimes, there was a ten shilling note left, or a shilling, it did not matter, each and every envelope had to have the exact amount in it. It must be a treat for the people doing my job today; for now everyone is paid by check, and mistakes can much more easily be found. To open envelopes until I found my mistake took time, something I did not have a lot to spare, especially Fridays.
One of my real big headaches, was, men with less than 5 days employment with the company, were allowed to give 2 hours notice and take their pay at any time and leave. In the construction business, there was those people travelling around the country, who just wanted to earn a pound or two so they could move on to the next town. These workers would be hired in the morning and some would give their notice just two hours before quitting time, at that time they would ask for their cards and the money they had earned for that one day.
In those days workers carried two cards. On one we placed a stamp for the National Health Service, and the other we placed a stamp which kept a record how much the man was entitled to be paid holiday pay.
This two hour notice system was a pain in the butt. I would have to stop what I was doing to make up their wages, and to stamp their cards. It didn’t matter what time of day it was, any time in the first 5 days of employment, they could make the request and it had to be done. After the workers had worked over that 5 day period, the only time they could quit was by giving 8 hours notice on a Friday. Most notices came on a Friday, and that was the day I had the wages to put up. It couldn’t have been worse.
One Friday about 40 men gave notice, so it was a bit of a mad house in my office. Noone was allowed to help me, for the money and paying it out was my responsibility. Therefore, if anyone came in and disturbed me I was pretty hostile. It didn’t matter how many men gave their notice, if they had to wait for their wages and cards there was hell to pay, they just didn’t understand how much work was involved. It happened on many occasions, believe me, when the men had to wait. While I was working to get the job done, the men who had given notice would be at my window banging on it, saying just do mine, I have a train to catch or whatever. Trying to tell them, all they were doing was stopping me from getting on with my job was a waste of time..
If 40 men left on a Friday, those men had to be replaced during the next week. To hire new people was just about the same amount of work. As I had to fix them up with cards and a work number. Usually, among the new people hired, there was always some who would quit after they had a day’s wages coming. This made it hell to keep up with. After the work in the mines, I still thought this was heaven. For one thing, I was in complete charge, no one could interfere, for the bosses, just did not know what was going on, they left my department completely all to me.
So my first venture in the construction business was pretty hectic. As we were way out in the country, the only entertainment we had was the local pub. A pint of beer and a game of darts went down well after all the stress during the day.
Our contract at the airport, was to replace the blacktop with concrete on the runways as Jet planes were using the airport, prop planes were disappearing. It took us approximately 6 months to finish the contract. As we were nearing completion, I had to transfer key workers to other construction jobs, the locals were paid off. So, closing out a contract became a busy time too.
We finally got down to a few workers who would do the clean up. Now I then began to wonder where I was off to next, I had been accepted for permanent employment. I didn’t have it too easy for long. I soon had to issue my own travel voucher, I had issued hundreds of others to workmen who were transferred. This time it was mine, I was transferred to a Housing site in Bristol on the west coast. I had never been to Bristol, so this was another just one more exciting step.
I believe the original contract for these homes at Bristol was for 750 homes. The contract had been going for quite a while, so when I got there everything was organized. It was easy to settle in. I did not have so much responsibility on this job, as there were over 500 workers and our staff consisted of 1 Cashier and two time-keepers of which I was one.
The work was much the same as before, but no way rushed as I had been at the airfield. We did the “checking in” in the morning and checking out at night; and as the workers were not as transient, we did not have so many people giving notice. So life was so much easier.
To fill in the day, we did more site inspections. The timekeepers checked to see that the men who checked in were still on the site during the day. This was nice, I enjoyed it, whether the weather was good or bad. I got to know how they built the homes. It was nice to have the time to do jobs that were not to be rushed.
Now that I was back in a town, I was able to go to the dog racing once again. Win or lose it didn’t really matter, I just enjoyed it. I suppose a lot of it revolved about meeting people. Remember, as an official of the company, to be personal friends with the workers was not the thing to do. You just had to do your job and be on your own, going to the dog races was completely away from everyone, I just enjoyed it.
I lived with a nice family quite close to the job site. In fact, it was in one of the houses John Laing and Son had built a few years previously. Unlike homes built here in Canada, which are built with lumber, most homes in England are built in brick. However, after the war, homes were needed in a hurry for the baby boom, building homes in brick took far too long, so a system was devised to build homes faster.
This system was called Easiform. Walls were built by installing forms or shutters, and filling them with concrete, leaving spaces where the doors and windows would go. It was marvelous how quickly homes would be built. Of course the walls had cavities, in order to keep the cold out and the heat in.
I had just settled down in Bristol, when out of the blue I was sent to Plymouth in Devon. Plymouth was the same sort of housing and really the same sort of setup as in Bristol. One head Cashier and two time-keepers. There were however, more workers and we were busy.
Plymouth is a beautiful place with a lot of history. This is where Sir Frances Drake saved England from the Spaniards those many years ago. A little bit of history. The King of Spain wanted to convert all the English to Catholicism and decided to invade England. He decided the way to defeat England was to send a huge Armada to the England shores. An Armada was made up of hundreds of large ships, loaded with cannons and thousands of armed troops.
The day of the invasion, Sir Francis Drake was playing lawn bowls by the harbour in Plymouth with his friends. He was informed that the Armada was on it’s way. Of course, it is told that he had some sort of smart answer, and decided to finish his game.
The Armada was coming down the English Channel closely bunched, bearing down onto the English shores; Drake was informed of this, and got a number of small ships, and promptly proceeded to meet the enemy. As he got close, his tiny fleet was set on fire by his men, then the ships rammed the Spanish ships and confusion took over. The Armada was so close together that they could not get out of the way of the fire boats, and the large Spanish boats burnt and sank. Thousands of troops and sailors perished. A few boats did escape, however. Not many got back to Spain, most were wrecked on the rocks off the English and Irish coast. Today, you will find many West Coast inhabitants olive skinned, most likely descendants of some of the Spaniards who escaped and settled in England and Ireland. This battle was known as where England defeated Spain without a great loss of life.
I enjoyed Plymouth, it seemed as if it was always sunny, so I must have just spent summer there, It wasn’t too long before I was on my way again. I was sorry to go as I enjoyed Plymouth very much.
This time I was heading up north to within 40 miles of home, I was sent to Whitely Bay. Whitely Bay is a resort on the East Coast of Northumberland close to the river Tyne; most importantly I was able to see my beloved Newcastle United again. I grew up loving this soccer team, I had even been to Wembley to see them win the F.A.Cup.
The job at Whitely Bay was a completely different type of contract. This was an open-cast coal site. As the coal vein was within 30 feet of the surface, we had large excavators digging away the soil and rocks enabling us to get to the coal. After the coal was taken out the soil and rocks were replaced leaving the land much as it was before. We then took this property, and built a Golf Course, which I believe is still there today.
On this job there were not as many workers as at Bristol or Plymouth, so this time the job was pretty easy for me. I handled every job, stores, cashier, timekeeper even ordering parts for the machines that continually broke down. I enjoyed this job very much, for I got to know each and every employee personally. I learned about each different job, I gained a lot of knowledge from this one contract. My outlook on life was definitely improving, I was finally growing up, this life was certainly teaching me a lot.
I recall one of the drivers of one of the huge machines for moving the rocks and coal, the machine was called a Euclid. In reality these were monster trucks which carried the coal from the bottom of the dig. This fellow told me, because of the rocks on the travel area, while driving these Eucklids, it was necessary to keep your thumbs away from the inside of the steering wheel. If the front wheels hit one of the rocks, the steering wheel would spin uncontrollably. Two days after telling me this, both of the thumbs of this man were broken, simply he had by forget to keep his thumbs away. This accident happened even after giving me this good advice.
I lived in a boarding house once again. The only thing I remember about this place, was that one of the boarders there, when he finished his meal, would continually scrape his plate with his knife to get every tiny piece of food off it. Telling this does not seem too much, but he drove everyone in the boarding house nuts, it didn’t matter how many times you told him he would continually scrape his plate, at least for ten or so minutes more than necessary.
I don’t recall how long I was in Whitley Bay, but there came an emergency. With this emergency came the event, which changed my whole life.
In 1952, there were abnormally high tides in the English Channel. Southern England and Holland were affected.. Dykes that had protected the land for so many years were swept away. Homes were destroyed, and business were ruined. It was a complete disaster, water had flooded to all the low lying areas.
I heard the news on the radio, 32 people had lost their lives. Little realizing it would have anything to do with me, I was happy where I was, looking after the men at Whitely Bay, just happy as a clown, I didn’t want to be moved, however, I received an urgent call. I had to get myself down to Canvey Island without delay. Canvey was the main area effected by the high tides.
