Chandler's Ford Today

You are here: Home / Community / Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 109)

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 109)

By 2 Comments

A small boy travels alone; intelligent Blue Tits; the two minutes silence – forgotten; Ben Lawers – a dream location; good birding at Dibden; more saddening development; uplifting mail; Mr Utterton – remembered; Jane – “the little dark horse”, and John Stuart Brenan.

Book 95

October 26th 1961 is Julian’s last half-term day with his Gran at The Ridge.  She takes him train-spotting on Shawford Station.  On the nearby downs she makes notes of the plants and birds she sees, and she gathers some Gladdon Iris foetidissima seedpods to use as a Winter decoration.

Jane arrives at The Ridge, spending the night on a bed made up on the dining room floor, and she is able to take Julian and Gran to Winchester the next morning, for Julian to catch the train home.  Gran writes.  “I waited anxiously to hear that Julian had reached home safely – he seemed such a little boy to travel alone – but Barry was meeting him at Waterloo”.

Gran, devoted Royalist, is pleased to record this on November 3rd:

A special announcement on the Television brought us the good news that Princess Margaret, Duchess of Snowdon, gave birth this morning to a son, who will be Lord Lindley, and both are well.

Three days later, suffering with a migraine and still depressed by family difficulties, she nevertheless, at the end of the day, says, “But reflecting now… I can find some cause for uplift of mind and spirit”:

…there was evidence of the intelligence of our Tits, though not altogether appreciated by Jean Hockridge, that is well-known to me and not in the least resented by me. They had pecked holes in the metal caps of her milk bottles and had taken some of the cream, and had done their utmost to tear out the lid of a carton of cream but had, I think, been interrupted.  I do not believe they would have given up the attempt.

A common sight in the 1950s and ’60s. Image by Caroline via Flickr.

This behaviour, by Great and Blue Tits, appears to be a thing of the past, as milk delivered to the doorstep nowadays is usually homogenised and is thus without the tempting “cream on the top”, which was nutritionally worth the birds’ effort in securing. I think the birds must have first discovered this food source when doorstep milk, frozen in the early morning cold, expanded and forced the metal tops off the bottles.

The cream – exposed! Image courtesy of Gray Elkington.

And she is also delighted with the good health of her two American Ivies, “grown from slips”, she writes, “which came over in flower arrangements on the United States” which she put out in the rain, together with the “wild Maidenhair Fern, which Barry, when a student, brought home for me from the Burren of Clare, when he visited Ireland…” The fern looked particularly beautiful when brought indoors again that evening, Gran noting that it “has grown wonderfully this year”.

Nevertheless, her spirits remain generally low, “the threat of Atomic War hanging over us all”, she says, and the Remembrance Sunday Service on November 12th does nothing to help:

…particularly as the high wind this morning had drowned out the maroons [used as an audible signal] from Southampton and I had, for the first time since Armistice Day 1918, forgotten the two minutes silence.

November 17th:

A letter from Pauline Muirhead today suggests the famous Ben Lawers as the second area for our Scottish holiday in July.  If this wonderful project materializes, one of my cherished dreams will come true; a visit to this Mecca of the Botanists, Ben Lawers, whose wild flowers seem utterly fabulous to me.  I cannot really believe it will happen.

Ben Lawers, Perthshire – a dream location for Gran. Image by Tim Haynes via Flickr.

There has been no reduction in the frequency of Gran’s field trips over the last few months, particularly with her friends, Peg Eagle and Wynefred Way.  Usually she sees little out of the ordinary on these outings but a visit to Dibden Bay on the 18th produces several birds that she rarely sees.  Five Snow Buntings on the sea wall are only the second time she has recorded this species; a single Water Rail, usually so elusive, gives good and prolonged views, and a lone swan watched flying in just after Gran has given her companions an account of her finding of a Bewick’s Swan at Pennington a few days earlier, turns out to be an adult Whooper.  “Fancy seeing these two uncommon swans in the same week!” she writes enthusiastically that evening.

An adult Whooper Swan – they often have stained heads and necks from their peaty Icelandic breeding lakes.  Image by Sciadopitys via Flickr.

Around this time Jane sends her a cutting from the Times Educational Supplement:

…showing scenes taken at Haberdashers’ Aske’s new school at Elstree.  This was particularly interesting to us as one of the pictures showed Barry teaching pupils in a Botany class, standing in characteristic attitude.

