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| Nurse Harfield (nee Mabbitt) District Nurse and Midwife - Twyford and Owslebury 1900's. Click on the image above to see larger picture. |
The Grandmother of Richard and David Harfield was District Nurse in Owslebury from the 1920s to the 1960s, and lodged in one of the houses at Marwell (where Emma Hall and Angela Read lived).
These are one or two things that we have heard her tell of life in the village at that time.
Before her marriage she lodged at Marwell and her district was Fishers Pond almost to Upham - Morestead - through to Lane End - Longwood - Owslebury. All this was covered BY BICYCLE.
She would be fetched out of her lodgings at Marwell by the father, who had sometimes had to walk, or run, from Longwood or Morestead, to Marwell to get the 'Nurse' because the baby was coming. She cycled - summer and winter - to get to the mother. Sometimes the father would come in a farm cart, and the precious bicycle will be put in the cart, and she would be taken to the patient.
(Very occasionally she had a pony and trap sent for her). Perhaps she would have just delivered a baby, by oil lamp and candles, and a knock at the door sent her post haste on the bicycle from perhaps Longwood to Fishers Pond to another baby case. She often said they used to come in pairs, as far apart as they could, in distance.
When she married she moved to Homelands (on the Cricket Down), where Richard and David's father was born. Things progress a little, a car was purchased and the bicycle, although used for day cases, was not quite so important as she was taken and fetched in the car.
During the last war, 1939 to 1945, when people were being sent into the country from bombed areas, Homelands became a small private nursing home, and she was in great demand. Babies were born by oil lamps, in use at night, as no electricity was available.
From 1918 to 1958 Nurse Harfield delivered 330 babies in her district, over half of which were born without running water or electricity in the houses.
Tilley lamps were used and there was a water pump which drew up the water from rain storage tanks. Water was boiled on oil stoves, and if you are lucky you had a small type of oven called a Hestia - under which you put two oil stoves and kept on pumping and pumping if you didn't want your cake to sink in the middle!
Most of the village cooked on oil stoves unless you had enough money to buy a modern ' Calor' cooking stove, some of the bigger houses had Raeburn type stoves.
Most people worked for farmers or the 'gentry'.
There was 'The Squire' (the last as such) of the village, Major Standish, who owned and lived at Marwell House with his six children, nanny, footman, butler, kitchen maids, etc.
There are still one or two of the old servants living. In Owslebury New Churchyard you can see the grave of the 'Nanny'.
She started with the Standish family at 13 years of age and was with them still when she died, having looked after the children's children, etc of each one of the six.
In the old churchyard, there is a large grave with the Standish names on it.
(They always went to church from Marwell by horse and carriage). |
