Maurice’s Story
My mother and father, Minnie and Jim Mills were originally Gloucestershire people where I was born at Lydney in the Forest of Dean in 1931. At about that time, I believe my father heard there was a job of rabbit catcher available in Calstone and it was all arranged through Arthur Rivers at Tog Hill. I don’t know how Father knew of the job – perhaps Arthur Rivers put an advertisement in some magazine like ‘The Gamekeeper’. Anyway, Father moved to Calstone to take up the job and lodged at Tog Hill for a while before Mother and I joined him in about 1932/33 when we all moved into Number 10 Calstone. In later years, Father’s brother Charley Mills, known as ‘Wink’, came to live and work in Calstone together with his wife Alice who was Mother‘s sister.
One of my first memories in Calstone was the day I started at the village school. The Barnett family lived next door to us at Number 11 and Ben Barnett said he would call for me on my first morning. I was all ready and waiting when I saw him go past our house without calling for me – he must have forgotten. I was too scared to go on my own so I went and hid behind the shed where my Mother later found me. She took me down to the school and handed me over to Mrs Edney the schoolmistress. On that day, all I wanted to do was escape. Later, Brian Sterry was my best friend at school. Another boy, Philip Daniels was always late. Mrs Edney would stand by the school door every morning and clip his ear as he walked in. If you misbehaved at school you got a slap which was the same as you got at home. Later at the senior school there was the cane although I‘m pleased to say it never happened to me. Every Tuesday, the Reverend Matthews came to the village school. On one visit, he took off his coat and soon after there was a lot of smoke coming out of it. He had put his pipe in the pocket and set fire to his coat.
Calstone was a great place to grow up in and I can’t remember anything bad about it. There was so much freedom. I had heard of a place called England and I thought Calstone was England. One Christmas Eve, Father came home from rabbiting and told me he had just seen Father Christmas up Blackland Hollow and that feels so true when Christmas comes now. When I was 10 in 1941, my brother Dennis was born at home. Father knew the baby was coming and said to get Mrs Green at Blackland Crossroads but she couldn’t come so Mrs Sadler came and helped. At the start of the War in about 1940 we had two London evacuees aged 5 and 9 from Walthamstow. They were with us for two or three years and later went to Stockley to live and we never heard from them again. I remember Mother going back to the Forest of Dean when her Mother was unwell and Father looked after us. He sliced bread for some sandwiches cutting the slices normal thickness and the evacuee ate the whole sandwich in one go so, after that, Father cut ’doorsteps’. That slowed him down!
When I was about 9, I went to the village shop with one of the Embling brothers where Shook Cleverley sold him an ounce of baccy. We took it to a field off Baileys Lane above Summers’ Mill and he made roll-up cigarettes with it. We smoked the whole ounce and I wasn’t even ill.
Sometimes gipsies would move into what we called the Valley off Barrow Hill. They were one big family – two of them were Henry James and Noah James. The children didn’t go to school and played until late at night. The men may have worked on the farms and the women made and sold clothes pegs. There was one lovely girl about 18 – my word, she was a good looking girl.
As well as being the rabbit catcher, Father was employed by Mike and George Maundrell at Manor Farm. He helped Shep Maslen with the lambing and sheep shearing both at Wellington Barn. I wonder what they would say if they could see what has been done to the Barn now. He was also the gamekeeper when local farmers came to Horsecombe Wood for rook shooting. His dog would pick up the rooks as they came down. He also filled the fox holes when the Hunt came to the village. Other jobs were rick building at haymaking time and keeping hedges and banks tidy. In those days villages were immaculate. November, December and January were the rabbiting months using mostly traps although snares and ferrets were also used. Mother helped Enid Maundrell in the house at Manor Farm.
