CHAPTER 12

VILLAGE AFFAIRS

        About the time I started at the village school, when I was five, Mrs. Tresidder arrived, the new head teacher. She devoted herself to the village, becoming Sunday school teacher, church organist and choir mistress. She was a widow with two children; a keen botanist, she would frequently take a crowd of children out on Saturdays for nature walks and picnics. We had a nature table at school filled with dozens of paste pots, each with specimen flowers, or with seeds in the autumn. They each had a card with the Latin name of the plant and its order as well as the more familiar name. Each child also kept a nature diary. In retrospect I can see that she was very up to date with all her teaching methods.

        The large schoolroom held most of us, the small classroom being rather cold and dismal, and at that time there were seldom more than two dozen children between the ages of five and eleven. The infants were taught by a pupil teacher. In the winter there was an open coal fire, and a large iron stove in one corner; both were well protected by guards which in winter frequently had coats, socks and other items put to dry, some of the children having to walk a mile or more. The windows were high and all that could be seen were birds and trees, although we could hear the horses and carts coming and going at the farm next door. In the summer the room was light and airy with doors and windows open. Outside were two separate playgrounds for boys and girls, although in practice we often played together - the boys' playground behind the school was overhung by trees and damp. Each had their own earth closet, and in the girls' playground was a washhouse with an enamel bowl for washing hands, and a pump which creaked and groaned before ejecting rusty water.

        The school day started with worship and before and after we went home to dinner we sang graces. Not all the children could get home; some brought sandwiches, or had aunties or grandparents near. We had a sports day during the summer but the big event of the year was the school concert. After the summer holidays we began learning songs, recitations and a play. As Christmas drew nearer, handicraft lessons were given over to making paper garlands and to making and mending tinsel wands or fairy wings -because there were always fairies! The boys had jackets and trousers of old sheets, one year trimmed with pompoms as pierrot clowns, trimmed up some other way the next year, and later the whole lot into a tub of green dye to turn the boys into elves! There was always a patriotic song to finish, with much red, white and blue bunting and flag-waving. On the day a stage filled a quarter of the big room, with smart black and white curtains dropping as background, and handsome brocade stage curtains. Seating was provided by every

home sending well-dusted chairs (with names chalked underneath). The more comfortable chairs were at the front for the party from the Bury. When the Bevan family were living there the adult sons introduced some rather more syncopated rhythm from the London shows in an item or two! One year the children did a very lively offering of 'The Bells are Ringing For Me and My Girl' for Mr. Johnny and his bride-to-be, with a tiny bride and bridegroom, and arches of half-hoops embellished with paper roses. The bride was played by a very fair little boy, there being no little girl of the right size. At the end the bouquet was presented by a very bashful little bridegroom to the real life bride.

        After the great day of the school concert and Christmas itself we could still look forward to the School treat. This was a tea with paste sandwiches, buns, cakes and jellies for all the village children. There was a huge decorated Christmas tree cut from the Bury grounds, and a visit from two elderly Heathcote ladies then living in Stevenage. Each child had a poke of sweets, an apple and an orange to take home. After tea we played games like Blind Man's Buff, Poor Pussy, Spinning the Trencher, Hunt the Thimble and Oranges and Lemons; danced a rather bashful Sir Roger de Coverley and perhaps had a magic lantern show.

        When we were eleven we had to go to Knebworth or Aston schools. I was the first child to go to Knebworth from Shephall. It was a newer, bigger school than Aston, and for some years was a school undergoing an experiment in advanced education. Entry to the advanced class was by examination, but most of the Shephall children entered on merit after a couple of terms, a fine tribute to our village school teacher. If parents could afford to keep the child at school he or she would stay till they were 16, the extra subjects taken being shorthand, French and bookkeeping. After our sheltered existence a school of over 400 children in 8 classrooms was rather frightening at first, and we walked there and back in all weathers, just a lucky few having cycles.

        After school we would play on the green, hide and seek among the great elms. As summer came there was a ritual of tops and whips, skipping ropes, hoops and ball games. We played the old games like In and Out the Windows, I Sent a Letter to my Love, Nuts in May, Sheep, Sheep Come Home, The Farmer's in his Dell, and many more passed from generation to generation. We progressed through the year from snowballing to picking primroses, bluebells, kingcups and sticky horse-chestnuts. In the spring we went bird nesting, took our jam jars to catch tadpoles, fished for tiddlers in the ponds. In the autumn we picked blackberries and crabapples, or came home with dandelions, cowslips or sloes for wine. Some of the boys kept rabbits, so there was a continuous search for hogweed and dandelion leaves.

        Because there were so few children we tended to do things together outside school. Only the inability of the very young to keep up with the older ones ever separated us, although many a pushchair with a tiny tot was pushed around by an older brother or sister, trundled down cart tracks and heaved over gates and stiles. But there was an odd thing -while we went anywhere on Shephall Green farmlands we were a little more circumspect when exploring Half Hyde lands, or the fields close to Aston; we kept to the paths and generally minded our Ps and Qs. I wonder if it was something reflected from our elders, a kind of folk memory from the time when there was a second manor with its own jurisdiction, and where it was not wise to stray. All the same, we were afraid of no-one, knowing only kindness. The policeman and gamekeepers were our friends, although to be obeyed; indeed, any grown up was to be respected. Mothers would sometimes tell us we were not to go far; perhaps a tramp had been seen about. Most of the travelling folk were known and people would buy pegs or haberdashery from the gypsies, and perhaps give them clothing. Quite a lot of men were on the road in the twenties, the aftermath of the war. They would ask for hot water to make a can of tea, and often from an already meagre larder a piece of bread and cheese would be found for them. A few were lazy or old, others just unable to settle down; a lot looking for work.

