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Chapter 2
Farmers and Tradesmen

There were two dominant farmers in Hillesley and while there were others whose land impinged upon our boundaries, agriculture to us really meant what was going on at Mr. Cornock's Hillesley Farm and Farmer Alway's Church Farm.
The Cornock family had been in the village for a long time. The farm was much bigger then, extending to the land on the Hill and embracing Burial Croft and Town Meadow. Because of the Cornock's position as an old and respected family two of the sons left home taking influence and money with them. John became a very well known cattle dealer in the Berkeley Vale and Walter a corn merchant in Gloucester. The youngest, Charles, remained to live in some style as a gentleman farmer. Very popular with the ladies, he never married and his home was kept very effectively by a Miss Perry. Farming in the old Cotswold tradition he kept a large flock of sheep which were hurdled on the hill. On most mornings his three teams could be seen on their long slow journey up the Old Road for their stint of field work. Carter Hemmings sat sideways on one of the leading two, John Trotman on the next and Joe Richards on the third. Poor Mr. Cornock, the time came when he no longer walked jauntily to church or drove his pony trap to Sodbury where he was Chairman of Guardians. He suddenly faded when he was fifty and died of cancer.
Farmer Alway had a large family. He did his farming well but in a different style to Mr. Cornock -more cows and less plough land. His horses having little work looked well under the care of Harry Smart. The Church Farm cows too always looked well. They were looked after by Henry Sims whose descendants are still numerous in the village.
All Mr. Alway's sons were great cricketers. Dan, the youngest, had a straight knee as the result of a tubercular infection, and because, or in spite of this he became a demon bowler - the terror of all visiting teams.
On the fringe of the village were the Robinson's, often referred to as the 'King' or the 'Prince of Wales'. This was because Edward, as a farmer in the Duke's country, was invited to Badminton on the historic occasion when Edward VIIth visited the ducal seat. On his return he was asked by the curious villagers what the King looked like, "Just about such a man as myself" Farmer Robinson replied, and so the nicknames stuck. The Robinson's were talented in handling young horses. When he was nearing seventy Edward would ride a smart cob to market sitting as a man of thirty.
Mr. Eber Stinchcombe was in the wood trade. He kept two good horses and hauled the timber from the Alderley woods into the estate sawmill at Broadbridge. He also cut wood and made hurdles, sold pea and bean sticks and made periodic journeys to Vick's toy factory at Uley with assorted lengths for wood 'turning'. Another journey he sometimes made was to 'Walker's Walking Sticks' at Nailsworth.
Eber, or 'Uncle Eber' as we always called him, loved machinery and was the first man to install a petrol engine for sawing logs. He was a talented musician and for very many years he played the organ at the Chapel. Uncle Eber was a great help in later years when Hillesley formed a Choral Society which competed annually at the Stinchcombe Hill Musical Festival. He taught us some of the rudiments of choral singing. At the Festival we were subjected to an unaccompanied sight reading test. The male section of choir would have been hopelessly lost if Mr. Stinchcombe had not been there to give us a strong lead.
No pre-war village was complete without a thatcher and Hillesley's craftsman was George Werrett who lived at Puddle Dock. Sturdily independent, strong for Church and State as represented by the Tory Party, he worked for Chapel people and Liberals with great condescension. When he wasn't thatching he was hedging or gardening and on every market day at Charfield he could be found 'putting in' or stalling the horses of the farmers who attended the sale. For very many years he was grave digger and sexton at the Church and altogether an important citizen.
We boasted an inventor and engineer in the person of Mr. Penley Werrett, brother to Mr. Arthur Werrett of the building firm. Living at what is now the garage he patented the 'New Century' acetylene generator and from this he developed lighting systems which he installed over a wide area.
Many large houses in the Forest of Dean and other remote parts were lighted by Mr. Werrett's generators. Because of his enterprise Hillesley became one of the first villages to have a public lighting system. His Maxwell car was a minor sensation when he acquired it, and the iron foundry he created in Back Lane was another of his innovations. His son Roy was equally clever, his first motor-cycle was built as an original model, many of its constituent parts were created in the Hillesley engineering shop.
There were millers aplenty on the Kilcot stream. John Gunter, who lived at what is now Mr. Thompson's farm, had ceased farm milling but I can remember the old miller living in the tiny cottage there. George Curtis was milling grist at Medlam's Mill until 1914, while 'Old Hazel' at New Mills was still talked about when I was a boy. The mill wheel was blown up by dynamite while I was still at school and I remember listening for the big bang. We were told fearsome tales of 'Old Hazel'. Fearing neither God nor Devil he drank so heavily that he grew 'ever so many noses' and in spite of all this he amassed a fortune.