In 1942, I left the village school to go to Calne Senior School where Mr Leavesly was the Headmaster. Every day, in all weathers, we walked from the village to the main A4 road and got the bus at Compton Bassett turning and did the return walk the same every evening. Maurice Grey walked with me. We got time off in the afternoons for potato picking back in the village, at Manor Farm. It was genuine time off and we got paid for it although not very much. I can see Michael Maundrell now licking his fingers carefully, as he paid the adults, in case the notes were stuck together. Potato picking stopped when the War ended. I left the senior school in 1945 when I was 14. I didn’t want to do farm work and one of my friends, Bill Comley got a job in Wiltshires the grocers. I would have liked to work there but there was no vacancy so I went to Rawlings and Philips instead.
I was working for Syms in 1949 when I was called up for National Service after passing the medical in Bristol. On the Tuesday before I was due to report to Bulford Barracks, I had my usual trim in Calne. When I got to Bulford next day, there were three soldiers waiting to give us a haircut and only one of those was a barber. I fell victim as one of the others ruined my nice Tuesday trim. There was a lot of drill every day and in late 1950 we did an extra six weeks drill before sailing from Liverpool for the Far East. We arrived in Singapore on 20 January 1951 to be stationed at Selerang Barracks not far from Changi RAF Camp. There was talk in the barracks that there were the bodies of many Japanese soldiers buried beneath the tarmac. After a month in Selerang, we went up into Malaya where our headquarters was at Bentong. I was in the Devonshire Regiment and we had to go through rubber trees into the jungle looking for armed terrorists. A new intake was to join us from Kuala Lumpar and as they made their way over the mountain to Bentong there was an ambush. One of the lads was shot in the throat and died. Later, the Devonshires were due to return to England and, as some of us still had a few months of National Service to go, we joined up with the Wiltshire Regiment in Kowloon, Hong Kong where I did guard duty at Government House.
I don’t suppose I would have done National Service if it hadn’t been compulsory but I can’t knock it – it was a damn good thing although I certainly wouldn’t have volunteered to take part in the Malayan conflict. That lad who was shot in Malaya has stayed with me. The discipline didn’t do you any harm – I’ve had it all my life at home, at school and in the Army. It’s a good thing and you know where you are. After National Service, I worked at Compton Bassett RAF Camp for a while then spent most of my working life as a machinist in Westinghouse. One of the German POWs, Franz who we called Francis, stayed in Calstone after the war and came to live with us at 10 Calstone. We worked in Westinghouse together as he had a motorbike. At this time, one of the girls in the village – Sheila at Number 20 Calstone – took my eye and it turned out to be a real village romance but I’ll let her tell that story.
Dennis’ Story
I’m 10 years younger than my brother Maurice, being born at Number 10 Calstone in 1941. There were just the two of us children in the family and it was a happy life. Father was the easy going one always telling us stories of when he was young and people he had met while Mother was stricter but loving and always firm, fair and kind. On my first day at Calstone School, I wasn’t too keen on going so Mother more or less dragged me around the village road to the school. I always remember going through the door and seeing the teacher, Mrs Stainer, sitting at a high desk in the corner and on the right hand side a big iron coke stove which heated the school. The schoolroom was divided between infants and juniors by two screens which had the four seasons of the year painted on them. In winter, school milk was placed around the pot bellied stove to warm up and I used to give my milk to Douglas Carr, my classmate, as I didn’t like warm milk. When I started school in 1946, I think a Miss Pemberton was the infant teacher and I remember those first weeks playing with plasticine and a frame with coloured beads for counting. Water was from a well in the corner of the playground and there were bucket toilets down the bottom. I sometimes had school dinners and one lamb dinner was very fat and full of gristle. I tried to eat it because food was still rationed but I couldn’t chew it and felt sick. The infant teacher came and stood by me – I can still look down and see her shoes, even today. She remained there until I swallowed. From that day on, I never had school dinners again. When I was a bit older, we were given a day off from school for flush toilets to be installed. I went with a friend, Ron Reeves, to Ducketts shop in Quemerford (where the post office now is) and the school inspector whose name was Huggins saw us. He didn’t believe we had been given a day off and made us get into his Austin 7 and took us back to Calstone. He soon found out we were right but he didn’t offer to take us back to Quemerford!
