Michael:
In the beginning …………
We are not exactly sure when Calstone and the Maundrell family came together, but it can definitely be said we had arrived in the village by the 1840s. It is highly likely that we were here even earlier in that century – the family was certainly in the Calne area in the early 1800s with farming locations such as Pinhills, Stockley and Knights Marsh being mentioned. The earliest record shows a Henry Maundrell (1706-1788) living at Mannings Hill, Bowood. Census records for 1851 show, my Great-grandfather, John Maundrell, born in about 1781 and his wife Amelia living in Calstone where he farmed 500 acres and employed 17 workers. Among their children was my Grandfather, Joseph Maundrell, born about 1817 who, by the 1860s, was living at East Farm, Calstone with his wife Maria, farming 395 acres employing 8 men and a boy. In the 1870s Joseph farmed 574 acres, living at Calstone Farm House and employing 10 men, 5 boys and 4 women. One of their sons, my Father Rowland, was born in Calstone in 1865. The family were tenant farmers, the whole village at that time being owned by the Bowood Estate.
The early 1900s
When Father was 16 in 1880 a new family moved into Calstone Rectory and the Reverend George Randolph Hadow became vicar. He brought with him four daughters and a son, the youngest daughter, Ethel Janet, being just 2 years old. Three more sons and a daughter were born in Calstone between 1880 and 1886. At the turn of the century, Rowland, by now in his late 30s, was in need of a wife. He looked no further than just down the road in Calstone where one of the vicar’s daughters was by now a young lady in her early 20s. He and Ethel Jeanette Hadow were married in the summer of 1902. I was their third son born in May 1915 at Manor Farm, my brothers and sisters being George Rowland 1905, Molly 1909, Henry 1911 and Dorothy 1921.
The Hadows were a wealthy family so consequently my Mother came to the marriage as a lady of means with a private income. The daughters in her family were educated at home with the boys going to top public schools like Charterhouse and Marlborough. Mother was adventurous and far ahead of her time as the century moved into the 1920s. She was the first lady for miles around to own and drive a car. Fred Tarry, who worked at a garage in Calne, taught her to drive her little Austin 7. Prior to that she had her own pony and trap. She rode horses and skated in Bristol, going there on the train. She loved clothes – if she saw another lady wearing something nice, she would have to have it. She had a dressmaker Connie Giles who lived at Rumsey House Lodge.
Wherever she went, she was late. She was a most unpunctual lady. She would take her pony and trap into Calne to catch the train to Bath. The stationmaster, Mr Lloyd, would see her coming down the hill towards the town centre and would hold up the train. This was despite having to leave the pony at the Lansdowne Hotel with the old groom, Bryant, and then walk the considerable distance from the Lansdowne to the station. Nevertheless, the train always waited for Mrs Maundrell! Every year, for the first two weeks in September, she took us off to the Tower House Hotel in Bournemouth for a holiday.
Mother had considerable help in the house with a living-in domestic servant for general work and there was other help coming in daily from village families. She supervised and helped with the cooking and children’s’ care. Around 1921/22 and now with a growing family, Father decided we needed a bathroom. As a tenant of Bowood, he approached the estate for help but they declined saying a bathroom wasn’t necessary. His Lordship said that he had an outside toilet! Father persevered, however, and the estate did help with some materials including yellow sand which shows in the mixture to this day. The bathroom including a toilet was built on the west side of the house over the present back kitchen where an open yard had been. The outside toilet remained against the east side of the house where there was a three seater for two adults and a child to sit in line on a box-like fitting with two large holes and a smaller one in the top. Despite the new indoor toilet, Father carried on using the outside one until much later in his life. Manor Farm House is a puzzling and complex structure and we are not sure how old it is. There must have been a back addition at some time because the back walls are so different to the thick walls at the front. There is an 1876 plaque on the front of the house which commemorates some renovations at that time. A builder once suggested some of the timber in the front roof could be ship’s timbers.
Among my parents’ friends were the Heneages at Compton Bassett House, the Smiths at Buckhill House, Bowood and the Coombes family at Bishops Cannings. They would meet socially and play whist. Once a year, Lord and Lady Lansdowne paid a visit to Manor Farm for tea. There would be much preparation – it was like royalty visiting. All the children, including myself, were banished from sight during the visit.
Father was always receptive to new ideas in farming and installed a Danish piggery which was far ahead of its time. It was a long rectangular building consisting of a central aisle for food bordered on each side by clean aisles which, in turn, were bordered by dunging passages. We had around 120 pigs and they soon learned to use it and were the cleanest animals ever! The breeding sows were reckoned to rear two litters a year and spent two months with their babies. Father, who always wore breeches and gaiters, got around the farms on a cob but he was not a horseman. He would tie up the cob in various places during the day, sometimes forgetting about it, but that cob was always patiently waiting for him whenever he returned to it. The farms were interesting in those days growing all cereals, loose hay and raising sheep, pigs and cattle. The cattle was a dairy herd with replacements bred on the farm and then into the herd. As tenants of Bowood Estate we grew and supplied the thatching straw for houses on the estate. They needed a special wheat for thatching straw as thatchers wanted it of reasonable length. We also grew wheat for bread and cattle feed, each wheat being totally different.
I have two miniature barrels with short stout chains (each about the size of a shoebox) bearing my Grandfather’s initials ‘JM’. I believe these were used to take beer or cider into the fields – perhaps an allocation for the men during busy times or part of their pay. These small barrels were carried by the horses on their hames, being the traction part of the harness.
Schooldays and ’a good arm to whack you’
My education started at home with a governess called Francie Ogg. (She later married Dick Dew.) In 1924, when I was 9 years old I was sent away to Chafyn Grove School, Salisbury where I remained for four years. I should have gone at 8 years old but I believe I was a sickly child so went a year later. There was never any question I should attend the village school. It just wasn’t considered good enough for a farmer’s son and I could not be seen to mix with employee’s children. There was a village divide especially politically. Farmers voted Tory and employees voted Liberal. I was very young to go away and I didn’t like it. In my early days at the school I was taken ill with pneumonia. I remember being brought home by ambulance at Christmas and being carried into the house by John Dew, our groom/gardener and I remained at home for the whole of the spring term. The school had rigid discipline and was very regimental with the Masters being feared and respected. The Headmaster was a severe man. He or the Deputy Head would beat you on the backside with a cane for quite minor offences. It was a boys only school and father drove me there and back in his car. I always felt a long way from home as travelling wasn’t so easy in those days. During one spell back in the village I recall riding out on my pony with the Avon Vale Hunt and receiving a ’blooding’ at Horsecombe Wood where the fox was dug out, its tail cut off and the blood put on my forehead.
At 13, I started at Bryanston School in Dorset and remained there for three years. Again, it was a boys only school and I was in Dorset House. The captains of each House, all senior boys, gave the beatings this time. The Dorset House captain was also captain of cricket – a good batsman with a good arm and eye to whack you. It was all considered part of discipline and I don’t suppose it did me any long-term harm. It was at Bryanston where I first received tuition in accounts from the Bursar.
After leaving Bryanston, I went to the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester for a year. Father was becoming increasingly worried about who would do the farm accounts in the future so I stayed on for an extra term to learn farm bookkeeping. Father’s bookkeeping was meticulous and of a very high standard – he had spent some time attending Harris’s offices in the late 1880s for special tuition in accounting.