Chapter Nine
Along with the many homes and businesses destroyed, the main Refinery for refining petrol was completely flooded. As this Refinery supplied most of London there was much more urgency.
As I said, life had a strange way of handling my fate. Off I went to the disaster area, I had no idea what was to happen. I very soon learnt what a disaster area was all about, houses destroyed, water everywhere; everything was chaotic, and on top of that there was just was no organization anywhere. The people who had lived there on Canvey Island were now living in the nearby towns, everywhere was deserted and with a desolate look for there was water everywhere.
Now I really had to get up and go, it was my job to hire workers. We were in need of laborers, carpenters, bricklayers, excavator operators, we needed all kinds of workers. All these type of workers were to perform necessary jobs to stop the waters of the English Channel from invading Canvey Island and the Shell Oil refinery again. It was a hell of a mess, mud and water everywhere; it was worse than the news had reported, homes were completely destroyed. The sea can do a lot of damage.
In the beginning; hiring these people was, as you can well imagine very chaotic. We had to get these people to work as soon as possible to save the homes that were still standing, and to build the necessary new dykes. We brought labor in from every town in the country as fast as we could. At the same time we had to find accommodation for all the workers brought in from all these other towns. The owners of boarding homes, and people who had room in their houses were in contact with us so it didn’t take too long getting workers settled.
For a few days the high tides were still getting through the breaches in the dykes, causing further damage. However, all of a sudden the tides changed and gave us a chance to get to the dykes and make proper repairs. We were now able to make headway. As can be imagined, the workers and volunteers worked long hours to get on top of the job.
Machinery was at a premium, those we had were worked to full capacity. As you can imagine many other jobs had to be undertaken at the same time. Organizing this, was quite an experience.
The same sort of flooding conditions were happening in Holland. That country lived up to it’s name; as the whole country is known as the “low lands”. Holland, had worse floods than in England, however, ours was bad enough for it was a pretty rough few weeks.
After a while, I was able to settle down to a routine, this department was all mine, once again I was paying the workers, and of course as this was a construction job , we had to be able to cope with the fact that some just got fed up and would quit with just two hours notice. I must say, the conditions they had to work in were the worst it could possibly be. Mud up to their eyeballs all day. We always had those laborers who were the regulars, who just wanted enough money for their next pint of beer. They did not care about natural disasters, or that they were a pain in the butt, it always had to be their way. Once again, I had to stop what I was doing to pay them and get their cards stamped so they could move on. I wonder to myself, I suppose those types of worker are still around. These days, I am sure they have to wait until the end of the week until everyone else gets paid.
I remember my office was set up close to a road so it would be easier to access it. I had to wear Wellington boots, for the water and mud around my little shed, just about went over the top of my boots.
Canvey Island is situated fifteen miles east of Southend on Sea, though called an Island, it is only separated from the mainland by a slough. When the tide is out, this slough is just horrible soft mud, impossible to walk on. Long before the refinery was there, it was very well known for the crabs and cockles etc, but those days, I believe that they all would be contaminated. It is quite the place for summer visitors, on the Island there are numerous campgrounds, beaches, candy floss and all those things. Fortunately, the floods happened in February, so only the permanent residents were affected.
Chapter Ten
Southend on Sea, is the nearest major town to Canvey, it is 40 miles west of London, on the Thames Estuary. When I arrived, I ended up arranging my own lodgings in a boarding house in West Cliff, the town next to Southend. I guess this was one of the best accommodations I had so far in my travels. There were only a few other borders in these digs so you tended to get that little extra attention, at least I thought of it that way.
As previously mentioned, I liked to gamble in those days. Often on Saturday, after the rush of getting the job organized, and things settled down a bit. I would go to the Greyhound racing, and try to increase my small bankroll. More often than not, it was decreased. I would then have to look forward to the next payday. When you think now, it wasn’t very smart. However, you have to remember I had not met any friends yet. I was really just learning about life in the big world, and gambling had been in my blood for a lot of years.
I was a pit kid, but what I had gone through in the last couple of years would make anyone grow up. Getting out in the world and having so much responsibility had to do the trick. My way of looking at life and the future had completely changed, I started thinking about what the future had in store for me.
Shortly after arriving at Southend, I discovered the Kursal Ballroom, which was a good source of finding some female companionship. Hey, I was 25 years of age and never really had a serious relationship.
It was at the Kursal that Anita and I first met. I saw this cute chick dancing with her girlfriend, so when they had finished I asked her to dance; I believed we hit it off pretty good for she was really friendly to me. Little did I know, when I was dancing cheek to cheek with Anita , she was looking at a chap who had let her down on a previous date. She asked me to pretend we had gone to the dance together, and being my usual bashful self I took full advantage of the situation and kissed her, that I can say didn’t go down too well. Never-the-less, it must have worked, just look where we are today.
The next week, on Saturday after my little trip to the dogs, I went back to the Kursal , hoping to see Anita again, but of course I got there after she had paid her own way into the dance. That was not the way any romance had a chance of getting off on the right foot. Anita said usually, a guy took the girl to the dance, not to be a cheapskate and have her pay for herself. Even after that start, that second time at the dance we got on extremely well. It seemed we enjoyed each other’s company, even though her friend seemed to want all of Anita’s time. I suppose they had been going to the Kursal together for so long, she didn’t appreciate me butting in.
Remember, in those days, I had just left the North Country and my accent was so terrible Anita did not understand all I said. Yes, even though I had been away from Durham and mixing with other people my accent was as strong as ever. During the dance I asked Anita for a date, I asked, could we go out to the pictures, back in those days we called the movies, pictures. Things do change don’t they?. I’m pleased to say she accepted my invitation.
If I remember rightly, on our very first date, we didn’t go to the pictures; for when I showed up for the date I was so ill, I just had to go back to my digs. I had a bad case of quinsies, a throat infection, which had made me very weak. I suppose as I had been under so much pressure at work something had to give.
In those days to make a telephone call, we had to go to a kiosk, and not many people had a phone in their home. So when I was lying in bed ill, I had no way in which to get in touch with Anita. I imagined her standing at the pre-arranged spot waiting for me. She, of course would not know I was ill. So it seemed to me the only alternative was to crawl out of bed and let her know personally. She would have thought I was a creep if I had let her down. Even in the short time I had known her I was interested in taking our relationship further, for she was and still is a most wonderful person. So what was I to do.
I later learned, my action of not letting her down impressed the hell out of her. Believe me I was pretty ill at that time. When I got out of bed I could hardly stand. I must have looked one hell of a mess. I remember telling Anita, I had been lying in bed for two days and no-one had visited me; I said, my Landlady would only come in the bedroom after I had passed away, so she could rent the room to some-one else.
I guess Anita told her mum and dad that I had shown up for our date, even though I was very ill, so it wasn’t long before I was taken to her home and introduced. It was good to meet a family. Remember my life of living in lodgings had done nothing for my social life, and it was good just to sit down and have a meal without fighting for it. After the meal Anita and I would go for a walk or we would go to the movies. In those days only a few people had a black and white television, there was no color T.V. I can remember the day when Anita’s parents got their first T.V. it was huge, it covered half the wall in their living room, but the screen was only about twelve inches wide. The whole thing consisted of television and radiogram, this piece of furniture got the name of the Cathedral. Just think, these days it would be a collector’s item. It became a regular occurrence for me to be invited to dinner as our romance expanded. I got know the family, Mum, Dad and little Alberta, who at that time was about 9 years of age. Bert, as she was called, was very much spoilt, everyone seemed to do that little extra for her. She was eleven years younger than Anita and I suppose, when a baby comes along after those many years, they are bound to get all the attention.
Anita’s mum took to me very well. She was so very sweet. Not so much just because of me, she put herself out for everyone and everyone loved her so much. She was one of the nicest ladies that ever there was. She would do anything for you, it didn’t matter whether she needed to get on with other things. She was such a hard worker, and for years she kept things going financially, as Anita’s dad was a painter, which was quite a seasonal job, therefore the money was very short at times. All of Anita’s Mam’s life she cared for people, she was such a happy go lucky person, everyone loved her. Eventually she worked caring for old people in a nursing home. She was very much appreciated by the old folks, as she would always put herself out for them, she didn’t just treat it like a job. She was a tiny women who everyone wished they could cuddle. I suppose that’s the only way I can say it, for nothing was any trouble for her.
Anita’s Dad as like all dads, felt I was taking Anita away from him, and it took quite a lot of convincing him that I was not such a bad guy after all. I can remember feeling quite nervous at the thought of asking him for his permission for us to get engaged, even though she was of age, I always wanted to do the thing right.
Anita’s brother Jack, and wife Lil they lived in London. Occasionally, we saw them when they came to Southend. Jack had a motorbike and sidecar, Lil rode in the sidecar. This bike was Jack and Lil’s pride and joy. They loved to take trips, every holiday, they headed out somewhere or other. After their two daughters arrived, Kim and Janet, I guess they had to have some other mode of transport, I just don’t remember.
