My father always said that he had to clear the snow off the path when he went to call the doctor. I entered this world on a cold snowy morning on 18th April 1918, in Yoxford in Suffolk, a village five miles from the coast, surrounded by smaller villages. Yoxford was and still is on the road from Ipswich to Lowestoft, now a very busy road the A12 London to Yarmouth. Travelling north, travellers see very little of the village. The road forks left, known as the Old High Road. This was the road that the stage coaches took to the Three Tuns Inn. The right fork is known as Brook Street, where a water course carries water to the river. There were times when this road was flooded. One lady in the village used a carriage drawn by a black horse to get to Darsham station, a picture in my mind I shall never forget, with an elderly man in charge of the horse sitting high up.
I do not remember living in the house where I was born but I did know it before it was, with others, demolished. The one I do remember was also in Brook Street. This consisted of a living room, backhouse complete with Dutch oven and copper and a pantry, two bedrooms upstairs, one bedroom was the landing at the top of the twisted staircase. There was a large shed, a bucket toilet which was a two-seater and a large garden. The pump for drinking water was shared by four properties. My brother and I slept together in the bed on the landing. There was only enough room for the bed, a chair and a small chest of drawers. The other room was bigger with a built-in small cupboard, chest of drawers, two chairs and a washstand as well as mother and father’s bed. There was a Bramley apple tree in the garden which every year produced a good crop of large apples. These were kept under our bed, covered with newspaper. The only lighting we had was candles and a paraffin lamp. For outside, when needed, a hurricane storm lamp was used.
The pantry was partly under the stairs and was a very useful size with plenty of shelves and a space by the door. This was where a chair, with the back cut off stood to hold the sack of flour, to keep it off the floor. The living room had a high hob grate fireplace. There was a cupboard on one side of this which had shelves and a space for hanging coats. Father smoked a pipe and I liked the mixture of smells when the cupboard door was open. In the living room we had a couch, a deal-topped table, four chairs and two wooden armchairs. The lamp stood in the middle of the table. The glass chimney of the lamp had to be cleaned every day and in my mind I can still hear the tinkle of Mum’s wedding ring when she cleaned it. Outside the back door there was a bowl and a bar of carbolic soap to wash our hands. Rain water was collected in barrels as it came off the roof. The barrels were from a garage and had contained oil. Father removed one end and with dry material set fire to it. The fire was extinguished when all the oil had burnt away. Rain water is soft and we liked it when we had our weekly bath in front of the fire in the winter. In the summer, rain water was kept for the weekly washing of clothes. The water was heated in the copper and once the fire got going was fed with anything that would burn, but not coal.
I remember in my early days there were two grocery stores, three butchers, three coal-merchants, two banks, three clothes shops, one harness maker, one blacksmith, one clockmaker, two cobblers, one shoemaker, a baker, an undertaker, a vet, a doctor, three public houses and one inn. The Three Tuns Inn was an old coaching inn. When in season a man came round selling fresh herrings. Another came to collect rabbit skins. He gave three old pennies for a good skin (that 3d was important as it enabled the seller to buy another rabbit for 6d). The butchers, grocers and coal merchants delivered not only in Yoxford but to surrounding villages. One grocer (Horners) had branches in Peasenhall, Kelsale and Middleton.
Mother bought her flour and yeast from the baker; it came in four-stone sacks. The yeast was delivered every Friday morning and cost one and a half pennies. Mother baked and cooked everything we had to eat. I do not think that I or my brother felt that we were poor as everybody was the same. At least father had employment working on the railway. In our younger days there were many people without work. I remember many years ago talking with a gentleman about our lives and what we had done. When we parted his last words to me were “Well, we lived in the best times”. What a strange remark I thought but then I thought yes, he was right, times were hard compared to today but we helped each other and could trust each other.
Mother worked the same routine every week. Monday was washday, Tuesday – ironing with a lump of metal heated in the fire. Wednesday was cleaning, Thursday – shopping, Friday Mother baked for the week and Saturday was the day for doing any other jobs that needed doing. On Sundays we went out for a walk, if the weather was fine. It was often a walk over the many footpaths across fields.
Father and Mother came from Bramfield, about five miles from Yoxford, they both came from large families. I just remember Grandma Elmy (Mother’s mother). Once I saw her in bed and she was very ill. My mother had to go into a home when she was a child because her father was killed on the railway where he worked. Mother did not talk about her young days but I gather that she had a very hard time, perhaps a cruel time until she went into service and became a cook. There were, as far as I know, two brothers and sisters in her family. After the First World War, one brother emigrated to Canada. The other brother, Will, went to London and in the summer came back to work in Suffolk and Norfolk to earn some money fruit-picking. The last time he came he called to see mother and asked her to cook a piece of smoked haddock for him. He rolled back the cloth on the deal table and cut this fish with a large knife he carried with him. In the process he cut into the table. Mother was very upset about this because she used that table to prepare the food she baked every Friday, including the bread for the week.
