Chapter 7
Village Love

I was too young to notice very much of the romances which were no doubt developing round me in the village. I remember frequently seeing freshly cut entwined initials in the beech and oak trees which told us that lovers had passed that way. People 'walked out' then and on a fine Saturday or Sunday evening our lanes would be pleasantly populated with happy lovers. Somehow the road to Kingswood was never popular. Perhaps it was because a number of young people used it on their daily journey to Tubbs. Lewis Mills. Kilcott Lane, the Upton Road, especially the Old Road which then had a good surface, and the lane to Hawkesbury were the lover's favourites.
Courtships were much longer and the marriage age much higher. Hire purchase of furniture, if such facilities existed, was a practice frowned upon by thrifty country couples. Girls remained in service and young men worked long years until they had saved enough for a 'good start'.
Perhaps there were sometimes hasty marriages and occasionally there were whispers of some poor girl 'in trouble' but such cases were the exception rather than the rule~ The stigma of bastardy was much worse and a child would carry the label all its life.
The local 'big houses' were an important factor in bringing romance into the village life. The Grange at Alderley where Mrs. Hylton Greene kept a staff of servants, the Manor House, General Burns at Mount House and of course our 'House' at Hillesley, all played their part in bringing attractive girls into the district. Mothers encouraged their sons to marry a bride from a "good" house where she would have had a thorough training in household skills. An elegant ladies maid, a buxom cook or even a 'tweeny' could be sure of catching the eye of some rural swain.
The system worked in reverse order inasmuch as there was a constant outflow of village girls into the cities of Bath and Bristol. Prosperous city tradesmen, when they moved out to the new suburbia's of Cotham and Redland, Stoke Bishop and Clifton, were always on the look-out for a nice country girl who could be trained by their wives to suit their new style of living.
Farmer's daughters did not go into service. They often went to the towns as 'helps' in tradesmen's houses where they lived with the family and were called 'Miss'. Many of these girls found husbands in the city and in later years would bring their children to see the village where their mother had spent her girlhood.
I remember one marriage in the village which had a very unhappy ending. Washing for other people was a way in which several respectable women earned a living. One of them was a little, tidy lady who lived in one of the two cottages next to the old Manor. She was a model of thrift and cleanliness and had besides, the distinction of having 'buried three husbands'. The prospect of her getting a fourth was a source of much good-humoured speculation. My father always promised a leg of mutton for the nuptial feast should the happy event ever materialise.
An outwardly jolly and genial man arrived in Hillesley in the person of a Mr. Coles. He must have been one of the last of the London horse cabmen in his working life. Full of Cockney bon-homie, he sang songs about 'My Old Grey Mare and I' and soon became a popular figure, not only in the village generally but particularly to the little widow, Jinnie Grimes. In no time Mr. Coles hung up his hat in Jinnie's clean little home, but alas, he soon began to show that his outward show of geniality hid an overbearing bully underneath. I was as insensitive as most boys but even I was saddened when I visited their home afterwards.
The new Mrs. Coles, always a little person, had visibly grown smaller and when her husband shouted at her she visibly shrunk in fear. She died soon after and Mr. Coles took his songs and his jokes back to London.
The Band of Hope movement was at its most successful time in those years. Every village and town had its society and the meetings were of a much more varied character than they had originally been. Amateur dramatics in the form of temperance sketches were popular, the social side of the organisation had developed greatly, and I expect it provided a kind of safety valve where talented young people could stretch themselves outside the rigid discipline of the Church. Various parties visited amongst the towns and villages and I expect many people met and fell in love through this interchange of personalities.
I think my father may have been attracted to my mother through these meetings and in spite of some difference in their upbringing they eventually married. My mother came from the Gunter family which seventy years ago was still fairly numerous in the district. Joseph Gunter farmed at Lovett's Wood, Thomas at Upper Kilcott, while John farmed at Lower Kilcott and ran the corn mill there. Only Thomas, my grandfather, married. The Gunter's sent their daughters to boarding schools and although declining in fortune they still considered themselves to be of good yeoman stock.
My father was then struggling to carry on the butcher's business which his grandfather had founded many years previously. Great-grandfather became a bankrupt and father's prospects could not have been very rosy. He was not welcomed by old Thomas Gunter as a suitor for his daughter's hand but they did get married and were very happy until my mother died leaving four children under four years old.
The Grist family succeeded Uncle Joseph Gunter at Lovetts Wood and the coming of such a family - seven daughters and two sons-must have caused a flutter in the hearts of the young men of the chapel, especially when it became known that the new farmer was a non-conformist and that his family, daughters and all, would attend the village Bethel.
The outcome of this happening was that three of my father's brothers married three Miss Grist's, and my father, some years after my Mother's death, married a fourth. She was Miss Esther Grist and very courageously she became a mother to myself and my two sisters. It was a very happy marriage and we loved our new mother as much as she loved us.