When I arrived in Southend, I now felt it was time I should have some transport of my own. These days, just about everyone owns a car; it was much different to 1952, a car then didn’t seem so important. I just had enough cash to buy an ex War Department Motor Cycle. This was an old 350cc B.S.A.
This motorbike was our chariot. We went all over with it. It did not go too fast but it was reliable. In those days, when you went out on a date you dressed in your best clothes; completely different from today. Anita used to get on the pillion seat in high heel shoes and a nice dress, and sometimes I wore a suit. At times, we were pretty dusty and windblown but it was fun. We took trips out into the country to a secluded pub or maybe we went to a dance. We didn’t go to many dances now as we just wanted to be with one another, now it was becoming serious. When you think about the dressing up in those days, seems a little silly now; fancy riding on a motorbike, with a suit and tie and Anita with her best dress. In those days we never even thought of wearing a safety helmet.
I had a little holiday time due to me, so Anita and I set off on the motorbike to my see Granddad and Grandma Taylor, and other relations in Rossington a village near Doncaster, Yorkshire. My Grandparents live in the same house where my Dad had lodged. This was quite an undertaking for us, for, we had not been too far afield on the bike. This was a trip of about a hundred miles. Anyway, we took off, I remember Anita was wearing a green coat with leopard skin collar and a hat with a little veil, all dressed to meet my mother’s side of my family.
Imagine if you saw a young couple today on a motor bike dressed that way, I’m sure you would consider them nuts. Nowadays people dress so very casual to; people don’t even dress up to go out for dinner, I wonder now how the people who sell men’s suits make any money.
We were to stay with my Aunt Hilda and Uncle Jimmy, meet my other uncles and aunts, and most of all to meet Grandmother and Granddad Taylor. Grandmother Taylor was a tiny cuddly darling who was so mild mannered she wouldn’t say boo to a goose. On the other hand Granddad was stern, he didn’t know it but when he smiled he was a delight to see. They were awfully good people.
Hilda and Jimmy owned a working man’s club in Rossington. It really was a pub, and they did a wonderful job of running it. Anita and I found it was so much fun being there. Rossington, like where I was raised, was a mining community, and most people worked in the pits, they were wonderful down to earth people. They really enjoyed themselves at the club.
I don’t recall much about that holiday but it was so nice to see my relations, and I know they all loved Anita and that was important.
Our next trip together was up to Durham to see Mam and family. The reason for this trip, I had asked Anita to marry me, ( that was the luckiest yes in my life) I wanted Mam and the family to meet her. They, of course had heard about her, but living so far away they had never had met. This time we went by train, for it was much too far to go by the bike. Many of the family had left home and lived elsewhere, I had forgotten one thing, which proved to be very uncomfortable, I had never got along with my stepfather and our visit was, to say the least, hell. We did not stay the full holiday it was not fair on Anita or Mam. We just had to leave as soon as possible. That was the last time I was ever in the small village of Edmondsley where Mam lived.
Shortly after our visit Mam divorced Joe, and had to get him out of the house. Mam had being going through a pretty bad time with him. In my Mam’s life she had a lot to put up with, after Dad had been killed. Fortunately for her, a short while after, she met a very nice man and she married him. I’m happy to say, she had a wonderful last part of her life. She lived till she was 84, I believe she was married to this man for 20 years.
Anita and I could not afford to get married right away, for neither I or Anita’s family were in a position to pay for a wedding. We also wish to have funds to set us up with our little love nest, so we started saving with a vengeance.
We had to wait for 9 months in order to save up enough money to get a good start in life. We also had to save money to help pay for the wedding as Anita’s Dad had broken his foot and was not working.. Everyone wanted a nice wedding, and I also wanted to bring down mam and Betty from Durham. Betty was to be one of the bridesmaids, Bert, Anita’s sister to be the other.
In the meantime, the job of re-installing the dykes was finished and all the men had been let go or transferred to other construction jobs. My time to move on had come once again.
As I mentioned before, trying to guess where I was heading next, was part of the adventure. We knew weeks ahead, we were to move, but to where?. As I did not want to move too far away from Anita, I hoped I would stay in the south of England. I of course had no control where I would end up. When notification came, I was so very pleased, for I had been sent to Windsor Great Park to build houses for the Queen’s workers.
I could not have picked a better place than Windsor, for Windsor was an easy train ride to and from Southend. It was easy to get back at weekends to see Anita without too much inconvenience.
Once again a job was to begun, I met the General Manager and made arrangements for the Offices to be constructed, hired men and in general got things put together. This was a different construction site, there was no hurry, everything was laid back. The building site, of course had to kept clean at all times, as this is one of the most famous and most beautiful Parks in the world. It is the Queen’s Estate at Windsor Castle. We were to build homes in 4 different areas of the park. I believe, 40 homes in all. We, of course had to transport all materials and tools to each of the 4 areas and were expected to keep every area spick and span. As you can imagine, it was a problem for us, as it was so easy to make a mess on a construction site.
I found lodgings with a nice couple; their home was just a short walk from my office. I lived with them for the few months before our marriage. Anita came down and spent time with me, so she became friendly with my Landlord and Landlady. They had a son about 11 years of age who was a member of the choir in Saint George’s Chapel. We were delighted to be invited to go to the church service one Sunday, and we were seated quite close to the Queen, Prince Philip, The Queen Mother, and Princess Margaret. Afterwards, the Royal Family stood outside and chatted to the congregation, we stood close enough to touch them. Quite an occasion.
As this was the main home of the Queen and her family, we saw the Queen on a number of occasions. She would ride horseback around the park and check on the progress of the jobs. There was no ceremony, you just said, “morning mam” if you were near her. She seemed to be interested in what was going on.
Remember, Anita and I had little money. What we had, we wanted to save, so, the home we had to find would have to be inexpensive. We found such a place in Windsor. We would share a house with a family named Hare. Today I believe it would be very difficult to do what we did. We took their front room, a bedroom and shared the kitchen. I suppose it worked out fine, I don’t really remember much about it. Anyway, this was our very first home together.
We were married in St. Andrews church in Shoeburyness, and had a very nice reception at a local Hotel. Mam, two of my brothers, Alan and Peter and my sister Betty came to the wedding. This was the first time they had been to Shoeburyness. It was a beautiful day and everyone had a great time. Anita’s brother Jack was my best man. As Anita’s Dad had injured his foot, she had to help him down the aisle when he gave her away.
Straight after the wedding; Anita changed into her going away clothes and Jack took Anita and I to the railway station on his motor bike and sidecar. This was the start of our honeymoon, which we were going to spend in our new home. We took the train from London to Windsor, so we spent our wedding night in our rooms at Arthur Road in Windsor. Our wedding bed was the worst bed we had ever slept on, and that includes right up to today. There was a great sag right in the middle. I remember we had a good laugh, but really it was not too good to have your first night in a home with strangers in the adjoining bedroom.
We had a wonderful Honeymoon, nearly every day we caught the train to London and went to see all the top shows. We saw one called the Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, this show ran for a record of over twenty years. It never occurred to us to stay at some bed and breakfast for a few nights, we returned to Windsor every night.
We settled down to life together, enjoying each other very much. Living in Windsor helped, for it is a beautiful city with all the history and the glorious river Thames. We spent time down by the river, and we visited the beautiful Castle on many occasions. Our only expense we allowed ourselves was going to the Theatre. Windsor Theatre is world famous and the plays put on there were fabulous. Many famous actors and actresses started their careers at the Windsor Playhouse. The Queen was a regular at the Playhouse.
After our Honeymoon, we decided, we would continue saving our money, for, as my job entailed us to move around the country we needed somewhere to live. It was not feasible to find digs for both of us at each and every job, so we decided the best thing to have would be a trailer. This was the answer for most couples with John Laing.
While at Windsor, Anita found a job, in a department store. With us both bringing in money it was not long before we had a decent bank account. We really saved our pennies as fast as we could.
We went to a “Home Show” at Earls Court in London. We saw and fell in love with a 22 foot trailer. It was the biggest thrill when we put one on order. We thought it was beautiful. Mind you, when you think of it now, 22 ft by 7ft 6in was not very big. Considering we had to live, cook and eat in there. After our place at Arthur Road Windsor, which was not all that comfortable, we just couldn’t wait until we could move into the trailer. We loved it as everything was so compact. We bought a black and white television, I think back, I believe we had a choice of two stations.
In England those days, it was not unusual for a person to go through life without ever having a driver’s license. Here I was 27 years of age and I hadn’t even driven a car. That’s very hard to believe, but as I said cars were not all that important or available in those days. I had sold my motor bike, as in Windsor we didn’t need it anymore. If we wanted to go to London, the train station was right there, also, I got picked up for my work in the Park, by the company bus.