        We spent time with the farmers at haymaking and harvest. There was tea and sandwiches to be taken to fathers and brothers too busy to get home for meals. Not thermos flasks; tea would be in tin or enamel cans, or glass bottles. We would take our picnic too; and another day when the farmer had finished cutting we could glean the ears of corn which had escaped the binder for our own chickens. We watched the corn being threshed, the cows being milked; sometimes we were allowed to return the cows to their meadows. The farmer's wife might let us collect the eggs or feed the hens. Sometimes there were baby chicks or ducklings. We would peep into the barns, taste the sticky molasses or chew the sweet locust beans which were fed to the cattle. We gave the bull a wide berth but loved to sit on the fence of the pig sty, watching the indescribably funny pigs.

        One evening when the harvest was being brought in and the children were enjoying the halfhour before bedtime, playing a last game in the road near their own houses, there was a sudden commotion heard from away in the fields. We heard shouts and the pounding of hooves. 'Out of the way, out of the way!' was the cry and we retreated quickly behind our garden gates. One of the great cart horses, loosened from its shafts and either overcome by the hot day in the sun, or badly bitten by insects, came at full gallop over the fields and down the lane. 'Out of the way, out of the way!' was the cry again as the farmer's teenage son, riding bareback, strove to control the poor animal as it thundered down the green, at last coming to a stop as he managed to turn it into the pond at the lower end of the village.

        Young and old often sang as they went about their work. At quite an early age the boys were expected to be able to whistle. Family singsongs lacking any conventional instrument could be accompanied by a couple of their number playing on combs; and because they were cheap to buy, most of the men and boys could play mouth-organs. Some people had a wireless set, and boxes of county library books came to the village, changed every three or four months.

        The village band had gone; so had the football team, probably never re-formed after the Great War. There was still a cricket team which played in Shephall Bury Park. The team travelled to away matches in a canvas-topped van which also made a weekly trip to Hitchin for the market. A rota of ladies prepared tea and made sandwiches on Saturdays when the team played at home. During the winter there would be two or three whist drives, a smoking concert, and during the summer a fete at Shephall Bury. There was a cinema in Stevenage which was courting territory for the young people. A few buses each day came from North London to Hitchin, passing the Roebuck Inn at Broadwater, but it was more usual to walk or bike to Stevenage - people walked or cycled quite long distances.

        Sometimes the church bell would toll to tell the village that someone had died; a broken pattern at first, 3 x 3 strokes for a man, 3 x 2 for a woman; then the steady tolling to indicate the age. Most of the village would attend the funeral, and curtains would be drawn over the windows at every house. Anyone meeting the hearse would stand still as it passed, head bowed.

        The children were expected to address all adults by their titles; Christian names were not allowed. The girls often had pet names within their families, generally diminutives, but nicknames were common for the boys and men. Tinker, Nipper, Tubby, Titchie and Totty were affectionate names acquired in childhood. There was a grandfather known as Pudgie; he had no son so the name jumped to his grandson, who was known as Young Pudgie. There was a Brindle, a Wag and a Kelly. 'Christmas' may have derived from a birth date, but why was his brother known as Sausage?

        It was the custom to mark Empire Day by the wearing of a buttonhole of red, white and blue flowers; white daisies and blue forget-me-nots were easy to find in May, but red was always a problem; we usually had to compromise with a bit of reddy-brown wallflower. On Oakapple Day we were off to the woods for either the soft green or the hard brown oakapples. There was no tradition of Maypole dancing, but the children always garlanded themselves with hawthorn blossoms, flowers considered unlucky to bring indoors. An elderly man who lived on the green would sing us the Hertfordshire Maysong.

        We were sorry when the long summer holidays came to an end, but soon it would be time for the Fair, the centuries-old High Street Fair in Stevenage, another once-a-year event. Apart from all the fun, most housewives would replace bits of china, supposedly more cheaply than at a local shop. School hours were adjusted so that we were out of school by 3 o'clock. Mothers and children would hurry down the meadows to catch the bus at Broadwater. After our quiet village life it was all very noisy, and as night fell, brilliantly lit with naphtha flares. We would enjoy some of the special rides for children and the sedate gondolas. The older boys and girls would be more adventurous and ride the big horses, or be shaken on the cake-walk, and even make the steep descent outside the penny on the mat or helter-skelter. Later after work, our fathers would join us and we would go round again. We would watch the Rock King pulling and twisting his sugar to make rock, and gaze with fascination outside booths containing bearded ladies and animals with two heads. We would wait by the boxing booth to see if any local men were going to take on the boxer flexing his muscles at the entrance, or more to our liking would be the weight machine a yard or two away. There was a friendly rivalry between the villages to find a man who could wield the great hammer and send up the gauge to ring the bell at the top of the post. People came to the fair from miles around and there would be greetings and meetings with relations and friends. As there would be a long wait for buses we walked home across the fields, the sleeping cattle hardly stirring as we passed.

        The Fair over, soon it would be Bonfire Night. The Revd. John Jones might have restricted the building of bonfires a century and a half ago, but that had all been forgotten. Towards the end of the summer holidays the children started collecting fallen branches and anything that would burn, and for two months the bonfire steadily grew at the narrow end of the green. If the edifice wasn't well built, nearer the night fathers and elder brothers would reassemble the materials. Families with young children would have a small box of fireworks and light them in their own gardens, but practically the whole village made its way to the bonfire at some time during the evening. It was wonderfully exciting watching the great orange flames leaping to the sky, and see the boughs crack and slip into the glowing heart, sending showers of golden sparks flying. The whole scene was made more dramatic by the darkness around, broken only by the mellow glow at the cottage windows and an open door or two where stood an elderly person, unable to venture far but reluctant to miss the fun, recapturing the essence of past bonfire nights.

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