Meeting the in-laws
It was quite a culture shock when I met my wife's family. They all lived around Wimborne way and still used gas lamps and drew all their water from a well.
My wife was born in Lower Lychett in Minster. The people in Lower Lychett never used to like the people from Higher Lychett – ‘them up there’ – I never knew why and I’m not sure they even knew!
My mother in law, I can’t fault her at all, I couldn’t have had a better one, but if you asked her anything about the family she used to just answer something like ‘all be dead by now’ or ‘they’re so thick one day they’ll fall in the midden together!’
She was very reluctant to talk about those things.
My wife’s father was an agricultural contractor. He’d been the manager of a farm previously, but during the war he was with the war Ag, they supplied tractors and drivers to farms all over the country.
It was a service and everyone had to do their bit. He’d go up to Sixpenny Handley for a 3 or 4 weeks with his tractor and plough and then onto somewhere else for another few weeks. He had a wicked sense of humour.
Written by a man in Dorset.
Stories of family life over the years
Sleeping in drawers and skipping competitions
I was born in Dorchester in 1939 at the beginning of World War II. We lived in Icen Way then, but we moved to a council house at the top of Coburg Road when I was 6 weeks old.
I was put in a drawer from the chest of drawers. I was the third child with an elder brother and sister.
Opposite our house in Coburg Road it was all fields. We used to play in the fields until more houses were built in 1947. The school across the road was the (Secondary) modern school – now Hardye’s School.
I went to school at Maud Road School, which was mixed infants up to 7 years, then the girls continued and the boys went to Colliton Street Boys School. We did the 3Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic. I still have a card to record that I won the skipping aged 8.
When I was 11 I went to the Modern School, it was a mixed school. All the children came from the same sort of backgrounds, none of the families were well off. Nobody had cars. I did like maths and games. I was in the netball team. I did 2 years of general studies. Once we were 13 we had a choice. I chose to go into the commercial group where we did shorthand and typing.
I met my husband at a friend’s brother’s wedding, it was just a few days before my 18th birthday. We got engaged about 6 months after we met. Then the problem was getting somewhere to live to start our married life. We found rooms in Olga Road, we had a front bedroom, kitchen, loo outside, no bathroom, no electricity, no lighting upstairs.
We used to go up to my mother’s to wash and iron our clothes and have baths. We married in March 1959 so that my husband could claim the full year’s Married Man’s Tax Allowance.
We moved into Louise Road just before our first son was born in 1961. We had a fully furnished flat there. We had a back garden so I had somewhere to hang out the nappies.
Our second son was born in 1963. In those days they would not say that you were pregnant until you were 3 months. Then you went to the hospital once a month, then once a fortnight, then once a week so you got to know all the other pregnant mothers due when you were. I had 10 days in hospital for each of my 3 sons.
I started badgering the Council and we ended up in a Council house in Coburg Road with gardens front and back. We used to go out picking up wood for the fire and blackberrying. Then we moved to a bungalow in Edward Road which my husband had inherited. We have lived there ever since.
Written by Patricia Matthews.
What will the neighbours say?
I grew up in a Dorset village in the 1930s and 1940s. I lived there until my early twenties when I left for the excitement of city life.
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One of the things that I disliked most about village life was that everyone knew everybody else, and of course most of their business.
If, as children, we did anything naughty someone would be certain to tell our parents and punishment was swift.
'What will the neighbours say?' was the mantra in most of the working class households of my childhood. When I escaped I loved the feeling that no-one knew me or my family, and that I was free to do as I liked. Not that I ever did anything very exciting: it was simply wonderful to feel unobserved.
However, now that in old age I have returned to my roots, I thoroughly enjoy knowing many of the people I meet and exchanging news of their families.
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Written by a lady from Puddletown.
Born at Moreton Heath in 1911
I was born at Moreton Heath in 1911.
My grandfather worked at the clay pits at Arne, but when he broke his leg digging out the clay and couldn’t carry on he came to Moreton Station as foreman of the gravel pits.
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My father was 21 years old when grandfather broke his leg, he worked at the Junction Hotel in Dorchester and later took over as foreman at the gravel pits from my grandfather. Dad worked at the pits until he was 75!
My mother died when I was six months old and so my dad’s two sisters became our mothers – Aunt Beat and Auntie Elsie.
Auntie Elsie worked in domestic service but when our mother died she came to look after us because dad couldn’t put up with us!
