Part 1: Wymeswold 1939-1950
Few houses had central heating, running water, washing machines and TV's. There were certainly no dishwashers or mobile phones, not to mention internet! But was it Paradise?
(with comments and corrections by Stan Sheppard)
The Early Memories
The war years
I have a few memories of the war years. In particular I remember going to see the wreckage of the plane that crashed in the field on the corner of Brook Street and Hoton Road.[1] (This is now depicted by an eagle on the mural put up by Russell Hubbard on the pharmacy in around 1986 – see below.) I also remember (vaguely) going to another plane wreckage in Storkit Lane. (At least that’s how we pronounced it; I hadn’t seen it written down before I started writing this.)
[1] The plane was a Wellington Bomber. It crashed on 25 November 1943, see Joan and Peter Shaw, ‘The Airfield in our Midst’, The Wolds Historian, 3 (2006): 2–18, p. 15.
After Italy had capitulated in September 1943, a convoy of prisoners of war came through the village. I remember joining other village children as the convoy came past the culvert opposite our house in Brook Street jeering at the “Ities”. (After the war, some German prisoners of war worked on farms in the village. In particular there was one called “Willi”, who worked for Bob Mills and used to go to my friend Brian Bartram’s for Sunday tea. He was treated with great affection.)
A number of “old” men used to gather in my father’s blacksmith’s shop, among them Mr Padgett and Mr Tyler. (In those days, it was quite rare to call anyone over twenty-one by their Christian names.) These old men were talking to my father about the war and I said: “I’ll be glad when this wall is over!”
We took the Leicester Mercury in those days. In the last few months of the war, the newspaper printed every evening in big type on the front page the number of miles the allied forces were away from Berlin. When I went to get the newspaper from the letter box, I read out the number to my proud parents.
During the war, my father was exempt from the army, as he was a blacksmith. This was a reserved occupation. He was, however, required to join either the Home Guard or the Fire Prevention Service. He chose the latter. He had all the equipment and they had regular meetings. The only fire they ever put out was in Burrows’ stack-yard at the bottom of our garden.
I remember being in the garden one evening in 1945. My mother said that the war would probably finish the next day. Presumably, that day had been declared a public holiday, because, when I woke up, late, the following day, all the houses were decorated with flags and bunting. I was amazed. I had never seen anything like it. There were games for children on the vicarage lawn in the afternoon. I went in an obstacle race. I came back to my mother and announced proudly: “I wasn’t last Mam!” That just about sums up my sporting aspirations throughout my life!
1945-1950
Wymeswold School
I started school in September 1944, two months before my fifth birthday. The school was opposite the church next to the Three Crowns. I expect my mother took me on the first day. After that she arranged for one of the “big girls” to take me. Jean Atkins lived in the fourth cottage from the bottom on the right hand side along Church Street.[1] She would have been six or seven years old! She had a brother, John, who was my age and was my best friend at that time and a younger brother, Neil. In order to get to school, we had to go past the post office to the top of Church Street and cross over Far Street to Sheppard’s farm. Even in those days, Far Street was considered to be a busy road, so it was quite a responsibility for a six or seven year old. I was never supposed to take the shortcut through the churchyard (holy ground), though I often did!
[1] The two end cottages were joined into one after the Atkins’ left.
The infant teacher was Miss Smith (see Women’s Institute photo later on). I was in her class for two years. She was deaf. She lived with her mother at 67 Brook Street next door to Collington’s. I don’t remember much about her class, other than that we sometimes danced “The Grand Old Duke of York” on Friday afternoons.
The next teacher was Miss Greasley. She had grey hair and was very strict. I was always top of the class. One time I had ten out of ten for everything, except handwriting, for which I had seven out of ten. (The handwriting hasn’t improved!) There was a map of the world on the wall, where half the world was coloured red: that was the British Empire in 1947. I remember her talking about a man called Gandhi, who was on hunger strike. Each week we had a period of silent reading. We chose a book from the bookshelf and could only change it when we had finished. My mother said that I was a “bookworm”, but I wasn’t really. I read the first book quickly, but the second book I chose was Rumpelstiltskin, which I couldn’t get on with. By that time, I was sitting on the back row of the class and kept that book in my desk for most of the rest of the year.
