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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 128)

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Searching 12,000 pages; two Flycatchers; Lizards – still present; an impressive moth-catch; rail travel – no longer a joy; the White Buck – shot, and the Harding family – a wedding and a baby.

Gran, always keen to be helpful, agrees on June 13th 1968 to act on the contents of a letter:

…from David Glue, of Southampton Natural History Society, asking for bird records for Hythe and Dibden Bay for the 1950s.  He is doing an ecological survey but has few records for these years.  It means looking through all my nature notes from 1947 to 1959 for I only keep my flower notes separately and this means twelve thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine pages!

Three subsequent evenings are spent sifting through her writings for the necessary bird records for David Glue, who became a well-known member of staff at the British Trust for Ornithology.  She writes on the same day that Katherine was delighted with her birthday presents, and that:

Jane and Stuart gave her a globe, so that she can see where are the countries that her special dolls belong.  She has an Indian, Polish, German and Irish to start, but they must come from their own countries, which I fear, the Polish one did not!  She came downstairs one night at ten o’clock to know where was Mexico!  I think, with luck, I can get her one from Fiji, from Mary Robinson, and one from Tahiti, whence goes Gilbert Whitley later this year!

A flycatcher is nesting on the house. Gran asks the window-cleaner on the 14th, “to be very quiet and careful as we had a Spotted Flycatcher nesting in the roof.  He was faintly amused but obligingly did as I asked”.  Many of the birds’ nests in the garden of The Ridge have failed.  Gran, as usual, suspects cats, but there are fewer in the neighbourhood, she learns from the window-cleaner, who tells her that, “the two hated cats from over the road have moved to Romsey.  Thank goodness for that!” she writes.

Spotted Flycatcher – much reduced in numbers now but it regularly nested on The Ridge, and on my other grandparents’ house – 99 Kingsway. Image by Jannis via Flickr.

Later that day, Brother sitting in with Mother, Gran undertakes some fast shopping:

I wanted something nice to wear for Antony Harding’s wedding and I was lucky at the first shop I tried.  I had a most kind and helpful sales-girl and found a pretty “Terylene” suit in a lovely shade of deep turquoise blue, which fitted perfectly.  Usually I hate such shopping and feel very embarrassed but today, with this saleswoman, it was a pleasure.

Barry, spending the night at The Ridge mid-month in order to lead a field trip to Browndown, gives Gran news of Julian’s latest running exploits, saying, “that it had been Haberdashers’ Sports Day yesterday and Julian won both the half mile and the mile races”.

On Midsummer’s Day, Gran and Norris manage an outing together, specifically to see a pair of Pied Flycatchers discovered nesting in the New Forest.  They park at Bolderford Bridge and find the hole in an Oak tree where the female is seen carrying food, and the male is singing nearby.  “ I have not seen Pied Flycatchers for over thirty years, when I then saw them nesting in my cousin’s nesting-box at Bettws-y-Coed.  It is unusual for them to nest in the South of England”, she writes.

Pied Flycatcher – more typically a bird of the UK’s western oakwoods. Image by ianpreston via Flickr.

The same outing takes them, with little hope, to the Lizard Orchid site at Downton.  They search hard for this species without success, then, returning along the embankment, Gran exclaims:

…I suddenly saw what I was sure was a Lizard Orchid in bud, about seventy-five yards away from the original place.  I excitedly showed Brother who had never seen one, and he cried, “Here’s another!”  It was!  To be sure, a rather tatty specimen this, with damaged buds but I carefully opened a bud and there was the lizard’s tail coiled up inside it.  No doubt about it – we had found two Lizard Orchids!  We drew the surrounding grasses, dead and growing, round the good specimen and sincerely hoped that it may survive.

They return to the site with Margaret Burnside on the 29th, finding another likely botanist nearby, but, not wanting to alert anyone else to the presence of the orchid, “just in case” they “walked nonchalantly past it with sidelong glances to see if it were still intact.  It was…”

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

Not unexpectedly, Gran spends much time at the end of June and the beginning of July watching the “shocks and excitements” of Wimbledon.  While she does so, she knits a cardigan for Stuart, “picked up and put down during the matches”, she writes, “but I have finished the back during Wimbledon so far!”