I used to like to play with the boys when I was young – climbing trees and playing football. But Aunt Beat was very strict and when I was small she used to tie a rope rein around me and tie me to the neighbour’s door so that I couldn’t get away!
For a pram I had a cardboard boot box and the lid stood up for a hood and in it I had my teddy bear – I wasn’t interested in dolls. I always preferred to play with the boys.
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Written by Gwen Spicer.
Sherborne in the war
I met my husband on New Year’s Eve 1935 and then did not see him again until New Year’s Eve 1936. We were married in 1940.
My employer made a lovely wedding cake for me and paid for my wedding dress to be made. By now, the bombing raids had started and so every time the sirens went, the seamstress who was making my wedding dress used to roll the dress up in a big sheet and sit with it in the cupboard under the stairs until the ‘all clear’ sounded.
The dress and the seamstress survived!
My husband and I were married in September 1940, although he was nearly late for the wedding because by then he was stationed in Wales and the nearest station had been bombed.
From 1940, I had to register with the employment people, so that if I wasn’t in work or wished to volunteer, I would be given a job to help the war effort.
Although I was married, my husband was in the army so I was still living in with the family but the family started taking in evacuees and we had two little boys from Southampton who were little devils and had never seen a bath in their life and it got too much.
The next time I had to go to the employment office, I volunteered to do war work and I was given a job at Westlands in Bradford Road. Sherborne.
We were making Spitfires, we had to put sheets of metal in a ‘jig’ and working in pairs. We had to drill tiny holes in the metal sheets.
There were about 300 men and women working in the factory and we were one of 2 Westland factories in Sherborne. A truck brought all the work to be done in the morning and then in the afternoon took the finished work to Yeovil to be assembled.
I worked there for 4 years and during all that time only had one sheet sent back as it was faulty. We worked from 7am to 6pm and sometimes until 9pm. We didn’t have any days off and sometimes worked all weekend.
Part of our duties at Westland was fire-watching and women had to do this as well as the men. We had to stay overnight at the factory to make sure no fires broke out. Once the sirens went and German bombers came over looking for Westlands, but were intercepted by Spitfires, so dumped their bombs on the town and a family in Lenthay was killed. There was a big crater by the school.
Sometimes word would go round that the shoe shop in town had a delivery of shoes and so we would beg our boss for an hour off to go and buy shoes with coupons we had saved.
We all had our bikes outside and we would all rush off together. Once it was frosty and when we put on our brakes at the Halt sign by the post house, we all skidded and ended up in a pile in the middle of the road!
My husband was supposed to be in the tank corps and so had to go to Bovington to train. The first time he drove a tank, he went too fast down one of the steep banks on the range and the officer instructing him in the tank fell out. My husband said that he had never heard so many swear words in such a short time ever!
Then he had to go abroad but could not tell me where he was going, all he could say that it was very hot. He was sent to Burma, while he was out there he had dysentery and came home with malaria at the end of the war and the local GP didn’t know how to treat it.
During the war, I hardly ever had any news or got letters from my husband and what letters I did get were censored and there was very little that he was allowed to write.
I carried on working at Westlands and American soldiers started to arrive in Sherborne. Some girls from Westlands married Americans.
The bombing which had started early in the war carried on and some American soldiers stationed at Haydon Park which was part of the Castle were bombed. Council houses in Newland were bombed.
My husband came back from the war in 1946 when the troop ship docked. Some other soldiers shouted abuse, saying they were ‘D Day Dodgers’ because they hadn’t been at Dunkirk. He found it very upsetting.
When he came back from the war, he was allowed to wear his Chindit hat he had been fighting with them (3rd Indian Division) in Burma and thought them very clever and brave and his hat always meant a lot to him.
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Written by Rene Wilton-Blackmore.
Tolpuddle Martyrs connection
My family has lived in Dorset for five generations, on both my mother’s and father’s sides. When the Tolpuddle Martyrs were deported one of my ancestors was deported too for stealing 11d of hay.
I was born in Bothenhampton in a row of cottages near the old church. When I was about four years old we moved to Symondsbury because my father worked on the farm there.
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Written by a Dorset resident.
Rabbits and sheepdogs
If you look out from Hardy’s Monument to Weymouth you can see two small cottages down below. it’s a place called Bench.I don’t know why it’s called that, but that’s where we used to live.