Living in Calstone was a good life but a hard one. Dad worked long and hard hours on the farm for part of the year being a rabbit catcher for the rest of the year. Rabbit catching was hard work too because Dad couldn’t drive so had to carry his traps and snares on his back or on the crossbar of his bike. That couldn’t have been easy on the hills around Calstone. He carried the rabbits home the same way and the dead rabbits were kept in a shed at the rear of the house until a man from Broad Hinton would call to collect them. I think they ended up in butchers shops in London. On one particular night, 360 rabbits were caught. Mostly gin traps and snares were used but when gin traps became illegal we buried between 70 and 100 of them in the back garden at No 10 Calstone. I expect they’re still there.
Mum was hard working too. She came from a mining family in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire and had known hard times. She made a good home for us always keeping it clean and tidy. There was no electricity or running water in the house and the toilet was a bucket at the top of the garden. Cooking, boiling a kettle, warming the flat irons for ironing were all done on the kitchen range. Our lighting was paraffin oil lamps and we used candles for going to bed. I can see Mum now twisting newspaper round and round inside the oil lamp glass to clean it. The front room lamp had a mantle in it which gave a brighter light.
Monday was always washing day. By the time I was born a tap was installed outside Nos 11 and 12 Calstone for use by all four cottages. I am told that before this all water had to be fetched from the bottom of Barrow Hill and carried up in buckets. Father did the filling and lighting of the copper on Sundays for bath night. The number of people using the bath water depended on the size of the family – the smallest child was bathed first and hot water added from the copper for each person. The copper had to be filled and lit again next day for the Monday wash day and Father again did this before he went to work. Two buckets were kept filled in the house for drinking, washing and filling the copper and were re-filled several times a day from the outside tap. The wash day was a busy one for Mum so there wasn’t much time for cooking. We always had bubble and squeak on Mondays after a good roast dinner on Sundays – mostly beef or rabbit. Tuesdays was a Good Food Day when Mother made up for the bubble and squeak by always doing a good rabbit stew with dumplings followed by a suet pudding cooked in a cloth served with thick custard. Nothing was ever wasted as food was still rationed – we ate it all.
Winter evenings were spent playing games, Ludo, draughts and cards in the light of the oil lamp and listening to programmes on the wireless like Much Binding in the Marsh and Rays a Laugh. For us two boys, the favourite programme was Dick Barton Special Agent later replaced by The Archers.
Next to us at the top of Barrow Hill lived Reuben White and his family. Reuben was the Head Carter on Maundrell’s farm, working with and looking after the carthorses (Shires). I can just remember there being 9 or 10 horses in the stables at Manor Farm – Boxer, Diamond, Whitefoot, Duke and Jimmy being some of their names. Next at No 12 lived the Comleys and I used to play with Len, the youngest son. The Comelys played a gramophone on a triangle of grass across the road as you turn up to Welly Barn and I remember hearing ’The Laughing Policeman’ a lot. Next to the Comelys lived Ted Sadler and his family at No 13. Ted worked on the farm as a tractor driver and my brother told me it was Mrs Sadler who helped me into the world. The Comleys later moved to the new council houses at Robins Piece and No 12 was occupied by the Woodridge family then later by Cyril Whatley and his family of 5 boys and 1 girl, Pauline. They also had a lodger Arthur Rust. We called him Bombard because he always used to call out “Bombard ‘em” whenever he saw us. I played with the two older boys, David and Bob, having a lot of fun until they moved to Rowde in 1954.
During harvest time we would follow the binder to catch rabbits as they ran out from the corn. As the binder cut around the field the rabbits retreated into the last small patch in the middle where we would wait with our rabbiting sticks. You had to be quick as they ran in all directions.