Mother had a caller one day, from the Prudential to enquire about the brother in Canada. They were trying to trace his whereabouts. Apparently he had an insurance policy. Eventually, as Mother was the eldest this money was passed to her. Not a King’s ransom but I expect it was very handy.
Father came from a family of four girls and three boys. One brother lived with grandad and grandma. David and Ellen were a lovely couple, grandad was retired from the railway when I got to know them, he had worked as a ganger. They lived in the same house all their married lives. They were married on a Sunday. The day before the wedding he was given permission to cut two posts from the hedge to use for linen posts. They were still there years later when he died. Grandad used to get his pea sticks from them as they had rooted and grew very strong. Of father’s sisters I know very little except for Sally who lived in Lowestoft.
Father collected Grandad’s railway pension from Darsham station every two weeks and cycled over to Bramfield to take it to him. He was paid 9 shillings and 10 pence a week, which was ten shillings less two pennies subscription. We used to go and see our grandparents two or three a times a year. At first we had a wooden-framed folding pushchair. The seat and back was a carpet type material. We walked a bit and rode a bit. Later we walked both ways and in the summer we would go by the footpaths as it was further to go by road. The memory stays with me, the scent of the hedgerows, the songs of the birds. Yes, we did live in good times, we had time to stop and stare. Grandma always had roast chicken for dinner when we went to visit them, also a Christmas pudding complete with silver three-penny pieces. We always found them in our helpings, I wondered why!
In the afternoon, we walked down to Mother’s sister Annie’s house, she had a large family. Once Mother took us round the “Gluepot” to visit an elderly lady there. It took us past the church with its round bell tower which was separate from the church. There was a crinkle-crankle wall opposite the church. Father used to exchange shallots and broad bean seeds with Grandad. Our soil was light while Grandad’s, on his allotment across the road behind the chapel, was sticky clay. The four cottages where they lived had a well for drinking-water. This well was not far from their back door and was about eighteen inches above ground level covered with a wooden top. In this top there was a trap door just big enough for a bucket. I was told that one year there was a drought and this well was the only one that did not go dry.
When my brother Walter was about four, Mother had to call the Doctor in as he was in a great deal of pain. The result was that he had to go to hospital as quickly as possible. Father went to see Mr Kerridge, who had a cycle repair and car repair business near to Darsham station to see if he could take us to Ipswich. The only other way was by train. On the journey, Mr Kerridge’s open tourer had the hood down. Father’s hat blew off and he asked Mr Kerridge to stop and go back to find it. “We can’t do that, we have to get your boy to hospital” was the reply. Apparently it was a good thing as Walter’s appendix was about to burst and as we got there in time he made a good recovery. On the way home it began to rain, the hood for the car was raised and there was father’s hat lodged in the folds of the hood. Father always had a thing about his hat. He had to have it on, even if he was just going to the shed a few steps from the back door.
Another little episode involving Walter was when we had been out for the day to Lowestoft. On arriving back home father had not got the key to open the door. In those days keys were big and heavy. What father had done was to lock the door and put the key in the letterbox. With his penknife, he managed to lift the latch of the small part of the window. I apparently was too big so my brother was helped in and it took a bit of time for him to understand why he was inside and we were outside. Eventually he unlocked the door for us.
When I was ten I had to go to hospital for a hernia repair, I hated it. I did not like milk and it was brought to us at supper time. One night I was told if I did not drink it I would have to sleep in the bath. I tipped the milk on the floor, received a good ticking off but at least they didn’t give me any more milk. It was a good thing that as a family we belonged to what was known as the doctor’s club and hospital club. Visiting times then to the hospital were Sunday and Tuesday from 2 pm till 4 pm. It must have been difficult for a lot of people to get there as there were very few buses. We were lucky as we were only a mile from Darsham station.
One trip to Ipswich we had with Mother, probably to the hospital, we were late to catch the train home. We had to hurry and by the time we got to the station poor Mother was gasping for breath. When we got onto the train there was a gentleman sitting in the corner of the compartment. He noticed that Mother was still gasping for breath and when she had got her breath back he introduced himself and said he was a doctor. He may have noticed an operation scar on Mother’s neck (she had an operation on her thyroid when she was sixteen and working in London) and told her that she should be on Thyroxine tablets. Mother said that she knew this but money came into it and thanked him as he left the train. The next day she went to the village chemist and got the tablets and never had an attack like that one again and was careful to take things steady and not rush about or get stressed. Father belonged to a benevolent club which helped when he was off work because of illness from time to time. He suffered from sciatica and once had to go into hospital.