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You are here: Home / Community / Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 1)

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 1)

January 31, 2017 By Rick Goater 19 Comments

Introduction

Her name was Joan Adelaide Goater, her maiden name Adamson. She was my grandmother and she kept a journal. Some Three-hundred and fifty hard-backed exercise books covered by a cheap blue paper that fades within half an hour of being exposed to the light. I’ve read small parts of some volumes, which date from January 1st 1947 to the early-1990s. They are written at “The Ridge” – that is number 27 Hiltingbury Road, Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire. It is the home where Gran and her husband Bill (William Cecil), whom I knew as “Grampa” or “Gramps”, lived and where their children Barry (my father) and Jane were brought up.

Joan Adelaide Goater - her journal about Chandler's Ford.

The contents appear mostly to be mundane and often repetitive, with daily comments about the weather, observations of wildlife, particularly flowers, birds, butterflies and moths, encountered close to home and on walks, bike rides and bus trips to nearby villages, towns and countryside, and occasionally further afield – the New Forest and the Isle of Wight, for instance. There are relatively few entries, at least in the early volumes, relating to the family, politics or the social scene of those decades in the second half of the 20th century, and it becomes very clear that the changing world, modern developments and the interests and values of the majority are anathema to her.

Nevertheless, her notes do provide some sort of personal record of a life lived during those times. It appears to have been an overwhelmingly sad one. In retrospect, her life elicits a degree of poignancy for me, her second grandson, as during her life (she died on September 9th 1999) she gave me no reason to think that the enthusiastic persona she presented was a façade.

Diaries of Joan Adelaide Goater.
The majority of Gran’s journals – I have a mammoth task!

Within her everyday comments, I have found little gems that are worth preserving, and anyway, surely such a long-term effort of penmanship should not be consigned to the recycling bin before being read by at least one person who loved her. Did she write it for somebody’s consumption after her demise? Possibly not. It appears to have been a necessary cathartic outpouring for herself alone and was perhaps even her main reason for living day-to-day.

I certainly remember her addiction to taking notes on every car trip and other outing, where she often seemed to have nothing more worthwhile to write down than the names of the towns and villages we passed through. Now I know that these notes, taken almost every day were assiduously converted to carefully hand-written entries in her blue-covered books, usually as she sat up in her single bed each evening before entering an often-fitful sleep. Her handwriting is superb – unchanging throughout, utterly readable and with barely a correction.

The journal is dedicated to Adrian Turvey, a man she never met but was clearly in love with. Whether this love was reciprocated, I do not know; the relationship was based on correspondence about natural history, initiated through the British Empire Naturalists’ Association (B.E.N.A.).

In all the sections that I have read so far, there has not been a single mention of Grampa, and even the occasional “we” or “our” within the text does not necessarily apply to him – in fact it is usually obvious that it doesn’t. They appear to have fallen out of love with each other early on, and it was not, as I used to think, the appearance of Adrian in Gran’s mental world that caused the rift. Bill and Joan’s relationship was built on nothing but a shared love of tennis in their earlier lives, and Gran’s up-bringing in a household of extreme Victorian prudishness did not auger well for a married life, with the particular intimacies that that entailed.

I find it amazing that she found the time to undertake almost daily trips, by bike mainly I think, to the chalk downs of Compton, Twyford, Shawford and Farley Mount, and to Otterbourne, Hursley, Ampfield, Brambridge, Braishfield and beyond. When did she cook, clean the house, look after her children, garden even? I think the answer is that she didn’t – much.

Diaries of Joan Adelaide Goater.
Every one a little treasure trove!

It appears that these tasks were undertaken by her mother, a constant fixture at The Ridge in my time, whom we grandchildren knew as “Greaty”. Greaty had been the wife of an oft-absent merchant seaman and had been accustomed to running her household alone. My Dad (her grandson) says, “When she came to live at The Ridge after her husband’s death, she took over – was first up every morning, cleaned the grates, lit the fires, did the cooking and washing up, cleaned my shoes – everything. She expected and got, no contribution from Gran”.

"The Ridge"
“The Ridge”

Before I embark on the journal, there is an extract from another piece written by Gran in the 1970s, which sets the scene, giving a little of her background and describing the early days of The Ridge:

I have personally known Chandler’s Ford for over 60 years. Park Road was scarcely more than a cart track to the large house on the corner of now Linden Grove, where a school friend of mine lived and we used to walk out of her garden through wild daffodil woods across Hursley Road to Ramally. Water carts were used to lay the dust on main roads, when it blew up in clouds during the high winds of March. I had three school friends living in Chandler’s Ford, and we went to school in Shirley Avenue, Southampton.

