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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 110)

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Wedding plans – bridesmaids, reception and dress; the Transvaal Castle; Gran falls asleep; chastised by Lord Montagu; the new Hampshire Naturalists’ Trust; eighty-five pounds of marmalade; Slimbridge again; a favourite tree is felled; farewell to Mrs Durst; a rare duck, and hunting caddis-flies.

Gran’s opening entry on January 1st 1962 is:

An owl was calling when I roused this morning, and the snow and frost remained in undisputed control after the coldest night I remember, with certainly the lowest minimum temperature I have ever recorded, only fourteen degrees!

She spends a restful day indoors, listening in the early evening to a televised concert of Johan Strauss’s works, given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, while Jane and Stuart, staying at The Ridge for a few days, explore Farley Mount.

January 2nd dawns, and she remembers, “Our little Ricky is seven today – it is incredible but true!”  Jane has a two day conference in London, and then, on the afternoon of the 5th, she and Stuart, Gran says, “went to see Compton Church, where they are to be married in August…” and on the following day they try to start plans for the Wedding Reception at the Winchester Hotel at St Cross.  “It was not very satisfactory”, she writes.  However, the next day, “Jane and Stuart went to see Potter’s Heron at Ampfield… with a view to Wedding Receptions.  Stuart was charmed by it and it is fairly certain that this is where their Reception will be”.  The pair departs for Nottingham that afternoon.

The first days of January have left Gran emotional and tearful, and she writes much about her “little Jane’s” future peace and happiness.  She is deeply touched, too, by a letter – “…a charming letter from Mr Brenan, Stuart’s Father, in which he said how happy the engagement of Jane and Stuart had made him and his wife”.

Work continues, packing and delivering flowers for the Fowlers, and on January 9th, she enjoys some time on yet another new Union Castle liner, “the Transvaal Castle, all flags flying, which sails on her maiden voyage on January 18th”.  Gran likes the ship, “…not too elaborate, but with beautiful public rooms and cosy cabins, the main colouring of the alleyways being crimson and grey”, she writes.

I sense a little self-criticism when Gran, usually constantly active, writes, on January 11th:

…Then I did an unprecedented thing.  I fell fast asleep in my chair, the wireless on, and was wakened half an hour later by a tenor singing the “Flower Song” from “Carmen”!  I was dead tired.

The 12th is, as always for her, a day of torn emotions: the anniversary of Adrian’s death and also Julian’s birthday – his ninth in 1962.  However, she is delighted, when spending some time in Southampton packing flowers for the Queen Elizabeth, to be able to take the chance to call in at the bookshop for her ordered copy of Andrew Young’s Collected Poems and she also finds there a reduced-price copy of the New Naturalist volume British Plant Life, by W.B. Turrill, so she seizes the chance of acquiring that as well.

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

Announcements in the Press of Jane and Stuart’s engagement are printed in the Southern Daily Echo and also in the Yorkshire Post.  Copies of each are sent between each family.

A day’s bird-watching with other members of Southampton Natural History Society along Southampton Water proves rather disappointing according to Gran’s notes on the 14th.  They visit Needs Ore, driving there, in several cars, along a road marked “private”, and are met with a slightly unfriendly Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who insists that the party turn around and leave, until one member produces a permit for entry to the estate.  Gran concludes:

…after apologies on our part and a sympathetic attitude to bird-watchers on Lord Montagu’s, we were allowed to stay.  We hope to obtain a Society permit for the future.

Her final entry for Book 95 is:

Three Wolf Cubs came this evening to be examined for their Collector’s Badges, two with matchbox labels and one with stamps.  I was intrigued with the matchbox labels – both boys had over three hundred and they were very interesting and from several countries.  All three passed the test.

Match box labels from the 1960s.

Book 96

After describing Green Woodpecker, Marsh Tit and Long-tailed Tits in the garden on January 20th, Gran continues:

I also had an unusual and exciting visitor; a cock Hawfinch, who very obligingly sat facing me, on the Laburnum tree, giving me an excellent view of the enormous bill, and waited there whilst I dashed upstairs for my binoculars.  Then he turned and showed me his beautiful reddish-brown back and the broad white tip to his tail.  It is several years since I last saw a Hawfinch.

“…his beautiful reddish-brown back and the broad white tip to his tail”.  Image by Vince via Flickr.

Arrangements continue for Jane and Stuart’s wedding, Gran recording that she went to Compton Church and there “…obtained a form for Jane to fill in for the Electoral Roll of Compton Church, to enable her to be married here in August and I pictured the Ceremony as I hope it will be”.