I had never even driven a car, ever, however, during my time at Windsor Great Park I had the opportunity to drive. This was due to the fact, the job was so wide spread. As the 28 seater bus which brought the men to work in the morning, stood around all day doing nothing, the driver began giving me driving lessons while delivering the workers tea and lunches to the outlying sites. This is how I eventually learnt to drive and got the experience I needed. Later a friend loaned me his car to take my driving test, which I passed. I now had my license, however it was still a long time before I got my first vehicle.
Eventually, once again the job was completed and now there were two of us anxiously waiting news of where we would begin our new job. We soon found out. We were heading to Kings Norton, a borough of Birmingham.
Birmingham is deep in the manufacturing area of England. We were used to the clean countryside of Southend and Windsor, however, Kings Norton was entirely different, it was dirty and very scruffy. It may be different these days, but back in 1955 it was bad.
When we were informed where we were going, we arranged to have the Trailer delivered directly to Kings Norton and installed on a trailer park near the job. As you can imagine we could not get to Kings Norton soon enough to see our new home. There it was, all new and waiting for us. The company had connected it to the sewer, connected the water supply and the electricity. It was all ready for us to occupy. It was where we could be alone for the first time ever. We were happy and thrilled, even though we found some of the paint still wet.
We never had any doubt about loving our new home, the smallness of it just made it all that better. Anita now was able to create meals she had not been able to do before. She had the world’s smallest kitchen, but the meals were wonderful. She cooked on a propane stove, and as we had small solid fuel stove to heat the trailer, she could also use this for cooking too. It was wonderful for both of us. Like all young married couples we could not get enough of each other.
The construction job at Kings Norton was to build the same type of homes as in Bristol and Plymouth. Easyform concrete homes. I once again was responsible only for the wages department, not like in Windsor where I looked after materials for the construction, all the equipment as well as the wages. It was easy to settle down into a routine, for now I had lots of experience in this field.
As we had to make payments for the trailer Anita found a job with a company called Triplex who made safety glass for windscreens for all types of cars. She left every morning for work by bus, while I just had to walk over the road to my office. In due course as I got home from work earliest, I began to cook dinner. My specialty was stew. I became quite good at making this. However, it became a bit hard to take when summer arrived. So Anita taught me how to make other types of meals, so everything proceeded pretty well. When Saturday arrived we would take the bus to Birmingham, where we shopped and went to the movies.
We met some people a little older than we were, and these people were to make a huge change in our lives. Alan, was the General Manager of the Kings Norton project, and his wife Beryl. Their trailer was next to ours, and it was bigger, they had lived at Kings Norton for quite some time. We became good friends, and often had dinner in each others trailer.
Alan and Beryl went for a holiday to the Lake District in the North West of England. The Lake District is renowned for its beauty. The scenery, the mountains and lakes are wonderful. Many tourists visit this area of England. Alan and Beryl had a small trailer, which they used for their holidays.
When they returned, they had left the trailer up there, it was suggested we use it for a holiday for ourselves. Well, we thought, as we never had a real honeymoon we should take this opportunity. Living expenses would be reasonable, just transport and meals. So we decided to take them up on their offer.
We took the train to the Lake District, we took buses around to see the scenery for we still did not have a car. I recall there was not too many buses, so we were a little stymied.
We met an older gentleman while we were there. He had a boat he used on Lake Windermere for fishing, and generally touring this huge lake. He was nice enough to take us with him on his trips around the lake. He enjoyed our company as we did his, he even let me drive his Jaguar car. It made me feel like a million dollars. I thought at the time, here I am, the first car, apart from the one I took my test in, turned out to be a Jag.
I have forgotten this gentleman’s name now, I do however, remember how he made his money. He was the European Representative for the Harlem Globetrotters, he made all the travel arrangements and booked the arenas for the team. He must have been well paid for his services for money seemed to be of no object to him.
Anita remembers, while we were there, we went and saw “The Lady and the Tramp”, of course the tears were rolling down her cheeks. We had a lovely time, but it was soon time to head back home to work.
We settled down to our routine, both of us working and enjoying our new found life. However, just as we were beginning to believe we were going to be there a long time, out of the blue we were informed we were wanted for a job in Cannock.
In 1956, there was a revolution in Hungary, the workers were fighting against the Communist government, and the British Government decided to allow refugees into the country. They did this, however, they had no accommodation to house them. This was John Laing’s job, to build huts to house these refugees. So once again, one big rush.
At Kings Norton, we lived on a nice trailer park, water, drainage and electricity supplied. Life was good, unfortunately it all changed at Cannock. As there was a big rush to get the contract begun, no trailer park was arranged for us. We were just dumped at the site, and there was mud all around, even at our doorstep. We had to carry water in buckets until some arrangements could be made, there were promises, but a water connection never came. A temporary cable was run for electricity, and we had a pail under the trailer to catch the waste water. We must have had somewhere to go to the bathroom for there was no sewer, I believe we used the toilet at the office close by. I can honestly say that Cannock was not very nice, we did not enjoy it at all. Luckily we had each other.
We were so busy, hiring people again. Materials were hauled in, trucks flying all around the place and on top of that, the place was a mud bath. The huts for the refugees were practically thrown together, and were finished in double quick time. That was fortunate for us, for we couldn’t get out of there quick enough. Even the town itself was nothing to write home about. We would go to the movies occasionally to get away from the site, for we had all this construction going on around us and we were in the middle of it.
When we were finished, once again we were waiting to see where we would end up next, I guess, the head office must have known of the horrible conditions we had been under for the months. They took pity on us, and we couldn’t have chosen a more comfortable place than where we were moved to. We were sent to Sutton Bonnington, a small village in Nottinghamshire close to the town of Loughborough.
When we arrived, we found Laing was to build an addition to the University. When our trailer arrived it was placed on a beautiful little trailer park. It seemed as if the world was on our side again after what we had suffered at our last place, the sun was shining welcoming us to Sutton Bonnington. I don’t think the sun ever shone while we were in Cannock, it continually rained. We called the rain, black rain, as this was long before there was such as thing as protecting the environment. Cannock, was where all the huge Chimney Stacks were, these stacks were bletching out black smoke all day long.
Life was terrific at Sutton Bonnington, and on top of that, the manager was easy to get on with. I asked him if he could hire Anita as his secretary. We were over the moon when he was able to, we now were able to work together. This was the very first time Anita worked for Laing.
This job was easy, the men enjoyed this place as much as we did, so we didn’t have so many quitters. My job was so much easier. We enjoyed our stay at Sutton Bonnington, remember, we still did not have a car, so when went out we used the bus. We used to go into Northhampton, which was a market town, where we bought lots of expensive types of china (seconds) as the factories making the china are in Northampton.
We enjoyed working together, as Anita was home at the same time as me, so it suited us both. Life was wonderful for us, for the first time in a long time, we really were not working under pressure. Working for Laing up to then had not been the easiest of jobs, apart from Windsor. Here at Sutton Bonnington we had the chance to recharge our batteries. Our neighbors were nice and we enjoyed going to work every day, which was just a short stroll away.
We would go to the local pub on Friday evenings, and have a whole lot of fun with the men who were in temporary lodgings. We formed a dart team and played the locals and other local pubs. It was real fun.
Chapter Twelve
We knew it could not last.
During and after the war, the roads in England gradually were not able to accommodate the increase in the amount of cars and trucks being used. Cars were being produced; and they were much speedier and powerful. The roads in England were so poor, something had to be done. Even Germany, who had lost the war, were building autobahns, all these roads were direct routes, with allowance for faster cars. Even some of the highways as such were still interrupted by traffic lights. I’m sure the roads in England at that time still followed the old Roman paths, which had so very many bends. Something had to happen.
The English Government made the only decision they could, build new highways. They had to be much different from the roads that existed. The very first such Motorway to be built was named the M1, the route it would take would be from London to Newcastle on Tyne.
Many new types of Diggers and Bull Dozers were introduced at this time. This was a different type of road construction, they needed something extra special. The method they used was completely different from the old way of building roads. If there was a hill in the way of the new road, they cut right through it and the dirt and rocks would be moved to areas where the land was low. This was a massive undertaking. Nothing like this had been down in England before.
After the easy going atmosphere of Sutton Bonnington, here we were once again under heavy pressure. This was where our next job would be, and though we did not know it at the time, it would be our last job for Laing Construction.
It was at this time we had a new member added to the family, Anita and I bought a male daschund puppy. We named him Maxie. He would be our first of many animals we took on as pets.
As the road was moving so fast, Laing did not supply a Trailer Park. We had to find our own site to put our trailer. We found one in a little village by the name of Ash Vale. The site was behind a pub, and there were only about six trailers. Ash Vale is a little village near Aldershot.
