I was born in Calstone in 1930 in a house behind the Chapel at Theobalds Green. My mother was Lillian Jane Wootton, daughter of Aaron and Eliza Wootton. My mother was born in 1897 at Sandy Lane and her parents brought her to Calstone in about 1900 when Aaron and Eliza came to the village to live at the bungalow on the corner of Moggs Lane and Theobalds Green. My mother, Lillian Jane, went to Calstone School at the turn of the Century and left when she was 10 years old in 1907. She went into service in the village, working for Miss Scarlet, the Schoolteacher, in her house.
There were two or three houses behind Theobalds Green where I was born. They belonged to a Mrs Heath. There was also a coal merchants called Nicholls.
My father was John Alfred Drew. I believe he came from Calne and my parents married in Calstone Church in 1927. They were the last couple to be married by the Reverend Danneman. My father worked in Swindon while he lived in Calstone. He used to cycle there and back every day because work was scarce. When I was two years old, in 1932, we had to leave Theobalds Green as I believe Mrs Heath wanted her house back so we moved into Calne to live in a modern Council house. I spent all my young years living in Calne although I still came back to Calstone to visit my grandparents.
Aaron Wootton, while living at Theobalds Green, was employed by Bowood. He was a very strict man and everyone was afraid of him. When my mother was a little girl, he took the belt to her because he caught her playing with some boys at Broad Bridge below East Farm. He wouldn’t allow vehicles down Moggs Lane by his bungalow. If women had wood in their aprons and saw him coming, they would hide the wood as he didn’t allow wooding. He looked after things in the village for Bowood, collecting rents and cutting hedges and generally keeping everything tidy. He travelled to nearby villages doing the same. He used a pony and trap or a tricycle to get around. He always wore breeches and buttoned gaiters and used a button hook to do up all the buttons. My grandmother, Eliza Wootton died in 1945 and Aaron left the village, passing away the following year.
When I was in my teens still living in Calne, I got to know a boy called Edgar Embling. My mother didn’t approve as she thought I was too young but she felt better about it when she heard he came from Calstone! Edgar lived at 18 Calstone, up by the allotments near the Church. His father worked for Maundrells and Edgar was one of 13 children. In 1939, Edgar’s mother died in childbirth with her 13th child and the baby died too. All the children had to go into a Home in Swindon. They would stay in the Home until they were 14 and then either come back home or the Home would find them work. Edgar was not long off his fourteenth birthday when he went in the Home and he soon returned to Calstone to live with his father. That was how it was in those days. You couldn’t expect a father to look after 12 children and do farmwork as well. When a mother died, the family had to split up.
So, twenty years after I had left, I married Edgar in 1952 and came back to Calstone (or just down the road) and we started our married life at Ivy Cottage, Blackland, where I still live. The house had electricity but water came from the well. Edgar worked for Maundrell Brothers. All the farms were worked by Maundrells in those days.
The School was still open – I believe it closed down in about 1962. I well remember the Village Shop both as a little girl and in the 1950’s after I returned. There were pots and pans, bottles of sweets and sides of bacon. You didn’t always buy at the Shop because Calne shops delivered to the village – Henly’s Stores, Wiltshire’s Stores and the Co-op. There was also a daily bread delivery and of course Jo Summers, down at the Mill, ran a milk round.
On Coronation Day in June 1953 Jim Dunsford, the electrician from Quemerford, installed a television set in the Reading Room and the whole village went there to watch. Only posh people had television sets in those days.
There was a bus through the village three times a day and return, run by Keens Coaches of Heddington. You never had any trouble getting into Calne and the bus went right through to Swindon if you wanted.
Margaret Joan Embling (nee Drew)
Ivy Cottage
Blackland Monday 16 August 1999