Kings Walden Community Website

Weekly Tuesday Music at The Plough

2010-04-04T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Plough, Plough Lane, Ley Green, Herts, SG4 8LA.

CLICK FOR GOOGLE MAP

The Plough has hosted a music night every Tuesday for a few years now, but recently the format has changed a little. One Tuesday a month is a Ploughmen performance. The other Tuesdays are all open session nights where people are encouraged to join in.

Details as follows:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

>>> On the SECOND Tuesday of each month, The Ploughmen (and occasional guests) play an informal set of skiffle, rock and roll, jazz, folk and bluegrass.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

>>> ALL other Tuesdays we hold an informal, open acoustic tune and song session. All acoustic instruments are welcome, as are singers. All genres and music styles welcome. Everyone gets a turn if they want to sing or play, but there is no pressure to solo or lead a tune if you'd rather just sit and jam along with what everyone else does.

Sorry, no amplified instruments.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Any questions just call or email me (Rick) using the contact details that appear in the masthead at the top of this blog page.

Local Hero

2010-03-23T05:32:00.000-07:00

A while ago, Mike Herrmann of Austage End told me about a photograph that he thought local people would very much like to see.

When Mike emailed me the photo he said:

"I attach the image of Ernie, he drove the first lorry off the Mulberry Harbour at D Day and has a story to tell. He is a local hero"

Two Mulberry harbours (artificial, temporary harbours) were constructed for the D-Day Landings in 1944. They were prefabricated and then transported across the channel to Normandy. One was to have been used by British and Canadian forces and one by US forces. The US Mulberry was damaged too badly by storms to be used, so the British Mulberry, known as Mulberry B, was the only one left.

Supplies for the landings were brought ashore via the Mulberry harbour. This is the crucial operation in which Ernie played his part.

So here is Mr Ernie Cooper proudly wearing the medals he won during the Second World War. I believe the photo was taken last Remembrance Day.

Please click the photograph to view a slightly larger version.

Service resumed!

2010-03-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

After a lengthy hiatus, the Kings Walden website has resuscitated.

Apologies for the interruption. A bit of a cock up by our previous domain registration company meant that we lost the Kingswalden.com domain. However, we are back with a new address. Our new domain is www.kingswalden.org.uk. Technically this is more appropriate than the old .com address as .coms are really intended for use by corporations, not for non-profit community websites!

So, we are now www.Kingswalden.org.uk.

Ploughstock 2009

2009-06-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

It's that time again!

Kings Walden/Ley Green's own mini music festival returns on 27th June at The Plough pub in Plough Lane, Ley Green. The event begins at midday and continues into the evening.

Please click on the poster image to the left of this text to see a larger version.

All the usual attractions will be present: live music, food, drink, more drink... It's a charity event, so we respectfully ask all members of the community to accept Ploughstock in the spirit in which it is organised. Please come along on the day and join in.

The Ploughmen will be playing during the afternoon (probably some time around 3pm - 5pm). You know you wouldn't want to miss that!

To those who do attend, please be considerate toward The Plough's neighbours. Please park only in the designated areas, do not leave litter or cause damage to property. Drive carefully through the lanes.

Offley Hoo Open Farm Sunday 7th June

2009-05-18T05:13:00.000-07:00

Offley Hoo Farm is holding an Open Farm Sunday on 7th June. Please visit the Offley Hoo Farm website for full, up-to-date details.

The image here on the left shows the promo poster for the event. Please click the pic to view the full-size poster.

The information on the Offley Hoo website says:

As part of the national scheme organised by LEAF we are opening our farm to visitors on Sunday 7th June 2009 from 12 noon to 4pm. FREE ENTRY, lots of car parking.

See our machines and our rare and native breed animals both large and small. Longhorn cattle, Wiltshire Horn sheep, Middle White and Tamworth pigs.

Guided farm walks. Demonstrations and displays showing how YOUR food is produced.

Learn how wheat is milled and watch regular bread making demos by a local artisan baker and a chance to buy his bread.

See some of the machinery at work. Watch Poppy, the dairy Shorthorn, being milked at 3.30pm. Learn how cream is separated from the milk and how butter is made.

Understand how the Hertfordshire countryside all around us produces food while at the same time promotes wildlife habitats and increasing native flora and fauna.

Local food stalls including: our rare breed meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables and watercress, home made cookies, plant stall and others.

Hog roast, by the Country Bumpkin, cooking one of our outdoor reared, freerange, rare breed pigs, refreshments & licensed bar, teas and coffees.

Live music courtesy of The Ploughmen, don't miss it.

We look forward to seeing you on the day. There will be lots to do and see whatever the weather.

Please email us if you know you are coming as this will help us with our planning to make the sure the afternoon is the best it can be for everyone.

So if you can make it along, please let them know at offleyhoo@aol.com.

Farmers Market - Friday 13th of March 2009

2009-02-04T05:52:00.000-08:00

Another fantastic Kings Walden farmers market will take place on Friday 13th of March from 12.pm - 3.pm in the village hall in Church Road.

As always, a range of excellent local produce will be on offer at very reasonable prices, including:

Lamb, pork, beef, venison, deli-style tarts, quiches, mouth-watering patisseries, vegetables, cheese, jams, plants, pies, apples, fudge, bread and many other artisan foods.

Refreshments will include delicious home made soup and fresh organic bread for just £2.50, and tea, coffee and cakes.

All money raised from the market will go to the church.

Please do lend your support and attend if you can, and please spread the word and help to ensure that as many people as possible are aware of the date, time and venue. Without the interest and support of local people it may not be possible to continue these farmers markets. That really would be a shame as this is exactly the kind of event that a rural community should be able to enjoy.

Friday 13th March
12pm to 3pm

Kings Walden Village Hall
Church Road
Kings Walden
SG4 8JX

In the first instance, please direct enquiries to the contact at the top of this page.

2008-11-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

Christmas Farmers Market

Friday 12th December

12.00pm - 3.00pm

Kings Walden Village Hall

Church Road, Kings Walden

Nr Hitchin

SG4 8JX

The best regional produce:

Lamb, partridge, pheasant, deli-style tarts, quiches, mouth-watering patisseries, vegetables, cheese, jams, plants, pies, fudge, bread and many other artisan foods.

Deliciously local

Refreshments available including homemade soup and mince pies

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Please direct any enquiries through this website. Phone and email are shown at the top of the page.

Kings Walden Farmers Market

2008-10-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

Friday 14th November 2008, 12.00- 3.00pm

Kings Walden Village Hall, Church Road, Kings Walden, Nr Hitchin, Hertfordshire, SG4 8JX

The first Kings Walden farmers market will take place in the newly refurbished Kings Walden village Hall on Friday 14th November (12-3pm). Bringing together a diverse range of local producers for the first time under one roof, it will offer visitors the chance to sample an array of high quality food produced in their home region. There will be locally reared lamb, beef and pork from Offley Hoo farm, pheasant and partridge from the Kings Walden Estate, deli-style tarts and quiches made at the Kings Walden village shop, mouth-watering patisseries baked in nearby Lilley, locally grown organic vegetables, and many other artisan foods and ingredients.

Organiser Henrietta Pilkington hopes that the market will not only raise funds for the local church, but will also build on the strong sense of community in the parish and surrounding villages. “It is very exciting; we are hoping to create a regular event offering high quality local produce that we can all enjoy.”

Queries and requests for further information should, for now, be sent to the Kings Walden Website email address as displayed in the site masthead so they can be forwarded to the organiser.

Kings Walden Paish History Group

2008-09-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Kings Walden Parish History Group is now up and running.

Membership is £10 per year, and £2.00 per meeting (including refreshment).

The last meeting was held at Breachwood Green village hall on Wednesday 17th September, when speaker John Sharp gave a talk on farming in the past.

The group has arranged a visit to the British Schools on Tuesday 23rd September at a cost of £6 per person.

Enquiries to Gloria at the post office in Ley Green.

Forthcoming Events at The Plough

2008-09-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

Colin and Mary have asked us to let you know about the following forthcoming dates at The Plough in Ley Green.

20th September: Ploughstock Presentation Night
Cheques for the funds raised at this year's Ploughstock mini-festival will be presented to the nominated charities (click the image in this post to see the publicity poster)
3rd October: Harvest Festival & Charity Auction
10th October: First Year Celebration Party
To mark Colin and Mary's first year in The Plough
8th November: Bonfire Night

Ploughstock 2008

2008-07-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

A brief note from The Plough...

* * * * *

Colin and Mary’s first Ploughstock went off very well.

Firstly, we would like to apologise to anyone who might have been inconvenienced in any way by the noise or by the number of visitors. We do our best to make sure that this charity event doesn’t put anyone to any trouble, but just in case…

We wish to thanks everyone who helped to organise and run the day, the performers and bands (who played for free), and our brilliant bar staff who worked non-stop. Thanks to everyone who helped out with various jobs, from printing to cleaning up after the event. Of course, we also want to thank all the people who came to enjoy the music and food.

You can all be very proud of your contributions. The event has, so far, raised £1,512 for our charities.

Thank you all.

Here’s to next year!

Colin and Mary

* * * * *

Watch out for pics coming as soon as I can find them!

Ploughstock 2008

2008-06-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

It's that time again.

Saturday 21st June is Ploughstock 2008. Kings Walden's own mini rock festival returns to the large garden of The Plough in Plough Lane, Ley Green.

As always, there will be a variety of bands playing. Food and drink will be abundant, and money will be raised for several good causes. The event is, as ever, organised by Mr Boyd Sim.

The image below shows this year's promotional poster, for which we thank Mr Robin King. If you would care to click the image you will be able to view a larger version of the poster.

Apologies...

2008-06-15T08:25:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lull. I've had problems accessing the Blogger portal that powers the site. Seems ok at the moment, so fingers crossed.