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Then when I was about 7 or 8 years we went to Gorewell and then later to Throop. We eventually moved to Abbotsbury and when I started at the school there I had a school master and not a mistress, Mr Rose, I don’t really know why but he always used to make me cry.
I was always very fond of history at school, I couldn’t see the point of geography. We used to have a long walk home after school across the fields.
In the school holidays we used to go for long walks, it was always lovely to get home after school because we knew there would always be a lovely hot dinner waiting for us. My mother was a very good cook. I liked a good old stew – usually rabbit. I don’t think we would have survived the war if it hadn’t been for rabbits!
There were three girls and six boys in my family. My father, George Croft was a shepherd. He looked after about 100 sheep for a farmer in Wadden and he knew every sheep!
He’d be out by 7.00 in the morning and out at night too when the sheep were lambing. Father’s sheepdog was called Quick, he was a good dog. Father was very good at training his dogs, he didn’t ever shout at them or give them the stick.
When he’d go out to bring the sheep in for the night off the down he didn’t have to say a word – he didn’t speak, he’d just use a hand signal and the dog would be off, and by the time we got to where to the sheep were they’d all be waiting, already herded up. He used to go to all the sheep fairs at Poundbury and Dorchester.
I was 14 when I left school, mother needed me at home but I also did daily work – I was very used to working and cleaning. My husband was a house thatcher and then later he worked as a lengthman on the railways until he retired.
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Written by Kit Cox.
Romance started on the dance floor
I met my husband at a dance in Bridport. He was in uniform, sitting on the other side of the hall looking so sad so I went over and bravely asked if he wanted to dance.
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He said 'I can’t dance,' and I said 'Get up and I’ll teach you,' and I did teach him and we’ve been together ever since.
Caring for each other is what makes a marriage last. We were married in St. Mary’s church, a lady sang Ave Maria as I walked up the aisle and some people were laughing. I only found out later that a little black cat followed me up the aisle playing with my train.
We had a reception at The Lily Hotel which was on the corner of West Street and Gundry Lane, past where the crèche is now.
I worked in the cinema for two years after I was married, in about 1947. I was an usherette, marching around with my little torch. I sold ice creams, cigarettes and sometimes I worked in the office. They were black and white movies and it was always full, it was very popular. I loved that job.
We lived in a little one bedroom cottage but when we had children there was no space. I had to push the pram under the table to get it out of the way. There were mice in there as well.
In about 1950 we moved to a brand new flat in West Allington. I opened the door and burst out crying. It was lovely, two bedrooms, lovely lounge, a kitchen and a bathroom. Everything was brand new.
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Written by Jean Marley.
The Wiscombes of Lyme
I was a Wiscombe, the Wiscombes of Lyme were really well known.
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My father came from Yarcombe in Devon where he had a wheelwright’s business. They moved to Lyme to set up a wheelwrights there but as horses and carts went out they started up a building business. There’s a place called Wiscombe somewhere.
I went to Eastcliff School first, it was a private school. Then I moved to Lyme Grammar, I loved school but I never shone except for games. I won the tennis cup and the hockey cup.
I was no good at history and other academic subjects and when the others were taking exams we went out and played tennis.
I lived at the top of Broad Street where mum had a shoe shop. I went into it straight from school and when my mother died my sister and I ran it until the 1970s.
My sister wasn’t so interested but I went away visiting stock rooms to buy the shoes. I went to Exeter and to Clark’s in Street. At Clark’s they showed you round the factory and showed you how shoes were made. I became quite an expert.
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Written by Molly Raisom.
An Upwey Potter's life
I was born at Portwey Hospital, Weymouth in 1954. I was the younger of two sons, I went to the Convent, then Thornlow Preparatory School and finally to Weymouth Grammar School.
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I was in the first intake to go to the new school built at Chickerell. It was built to cater for the influx of scientist’s children at UKAEA (Atomic Energy) and the various defence establishments. These children were mostly very bright. I started doing pottery as an extra mural activity.
My whole family said to me that I didn’t have to go into the family building business (Crumblehomes) but it seemed to be a no brainer – so I joined the firm and worked for about 25 years in the business. I was tied to the desk doing all the accounting, ordering supplies, giving estimates, doing the wages. The company employed about 20 people, only one of whom was a woman.
After 25 years we wound down the firm and I became a full-time potter. I had moved out to Upwey where there was an artistic community feel which attracted me. I’m sure I could exist as an artist in isolation but it’s useful to have other artists you can talk to about things.