There are recollections of times past in the garden of The Ridge, when one of Dad’s friends call in on July 5th.  There is a late evening knock on the door.  Gran is in bed and Brother answers it:

David Agassiz had come to run his mercury vapour lamp and moth trap in the garden, as I had invited him to do some weeks ago without arranging a definite date.  I slipped on a dressing gown and went down.  David was full of apologies for coming so late but I was delighted at the prospect of having a lamp going in the garden again.  I showed him where Barry used to run his and he said the garden was perfect and the conditions ideal.

David is due next morning at nine o’clock to see what has entered the trap but Gran and Norris have a surreptitious look, without disturbing it, early in the morning.  Gran lists what she sees, as she did in the “old days”: Elephant Hawks, Buff-tips, a Lobster, an Eyed Hawk, Small Angleshades, “but”, she says:

…no wild imagination could have thought of the result of the night’s activity as revealed when David came; at least ninety-one species, a few more to be identified for certain later, and between four and five hundred moths altogether.  It is a great joy to know that so many moths still exist in this neighbourhood, and Barry will be delighted.

The trap is run again on the following night, catching another thirty-seven new species, and Gran tells David that he is welcome to come any time.

“No wild imagination…”  The moth catch that night, typed out for Gran by Jane Elizabeth, with comments by Dad. Evocative English names.

Gran is at Bushey again shortly after this, where she receives news that Julian’s ‘O’ levels are going well and that Ricky was Victor Ludorum on Sports day, with the most points in athletics.  “Julian and I played some table tennis this evening”, she writes, “and he won every game!” and, “Oh! the Blackbird is sitting again on the nest on Barry’s bicycle saddle in the shed”.

Another over-fast railway journey takes Gran on to Wolverhampton, to visit Jane and family two days later.  “I do not like these terribly speedy trains”, she complains, “and all the interest and enjoyment has gone out of rail travel”.

Gran spends several days in Pattingham, enjoying the company of Katherine and Andrew, and she writes on July 17th:

Gill Burn, a college friend of Jane’s, and newly arrived back from Africa, came to lunch, bringing her two children, Simon, who is seven, and Catherine who is Jane’s Godchild and was born on the same day as Katherine.  The children all got on very well together.  Gill brought Katherine a little antelope handbag from Africa and Andrew a British Police car, than which nothing could have pleased him more.

Back in Chandler’s Ford on the 19th she is glad to learn that the Spotted Flycatcher brood in the roof has successfully fledged, and she finds an:

…exciting lot of mail… including a first day cover from Australia, with flower stamps for each state, two first day covers from Black Creek Pioneer Village in Canada from Jean for my birthday on Monday, and a Country Life Magazine, which had in it an Article on Amberley Wild Brooks, by Ceres Esplan (Alison Ross, under which name she writes).

Two Black Creek Village First Day Covers – although each dated differently. Image courtesy of Andy Brenan.

“I was roused this morning”, she writes on July 30th:

…by a loud knocking at the front door, and when I hastened downstairs I found that the postman had left a parcel.  This was my “Concise British Flora”, by Keble Martin, which Barry and Jane Elizabeth have given me for my birthday.  By second post came my translated list of the moths which came to David Agassiz’s lamp in this garden on the nights of July 5th and 6th, with Barry’s added comments, and the account of Tits attacking milk bottle tops, typed out for me to send to Gilbert Whitley.  Jane Elizabeth did this for me from “British Birds” 1949.

Gilbert Whitley had written from Sydney to ask Gran for this information because, he told her, the Currawongs in Australia had recently developed the same habit.

“Keble Martin” – a very popular flower book in the 1960s.

A busy afternoon as well as morning but I started knitting the band for Stuart’s cardigan, and Brother brought Ricky home after a day of birdwatching in time for me to play tennis this evening.  There was a Copper Underwing at rest in the hall when I came home.