Scouring the countryside around Farley Mount on November 22nd, “hoping to get some things for winter decoration”, Gran is “saddened to see that most of the Yew Trees beside the Sparsholt Lane have been cut down.  “One misses these loved landmarks of days gone by”, she says. And two days later, collecting moss along Hocombe Road, also for winter arrangements, she writes:

There was plenty of Pad Moss lying loose so it took only a few minutes to fill my bag, but building is slowly drawing nearer and nearer to my special patch so I do not know how much longer I shall be able to come here.   All my simple joys are being taken away from me since Eastleigh annexed our village and suburbanized it.

How important and valued was the postal service in these days!  The receipt of a letter is often all it needs for Gran’s spirits to be raised.  On November 27th she has little to record except for the “welcome arrival of a letter from Jane”, and the following day’s post, Gran writes:

…brought me a letter from my friend Gilbert Whitley, in Australia, just twelve days after I posted mine to him, and he has sent me almost all the stamps I needed to complete my Elizabethan Australian, both used and unused.  What a good pal he is!

Mary Harding is another “good pal”, and Gran accompanies her and her son, Timothy, to Southampton Guildhall to see a performance of the Dream of Gerontius given by the Philharmonic Society, in which Jill, Timothy’s twin, is taking part.

Barry, failing to arrive at The Ridge when expected on December 1st, gives his worried Mother a largely sleepless night, before she has to leave early the next day for a meeting, in London, of Scottish natural history interest.  While she is away, Dad does arrive, and he attends the Old Symondian’s Dinner in Winchester. He and Gran finally rendezvous late at night on the 2nd, and Gran learns that he has been presented, I think permanently, with the Old Symondians’ Quarter Mile cup, which he had won in eight of the last eleven years.

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

The kitchen is being re-decorated during early December.  Gran’s wording, when describing this, seems to indicate that it is a surprise to her.  Perhaps Grampa organised the work, but she was certainly the one to choose the new wallpaper, since she writes in frustration of scrubbing the floor and generally cleaning-up the kitchen while work is held up:

…because the wallpaper I wanted is out of stock, it being the end of the season, and my third choice can only be obtained from London.  The second choice is also out of stock now.  Why can I never get exactly what I want for this house?

At Keyhaven, and for the first time, at adjacent Hurst Castle, on December 9th, with other Natural History Society members, she has a good day’s birding, seeing, amongst many other species, a female Merlin with a newly killed Dunlin, and she also reports:

…being accosted by Television camera-men who were working on a programme called “Out of Town” [who] wanted to film us as we boarded the motor boat which was to take us out across the water to Hurst!  They had already filmed two shooters, (curse them!) and now wanted the contrast of bird-watchers.

The UK’s smallest falcon, and a skilled chaser of small waders and Meadow Pipits, the Merlin. Image by Mick Thompson via Flickr.

A poignant evening visit to Compton Church takes place on December 10th:

…there was a special mention and remembrance of my old friend and late Rector, Mr Utterton, who died this week, and whom I remember with gratitude and affection for his help and sympathetic understanding during my darkest days in 1947.

The Ridge is in need of its own telephone!  Gran is frequently called into the Hockridges’ next door, to receive, on their phone, a call from some member of the family, or to be asked at short notice by Bob Fowler to rush into the shop to help with a heavy workload.  On the 12th, she writes, using far too many exclamation marks, that having been away:

…I returned home, and was met with the news that I was wanted on the phone next door.  It had been a call from Jane from Nottingham but I had just missed her.  I wish I had not done so!  She had phoned to say that she wanted to get engaged at Christmas and would write tomorrow!  The little dark horse!  All I know at present is that “his” name is Stewart. He is a schoolmaster and teaches languages at Nottingham High School for Boys!  Jane is bringing him to meet us after Christmas!  I can scarcely believe it but I am delighted and wish them every happiness.  Of course, I had to phone Tommy and then go and tell my Harding family, all of whom shared my pleasure.  I cannot wait to meet my future son-in-law!

Next day:

Second post this afternoon brought an incoherent but ecstatic letter from Jane, who is full of happiness.  She still has not told us Stuart’s surname, and little else about him except that he is kind, considerate and well-mannered, teaches Russian, French, and German but “otherwise is quite normal” and “knowing how fussy I am Mummy, believe me when I say I have picked the best.”  Everybody likes him and Jane is sure that we will too.  Well, he sounds the right sort and if Jane thinks so and is happy, that is all that matters to me!