My daughters 'helped' in the pottery and my wife caught me hosing them down when she returned.
For years I ran workshops in the Upwey Village Hall (formerly the school). It was part of the feasibility for the hall. Then I started teaching evening classes along with Phil Cooke, another Upwey Potter.
My wife became a Special Needs Teacher on Portland, having originally trained at University as a French and P.E. teacher, which she had given up when our children were born.
I was a founder member of The Upwey Potters – originally 4 potters. The major reason was to come together to do exhibitions, bulk buying of materials, peer criticism. We have been called the Potter Wizards of Upwey. At lot of what I do is alchemy – seeing what clay will do seeing the best things you can do with the material.
I’ve always enjoyed gardening and learnt it at my mother’s knee. I used to also be a keen windsurfer.
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Written by Bill Crumblehome.
Helping hands
My mum was blind and dad worked on the farm, so I had to do most of the chores.
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Every Monday I had to do the washing, all by hand and change the sheets. I also had to do the ironing, the iron was heavy and had to be heated on the fire, we had no electric iron in those days.
Dad used to help to do the cooking – prepare the potatoes. We used to grow all our own vegetables. I used to help dad plant potatoes in our garden, I wasn’t allowed to help plant anything else though.
I can remember going into the garden and picking gooseberries, raspberries and strawberries and eating them, they tasted lovely.
When I left school I had to look after my mum and do all the household chores.
I remember going to the seaside at Bournemouth with my auntie and uncle. They used to have a car and we used to go for the morning. I remember when I was courting we used to go to the bingo. I used to win a lot! I also remember in more recent years going fishing at Kinson.
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Written by June Spicer.
Memories of chamber pots
I remember having to empty the chamber pots.
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Our toilet was a bucket in a shed at the end of the garden, it was dad’s job every Friday night to dig a hole and empty the bucket. Our toilet paper was newspaper cut into squares.
Clothes washing was done every Monday, whites were put in the copper to boil.
We had to light a wood fire under the copper to heat the water.
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Written by June Page.
Clothes washing by hand
During my childhood I lived at Fordington. We had electricity but no gas in the house where I lived.
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I remember clothes washing was always done by hand every Monday. The whites were put in a copper to boil along with a ‘little blue bag’ which helped to whiten the washing.
I married my husband at St Georges Church, Fordington in July 1955.
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Written by Heather Mitcham.
Two and sixpence for four daughters
My mother and father rented a cottage in the Radipole village it was built in 1670.
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They paying a rent of 3s 6d a week and 6d a week rates but in 1930 when the cottages were put up for sale they bought it. It cost them £150.
My father was a milk roundsman and earned £2 10s but because he had 4 daughters he was given an extra 2s 6d.
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Written by Louise Symonds.
Bath time
At home living standards were quite primitive.
We had a big rain water container and my Mum used to wash our hair in it.
We had a bath tub but no bathroom and there was a copper in the corner where all the water was boiled.
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Written by Peggy Voss.
Living in the New Commercial Inn at Charmouth
I was born in Coram Towers in Lyme Regis where my father was the coachman.
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Today Coram Towers is holiday flats. When I was 1 we went to live in Charmouth to run the New Commercial Inn. Later it was just called the New Inn and now’s it’s just a house.
I generally didn’t like living at the pub but I learnt to play cribb there and I think that made me good at maths.
My father bred cocker spaniels at the back of the pub, there were five pubs in Charmouth then and there are only three now.
Mother cooked on oil burners and heated water in the zinc bath. One day, when I was five, I was playing with my brother in the kitchen and he suddenly let go. I fell backwards into the bath and scalded my bum. I was badly scalded and had to have skin grafts. My mum would tell people about it and say 'Show them your bottom dear.' I was so embarrassed.
When I was fourteen I left school and helped mum in the pub with the boarders.
Then at seventeen I took the Civil Service exams and went to work in London with the telephone service. I hated London. I lived in a hostel off the Tottenham Court Road. Once a year I could go to Hampstead Heath which was the only bit of London I liked.
My parents had no income during the war as the visitors to Charmouth stopped, so they had to go and live in Hook.
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Written by Jo Musk.
A lifetime on the farm
I grew up in Mosterton, I had a twin sister and a younger brother. My father worked on a farm in Mosterton and we lived in part of a house nearby.
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It was very primitive, we had no running water. We did have a toilet indoors but mother had to empty it every day. Then my father built a new house with all mod cons up at the farm.