So, let's catch up a bit...

Back in May, Colin and Mary at The Plough were presented with an award from the RNLI in recognition of the fundraising for that cause that takes place at the pub.

Below is a pic of Mary receiving the award. Thanks to Chris Ross for the photo.

Thanks from The Plough (Nigel's party)

2008-02-26T05:35:00.000-08:00

Colin and Mary would like to thank all the friends and colleagues who turned up to Nigel's send-off do on Saturday 23rd Feb. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and it was nice to see all the game keepers, and other faces from the estate.

It is hoped that some of you will pop in more often!

Cheers all!

Burns Supper at The Plough

2008-02-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

Saturday 26th Jan was Burns Night at The Plough.

Leno cooked up the Burns Supper, and Kenny did his legendary job as MC.

Here is a brief video shot by Eric of Kenny's educational lecture. Also a few photos of the fun kindly contributed by Neville and Carol.

Potential Gypsy and Travelers Site in This Area

2008-01-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

Kings Walden Society and Kings Walden Parish Council

Potential Gypsy and Travellers Site in This Area

Webmaster's Note:

As long as objections to the proposals mentioned below remain based rationally upon the criteria specified, then this website remains available to help the community to address its concerns. However, at the first sign of quasi-racism in the tone of the campaign I will cease to allow this issue to be addressed on the website.

A few words in the notice below have been edited to replace potentially emotive phrasing.

Information and Procedure for Making Objections

North Herts District Council, together with other local authorities, in order to comply with their obligations under the Housing Act 2004 to include gypsy and travellers sites in their housing requirements, commissioned consultants Scott Wilson to produce a report identifying possible sites in their area. Their report has identified one site being No. NH61 at Preston Hills (Kings Walden).

The location is the 10 hectare field south of the Kings Walden to Preston road at the junction with Dead Woman's Lane (the Keepers Cottage) and the road leading to Lilley Bottom Road.

All letters of objection MUST stick to planning reasons as to why the site is not suitable. Any other reasons or NIMBY points will be disregarded by North Herts District Council. Set out below are the salient planning criteria, followed by the format for a letter. It is suggested that each letter should contain four salient points and possibly one or two more ancillary points.

The main planning criteria are:

That each site should be located close to basic services, i.e. within 1 kilometre of shops, doctors and schools, and 500 metres of a bus stop.
Priority should be given to sites not within the Green Belt.
Planning Circular 06/03 requires preference be given to areas of land in public ownership.
The natural topography of the land would lend itself to a gypsy camp.

* * * * *

Suggested format for a letter to North Herts District Council to reach them ASAP

To

The Planning Policy and Projects Dept.,
NHDC, Council Offices, Gernon Road,
Letchworth Garden City, Herts, SG6 3JF

Dear Sirs,

I object to the possible location of a gypsy or travellers site at NH61 - Preston Hills, Kings Walden for the following reasons:

There are no doctors' surgeries within 1 kilometre of this site
The nearest shop is at Kings Walden, which is small and over 1 kilometre away
The only school within 1 kilometre is a primary school
there is no secondary school within 1 kilometre
there is no bus stop within 500 metres of the site
the site is privately owned and the owner objects to the land being used for a gypsy or travellers site
The site has been included by NHDC to be within the proposed expansion of the Green Belt
The site is above the level of the road, is highly visible and does not lend itself in any way for a gypsy camp
The site does not have access to a public sewer
Access from the site to the Preston village school is along a dangerous, narrow, twisting, unlit roadway with no pedestrian facilities

Please register my objection to this proposal and keep me informed as to any future consultation process.

Yours faithfully,

Note: letters can be typed or handwritten. Every letter counts as an objection.

Happy New Year

2008-01-08T06:51:00.000-08:00

OK, so a few days late... It's taken me that long to shake off the hangover.

Colin and Mary would like to thank everyone who made The Plough's New Year party such a success. It was a great night, as always.

So, thanks to Paul (PJ) and Trevor for equipment; to MCs Simon and Natalie for keeping everyone singing and for providing some of the karaoke discs; to Kenny for also providing discs; to everyone who supplied food and to Ricky and Chelsea for helping out serving drinks and food... and to the cast of thousands who turned up to drink and sing in the New Year.

Cheers all.

Children in Need - A Great Success

2007-11-21T12:29:00.001-08:00

We're delighted to say that the Children in Need night at The Plough went very well indeed.

The auction was very well stocked with lots, and Roy, our resident auctioneer, did his usual fine job of getting the goods moving. I need to get exact figures from Mary, but the money raised on the night was well over £700!

Well done everyone, and thanks to all concerned.

The baby pic ID parade also proved quite popular, and we'd like to thanks everyone who contributed a photo or entered the guessing contest. Winners and runners up from 1st to 3rd places were: Mary, Trevor and Keith and Jackie.

A list of answers appears underneath the photo below. If you click the photo you should se an enlarged version big enough to show the photos and their numbers.

The suspects were:

Robin K
Jones
Russell
Lindsey
Steve S
Jenny
Amanda K
Kirsty
Dill
Trevor
Boyd
Boyd
Boyd
Boyd
Eric
Andrew 4x4
Ricky H
Eion
Boyd
Eric
Sarah D
Mary (on right)
Jackie
Gloria
Carol
Sarah D
Pam
Sarah D
Hayley
Lyn W and Ginny
Lyn W
Keith
Kenny
Rachel
Chris Ross

Hope you all had fun. It was in a good cause.

I'll post some more pictures when I overcome a couple of minor technical difficulties.

Fireworks at The Plough

2007-11-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

A few pics and acknowledgment of the hard work everyone put in... over at The Plough website (click the link).

Kings Walden Society

2007-11-05T12:52:00.000-08:00

At the meeting on 3rd November in Kings Walden village hall, a vote was taken and the Kings Walden Society was formed. To clarify, the society is concerned with issues affecting the Kings Walden community in its wider sense, meaning the entire parish.

The meeting was well attended, and for a first outing went remarkably well.

There was broad agreement on all points, and several people "volunteered" for specific duties... although none of them actually seemed to remember having volunteered.

Matters discussed included:

the post office (possibility of closure and measures to be taken to avoid)
poor road surfaces
maintenance of footpaths and bridleways
coordination of events and entertainments
erosion of bus services
fly-tipping
possible plans for a permanent travellers' residential site near Dead Woman's Lane

The stout volunteers mentioned above assumed responsibility for items on the list, and the duty roster panned out as follows (to the best of our recollection):

Post office - David Bennett
Road surfaces - Neville Denton
Footpaths/bridleways - Angela Herrmann
Events - Nick Barclay
Buses - Mike English
Fly-tipping - Jeremy Bretherton & Boyd Sim
Travellers' site - Richard Pilkington

Actual duties at this stage are mostly concerned with gathering information.

Also proposed was the establishment of an email mailing list. The list, in conjunction with this website, will endeavour to help keep everyone up-to-date with news and developments. For the benefit of people who have no access to the Internet and email, important notices will be posted in the post office and on The Plough notice board.

Would anyone wishing to be included in the mailing list please email me, rickcadger@gmail.com, so I have confirmation of their email address. This includes people who atended the meeting, as some of the addresses written on the attendance sheet were not clearly legible.

Lastly, many thanks to Sir Thomas and Richard Pilkington for allowing use of the village hall, and for their involvement in the meeting.

That's all for now, folks. Stay tuned for news. :-)

Meeting: 11.30 am, Saturday 3rd Nov. Village Hall

2007-10-29T02:16:00.001-07:00

The following is reproduced from a notice circulated by Jeremy Bretherton.

Confirmation Notice

of a meeting to be held at King's Walden Village Hall

(by kind permission of Richard Pilkington)

at 11.30 am on Saturday 3rd of November

to hear a proposal for the formation of a

KING'S WALDEN SOCIETY

Everyone is welcome (including children).
Your views for and against the proposition will be welcome
and if for the proposition, then say what it should do
and how it should be run.

WHY HAVE A KING'S WALDEN SOCIETY?

Principally to have a local organisation that can provide a co-ordinated response to individuals' local concerns - the main one at the present time being the possible closure of our Post Office, the decision on which is to be made public in March 2008.

Also, to enable the residents in a spread out community such as ours to have a body which will support their concerns in areas where "authority" tends to ignore individual protests, such as the reduction in bus times, the redistribution of rubbish clearance (Did you receive the leaflets on the changes? Many didn't), pot holes on the edges of local roads, maintenance of the surfaces of the footpaths and bridleways, maintenance of the recreation ground etc.

Additionally, it is useful to have a body that can be the co-ordinator and provide publicity for local events such as the fireworks and the gigs at The Plough, the annual cricket match and Ley Green Day so that they do not clash with each other or with other local events in neighbouring parishes.

So, even if you have no firm views, come along on Saturday 3rd November for a cup of tea/coffee and meet and chat to other members of our community.

Jeremy Bretherton

Tel: 01462 768240

Fireworks and Children in Need

2007-10-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

The Plough in Ley Green is holding a fireworks party on Saturday 3rd November.

There is also a Children in Need event consisting of a charity auction and a baby-pic ID parade. Should be a great laugh.

For more info visit the new Plough website at www.ploughleygreen.com

Meat Raffle!

2007-10-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

The Legendary Plough meat Raffle is back!

Yep, the old favourite weekly meat raffle has returned, with the traditional ticket draw on Sunday. Tickets available from the bar.

The more tickets we all buy, the more prizes there will be to choose from, so get yours now. I bought mine already, by the way - even though I'm a vegetarian...

Another Great Night

2007-10-18T14:40:00.002-07:00

Thanks again to Paul and Sally for having us up to play again at the Red Lion last night. There weren't as many people as usual (sport on TV, I think...), but we all had a great laugh, and the people who were there seemed to enjoy it too.