Uncle Hill and the 1920s
During the 1920s, the Calstone farms had been run by Father, his brother Joseph (known as Uncle Hill) and my brother George, some ten years my senior. In 1926, Uncle Hill was killed suddenly during a thunderstorm in Calstone. He was hit by a piece of wood from a conifer tree near the entrance to East Farm. The tree received a direct lightning strike and disintegrated with bits of wood flying as far as the river. I was at Chafyn Grove School at the time and was called to the Headmaster’s office to be told the news. I have to admit there was an element of relief because usually the only reason you got summoned to the Headmaster’s office was for a beating and I couldn’t think of anything I had done to deserve one. It was a great shock in the village and, without telephones, the news was spread in various ways. Everyone knew Mrs Maynard, the Calstone schoolmistress, had been friendly with Uncle Hill and she lived near Marlborough. So Bill Vines at Blackland, who had a car, drove over to her house to tell her. She told Bill Vines that she and Uncle Hill were man and wife and Bill Vines drove back to Calstone to impart the news to the family. Uncle Hill had always been a very secretive man. Although we now know the marriage took place in Cheltenham a matter of weeks before his death, at that time no one knew when or where the marriage had taken place and it was a complete surprise to Father who was his brother and farming partner. Although married, Uncle Hill had continued living at East Farm with his sister Aunt Minnie (Maria). I often wonder if she knew about it. Village gossip spoke of two chairs in the hayloft where the courting took place! The widow received a substantial payment from the partnership and Father carried on farming with George. It was a difficult time with farming being depressed in the late 1920s.
Prior to the 1920s Father’s mode of transport was a high trap drawn by a cob. However, during the 1920s, George Brown who farmed Sprays Farm put paid to all that when he became the first person in the village to have a car. Of course, Father then wanted a car and he soon bought an identical model to George Brown’s – a Rover 4 seater tourer with a hood. I recall it was a right hand drive with the gears on the right of the driver so there was no driver’s door. The driver and passengers got into the car on the left side. When driving across the Downs to Devizes, Father drove on the grass verges where the golf course now is. It was all unfenced downland in those days and the road was awful.
To be a farmer ……
On the first of January 1933, a few months short of my 18th birthday I started my life of active farming in Calstone. There was no question of me being anything other than a farmer – it was what I had always wanted to be. I had a love of and empathy with animals and seemed to develop a way with them. I think pigs were my favourite because I always found them very intelligent. I also spent more time with them than other animals. For almost a hundred years the family had farmed in Calstone as tenants of Bowood. When I joined Father and brother, George, in 1933, the tradition continued with the farming of Manor, East and South Farms. I recall Father being very much ‘Boss of the Village’. That was how it was. He worked very hard and there was little recreation in those days. As he grew older and his sight deteriorated, I took over the bookkeeping which was a great relief to him – he had trained me with that in mind. He eventually became an invalid, blind and diabetic. He had a resident nurse to care for him – I remember Nurse Webb as a miserable woman to be avoided. I had had only three years farming with Father before he died in 1936. Two years later, Mother left Calstone to live in Bournemouth where she remained until her death in 1966.
Harry – a lovely man
My other brother Harry (Henry) never showed any interest in farming. He was four years older than me and had such a gentle personality – he was a lovely man. Although only four years separated us, Harry went to Sherbourne School but we would meet up back in Calstone for the holidays. Father’s sister, Clara had married a Yorkshire man – Hardy Beanland – who owned a worsted spinning mill in Huddersfield. It was hoped Harry could become an apprentice there but Father’s other sister Emily’s son, Jo Dew, had already been taken on and, due to the depression, there was no other vacancy. So Harry became an apprentice engineer at Weirs in Cathay, Glasgow, manufacturers of marine pumps. I think they still operate to this day. He eventually joined the Merchant Navy and was Second Engineer working between Hong Kong and Vancouver when war broke out. He was engaged to a Vancouver girl, Nina Morris and they married in Canada in 1940/41. He served in the Merchant Navy throughout the war and was torpedoed. Nina came to England and they were apart for two years during the war. Harry left the Navy in 1947 and took a job in Lancashire. The winter of 1947 was dreadful and somehow things didn’t work out so they returned to Vancouver where they spent the rest of their married lives. Harry came back to England on odd occasions to stay with us. We also visited them in Canada where Harry died in the mid 1980s.
The partnership with G R
So, after Father’s death in 1936, I began the partnership with my brother George which was to last until 1970. He was ten years older than me and we were very different. He was the gentleman farmer and I was the ’hands on’ man. I always called him G R. He was the boss – a good farmer who did little manual work. He was a brilliant horseman and cattleman visiting Australia as a judge and rode with the Avon Vale and Beaufort Hunts. He was always well dressed when farming, usually wearing jodhpurs. He rode a horse around the farm saying that was the correct and quickest way to farm. When visiting London, he wore a bowler hat and carried a rolled umbrella. He was an authority on Dairy Shorthorn Cattle and a member of the Shorthorn Society. He was also a member of the Milk Marketing Board and one time President of the Wiltshire Farmers Union. He was a member of the Territorial Army long before the war. The partnership with G R was not an easy one. He was dominant, bossy and hot-headed with a temper inherited from his Grandfather Hadow. He would verbally lash out at anyone and treated employees like dogs. He wore a cap around the farm and, if it was pulled well forward, you knew he was in a bad mood. He once went to London with Reg Harris, known as Tom, (of the Harris’s factory) who lived at The Grange, Calne. They ordered some tea on Paddington Station while waiting for the train home. Reg’s tea was hot and, with the train about to leave, he poured some into the saucer to cool it. G R got up and walked off.
My side of the partnership involved all the paperwork and bookkeeping, working with the men and managing the farm. G R left me to deal with the men admitting I got on better with them than he did and could therefore get more out of them. Regardless of the difficulties in working with him, he never hesitated to give praise when things went well.
The 1930s
The farm routine in the 1930s, up to the war, involved a six-day week with no annual holiday and the only Bank Holiday was Good Friday. It was the custom for the men to spend their day off in their own gardens planting their potatoes. Good Friday was always potato planting day! Christmas Day and Boxing Day were free apart from feeding the animals. There were well over 20 employees who ranged from those with special responsibilities such as Rueben White, the Head Carter (taking over from the original Head Carter, Frank Barnett), ‘Shep’ Maslen, the Shepherd, Ted Dolman, the Head Pigman (later Edgar Embling) to others who could turn their hand to any number of farming jobs, depending on the season. These were called Day Men who worked from 7am to 5pm with 20 minutes off for a morning break and an hour off for dinner. Some of the Day Men were Les Dew, Fred Smith, Tom Davis, Phil Smith and Bill Grey. Farmer McQuie was a sort of foreman as well as Head Dairyman but G R took this over eventually. Although an employee, he was always known as Farmer McQuie as he had originally had a farm at Heddington before it went bust.
Every morning at 6.30am I would go to East Farm to discuss the day’s requirements with G R. As well as working Calstone land, we owned four fields near the bridle track at Blackland and rented a further two fields near Blackland Farm. The land had no water supply and I recall, as a boy, taking a water barrel on a horse drawn frame to the Blackland fields. At 7am, the Day Men would assemble on the road at the end of Manor Farm’s drive to receive their orders. Fred Smith, who had a withered hand, was always the first to arrive walking daily from Cherhill. Tom Davis walked from Greens Lane and others lived in the village in houses owned by the farm. One of the few perks for farm workers was buying milk at three pence a pint. House rent was around 3 shillings a week with Nos 18 and 19 Calstone – the thatched houses up the Church drive – being a little cheaper at two shillings and six pence (half a crown). There was no special clothing – the men wore whatever they could provide for themselves. They used sacks across their shoulders in poor weather which they would hang outside the carthorse stable to dry. On wet days the day men were employed inside if work could be found for them. Reuben White, the Head Carter would fill his day by oiling and maintaining harnesses. Leather hobnail boots were a necessity sometimes worn with gaiters or puttees. A recognised make of boot was ‘Holdfast’. Wellingtons came in later but were not really suitable for all day wear. Some managed to do it but I couldn’t.