Miss Greasley retired when I moved up into the next class. She was replaced by Miss Hassall. She was very much younger – I imagine now it was probably her first post after teacher training. She had dark wavy hair and all the boys in her class were in love with her!
I spent the final two years in the Headmaster’s class: Mr A.G. Smith. His nickname was “Jumbo”. He had been there for a long time and did not have a particularly good reputation among the adults. He biked to school every day from Barrow-on-Soar, some five miles away. (The fact that he did not live in the village also counted against him with his detractors.) Sometimes we listened to a BBC Schools Programme on the wireless. It was called How Things Began. I found it fascinating. My father did not believe me when I told him about dinosaurs, which of course were not known about when he went to school.
The boys sat on the right-hand side of the classroom while the girls were on the left. In the last year I sat on the front row along with Clive Harrison and Eric Upton. Eric lived in Six Hills: there was a bus came every day to bring children from Six Hills and Ragdale. These children all stayed for school dinners. These were brought in every day in metal containers. They smelt horrible. There was one little girl called Caroline, who was always in trouble, because she wouldn’t eat her dinner. Writing this now brings back the smell of the school dinners and makes me feel quite ill! Other boys in my class were Russell Hubbard, Ian (Peeno) Collington, Brian Allsop and Jimmy Young (or Hickling). Jimmy was evacuated from London during the war and went to live with Bill Hickling and his wife. He stayed with the Hicklings after the war and never went back to London. John Issett joined our class in 1948 or 1949. We battled it out for first place in the class. He was a big reader. He devoured books in no time at all. He introduced me to Biggles[2] and similar and I came to enjoy them.
[2] A series of youth oriented adventure stories about a pilot, by W. E. Johns.
The girls in the class were Ann Peel, Jean Anderson, Jean Goodburn, Ronaline Jalland, Hazel Ingall, Janet Swaffer and, briefly, Jennifer Albon. Jennifer’s father bought (or rented) the Hall Farm – the last farm on the right hand side of Brook Street going towards Six Hills. She didn’t stay at our school very long, before going off to private school. Until John Issett came, Hazel Ingall always came second in the class.
The school playground was divided into two, with separate entrances. The girls and infants had the east side and the older boys the side next to the Three Crowns. We used to play cricket and football (mostly with a tennis ball). We also played British Bulldog, but, being small, I didn’t like that very much. In winter, slides were made on the ice. There was a big school garden behind the girls’ playground. From time to time, Mr Smith took us for gardening lessons. My partner one year was Stan Sheppard’s brother, Roland.
Two boys in the year below me bullied me during the playtimes. This continued on the school bus to Loughborough until one day I thumped one of them hard on the face. He hit me back, but never bullied me again. He told me with admiration sometime later that I had really hurt him. He obviously respected me for it.
Life outside school
East end of Brook Street (Loughborough Monitor, September 1, 1949)
My friend John Atkins went to live in Belton, when I was six. I never saw him again. My mother went to see Mrs Bartram to see if I could play with her son, Brian, who was ten months younger than me. It was agreed. We remained friends all the time I lived at Wymeswold, though we had our ups and downs! Brian’s father had the bakery at 5 Church Street, which was about 50 yards from where I lived. Brian had an older brother, John, and two sisters – Ann, who was two years older than me, and Penny, who was about three years younger.
They had a long narrow yard, at the top of which was a garage with big green garage doors. We spent hours and hours playing football (mostly with a tennis ball) shooting into these garage doors. In summer we chalked wickets on the garage doors and played cricket. Brian was better than me at most sports, so I spent most of the time bowling. The only shot that could be played was the straight drive, which, if not fielded, went downhill out of the gate and across the road. It was also possible to slog the ball over midwicket into Harrisons’ yard, but that was six and out (and a long walk to fetch the ball). Sometimes the ball also went over the wall on the other side into Mr Sime’s garden. Mr Sime lived in the large white house on the corner of Brook Street, opposite my father’s blacksmith’s shop.