Sorry, no video this time (stand up whoever said "Good!"...): Lindsey was a bit poorly and stayed home.

Red Lion Music Night

2007-10-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

This coming Wednesday, 15th October, Paul and Sally at the Red Lion in Breachwood Green are hosting another music night featuring the bunch of itinerant din-makers from the regular Plough pub session (Tuesdays at The Plough in Ley Green).

We always have a great time when we play at The Red Lion, so we hope to see everyone there.

We were glad to hear that Paul's birthday bash went well. He certainly looked a little... 'weary' the following day!

----------------------------

Handmade acoustic guitars...

Plough Relaunch Party

2007-10-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Colin and Mary's Plough Relaunch on Saturday was a great success.

The pub was packed, there was loads of food and a good deal of audience particiption in the "music". Thanks to everyone who sang along or danced.

Here's a small sample of the artmosphere from what was a great night.

The Plough!

2007-10-10T02:34:00.000-07:00

For those of you who were unaware, The Plough in Ley Green is under new management. Colin and Mary Hill, long-time patrons of the establishment, have taken over and the Plough's future now looks bright and cheerful.

The official relaunch do is on Saturday 13th October, and the evening will feature live music by The Ploughmen, the disreputable collective that forms the core of the regular acoustic jam that takes place in The Plough every Tuesday evening. We apologise in advance for the din...

Seriously, The Plough has had a rocky few years during which its once-enviable reputation somewhat declined. Colin and Mary are real fans of the place and are determined to restore The Plough that local people know, love and have missed.

So, we'll see you all on Saturday!

Holiday

2007-10-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

Just back from a brilliant week in Killarney.

I'll be popping some holiday snaps and video up as soon as I can get around to it (ooh, you lucky people...).

To kick things off, here's a wee clip of some music from the pub where we spend most of our holidays!

Preston Music

2007-09-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of video from the Ploughmen gig at the Red Lion in Preston on Wednesday night.

Thanks to the Red Lion for having us, and indeed to all the pubs who put up with the racket we make when we visit. We had a great night and would like to play there again if they'll have us.

We also hope to be visiting the Breachwood Green Red Lion again soon. Oh, and don't forget the regular open session at The Plough in Ley Green every Tuesday (unless specified otherwise here).

More Music

2007-09-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

Another video from Friday's performance at Offley Club by the Ploughmen hooligan collective...

Another Evening Out....

2007-09-11T05:21:00.001-07:00

The Tuesday night mob were allowed out again this last weekend. We were invited to play at the bikers' night at Offley Club on Friday.

Below is some video of the offence in question.

A Good Night Out

2007-08-29T08:16:00.001-07:00

Once again, thanks to Paul and Sally for hosting our acoustic jam thingy at the Red Lion in Breachwood Green, and thanks to everyone who came along - especially those who joined in the singing! It was another very good night and we all enjoyed ourselves very much.

Hopefully it won't belong before we do it again.

Don't forget that the Tuesday session happens every week at The Plough in Ley Green. Any changes to that venue, or additional soires, will be announced here in advance.

Anyway, I'll be posting a couple of video clips here from Tuesday's Red Lion extravaganza just as soon as I get a mo'.

Flamstead Scarecrow Festival

2007-08-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

Lindsey and I popped over to Flamstead last weekend for their Scarecrow Festival. This is an event they hold to raise money for the local church and the Herts Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Centre.

About 100 scarecrows were created by local people and put on display in their gardens. Visitors could vote for the scarecrows that impressed them most. In addition to the display of eccentric straw figures, there were various entertainments and attractions, including morris dancing (see videos below) and craft stalls.

A nice event which seems very well organised, and to which many of the locals obviously contribute great effort.

Here are a couple of videos and some pics of the scarecrows.

Click the images for bigger pics.

Images of... Summer?

2007-08-22T01:13:00.000-07:00

Well, there has been some summer, honest. At least enough to get out and take a few snaps, anyhow.

Of the pictures below, the flowers were photographed on Blows Downs in Dunstable, and the berries and bee in our garden.

Click the images to see large versions.

Tuesday 28th August Music Night

2007-08-22T00:51:00.001-07:00

Tuesday 28th (the one after the bank holiday) will see another trip to the Red Lion in Breachwood Green for the Acoustic Session.

The last one we did there was a great night, so we hope everyone will come along. The regular session at The Plough is also picking up and becoming quite a busy event, so instead of sitting in front of the television all night (as our banjo player would if he had the chance), why not pop down for a sing-along and a drink?

Red Lion Session

2007-08-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Paul and Sally for putting up with us again last night - we had a great laugh. Part of the reason for the visit this time was to celebrate Boyd's Birthday, which is today. Happy birthday, mate!

There was a good turnout for the session. Thanks to everyone who stayed to listen - I never realised there were so many deaf people in the area...

Anyway, below are a couple of videos from last night. The first is Eric's legendary performance of 'My Old Man's a Dustman' and the second is a rousing 'Rockabilly Rebel' featuring a great 'Benny Hill' moment from Keith and his comedy saxophone!

And of course, the post wouldn't be complete without a pic of Boyd reluctantly modelling his birthday cardigan.

Tuesday Music Session Visits The Red Lion, BG

2007-07-25T04:29:00.000-07:00

The weekly Tuesday night acoustic jam session that usually happens at The Plough in Plough Lane, Ley Green is making a second guest appearance at The Red Lion in Breachwood Green this coming Tuesday 31st July.

After our first outing there (pictured below) Paul and Sally have been kind enough to allow us back to make more noise!

The session is open to any acoustic musicians who might like to join in playing a mixture of folk, blues, rock, bluegrass, rockabilly and even reggae. Chord/song sheets are available.

We are in particular need of a folk singer or two at the moment, so anyone with abilities in that direction would be particularly welcome to join in.

Any questions, call Rick on 07913 023969.

More Offley Bike Show 2007

2007-07-16T12:41:00.001-07:00

I hope you enjoyed the videos from the bike show.

Below we bring you a few photos of some of the bikes. These are the prize winners.

On behalf of everyone who had as good a day as we did, we'd like to thank Martin, Trevor, Lee, Mike, and Brenda who organised the event. Thanks also to the bands who provided the entertainment: Hang Loose, Ten Days Unshaven, Four Play, The Soul Corporation and 24 Carat Purple.

So, here are those bikes. Click on the images for larger photos.

Rhythms of the World

2007-07-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

What a weekend.

Not only was it the Great Offley Bike Show, but Hitchen held its excellent Rhythms of the World festival. Once again, even before the event is over we bring you highlights of the day's entertainment!

RotW is always well organised and features some great acts. The video below shows the brilliant Trailer Trash Orchestra performing on the Market Square stage on Sunday afternoon. Those of you who were at Ploughstock this year will remember TTO as one of the stand-out acts.

Anyway, here you go.

Great Offley Bike Show 2007

2007-07-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

How's that for efficiency? The show isn't even over yet, and already we bring you the first highlights!

Below are a couple of videos from this afternoon's fun. More to follow, including a brief account of the day, and photos of the prize winning bikes.

Anyway, here's Hang Loose and guest guitarist Robin singing their little hearts out, bless 'em.

And again.

A couple more songs from the set will follow later. Excuse me for now. I have to get back to the bike show for a drink or two and some more music!

19th Century Maps of the Area

2007-07-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, we were given access to an old, and very large, map of the area. The map is far too big to easily reproduce in its entirety here, however we have photographed key areas of the chart, and made them available from the links on this page.There is a photo of the whole map unrolled on the floor of Kings Walden village hall to give you some idea of the size. I haven't measured it yet, but it is 7 or 8 feet square.

The map is not dated, but we are able to date its charting before 1898 as several houses not shown on this map are featured on a map dated 1898 which we we have also seen.

Please select the area you would like to view from the thumbnail links below. These should open larger versions.

Kings Walden:

Austage End:

Bendish:

Breachwood Green:

Darley Hall:

Frogmore:

Ley Green:

Whitwell:

Overview of the Whole Map:

Memoir: Kings Walden (1925-35)

2007-07-10T09:44:00.000-07:00

This memoir was originally passed to us in the form of a typescript from which the first page was missing - so, at the time of originally posting it here, we had no information regarding the author.

I was, therefore, delighted to receive an email from Richard Hartless who said:

I stumbled across the above memoir on your website and immediately recognised it as a piece writtten by my father, Ronald Hartless... ...as you say you are missing the first page or so. The title he gave it was simply “King’s Walden (1925-1935)”.

My father was born in Preston in 1920 and lived the first 15 years of his life between the two World Wars in King’s Walden. His grandfather (my great-grandfather), Thomas-John, was head gardener on the Estate until he retired in about 1921 following the death of his wife. When Major Jack Harrison succeeded to the Kings Walden Bury my father’s father (my grandfather), Alfred, was appointed head Gardener of the estate. Unfortunately, Alfred suffered a stroke - I think in about 1935 - and was unable to carry on in his job so he retired with his family (including my father) to Hitchin. My father lived in Hitchin for the rest of life and died in 1998. He wrote the memoir in the mid 1980s and I recall him passing a copy to Hitchin library. An edited version also appeared in a parish magazine.

So, what follows is the complete text of Ronald Hartless’s wonderful memoir of life in King’s Walden from 1925 to 1935.

Our sincere thanks to Richard Hartless and family for permission to reproduce the document, for providing us with the full text, and for the additional information on Ronald and his family - which put the document in context and add to the reader’s experience.