I don’t believe we had all the facilities we had on other occasions. I seem to remember I had to keep emptying the waste bucket from the kitchen.
Anita continued working in the Laing office, so once again we had two sets of wages coming in and we were able to save. We really didn’t spend a great lot of money. The job on the Motorway was proceeding at a terrific pace. The Government said it had to be finished in a certain time, and Officials of the Government were chasing Laing Construction to get on with it.
As you can imagine, there were machines flying all over, Diggers, Dozers and Monster trucks, it was a nightmare, but somehow it all got figured out and the project proceeded at a tremendous pace.
The General Manager on the Motorway was Alan Jerrard, whom we had been very friendly with at Kings Norton. Beryl and he had moved closer to the head office so we saw a lot of them.
During our breaks from the job, we started taking trips together in their car, and staying over night somewhere in Devon. Devon is one of the most beautiful places in England and is world renowned for it’s beautiful scenery. We had never been there, and we were very impressed. We decided if we ever left Laing we would love to settle in Devon.
It was at this time, Alan started talking about us going into business together, the business he was talking about was Chicken Farming, which we both knew so little about. This didn’t seem to matter to Alan.
Anita and I had been living in our trailer for close to 4 years, we still loved it very much, but however questioned the moving about all the time. I believe the romance of setting up at a new place time and time again was beginning to lose some of it’s glamour. We hated to think we could get another Cannock experience.
Anita and I counted up the pennies we had saved, and with the sale of our trailer we did have enough money to get us by for a while. Our plan was that Alan would continue to work for Laing, and Anita and I would run the Poultry business.
So, now we began in earnest looking for a farm, a farm that Alan and Beryl could afford. I wonder now, why we didn’t look for a place with buildings, which could have given us a much quicker start than we had. I now know for sure now, we did it all wrong for we went for beauty, we should have gone after the things which made sense.
I guess the reason was Alan and Beryl were trying to buy a farm at a reasonable price. What we ended up with was a beautiful 14 acres, with a farm house over 300 years of age. The house was itself was on the Government’s Historic Building List, so we were never allowed to alter the outside of it. There were no conveniences in the house, apart from running water, it came from an outside well. We pumped the water from the well to a tank in the roof and the water gravity fed. However, we didn’t have electricity. The heat we did have, came from an aga stove which was our source for cooking, and for heating the water.
After the purchase of the property, we spent all our weekends and holidays, getting it into some sort of shape, for the whole place had been more than a little neglected.
It was a very satisfying experience though. After work all day we would have dinner and light the house with oil lamps or candles. We would light a fire in the huge fireplace in the living room and just relax. What a feeling it was relaxing, after a very hard days work. We of course had no T.V., All we had was a battery powered radio. We also had a piano, which was given to us by Beryl’s Uncle, so we had some pretty bad attempts trying to play that.
Only having the weekends to work at the farm, it was not easy, for time was so short. We had to drive there, work continually Saturday and Sunday, then late on Sunday night we would leave to get home and be ready for work on Monday morning. We would be pretty tired to start back to work.
We had a pretty busy few weeks trying to do whatever we could. The nearest hydro was about 3 miles away so we had to install a generator. Alan hired an Electrician who wired the house , so eventually we had light and could dispense with the oil lamps. Mind you, with the oil lamps and candles, the place had that certain romantic feeling about it.
The first generator, to start it, we would have to swing a handle, and only then could we have electricity. It was a real pain to go to the small barn across the courtyard and swing the handle, of course like all machinery sometimes it just would not go. I would swing and swing and curse.
As there were no chicken houses on the farm we had to start from scratch and build them. We planned to have eight chicken houses each 30 ft wide by 90 feet long with a building in the middle of the field for storing the eggs. For two couples, this was a huge undertaking, for neither of the couples had hard work in their background. We knew we had the energy, if nothing else, to tackle this massive project.
After many weekends of hard work, and rushing from the office to the farm, the time came for Anita, I and Maxie to move. South Heale was the name of the farm. The plan was for Alan to continue with his managerial work, and earn the money which we would still need, he received an excellent salary and the plan was to help sustain the shortfall until the farm was making a profit.
In 1958 we gave our notice to Laing construction and prepared to leave Ash Vale. We first had to sell our trailer, fortunately, this did not take too long, we found a buyer immediately. With some of the money we bought a 1947 Ford Van. This old thing stayed with us all the time we were at South Heale. At long last I had something to drive, even though it was old and not too efficient.
Imagine a Nineteen forty seven van, the thing was old, and it sure did not run very well, however, this is all we could afford. To make it more presentable, as the paint was peeling, we had it painted dark blue. The paint kind of held it the van together.
We loaded the van with our belongings; we had bought some furniture and other things for our new home and set off on our new adventure. Both Anita and I were thrilled with our prospects, and were looking forward to the new start. We had enjoyed our time with Laings, but now it was time to move on. Now, we did not have to travel the hundred miles every Sunday night back to Ash Vale.
Our journey from Ash Vale to South Heale was eventful for we had trouble with the van. The petrol to the carburetor was continually evaporating, due to the fact the line was too close to the manifold. As soon as the engine got hot the petrol evaporated. Each time, I had to stop until the engine cooled, I had to undo the petrol pipe, and suck it until the gas came through. I must have sucked this thing a hundred times. Eventually we got home to South Heale, I did however, have a sore mouth for weeks due to the petrol burning my lips.
As we were passing through London, the van again broke down. I don’t recall what the trouble was this time, but we were helped by two Bobbies (policemen). I was stuck for quite a while, so as the van had no heater, Anita spent the time in the police car keeping warm.
All the years we were at South Heale the van gave us trouble, I guess I kicked it a couple of times. The van however, was very handy around the place and it got us to the village of High Bickington 3 miles away. I just cannot imagine how we could have done without it. Mind you, spending a few pounds for a better vehicle would have saved so much frustration and cursing. As time went on, we eventually invested in a newer vehicle, a Morris station wagon, this was done when we were close to leaving the farm. Having a car that was reliable felt so very good.
Our life on the farm began with us settling in as well as we could. Don’t get the idea South Heale was a dump, forget that; it was most beautiful. There was a monster kitchen with a huge fireplace, and an Aga stove. All the cooking was on the Aga. The Aga also heated the areas close to it. A bathroom was next to the kitchen, then a large living room with a fireplace. The other way from the kitchen was the dining room, then the dairy and a storage room where the pump was installed to pump the water from the well to a tank in the roof. Upstairs there were four bedrooms and a bathroom so it was quite a big house. The Dairy was on the north side of the house and the thick marble counters kept the place so cool, we were able to keep our groceries and milk cool. Remember we had no fridge then.
Outside there was a courtyard where weeds continually grew between the cobblestones. These weeds were persistent, for we never seemed to beat them. We would work hard to get rid of them and within a short while there they were again. Those days there were no weed killers as there are today. We dug or pulled out the weeds for hours on end to try and keep the courtyard beautiful. Mind you, when it was all clean, it was a joy to see.
Across the courtyard, there were two small barns in which we stored the generator and tools. We also kept the van inside when the cold weather came. In the courtyard walls, there were holes called “bee boles”. We read somewhere, the Bee Boles at South Heale farm were famous.
Those many years ago, they had built the home and barns with the only materials they had, and that was rocks, mud, straw and cow dung. The walls were thick and had stood the rain and storms for over 300 years, so their system must have worked. This type of home was named after the Queen at that time, she was Queen Anne. There are many Queen Anne houses in England built the same way.
must say we were proud of the way the home and farm was turning out. We started to build the chicken houses, they were a post and beam construction. We dug holes and placed posts in the ground, then we concreted them in. We then attached runners to form the walls and roof, then filled everything in with cladding, leaving window spaces. Sounds easy doesn’t it. Well believe me it was hard work. There was Anita and I side by side digging holes, mixing concrete and doing all the other jobs around the farm. We loved it. Eventually we had to replace the old generator with a much larger one, This started automatically when a light was switched on. What a wonderful invention, no more swinging the handle, hurrah.
We had to go to the village for groceries and milk, so we decided we would have to do something about it. First we bought ourselves a cow, Binkie was her name, she was one of these doe-eyed jersey cows, she was a real charmer. Remember, we did not know anything about milking a cow. The things we tackled. Anita turned out to become an expert, after a very short while. Binkie became a real pet. We also started a garden so we would have vegetables.
Binkie produced a high butter fat content milk, and so much of it, there was no way in which we could get use all of it. Like all cows, Binkie had to be milked morning and night or she would go dry, so Anita had this creamy milk building up day after day. We were throwing the beautiful milk away, day after day.
One day, after we had been to Barnstaple the local market town, and had a famous Devon Tea, scones with strawberry jam and Devonshire Cream. Anita decided she would try to make the cream at home. It turned out fabulous. There was two problems, one we once again could not eat all Anita made, secondly, we found ourselves gaining weight at a astonishing rate. Unfortunately, it was not really good for you at all in large batches.