The mail brings interesting letters on the 30th: one from Barry “confirming his arrival on Friday” to give a talk to the Natural History Society on Hampshire’s moths; two from Gilbert Whitley, each enclosing stamps for Gran’s collection, from Ceylon and India, “where he is at a Conference on Fisheries”, and one from Jane with news of wedding dress fittings and a request for her Mother to book the Church for 2 pm on August 18th, for the Ceremony.

On the following afternoon, Gran attends a meeting at:

…Winchester Guildhall to attend the Annual General Meeting of the newly-formed Hampshire Naturalists’ Trust, of which I am a Founder Member.  During its first year some very praiseworthy work has been done, amongst it the making of Nature Reserves at Langston Harbour, Farlington Marsh, Stanpit and Titchfield Haven.  After the business was completed, Eric Ashby showed some of his colour films…

Barry, meanwhile, has been in the New Forest collecting mosses (a relatively new passion) for identification.  Gran relates this story:

Barry came home soon after I arrived and we spent much of the remaining evening investigating the mosses, most of which he could identify at once, but some will need a microscope.  He had a lift as far as North Baddesley, and the driver of the car told him that it was his Great-Great-Great Grandfather who had brought William Rufus’ body from Stoney Cross, where he had been killed by an arrow whilst deer-hunting, to Winchester Cathedral for burial.  So Barry said, “Your name must be Purkiss, then”, and, sure enough, it was!  From Baddesley, Barry walked home…

If true, I think that more than just three “Greats” would have been needed!

Gran writes on February 10th, following the arrival of Jane, without Stuart this time, who has to stay behind to give a lecture in German, that:

I had rather a busy day, after all, but one of the “bright spots” was the arrival on the back doorstep of a grave-faced but excited little Anne Hockridge, whom Jane has asked to be one of her bridesmaids.  She was asleep when Jane went in last night to ask if she and Ruth could be, and Ruth had told her early this morning.  She had now come to tell Jane that she would love to be…

Gran, on the following day, indicates her continuing great distress over the apparently imminent “complete breakdown” of Barry’s marriage.  “I feel sick when I think of Julian especially”, she adds, also saying that she “cannot see how Barry can continue like this”.  She is in need of solitude:

I went to the quiet place by Otterbourne Reservoir this afternoon and wrote to him, assuring him of my love and support at all times and in all circumstances but my mind remains uneasy and I am torn with doubts and uncertainties.  I have not felt so alone since 1947.

Otterbourne Reservoir, where Gran found a “quiet place”.

And the next day finds her seeking to “recapture a little serenity of mind” in the utter silence of her beloved Winchester Cathedral – “until the notes of a small organ suddenly pealed forth… I felt better when I came out”.

Outings into the countryside as well as more mundane chores and activities, keep her mind on easier things during these weeks, and by February 19th she has made more than eighty-five pounds of orange and lemon marmalades, “which”, she says, “should suffice for the time being”!

She worries about threatening snow showers on the 23rd, saying, “…they need not come in the night nor tomorrow, for an outing to Slimbridge is planned and it is a long way to go”.  Before this, though, she has a funeral to attend:

This afternoon I went to Compton Church for the Burial Service of my dear old friend, Mrs Durst, who died at Bexhill last Saturday and was cremated there.  The service was simple and beautiful and I was pleased to see Mrs Durst’s faithful maid, Beatrice, there.  Only relatives and close friends were present when her ashes were interred in her husband’s grave.  It was bitterly cold in the Churchyard but it was beautifully sunny and it was good to know that she had been brought to rest in her beloved Compton.  I shall always remember her with affection.

The trip to Slimbridge, with Peg Eagle, is wonderful, Gran says, enthusing about skeins of wild White-fronted Geese in the sky, and others in the nearby fields, numbering three and a half thousand birds. And also Bewick’s Swans, seen during a warden-guided walk to the hides overlooking the tidal Dumbles and then flying in to be fed, with many other waterfowl, captive and wild, on the pool in front of Peter Scott’s studio.

Bewick’s Swans on the Dumbles – the River Severn saltmarshes.  Image by Michael Day via Flickr.