My parents and I used to cycle from Bassett, where we lived, to Winchester and Farley Mount, where there were no roads to the Mount, and we used to carry our bikes across fields and over fences to the downland.

I came to live here on my marriage in 1928, when we had the house built, the first one in Hiltingbury Road, as the Merdon Estate had only just been opened up for general building. There were a few houses in lower Kingsway and Lake Road, and one or two, including Sherbourne House School, then the private house “Wattles” owned by Mr and Mrs Howell, in Lakewood Road. There were none on the opposite side except the Lodge to Merdon House.

When our house was built there was a restriction on the size of plot, and we bought our plot of 50 feet by 150, for £100 and had 3½ feet at the bottom of the now, garden, thrown in to meet the plots in Lake Road. Our three-bedroom house was built for £850 and in 1939 the kitchen size was doubled and an extra two upstairs rooms, garage and downstairs toilet were added for £300. This was when my mother came to live with us when Father died and war broke out.

When we first came, Hiltingbury was rural and very beautiful. We had no mains drainage, electricity, no made-up roads and no street lamps, but a house in Kingsway had a generator and supplied five houses, including ours, with electricity for lighting. We did have gas. The telegraph pole in the garden, which brought us our electricity was eventually cut in half and provided a swing for the children. The frame is still here.

I remember it well!

Joan Adelaide Goater
Gran – as I remember her best

I sit on a high stool at our breakfast bar, in our new house at Doune, in Perthshire, laptop open in front of me, at the end of a day soon after my own retirement from work late in 2016 and I have decided to distil and edit Gran’s words into a document that I hope will be interesting to the family and Chandler’s Ford residents and which may even prove to be a worthwhile historical document. At the age of 61, I fear I know myself too well; I readily lose interest, there are many pages to read and I may not finish the task…

I turn to page one of the journal…

Article series

  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 1)
  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 2)
  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 3)
  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 4)
  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 5)
  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 6)
  • Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 7)

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 71) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 79) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 98) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 118) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 141)
Tags: Chandler's Ford, family, Hiltingbury, Hiltingbury Road, history, Joan Adelaide Goater, local interest, memory, writing

About Rick Goater

I have never lived in Chandler's Ford, though know bits of it well because both sets of grandparents lived there and I often visited.

I was fascinated by descriptions of rural life there during the 1930s and '40s and I have to admit it, am a bit depressed by its urbanisation since then.

I'm retired now, having worked first as a warden and ranger on mainly estuarine nature reserves (the Severn, the Solway and Montrose Basin) after which I spent ten years in Ecological Consultancy, based in Cambridge and then in Central Scotland.

Wildlife, especially birds, and wild habitats are what interest me and I'm most at home on British off-shore islands during migration time - the Scillies, the Isle of May, Shetland and Orkney, the Western Isles.

On the mainland, the New Forest is still a favourite place, though a long way from my home near Dunblane and sadly, somewhat depleted in its wildlife since I first knew it.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Karen says

    February 1, 2017 at 1:56 am

    Thank you for the insight into your grandma’s diary. I am so grateful she took the time to write them and for you to take time to share them.It would be lovely to hear more. I look forward to my next walk when I pass the house and I can recreate the daffodils in the fields in my mind.

    Reply
    • Rick Goater says

      February 1, 2017 at 7:58 am

      Fantastic to get a comment – especially a positive one! Many thanks.

      Reply
  2. Doug Clews says

    February 1, 2017 at 3:17 am

    Thanks for your article Rick … although I did not know either of your grandparents, I did know your dad, as he and I were at Peter Symonds’ at the same time, and his sister Jane … Jane used to go to Winchester County High, and both used to catch the same bus to Winchester as I did (8:13a.m. from the top of Leigh Road) … although I lived at the other end of the ‘village’ as it then was, I used to cycle most days after school, and at weekends, to Hiltingbury Lake, where I was part of the ‘Lake Mob’ where we all used to play ‘relievo’ on and around the bridge, your dad included … great fun and never forgotten ! … I seem to remember another Goater family in Velmore Road … estate agents from memory ,,, any relation ?

    Reply
    • Rick Goater says

      February 1, 2017 at 8:03 am

      Thanks Doug. There were certainly estate agents in the family. I must follow this up, as I thought they were all in the Fareham neck of the woods. My Dad is still around to ask. I recently sent him a photo of what I thought was the “Relievo crowd” – he was at the back, and his best mate, “Tibby”, somewhere in the middle. Maybe you were in it. Dad has identified only a smll proportion of the faces, so before too long, i’ll get a copy to you to see if you can complete the picture.

