Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 76)

The Master Builder’s House at Bucklers Hard; the “Any Questions?” botanical expert; a lone rabbit at Farley Mount; an aunt dies; a pipe bursts; thirty-eight pounds of marmalade and two days at The Severn Wildfowl Trust.

1956

The new year begins, and that morning Gran is uplifted, writing:

I was delighted… when my kitchen spider, who has lain inanimate for weeks without food on her great batch of eggs, suddenly descended on a silken thread to the window-sill and then ascended again with tremendous agility to her eggs.  I thought she had been dead a long time and was overjoyed to find her well and active.

It is a fine afternoon and she decides to spend it at one of her most-loved places – Bucklers Hard.  She travels there by bus.  It is not only the wildlife and peace of the area that she adores; her favourite house is there too, although it is another building she writes about this time:

I went to the Master Builder’s House to see if I could get some tea and was invited by the proprietor to go into the lounge.  Incidentally, the present Proprietor is a son of C.B.Fry, the famous England cricketer, whose cricket-bag hangs in the hall with photographs taken when he was at the height of his career.  The lounge is most beautiful and a perfect example of what one would hope to see in an old English house in such a place as Bucklers Hard.

She describes the rooms in detail: roaring log fire in a huge brick fireplace, festooned with Christmas Holly and red ribbon bows; a decorated Christmas Tree near the French windows; rush matting on the floors, dark oak beams; electric lighting skilfully concealed; a sonorously ticking grandfather clock; chintz curtains; low, comfortable chairs, a “delightful home-made tea” and much more.

The next day, the 2^nd, is my first birthday, “a Spring-like day”, Gran tells us.  She spends the day gardening with Jane – “there was a delightful scent of damp earth and bonfire smoke!”, she writes, and “We came in to tea, dirty and tired, but well-satisfied.  Just as we were finishing tea, Barry arrived, to stay the night on his way to camp at Beaulieu Road tomorrow with some of his boys”.

“It was an “any questions?” night for the Natural History Society”, she records on the 3^rd, continuing:

…and I had been made one of the panel to answer the botanical questions, which, fortunately, I had known in advance and been able to read up in books by real experts. No-one in our Society will believe me when I tell them that I am not an expert, but I managed to get by all right this evening.

On the following day, Gran tantalises us again by failing to mention someone’s name:

I received the most unexpected but delightful gift of a pretty marcasite brooch this evening, something, curiously enough, that I have long wanted but never before possessed!  I do not often have occasion to wear jewellery but I love beautiful things!

Who gave it to her?

Barry’s camp in the New Forest goes a little awry owing to illness amongst some of the boys so he has a few spare days to himself in the county.  During this time he cycles to Farley Mount with sister Jane, and Gran, the latter noting, “Barry actually saw a live Rabbit – he was ahead of us – and waved an arm to warn us, but Bunny had gone when we passed”.  Myxomatosis had clearly wiped out almost every rabbit in the local population, to warrant this comment.  This particular day is a long one in the field, and Gran, writing in bed that night, ends her entry with, ”Barry went for a walk later and saw Winter Moths, and Mottled and Scarce Umbers.  How insatiable a Naturalist he is!”

The weather is bitterly cold around this time, the temperature within The Ridge being no warmer than outside. Gran hates it, but achieves a little relief on the 9^th:

I had to go to Eastleigh to give blood, since I have been a donor for many years and go when called upon, and I was thankful for the respite from such intense cold.

Two days later she records more weather:

For the first time for over a week there was no frost this morning.   But it was strange that the thaw should have brought such astounding weather with it.  According to today’s newspaper, Colden Common and Fishers Pond sustained the brunt of last evening’s thunderstorm and hurricane, and about forty trees were uprooted or damaged, one of them falling on the Lodge at Fishers Pond…

That significant date for Gran, January 12^th, arrives.  “A most chaotic day”, she writes:

…full of sad and joyful memories and unexpected happenings, my mind divided between thoughts of my lost dear one and my precious little Julian, and Jane’s return to College, coupled with news of an accident to an aged Aunt, who is now in hospital, unconscious.  It rained throughout the morning…. Later I went to Bassett and then on to Shirley to meet another Aunt at the Police Station and support her in connection with her Sister’s accident.