Mr Sime was a barrister and King’s Counsellor. I believe he was also Recorder of Grantham. He was captain of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club from 1947 to 1950. When the Australians, captained by Don Bradman, played a Test Match at Trent Bridge in 1948, they came over to Mr Sime’s for Sunday lunch. (There was no cricket on Sundays in those days.) So the Simes were very posh and we usually lost several balls before plucking up courage to go and ask to look for them. (They were always very kind and let us look for them, but “mind the plants!” (pronounced “plahnts”)). When I was about ten, Brian acquired a badminton net and I learned to play badminton in their yard.
Quite often, I went to Brian’s house for Sunday tea. When it was too cold or too wet, we used to play games, usually at our house. Subbuteo football was our favourite. We also learned to knit. Sometimes we played cricket and football in Burrows’ field behind our house.
Jim (left) and Brian Bartram, knitting c. 1948.
I was friendly at various times with most of the other boys around my age. Clive Harrison lived in the yard in Church Street (or Church Lane,[1] as we called it) opposite the Post Office (as it then was) and next to the “jitty” that went to the Stockwell alongside the churchyard. Clive was born on 5 April 1939 and I always went to his birthday parties. We also played cricket in their yard! We used to go for long expeditions through the fields behind our house, looking for birds’ nests or mushrooms or whatever took Clive’s fancy at the time. We would be away for hours. Looking back I would say that my mother was generally quite protective, but she never gave me any indication that she was worried. We also went fishing in the pond in Burrows’ field for sticklebacks or similar. It was at Clive’s house that I saw my first ball-point pen in around 1948!
[1] Throughout this book, I have used the correct address, when that has seemed more appropriate. Otherwise, I have used the words we generally used, i.e. Church Lane, Hoton Lane, Rempstone Lane and Wysall Lane.
I collected all sorts of things. I inherited my mother’s stamp collection and added to it. My mother’s stamp album, which dated from the time of the First World War, had pages in it from countries with strange sounding names like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the strangest of all: Bosnia-Herzegovina. I never dreamt that in my lifetime these would once again be independent countries. I also inherited my mother’s collection of cigarette cards, many of which were stolen by one of my friends’ older brother when I showed them to him. I also collected labels off tins and jars. I was a keen collector of car number plates. I had a little book, which showed where they all came from. Later a lot of boys at Grammar School were train-spotters, but, as the nearest train line was five miles away, I never got too interested in that.
At home, we had a ‘wind-up’ gramophone with breakable records. Apparently, before I can remember, I broke some of myfather’s favourite records. We also had a wireless set in the box-room. It didn’t work! On one occasion, when I was four or five, I was taken to be looked after by Marjorie Bakewell and her mother, who lived opposite us at what would become number 2 Church Street. At round about one o’clock, they wanted to listen to the news. I was terrified by this man’s voice coming from somewhere in the room. Around 1946, my Uncle Jim brought us a second-hand wireless set. I used to peer into it to see if I could see the person speaking. My mother said that if I wanted to see, I would need to get a television. Needless to say, I didn’t know what she was talking about. But, having got the wireless, I used to rush home from school in 1948 to listen to the ball by ball commentary on the Test Matches. About that time, my father had a telephone installed for his business – Wymeswold 393. I was not allowed to make personal calls, certainly not to ring Brian, who lived 50 yards away! My father used to ring his brother, my Uncle George, every so often and I was allowed to talk to him about football.