* * * * *

KING’S WALDEN (1925-35)

Ronald Hartless

Smells and sounds are supposed to evoke memories from the past more vividly than any visual reminder. One sound in particular reminds me of the warm summer evenings of my boyhood. Sometimes in the quietness of the evening pheasants will suddenly give an alarm cry, and I immediately recall the pheasants in the woods around King’s Walden all calling together as their sensitive hearing picked up the rumble of distant thunder, too far away for humans to hear. There were many woods around the estate well stocked with pheasants against the shooting season, so that their shrill cries were seemingly echoed from one wood to another. I don’t know why these birds feel obliged to scream a warning, because as the thunder becomes nearer and louder, they cease calling. They can certainly be deceived, for I remember hearing them call out one quiet afternoon when I could definitely hear distant rumbles which were not thunder, but later proved to be from Naval gunnery practice off the south coast. Even where I live today on the edge of Hitchin, I hear them call about the same time each evening when it is quiet, and after discussion with friends have decided that they pick up the sound of Concord slowing down through the sound barrier out over the Channel as it comes in from across the Atlantic.

Pheasants come quite a lot into memories of boyhood. My sisters and I had to walk one and a half miles to the village school at Breachwood Green every day. We would set out across the Park, going close by a wood we called the Plantation, and then leaving the Park through a Kissing Gate we would trudge down Beech Hill. The banks to this path down Beech Hill were covered with Doy’s Mercury in Spring, and this was a favoured spot for pheasant’s nests. If we found one, we would tell one of the gamekeepers and hope to get a handsome reward of sixpence. The gamekeepers didn’t trust the pheasants to bring up their young, surrounded as they were by so many real and imagined predators. The eggs would be taken from the nest and put under a broody hen in a coop, and part of a field or the Park would be given over to rows of hen coops with tiny pheasants eventually emerging to run around the foster mother. Probably nowadays it’s all achieved by incubators.

Further down Beech Hill was a gamekeeper’s gallows, this consisted of the normal barbed wire fence on which were strung the stinking corpses of owls, kestrels, stoats, weasels, jays and other creatures which the gamekeepers had shot to protect the young pheasants and their eggs. We used to run past this with handkerchiefs over our noses. The gamekeeper was a familiar figure, clothed in thick green corduroy jacket, and twill trousers. The jacket had voluminous pockets and, of course, he always carried a twelve bore barrelled shot gun, had strong leather leggings and boots for walking through the undergrowth and was usually accompanied by one or two black retrievers being trained as gun dogs.

I must suppose that Man the hunter-gatherer progresses, but slowly, to Man the civilised cultivator of crops and breeder of cattle. Anyway a lot of the remembered life of King’s Walden is connected with hunting and shooting, not just pheasant, partridges and foxes. The local folk would join in the trot after the beagle hounds as they coursed over the fields for hares. My contemporaries, the farmer’s sons had their own ferrets and terriers to go rabbiting. Farmers would take their guns out to shoot pigeons when time allowed. Gamekeepers and any other man in the village with his own gun would turn out one week in the year to shoot down the local population of wood pigeons, jackdaws and rooks, or any other bird not classed as game which might be suitable for the pot. Grey squirrels might be taken too, as their tails could command a small bounty. Lesser folk like myself would content ourselves in pursuing rats on autumn nights with hurricane lamps, stones and heavy sticks. Smaller boys might hunt for frogs, tadpoles and newts, the difference being they caught them alive.

In the summer, when “The Family” at the big house were away, a privileged few which included a local doctor, would take a punt out on the lake to fish for pike and perch. However, the scene which brought out the hunter in us more than anything else was at harvest time when the corn was cut. As the horse-drawn binders worked their way round the field the uncut portion in the centre became smaller and smaller and the rabbits that were in the corn had retreated inwards until the swathe left to cut was very narrow. They would then make a run for it, but waiting for them was the gamekeeper with gun, farm workers with stones and boys with sticks, stones and the odd mongrel dog. I remember the tingling excitement of the hunt. It mattered not at all that I had two tame rabbits in a hutch at home. Along with the others I would pursue without mercy and when the furry corpses were finally gathered together at the entrance to the field, I would gladly pay the farmer sixpence to be able to make my proud contribution to the family cooking pot. There were always moans at home at having to skin and degut the rabbit, but rabbit stew went down very well, especially in those days when the main meat meal was reserved for Sunday dinner and items like tripe, boiled fish or lentils featured regularly during the week.

I would never regret the long walk to school; the children that are whisked to school by bus nowadays see so little. At the slow pace we walked we noted the appearance of Spring flowers, buds and catkins as they arrive. We would find birds nests, identify the natural sounds we heard. We would become acutely aware of the changing seasons and their effect upon the growing things about us. We became alert to weather changes, when to run home as a thunderstorm approached, or to loiter in high summer when the scent of hay permeated the air and flies pursued us down the lane. We knew where to find a branch from an Elder tree, whose smell was supposed to repel the flies from each others noses and we knew where to avoid the wasps’ nests and where to find the fascinating quaker grass that shimmered in the breezes. In Winter we would notice that odd quietness with which the November fog enwraps everything, and on the fresh snow we learnt to decipher the tracks that creatures had left. When we could hear the railway trains on the line through Hitchin we expected cool, clear, dry days. When we heard trains on the line from Luton, we came to expect warmer showery weather from the South West.

In the village which clustered around the Parish Church of St Mary, we were all Church of England. It was rumoured that here and there might be found someone who attended the Chapel at Breachwood Green and we even heard of difficulties at Ley Green school where some Roman Catholic children kept having extra days off for feast days of Saints we had never heard of. To us then they seem as remote as Hindus and Muslims.

This brings me to another sound that evokes memories and sensations: church bells. King’s Walden Church has six bells. As a choirboy I would have to attend morning service and evensong once a month as the Sunday afternoon was children’s service and on three other Sundays of the month, Sunday school in the Parish Hall. There was also choir practice on a week night. On hot summer evenings, in particular, I would rather have gone for a walk across the Park than sit in church listening to a drowsy sermon from the Vicar and conscious of the musty incense smell of the hassocks and snuffed candles. Added to this was the sound of the bells being rung down before the 5-minute bell. When bells are rung down, the sound lingers and in lingering each bell overlaps the chime of others, producing the kind of tone effect exploited by some of today’s composers when they want to convey the sense of loneliness in outer space. This was the effect on me then, sitting waiting for the service to begin, a feeling of sadness which on one else seemed to share.

Our modern Marxists, Trotskyites, or whatever label is currently fashionable, are constantly preaching with puritanical zeal against ‘elitism’, class-consciousness and the rest of it. What a wonderful time they would have had in our village church in the 1930s. We, of course, know our places. The Squire’s family (and he had eight daughters) would occupy the front pew on the left (when the family was in residence of course) the children’s nanny would also qualify for that pew. Miss Ingram who acted as lady’s maid to the Squire’s wife would sit behind in the next pew, behind her would be the Vicar’s wife and sons and the next order of local gentry, Mrs Fellows, the two Miss Sowerbys (the former being the widow of a Colonel) all living at Lane House, a large house complete with car and chauffeur, when cars were very few.

On the opposite side of the aisle, to the front could be found tenant farmers of good repute, some folk connected with trade and I particularly remember George Tompkins, Bookmaker and Umpire to the village cricket team, who became quite religious after a short stay in Wormwood Scrubs. He had apparently made some errors with regard to his income tax returns. The lesser folk who pursued their humble tasks around the estate tended to use the seats to the back of the Church. A regular attendee was Will Lawrence, a farm worker with a gift for keeping the farm machinery going. At his side would be Nelly Henman. It was reported that they had been ‘going steady’ for at least five years. If Nellie ever thought Will was a bit slow about popping the question, there was not much she could do about it. Elsewhere in the congregation were quite a few attractive single ladies moving towards middle age. They were single only because the carnage of World War I had taken away so many eligible men.

One other person who would occupy a pew fairly close to the front was the agent for the Estate, Captain Vaughan with his wife and Downes’ Syndrome son. The Squire, as a former Major in the Guards had a strong loyalty towards former army comrades. Captain Vaughan was definitely one of them. His appearance was always efficient and military. He would bring a leather bag round with the men’s wages for the various heads of departments to distribute. On such occasions he seemed to shine. His brown boots and brown leather leggings of cavalry type would gleam on the dullest day, as though he still had a batman to polish them. Occasionally he would come round on his horse and that would be gleaming too. The Captain’s secretary was Edgar Field who was also the organist and choirmaster of the Church. Some of the Captain’s military efficiency had rubbed off onto Mr Field who always looked neat, tidy and polished, never a hair out of place and, in my recollection of choir practices, always firm and positive about what had to be done. This was in contrast to his father who worked in the timber yard on the estate as a carpenter and like others in the yard seemed to my boyish mind to have wheezy voices as though there was always sawdust at the back of their throats.

The Squire also had two former army padre friends whom he used to invite into the pulpit once a year. Canon Gibbs was a regular for Harvest Festival, his text was always the same: “While the Earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not fail”. Of the rest, I remember nothing, for he had a sleepy sounding voice and his subject matter was held together by a string of pious platitudes. Thus his seed fell upon stony ground. The other man was different: he commanded attention. To begin with he had lost a hand in the war and wore some metal substitute covered with a black glove with which he hammered his points home on the pulpit. After the war he had become a prison chaplain and he had many stories to tell of intense human interest, yet I have forgotten his name.

Of course, the Squire entertained guests from time to time, who would be expected to attend morning service. Thus on one occasion we choirboys were told to smarten up and stop sniggering during the sermon as the Duke of Gloucester was going to be in the front pew that morning. Another time it was Princess Alice Countess of Athlone who dignified the service with her regal bearing. The Squire himself would read the first and second lessons at morning service. Being somewhat over six feet tall and big with it and being possessed of a deep stern voice with the timbre of command about it. In my young mind it seemed that God must have sounded rather like that to Moses when the Ten Commandments were being issued. I think it was Anthony Sampson in his book “The Establishment” who remarked that members of the Establishment somehow seem bigger and taller than the rest of us.