Gran’s life appears to me to be full of interest almost every day, yet on August 2nd, having recorded with pleasure that “Julian and Ricky came in this morning, Ricky elated” (because Dad has managed to buy me my first pair of binoculars, partly funded by Gran) and she adds this:

…Tommy Fowler walked in.  It was so nice to see her, and her visit, though brief, was a welcome break to the monotony which has settled in since my return from Pattingham.

She is “horrified and outraged” to hear on television that evening that “vandals have shot and killed the white buck in the New Forest”.  This was a leucistic Fallow Deer that she and Norris had searched for and seen recently, near Brockenhurst.  The news depresses her, and the following day, August 3rd, is one on which she always struggles, it being Adrian’s birthday.  However, she writes:

This afternoon was helped by the arrival of Brother for a brief visit, and Pat (née Littlecott) an old friend of Jane’s, called to see me.  She is home from Canada for her sister’s wedding on Thursday and was always a favourite of mine.  She was interested in all the news of Barry and Jane and their families and also of old friends in the neighbourhood.  Ricky and Julian came round this evening so all of this helped to relieve my depression.

We never knew.

We have news of the Harding family in early August, Gran saying that she “started knitting a baby coat for Timothy Harding’s babe, due any time now”, and also that she:

…dashed to Southampton to get a tablecloth to embroider for Mary, as she had so much admired those I did as presents for Tim and Antony on their weddings, Antony’s being on Saturday… I heard from Antony today, and he and Sally are delighted with theirs.

The wedding is on August 10th, “A lovely and most enjoyable and exciting day”, says Gran.  Doris Crisp, an old friend, spends the night before at The Ridge so that on “the Day” Gran can leave Mother in her capable hands without fretting.  Frank Harding, Mary’s husband, picks up Gran at quarter past ten, then Mary and her mother, “Granny Pickford”, before driving to Chippenham.  More wedding guests join them there for lunch at The Angel Hotel, before they go on to the Church of St Nicholas at Tytherton Lucas.

As usual, Gran is deeply interested in the flowers decorating the church and in the clothes worn by the guests, and she describes them at length, starting with Sally’s mother, who:

…was wearing a navy blue silky dress and short coat, with a pale pink swathed hat of soft material and navy blue accessories.  Mary’s dress and full length coat were of a lovely shade of green, between emerald and jade, and with these she wore a cinnamon brown straw hat with matching shoes, gloves and handbag.  Granny Pickford looked delightful in a deep blue suit, dainty royal blue scarf and feather, close-fitting hat of shaded royal and dark blues.

Sally’s sister, Lucy, is the Bridesmaid, and her dress of turquoise, lilac and green is described. Then,  “Now the bride arrived on the arm of her Father, looking very lovely indeed”, Gran continues, and:

She was wearing a long white dress of smooth crepe, Empire-style, short waisted, with the bodice of lace, with two small bows in the front.  Over this was a long lace coat with long sleeves, in a design of flower clusters.  Her full-length veil was held in place by a cluster of pearls and gauze leaves.  The bouquet was of pink Cymbidium Orchids, pink Carol rosebuds and Lilies-of-the-Valley.

The Service is described, and Gran notes that, “So small is the Church that it has no vestry and the signing took place near the Altar, the book resting on one of the choir stalls”.  There is more:

In the midst [of the reception] came an added excitement and special joy for Mary and Frank.  A telegram from Tim announced the arrival during this morning of Judith Elizabeth, their first Grandchild, and this message must have followed closely upon their greeting to Antony and Sally, which read, “Labour Party sends Congratulations and Best Wishes, Tim and Daphne”.

The Church of St Nicholas – no room for a vestry.  Image courtesy of Kevin Farmer via Flickr.

As the day ends, the drive home is in lovely weather, and “largely along winding country lanes”:

It was a most lovely close to a lovely day, and, having known my Harding family for so long, I felt that their happiness was mine also, and I hope that they will have as much pleasure in Judith Elizabeth as I have had, and still have, in my grandchildren.

Gran’s last entry in Book 121 is, “Diana Fowler has become Secretary-Receptionist at the Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust! Lucky girl!

Article series

Related posts:

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 68) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 83) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 90) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – A Journal (Part 104) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 129)
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