Bread and groceries were delivered by Wiltshire & Sons from Calne who came on Tuesdays and Thursdays with horse and bread van later changing to a petrol van. Henlys Stores and the Co-op, both came from Calne with bread and groceries. Gabbs the butcher delivered meat and Taylors fruit and vegetables which we called a ‘travelling garden’.
On one visit they had something called bananas – I’d never seen a banana and he gave me one to try. I loved it and have loved bananas ever since and eat one every day. On Saturdays a man would come with the accumulators for the wireless until electricity came in about 1950. What a difference that made! Especially in making life easier for our mothers.
At the end of the war, there were Italian and German POWs working in the village. The Italians lived in a cottage near the Church and I have a misty memory of going there with Len Comely one day and eating spaghetti for the first time. I think there were three of them and I remember two names Franco and Chico. They had an outside tap in the garden and my brother Maurice recalls one of them, who had a lovely voice, singing as he washed in the mornings. After the Italians left, three Germans, who had been prisoners of war, moved into the empty cottage to work for Michael and George Maundrell Their names were Franz, Herbert and Kurt. Franz eventually came to live with us at No 10 and the other two met and married German girls who I think worked at Roundway Hospital in Devizes. Herbert still lives in Calstone. One of the Germans came to the door one day with a wooden toy which he had made by hand. I can see him now in the doorway wearing a cap like they did in the Afrika Korp. Mother bought the toy for me and I don’t know what happened to it eventually but I wish I still had it. My brother remembers American soldiers camped in the valleys of the Downs. He went with Ken Harper to see them and they couldn’t believe their eyes! They saw the Americans using pounds of butter to fry chips whereas, a short distance away in Calstone, we were reduced to a few ounces of butter for whole families. I recall track marks below the Monument for many years which I believed was where they tried to get their tanks up the slope.
The cottage lived in by the Italians and Germans used to stand on the left side of the driveway that leads into the Rectory but it fell into ruin and is now gone. There was another cottage a bit further on from there and on May 1st 1958, Edgar Embling and I had been working in the field just behind. About 4pm we were going in to feed the pigs at South Farm (where Mr Hoskin’s house now stands) and noticed flames coming from the chimney. It didn’t look good as it had a thatched roof. The family were alright and we helped get some of their things outside but in a short time the roof was ablaze and soon caved in. By the evening there was nothing left except the walls.
The village held its entertainment in the Reading Room at the top of Sprays Hill. There were many social activities in the village in the early 1950s before television came along. A man brought a cine projector with sound for us to watch films like Laurel & Hardy, Hue & Cry and The Mudlark. There were concerts where local talent did their stuff. Fun evenings included Derek McFaull doing conjuring tricks, the WI doing a play and an airman from Compton Bassett Camp singing and playing the guitar. Wilf and Doris Merritt organised dancing to music from 78 records on a radiogram. There were also whist drives – Mother was a great one for the whist drives always bringing home fruit bowls. We still have and use those fruit bowls. There was choir practice at the Rectory when Mrs Matthews played the piano. My brother Maurice remembers films in the Church. He can‘t remember which films but recalls laughing a lot so they can’t have been too religious.
Calstone was a great place to grow up in and through childrens’ eyes it had everything: Sherwood Forest, the prairies of Texas and the Rocky Mountains. Joe Summers used to graze his milking cows in the field below the Church and sometimes, being cowboys, we drove his cows to and fro across the field. Fortunately, he never caught us! Our swimming pool was the river at the bottom of Bycrofts field and the changing rooms were the bushes close by. The field the other side of the river was for football and cricket. I don’t think our parents worried about us and we could roam anywhere. Of course, we had our ups and downs as all kids do but, all in all, we were a happy bunch.