Reuben White had a different routine. There were 8 carthorses right up to the late 1950s. His morning began at 5.30am when he would get the horses in from the field behind the school known as Byecrofts and feed them. Then he would go home at 6am for breakfast, starting work again at 7am. He took a lunch snack between 9.40am and 10am and his one hour dinner break started at 12 noon. The horses finished working at 4pm and were taken to the stables to be unharnessed, cleaned and fed. Reuben’s day finished at 5pm when the horses took themselves off to Byecrofts, charging down the village road on their own. They knew their field and always spent the night outside. Reuben was our last Carter before mechanisation. He wore boots and gaiters and reckoned his feet never ever got wet. Ern and George Maslen, sons of ’Shep’, used to take the mickey out of him as it was almost impossible to be out all day and still have dry feet. “Bloody old liar” they would say. Old ‘Shep’ Maslen, who couldn’t read or write, had been a shepherd all his life. I believe he started as a boy on Salisbury Plain and before coming to Calstone spent some time on a farm at Bampton between Witney and Faringdon. After he moved to Calstone, his former employer always sent him a Christmas box.
We had a very stable workforce with most employees staying for years. It was the custom for sons to follow fathers into farm work although the indoor working life of Harris’s factory attracted many away from farms. Harris’s even sent buses round the villages to transport their workers. Very few of our men were ever sacked – if a man didn’t like it, he would move on. Vacant farm jobs were filled by hearsay in the early years and later by advertisement in local papers. There was not necessarily a house with the job – only if there was one spare. The houses were basic with a range, outside toilet, oil lamp and water well. The tenant was responsible for interior maintenance and outside was maintained by the Farm. They were all great gardeners – everyone did their garden. Arthur Rivers, who was the waterworks manager and lived at Tog Hill, had a huge garden right down to the river and all dug by hand. I recall, with a smile, a conversation between him and Jim Mills when Jim pointed out one of Arthur’s rows was crooked. Arthur replied, “You grow more in a crooked row”.
Wages were paid fortnightly at 5pm on a Friday. Employees would come to the Morning Room at Manor Farm and state the number of hours they had worked during the previous two weeks. They were completely trusted and after deductions for milk, rent and one shilling and sixpence for insurance, they received their wages in cash. The pay of Day Men, fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board, was basic – around 30 shillings a week in 1933. Few employees paid tax as the wages were so low. In later years, time sheets were introduced and wages were paid weekly.
There was a serious foot and mouth disease outbreak in 1936 – locally it was very bad with farms all around Calne being affected. Bill Cleverly at Dykes Farm, Blackland had it and the Atwells at High Penn. There were pyres of burning animals all around Calne and district with their smoke and smell. G R was very worried about our herd of Pedigree Dairy Shorthorns but somehow Calstone escaped the outbreak. They were such a special herd being known as the Calstone Herd of Dairy Shorthorns. Each one had a name – Calstone Daisy, Calstone Buttercup and then 1,2 or 3 indicating their generations of calves. It was a splendid herd but eventually lost ground to the British Friesan which proved a higher yield cow.
We got our carthorses from Jack Church at Bishops Cannings. He was known as a Heavy Horse Dealer and lived at Bell Farm, Cherhill for a time and always wore a grey bowler. We would purchase at two or three years old then keep them on the Downs for a year or two until old enough for G R to break them in by working them with older experienced horses.
G R belonged to the Light Horse Breed Society and he arranged for a stallion to be based in the village for a few weeks every year during which time it would serve mares in surrounding farms. A Cornishman came with the stallion leading it for many miles as he walked between the farms. He was a huge man – a funny old boy really. He always returned to Calstone on a Friday evening where he would take off his leather boots and dump them in the water trough to soak until he needed them on Monday. This went on for years. One stallion’s name was Knight Errant.
By the late 1930s, G R was living at East Farm with his wife, Mollie – they had married in 1929. Mother had gone to live at 47 D’Lisle Road, Bournemouth with my sister Dorothy and my other sister Molly had married. I was living alone at Manor Farm although I was only sleeping there as I had my meals with Mrs Allen at South Farm. In the bungalow at the end of the Church walk, Ellen and Florrie Smith and Emily Rivers ran a laundry and did my washing. They lived and worked there and it was the only house in the village at that time with a water supply. Dorothy was the first daughter in my family to go out to work when she became a hairdresser in Bournemouth at Luton’s in Westover Road. It was an exclusive establishment with a very good clientele. Previous generations of farmers’ daughters never worked. Dorothy often brought friends to the village and one of them was Enid Thomas who lived in Calne. I gave her a box of chocolates on her 18th birthday and I’ve been doing that ever since!
Enid:
Schooldays and meeting a farmer
My father was the manager of Lloyds Bank in Odiham, Hampshire when I was born in 1918. I was educated at home with my two sisters, despite Mummy always hoping I could go away to school. In late1934 when I was around 15 , my Father took a new position as manager of Lloyds Bank, Calne and the family lived over the Bank in the High Street. I believe one of the reasons for coming to Calne was that Father heard there was a good school in the town and I subsequently started at St Marys. A few months later, in April 1935, my Father died suddenly and Mummy found herself a widow at 48 with three teenage daughters and in a strange town. We had to move out of the Bank accommodation and into a rented house. I stayed at school long enough to get my School Certificate and then took shorthand and typing lessons with Mrs Black who was secretary to Mr P T Knowles one of the bosses at Harris’s. Mummy took me to Lloyds Bank Head Office in London for an interview to work in the Calne branch. They told her I couldn’t work in Calne as it was Bank policy that employees working in their own town risked learning the banking secrets of local people who they might know personally. Mummy put him right in his place! “If she can’t work in Calne, she won’t work in the Bank” she told them. Subsequently, in September 1936, I started as a shorthand typist in Lloyds Bank, Calne – the only girl working with seven men and a Manager and only the second girl to have ever been employed there. The first was a Miss Stoodley who came from Box or Corsham. I was kept very much behind the scenes but I do recall having an adding machine. I was absolutely spoiled – they always let me have time off when I wanted it and the Bank Manager’s wife always made me a cup of tea when I arrived in the morning. One morning some friends were going off to London for the day and I said how lucky they were and, before I knew it, I was given the day off to go with them. I was at the Bank for three years and during this time I saw many of my old school friends, one of them being Dorothy Maundrell. I often visited Calstone where her family farmed. She had a brother Michael and he gave me a box of chocolates for my 18th birthday. When we started courting, he had an Austin 12 Four car inherited from his Father. It had a wonderful back seat for courting!! I used to work in the Bank until midnight on two evenings a year – June 30th and December 31st – which were called balance nights. As it got near to midnight, I would hear Michael driving this car up and down the High Street hill outside the Bank hoping to take me home. It had a very distinctive sound which I think was something to do with having to double de-clutch when changing gear. Michael took it over from his Father because Rowland couldn’t bother to double de-clutch and kept crashing the gears. The lights burned on at the Bank and Michael would telephone from the callbox on the Strand to ask if I had finished yet! The Manager knew exactly what was going on because he knew the sound of that car and guessed who was ringing the Bank at that time of night! During the time we were courting I soon realised I would have to compete with Rugby. We arranged to meet on Saturday evenings and he didn’t turn up – he was with all his friends having more than one drink after the game! So I made the wise decision we would meet on Sunday evenings instead.