The choir was made up of a number of skills: Mr Titmuss (carpenter at the timber yard); my father (the head gardener); Mr Simpson (schoolmaster); John Stedman, Reg Bird and Harry Keen, (timber yard); Joe Parkin (plumber); John Parkin from the dairy farm; Horace Anstey (insurance agent) and Mr Whitehurst (cart driver on the estate). Five of these were also bell ringers. The Verger, Mr Robinson from the village of Preston also sat in the choir stalls. He was a stern old man who never seemed to sing because he was constantly glowering at the choirboys in case the Devil should move them to some outbreak of irreverence.

The Vicar of the parish when I was very young was the Rev. Proctor. I can picture his bespectacled round face quite clearly: a cheerful Mr Pickwick. I cannot remember whether he retired or died, because his place was taken by the Rev. George Shackleford, a man of quite good manners. God had not reached out to fire him with the zeal of the Holy Spirit, but his ancestors had combined to endow him with the qualities of an English Gentleman. This was something we in the village could admire and respect. The Welsh mining villages might pay more respect to the eloquent preacher or politician with fire in his belly, but there is also room in God’s world for those whose message embraces the world as it is here and now, without trying to drag their flocks into revolutionary dreams of utopia. In pressing forward towards the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth, the Rev. Shackleford did not crack the whip, or dangle carrots in front of our noses, but when some of us, as we all do, showed in some action that we had fallen short of the Grace of God, there would come a hurt look in his eyes, such as can be seen in a cricket captain when one of his trusted fielders fumbles an easy catch in the outfield.

Yes, this Vicar was keen on sport. King’s Walden ran two cricket teams till well after World War II, and the Vicar, being a gentleman, played in the first team until ill health, following a stoke, put an end to such activity. Even then with difficulty he would walk through the Park to watch the games. Before the war he would occasionally drive members of the team to Lords to see a Test Match and I remember he once took my two sisters to watch the tennis at Wimbledon. If a visit to such events sound commonplace today, it was certainly not then. With most people having to work on Saturday mornings as well as the other five days of the week.

The patronage of the Squire was bountiful as far as cricket was concerned. He supplied the ground which was mowed, rolled and maintained by the Estate gardening team under my father. It was the envy of surrounding teams, since the quality of the first eleven gave them fixtures with town teams like Harpenden, Welwyn Garden City, Stevenage, Hitchin and Henlow. The Squire had provided an excellent wooden pavilion, whose thatched roof blended well into the rural scene. As teatime drew near, servants from the big house would enter the ground carrying a handbarrow with the tea urn, sandwiches and cakes, all ready to spread in front of the hungry cricketers. For the team playing away there was transport by the Rolls Royce estate bus.

After the war, when I returned to King’s Walden on alternative Saturdays to captain the second team, most of the help from the estate was being withdrawn as taxation forced economics on the Squire. The motor mower and roller were still available, but the teams had to provide the labour and petrol for them. They had to supply the provisions for teas and also learn fund raising techniques to keep the club going. Against the competition, caused by the fact that many players no longer worked on the estate, but in factories that had their own sports clubs, cricket at King’s Walden finally died. At the time it was conjectured that the cricket field would be given over to raising sheep, or pheasants. That, of course, would be a poor substitute for raising cricketers.

Every time there was a home match on the cricket ground, there would be two regular supporters from the village of Breachwood Green. One was known as Tuppeny, if the other had a name I’ve forgotten it. These two were of not quite sufficient intelligence to hold down a job. They were not village idiots and they relied on the odd bob or two performing simple tasks, like beating the woods to drive the pheasants out where the guns were all lined up for the pheasant shooting. There would also be simple jobs on the farms they could do at harvest time. I have heard it said that such people were common in villages in the past when travelling around was less common, which led to in-breeding. However, such people found a place in the community. They were certainly more harmless than the idiots of today to whom murder and mayhem, drink, drugs and disorder come naturally.

The brunt of keeping the Church going fell to a considerable extent on the Squire, since I believe he contributed to the Vicar’s stipend and helped to defray the expenses of church repairs when church collections did not provide enough. It follows, therefore, that the Squire would also have had an important voice in the choice of any new incumbent at the Church, with sound but unimaginative men being given the preference. The Vicarage was very large and impressive, larger than the one which Hitchin Vicars used to occupy and after the war when economies were being made all round, the Vicar moved to smaller premises and after his illness retired to a house formerly occupied by the head groom of the hunting stables.

Every morning I was accustomed to being awakened by the clatter of a string of hunting horses. Perhaps as many as twenty-four being taken out for exercise before breakfast. Each groom would be in charge of two horses. So there must have been a stable staff of twelve or more. At some time during the winter months, the family would take up residence at their hunting lodge at Melton Mowbray, where they could hunt with the Quorn or Pytchley packs. I presume the horses would have been walked to Luton station and taken by rail to Melton Mowbray. Later, a horsebox was added to the estate fleet.

The season really began at King’s Walden with a celebration Hunt Meet in early November in the Park near the big house and also near a massive oak tree which was supposed to date back to William the Conqueror. The Meet was always a spectacular affair, the hunting pink of the huntsmen contrasting with the shiny back coats and toppers of other horsemen and horsewomen some of whom, in those days, were still riding side saddle and wore veils. Waiters would come up from the big house bringing trays of drinks for the riders who would take their drink on horseback. This Meet was the “Big One”. Anyone in the country set who wanted to be recognised, definitely made an effort to be there. Any social group that has interests in common, whether in flying, angling or listening to pop records, seems to require a magazine to keep everyone in the group informed about what goes on. For the wealthy landowners and country people there were two or three magazines, such as the Illustrated London News, The Tatler and Bystander and the Field. Well printed with quality photographs on glossy paper, the gentry would be kept informed with excellent back up pictures that the Hon Geraldine Dawson, who is, of course, the daughter of the 3rd Duke of Culdrose and was presented at Court earlier this year, is here seen attending the Staffordshire point-to-point races with her pet Sealyham ‘Porgy’. In the picture the Hon. Geraldine is probably sitting on a shooting stick in a heavy shower of rain, but with the characteristic British look of calm interest she disguises the fact that she would rather be at home reading a good book in front of the fire.

Hunting was a risky and often uncomfortable pursuit. The Squire’s eldest daughter Elizabeth had a nasty tumble once, broke her nose and was concussed. The injury became infected and in the days before penicillin this could be a very serious matter. She was made to take the juice of many oranges and overcame the infection, but skin surgery, then at a rudimentary stage, was used to reduce the damage. On a teeming wet day, riders to the hunt could get soaked and cold.

Sometimes in the summer, some of the family would go to the Spa at Baden Baden to take the water as an antidote to the onset of rheumatism in later life. The Squire himself was to be crippled by it in his declining years.

Ted Hedley, who was originally the chauffeur for the ladies at Lane House, later became chauffeur to the Squire’s Lady, during the time she was Master of the Foxhounds for the district. He told me that after one day of hunting in the rain with new riding breeches on, they had shrunk so much that she was immobilised and he had to lift her off the horse into the car. He was then ordered to try and pull her breeches off, but without success until he got a knife from the tool kit and cut them off and circulation was restored.

During the period when I lived at King’s Walden the garage was an interesting place for a boy to visit. There was a large Rolls Saloon, a large Daimler Saloon, a Rolls drop head car with ‘dicky seat’. It could probably seat six quite comfortably. These had the family crest on the sides, which was a hare on a sheaf of corn. There was also a Rolls Estate bus mentioned earlier, a Rover runabout car for running errands.

When we went on holiday once I remember the head chauffeur, Bill Wheeler using it to run us to Luton Station with all our luggage. The motor horsebox came along later. I don’t think the idea of transporting horses by road had reached the big estates before that time. The Estate also had a motor lorry for general transport use. This was a solid tyred American Pierce Arrow with artillery wheels, probably developed for carrying supplies in World War I. A very noisy brute this was. If the string of horses didn’t wake one in the mornings, this lorry did, as it rumbled down past our house to its first task in the timber yard. One of the chauffeurs was Walter Bunyan who came from Preston and was said to be distant relative of the famous John Bunyan.

As the Squire’s daughters became of age, they were presented with a car. Which added to the fleet for a while, calling for the construction of additional garage space, but as these young ladies were very attractive they were soon married off and departed from the scene.

Each daughter, in turn, reached the age of “Coming Out”, a British custom whose history I know very little about. When the young lady had reached an age at which she could be considered responsible enough to move in social circles and her family background was considered suitable she would be presented at Court to the Monarch as a Debutante. This may have been a device by which families who might live miles apart in remote places of the United Kingdom, made it publicly known that an eligible daughter was now on the marriage market. Back on the Estate, I remember particularly the celebrations for the “Coming Out” of daughter Patricia, who became Countess of Lewes.

On a fine summer evening, there was a gypsy orchestra playing by the Roman style swimming pool in the Italian Garden, while inside the Big House, a well known dance orchestra was playing in the Ballroom. People on the Estate were allowed to watch from a distance behind the yew hedge bordering the Church yard. Flood lighting was used to great effect, possibly an early example of Son et Lumiere.

I would not like it to be thought that there was a gulf, accepted by both Squire and retainers as being the best way to run an organisation to their mutual benefit, provided it was accepted that a great disparity between the lifestyles of the various parties concerned must exist. Thus it happens, that I lived through the Great Depression of 1924-31, without being aware of the turmoil outside in the world at large not being old enough to read newspapers or listen to radio which was only just beginning to make its mark. Nor, in re7trospect, do I envy the lifestyle of the landed gentry when I see how stereotyped it was. If we take the start of their year as the Hunt Meet in November, there would be fox hunting, cub hunting and, for variety, a change to hunting centred at Melton Mowbray. This would be followed by pheasant and partridge shooting till the close season with a break at Christmas for religious observance and the entertainment of more guests than usual. Somewhere in the year would come the ‘London Season’. I presume timed to coincide with the presentation at Court ceremonies and, as I have pointed out, a time to launch marriageable daughters into the social scene. From time to time there would be fashionable race meetings to be attended, with Ascot a real imperative.