My father went into hospital for an operation in 1948. There was a Polish refugee camp based on Wymeswold aerodrome at Burton on the Wolds. My father employed a Polish blacksmith, called Leon, to do his work for him while he was unable to do so. He was paid £5 a week. He did not speak English and, according to my father, he wasn’t a very good blacksmith. My Uncle George came over every Friday to help out. One Friday, Roland Sheppard begged me to take his pen-knife home at lunch time to sharpen it on my father’s grinder. At first I refused, but afterwards I relented. Of course I didn’t know how to do it and made a mess of it. My Uncle George tried to rescue it, but the pen-knife was ruined. I don’t think Roland ever forgave me for that.
During my time in Wymeswold I “helped” delivering milk and bread. I also helped on Charlie Hubbard’s, Ron Sheppard’s and Cyril Hubbard’s farms, as well as being paid later on to deliver newspapers and the Christmas post. But I never liked working for my father very much. One job he gave me to do was to put washers on rods: the iron washers came loose in packets and he wanted them put on metal rods, so that he could find the right ones more easily. I disliked this job: the washers were cold and dirty. He made harrows and drags for breaking up the arable land. The other job he gave me, which I quite liked, was to paint these implements after he had made them. They were usually painted Cambridge blue, though one time I persuaded him to paint them Oxford blue. (I don’t know why, because my mother and I always supported Cambridge in the Boat Race. Again I don’t know why!) The house where we lived had a big yard and a lot of outhouses. The yard was usually full of farm implements waiting to be repaired, such as mowing machines, swath turners, scufflers, ploughs and binders. Not the ideal playground, but I never remember getting hurt. The biggest outhouse was called the garage, though we never had a car. My father built me a swing which was fastened to the lintel of the garage door. It was a good swing, but you had to remember to face inwards, or else you banged your head on the ceiling of the garage! Upstairs there was a huge loft, where my father stored some of his iron. This loft was full of forgotten treasures, including a machine for cleaning tennis balls. Alongside the garage were a coalhouse (for the fires in the house) and a place for storing coke for the forge.
There was a gate to the garden. On the other side of the gate was a relatively new lavatory and then, backing on to the garage, three or four places which weren’t used very much. In one of these Mr. Lewin, who was a retired farmer, persuaded my father to keep pigs. Mr. Lewin did all the work, my father provided the premises and they shared the costs (and the meat!) They did this for two or three years. In particular, one of the pigs was slaughtered at Collingtons’, the butchers on Far Street in 1949. I witnessed the deed and remember vividly the pig running around squealing after it had been shot.[2] Leicester City were playing Luton Town in the fifth round of the FA Cup. The match was broadcast (probably the second half only) on the wireless in the butcher’s yard. The final score was 5-5. I recall that Brian Bartram’s dad also kept pigs around the same time – food was, of course, rationed at that time.
[2] The experts tell me this is not possible!
We had a large vegetable garden. From quite an early age I did most of the digging and planting. I don’t think I did much later on in the year: I wasn’t so keen on weeding! In the garden, we had two Bramley apple trees, one of which was always very productive. The apples were spread out on the floor of the spare bedroom after they had been picked. There was a greengage tree, which didn’t bear much fruit, a loganberry bush, raspberry canes and blackberry bushes, which I persuaded my mother to plant, probably against her better judgement.
Most of our food was stored in the pantry. We had to go down two or three steps from the front entrance area, so it was slightly below street level. It was supposed to be cool, but, in fact, the wall was close to my father’s forge on the other side, so it often got quite warm. That was in fact the least of the problems: we had a perennial problem with mice and cockroaches! Our diet did not vary very much. We had breakfast in the morning, dinner in the middle of the day, tea after school and supper before going to bed. For Sunday dinner, we always had roast meat (usually beef) accompanied by mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and green vegetables, most of which I didn’t like. I didn’t like gravy on my Yorkshire pudding, so I always had it with butter, before the meatcourse. My mother’s savoury cooking wasn’t particularly exciting, but she was an excellent pastry cook. We always had a pudding with every dinner, quite often an apple pie and custard. Her apple pies were delicious! For Monday dinner, we had cold roast meat, sometimes with bubble ’n squeak. On Tuesdays, the remainder of the Sunday joint was turned into mincemeat, which I really liked. Wednesdays, we often had cheaper meat from the butcher. Thursdays we usually had fish and chips. Friday and Saturday, we often had processed meat, like potted meat, sausage, polony, pork pie or haslet. When someone had killed a pig, we quite often had pig’s fry (a selection of meat and offal from different parts of the pig). For tea, we nearly always had bread and butter (or margarine, only when there was no butter left from our ration). We usually spread jam or fish paste on our bread. We usually had tinned peaches for Sunday tea (with bread and butter and sometimes with evaporated milk). (I don’t think I knew what fresh cream was (other than the top of the milk) until I was about eighteen.) We nearly always had home-made cakes for tea.