In 1953 I went into Calne to the Secondary School. A school bus picked us up from the Reading Room daily. When I was 13, I would help out in the garden of John Grierson at Tog Hill on Saturday mornings. Bill Barnett was his gardener and I did odd jobs and earned sixpence an hour. After that when I was 14, I worked part time on Saturdays for Michael and George Maundrell and was paid ninepence an hour. When I was 15 and about to leave school I asked George Maundrell for a full time job as I always wanted to work in the open air and to drive a tractor. He took me on at £3.5s per week less my insurance stamp of 2s 11p which meant my wages were £3 2s 1d for a 47 hour week. I worked mostly with Edgar Embling who was a tractor driver and also looked after the fattening pigs. In 1957 I was with Edgar mowing grass for hay at a time when a chap at Rowde had died in a tractor mowing accident. George Maundrell told me in a fatherly way that I should take care and not go out of Edgar’s sight. Sometimes George Maundrell was as nice as could be but he also had a hell of a bite.
Graham McQuie lost part of his arm as a young man in an accident working on the farm. He had an artificial arm to which he could fit attachments to enable him to work – a hook to hold the reins to guide the horse or a clip to fix onto a two or four grain prong. He worked as well as any man with both arms. He was a nice chap and, on the few occasions I worked with him, it was a pleasure. I was with three mates in the Talbot at Quemerford one evening and Graham was there having a drink. We all got talking and it must have been about aircraft because I remember Graham saying “I wouldn’t get in one if I could keep one leg on the ground”.
Dick Green was one of the carters who worked with Reuben White and Graham McQuie. He always rode his bike into Calne to drink at the Green Dragon. On his way home, usually late on a Friday or Saturday night, especially in the summer when windows were open, we could hear him coming past Manor Farm singing ‘Shine on Harvest Moon’. As he went down Barrow Hill he always called out to my Dad “Goodnight, Jim, you old bugger”.
Ted Dolman hated working overtime at harvest and was pleased when it rained. He also did the pigs and towards the end of the working day would poke his head out of the building calling out “Is ‘e goin’ up ‘ill yet”? He was referring to the minute hand on the clock for knocking off time! Ted and his wife Ethel who lived in the wooden bungalow on the corner of Theobalds Green (now Forge House) were great characters and she had a lovely singing voice – a bit like Gracie Fields.
One Saturday in 1957, Michael Maundrell took us to Swindon to the Bath & West Show which changed sites every year in those days. We went in his old Bedford Army lorry sitting on straw bales in the back. One day in December 1958 I was wet through at the end of a day working cutting and loading kale onto a tractor and went home a few minutes early. The next day I had a difference of opinion with George Maundrell about leaving early so on Tuesday 16th December 1958 I left the farm and started at Wiltshire & Sons in Calne as a storeman the day after Boxing Day where I was paid £4 17s 6d a week. I regretted leaving the farm really but I was taught to drive at Wiltshires as a relief roundsman. I stayed there for 2 years until 1960. At that time, I still had to wait until I was 21 to receive what was called a ‘Man’s Wage’ but Harris’s factory decided to pay this at 18 and Rawlings & Philips Mill soon followed suit. So, at 19 years old, I got a job at the Mill and my ‘Man’s Wage’ was £9 4s 6p and for only a 40 hour week. After a couple of years at the Mill, I still wanted the open air life and to drive a tractor so I went back to Calstone to work for Colonel Luard at East Farm. I continued working there after the farm was bought by BHC Sykes in January 1970 which was around the time I met my wife Margaret at a dance in the Neeld Hall in Chippenham. We’ve been happily married now for 33 years. I was made redundant in1992 when Mr Sykes gave up farming and thereafter still worked outside in grounds maintenance until retiring in 2006.
I enjoyed my working life on the farms even though at times it was hard work and I loved my job on the hills of Calstone. I will never forget a feeling I had on climbing aboard a combine harvester on a beautiful summers day to cut a field of standing wheat. The wheat going through the drum made a humming noise and it was music to my ears. Bliss!