We were engaged at Christmas 1938 and married the following October at St Mary’s Church, Calne, one month after the declaration of war. Despite the war having just started and everyone saying it would be all over by Christmas it made things very difficult for getting married. Relatives couldn’t come because of the petrol situation and there was no reception. Each of Michael’s aunts gave us £5 for a wedding present. Somehow we found the petrol to take ourselves to Minehead for a honeymoon in Michael’s little Standard car, BMR 529. We had to leave in good time to get there in daylight as the car’s headlamps hadn’t yet been ‘hooded’, a requirement of the blackout restrictions. The boot was full of petrol in cans for the return journey.
To be a farmer’s wife …..
We started our married life living at Manor Farm. Normally, George, being the eldest son, would have lived in this house but he preferred to remain living at East Farm near the dairy herd. George and his wife Mollie were complete opposites and it was puzzling how they ever married each other in 1929. She was as Irish as they come – a kind hearted and friendly person but so disorganised. She would ask me to put something on her kitchen table but there wasn’t an inch to spare. If she was going out with George, he would inspect her nails and stocking seams beforehand! She once sat in my kitchen at Manor Farm and announced “I feel like a load of dung”. As her marriage failed, she would spend hours in our house talking to Michael about her problems.
Housekeeping the hard way.
Michael’s Mother had taken a selection of the furniture with her when she moved to Bournemouth and we started our married life by shutting up the front of the house and living at the back. We had the remaining family furniture and I went to Colmers in Bath and bought a velvet suite for £28. The basic functions of everyday life presented an enormous challenge to me. There was a Triplex coal burning grate with two ovens for cooking. It had a flue which diverted flames to the boiler for hot water (hardly big enough for such a large house) or to the oven for cooking. I also had a Valour two burner oil stove for cooking which I later upped to a Florence three burner with a portable oven. At first, I asked myself if the food was ever going to cook – it took twice as long as normal and my first attempts at baking a cake and roasting a joint were very hit and miss affairs. The farm had a strict routine with mealtimes to the minute and meals had to be ready on time. Thankfully, I always had help in the house – Jim Mills’ wife came in daily as well as others from the village. There was very weak electricity generated from one of the portable engines in the barn. It allowed us to have lighting and an iron but was too weak for such as a vacuum cleaner or cooker, so all housework was done with a carpet sweeper and dustpan and brush. There was a laundry in the village which I used at first. Later I boiled the bed linen in a galvanised bath on the Florence stove and did other items by hand. Rinsing was done in the big sink in the back kitchen before the laundry was put through a hand wringer.
I remember a few days of freak ice in early 1940. It coated the whole countryside with the odd noise of tree boughs breaking off and telephone wires collapsing with the weight. Rueben White, the Head Carter hurried to get the carthorses from their field into the safety of the stables lest a bough should break on them. Farmer McQuie walked across the driveway at Manor Farm wearing sacking wrapped around his boots so as not to slip and warned me to stay inside.
Recollections of Wartime
Any ideas I had of an idyllic life being married to a farmer in Calstone were soon dispelled as the war took a hold. Those in the country with room had to take in those living in more vulnerable areas. At first, I was horrified when there was talk of single servicemen and evacuees moving in. I was 21 and expecting our first baby when Police Constable Mead of Cherhill came round with an Army representative to look at the rooms. He said he would try and fix it for me to have families. Our first lodgers were a Mr and Mrs Poston – he was at RAF Compton Bassett. She was absolutely useless in the kitchen putting my plates on naked flames to heat up and putting hot dishes on polished furniture. Despite this, I felt sorry for her one Christmas and gave her a small jug of cream or ’tops’ as we called it. She thought so much of the cream, she wrote to someone in Dublin and mentioned it. The letter was censored and the next thing was a Ministry of Food Inspector knocking at the door asking her where she got the cream from in wartime. I was able to come to her rescue by explaining about the ’tops’ cream on our milk churns and he was satisfied. In the end, right up to 1945, we had a variety of service families, friends and relatives living in the front of the house. Some stayed longer than others, doing their own cooking and paying rent. At the time of Dunkirk in 1940, a lady brought her several children from the south east coast and stayed for a while. There was panic at the thought of an invasion but she soon went home when the panic subsided. Towards the end of the war when the Doodlebugs were again threatening that area, she wrote asking to return saying she had had more children and named one of them after me! Thankfully, we were full up so she couldn’t come. At one time, there were eleven people living in the house sharing one bathroom and one toilet. All windows had to have thick curtains as part of the blackout – in some instances we put boards up.
The Women’s Land Army
The Women’s Land Army was formed later and we had several girls in Calstone. Nancy Droop was at East Farm for a while. Joan Devereaux lodged with Jim Mills and there was a May Robishaw. Joyce Lockwood was a townee from Barnsley in Yorkshire and had never been on a farm before let alone experienced the darkness of a village. She turned up late one night and was taken to isolated Tog Hill to lodge with Arthur Rivers and was told to be at East Farm dairy at 5am the next morning. She made it on time but no one could think how she found her way there and I doubt Arthur Rivers gave her any help. The Land Army worked on for a time after the war ended.
Al and Mac
You made lifelong friendships during the war. My sister went to dances at RAF Yatesbury and she brought a Canadian called Al and a New Zealander called Mac to see us around 1940/41. Yatesbury was a holding camp and, while awaiting their postings they flew Proctors and Dominies training wireless operators in the air. They were gone by 1942 – Mac to West Africa piloting flying boats and Al to South Africa flying brass hats about- but they have remained in touch to this day and have visited us several times from New Zealand and Canada. Mac used our home as a base when back in England during the war.
Two ounces each
I suppose, living in the country, we were a little better off during the food rationing. Jim Mills was the rabbit trapper and provided us with a rabbit each week. We had our own pig, milk and eggs and all vegetable gardens were highly productive. An early wartime recollection is of pigs farrowing at night with hugh litters over many hours. Michael would put the early piglets in a wood basket and bring them indoors for warmth by the fire returning them to the mother when they were all born. During haymaking and harvesting, the Government allowed farm employees extra rations as they had to take food with them into the fields. I worked out the number of men and then made an application. I would collect the rations from Sid Burchell, the grocer in London Road, Calne, who made up a packet for each man containing 2oz each of cheese, sugar, tea and butter.
Applying for every drop!
You were entitled to a basic petrol allowance up to June 1942 according to your requirements, business, farming, etc. After that date you had to apply for every drop. We had a petrol pump for farming purposes so were probably a little better off than most. I learned to drive in 1941 with three lessons from Fred Smith who lived on The Green in Calne. I never took a test because when your provisional licence ran out after about a year, you were issued with a full licence. People coped with petrol rationing in a variety of ways. The only way I could take the children to see my mother who lived on the other side of Calne, at Lickhill, was to put a sack of potatoes in my boot and, if I was stopped I could say I was on a delivery. When I was in the maternity hospital in Chippenham the only way Michael could visit me was to say he was at the vets! Our veterinary surgeon, Derek Hale, lived opposite the hospital and Michael would ’phone him to say our car would be parked outside his house for a while and, if anyone asked about it, to say he was visiting him on farm business.
The Italians – Johnny, Ito and Franco
During the final war years we had three or four Italian prisoners working on the farm. They came from a camp at Westbury and lived in the empty farm cottage at the bottom of the Rectory drive – now demolished. Once a month on a Sunday morning Michael took Johnny, Ito and Franco back to Westbury for clean clothes and provisions. During the week preceding this monthly visit they would be very excited and kept asking Michael to confirm the visit was still on. They were happy men, good workers and loved seeing their mates every month. When Italy surrendered they were repatriated and we never heard of them again.