I used to help at the farm, I milked cows and helped with the haymaking – we raked up the hay and took it in and we enjoyed it.
We didn’t have bikes until we were 11, then we used to cycle down to West Bay. No-one worried. We’d paddle and walk about, my sister and I did a lot together, going out on our own. There was not so much traffic.
We went to Beaminster Grammar School and then I became a teacher. I taught infants and young juniors. They were very fond of their teachers then and would fight each other to hold our hands, I loved it. I taught in Frome and East Coker.
When I got married we lived on a farm. I stopped teaching then and helped with the poultry, I would feed them and look after them, I would have liked to have stayed teaching really, I loved it.
They were good days. Everything is very hurried now, these are good days too, just different.
Written by Eva Boucher.
My family life in Bere Regis
In the 1930s and 40s it was very difficult to make contact with your parents because of limited transport.
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If you were in farming you probably did have the children to follow on, they were lucky and in that they had what we called tied cottages.
They were attached to the farm and could only be used by people who were actually doing the farming but as far as other relatives were okayed, the daughters probably went out to service, not necessarily in the village, and they probably married where there were and so lots of us didn’t know a lot about our grandparents, although we knew what they did. My grandfather was a horticulturalist but my other grandfather was a saddler.
By that time we had got a number of cars, but I was thinking of leaving teaching and getting married and again we had a problem with housing, we lived with my mother for a short time and then the Army moved out of Bere Regis where it had been housed during the time when the invasion took place, so we were able to hop into one of the houses they were vacating.
The person who owned all of Bere Regis was Admiral Drax and he kept all the property in excellent order. A lot of them were thatched and they were always regularly thatched.
Essentially when the water came to the village Drax couldn’t see modernising all the houses, they would all want water and the sewer would come so they sold up everything except one or two places like us.
We had a pump which was electrically operated to pump the water into the roof and because we had a bathroom we were not sold up, he didn’t need to modernise us.
It had a very big garden and luckily I am keen on gardening but my husband always said oil and soil didn’t mix so he looked after the cars and I looked after the garden.
I had a man to come to dig so that we could grow vegetables but the rest of the garden was mainly mine and I have a picture of my children under two or three enormous sunflowers which had come out of a packet of seed.
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Written by Peggy Wyatt.
The Thomas Hardy connection to the Antell family of Puddletown
John Antell (1), my great-great grandfather came from Cerne Abbas to Puddletown and married Mary Ann Childs in about 1811.
John Antell was literate and worked as a maltser and agricultural labourer. It is thought that the maltster in Far from the Madding Crowd is a portrait of John Antell.
He had a mortgage from the Earl of Oxford and was able to buy a house in the Square, Puddletown and later a former farmhouse in High Street, Puddletown.
When John Antell (1) died in 1847 he left £100 which was a lot of money for a maltser and agricultural worker.
John Antell (2) my great-grandfather was born in 1816 and died in 1878. He married Mary Hands the younger sister of Jemima Hardy nee Hands, the mother of Thomas Hardy.
The sisters were close and after being a lady’s maid, Mary moved in with the Hardys to nurse her sister’s son Thomas.
She nursed him through his delicate first years. John Antell (2) married Mary Hands by special license. Mary was married from the Hardy’s Bockhampton Cottage and her sister and brother-in-law were Maid of Honour and Best Man respectively at the wedding.
Family tradition has it that the parents of Jemima and Mary Hands turned up at the wedding and that the baby Thomas Hardy was also present. Mary had been a witness at the marriage of the baby Thomas’ parents at Melbury Osmond Church on 22nd December 1839.
John Antell (2) and his bride Mary set up house in High Street, Puddletown. Mary’s younger sister Maria Sparkes and Mary’s three elder brothers, Christopher, Henry and William also lived in Puddletown.
John Antell (2) was apprenticed to a shoemaker, first in Dorchester and later by the backwater over the river in Puddletown. The manufacture of shoes ruined the handmade shoe trade.
John and Mary Antell had two children, John Antell (3) and a daughter who died of scarlet fever at the age of 11. Both John Antell (2) and Christopher Hand were the village constable for a year each.
Thomas Hardy had a great affection for his uncle John Antell. They used to go for walks together and talked a lot. Thomas Hardy used to sit in the cobblers shop at the back of the house discussing his books.
The Antell family used to visit the Hardy’s at Bockhampton. John and Mary Antell’s son John Antell (3), my grandfather said he could go round Puddletown and pick out people from Far from the Madding Crowd.