And there is more on December 16th:

A knock on the front door – and there stood Jane, looking radiant and announcing “I’ve come!”  Needless to say, we talked until about midnight.  We gleaned that her dear one is John Stuart Brenan; he is twenty-eight, tall, medium brown hair, hazel eyes, took his degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge…

He also teaches swimming.  He plays the violin in an orchestra, paints for pleasure, collects books and gramophone records, is fond of music, makes furniture and is very domesticated.  His home is in Leeds, where his Father is a Schoolmaster, and he has one sister who is married and has a small daughter and a very new son.  Jane had with her a small photograph of Stuart…

Years later, having watched a performance of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, in Cambridge, and then read his autobiographical Untold Stories, in which I found a photograph of Stuart Brenan with Bennett and four other boys, entitled “Leeds Modern School 1952”, I was tempted to write to the author.  My question to him was whether Stuart “counted” as one of the schoolboys upon which the premise of The History Boys was based, and the slightly oddly worded reply I received states:

“Stuart Brenan was one of the group of boys who tried for Oxford and Cambridge in 1951 – and which (though without precise identification) is he one of The History Boys.  Stuart, I think, got an Exhibition at Emmanuel… I didn’t know him very well – he always seemed very grown-up to me (and his French accent seemed flawless!)”

Gran is busy, daily, at the Fowlers’ shop, helped on several occasions by Peg Eagle, until Christmas. Returning from there late on the 19th, she:

…found a letter from Jane’s Stuart, introducing himself and asking permission to marry her and to become engaged after Christmas when he comes to see us.  A nice letter, to which I sent a hurried reply…

Jock and the boys are to spend Christmas, as usual, at The Ridge, though sleeping next door at the Hockridge’s.  Jane drives to Mill Hill to bring them down on the 23rd, which is followed by a very busy Christmas Eve, everybody helping with preparations for the Day, which, when it comes, Gran discovers later, “is the coldest Christmas dawn for seventy years”.  She gives few details of the day, except that:

Julian received, amongst other things a set of chessmen and he and Barry disappeared whenever possible, to play.  I am banking upon this new-found companionship with Julian to help Barry over his other difficulties and distresses.  They were a joy to see together this time.

The day after Boxing Day finds Gran suddenly alone:

All my family had departed by half-past nine this morning – Jane to Leeds to meet Stuart’s parents, Jock, Julian and Ricky back to London and Barry down to the West Country for a day or two… looking for mosses.

December 29th brings yet more mail, and this letter is from from Pauline Muirhead, which:

…made our Scottish holiday next July seem very real, and I trust that nothing will prevent my going.  One week at Dalrulzion Hotel, Glenshee, by Blairgowrie, Perthshire, and the second week at Cruachan Private Hotel, also in Perthshire – the very names stir my heart!

She continues, on another subject, “A very, very busy morning spent in trying to make the rather shabby house worthy to receive Jane’s beloved tomorrow”, and  she “hopes that the bad weather conditions in the north will not prevent Jane and Stuart from coming…”

Next day, having endured a hazardous three-hour drive from Leeds that morning, the visiting couple finds eight inches of snow on the ground at Nottingham, but they leave there around three o’clock and arrive in Chandler’s Ford at ten past nine that night.  “After a good meal”, Gran tells us, “we talked far into the night”.

Snow falls on the last day of 1961, discouraging Gran from venturing outside but Jane and Stuart, she says:

…went for a walk, which eventually became not far short of a six-mile trek!  They went first to see the Lake, then through the Pinewood, up Lakewood Road, along Hocombe to the top of Otterbourne Hill, then, not yet wanting to return, they went through Otterbourne Woods into Kiln Lane.  Here they thought it a pity not to look at the River since they were so close, and this ended in their walking along its bank as far as Allbrook, thence along Boyatt Lane back to Otterbourne and so home…

A snowy Hocombe Road, scene of many a Goater family walk. Image by Henry Burrows via Flickr.

That evening, Tommy and Bob Fowler, and Mary, Frank and Jill Harding descend on The Ridge, overwhelming the couple with gifts, and Jane showing off, “her beautiful solitaire diamond ring and basking in the kindness and wholehearted good wishes of everyone present”.

Thus ends Gran’s year, its last few weeks bringing her sorrow and joy in equal measure.

Article series

^

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.


Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 69) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 106) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 121) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 131) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 154)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. It is so kind of you to share this journal with us. I enjoy it immensely. It connects me to a nostalgic way of life. Thank you.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.