Further down stream at Hillesley Mill the Hopkins family had been grinding corn for many years. The Hopkins Mill had a special significance for the boys of Hillesley because in the backend of every year great loads of cider apples would be brought to the mill from surrounding farms. If we were lucky we could sometimes sneak in to watch the rich brown juice running from the press. Sometimes a good-humoured customer would give us a drink of the new cider from a horn cup, a draught as near like nectar as we had ever tasted. Nearly every farm from 'under the hill' had its cider orchard and the resultant product was dispensed to farm staff and casual callers throughout the year. The coming of the Wickwar cider factory started the custom of selling the apples to the factory. Few of the old trees remain.
My cousin Jesse Chappell carried on the corn business founded by his father but he did his grinding at Walk Mills, Kingswood. Mr. Dan Cooper, who I believe learned the art of milling at John Gunter's at Kilcott, cycled for many years to do the grinding at Kingswood. The horses which distributed the barley meal for the cottager's pigs, the crushed oats and bran for the local horses, were stabled at Hillesley and looked after by Fred Drew, a well-remembered man of the village.
My father built the house now known as Crossways and there carried on the butcher's business founded by his grandfather. There were two bakers, John Purnell at what is now the Coates business, and Mrs. Betty Brown at the old Manor. When I was about five years old, John Purnell with one of the Alway sons (Ben) sought new opportunities in Canada. I can just remember them coming into our shop to wish my father goodbye. John Purnell's business was then taken over by Mr. Charles Coates's father, W. J.
With the business went Tom Lyons who was Mrs. William Coates brother. Tom I remember well. He was popular with everybody, young and old. He delivered the bread with the aid of 'Kit', a pretty brown mare. My grandmother lived then at the Cottage and when I was passing to visit her, Tom would often let me go into Kit's stable to see the display of cigarette cards tacked all round the walls. There were 'British Birds' and 'Butterflies', lovely actresses and jolly comedians but best of all were the 'Famous British Racehorses'. There were 'Blink-Bonny' and 'Eclipse', 'Rock Sand' and 'The Tetrarch', scintillating stars of the Turf, and under these elegant creatures was honest little Kit, patiently munching her oats.
Poor Tom, he was one of the first to volunteer when war broke out. It was at the Battle of the Maine, I think, that he died for King and Country. It was a sad day for all the village when news of his death reached us.
Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, assisted by Edward Hopkins and Bill Smart, carried on the business started by her husband Charles.
We were told that when she married, Mrs. Brown looked at the first week's wages her young husband brought home. She said, "This won't do Charles - you can't keep two on that". Charles, who had had his usual pints during the week, saw the light and took the pledge. He was soon able to start in business for himself. He started the Band of Hope at the Chapel and was a leader there for many years. His work is commemorated on a tablet in the Chapel.
Mrs. Brown's faithful assistants served her through a long widowhood. Many villagers will remember them. Edward Hopkins fell in love with Jinnie, daughter of George Curtis. Mrs. Brown had developed a business sideline in buying butter and eggs locally and then supplying shops in Stroud with such produce. On the days when Edward Hopkins did the Stroud journey, Mrs. Brown's old brown horse enjoyed a long, long rest while his driver paid court to the dark-eyed Jinnie at the Mill.
No village was complete without its clockmaker. We had ours in the shape of a Mr. Yorke who lived in a Back Lane cottage long since levelled with the ground. He called himself a 'horologist' and, pushing an ancient tricycle (never saw him ride it), he went about the district repairing and, I suppose, selling clocks. Tall and gaunt, dressed in rusty black with long flapping coat-tails, he was a rather frightening figure. We were always told that there was no harm in him - he was really a gentleman who had been 'crossed in love'. This was the reason given to explain any man's unnaturally long bachelorhood.
My earliest memory of the Post Office is that of when it was kept by a Miss Thomas at the little cottage next to the school house. When she had remained single until middle-age, a Mr. Pitt arrived from regions beyond and carried her off to South Wales as his bride. The care of Hillesley's communications then passed into the hands of Enoch Davis and the Post Office was transferred to his shop where it has remained ever since then. Many will remember Mr. Davis who delivered mail and telegrams round the village for many years, always at the same deliberate pace. Nobody ever saw him in a hurry and as he was very short-sighted, he held each letter close to his nose in order to decipher the address. If it was a postcard he knew its content, if a letter he guessed from whom or whence it had come. Deliberate, fully conscious of his position as postmaster, he could be irritating to those in a hurry but his trustworthy attention to every detail of Post Office rules, earned him a great deal of respect. He married for his second wife a very kindly lady whom many will remember with affection. She had nieces of the name of Jewell, one of whom, Cissy, came to help in the Post Office.