With a close season for shooting in the Spring time there was a period for looking into the affairs of the Estate, the progress of the farms (the home farm in particular), the state of the gardens. Perhaps in summer a holiday on the continent to ‘take the waters’ as previously suggested. At the beginning of August came the Kings Walden Flower Show, perhaps an even bigger event of the year because it involved everybody. Then by the 12 August, it was off on the ‘Night Scotsman’ train to northern parts for the grouse shooting and salmon fishing, while Bill Wheeler drove the Rolls Royce to Scotland with all the necessary impediments which would be required on the grouse moors. So it will be seen we have nearly come round to the hunting scene and the routine begins again.

I had a brief back stage look at London life when I was quite small. My mother and I had the opportunity to travel up in one of the estate cars while the family was in residence at their London house in Grosvenor Place. We stayed in the chauffeur’s quarters or Mews where the cars were garaged near Sloane Square, together with cars and chauffeurs belonging to others of the notability who were up in Town. This Mews was within easy walking distance of Hyde Park, and I would be taken there to see the wealthy folk taking their exercise on horseback along Rotten Row. I also remember surprise at seeing so many different coloured omnibuses, their solid tyred wheels rattling over the cobbles as they raced each other to compete for passengers. I can even remember the names ‘Metropolitan’, ‘Tilling Stevens’, ‘Overland’, ‘General’ and nice chocolate coloured ones with ‘Westminster’ on them. So I was old enough to read at that time.

I liked to get up early in the morning and watch the chauffeurs polishing their big cars up as though for an Army General inspection. The quality of the varnish on the cars of those days was in the best tradition of coach building and they gleamed to perfection. Those with brass radiators had to be metal polished to mirror finish. One such car was a magnificent Minerva and I also recall a Hispano Suiza. Some had the driver’s part of the car open to the elements and only the passengers’ compartment enclosed. Even so, when seen today in car museums, these cars seem to exude opulence and style because they were designed for superior people to ride in, driven by lesser mortals - again a tradition inherited from coaching days.

The Squire’s daughters mixed with the village children only on a few occasions. They belonged in turn to both Brownies and Guides, held in the Parish Hall. Two elder daughters, Diane and Audry helped with the Sunday School. They all helped out with side shows at the Kings’ Walden Flower Shows each August and also at the Summer Sunday School Treat held on the magnificent lawns which surrounded the big house. Wheelbarrow, obstacle and sack races were laid on for the youngsters and useful prizes awarded, but the highlight for us were the dishes of ice cream prepared by Mrs Keys, the Cook at the house. It must have been a secret recipe for I have never tasted such ices since.

I am fairly certain that the family would have also helped in decorating the Church for the main festivals. The harvest festival decoration was, in common with many other churches, a real labour of love. With Luton so near, it is not surprising that there were quite a number of examples of skilful straw plaiting to be seen. The flowers from the gardens would be exceptional.

The year 1931 was quite eventful. Christmas Day was over and people were relaxing over Boxing Day when it began to rain and blow. It grew colder in the afternoon and the rain turned to sleet, then to heavy snowflakes and finally to waves of finely powdered snow which settled and drifted in the wind. After dark my own family and some men from the gardens lit hurricane lamps and got out our two sledges, dragging them through the blizzard about half a mile to Cowditch, a fine tobogganing slope. We had to build snow walls round the lamps to stop them from being blown over by the wind. It was still snowing next morning when we got up to look at a very white world. It was a Monday and people should be returning to work, but news began to come in that we were cut off. The road between Ley Green and Parsonage Farm was typical, blocked by 6 feet drifts, cutting off the way to Hitchin. Similar things had occurred on other approach roads, There was a brief time of rejoicing by those who could not get to work; that is, until they thought it through a bit further; no Postman, no Mr Hall with his baker’s cart, no delivery van from Sainburys at Luton.

My brother and Ted Cooper, one of the gardeners, set off with a large sledge to get bread for the village from Whitwell. There were vegetables about the gardens and potatoes in the big cellar under the gardeners’ mess room were available. One or two deer in the Park had succumbed to the severe weather and the Squire made these available, so that venison was on the menu for a number of people who had never tasted it before. However, every able-bodied person, male or female was asked to bring spades and shovels to clear the roads and re-open communications. It was probably 3 or 4 days before things became normal again, but in the afternoon after the worst of the digging was over, the Cowditch slope was like a winter sports area. Those youngsters who had no sledge went whistling down on large metal tea trays. The Squire’s daughters came and joined in bringing their nanny, Mrs Mellowes. They unwisely bullied her into taking a ride, but she panicked and stuck her leg out, wrenching it so badly that she had to be taken back home lying prone on the largest sledge that could be found.

Another event about that time was the occasional passing over of the airships R100 and R101 from Cardington. One day when I was at playtime at Breachwood Green School, they both appeared in the sky together and we were allowed to stay in the playground watching till they disappeared in the distance and with airships that is quite a long time.

The R101 came over Kings’ Walden on its last fateful journey. On October 4th 1930 it came over soon after dark, all lit up intending to pass over London before heading for France. I was having a bath when the cry went up that the airship was coming and I dashed out on the lawn just as I was, all dripping, to join the other spectators. In the morning we learnt of the crash at Beauvais in France, of the many casualties due to the heat of the burning hydrogen and later we learnt that Sir Sefton Bracher, the Air Vice Marshall who died in the crash, was a close relation of our Vicar the Rev Shackleford.

The timber yard at Kings’ Walden was a fascinating place for a boy to wander round. On an estate of that size with parks and woodlands, there were always trees falling as casualties through age to the winter gales. These would be hauled to the timber yard for treatment. The lopped branches, too small or bent for any use, would be thrown into a large heap to dry out and await being sawn up into logs. The trunks would dry out for a while and then be moved to the sawmill where they would be slit into thick segments and returned to the yard, with the segments kept apart by wood laths, giving the air gaps necessary for some months of drying out and seasoning in the open air. This would then be used around the estate for new building, fences and gates as for repairing existing ones. The gardens required quite a lot of timber because of the acreage of green houses and cold frames. For this work there was quite a large carpenter’s shop below the building which also housed the Parish Hall. It was fascinating to watch the carpenters, although they had a planing machine, the finished smoothing was done by hand with large wooden planes. The smell of wood shavings like that of autumn leaves is one of those things which can evoke past memories quite vividly. The curly chips that came off the planing machine were useful to put on the floor of our hutches for tame rabbits or guinea pigs.

I should point out that the saw mill and other machinery were driven either directly or indirectly from a big single cylinder gas engine, with what seemed to me an enormous flywheel. This drove the big slitting saw by a long flat belt, it also drove a dynamo, generating electricity for other machines within the yard and charged up rows and rows of batteries in a special battery room. This room provided steady current to light the lamps in the big house, the Church and the Parish Hall. The light bulbs of those days were of the carbon filament type, long with a sharp point at the bottom, they glowed more yellow than the tungsten lamps which later replaced them and they lasted much longer. The gas engine could be heard most days, giving a steady and stately chuff-chuff-chuff, which became part of the accepted background. It was managed by Harry Keen, who was also scorer for the cricket team. To see him standing on the spokes of the mighty flywheel ready to set the engine in motion was rather frightening when one knew how fast it could turn once the chuff-chuff began.

In one of the timber yard buildings was a long cylindrical tank with one end that opened to admit long wooden planks, the tank would then be sealed up and creosote pumped in under pressure to achieve maximum penetration into the wood. Wood treated in this way was intended for use in sheds, barns and for the miles of wood fencing around the estate. Also stationed in the timber yard were the painters, the plumbers and the bricklayer. I remember about three painters. Arthur West, Fred Rolph and Willy Peploe (son of the head of the timber yard, Harry Peploe, who was replaced by Ted Fowler on his retirement). The painters had a Forth Bridge kind of job: by the time they had decorated all the houses on the estate and the greenhouses as well, it was time to start all over again. They had coloured test pieces exposed to sunlight outside their shed with the paint maker’s name on so they could compare the durability of the various paints . I liked the smell of paint as it was constituted then, likewise the smell of turpentine, linseed oil and putty and enjoyed being given a hard piece of putty to work with my fingers till it was pliable enough to use.

The plumbers’ shop housed Mr Jones with Joe Parkin as his mate. It was interesting to watch them heating the silvery solder in a steel ladle held over the flame of a very noisy blow lamp. The melted solder would be used to make a wiped joint on lead piping, being built up round the pipe to give it a swollen appearance like an embolism in an artery. Yet the clean contoured finish of the joint depended on the skilled use of a piece of moleskin, tough enough to stand the temperature of solder at melting point. I once watched Mr Hailey the bricklayer make some plaster up, he made a crater in a heap of sand, poured in a white mixture of lime, followed by handfuls of horse hair, then all these were mixed together ready for use on a ceiling.

I have mentioned the lorry which used to operate from the yard. This was driven by Mr Woodhams of Ley Green, where he also ran the Plough Public House. He had a mate to help load and unload and this mate of his finally took over the job when he went, after all, there were no driving tests then. Also located in the timber yard was the estate cart and the Shire horse that pulled it. Mr Whitehurst, a tall ex service man with a lame leg used to trudge around the estate wherever loads were to be carried. It could be coal or hen coops, grass mowings from the big lawns, or autumn leaves to be taken to the gardens to be piled up to make leaf mould. As I pointed out, some electricity was available on the estate, generated in the gas engine house in the timber yard.