The Germans – equal shares to the centimetre
Then the German prisoners came. They were held at Devizes Camp and a big gang of around a dozen men worked on the farms during 1944/1945. Michael would fetch them daily in our Bedford truck – there were never any guards – I suppose they were just glad to be out of the war. One of them could speak a little English. They brought some food with them daily but we augmented it with potatoes grown on the farm. We didn’t have to do this but they were a great lot who worked well for us although they all looked so poor. We were glad of help on the farms and with other odd jobs. There were no wages involved – I suppose the government paid their other costs. Every morning, on arrival, they would peel the potatoes and I would cook them in a big oval cast iron pot for midday lunch. I still have that pot somewhere. Michael bought them 6 loaves of bread every day. So that each man should have an equal share, they carefully cut each loaf in half exactly to the centimetre to eat with the potatoes and followed this ritual every day. I never saw any animosity towards them in the village although when I asked Joyce Lockwood, one of our Land Girls, to take something to them she said she wasn’t going to wait on Germans. After the war, three Germans came to the village after the Government allowed them to remain in England to work. Herbert is still here in the village, Kurt left later and we lost touch and Franz left but kept in touch and is now buried in Calstone.
The height of fashion
There were no holidays during the war. The best we could manage was a trip to Bournemouth to see my mother in law. This meant getting a double-decker Wilts & Dorset bus from Devizes to Upavon changing to a double-decker Hants & Dorset bus from Upavon to Bournemouth via Salisbury. By now we had three children, Robert (Rob) born in 1940, Carol (Muffet) in 1941 and Patrick (Pat) in 1943. I got on well enough with my mother in law but she was a complex lady, very possessive and jealous. Michael bought me a silver fox cape after the war – they were the height of fashion. We had to hide it from her or she would have wanted one.
Switching on
Calstone housewives were liberated in 1949 when electricity finally came to the village. I bought a washing machine (with a hand wringer), a vacuum cleaner, a polisher and a portable cooker. There were no fitted carpets then so a polisher was needed to do the wood surrounding your carpet squares and rugs. Later my second washing machine had an electric wringer.
‘Special Ashun’
It took a long time for all food and petrol rationing to end – well into the 1950s.
Our fourth baby Susan (Toots) was born in 1952 as post war lives began returning to normal. Special simple things remain in my mind from that time after the turmoil of the war. An abiding memory is of the children rushing in from the garden at 6.45 every evening to listen to ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ on the radio. They would all shout “Dick Barton, Special Ashun’ as they couldn’t pronounce Agent!
Never again!
For the first ten years of married life, I never felt Manor Farm was my house. The war meant it was constantly shared with strangers. George or Mollie would wander in from East Farm and help themselves to things like matches with never a word. George would come into the house and speak to Michael like he was a dog – Michael hated confrontation with his brother and was the last person to have arguments. It seemed to be open house for everyone. We had people staying long after the war ended. When we finally had it to ourselves in 1949 I said I would never share it again and I never have!
Michael:
More War memories
Most agricultural workers were exempt from joining the armed forces. There was a rule that if your 21st birthday fell in 1939 you had to join up but keeping men on the farms producing food seemed to be the priority. Being a farmer, I was automatically reserved but G R was called up as he was in the Territorial Army. But he failed his medical as he had had so many broken bones from falling off horses. We cultivated the downland for growing corn and it has remained so to this day. Potato growing ceased after the War as the soil wasn’t really suitable.
Happy pigs and a pile of plate
We had a contract to collect swill daily from Yatesbury Camp. It was a huge camp and we collected from two of the wings using a car towing a trailer for the bins. We fed it to the pigs raw in the early days. My word, they loved that! There was a lot of waste despite food rationing – we would find whole packs of butter in the swill and the pigs didn’t mind at all. One day we found a big stack of plates in one of the bins – we didn’t know what to do with them, as to return them might have got someone in trouble, so we kept them. They had RAF stamped on them and Enid used those plates for years! Later on the Government stepped in and swill had to be taken to the by-products factory in Calne for processing. You collected it from there and had to add water before giving it to the pigs. They were kept at South Farm and you didn’t need a clock as they were fed at 4pm daily and the crescendo of squealing was heard all over the village. Lifting the latch started them off. No matter how quiet you were those pigs heard you. When Enid was blackberrying on the Downs she didn’t need a watch – the pigs told her the time. They were spotlessly clean animals and so intelligent.
The Calstone Platoon
During the War, the Calstone Platoon of the Home Guard met on Sunday mornings on the village road by the cart shed. We eventually had uniforms and rifles and did training in the use of hand grenades and machine guns. G R was the lieutenant and Major Addington, who farmed at Highway, was the commanding officer. I was the platoon sergeant with Captain Benson of Compton Bassett House being adjutant. Some other men in the platoon, which included Blackland, were Bill Barnett, Reg Burgess and a Mr Pope. I missed one meeting a month when I had to take the Italians POWs back to Westbury on a Sunday morning.
Changes in my Farming Life over the Century
Farming has been a hard physical life, gruelling at times. Walking behind a horse drawn plough may have looked easy, but you try doing it all day long and you would soon find how gruelling it was ploughing one furrow at a time. I believe the arrival of hydraulics was the biggest progress ever introduced in farming. The progression of lifting from manpower to machine power gradually changed everything. In the early years when manpower was the only way, it was all done with the back – there was a knack to it. If you got it wrong, you would end up on the floor with a 2cwt sack on top of you and taking time off sick. Some couldn’t do it – eventually only myself and Herbert Baumgartner did lifting. Herbert was originally one of the German POWs who came daily from the Devizes camp. He stayed on after the war and worked for us for the rest of his life.
Kicking like fury and breaking your thumb
There had been some mechanisation in the 1930s – we had a tiny Fordson tractor which was like a toy with metal wheels. It had to be cranked by hand and kicked like fury and would break your thumb if it was around the handle. It ran on tractor vaporising oil and also had a small tank of petrol for starting it up and turning it off. I believe the first driver was Frank Cowdry’s son – he was full of fun always chasing us kids with a flue brush. It would pull a plough with 2 or 3 furrows whereas horse drawn was limited to one furrow. Prior to the tractor, we had two horse drawn portable steam engines. You put shafts on them to move them and they were used to drive the threshing machine, saw bench and chaff cutter.
Touring on the farm
A man called Hosier was a great inventor of agricultural machinery, especially milking machines. He invented a hay sweep to use with old cars. We happened to have a big old touring car on the farm and fixed a Hosier hay sweep onto the front of it. That old tourer went all over the place and was an amusing sight. Arthur Rivers used to help out at haymaking and harvesting times. One evening up at South Farm Barn (now demolished) we all piled in the car to go home. He refused to get in saying he didn’t trust it and we passed him walking home.
Trolleys everywhere
Our next progress in achieving power were the R A Lister 5 horsepower portable petrol engines mounted on trolleys. We had a whole collection of them all over the farm. They were used in connection with milking machines, shearing, cake crushing, rick elevators and endless other jobs. Some were in the stables behind Manor Farm and gave limited power to the house and later an extension line was taken to East Farm.