She was petite, sparkling and pretty and the Hillesley young men flocked to the Post Office to buy stamps. Her aunt, probably feeling responsibility for her pretty niece's welfare, sent her home and her sister Daisy came instead. Although she was very nice, and had, we were told, lovely brown hair 'that she could sit on', Daisy remained Miss Jewell.
Enoch Davis had a brother Giles and sister Hannah who lived at the house now owned by Mr. Bernard Werrett. There Giles kept the large garden in immaculate order and daily walked to the Alderley Estate saw mills. Winter and summer, wet or dry, he was never without his big umbrella, which from its original black had long since faded to a dingy green. Quiet, shy, and almost a recluse, Giles had hidden depths of character only revealed at our Chapel. A very regular attendant on Sundays and the weekly meeting, I remember hearing him 'engage in prayer' with ease and sincerity.
Hannah, in her younger days, had been dairy-maid on a large cheese-making farm. Cheese making was a well-paid job and Hannah was reputed to have a 'long stocking'. In her retirement she made a little extra selling sweets. In long glass jars, those long sticks of liquorice, the great pink gob stoppers, the even bigger striped peppermint balls, tantalised us as we passed on our way to school. At Hannah's you were passing rich with a half-penny in your pocket; a farthing for a thick stick of liquorice, another for one of the big pink sweets, which, after hours of sucking, would yield at the end a glorious sherbet centre. The name of the owner of the blacksmith's shop across the road from Hannah's sweet shop was also Davis, but I do not think there was any connection between the families.
A very busy and important place in my young days, the business was in the hands of Jesse Davis. He had taken it over from his Uncle William who had conducted it for many years before.
The old man lived near and he still kept a watchful eye on the operations of the forge. White haired, with piercing black eyes, leaning on a long forked hawthorn, he was often at the forge door. I expect he was often critical of the younger generation, and Nat and Joe, who were then starting at the anvil, were often resentful of the old man's reminiscences. He had been apprenticed at Beverstone and often told us, "got there at six every morning for 'fower' (four) year - and never five minutes late".
Old William must have been a good craftsman and a far-seeing business man for he was one of the first local blacksmiths to get an agency for the new horse mowing machines when they came to replace the scythe. Every spring the road outside the forge was lined with machines awaiting their annual overhaul. I do not know whether scythes were ever hammered out at the Hillesley forge but I remember using bill-hooks and sickles with the name 'William Davis' stamped in the metal.
The forge was always a magnet to us as we went to and from school. The smell of the sizzling hoof as the red hot shoe was pressed to fit against it, the wonder of seeing the long sharp nails driven so skilfully as to avoid the 'quick', the occasional excitement of seeing a colt shod for the first time, all these things we crowded round the door to smell and see. Sometimes, in the yard behind the forge, they would be 'bonding'. This was the placing of the heavy iron rims on wagon wheels. The wheel with its oak and ash sections assembled by the carpenter, had to come to the blacksmith's for its final preparation for the road. The tyre or rim, often nearly half-an-inch thick, was heated nearly red hot, then several men holding it with tongs would lower it on to the waiting wheel. For a second it would smoke and burn, then buckets of water were thrown on in what seemed frenzied haste and the quick cooling and subsequent contraction would make the rim hold tightly for many miles of travelling.
Sometimes we crowded too closely and old William's patience would be exhausted, "Bagger 'ee you boys, get off to school and try and learn summat!" He would wave his long stick most threateningly but we knew his bark was far worse than his bite.
At Yew Tree house across the road from the forge was the wheelwright and carpenter. This business was run by my uncle John Lewis Chappell. His real business was the upkeep of carriages and traps but he also built the Bungalow at Kilcott and the Crossways house for my father. Mr. Hannam Clarke, a wealthy solicitor from Gloucester, bought the old mill when the Curtis family ceased milling there. My uncle had just started business in Hillesley and I think Mr. Hannam Clarke gave him the job of building the Bungalow as a means of encouraging him. The passing of the carriage and horse age affected the wheelwright's business and when my uncle died in 1918, a victim of the flu epidemic, shining carriages no longer stood in the old paint shop.
There was in Hillesley a professional photographer. He was Mr. Arthur Werrett's younger brother, always known as 'Eddie'. He had a display board in the garden of the house where Mr. Werrett lives now which contained examples of his art. I have a photograph of myself and two sisters taken as children against a background of potted ferns and palms such as all the best Edwardian photographers used. I expect many of his studio likenesses are to be found in Hillesley homes today.
