Conversations about the Pang Valley at the turn of the century

By Felicity Palmer

Talking to Harry about the water meadows between Frilsham and Marlston Farm he said that when he was a boy there was an old man on Marlston Farm whose job it was to manage the hatches. There was one meadow on the Right Bank higher than the others were and in order for this one to be flooded the water level had to be raised to the point where there was no longer enough fall for the mill to work. So it always had to be done on a Sunday, and the old man would grumble and say "hay won’t be no good."

The meadow would be flooded about February for an early bite and then again for hay and possibly again later in the dry season. Only sheep would be allowed in these meadows, cattle would have trodden out "gutters" as he called them. The sheep were driven in for the day and taken up often the other side of the road on some bare ground at night, as they needed no feed at night. One of the reasons they weren’t left in the meadow was the fear of them getting on their backs in the gutters.

He never knew or heard tell of a Windmill on Windmill Hill (near Hermitage), it was a larch plantation before the First World War. When I said windmill might be needed when the river Pang was dry he said he thought the Pang was much more reliable in those days.

He lived as a boy in one of the Boars Hole cottages; his mother baked bread once a week on Fridays usually. There was a bread oven and his father and grandfather could get free brushwood for heating it. Meat was brought once a week by a butcher from Newbury with a horse and cart, groceries came from Cold Ash. They always kept a pig. Skim milk came free from the farm, pretty much as much as they wanted, butter one shilling a pound.

The boys of his age use to meet almost every evening after work on a green at Wellhouse where they played tip-cat, kick-can and sometimes football with any type of ball, or cricket with home made stumps and bat, or they would have sing-song along the lanes. Perhaps there was other less innocent pastimes, but they weren’t mentioned.

Letters were brought by the postman on foot from Hermitage, in the evenings about 6pm a man called Luker from Chieveley used to and collect from the pillar box; he would blow a whistle as he got near so any one who had a parcel could take it along to him.

His parents took the Newbury paper, no other. It came out in the carrier’s van. He didn’t think anyone else took any other paper. "I often think to myself, I don’t believe there used to be all this bother about in those days, and then I think, well maybe there was but we never got to hear about it." Books were few and mostly school prizes. In the winter evenings they played draughts, cards or dominoes.

There was a shop of sorts, at Wellhouse kept by Mrs. Smith. Her husband did carting and carted most of the building material for Marlston House. The stone came in very large blocks, 4,5, and 6 tons, special small wagons were used to collect them from Hermitage Station. It took four or five horses to get up the hill at Fence Wood, going down Wellhouse Hill as well as the brake shoes being on, Mr. Smith used to brake the wheel with a pole jammed under the platform and against the wheel, which he leant on with all his weight.

The cottages next to his own, opposite Parsonage Farm, Frilsham was at one time occupied by two Queen’s nurses. Mrs. G. W. Palmer installed them there to look after the neighbourhood. This was the days before district nurses. " And before that?" " Well there was my mother’s aunt Mary Portlock, ever so many she must have brought into the world and laid out to, better go and fetch old Mary, that was what everyone use to say." She also lived in the cottage that the nurses later occupied. To fetch Dr. Beach meant going to Yattendon and in the shooting season you had to get there before 9am "or you’ll very well found him gone". When Harry’s father was fatally hurt in an accident on the farm Aunt Mary came to see him one evening about 9-30pm and said "one of you boys’ll have to go for the doctor." So they walked from Boars Hole across the fields to Yattendon, caught the doctor just going upstairs to bed. "All right," he said, "I can’t do anything but I’ll come." By the time they got back the doctor was there having ridden over. He kept two horses one to go in a dogcart and the other for riding.

Talking to Harry about changes in local woodlands he said what a lot of work they used to provide especially in the winter. The coppice wood was cut about every ten years, much of it was auctioned as a standing crop and there was an annual auction at the Bladebone, Bucklebury. Cutting started in November and had to be finished by March 25th and everything had to be carted out by May 20th. Usually a small businessman would buy a lot of a few acres and then bargain with one or two woodsmen for piece work rates for cutting through it. It was the woodsmen’s job to decide how best to use what they cut- as bavins, puffs, poles, pea sticks, bean rods, handles, mops sticks, hurdles, besoms and so on.