F Y M
Muckspreading was a classic example of progress. Early muckspreading employed 7 men and 5 carts. The dung carts transporting f y m (farmyard manure) were short bedded with high sides and the 5 carts operated a shuttle service between farm and field. Three men would use 4 grain prongs to fill one cart at the farm, three filled carts would be already on the road and one cart at the field dumping the load. The dumped load would be distributed by men with handbarrows at intervals on the nearby arable land. Nowadays, one man does the entire job with a mechanical spreader.
Pulling the weeds
Mechanical crop spraying started after the war. Prior to that it was manual sometimes using a hand hoe, especially rooting out marigolds. A gang of 6 or 7 men would hand pull weeds and sack them so as not to re-seed. Enid recalls a mention around the 1890s in an old Wages Book of women being paid sixpence for pulling docks.
Aching all over
Shearing from the mid 1930s was usually done in May at Wellington Barn, using mechanical shears powered by the portable petrol engines. We had a team of shearers among them myself, G R, George Maslen and Jim Mills. There were around 400 sheep and the job took a good five days. It was back breaking work. Our lunch hours were spent lying flat on the ground trying to get our backs straightened out! At the end of the day, when aching all over, you had to get more sheep under cover for the next day as only dry fleece could be shorn. It was the only farm work which left your hands white and soft as you handled fleece full of lanolin. Later on, shearing was taken over by contract labour, the last gang of 6 shearers being the Lewis family from Compton Bassett. They were also thatchers. We supplied workers from the farm to roll up and bond each fleece, shorn side out. Around 40 of them were made into a sample bale and taken to the Marlborough Wool Auction. The auctioneers were Lavington and Hooper. Whoever bought the sample had the rest of the wool which was sent to them by train from Calne Station. Our sheep were branded on various parts of their body depending on age with a painted ’M’ which faded yearly. The location of the freshest brand told you the age of the sheep. Wool auctions ceased when the war started – you then had to send your wool where the Government said. Enid recalls pushing the pram up to the shearing in Wellington Barn on June 6th 1944 to tell us she had just heard about the D Day landings on the radio. We always had sheep on the farms – two flocks at one time with one flock of Hampshire Downs on the downs and another flock of grass sheep.
A special slab
Milking was by hand into an open bucket twice daily with around 6 milkers handling around 60 cows. Each full bucket was carried to the cooler in the dairy. After cooling, the milk was measured off into 17 gallon 2cwt churns. Precise measuring was done by standing each churn on a special slab in the doorway. This slab was dead level giving the correct level in the churn. I wonder where that slab is today – it has a lot of history. Usually, in the evening, churns were loaded two abreast on a four-wheel milk wagon with a trotting horse and taken to Calne Station for onward transportation to London. A London dairy firm called Henry Edwards bought the milk under a yearly contract. Phil Smith was one of the hand milkers as well as being a part-time shepherd. Every day he would milk in the early morning, cycle to Colerne to check on some stock on some land we rented, cycle back to Calstone in time for the evening milking around 3pm and then later take the milk to Calne Station.
Walking away the gallons
Milking became mechanised in the 1930s by the invention of the Hosier Portable Milking Machine which remained in the field with the cows. Two men operated it – Bill Barnett and Charley Weston were the first. It consisted of a portable fenced yard with six cows at a time being put through the milking bail and then released back into the field. Most of our grazing land was around Greens Lane and cows walked away gallons of milk when returning to the farm twice a day for milking. The portable machine meant yields were increased. Despite increased yields, the method was hard work and a man had to transport the milk back to the farm by harnessing a cob to a two-wheel cart. In later years, there was an all electric dairy to East Farm with the milk being transported by flatbed wagons on the A4 to London. Whatever method we used over the years the cows always seem to adapt quickly. During the 1962/3 freeze-up, the wagons couldn’t reach the village so we had to use our ex-army Bedford lorry to take the milk in 10 gallon heavy churns to the A4 where they were exchanged for empty churns for the next day‘s milking.
One speed only
Ours were not the only cows in the village. George Summers and his son Joey at Calstone Mill had a small dairy. Their cows were kept in fields up by the Church. Twice daily, they would be taken down Bailey’s Lane to the Mill for milking – there was a proper bridge over the river in those days. After milking, the cows knew their way back to their fields, ambling leisurely through the village. Everyone knows a cow moves at one speed only! There were about 20 of them and it was a good half hour between first and last as they took their time feeding off the verges. I kept the verges mown outside Manor Farm and the cows would put big dents in the grass. A helper would come along later to secure the fields and I used to cuss him for spoiling my verges, but he never once took any notice.
Tops
Employees of the farm were entitled to cheap milk – it was never rationed and they had as much as they wanted. Originally they collected their milk in cans from the dairy. Later I used to put it in quart or pint bottles with cardboard lids and take it to the houses. Our milk was thick and full of flavour – straight from the cow only hours before. It would stand in churns awaiting dispatch and a thick cream known as ‘tops’ would form. About a pint of this ‘tops’ would be skimmed off each of three churns with a quart mug for Enid to use in the kitchen.
A lovely smell
Haymaking was all horsepower pulling a cutting machine. It was left a day or two and then aerated by a horse drawn turning machine. Another machine would make two swathe lines before a siderake made the two rows into one. If it was wet weather you just kept turning the rows until dry – much the same as today, really. Before these machines, men would manually turn it. In a bad summer, it could be turned many times. It was then pitched up manually by 2 grain prongs onto wagons and taken to the rick location. Three ricks were always built at the back of the cowshed at East Farm while others were dotted about for use all over the farms. Ted Dolman, one of the Day Men, always did the rick thatching. They were all loose hay – not bales like today. Ideally we needed to have at least two ricks left in case the hay was poor the following year. That hay had a lovely smell. The Italian POWs were the first to operate the tractor-drawn baler with one man on the tractor and the other two on either side of the baler tying each bale with wire. Bales were much smaller in those days – a man could easily lift one. Sileage came in the 1950s and is now widely used. You cut the grass earlier than for hay and harvest it wet – usually in May. It is stored in clamps until required. It is so much easier as there is no weather risk and the product is guaranteed.
A boy at the front
Harvesting in the early years was by horse-powered binder with a man on the binder controlling a pair of horses with a third horse in front ridden by a boy. The front horse was too far ahead to be controlled from the binder so the boy did it. A team of Day Men did the manual harvesting jobs. One of these jobs was to cut a track as wide as the binder around the field. The binder took off the crop much nearer the ground than today – there was no waste. It was tied into sheaves with strong string and 8 to 10 sheaves, with crop heads at the top, made up a stook. Stooks were formed in aisles across the field to dry out the crop – in good weather this could be a couple of weeks. The dried sheaves were then pronged onto wagons to be taken to the rickyard. The ricks were made two abreast in two parallel lines wide enough to allow the threshing machine to pass between at a later time. Some ricks were made in the fields if harvesting was some distance from the farm.
Tricky and dusty and a handful of knots
Threshing was done on and off throughout the winter mostly after Christmas. It was a tricky, dusty job usually done in freezing unpleasant weather either in the rick yard or open field depending where the ricks had been assembled at harvest time. Manual threshing had been replaced by machines run by coal fed steam engines and a team of 10 men upwards was needed. There was a sort of rhythm to the whole operation. A boy would start by cutting the string bond around the sheaf and, if he had any sense, he would cut it by the knot. At the end of the operation he should have a handful of knots with string for re-use. He would pass the sheaf to a Senior Day Man on the machine who would break it up to feed into the drum. The grain was knocked out and would exit one end of the machine going into 2cwt sacks. These would be wheeled away, lifted manually onto a wagon or cart and taken to the barn for storage until sold. Straw exited the other end and fell into either an elevator feeding a rick or was tied into bundles. One or two men would carry the straw bundles to another rick. Two men would be atop the ricks arranging the loose or bundled straw. The chaff would exit the machine at the side and would be sacked off for horse feed in special chaff sacks. These sacks were twice the size of grain sacks and were always marked ‘STOLEN FROM MAUNDRELL BROTHERS’. As I said earlier in my story, farm workers had no protective clothing in those days and chaff sacks by their size were ideal for converting into bad weather covering. Nowadays, one man operates the combine, one man takes the grain away on trailers and one man operates the dryer. Good job too!