We hit on the idea of selling our surplus cream in the village High Bickington. Fancy, here we, the strangers from up north and from London town, selling of all things Devon Cream to the natives. Even the Villagers had a laugh at that one. It turned out to be a nice little extra income for us.
We, however, still could not keep ahead of the milk supply. As we did not go to the village every day, and on top of that, we did not have a fridge, so the milk and cream would not keep, so we still were throwing it away. The surplus milk situation was solved, we went to market and bought a little calf. We fed the calf with the surplus we had until Binkie went her term and went dry, we then sold the calf for a profit back at the market.
As a cow will only get her milk flow back by having a calf, we had Binkie artificially inseminated, and she took right away.
When she had her baby, a little heifer we called Hazel, we made a mistake of allowing Binkie to suckle the calf. We should have done what we had done with the other calf and fed it with the bucket and kept the two apart. We kept Hazel locked in the barn and turned Binkie out into the field.. She would spend all day trying to get to her calf. When Hazel grew up, we would put her in another field, it then was a pain to hear them both bellowing all day. Binkie even broke fences. When Hazel was nearly full grown she still wanted to suckle. We eventually had to sell Hazel because it was a nuisance to organize keeping them apart.
In the meantime, we still sold cream to the people in the village and our customer list kept growing, they were really loving it, it was so good. We, of course couldn’t resist it, and if we hadn’t been working so hard, we would have been like tubs of lard.
All the time we were building our first chicken house, digging a garden for vegetables; we even bought a goat for the time Binkie did not have milk. Goat’s milk is quite different from cows milk, different all together, but we got used to it after a while. Of course the goat had to have a name, the name was Rosie.
We eventually finished our first chicken shed, everything was ready for our first batch of chickens, all the nice new wood shavings on the floor, the for the big event time had arrived.
We had been waiting anxiously for the time we would have our first baby chickens, we never guessed how little we knew about it all. I had studied many books on how to raise chickens in large numbers, reading about it was so much different from the real thing. The books said the first few days were crucial for they must be kept warm, however, not too warm. The system used, we were to put about a hundred chicks under a heating lamp in an area not too large. This area, needed to be surrounded by a sheet of thin board, which would circle the chicks, it had to be fixed in a way there would be no corners. The heat from the lamp had to be just right so the chicks would spread out over the enclosed area. Should the heat be insufficient the chicks would get close to each other to keep warm, if they still were not warm they would eventually pile on to each other and suffocate. The chicks had to be watched all the time to make sure everything was fine.
Our first chicks totaled 1200, so we had 12 different areas in our first chicken house to watch. We had to be very careful. We were actually pretty successful while the chicks were young for they were not heavy enough to smother each other. We managed great, and were quite pleased how things were progressing.
We fed them with the best of food, they grew in leaps and bounds; you could see a difference in them every day. They grew in size as well as developing feathers, we felt we were doing a great job.
As they were growing so fast, we moved the surrounding board so they would have that extra room to run around. It was great to see them, we were so happy and pleased with ourselves. They got to be about a 6 weeks old and were developing beautiful. Little did we know terror was just around the corner.
At the beginning, we had groups of about 100 in each area, however, by widening the boards they began tipping over and were difficult to support so we increased the chickens to two hundred; that was fine. So onto three hundred, then four hundred. Everything was okay, so we went to five hundred. We had the same heaters going, the area now was bigger so everything should have been fine.
Have you ever seen a grown man cry. We had nursed these stupid chickens for six weeks, now they decided to commit suicide. They all decided, it was now time to pile onto each other. There was no reason for this, the heat coming from the lamps gave off sufficient heat. Remember, there were still no corners anywhere; one evening going on our normal check-up, when we went into the chicken house we found the bloody chickens were piling on top of each other, the total number smothered and dead was 200 out of the 500.
The other batch of 500 decided while we were in the barn to do exactly the same thing!!!! There was Anita and I for the next couple of hours pulling the chickens out of the piles and as fast as we pulled them out, they would run back. Talk about frustration we just didn’t know what to do. Fortunately the other batch decided not to kill any more, so we only had to worry about this one batch. Eventually, we made another area and threw half of them in there with heat lamps and said goodnight.
That was our first nightmare with stupid chickens; there were many more bad times to come.
Chapter Fourteen
Yes we had many problems with the chickens, but that will come later.
We were now feeling comfortable in the house. We had come a long way from the first day we had arrived at South Heale. We now had furniture and some of the good things in life. Importantly, instead of a generator that we had to swing to get electricity, we now had got ourselves a much bigger one, which was made so that when anyone switched on a light or any appliance the generator started. This we thought was luxury; instead of going out in the cold, across the courtyard to the barn, and swinging the old one with great hopes it would start, we now had this marvelous system. It is strange, in life, different type of things become important as the situation changes.
We still had our old 1941 Ford van, which continued to be a headache. We did not need to get the gas supply fixed, because simply, we never did long trips any more, so the gas did not have time to evaporate. It did however, refuse to start on so many occasions. We would be all dressed up to go out shopping or to go to Barnstaple, then the thing would not start. I would have to swing the handle to get a spark, I would end up sweating like hell and not very happy. We, however solved the problem, we would park the van at the top of the driveway and coast down hill, and slap it into gear, then it started. Can’t imagine why we didn’t get a new battery, after suffering so much. I guess we just didn’t think.
I’m only telling you these things to explain that it wasn’t easy getting started on the farm. We worked morning to night, not only looking after chickens, but building further Chicken Houses. Erecting the roofs on the sheds was no child’s play. Anita and I would be up on the roof fixing 8×4 sheets of heavy plywood; these of course had to be lifted on the roof, both Anita and I struggling to get them up. The conditions were not easy, it was pretty rough in the cold and wet weather, mind you up on the roof in the heat of summer was not the best of times either.
As well as everything else that went on, during the Spring and Summer the grass was growing in the fields and had to be cut. It had to be made into hay for the animals. We had a little rotor tiller, which could be converted to a grass cutter with a blade about 4ft wide. Cutting the grass with this size of blade took a lot of time, hours and hours in fact. We had to go round and round the fields, cutting, there was no riding, we had to walk. The grass would then have to be turned with a pitch fork after it had dried on one side, then when it was completely dried it was hauled into the barn. Once again, the old van came into it’s own.
At this time we were growing ginger beer plants; I know that sounds strange. Well, to explain; a neighbor of ours had this substance in a 3 gallon earthenware jar, and told us, that he fed it sugar and ginger every day for 28 days. At the end of the 28 days, the mixture was strained off into bottles, leaving at the bottom of the jar a substance he called a gingerbeer plant. In order to begin feeding this substance with the sugar and ginger for a further 28 days, it was necessary to half the substance.
Instead of throwing away the unwanted plant, he gave it to Anita and I. We fed ours for the 28 days and bottled the contents. I can tell you this drink was fantastic. After a while we had more than one plant going, for we drank gallons of the stuff in the hot weather. It was great, a great drink, non alcoholic, it certainly quenched a thirst.
I suppose it was about this time we started making our own wine, such as blackberry, elderberry and nettle, believe me it was real nice, especially the elderberry. When you think of it, there seemed to be nothing we wouldn’t tackle in those days. Oh, to be young and healthy, and have the energy.
All of this was work, never got us down, both Anita and I loved all of it. We loved the work, and we loved the place; South Heale was a wonderful, it was heaven. Two young people in love working together in harmony. It was a time we both will always treasure.
As the chicken houses were away from the road to our house, they were across one big field, so it was necessary to construct a road to the sheds. We tried to do the job as easy as we could. We dug two tracks, about two feet deep by about 3 feet wide, each track was where we knew the wheels of the truck delivering the feed stuffs would run. We used the rotor tiller, dug a little, cleared the loose soil with a shovel, then used the rotor tiller again until the track was deep enough. We had loads of rocks hauled in to fill in these tracks. The road was about 200 yards long so it was a pretty big job to do by hand. Nevertheless, it got done. During the winter it served us pretty good. The trucks delivering the chicken feed across the first field to the chicken sheds did so without any problem.
We put the road to pretty good use, as far as the first year was concerned; the road however, just gave up the ghost the next year. All the rocks we had placed in the trenches, decided to work their way out of the trenches we had dug. The rocks were finally anywhere but in the trench. These rocks just disappeared into the mud. Therefore, it became impossible to get the trucks over the field to the sheds; they got stuck so many times, so, we had to come up with another plan.
It was decided to go back to the old method of many years ago. We decided to buy a horse and cart to transport the feed to the sheds. We knew this would be a lot more work, for the truck would have to be unloaded, then unloaded again from the cart.