When John Antell (2) died in 1878 Thomas Hardy did a sketch for his uncle’s tombstone and composed the epitaph.
'He was a man of considerable local reputation as a self-made scholar, having acquired a varied knowledge of languages, literature and science by unaided study in the face of many untoward circumstances.'
He was partly the original for Jude in Jude the Obscure.
Written by John Antell.
Rationing and hand-me-downs
Due to shortages and rationing, when people knew a delivery of sweets had come, particularly sweets and cigarettes, there was a queue from Adams near Damers Road to Cambridge Road in Dorchester.
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They used to run out of sweets before everyone in the queue got some. One time I dropped my coin down a drain, I howled and have kept away from drains ever since!
We kept chickens in our back garden all through the war and afterwards. When the man from Weymouth came to wring some chicken’s necks, we exchanged our dead chickens with a neighbour’s so that we didn’t eat our own chickens.
My Dad made me a little two wheeler cycle out of bits and pieces he got at work. He painted it pale blue and I loved it. I used to ride it in the back alleys, and up and down Olga, Dagmar and Damers Roads.
All my clothes and football and rugby boots were hand-me-down. I was a slight child and I resented having to wear clothes which were often far too big for me.
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Written by Adrian Downton.
Milk, blackberries and the Co-op outing
Living in Rope Walks in the 1930s and 40s was very hard for our parents, but for us being kids we did not know half of it.
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We were a family of four, and we had to share an outside toilet with another family of four, with little or no toilet paper. In those days it was newspapers torn up in squares threaded on string and hung on a nail.
There were not many clocks or watches, although we could see and hear the Town Hall clock from our house, we were governed by the two factories’ hooters which would sound morning, noon and evening.
I can also recall the milk man with his 1 pint and ½ pint measure, and a large churn of milk. Money was short so we would pick blackberries and collect jam jars and take them to our local jam factory (Cornicks).
We also picked wild flowers as the seasons would allow, and sold them from door to door.
If your front door was out on the street the lady of the house could be seen every day on her hands and knees scrubbing the front door way (it was the done thing).
Also on a Sunday morning the man of the house would go to the front door step regardless of whether or not they had meat for dinner to sharpen the kitchen knives on the sandstone.
Outings were few and far between although our mum and dad did their very best. One such outing was the Annual Co-Op outing from Bridport to Weymouth by train.
We would all meet up at the local Co-Op and had to march to the Railway Station a mile or so away behind a van with loudspeakers on the top, playing music all the way. Having arrived at the small station the train was so long that it had to pull up and stop three times to allow us to get on board.
One funny story that is perfectly true, was about a certain dentist in the town whose practice was very near the Bull Hotel. On one occasion someone had to go into the Public Bar to fetch the dentist as he had left the poor patient still semi-conscious in the chair!
Written by Frederick Hodder.
Life in my Preston cottage
I was brought up in Osmington but then moved to Preston when I married. I’m now in my eighties and I remember my early life as fairly privileged.
My parents had staff working in the house which meant that my mother did not need to cook. Because of this I did not learn.
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My first boyfriend became my husband and the first time I took him home to meet my parents I felt that I needed to tell him to talk well, he had a strong local dialect which I thought that they wouldn’t have understood. They did and my parents took an immediate liking to him.
His way of life was very different. He was a carpenter and so life changed once we were married. Because of my lack of culinary knowledge I remember going to Pullinger’s Restaurant (used to be on the Pier Bandstand) every evening for a meal. When I was expecting our first child, my husband said that I had to learn how to cook!
We lived in a cottage with a large (1/2 acre) garden. My husband, who was a good gardener, grew all types of vegetables. I remember packing runner beans in banana boxes and taking them in a pushchair up to the caravan site to sell. When our four children were older they were given the job of measuring the beans with sticks to check that they were long enough to pick.
Bath time for the children was in a tin bath in the kitchen. I filled it up with water using a jug. The youngest child was always put in first in case the others carried any germs.
My first bike came from Tilley’s for which she paid £4 10s (£4.50). My husband and I also had a tandem at a later date. I remember roller skating at the Sydney Hall (on the site of Asda) for 6d (5p). And I also remember the terrible floods in Weymouth in 1955 – the year that Martinstown held the national record for daily rain – 11 inches. This record remained until the recent floods in Cumberland.
Written by June Lawes.