Ten sacks to the Acre
There was a rotation system for crops – the first year was wheat which always needed the best ground. The second and third years would probably be oats or barley. The fourth year would see the land ploughed and sown back to temporary grass for hay. Then it would start all over again. In 1933 you thought you were doing well to get 10 sacks of wheat (25cwt) to the acre. Now you are aiming at 4 tons to the acre! It’s all down to scientific improvements in agriculture, different rotations, seed varieties and artificial fertilisers.
Bill Grey
I recall two serious accidents on the farms although I forget the exact dates. In the 1940s Bill Grey was an employee who lived in Greens Lane in the small attached house at the top. He was driving a pair of young carthorses and a wagon on the Swindon Road near Beaversbrook Farm. The horses were Boxer and Diamond. An old steam wagon passing by made them bolt and somehow Bill ended up under the steam wagon and was killed.
Graham McQuie who never complained
The other accident happened much earlier, probably in the late 1920s, involving Graham McQuie when in his teens. One of his jobs was to feed store cattle. We used to obtain slabs of linseed and cotton cake which were a by-product of the oil mills at Avonmouth. The cakes were about 2’6” long, 18” wide and 1” thick and would be delivered from Bristol in a Foden steam wagon. We would then use one of the portable petrol engines to power the cake crusher and, when crushed, the by-product could be mixed with oats and barley. There should have been two men on the job but Graham was working alone feeding cake into the crusher and wearing gloves as it was cold. There was a system where the last bit of a slab was poked through with a broken bit but he did it with his gloved hand and it took his arm off to the elbow. He managed to stop the machine by pushing off the belt, walked across the yard and rang the back door bell. Father took him into Calne in the car and he was away for a long time recovering. He needed treatment after that because he was so young and his bones were still growing. But he came back to work eventually and farmed for the rest of his life. He had a hook hand which, when fitted with various gadgets allowed him to tackle most jobs – he could handle a prong with one of them. He was such a nice chap and never complained. He got a small weekly sum in compensation in addition to his wages. It was something known as Workman’s Compensation through his insurance. He couldn’t drive a tractor – they were difficult to drive in those days – so he became a carter. We used horses into the 1960s when they were gradually phased out in favour of tractors.
Owning the land
In 1954 after a century of tenant farming in the village, G R and I became owners of Calstone land when the partnership purchased all three farms: Manor, South and East, together with the farm cottages and land – about 1,362 acres in all. Bowood Estate sold the farms to us as sitting tenants and I believe the price was around £27,000.
G R and The Stud
In the same year, Blackland Stud and Farm nearby came up for auction. G R was going through a difficult time with his divorce from Mollie and impending re-marriage. I was working one day when he walked past me remarking that he was ‘just going down to see the sale of the Stud’. When he returned, he said “I’ve bought the Stud Farm”. It had not sold at the auction. However, he spoke to the auctioneer afterwards and bought it, using partnership money. There had been no consultation with me and we had to sell East Farm to pay for it. The dairy herd was transferred to South Farm and we ran South and Manor Farms and Blackland Stud as Maundrell Brothers for the next sixteen years with G R living at the Stud.
Reuben!!
By the late 1950s, all the farm cottages were modernised by installing electricity, water and bathrooms. It took two or three years to complete them all and families temporarily lived in South Farm. Reuben White’s was the last to be done and he wasn’t too keen on the idea. He didn’t want to be modernised but gave in saying, “Oh alright. If everyone else had it done I s’pose I’d better”.
The elms
Before selling to us, Bowood had felled most of the elm trees in the main village. There were no restrictions then on felling trees. They were huge – I recall the 7 acres behind 20/21 Calstone known as Smiths Ground had 35 elms in it. I believe elm was a sought-after wood for coffins at that time. When the elm disease came in the 1970s the village lost its remaining elms around Theobalds Green and Greens Lane. It was very sad.
Not a penny!
I’ve done plenty of voluntary work outside of my farming life. I was quite young when I started on the Parish Council. I also served on both the old Calne & Chippenham Rural District Council and the present North Wiltshire District Council for many years. I’m pleased to say I never charged them a penny for my services – I just couldn’t be bloody bothered with the paperwork. As a boy in the 1920s and early 1930s I attended Calstone Church, but later the family went to St Mary’s Calne as Father fell out with the Reverend Matthews in the 1930s – I think it was something to do with the church fields. Enid and I returned to Calstone Church in the 1960s and I became churchwarden and treasurer for the next 40 years until giving up last year. We were both involved over those years in fund raising for the Church using our house and garden for many successful events. For over 60 years from 1939, Enid sold poppies in the village, calling at every house each November. She still does some organising for the poppy appeal. We were invited to Buckingham Palace and the Royal Albert Hall in connection with our voluntary work.
Michael and Enid:
Our Children
During these years both our sons, Rob and Pat went into agriculture. Rob worked for a time at home after getting a BSc Honours degree in agriculture at Wye College, London University and then spent his working life in agricultural management. Pat trained at Lackham and joined G R and Michael in running the family farms – it wasn’t always easy as G R could be as difficult as ever. Muffet (Carol) trained in Brighton as a children’s nurse and soon met her husband Alistair. Toots (Sue) trained in secretarial work and sometime later met her husband Lindsay.
Rugby – a shared reminiscence
Michael: I’m afraid there isn’t going to be a complete story about my life unless I am allowed to talk about Rugby! The game has been a lifelong passion since I started playing at prep school at 9 or 10 years old. I don’t know what it is about rugby – I just took to it. I never made the first fifteen at Bryanston as I left early to go to college and I was too young to play at college where they played club rugby.
The first team I played for was Calne in about 1933 – I couldn’t drive so I cycled into town for the match. We changed into our kit at the White Hart Hotel – it was a grotty room with big gaps between the wooden floor planks. We all arrived in our normal daywear which included collars with studs and ties. We were all very careful not to drop those studs through the gaps in the floorboards! After the match, the hotel allowed us to wash in a courtyard, which was open to the heavens, using round galvanise tubs of cold water. The ladies at the Calstone Laundry could never understand why my kit had to be so muddy.
The Calne team packed up after a year so I joined Melksham for the 1933/34 season as I could drive a car by then. I never had any driving tuition or took a test. I had a lot of practice on the remote roads on Dartmoor and Exmoor and then just applied for a licence. The Melksham club soon packed up too and, in 1934, I joined the Devizes Rugby Club where I have been ever since. I played for Devizes from the age of 19 to when I was 44 in 1959. The headquarters was at the Crown Commercial Hotel in St John’s Street and we played off the Nursteed Road where farmer, Charley Scruse, provided a field. Before playing, we had to clear the cowpats. Wadworths installed some showers for us at the Crown Commercial and, after the match, the team would go up to the Rendevous Café at the top of The Brittox run by Archie Taplin and his wife. We would have tea and toast or cake before going back to the hotel for the more serious liquid refreshment later! The tradition of entertaining visiting teams to tea after the match hadn’t started then. Driving after drinking wasn’t a matter of concern at that time – I once recall falling asleep whilst driving home from Devizes on the Swindon road. I missed the turning across the golf links and woke up at Shepherds Shore.