The horse we bought had to have a name of course, she was old and fat so we named her Polly. She was about 14 hands and was as fat as a pig, she had done no work for years. Along with Polly, we got a cart, so now on the days the food arrived for the chickens, we had to stop what we were doing, load the bags from the truck to the cart, and hauled them to the chicken houses. This was long and arduous when there was so many other jobs waiting to be done.
Polly became, just like all our animals, a proper pet, Anita bought a saddle and began to ride her. Anita had not rode a horse for years, she however, did not take long to get used to her, she managed very well. In fact, within a short while Anita was riding with the hounds.
In the local town of Torrington there was a group of farmers who kept hounds to hunt foxes, every Tuesday during a certain time in the year, these people would have a “meet” and ride chasing foxes; “tallyho” and all that sort of thing. Actually, it was a marvelous sight with the men dressed up in their red coats and the “Whipper In” sounding his bugle. Well Anita began to go every Tuesday and enjoyed it very much. She would be at the back of the crowd, because Polly wasn’t very fast, nevertheless she enjoyed it. It was some recreation for her, a break from work, which she enjoyed very much. She deserved this break, for she worked so very hard.
As I mentioned, we had no water supply for the farm other than the well. The supply from this was poor to say the least. We had to conserve water as much as we could, not flushing toilets helped, of course certain times they have to get flushed. The water supply for the chickens was a different matter. We had to devise a different and separate system away from the house supply.
In the middle of the field next to the field with the chicken houses, this is the one we crossed with the road, there was a small gully, which we dug out and widened. We then constructed a dam with concrete. The digging and the mixing of concrete had to be done by hand.
When the dam was finished, we anxiously waited for the rain. When it came it poured, the water ran off the field and collected in the dam. It worked to a tee. Very crude to say the least, but it gave the extra water that was needed. We built a small building to house a pump, this to pump the water to a shed at the top of the next field. In this shed we installed a large 1000 gallon galvanized tank in order to have the storage. The pipe from the pump to the tank, we allowed to lay on the ground, and to be exposed, for the water left in this hose siphoned back into the dam once the pump had stopped pumping, to have buried this pipe would have been another huge undertaking.
We however, could not have the pipe from the storage tank to the chicken houses exposed the same way as this pipe always was full of water due to the pressure from the storage tank and the drinkers in the houses. To leave that pipe above the ground would be a bit stupid as when winter arrived every bit of the pipe would freeze solid, and the chickens would never get any water.
So, once again came the more hard work. Remember, all of the other work was going on at the same time, just to give you an idea, we were building the chicken houses, upgrading the house, and rearing the chickens, establishing a garden, milking the cow, and building a road, just to mention a few of the jobs. Not bad for two inexperience people, there must have been other jobs which I can’t think of right now. Luckily there was 24 hours in the day.
In order to bury the hose pipe, I got the rotor tiller out once again; chopped the first layer of soil, then shoveled the loose to one side, then rotor tilled it again and repeated until it was deep enough to lay the pipe. The idea was to get the pipe into the soil so that when the frost came it would be protected from the frost. Little did we know how deep the frost penetrated, we would learn later, we just did not dig deep enough, for when the real cold weather arrived, it showed we had just not done the job.
Don’t ever get the idea that I did this by myself, Anita was with me every step of the way, she was always as busy as I was. Alan and Beryl came down at weekends and worked on the construction side, for we had to get the sheds built in order to get more chickens. It worked out, that Anita and I never had a day off at all and our days were long.
Chapter Fifteen
The next few years were wrapped up in the farm. As if we didn’t have enough to contend with, Anita and Beryl decided they would take in Guests and supply Bed and Breakfast. When I think of it, I really don’t know how everyone slept but we managed it. One would think we did not have enough to do.
Instead of just Bed and Breakfast, the girls started to give the guests dinners at night. I’ll bet those people still talk about the meals they were served, because, they got nothing but the best. I don’t know if Anita and Beryl ever made any money out of their project. Mind you, the farm supplied many things, chickens, eggs of course, honey, butter, cream and the marvelous milk. Binkie’s milk was like cream even after taking the regular cream off.
We all worked so hard, no-one complained, all the work we all did on the farm, was enjoyed, by everyone there. The farm was a wonderful place for us all to grow up. I would say, each and every one of us gained a lot from our experience at South Heale.
Eventually, we finally finished construction of the Chicken houses. As we had close to 10,000 chickens laying eggs, we could not keep up with the work. We hired a young fellow of 15 years of age to help with the feeding of the chickens, also a young girl to help Anita in the house. This girl also collected eggs.
At first, the plan for our business was to produce eggs for the kitchen table, however, we soon were made aware that to make a profit in eggs of this type we would have to have the chickens in cages. Buying cages for all our chicken sheds would have been a tremendous expense, buying cages and also three times as many chickens, so we had to come up with a different plan.
In 1961 the broiler chicken was just coming of age. This was a fast growing breed of chicken, they achieved the weight needed for the oven at the early age of 8 weeks. The parents of these young birds were of monster size when they matured and layed eggs, so therefore not only ate a lot of food but layed far fewer eggs than the normal bird.
We worked out the economics, the figures made sense. We signed a contract with a local hatchery to take their breed of birds, in return we would sell them our eggs for hatching.
We bought their chickens, starting all over again and raising them. The chickens were much easier to bring to maturity than the previous birds, they just were not so flighty. By being more docile our mortality rate was certainly much better than before.
When laying chicks arrived, we were guaranteed 98% would be hens. Any chicks that were cockerels had to be destroyed. They were not up to the standard required for breeding.
These cockerels were supplied at a different time. And were reared completely on their own until the day came when they were introduced to the hens just prior to maturity.
These cockerels were so big and randy by the time they were put with the hens, they would systematically pick on one individual cockerel and destroy it. You have heard of Cock Fighting; well this went on all day long. When they had finished with that one individual cockerel, they would pick another and kill it. Believe me, rearing animals is not the easiest thing to do in the world. I call these things animals for the size of them you couldn’t call them birds. They were the size of turkeys. They truly were cannibals, eating the flesh of the smallest birds.
All the time we were bringing the new chicks on, the previous birds were producing eggs so we had a cash flow. We were still extremely busy, as the eggs had to be collected and as the production of eggs diminished with the older chickens, we were sending them to the slaughter house for disposal. A chicken will only produce sufficient eggs economically for approximately 10 months then as they go into moult and lose all their feathers they have to be destroyed.
When the old chickens were sent away, we now had to clean out the vacant houses ready for the new batch of chickens. Should a poor job be done in cleaning, a disease can get into the sheds and spread to the new chicks, it was important to make sure everything was properly clean. One of the methods we used, we used a tremendous amount of creosote to kill any type of germ.
The sheds had been constructed with a raised perching area 8 feet wide, with removable slats running down the center of the building. This is where most of the droppings were deposited, if that’s the right word. By the end of a laying season a lot of manure was deposited.
In order to clean this area, we removed part of the front of the shed, then removed the slats from the perching area. We, at this time bought a small tractor with a front end loader to do this type of digging. We had arranged with a local farmer, to deposit all our chicken droppings on his grass fields, he agreed, as the nitrogen helped the grass to grow. We borrowed his muck spreader and proceeded to dig out the shed.
With so much chicken feed available, it is understandable we always were pestered by rats. No matter what we dad, poisons, traps, what have you, we still could not keep them down. Little did we realize how many we had until we started cleaning out the droppings pit. It seemed every dig with the tractor we came upon a nest. This is where Maxie came into his own, he would chase and kill every rat that tried to run. If there were four trying to get away, he would be on them one at a time, and with a nip on the back of the neck and a toss in the air they would be dead.
Cleaning out the sheds and bringing them back to scratch after a batch of chickens had left, was very hard work to say the least.
.
Anita and I had worked every day, Christmas, Easter, it didn’t matter; we had worked every day for years. Time came when we just needed a holiday. Alan had his job with Laing so he could not come down and relieve us. What to do. Luckily, Jack, Anita’s brother had been down to the farm on a number of occasions and volunteered to help us out. Little did he know what he had let himself into. He knew we were busy every day when he visited us, but left on his own was something completely different.
We were so excited to be going on a holiday, as you can well imagine. We had booked to fly to the Channel Isles, and spend a week there. It would be the first time we had been on a plane, and of course we were extremely nervous.. The plane ended up being a D.C. 3, It had been used in the war, and I do mean the war, at the beginning of it.. It was so old and decrepit to see, and when it got into the air, my God, we were scared, it seemed to shake all over, and the noise was unbelievable. Anyway, we did arrive safe and sound. The whole holiday was a wonderful break from the farm. Apart from our holiday in the Lake District, this was the first holiday we had since we had got married 7 years prior. The Channel Isles was just like being on the continent, as lots of the locals spoke French..
