I was born at Baybridge in that little house close to the chapel where the Glasspool’s live now.
Mr King, nicknamed the “sergeant major” was my school master. He was helped by another teacher with yet one other to look after the infants. There were more children in one class then than there is goes to the school altogether now – in the children’s room the seats went back in tiers, but it’s altered now an the school looks more like a picture house.
We were in school at nine o’clock and if you wanted to go out hard up – and if you weren’t back quick the sergeant major went out the door after you.
Mr King would come in about 10 o’clock in the morning. She’d say “Thomas, are you ready for your medicine?” “Yes, please”. She’d come back in with a little glass, that held his medicine and a biscuit or tow. He was taking no medicine – it was whiskey.
He had two boys and tow girls – Bertha, Carey, William and Gilbert. When he died I believe Mr Peirce took over.
The school hours were 9 – 12 and 2 – 4, no dinners laid on, no glasses of milk and a map book across your head if you didn’t do your work. The examinations were held at the school, no going into Winchester to be finished off. There was the Infant’s class, 1st Standard, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th, leaving at fourteen years of age, although you could leave anytime once you had passed the 3rd Standard. In those days you had to pay 2d a week. If you stayed away for just a day or so nothing was said.
There was a headmaster named Whitchurch but he didn’t stay long, after Mr King. Followed by Mr Peirce and a Mr Howe. Then Mr Matthews. We only had candles in the school for lighting.
How did people get on with finding the money for the doctor?
Well, there was a good many people had it from the parish but you could soon go in and see the people who had paid themselves for their medicine, it was half a crown a bottle, was always done up nicely in paper with their name on it. This is the third generation of the Dr Roberts’ that I have been under – the present Dr Michael’s grandfather was the first – Dr George.
I left school when I was 11 years old or just after and I went and got a job with old Mr Farmer Anstey. I worked for him at Lower Farm for five years and six months. Firstly I was sheep minding and then I went to the stables as under carter in the head team. I had a good wage – three shillings a week! – and when I was 14 years old was often put in to do a man’s job.
It was hard work and many’s the time in the summer I’ve been walking across these footpaths and when I’ve pulled my socks off at night they’ve been smothered in blood and if they had to do it today what would they do?
Mr Anstey’s flock was about 150 eyes and a few tegs, that was the time when we sheared by hand. I see in the paper t’other day it was a four handed job and they don 1,704 of them in one day but it wasn't done properly it was a “back off”.
When I started sheep shearing we had three shearers paid at 3/6 a score and then walk perhaps 7 – 8 or 9 miles to get to the work. I walked over from Baybridge once to close over by Fareham Asylum that’s 12 miles there and back. From the Ship its 13 miles – there were four of us went and we had a hard days shearing being paid 4/6 a score then.
When I was man enough to take two horses to plough and I could get more money. I went to work at Owslebury Farm and was there three years, leaving to work for Mr Russell at Baybridge. My brother worked on the Longwood Estate but left to work in Morwell gardens. Mr Dunlop who was one of the stewards asked my fatehr if he had another son who could take Frank’s place.
My father said “Yes”, “George, who has worked for Mr Russell through the summer”. I went there for 12/- a week. We used to do a lot of hours day work making what they call faggots 4/- a hundred. Copse faggots about 4 feet long and put into bundles for firewood. In those days if there was no work in you, you could soon go and they’d get another nipper.
When I looked after the horses at Lower Farm I used to get up about 4.30 – 6.00a.m. I worked along with a man Mr Gilpin who lived in the house on the left as you turn into Lower Farm. We used to go to Botley Mill five days a week with barley – some of the finest barley ever you could set eyes on – what they can’t grow today. The harvesting, the dung carting – everything was done with the horses.
I’ve been up and down that old track what goes down through the farm and when we’ve done we’ve been plastered from head to foot with mud. I’d like the little devils to have to do it now. Mr Anstey was the manager for old Squire Standish and he rented Lower Farm.
