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CHAPTER 13 THE LAST CHAPTER So do our moments hasten to their end ... and Time that gave doth now his gift confound, Shakespeare The occupants of the Bury kept an eye on village affairs. They chaired parish meetings, supported the cricket club, gave raffle prizes and provided a venue for sports and fetes They were all kindly employers. The Upstairs Downstairs stories are commonplace now; after all, it was a way of life for thousands of people, either as ups or downs. Both indoor and outdoor employees, senior staff especially, did enjoy a particular relationship with their masters, each party observing the understood boundaries. Gardeners were very much in charge of their gardens. They were also in and out of the house daily, not only with fruit and vegetables at the cook's request, but providing floral arrangements throughout the house. Male staff would be asked to act as beaters if there was a shooting party, or be around to give a hand to the grooms if the hunt met at the Bury or on the green, or at the Roebuck (which was how my father once held a horse for the Prince of Wales). When there was a race meeting at Newmarket a couple of men were often invited to travel with the houseparty for a day out, if there were spare seats in the cars.
The hunt meets on the Green When the family was away Father would sometimes take us with him when he made his rounds of the gardens and greenhouses. In the summer he would have to water plants and spray the floors of the greenhouses to increase the humidity. During the winter he made a visit as late as ten o'clock to stoke boilers to last through the night. As a small child I worried that one night he would fall into the pond he had to pass. In the gardens were hothouses for grapes and melons, a peach case, cold houses for tomatoes and cucumbers, houses for pot plants and ferns and in the depth of winter a frame with the most beautiful deep purple violets. There was a kitchen garden and fruit trees, long herbaceous borders and pergolas; there were flowers for cutting and flowers in pots, cyclamen, cinerarias, schizanthus and so on. We would leave this miniature Kew and stroll round the front of the house. Here there were rose beds and green lawns, and gravel paths which eventually led us back to the kitchen quarters, where we would stop for a cup of tea and an exchange of news with cook.
The herbaceous border c. 1900 As schoolgirls my sister and I delighted in the lovely clothes which were passed on to the gardener's family, there being two girls about our ages at the house. Alas, as we became young teens we developed into the typical sturdy youngsters of our kind, while they turned into slim young ladies doing the London season and being presented at Court. Just before the war Shephall Bury was sold and the family moved. Nevertheless, during the war by chance we sometimes met, all four of us in uniform, as we waited for buses in Bedford bus station, and we would chat for a while, they always eager to hear news of Shephall, our common childhood home. In the early thirties it was still exciting to see an aeroplane, and airships were being built not many miles away at Cardington. The R101 came over on training flights, and if it appeared while we were in school it was accepted that someone could knock on the door and the children would rush up to the meadow where there was an unobscured view. How upset we all were when it crashed on its maiden flight! (Later in my life I spent five years in the shadow of those giant hangars, and celebrated VJ Day in one of them.) A happier memory is of the time when Reynoldstown won the Grand National; the jockey was the nephew of the Grenville-Gavins at the Bury and the whole village had backed him, if only at a shilling each way! The Silver Jubilee in 1935 was celebrated with a tea, and our oldest resident, with an elderly Miss Evelyn Heathcote, planted the commemorative oak tree on the green.
The Silver Jubilee oak There was a christening in the church at which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, came to officiate; all the village was invited to the church and the children given seats so that even the youngest could see. And there was the time we found ourselves in a book. Sir Arnold Wilson, our MP toured his constituency in 1933/4 in a series of walks. He did not identify his villages, but we remember my mother passing a hymn book to the stranger who shared our service that evening: 'it was one of those rare clear evenings when every beauty is heightened by lengthening shadows; the great elms beloved of Constable stood in rows round the village green; at one corner stood the little church, almost half full, although there were not over thirty present. The mixed choir did justice to the schoolmistress at the organ; the lessons were finely read by her son...' By the '30s people were seeking employment outside the village. The farms becoming mechanised required fewer men, and there was more money to be earned in building and factories. Girls no longer wanted to go into service, but hoped to find jobs in shops or offices. Not that there was much work. The shops in Stevenage were mostly owner-occupied and few employed anyone outside their own families. I found a job in Hitchin eventually. The hours should have been 8.30a.m.to 6.30p.m., but there was no bus to get me there till 8.45 a.m. and no bus home till 7.40 p.m.
The village waits: this picture was taken for the surveyors A kindly manager allowed me to adjust lunch and tea breaks to catch a bus at 6 p.m., although on Saturdays later opening hours meant I didn't get home till 9.30 p.m. Just one early closing day a week left little time for leisure activities, but with the enthusiasm of youth we played tennis; the boys had cricket and football and we went to their matches. There were pictures and dances in Stevenage, and for two or three years we had a girls' club. Most homes now had a wireless. Stand pipes for water came, and some could afford to have water piped into their houses. Electricity came too, but we never had a gas supply. Conditions at work were improving, and the fortnight's holiday became normal, but not yet the seaside holiday. Making use of improved travel services people took days out or made more frequent visits to relatives. Charabanc trips to the seaside or to the newly opened Whipsnade Zoo ran locally. But as the thirties drew to their close the tragedy of the Second World War overtook us. The village was small; the many bombs which fell in our fields left us unscathed, but there were other scars. My generation grew up in a few short weeks. Still teenagers in 1939, by 1946 when the demobilisation came we were looking for jobs, and marriage and homes. That year in an office in Whitehall, miles away from Shephall, a rubber stamp came down on a document, the New Towns Act. It was the beginning of the end. "We will preserve the village", they said, and they meant it ... and they tried. But how can a village be preserved in the middle of a New Town in 20th century England? Only between the covers of a book, before Shephall finally slips through that cranny of time, into the deeper oblivion... "But what of us?" I hear you say, my many New Town friends. "We live in Shephall!" Ah, yes! but that is going to be quite a different kind of story. Make it as interesting as mine, won't you? |