The big houses at Alderley and our own 'House' at Hillesley each had one or more gardeners. Our own horticulturist, who was responsible for Captain Forrestier-Walker's flowers and vegetables, was a Mr. Jim Smith. He lived where Miss Jotcham does now. Besides being a good gardener he was a musician. Conductor of the Kingswood Abbey Band, he was also our choirmaster at the Chapel and on Anniversary days his was a most important part in that great day's proceedings.
How we looked forward to that day in June when nearly every girl had a new summer dress and if the boys could not sport a new suit, at least they had very clean faces and a buttonhole of, if possible, lilies-of-the-valley from a special spot in Splatt's Wood. I wonder if they grow there now?
We sang our songs and gave our recitations under the critical eyes of our parents and many, many visitors from the chapels round the district. The Smith family, Charlie and Julia, Tom and Gladys, could all read music. The younger, less musically advanced had 'words only' copies from which to sing, and I remember with what awe and respect we looked upon those clever people who knew all the mysteries of 'tonic sol-fa' and what they called the 'old notation'. We had new music for each anniversary. Somewhere there were people composing new words and new music for Sunday School children all over the country. After the great day we never sang the songs again. What happened to the used copies I never knew but I know that we would have been very disgusted if we had ever been asked to sing from old and worn leaflets the following year. I expect as many as sixty singers would assemble for practice. It was a tradition that some of the older Church members should stiffen our youthful voices for the great occasion of Anniversary so that Mr. Smith had a sizeable choir over which to wave his baton.
The B.B.C. had not then arrived to standardise our accents and every village had its own particular shade of expression. If a stranger came into our village we listened to his speech "that's Hawkesbury" or "that's Kingswood" we would say.
Mr. Jim Smith had a dialect which I suppose he had brought with him from his native Uley. Mounting his box, baton in hand, he would survey us to see that no sweets were being sucked and no unseemly giggles distorted our faces, then, satisfied, he would say, "Stawnd ep." "Let's have a bit of light and shade."
The existence of the big houses and the couragement the various owners gave to their gardeners had provided the basis for a flower show which had been held for long before I can remember. It had been declining for some years and the outbreak of war finished it, but when I remember it was still a very exciting date in the village calendar. I think it must have been in 1912 when John Cole's steam roundabouts came for the last time. There was a great air of excitement as the great triumphal arch was erected in the Street and big branches of box and fir were planted in all the green spaces. At one time the show was staged where the annual fete is held now but the one I remember was held where the 'Deans s' council houses now stand.
The show tackle was coming from Kingswood, drawn by John Cole's gaily painted engine. No dodgems of course, but the horses, swings and switchback may be still in use somewhere in the country. We were watching from the top of Hillesley Hill long before the time of arrival and we went further and further down the Kingswood Lane to look for sight or sound of the coming steam-cade. Prostrating ourselves on the muddy road we laid our ears to the ground to catch those vibrations which were supposed to travel along the ground surface, and at last the great spectacle arrived and Hillesley had one more day of glorious excitement.
I was never allowed to go to the show at night, 'a lot of rough men would be there' I was told, but there was a visit in the afternoon to see the marvellous flowers and vegetables and at night I could lie in bed and listen to the great steam organ. I wonder if that one still plays somewhere in some steam collection?
Another important craft in the countryside was that of the stone-breaker. The smaller roads such as Kilcott Lane were administered, I believe, by the Parish Council or the four men who constituted the Parish Overseers. The stone for these roads was dug almost on site as the old quarries still to be seen in the local hills indicate. The main roads such as from Kingswood to Hillesley were the responsibility of the old Board of Guardians, later to become the Sodbury District Council. The methods of Macadam were in general use with large stones laid first, then smaller, and the whole operation finished off by the steamroller gang.
The Council developed its own quarries at Yate Rocks and the Sodbury family of Short's had the contract to take the big blocks of hard limestone to wherever they were needed throughout the district. The heaps of stone were stacked at strategic places and were then let at so much a yard for breaking into smaller sizes. The stone-breakers were men who never seemed to have a regular job. Perhaps they preferred employment where they could come or go as they pleased. We saw such men as Harry, or 'Pont', Heaven the wooden-legged man, eyes protected with shields of brass gauze, their only tools a few assorted hammers. These hammers were of curious wedge shape, their handles of whippy ash or hazel. With a curious, laconic ease these stone-breakers used the spring of the half green wood to crack the hard blue stones. One day we would see a great stack of big blocks, a small figure at one end with a tiny pile of small stones beside him. Another day not long after we would see a mighty heap of small stones cracked to a size amazingly uniform, with only a little patch of burned earth where the stone-breaker had boiled his kettle. He would be gone further to patiently use those little hammers on another unbroken heap.