Sheila’s Story
My mother, Mary was of a Cherhill family and she took me to Calstone in July 1948 when she married Ern Maslen who worked in the village and lived with his parents, Shep and Annie, at Number 21 Calstone. We lived next door at Number 20 opposite the waterworks lane. I had started my schooling in Cherhill and was 7 when I started at Calstone School in September 1948.
The teachers were Mrs George the Headmistress, and Miss Pemberton. There was a big iron stove at the infants’ end and a coke heap outside which you weren’t allowed to climb. The stove was used to thaw milk which arrived frozen in the bottles and also to dry coats on a wet day. School dinners were cooked at a central kitchen somewhere near where Bentley Grammar School was built. They arrived in big aluminium trays holding containers of cabbage, custard and gravy. Bill Barnett’s wife would serve them up and we ate sitting at our desks. She would then wash everything up in a sort of kitchen – just a sink, drainer and cupboard really. We were made to eat all the food which wasn’t easy when the cabbage was full of stalks.
The family increased in subsequent years with the arrival of my two brothers and two sisters. My Mother was a good Mum who looked after us well and was always there with food on the table and clean clothes for us. She baked, made wine and jam, bottled fruit, sewed and knitted. She made the most gorgeous bread and butter pudding from stale bread and there was always porridge for breakfast with golden syrup out of 2lb tins. She loved writing down recipes and in later years when I cooked at school, she would use the recipe herself and then put it into her book. We picked mushrooms from the fields and blackberries from the hedgerows and from the field known as the Park which was full of blackberry bushes. We roamed the fields and downs and went wooding with an old pram at the weekends. Mum hated the mud on the roads in winter and farm workers tried sweeping it to one side. She would cycle into Calne with me in tow on my bike each with a little sister or brother in a child seat as well. I remember tipping my youngest brother into the brambles just above Bill Barnett’s house after he swung round to look at a car behind us. Later on we would take Keens buses into Calne – I think there were several every day and the last one back to the village was at 9.15pm. Taylors shop came from Calne with wet fish and vegetables. Wiltshires Grocers delivered daily and Grants Bakers from Cherhill called twice weekly. Another delivery was what we called The Radiant Man with bottles of pop and cherryade. On Sundays we had icecreams from Calne and spearmint lollies which were pale blue! Those were the days although memories of loos up the garden and horrible buckets to be emptied (not my job thank goodness) are best forgotten.
It must have been the uneven ground in those days but I was always tipping over and had permanent scabby knees and ruined black stockings. Mum would darn them and make me wear them the next day. One day, I was taking a bottle of water to an orphaned pet lamb in the field nearby and I tipped over again. I had cinder grazes all up my arms and when I returned home for some sympathy Mum just said, “You didn’t break the bottle, did you?”
My Dad, Ern Maslen worked for Maundrells driving a shire horse and light cart to feed the animals and later worked in South Farm Dairy getting up at 5am to get the cattle in. He would return home at 8am for breakfast often with a pint of cream in his pocket. He kept as many as 200 hens at the top of the garden, later in an enclosure above the waterworks. I vividly remember those horrid hens and how they flapped and pecked as you fed them. My job after school and on Saturday mornings was to pack up to thirty dozen eggs ready for the United Dairies lorry on a Monday. They would bring a fresh box and packaging started all over again.
My Gran and Grandad from Cherhill came to live with us when they became elderly so there were a lot of us in that small cottage. Grandad soon died but Gran was with us for a long time and helped Mrs Grierson at Tog Hill with light housework. I was lucky having Gran and Mum teaching me to bake. I also had to clean the shoes – it was amazing how many shoes appeared every time I took the box from the cupboard. We all moved into one of the thatch cottages for a while so that a bathroom could be installed downstairs at Number 20 and the stairs were moved to make an extra bedroom out of the landing. When the electric came to Calstone in the early 1950s, Mum bought her first fridge. It was enamel and I chipped that enamel and had to look at that chip for ever.