Around 1932 (?) electricity was brought in from outside by the Northmet Co. This brought electric light to all the houses in the village of Kings’ Walden and made some important improvements. Our family tended to live in one room at night, lit by an oil lamp which had been greatly improved by the introduction of the incandescent mantle. Even so, reading or doing homework by oil lamp was a strain. With electric light for the first time, even a 60 watt bulb seem dazzling, but so much better was the relief in not having to light small oil lamps or candles to go into any other room or to bed. Mr Conquest who used to pump the bellows for the Church organ was replaced by a small electric motor and fan and he was able to come into the service as a chorister. Harry Keen was a little jealous at first that his gas engine was not needed any more and he gave a shout of triumph when the new motor on the saw mill failed when faced with a really big tree trunk, but after this had been corrected he was probably glad not to be called out to run the gas engine for weekend parties at the big house.

We did not indulge at home in any electrical gadgets, because there were so few available, not even a vacuum cleaner; these would have been considered as luxuries. However, it did make a difference in the matter of radio. We had been among the first to have a crystal set installed, with the tall aerial which was considered necessary in those days. With headphones, only two people could listen at the most and it could be annoying on a Saturday night when Vaudeville was on with a good comedian like Leonard Henry, to hear those with the headphones on laughing away, while the rest of us could hear nothing. We had moved on from the crystal set to a loudspeaker set later, which meant keeping an eye on the batteries, particularly the LT accumulator which had to be taken to town or to Roberts’ garage at Whitwell to be charged up at frequent intervals. With the coming of mains electricity, we were able to get our first mains radio set and we were amazed at the difference in the quality of the sound and intrigued by our ability to listen to programmes from foreign stations. We could listen to Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandy and hear dance music on Sundays, which the BBC authorities frowned upon. Our parents were uncertain whether this tuning in to the continental Sunday was right and proper and made us switch over to the BBC when visitors looked in.

While we were still relying on the crystal set, the two youngest in our family were encouraged to listen to Children’s Hour in the days of Uncle Mac and Aunt Elizabeth. We loved Toytown in particular and the calling out of birthdays, which was quite possible then with so few listeners. I remember the excitement one birthday when Uncle Mac called out my name and told me to go upstairs and look on top of the wardrobe in my parent’s bedroom where I would find something of interest. I flung off the headphones, ran upstairs and found a birthday present. It was then sheer magic.

When it came to entertainment the Parish Hall was not the only choice, because Breachwood Green with its larger population had what we called the Recreation Hut. Already we have mentioned Sunday school in the Parish Hall, also Guides and Brownies. There were Cubs and Scouts too, but although these troops had two good army tents and a trek cart, they didn’t have any really adventurous activities, because one Scout Master had a touch of religious mania and spent a lot of time writing to Bishops showing them where they were in error. The next one got things nicely organised again and then ran off with the funds. At the time I left, George Angell from Breachwood was trying to salvage something from the wreckage.

On a midweek afternoon there was the Mothers’ Welfare and Nurse Wyatt, the district nurse, would have been there in her Austin Seven. She had succeeded Nurse Lackland who had helped to bring me into the world. I used to like that day of the Welfare, because occasionally my mother would bring home one or two pieces of yellow cake, or even fruit cake that had been left over. Since our cake during the week was plain with caraway seeds in, this offering made for variety till the weekend fruit cake was baked.

There were Whist Drives, of course, and dances with something like three-piece bands to provide music. Roy Darby from Offley was a fine swing pianist. He was employed by Luton Borough Council at their Sewage Treatment Plant, but ended up as a Chief at Luton Airport and in retirement is still connected with music in Luton.

My father helped to organise a branch of the British Legion, which met once a week in the Parish Hall and paraded at the Church on Armistice Sunday with the Scouts and Guides. Near Christmas time they had the annual British Legion concert, which was very popular. This was in the nature of a variety show using local and imported talent. It was also an occasion when the Squire and his family and guests would really let their hair down and provide some good comic sketches. One regular guest each year was Freddy Grisewood, the BBC announcer who sang both straight and comic songs with a well trained baritone voice. Then he would switch to a monologue in dialect about a country character called ‘Our Bill’, with the sort of broad humour that Bernard Miles was to exploit much later on. Another welcome guest was Captain Spencer, a quick fire joke cracking comedian with a fund of comic songs that would have been relished by more sophisticated audiences than we parishioners. It occurs to me that this gentleman could have been an ancestor, or relation of the former Lady Diana Spencer, now Princess of Wales.

A popular sketch at this time for local theatricals was “The Hole in the Road”. I remember Tom Whitmore (father of Richard) giving a fine performance in this as the night watchman. Occasionally, concert parties would come out from Hitchin to give an evening’s entertainment. Of these I can only remember the Hitchin Postmen’s Mouth Organ Band which was very good. I remember a few short silent movie films being shown in the Parish Hall one night, probably by Mr Latchmore, with constant stoppages to put the lights on while broken film was repaired.

When Mr Simpson became headmaster at Breachwood Green School, he started a move to organise more recreational activity. The organisation was known as the BBC, which stood for the Brighter Breachwood Club. Apart from concerts, whist drives and dances, there was also a lady’s hockey team. Perhaps the finest effort was the formation of the choral society which was hammered into shape by the energetic, wiry, diminutive Mary lbberson quite early on in her pioneering work for Rusal Music Schools. They tackled quite formidable musical works and singers used to come out regularly from Luton to join in. Tom Brooker would come out from Hitchin to take tenor solo parts.

There was a sort of bus service in existence when I first began to sit up and take notice of the things that went on around me. The first bus I remember was classified as a charabanc. Which meant what it said: a vehicle with seats in rows with separate outside doors to each row of seats. It had a folding canopy kept open on fine days, but even when the cover was over in winter it had no side windows and must have been very cold. It had solid tyres and the roads were not always covered with tarmac so that heavy rain would carve ruts in the gravel surface and the ride was very rough indeed. Exciting too, because the engines of those days were feeble and unreliable. Climbing a hill was an adventure as the driver struggled to get bottom gear and, if the engine was unwilling, passengers would have to get out and help push. It was said that one day, when this blue charabanc, flatteringly called “The Ashburnham Belle”, was trying to climb Lye Hill into Breachwood Green, the engine actually dropped out. Apart from that, roads were still narrow and to get the bus past a farm cart or traction engine was a matter of skill and patience. The next bus after that, driven by Bert Gurney, had a roof and glass windows, but an open front for the driver and two passengers. I remember as a very small boy being allowed to sit on Bert Gurney’s knees while he drove and helping change gear with the handle on the steering wheel. After this one, the service was taken over by a private company called ‘National’ with red buses run from Luton by a Mr Brown.

Along came the day when the first pneumatic tyred buses arrived. We called them balloon tyres then, and on the first day of their use some passengers missed the bus because they were used to waiting indoors until they could hear the rattle of the older solid tyred bus in the distance. They didn’t hear the new one coming.

When the bus service became a through service between Luton and Hitchin some buses would go via Ley Green and some via Whitehall alternately, so that the T junction at Parsonage Farm was a busy pick-up point. At some time, with bigger buses coming into service, it must have been decided that the Whitehall route was too narrow. After which they all went round Ley Green.

There were two farms which I considered as part of the estate run by those paid directly from the estate exchequer, to distinguish from the other farms around the estate run by tenant farmers. One was the Home Farm at Offley which carried a lot of cattle and this was where Captain Vaughan (the estate agent) and Mr Field (the secretary) had their base. I never went there except once on a half hour visit with my father and have no memories of it. I do, however, remember a story told about the Squire when he was visiting the farm not long after the birth of his eighth daughter. He had been looking over the cattle with the stockman and seemed to be in a thoughtful mood. Turning to the stockman he said: “You’ve been breeding cattle for a long time now, tell me, if you had a cow that only produced female calves, how would you deal with it?”. The stockman quickly realised what lay back of the Squire’s question and couldn’t miss the opportunity: “I would shoot the bull Sir.” he said.

The dairy farm or just “The Dairy” was at the far end of the Park at Frogmore was run by Mr Parkin, with Mrs Parkin helping with the cream separator and butter churn. (Tim Woods, who worked in the estate gardens used to live in the gatehouse at the Frogmore end of the Park.) Sometimes we children had to walk across the Park to get our milk, and sometimes we would get it from Parsonage Farm. I remember playing with the chaff cutter and being told to stay away because the big knives were sharp. So I would go and look at the cow cake in slabs which smelt nice, but didn’t taste so good. I was told in later life that I owed my life to a cow in The Dairy. After I was born, I made little progress and my mother was told she might lose me because her milk was giving me ‘thrush’. Instructions went out that I was to have milk sent up each morning from the best cow in the Dairy and I survived, but was never introduced to my foster mother.

Next to the Dairy was the Laundry, run by Mrs Barlow, which catered for the laundering requirements of the big house and staff. I don’t remember going inside, but there was usually a lot of steam and the noise of machinery coming from the building.

At the Whitehall Corner of the Park was a poultry farm looked after by John Parkin and his wife Ethel. I just remember rows of hen houses with chickens of various breeds and ages running around all enclosed by a strong system of fencing to prevent hens fluttering out or foxes creeping in. John Parkin’s house was another gatehouse to the Park. Not far from there, opposite the Vicarage, the Squire had a clearance made for a Polo pitch which was used quite often but I don’t remember a match there.

A feature of the Park was a flock of fallow deer and also a flock of Jacob’s sheep. The ponds in the Park provided water for these animals and were good places to see coots, moorhens and dragon-flies. Also within the Park, near the cricket ground was a small wood in the middle of which was the Ice House, below ground, where game and other food stuffs would have been stored before the days of refrigeration. There were always horses roaming loose in the Park being rested from hunting and, in the meadow near the stables, we would often see young horses being ‘broken in’. A genial old groom, Mr Edwards used to do this, watched over by Mr Strutt, the senior groom. Head of the stables was Mr Scott. He was succeeded by Mr Jebb, whose son Roger was a year or two younger than me. In the Park, and in meadows where horses were kept, there were well-built barns with mangers for the horses’ hay and one or two of them, like the one near the Parish Hall, had a loft where hay was kept. A lovely place for youngsters to play when it was wet outside provided you didn’t mind sharing the hay with the odd rat or mouse. Oddly enough, I have learnt since from friends who have kept horses that even if shelter is provided in a meadow the horses may not use it, even in bad weather.