There was no rugby during the war and when it resumed in about 1946, men were scarce and it was difficult to get a team together. We had players from the camps – Yatesbury, Devizes and Netheravon. The club would have folded at that time without them. We still used the Crown Hotel, then run by a Mr Bowditch, and started an annual supper with simple fare like sausage and mash. Gradually local men were recruited into the team – Tommy Watkins, Bill Furzeman and Mac Kilroy who were all teachers, John and Ron Bishop, Geoff Barnard the vet and Gus Cowley. Lord Roundway was chairman at first and then Colonel Theyre. We continued to use the Nursteed Road field post war and then later moved to one of the Army pitches at Cannings Hill. We changed in one of the Pay Corps buildings and then had to run across the main Swindon road to the pitch! After the match tea was taken at the Cross Keys Inn, Rowde or the Three Crowns Pub in Devizes. When the Crown Hotel closed we moved to the Castle Hotel in New Park Street. The club converted stables into changing rooms and tea was taken in the ballroom!
Enid: I enjoyed playing hockey at this time but, with a young family, it was difficult for both of us to be away. I always maintained in the early days of our marriage that rugby was Michael’s first love and I came second. It always seemed to come first. So I said, ’If I can’t beat you, I’ll join you’ and, in 1957, I became joint secretary of the Devizes Rugby Club with Michael and we remained so until the mid 1990s. I can’t give a definite date when we gave it up as we never did officially – we just sort of phased it out.
Michael: In the 1960s, we were finally ’let in’ to the Sports Club in London Road, Devizes. There was a sparse pavilion occupied by the Cricket Club and they were not in favour of us joining them. Cricketers, Joey Weeks and Fred Bush, weren’t at all sure about rugby players. I think the Club thought we would wreck the pavilion – they could find it in ruins on a Monday morning! Eventually, it was the revenue from thirsty rugby players that kept the club running! Our eldest son Rob was ‘initiated’ at a club supper with Pat following him some years later and both kept up the tradition of arriving home and flying upstairs to the bathroom! When Sue was newly born in 1952, Enid brought her into the club and we toasted her with champagne. I recall the baby had some too.
Enid: When we were finally let into the London Road pavilion, I formed a Ladies’ Committee and we arranged a meal after the weekly match. I got damaged Marks & Spencer pies from Harris’s shop in Calne which the shop could not sell, despite the damage being slight. They were heated up at the Pavilion on a Calor gas cooker with baked beans and brown bread and butter. We tried instant mashed potato but it wasn’t liked. I took over the laundering of the kit for a while getting all the mud off first in the big sink in the back kitchen. I always dreaded doing the laundry after playing Frenchay away. The soil there was bright red and difficult to remove.
Michael: When I reflect on my rugby days, all I can say is that I found the game a relaxation from the seven day week grind of farming – my brother G R never did manual work and hunted practically every other day so it was all down to me.
Michael: The later years
A way of life
In 1970 my partnership with G R ended as he wished to develop his horse interests at the Stud. South Farm was sold to facilitate the split resulting in the sale of the dairy herd. G R died suddenly two years later in April 1972. I had retained Manor Farm and continued running it with Pat through the 70s and 80s. Farming was still a way of life then with enthusiasm for the job. New buildings were erected for beef cattle and farming was still profitable. The workforce was gradually reduced as mechanisation improved and spraying and fertilisers increased yields. In 1982 Manor Farm was sold to Sir Brian Warren although we retained the house. The Trustees of his estate still own the farm today and the partnership remains as sitting tenants. In the early 1990s, BSE put paid to the cattle and farming gradually became just a business with rules, regulations, paperwork and government interference putting stress on the farmer. It’s sad in many ways to see such a way of life disappear.
A new word in farming and not making top nor tail of it
The 1990s also brought a new word to farming – diversification. The beef buildings, also known as Guernsey Villa, became initially a store for caravans and now are used for horses. The carthorse stables house a music studio with a stonemason now using the old harness room. Above the harness room in what was known as the apple room (although it was far too dry for keeping apples in) there is another music studio. All the farm cottages are rented out – there are no farm workers to fill them anymore. Wellington Barn – the last original barn on the surrounding Downs – has been converted with a grant to preserve old buildings. You have to feel some satisfaction that this Barn has survived while the other surrounding downland barns have either disappeared or fallen into disrepair. You have a job to find barns today – they’ve all gone. Welly Barn, as it is affectionately known, was designed as a place for oxen to be near their work and was originally a thatched barn. Through the years, we used it for sheep work, stores and as a grain store. Today it is a functions venue and licensed for marriages! I wonder what the employees years ago would have thought of all this diversification. I think they would be puzzled and not able to make top nor tail of it. Ah well, it had to happen.
Not clever enough
Throughout this decade of change and by now in my 80s, I gradually phased out my active involvement by handing over to Pat. He now runs the farm although we are still a partnership. He’s just taken on some more land which I think is too much for him. After all, he’s nearly a pensioner himself. It’s difficult to get help on farms these days but I expect he knows what he’s doing. I wonder what I would have been if I hadn’t been a farmer – a haulier perhaps – I was quite interested in that, at one time. I don’t mean a cattle dealer – I wasn’t clever enough to be one of them – bloody rogues most of them. I dealt with one for years and never knew if he was diddling me.
Across the driveway
We have done our own bit of diversifying. The garages at the rear of Manor Farm, originally used for carriages and later as stables were converted into our present home. Enid and I moved in at Christmas 1998 when, after living all my 83 years at Manor Farm, I crossed the driveway to our new home which we called The Old Coachhouse. Enid had been with me at Manor Farm for 59 of those years. Our dining room is now where the portable petrol engines used to work away to produce their limited electricity in the middle of the last century and the far wall had a fixed ladder leading into the loft. It was the devil’s own job to use if you were taking anything up as you needed both hands for the ladder. As for our present fabulous view of the Monument and Downs – nothing can compare. I’ve looked at that view all my life and still can’t put it into words.
Michael : a tribute to Enid
I’ve told it all as I best remember it – if I’m wrong there’s few to contradict me as I seem to have outlived most of them. There wouldn’t have been half the story without Enid. Her memory is so much better than mine. She remembers all the dates and even the time of day when events happened fifty years ago and who was there and what they said!
Enid: the last word, of course …….
Michael is in his 92nd year and I am now in my 88th. We are no longer young and age has its frustrations for us both. On our 40th wedding anniversary back in 1979 we decided to have a ’good do’ and celebrated in style with family and many friends from inside and outside the village. We said to ourselves we wouldn’t get much further! Since then our 50th, 60th and 65th have all been memorable occasions and the 67th is coming up later this year.
Michael and I have been here so long now. Happily, the Maundrell name continues in the village with a son, a grandson and a great-grandson living in Calstone. We are so blessed with a caring family and, in these uncertain times for village life, we believe and dearly hope our family will continue here one way or another. Our greatest pleasure these days is in still being a focal point for the family and our friends. Every day there are visits and ‘phone calls and letters and postcards.
We have eleven grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren and another family wedding due next month. I think I shall get us both a drink now after all this talking. Michael’s is a glass of rum and mine is what the family call ‘Grannie’s drink’ – gin with a dash of dry martini with ice and lemon topped up with tonic water. Thinking about the grandchildren and great-grandchildren this evening, with a glass in our hand, seems as good a way to end our story as any.
The Old Coachhouse
Calstone in the summer of 2006
(Enid unfortunately died in 2007 and Michael in 2009)