During this holiday, Jack and Lil looked after the farm. We were so grateful for we needed this holiday. I would suppose they really enjoyed the change, for Jack loved to mess around, he was a real handy man in any case. It was unfortunate in that the pump, which pumped the water from the dam to the tank at the top of the field, broke down and caused great concern. Fortunately, Jack had the ability, as he was mechanically inclined, he fixed it. I know I would have had a problem to get it going for I’m no mechanic.
We did learn that poor Lil suffered cleaning the eggs. The hatchery needed all the eggs clean, so they can put them into the incubators. It was required that each egg, which many of them were pretty soiled, had to be cleaned. To get them cleaned, it was necessary to use a tool with sandpaper; each egg that was soiled had to be scrubbed, to get rid of the dirt. Unless, you were used to the cleaning, one would end up, buffing off the skin on your hands. I sorry am to say poor Lil managed to have very sore hands, due to the sandpaper. I guess both Jack and Lil were pleased to see us home. They knew now how hard we worked each and every day. We were so very pleased to have had that break.
Chapter Sixteen
Life went on; busy all day and every day, until surprise!!, Anita became pregnant. Anita and I had been trying for quite a while to have a baby, we had been married at this time for 7 years. We never really worried that it was possible we may not be able to achieve having one. Little did we know there must have been something that was holding back Anita from having a baby. The reason we figured this out, Anita was out fox hunting, and was going up this steep incline and slipped off the back of the horse. She very painfully landed on her back with a tremendous jolt. She really knocked the wind out of herself and jarred her whole body. Anyway, we believe something was altered for pregnancy happened almost immediately.
It was pretty hard for Anita having to work when the baby had added weight to her, but, she never complained. She was still at it each and every day.
John was borne July 26th 1962 in the Barnstaple hospital on one of the hottest summers on record. I remember Anita suffered with the heat, luckily for Anita, John was borne 3 weeks early. I’ve just thought of something for the first time; if Anita had gone her full term John could have been borne on my birthday August 22.
Anita worked right up to the time John was borne, for on the farm there was always work waiting to be done and she was so good, she didn’t want to see me get behind. There was always those regular jobs that had to be done, it didn’t matter what was going on, they had to be done, day after day. When you think of it, milking Binkie in that condition must have been hard, as, the stool for milking is so very small.
A strange thing happened, Alan and Beryl had been married much longer than we had, and up to that time had no children. We were having dinner one weekend when Anita and I announced, we were having a baby, after congratulating us they made the same announcement to us. They had the same news to tell us, they were waiting for the right time to give us their exciting news. They had been married longer than we had, and had just about given up the thought of having children.
Both babies were borne without any complications a month apart. Beryl moved down to the farm so that Anita and her would be together with the babies. Having a baby is one of the nicest things to happen to anyone. We both doted on John, both children grew quite fat on Devonshire cream and all the goodies we had on the farm. As you can well imagine, as John was our first child, we spoilt him rotten.
I don’t know why, but Anita and I decide we had to have bees and sheep added to the farm. Now we had chickens, cows, bees, goats and geese. We even had started to raise beef and pigs. I guess we thought we didn’t have enough work to do. We were so pleased with the farm, we just wanted to have every animal we could think of.
I remember one morning I had just come down from the field after the early morning feeding of the animals; I was sitting down having breakfast, we were just chatting, she causally mentioned her time of month had not showed up. We then started to calculate and realized that it hadn’t been around for a while. We had thought as Anita was breast feeding John we need not take protection. Of course we knew what it was; Anita was pregnant again.
Fourteen months after the birth of John, along came little Lyn. She was a black haired beauty, completely different from John who was a red-head. One other baby to spoil. Now Anita was extra busy, looking after the house, helping to collect eggs and looking after two babies. What now more could we possibly want. We had a business that was doing quite well and two gorgeous children.
As we had decided to have sheep, this was another chore; the sheep were old ewes, which had been selected for the slaughter house, we had picked them up pretty cheap from the farmer next door. He ran them with his Ram as part of the deal, to make them pregnant, so now we had something else expecting on the farm.
ittle did we realize what kind of problems these old ewes were going to cause. As they were old, their teeth had worn down so they could not properly chew the grass and therefore did not put weight on. We had to give them grain and much more to eat, even then they were still skinny.
When the lambs began to arrive; I remember it was snowing like hell, and as the sheep were not very strong, they struggled to get rid of their lambs. So, there was Anita on her hands and knees with her arm up to the elbow assisting the ewes to rid them selves of their babies. I don’t believe we lost any of the lambs, but I do know, more than one or two of them spent their first night next to the aga in our kitchen. Another memory to add to our many.
Talking about the aga, we used to rear ducks and geese for the table, these were for the people in the village. We had a small incubator in which we placed our duck and geese eggs; when the young were hatched they always spent a few days right beside the aga on the kitchen floor. I recall Anita and I rolling peas along the kitchen floor , having a real good laugh at the ducklings chasing the peas.
I suppose one gets hard; for these ducks and geese had to be killed and plucked. There is a lot of hard work killing and plucking, but once again it added to our income. Each Xmas we supplied most of the village, for goose and duck were favorites.
That was the last year we had sheep, we did not like the idea of sending the lambs to market and having them slaughtered, we of course had grown attached to them. We also did not need the trouble of rearing them, and making sure they did not stray through our hedges onto other ,farmer’s properties.
That same year we had one of the worst winters on record, we had 5 feet of snow drifting against the hedges and chicken houses, the frost penetrated deep into the ground. Of course my pipe carrying water to the chicken houses froze, therefore, there was no water whatsoever getting to the birds.
Believe it or not, the day this happened, was Christmas day, everybody was busy with other things, so it was up to me to do something about the water supply. I guess this day was the first where I had doubts about the farm being our life long achievement.
had 8 different sheds with 10,000 chickens to supply with water. As all the pipes inside and out of the sheds were completely frozen, I had no other alternative but to carry water by bucket. The water had to be dipped out of the dam after breaking the ice, and carried to each house, then it had to be tipped into the water troughs. As I poured the water into the troughs, the chickens would pile on one another trying to get a drink. I carried water all day, early morning until it got dark, all day long, I never once caught up with the requirements of the birds. I felt like crying for it just was hopeless.
I can remember I was dressed in a thin raincoat. I dressed in this as I could not be dressed too heavily due to sweating. This raincoat was stiff with the frozen water and when I eventually gave up and went to the farm house, I stood the raincoat in the corner and it stood by itself for it was pure ice. I just was unable to continue any longer carrying the water up the field. I was so bloody tired, I could hardly move. I guess a great lot of birds went to sleep thirsty that night therefore we lost a lot of egg production.
As I said, the day of the bitter cold had started my doubts as to whether South Heale would be our complete future. It seemed that as hard as we worked with the farm we could not get ahead , we owed the bank so much money and the interest was killing us. We had many setbacks, too numerous to write about, but over the 5 years we achieved a great lot and had completely changed South Heale. It was as if we would never get any benefits from our hard work. I know the benefits of this wonderful place internally had given us so much, but the work eventually just about killed us. We could see the pair of us as old people still working as hard.
We then suffered our biggest setback. The company, we had been supplying eggs to for the last three years, were bought out by a large company, by the name of Ross Frozen Foods. This company decided they would like to introduce their own breed of birds to supply eggs.
We of course would have been happy to do this if it was feasible. We had 10,000 birds, which laid approximately two eggs a week each, they were at their peak production. Due to their low supply, it made it uneconomical to sell the eggs for the table. These birds were monsters, ate so much food, the small number of eggs they laid at the prices paid by the Egg Marketing Board just was not enough. The alternative was to get rid of our birds and take their chicks and rear them for 5 months till they finally laid. We certainly could not afford to do what they were asking.
Ross Foods were not prepared to help us in any way, therefore we called the slaughter house and had all the birds slaughtered, for each and every day we kept them, cost us money. This was the last straw, our own birds were our way to get our bank loan paid off. The money we received from the slaughter house went directly to the bank to reduce our loan, we then had to put the farm on the market.
To put food on the table I got a job at the slaughter house where we had sent our own chickens. Killing chickens, is certainly not my idea of employment; I don’t want to describe it, just to say it was not nice. The owner, who properly not had a holiday for years decided that I would run his business for him, so, for a couple of weeks he took off and left me to run the whole thing. Everything went fine, but I hated having to slaughter chickens all day and every day. It is not difficult to understand.
It was not the job I wanted to do for the rest of my life, or even for a short while. I had however, to I keep at it until we sold the farm.
Meanwhile, another thing happened, Anita’s Dad died of cancer. This was at the same time we had all of the happenings at the farm. So, when we had sold, and were ready to move away from our lovely farm where so much had happened, we went to Southend to live with Anita’s Mam.
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Comment by Mr WordPress — July 24, 2008 @ 10:58 am