The next day is icy and foggy and is spent in Southampton, preparing flowers for one hundred and twenty orders for the Andes, due to sail the following morning on a cruise.  Gran visits the aunts in Bassett on her way home, saying simply, “Aunt Maud was still unconscious”.  At least we have a name!

“A lovely day, clear and sunny throughout”, is how Gran describes the 15^th.  However, she does not go out except to post letters, and in the afternoon she listens to the wireless:

…a Mozart Bicentenary Concert…in which Yehudi Menuhin played two of his Violin Concertos with great clarity and depth of feeling.  In the previous programme, “Choir Time”, the choir of Jane’s old school, Winchester County High, was taking part, conducted by Miss Hayward, but unfortunately I missed most of it.  But I have heard the choir several time at the school, when Jane was there, and know how excellent it is.

News from the hospital, when Gran phones for news of Aunt Maud on the 16^th, is that she “has regained consciousness and there is a slight improvement in her condition”. Gran’s plans to visit her, with flowers, on the evening of 17^th are thwarted by fog so dense that the Hiltingbury bus is running an hour late, preventing her getting to the hospital for visiting time between eight and half past.  And the next day she writes:

The news came this morning that the poor old Aunt had died at ten o’clock last night, and had not recognised her sister at seven o’clock, so I was too late with my flowers owing to last night’s fog.  I pray that she may be at rest, since Life in this world gave her very little, and certainly nothing to which she could look forward.  Maybe Providence was merciful.  I hope so.  I cut and prepared oranges for marmalade later this morning – I hope to do more tomorrow for Barry and Jock.

Yes, life goes on!  Maud Mary Wise was born in 1880; one of eleven siblings (of which Gran’s mother, Nellie Sarah was one), seven of whom survived into adulthood.

Gran makes nineteen and a half pounds of marmalade on the 19^th – during which she looks forward to the next three days, with some trepidation, for snow is forecast and she is hoping to visit a place she has long wanted to see:

…tomorrow Brother, Barry and Fin are coming, and on Saturday, D.V., the long-looked-forward-to outing to Slimbridge and the Severn Wildfowl Trust’s Grounds takes place and we do not want to be hampered by snow on the roads during the long drive into Gloucestershire.

And, after the production of a further nineteen pounds of marmalade, as well as the baking of cakes for up-coming packed lunches:

Brother, Fin and Barry arrived and there was much hilarity fixing up camp bed and sleeping-bag and mattress to accommodate the two men. Fin was able to have Jane’s room. We hope to be away to Slimbridge by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

Twenty pages of description follow: the journey, and birds seen during it; the buying of three dozen rolls in Chippenham for lunches; the lovely stone walls of the Cotswolds and the passing of:

“The Patch”, the guest-house where Brother had booked us in for the night.  We did not stop now, however, but passed on across the bridge over the Severn Canal to the New Grounds, where the Severn Wildfowl Trust has its domain… A party of Curlew flew over by way of introduction, as we entered the gates, at last, of the Severn Wildfowl Trust.

Peter Scott’s house looks out over the ponds frequented, not only by the vast numbers of his own famous ducks but by many wild species which join them there, and all the windows of the house are huge, and reach almost to the ground downstairs.  Upstairs they are almost as large, and Peter Scott’s own bed is right up close to one of them.  He obviously eats, rests and sleeps with his ducks and geese in full view and one can imagine him at dawn, staring out through the gloom to see if there is an unusual visitor…

She marvels at the exotic markings of the many captive non-native ducks there – including Mandarins, Carolinas and Eiders – but she much prefers the, “beautiful Pintails, which continually flew in from the Dumbles, the marshes and mudflats on the estuary, and landed on the ponds among the pinioned birds…”.  The presence of the wintering flock of White-fronted Geese on the Dumbles prevents them visiting this area, as they had hoped, but they watch Peter Scott himself feeding the birds on the Rushy Pen in front of his house.