      Reply
    • Rick Goater says

      February 1, 2017 at 8:16 am

      Hi Doug – Dad wrote this about the photo I sent him:

      I have done my best to name people in the photo and have posted you a labelled diagram. I did a cycle tour with John Rice in 1947 and am still semi in touch with him. John Hardwick and Don Thompson both became senior RAF Officers. I saw Don’s sister at Tibby’s wife’s funeral, and also Hugh Reilly. I remember he used to make rockets which he fired from the upturned handlebars of his bicycle. Mavis Bronsdon suddenly appeared in the garden here sometime in 2014. She is now Mrs Mansell and lives in Cornwall, near Truro. I cannot remember the correct name of the chap we called Goofy. Jean and Pat Littlecott lived just up the road. They were the daughters of the then County Education Officer. John Shard was not a member of the Relievo crowd, but was at Peter Symonds.

      Reply
  3. Katie Sharp says

    February 1, 2017 at 9:57 am

    Well done Rick! As the only granddaughter I always felt just a bit special although gran spoilt us all in her quiet little ways. I can’t bear to think that one day ‘The Ridge’ may not be in the family as it has been for nearly 90 years! Mum (Jane) would have loved to delve into these diaries as an insight into the strange up-bringing she and Barry had. Keep the blogs coming!

    Reply
    • Elinor Goater says

      February 7, 2017 at 12:51 pm

      Hi Katie, it’s certainly interesting reading about the sort of person she was and what she was interested in; as children, when we knew her, we had no idea or interest really in what lay beyond what we saw.

      I have very few memories of her beyond her coming to Scotland with your mum on one visit; her saying she was “top heavy” when she was tired; and her giving me her second edition of Hans Christian Anderson Tales.

      I hope you are all well in Sydney, and have enjoyed having Charlotte over there too. See you next year! Xx

      Reply
  4. Fiona says

    February 1, 2017 at 4:23 pm

    Hope you get thru them all! Will be nice to hear of Chandler’s Ford from earlier times. As a youngster I always loved the mossy bank at the front of your grans house, with the miniature daffodils in the spring. We passed it every Saturday on the way to play at the lake. Like a little fairy land! Fiona xx

    Reply
  5. Mike Sedgwick says

    February 2, 2017 at 10:51 am

    Rick, you were not born here, you are not even what my granny used to call a ‘comer’. She used the term disparagingly about people who had moved into her area forgetting that she herself was a comer.

    However, you are going to know more about Chandler’s Ford than the rest of us by the time you had digested those journals.

    It would be interesting to see whether you can determine any changes in the local flora and fauna over that period.

    Me? I’m a comer. We used to be the youngest in the road but now we are firmly classed with the oldies. Sadly, I never kept a diary.

    Reply
    • Janet Williams says

      February 2, 2017 at 3:25 pm

      Too bad. I’m an immigrant.

      Reply
    • Rick Goater says

      February 3, 2017 at 9:26 am

      Hi Mike – there are definitely major changes, and the journal seems to document these quite well – as you’ll see. Up here, in the north, we are certainly what they call in-comers!

      Reply
  6. David Magrath says

    August 28, 2019 at 2:00 am

    Hey! Breaker, breaker, Mavis Johnston had a younger brother John and he and I used to to hang out with a group of teenagers in the 1950’s at the Lakes we were also in the Chandler’s Ford Scouts led buy Jack Hall. We called ourselves the Lake Gang and yes we played relevoe in the rhododendrons by the lake. John was there , Chros Arnold, Brian Prentice, Derek Bannerman, Greg Hiscock, the Pratt sister Sonja and Hazel, Bob Sykes and his sister Ursula, Rosemary Udal, Jenny Vinning, Jenny Battershill, Nat Cottel, the Burnadge brothers, Geof Langston. Yup, my spelling’s terrible and I’ve left out a few names. Please forgive me. And we all joined the YCs around 1953/4

    Reply
    • Jill Andrew (Harding) says

      November 19, 2020 at 9:10 pm

      Fancy seeing your name David! You may remember the Hardings in Merdon Avenue? My father had a lot to do with the Scouts and knew Jack Hall well, as did my brother Tim. I think your father was involved too? I once went on holiday with your sister Heather to Austria. We had an awful ferry crossing when from memory I think Heather’s luggage was lost and she had to buy more clothing when we arrived! Where is she now?
      I’m in regular contact with Jenny Prentice (Battishill) and hear occasional news of Jenny Jones (Vining)

      Reply
    • Carol Ashman(nee Chant) says

      January 31, 2021 at 7:32 am

      David McGrath, I used to live at 80 kingsway on the corner with lake road. Was your house at the end of our garden? I still have a book that has your name in it which I think was given to me by possibly your mother. It’s a strange world.

      Reply

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