Father's life
My father had a wife and three small children under 9 years old and so he took a labouring job.
At this time the lower end of South Street was being redeveloped and I can remember that there was a pub with a garden called The Railway Tavern and next to it Mr Holt's basket shop, he later moved to Durngate Street.
Mr Wells was the landlord of the Railway Tavern and he and his wife gave my mother some knives as a wedding present.
In 1934 on a lovely sunny day in April, I remember I was off school with the chicken pox.
My father was working digging the foundations for The George in Trinity Street when a wall collapsed completely burying him. He had to be dug out and was very lucky that his only injuries were cuts and bruises.
However as a result of this accident he was off work again and lost his job. Having a wife and young family to support, he was compelled to look for work again as he needed the money. This was the worst thing he could have done as in those days if you did this you were not eligible for compensation for injuries sustained while at work.
A few months later around September/October, my father got a job at Eldridge Pope, but things were not to work out for him as within months he became ill. By December he was bedridden and had to be transferred to hospital where he eventually died of cancer.
In the days before my father died when my mother was constantly at his bedside, my grandmother, who lived next door to us, put us all in one big bed at night.
I remember being woken up by the church bell tolling. This was the way of telling people that there had been a death in the Parish and on this occasion my grandmother told us it was tolling for my father.
I remember him being brought home and his coffin being put in the front room, there were no funeral parlours in those days. The blinds were drawn and my mother kept a light burning day and night. We were taken in to touch him as we were told that this would stop us from dreaming about him.
Being the eldest child I went to the funeral. I wore a navy blue coat and dress with a black felt hat and black stockings and shoes. It was a bitterly cold day, it had snowed and there was ice on the puddles.
It signalled the end of my care free days.
Written by Freda Wade.
Red boots and Bluebird toffee
In the winter when we had snow it was really deep, we used to have little red Wellington boots.
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When we woke up we were really cold as there was no heating, we only had open fires in the kitchen and the front room. We lived at 42 Rope Walks which was behind where the supermarket is now, I loved that house.
We could go to the little sweet shop in St. Michael’s Lane and buy sugar mice. At Christmas we each had a pillow case at the bottom of our beds and mum and nan filled them with nuts, oranges and chocolate pennies.
We always had a tin of Bluebird toffee with a little silver hammer to break it up. Every year we had a real Christmas tree and decorated it with glass balls which we bought at the old Co-op which was near the cinema in South Street where the flats are now.
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Written by Mary Rowe.
A visit to the Doctor
The year is 1929 and I am 4 years old and living at No 21 Harveys Buildings, now known as Harveys Terrace.
I remember that we had been on a visit to a friend of my mother's who had given me a tin of toffees. In those days a lot of tins had sharp edges.
I had opened the tin and wanted to take it to bed with me. My mother was busy with my younger brother, aged 2, and she was also expecting again. It seems I tripped on my nightdress as I was going upstairs and the side of the tin went into the left side of my face.
I have a dim picture of leaning against my mother's bed and the next thing I knew I was walking beside the pram as my mother took me to see Dr Broadway at 17 Cornwall Road.
I particularly remember the smell of disinfectant and antiseptic as we entered the house. Dr Broadway stitched me up and after that I had to go on a twice daily basis to have the wound dressed.
I remember that if I was good I was given a penny or I could take something from the fruit bowl on the Doctor's trolley. However, the stitches didn't last and I then had to have the wound re-stitched lying on our kitchen table.
Doctor Bond, who lived in Icen Way, was also in attendance. This episode cost my father 14 guineas, in those days no-one went to hospital unless it was really necessary.
Doctors performed this sort of procedure as a routine part of their work and they also made up medicines and ointments, hence the smell.
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Written by Freda Wade.
Great Grandfather was an engine driver at Weymouth
I would like to share with you some memories of my grandparents in these old photographs.
My Great Grandfather was Albert Stanley Sewell, he was an engine driver and lived in Spa Road, Weymouth. The photograph to the right shows him setting off to work in the 1930s.
The picture on the left below shows my Great Grandparents, Albert and Maricia Maria (nee Sewwll) all dressed up, on holiday in Margate.
Below and to the right, is an early photo of the St. John’s ambulance group in Dorchester, probably taken at the T.A. Centre near the Barracks.
My Grandfather gave the organisation 50 years service after founding the branch with some others.
Hope you enjoyed looking at these old photographs, as much as I have sharing them with you.