My father by the back door of our first house in Brook Street, c. 1939.
There was no mains water in the village until the end of the forties. I can remember them digging up all the streets in the village to lay the water pipes. It was put in our house about a year before we left, so 1951 or 1952. We had a pump for drinking water a few yards from the back door. Unlike some other pumps, it worked well. Occasionally it froze or had to be primed for other reasons. There was also a tank which collected rainwater from the roof of the outbuildings. It was about 15 yards from the back door. It must have been reasonably efficient, because I never recall us going short, though it too must have frozen on occasions. There were washstands in both bedrooms with washbowls, which, presumably, were filled by my father each morning. Occasionally, I had a bath in the bathtub in front of the kitchen fire. The real treat in the summer was to have a bath outside by the back door.
There was a purpose-built washroom attached to the house. This had its own fireplace and built-in copper. I don’t think that worked very well. Very early in my life, my mother bought a second-hand electric copper and washed the clothes in that, usually on Tuesdays. (Most of the other children’s mothers had dolly tubs and did their washing on Mondays.) She hung the clothes out to dry in the yard, where there was plenty of space for washing lines. She had a metal iron which was heated on the living room fireplace. The lavatory was about twenty yards from the back door. It had a wooden seat. The pan was accessible through a little door on the back wall. The “pan men” came to empty it about once a week. Needless to say it was cold sitting there in winter! Unlike many people we always had toilet paper. Most people, including my grandma in Barkestone, cut up newspaper into rectangles and hung the pieces on the wall. Like most people in the village, we had electricity. But there were a few houses in the village, including Mr Fletcher in Fox Yard, who didn’t. (My grandma in Barkestone had electricity downstairs, but not upstairs – we used to have to takea candle to go to bed.) There was a hole in our living room ceiling, which the mice came through and which my mother said had been for a gas pipe. There was no “town” gas in the village in my time, but gas had been produced in the village at what became 93 Brook Street, in earlier times.
We had a few days snow most winters. My father made a sledge (or bought it off someone else). I used to take it into Burrows field behind our house, where there were two short steep slopes. Most of the boys went to the “’all closs” at the south east end of Brook Street. This had a longer steep slope, which dropped into a pond, which often froze over in winter. It was only years later that I realised the name of the field was “Hall Close”.
The winter of 1947 was memorable. Although some people have contradicted me, my recollection is that it didn’t start in Wymeswold until 29 January. Indeed, I remember saying to my father in mid-January, with all the wisdom of a seven-year-old, “It doesn’t look as though we are going to have much winter this year, does it?” When it did come, it snowed heavily for several daysand deposited large amounts of snow on Wymeswold and the rest of the country. I was in my element and made a network ofsledge tracks in the yard. I used to drag my sledge up and down these. After the snow, there followed about eight weeks of sub-zero temperatures. The ice packed hard on the roads and pavements. From the beginning of April, it became possible to chip away at the ice, with a spade, which I enjoyed doing. The ice finally cleared in the middle of April. As it was soon after the war, food was still rationed. With the severe weather the shortages became more acute. Coal was in very short supply. Most, if not all, of the houses in the village were heated by coal. My father obtained a supply of peat to put on the fire. This burned (just about) but didn’t give off much heat. Mr Strachey was Minister of Food and Mr Shinwell was Minister of Fuel. In our Conservative household, their ‘incompetence’ was to blame for many of our problems.