Sheep
The most as ever I did shear was 50 in a day and that wants doing. It takes about 9 – 12 minutes to shear a sheep. You had to be on the move all the time when shearing those “Hampshire Downs”. The wool was tied up in the fleeces except the lambs wool – that was bagged up loose. I’ve been shearing lambs when they’re not been much bigger than a good sized cat. The wool was taken to the Corn Exchange in Winchester.
‘Work’, well I don’t see as works done today its what I calls “properly messed about” – farm work that is.
Making hurdles was a job in itself. Years ago in Coney Park and other places, I bought the wood and worked on my own. All that you had for making hurdles was a little hook, a little hatchet for trimming and an old hurdle frame. I still have mine out in the shed and its thirty, forty, fifty – over fifty years old.
My average for making hurdles, if the weather was right was nine a day that was in day hours and if you could do that you hadn’t go to go to sleep. You had to split your own stuff, get the rod between your legs, hit it and make four spars. Hazels were the best wood and this Coney Park wood was lovely, it was so white.
The last bit of wood I bought in Coney Park – I gave £2.10.0 an acre for it and now I suppose you wouldn’t get it under £20. Look at the price you get for the jurdles. I was getting about 10/- a dozen and when I first started it was but 3/6 or 4/- a dozen.
The man that taught me – he was a big fellow, a tall man, if you didn’t do anything right he wouldn’t turn mad and start swearing at you – he’d say “What you go a different way of doing that now”, if he see you putting a rod in wrong. George Fletcher – we worked together in the woods for eight or more years and we never had an angry word.
The last lot of hurdles I made after I was 81 was for Col. Harrison at Morwell. I made about 8 dozen for him that year. He stood and looked at them and you should have just heard how he did praise that up and how wonderful – how wonderful t’was to do it. Well there’s heart in it! When the sheep left the down there was not money in hurdle making so I packed It up.
I’ve been and cut hard then of a night about eight chain long and a chain wde and that was over ¾ acre of ground. 7/6 an acre done by hand and t’was done.
Shackles
Some had iron shackles but I’d sooner have the wooden ones what you make with the hazel. When you get your shoe in and your handle in you puts it over the shoe and fasten it on to the end. If you get an iron shackle they get their leg down and hook it off.
The Bow Shoes we used to get 2d a dozen for those and 2d a dozen for to point them. They were 5” long and were used to hold the hurdles up.
In those days there thousands and thousands of loads of stones picked off the fields – a shilling a load. The loads used to be put down in heaps – at the lower end of Crabbs Hill – and at Baybridge. The roadmen in those days broke the larger stones. Mr Winkworth had a crook on one ar, I was always given to understand he done that firing off a gun on a Sunday. Working with him was Old Billy Mannering – lived at the lower end where Mr Sutcliffe now lives. I can remember that old land from Baybridge up to Green Hill when he laid it down with old rough stones, nothing to roll them in.
Walter Brown had a ‘shop’ at the Chestnuts before he moved to Lane End. His wife used to be school mistress up here and Carry Pethick was a teacher with her. They left to go to Lane End school just as I was about.
Mr Trod worked at Ivy Cottage, he was a good blacksmith. I’ve been coming across these fields in the morning in the winter, I used to get up to the stable about six o’clock or soon after and you’d see a light in his shop.
No fire whatever or anything like that, when you have bacon smoking in the chimney.
All the servants were brought up from Morwell and Longwood to go to church. Everybody seemed to go to church. I used to go to that church, I used to come up in the morning and do my horses, back home to breakfast, wash and change, back up to church and when the coachman and grooms used to go and get their horses to put them in the carriage shafts and harness them I used to go out then and give my horses their dinner. Home to dinner and then in the afternoon time I had to go back and do them again. That was twice to Owslebury and then at night I had to go back to rack up about 7 – 7.30 (rack up – last feed at night).