For five years in the 1980s, as Reserve Warden at Slimbridge, this was my daily task, which included carefully cleaning those huge windows without frightening the wild birds a few feet behind me, while Diana Fowler worked in the Trust’s Education Department.  How interesting it is for me, therefore, to read of Gran’s experience there, in the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s early days!

They spend a comfortable night at “The Patch”, where many visitors to, and staff at, the Wildfowl Trust used to stay.  Gran notes that the Guest House’s sign consists of “a duck wearing trousers, in the seat of which is a large blue and white check patch”.

Much of the following day is spent observing the wild birds on the Dumbles, from a hide – more White-fronted Geese than Gran would ever see in her local Avon Valley – and many Golden Plover and Lapwing.  The presence of these highly disturbable birds again thwarts their hopes of visiting the saltmarshes with the Warden, but they do briefly meet Peter Scott, who, as Gran records, greets them with “a friendly “good-morning””.

Dad’s Head of Department at Haberdashers’ is publishing a book on spiders and Gran, back at The Ridge on January 23^rd, proudly notes that:

Barry has been asked to illustrate Mr Savory’s new book.  The Spider which he painted for Mr Savory’s Christmas card apparently having met with great approval.

Gran’s new obsession, the painting of wild flowers that she finds herself, has been in abeyance for the last few winter months but she is pleased to be able to start again with the earliest flowerer of Spring, writing on the 30th:

…I started to paint my first wild flower for this year, A Foetid Hellebore, or, as I prefer to call it, Setterwort Helleborus foetidus, but the light did not last long enough for me to do much.  However, I got far enough to know that I can still do it and I look forward to many hours of pleasure in making my loved flowers my own in this way.

She finishes the painting on February 1^st, “almost freezing in the process”, she says, “though there was a good fire in the room, but I was cold later, even when sitting close by it”. She finds the flowers, which she arranges daily in her room in memory of Adrian (in this case anemones) frozen in their vase.  They are placed near a lamp by her bed, in the hope that they will recover. She writes more of the low temperatures, in Fahrenheit of course, the following day:

According to today’s early news, last night was the coldest at Kew for over a century and yesterday the coldest day!  Well, I have not lived a hundred years, and have only been recording temperatures for the last nine, but I have never before recorded a minimum of fifteen and a maximum of twenty-three, as my today’s reading showed.

On the 4^th:

This afternoon brought a sudden and unexpected thaw and with it, a burst pipe in our roof so that water poured through the landing ceiling and dripped down the stairs!  Prompt attention – water turned off, bucket, bowls and mops in action – stemmed the worst flow and we escaped this time with the stair carpet damped in several places and a spreading wet patch on the landing ceiling.  Bedrooms and sitting-room escaped.

That night, reading “a delightful book by Neil Gunn; a selection of essays about nature in the Scottish Highlands” Gran is much taken with a particular passage, quoting it in full, because, as she says, “it applies to me also, though it is often the washing-up or dusting that suffers with me”:

“The eye has no conscience.  When it observes something in the world of nature in which it is interested it wipes the mind clean of the papers on the desk before the window, of the work that has to be done.  In a moment, like an eager boy of an earlier world, it takes the mind in tow and off they go.  At the back of the mind, the mind knows well that this is reprehensible conduct.  But deep down in the mind, the mind, knowing this, brings a gleam to the eye.  For it has a much older knowledge than is dreamed of in the philosophies it has so patiently reared”

“Do you not agree, dearest?”, she concludes.

^

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)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 8)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 9)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 10)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 11)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 12)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 13)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 14)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 15)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 16)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 17)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 18)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 19)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 20)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 21)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 22)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 23)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 24)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 25)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 26)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 27)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 28)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 29)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 30)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 31)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 32)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 33)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 34)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 35)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 36)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 37)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 38)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 39)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 40)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 41)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 42)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 43)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 44)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 45)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 46)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 47)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 48)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 49)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 50)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 51)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 52)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 53)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 54)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 55)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 56)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 57)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 58)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 59)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 60)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 61)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 62)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 63)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 64)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 65)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 66)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 67)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 68)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 69)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 70)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 71)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 72)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 73)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 74)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 75)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 76)

^