That winter was followed by the summer of 1947, which, apart from my mother’s health problems, was idyllic. I remember, in particular, there being a good crop of Victoria plums. Among others, the Bartrams had a plum tree in their yard.
We used to like playing conkers. There were not many conker trees in the village. One of the few was opposite our house in Sime’s garden on the corner of Brook Street and Church Street. Some of the boys used to throw pieces of wood and other things at the tree to make the conkers fall, but I was never allowed to do so. In spite of that I usually obtained an adequate supply.
There was a special feature on Wymeswold in September 1949 in the Loughborough Monitor. My father’s photograph and a brief report was in that.
In the left photo below (which was not published), he is working at his anvil, making a horseshoe. The photo on the right shows him working at his forge. The bellows had been powered by electricity since 1942 or 1943. (I can remember, as a very small boy, pumping the handle of the old bellows.) An array of blacksmith’s tools can be seen on the wall of the workshop.
Photographs from the Loughborough Monitor, published by kind permission of the Leicester Mercury.
The star of the show in the Loughborough Monitor feature was a Mrs Blount who was 88 years old and still smoked her pipe. She lived in one of the cottages behind the Hammer and Pincers.
At about the same time, Mrs Duce, who lived in the thatched cottage next door to us at number 60, wrote a parody of Longfellow’s poem, The Village Blacksmith, featuring my father. She wrote it for her son, Roland, who was four or five years younger than me. Her husband was a lecturer in engineering at Loughborough College. He owned several vintage cars.
Mrs Duce’s poem, written out by my father.
On Thursday afternoons, my mother usually caught the 2 o’clock bus to Loughborough. In the early days and school holidays, I used to go with her. We used to go to the market and the bank to pay in my father’s cheques and draw some money out. She would also do any necessary shopping for clothes and other things that could not be bought in Wymeswold. We would get the bus back at either ten past three or ten or quarter past four. The ten past four bus was full of rowdy school children who, according to my mother and other adults, “had no manners these days”.
I joined the cubs when I was about eight. The First Wolds Scouts group met in Rempstone. We used to travel there by bus. Very occasionally we walked. After the meetings, we sometimes went to the pub to buy a packet of crisps – Smiths’ crisps with salt wrapped in blue paper. I enjoyed the cubs. I obtained an armful of proficiency badges and eventually became “Senior Sixer”. For at least one of these badges I had to be certified by the village policeman, PC Rowlett. He lived in the police house on London Lane (number 37). He had a son, Keith, who was a bit older than me. With the cubs, we used to go on the annual St. George’s Day parade, which was held either in Ruddington or Radcliffe on Trent. There was also an annual Christmas Party in the YMCA in Nottingham, which I used to enjoy. I progressed to the scouts, but left after about a year. There were two reasons for this. One was that there was an older boy from Hoton, who was said to be vicious, and I was afraid of. The other was that we were expected to go camping and my mother persuaded me that I wouldn’t like “roughing it” (ironic really, since I subjected my boys to 10 years of holidays in a tent, when they were children!).
Towards the end of the forties, Brian Bartram got friendly with Stan Sheppard and I was side-lined for a time. Then we all became friends together. We used to play table tennis on one of the long narrow tables in the bakery. We also played cricket, usually in Sheppards’ farmyard.
The bigger boys used to play a game throughout the village. I don’t know what it was called, but the chant was: “If you don’t holler, I won’t foller”.[3] In particular, they used to gather under the streetlight outside my bedroom window in the winter evenings. The leaders of the “gang” (for want of a better word, there was nothing sinister) were Honky and Rusty Welton. Other important players were David Brooks, Bimmo and Peeno Collington. I played once or twice, later on, but don’t remember much about it.
[3] I am informed that this game was called Hooperella, see Lisa Hill, ‘Archaeologies and geographies of the post-industrial past: landscape, memory and the spectral’, Cultural Geographies 20 (July 2013): 379–96, p. 391.
Continued in Part 2