As you goes in the church there was a gallery and that’s were the organ was and that’s where the Sunday school children was. There was pews in there just on the left hand side as you go in the church there was a ‘horse box’ you might say, which belonged to Farmer Anstey, paid so much a year for it. There was plenty as had their own seats and then up in the vestry there was the Longwood seat on on side and Morwell on the other.
You never saw work done on a farm on a Sunday unless it was to do with cattle. You wouldn’t see a woman hardly pick up a thimble and put it on her finger.
I’ve been at it – 7/6 an acre. My wage was 2/- a day. I’ve been and pulled over ½ acre and by working so hard I could almost double my money. When I had several children and the wife, I used to fatten two pigs a year.
There was four if not five cottages on that old bank on the left hand side going down and I can mind when they were all occupied. The last woman that was there was a Mrs. Parker. They were very old cottages, at the back of them it was mainly blocks of chalk with flint in front. Of course there was only one room downstairs with a little pantry at the back and one bedroom upstairs with perhaps a little one as well.
Mr Russell had four farms, the Off Licence, Lower Whiteflood Farm, Baybridge Farm rented from Dpress? Elm Farm rented from Mr Stephens of Blackdown. He had six horses to do the lot and I’ll gamble that there weren’t so much couch on they four farms as there is on one acre of some of them now. You can’t get the couch out of the ground with the tackle they use today.
I said to my daughter the other day. Those hedges across there. I can remember the time when they were trimmed each year, but look at them now. There was no barbed wire and its that that spoils the sport for hounds today. A horse when he’s hunting today goes five miles when he went one years gone by. There’s some get off their horse and take their coat off to lay over the wire.
When I used to go shandying grass seed, 1216 of clover and a little trefoil and rye grass.
As the Club day was on a Monday, so on the Sunday, Odd fellows and Forresters joined together and had a church parade with the Shawford and Compton band and two banners a flying and people come five or six miles to see it and the church packed out.
One year the dinner would be held at the Cricketers and the next at the Shearers, the two clubs went together. There was also the fair with all manner of things, swinging boats, roundabouts, shooting galleries, a real proper day. On the Monday they used to parade the village and visit Morwell Hall and Morwell Lodge and all round. I can tell you we used to pay 2/6 for the dinner and there was everything on that table you could think of up to a rabbit pie, lovely beef, pressed beef, mutton, everything was on the table that was required including a pint of beer. It was a jolly nice day. Shouldn’t be surprised if the last club day wasn’t before the last war.
Garland Day was the 1st of May, and it was made much of ‘Maym, May – Garland Day, Chimney Sweeper’s Holiday’. The children would go round collecting flowers and making them into a garland.
Changes at the Ship
It used to be thatched and when the thatch was removed, I gamble it was that thick (indicating 2 – 2’6” thick), and there was only just the Tap Room. Old Mr Norgate and his wife used to keep it, he used to have to go down the cellar and he had a little benzolene upstairs and the odd wag used to blow it out.
Shearers
was burnt down on a Saturday night. There’s a well the other side of the hedge. That well used to stand inside the house.
The Cricketers
When I first remember that a man by the name of Sam Smith had it. He was carpenter for old Squire Standish.
There used to be a pub next to Col. Wilson’s house but that was before my day.
There was a pub at Hurst Common. Where my sister lives at (now White House) Baybridge – that was a pub. Over at Whiteflood there was a pub. My grandfather’s father kept it.
And then at Holt Farm, those two cottages that stood there one was a pub, before my time. Old Squire Long bought these tow places because his men used to get in tehre drinking. The last people that kept the pub went by the name of Salter, from there they went to Upham to live.
Down in front of Elm Farm there was another farm, with barns, outhouses and the whole lot was burnt down. Man named Pope kept it.
Mr Bunny was the undertaker, you should see the coffins he made. They were black all round and polished. He use to cover a big area and if going to Baybridge, or further afield he would take his horse and van. The horse he had was blind.
EH |