In contrast, March 2nd, another lovely day with regard to the weather, is:

…sadly marred by the felling of what I think was the loveliest tree in Chandler’s Ford – the magnificent Silver Birch by the stream in the last remaining bit of the opposite wood, on which nine bungalows are now to be built.  This beautiful tree was just visible to us between two of the shops and had given us delight for over thirty years, at all seasons and at all times, especially towards sunset when the low beams from the sinking sun touched its crown with gold and brightened the trunk to gleaming silver.  Now it is no more, its branches burned with the sap rising in them and its glorious trunk cut into short lengths.  I could weep – instead I was impotent with fury…

A week later, Gran attends a Natural History Society evening meeting “at which Mr A.E.V. Boggust showed some of his colour films of the countryside”.  Unfortunately, she has to leave early, to catch her bus home.  “A pity”, she says:

…as questions were being asked and Mr Boggust had just told us of a friend who gathered some Sphagnum from Arne, for some plants in his greenhouse, and was amazed when two plants of the extremely rare Summer Ladies Tresses Spiranthes aestivalis appeared in it and one of them actually flowered last month.  I would have liked to ask more!

Summer Ladies Tresses is considered to have become extinct in the UK ten years before this time, so the record must be judged unlikely, but no wonder Gran wanted to ask more questions about it!  On March 17th, she is with a B.E.N.A. party at Frensham Great Pond, where, she says, “A Willow Tit actually came into the trees right in front of us and we were able to watch it at close quarters and hear its call all the time we were having lunch”.  I wonder if one day we shall find that this is another species declined to extinction in the UK.  Its population is one of the most reduced, of all birds, over the last few decades.

A Willow Tit – matt black cap, pale wing panel and scruffy black bib help distinguish it from Marsh Tit.  Image by Philippe Rouzet via Flickr.

A busy day at Fowlers’, packing flowers and delivering them to addresses in Swaythling, Eastleigh and Chandler’s Ford, and also, as usual, to the docks, gives Gran the chance to see over a new and impressive liner:

…the new French liner, “France”, which came in at quarter to nine and was sailing again at midnight!  I had not been on her before and was amazed at her size – much larger than the “Queen Elizabeth.  Her reception hall at the head of the gangway is carpeted in red, and all the little French bellboys were wearing black trousers with a red stripe down the legs, short red jackets and red pillbox hats.  Very smart!  The ship is nice, and tastefully appointed, but one needs to be in good training to walk her decks without exhaustion.

She adds a new bird to her list on the 24th, when she is at Avington Park with John Gunningham.  It appears that they went there specifically to look for a Green-winged Teal, which had been there for some weeks.  They find it, after some local bird-watchers give them directions, but apart from Gran recording that they were lucky to see such a rare North American bird, we are not treated to an enthusiastic description of the bird or the event!

Birdwatchers often scan flocks of Eurasian Teal for the tell-tail vertical white bar of the American Green-winged Teal.  Image by Doug Greenberg via Flickr.

Neither are we given enough information about Ursula Sykes, whose wedding Gran attends at this time.  The event sounds unusual!  “It was a simple ceremony”, writes Gran:

…by special licence, as her new husband has to return to Australia on Thursday, and she is following on the “Oriana” in a month’s time.  Ursula wore white – a short dress, but there were no bridesmaids, as it had all been arranged in ten days!

It has been the coldest March since 1885, and Gran is not surprised that, for the first time, she has not recorded any summer migrant birds this month.  Migraines continue to lay her low, and because of headaches, she has two “wasted days” in early April, though managing to attend a celebration of Brigadier Venning’s eightieth birthday on the evening of the 4th.  Brigadier Venning, President of the Southampton Natural History Society for many years, has spoken on an impressive range of subjects at the Society’s indoor meetings.  On this occasion, before being presented with a cheque and book, he speaks on “The Geology of Britain”.

It is not until April 7th that Gran records her first migrants: three Sandwich Terns, at Stanpit Marsh.

It is neither birds nor flowers but Caddis-flies, that take her attention on April 9th.  She records:

I spent an enjoyable afternoon with a research student from Southampton University, Helen Ashford.  We went to the River Itchen at Brambridge to look for some and found great numbers, among which Helen said we had about a dozen species at least.

It was interesting to hear that her brother, Michael, went to Haberdashers’ and was one of Barry’s pupils.  It was Michael who suggested that she should apply for admittance into Southampton University, as that was where his Biology Master took his degree.

Larval cases of Caddis-flies, made from materials found on the stream-bed. Image by Don Ehlen via Flickr.

Later we went to Hiltingbury Lake to see if we could find any Caddis there.  The Lake, very dirty and smelly, yielded none, but the stream below it gave us yet another species.

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