Also in the early 1950s I passed the exam to go to Bentley Grammar School in Calne. Mum never commented but I think she was quite proud. I caught the school bus from the Reading Room and in those days the school was spread all over the town. The main part was on the Green with art lessons in the Town Hall, PE at the Rec and my first classroom was in the Old Chapel in Back Road. So much time was wasted getting across the town to lessons. We bought sixpenny bags of stale buns from Maslen’s Café at lunchtimes and you could buy sweets at Watsons the cobblers. My school uniform was hand-me-down from one of the older girls in the village. I had her summer dresses as well and her bike when she outgrew it. There was a school trip to Chippenham to see the film ’Tale of Two Cities’ and I recall I was the only one not to go. I couldn’t ask Mum for the money. I just couldn’t ask her. Later in about 1953/54, I earned one shilling and six pence an hour by cleaning and cooking for Mrs George, the Calstone schoolmistress, on Saturday mornings.
We had our first TV in 1953 which was Coronation year although we didn’t have ours until September. No-one said it was coming – it just appeared and I was so exited. I can see that potter’s wheel now as it turned during the interlude. I also remember one early Panorama programme showing a baby being born and causing quite a stir. It wasn’t explicit like today’s programmes as everything was shielded but Father made the comment, ”Huh, just like a cow”. Mum, who had five children, was not well pleased about that comment!
My first job on leaving school was at the Bear Hotel in Devizes as a waitress and chambermaid. I lived at the hotel and it was my first time away from home. I hated it and only stayed three weeks. There was a chef who used to get drunk and when he came up the narrow stairs at night I was terrified he would come into my room which didn’t have a lock. I then worked in Woolworths in Chippenham, cycling into Calne from the village every day and getting the train from Calne Station. Others from the village also used the train – I remember Maurice Mills was one of them. After that, I worked in Jack Weeding’s bakery in Church Street, Calne, for a couple of years.
January 1957 was very cold with snow and the village road was icy. One evening, I got off Keans Coach by the Reading Room. Maurice Mills also got off and because the road was so treacherous he gave me his arm through the village and saw me safely home. I suppose that was the start of our romance. We started going to the pictures in Calne together and also for cycle rides. One Sunday, Mrs Mills invited me for tea. She had made a trifle which contained bananas and I had never been able to eat bananas. I just couldn’t stand them. As she was putting my trifle onto a plate I felt dreadful as I told her I couldn’t eat the bananas thank you. The spoon was held aloft as she looked at me before dropping the spoonful back into the trifle and saying, “I wish somebody had told me”. Mrs Mills took a long time to accept me and was quite disapproving at times. It seemed I wasn’t good enough but when I went to tea again, she did make me a separate trifle without banana.
Maurice and I got engaged in mid 1959 and on October 7 1961 we were married at Calstone Church with a reception at the Jolly Miller in Quemerford. Our honeymoon was a three day stay with a friend in Hillingdon and we got there on the Royal Blue. There were no council houses available so we started our married life in a caravan belonging to Jack Weeding. We parked it at my uncles in Middle Lane, Cherhill. We saved very hard to buy our own house and in 1962 we looked at a house in Chestnut Road, Chippenham. We could see the white horse and monument on the Downs from upstairs so we knew we had to buy it. It was £2,500 and we had saved the £250 deposit so we bought the house in July and have spent the whole of our married life in it.
In 1964, Mum and Dad left Calstone to move into their own house at Bryans Close Road in Calne. I think they wanted to own their own house and Mum wanted to get away from the mud. Dad still worked on the farm at that time but eventually ended his working life in Harris’s.
We can’t see the Downs from our house anymore because of trees and development but Calstone is still home. Of course, it’s not the same village we knew – it’s so quiet, almost dead these days and you rarely see anyone. But it’s where we were brought up and all our parents are buried there so we often go back home to the village and remember the good times.
Dennis, Maurice & Sheila Mills 2010.