One person I remember well, although I never met her, was Miss Barker, a school teacher, who used to ride through King’s Walden on a motor bike twice a day. Always clad in a brown leather coat, leather hat and goggles. She had a Francis Barnett two stroke machine with the characteristic ‘pop pop’ noise and a trail of blue smoke. She either travelled from Preston to Kimpton every day, or maybe the other way round. Anyway, I can’t remember her features because I never saw them out of motor cycling garb. Ruth Angell from Breachwood Green became a motor cycling school teacher. She married Harry Maltby, a journery man gardener at Kings Walden, but I believe she was killed on her motorbike.

The gardens were an important feature of life at King’s Walden and a great attraction to outsiders. Because my father was head gardener there, as had been his own father, we had a certain family possessiveness about it. It could be divided into four sections:

(a) Kitchen garden, comprising fruit and vegetables (b) Greenhouses for more exotic fruits and flowers (c) Ornamental grounds with lawns and flowered borders (d) Rock gardens and lake.

The kitchen garden was looked after by men from within the parish. They had an Overseer, Isaac Fitzjohn, who lived in a house on the estate, but he soon retired and was replaced by a Suffolk man, Alf Sawyer. This section provided a wider variety of produce than the average person could then expect to see in a lifetime. There were all the common vegetables, a great variety of types of cabbage, asparagus, raspberries, strawberries, loganberries, two or three types of gooseberries, black and white and red currants, red and yellow tomatoes. Massive dandelion leaves were grown for salads. Marrows of various colours were to be found growing in odd corners. Cucumbers were plentiful, likewise different types of melons, chillis and pepper plants, mushrooms were cultivated in a special room. Blue and yellow grapes were grown in larger greenhouses and the fig house was always fascinating, and being kept a high temperature and high humidity the air was heavy with the scent of figs.

There were fruit trees in abundance, great use being made of high brick walls facing the best of the day’s sunlight. On these were to be found peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums and different varieties of cherries. The variety of apple trees was enormous, some varieties grew as normal trees and others grew cordon style along a wrought iron archway. Some of these produced such large table apples that, as they neared ripeness, little muslin nets were tied under them to protect against bruising if they fell. Even the humble crab apple had a place there, because its fruit could be used for crab apple jelly (an alternative to red currant jelly used with game).

Between the plots of the vegetable garden ran a grass path with flowering plants on either side, which would be used to supply flowers for decorating the big house and also the Church, particularly for festivals. More exotic flowers and plants were grown in the greenhouses. Two large ones were given over entirely to carnations, another to orchids. Yet another greenhouse was given over to curiosities, like the Sensitive Plant, which folded up it leaves smartly when touched and another, whose leaves gave off a lemon smell when squeezed between the fingers. On Sundays after lunch the Squire would often bring guests over from the big house to show them round the greenhouses, or to look at anything else of seasonal interest. They would usually be accompanied by a retinue of dogs, starting with a couple of retrievers, followed by an Irish Wolfhound, a greyhound, a posse of daschunds and, bringing up the rear, a mongrel tike named Peter, the sworn enemy of our own dog Punch, who had to be kept indoors for the duration of the visit.

Behind the scenes there was a background of work places essential to the running of this garden. Cold frames, potting sheds, a bunker for silver sand which is beautiful stuff for a child to play with. A tool shed with a massive sandstone wheel for sharpening axes and other tools and a chopping block for chopping the kindling wood for the numerous fires to be lit each day in the big house. There were bundles of faggots for training peas, cut by woodmen on the estate, a massive bonfire of garden rubbish which rarely went out, a place for making leaf mould and leafy loam and a fruit room, partly below ground for keeping stored apples and pears at a suitable temperature.

Tucked away in one corner was a small plot where my father kept two goats, some hens, pigeons and tame rabbits. The greenhouses were kept warm by two large Robin Hood boilers, situated below ground at either end of the greenhouse complex, so that no circulating pumps were necessary for the hot water which flowed by gravity through the piping system. The boilers were heated by coke, except for a short time when they used some oval shaped briquettes stamped ‘KAISER’, which had come over from Germany as part of their war reparations. It was the job of the gardener on duty to bank these boilers up for the night and I would often hear the rasp of the shovel on the concrete floor while I lay in bed.

Many plants meant a lot of watering, with soft water for preference, and the solution of this problem was a very economical one. All the rain water that drained off the greenhouses was led to a huge copper lined tank beneath the green house at the lowest point. The tank was as big as a room. A windmill pump of the lift and force type sucked the water up from this tank to another one high up on the windmill platform, where there was enough head of water to reach the individual tanks in each greenhouse from where the gardeners filled their watering cans.

The control system on the windmill was simple but effective as the high tank became full: a float moved up and a system of rods and levers caused the sails of the windmill to feather, turning edgewise to the wind so that it stopped turning and pumping. After the coming of electricity, this windmill with its pump was replaced by what seemed a pathetically small centrifugal pump direct-coupled to an electric motor.

The gardeners who looked after the greenhouses were known as Journeymen. That is, they were youngish men getting experience in their skills, so that one day they would command a more responsible, better paid post, such as being in charge of public gardens administered by a town council. These men had lodgings on the estate known as “the bothy”, a Scottish word, I believe. Their cooking, catering and laundering were done for them, possibly by some matronly lady who lived in, or later by a woman from the village who came each day to do the work. I can’t remember clearly. Their evenings, Saturday afternoons and Sundays were their own, so they would join in with the cricket or tennis. On autumn evenings they would play football in a meadow nearest the bothy, sometimes joined by men from the stables. These gardeners had a separate foreman from those who worked on the vegetable gardens and ornamental grounds. This foreman being only a little older than the rest, would allocate duty rosters and maintain discipline in the bothy. One such foreman was Charlie Oldham from Burnley who almost became one of our own family but, having decided to marry a cook from the big house, left and by wartime was a head gardener on a country estate, but he continued to keep in touch with us for many years.

Mr Hamilton, who succeeded my father, told me sometime after the war that he had been cleaning out the head gardener’s office and had turned up a wage bill for one week in the year 1923. This came to a total of £64 for about 35 men, youths and boys. It has to be remembered that for those living on the estate, coal, paraffin and housing hardly cost anything and doubtless there were perks in the way of surplus vegetables and the odd rabbit or two. Even so, there were children who used to come to school at Breachwood Green with holes in their boots and some cried out from the pain of chilblains.

The estate had its own drinking water supply, which came from a pumping station in a meadow quite near the entrance to Parsonage Farm. A well-built brick building concealed the well, a deep well pump and storage tank. The pump was driven by an oil engine of the type now seen on display at traction engine rallies. Such engines were the workhorses generating power, pumping, or mixing cattle feed on many estates and farms throughout the country before the coming of electricity. There was another such engine attached to a pump on a mobile trolley which was used within the gardens on jobs like emptying the swimming pool or emergency watering in time of drought. Because of the noise it made it came to be known as “Puffing Percy”.

One antique pump in regular use within the gardens was a chain pump used to bring up ‘manure water’, as I used to call it: the stuff was pumped into a mobile liquid carrier and mixed with water for watering plants. The manure water came by underground drains from the stables about 150 yards away and consisted of liquid run-off from the stable floors and it collected in an underground tank where the chain pump was. This is the kind of planning of which today’s conservationists would approve.

My father used to pay great attention to the weather forecasts put out over the radio and he made his own contribution as a supplier of information to the Meteorological office. He had a rain gauge, a barometer, a Stevenson screen for a max and min thermometer and a wet and dry bulb thermometer. We youngsters were occasionally trusted to go out and record these measurements, which was done each day.

The ornamental grounds achieved their effect by the combination of terracing, ample lawns following the gentle slope of the hills, rare shrubs and trees and some buildings copying classical styles of another age. For example, the swimming pool had something of home about it and the summer house was Italian in conception. Along the main gravel path to the Church stood two pagoda-like sentinels in wrought iron, reputed to have come from China. It was maintained that they had been designed to hold a red lantern inside and small metal bells swung from hooks on the top to warn the traveller that this was the entrance to some important dwelling.

Within these grounds there were two grass tennis courts outside the front of the house, and hard tennis courts elsewhere. The view from the house across the lawn to the park would allow horses and cattle in the part to be seen as though there was nothing to prevent the animals wandering in. This was achieved by using a ditch and a brick wall called a “Ha Ha”. It was not called by that name then, but I have seen a few since and that is how the device is usually termed. No doubt Capability Brown first though of it. At one time, the lawns called for two or even three motor mowers in Springtime and a handmower on the steep slope in front of the house. The cut grass was piled up in a small orchard near the timber yard and seemed quite mountainous to a small boy. If I put my arm well into the heap of composting grass it could be so hot I would have to pull it out quickly.

The rock garden had something of both my grandfather’s and my father’s planning about it. Certainly my father, with some of his training at Kew, would have been better equipped to establish the rarer rock plants there and to plan the overflow from the lake, so that water cascaded from one rockpool to another. Mr Sutton from Breachwood Green was a trusted gardener who specialised in the rockery. Incidentally, the lake was topped up and made to overflow by pumping in water from a well. Yet another engine driven pump in a brick tower near the lake used to do this. The water ran into the lake through an upright pipe in the middle giving the effect of a weak fountain. A wooden water pipe dating from Roman times was found in the lake while I was living there.

At the highest point of the rockery, alongside one of the gravel paths was what looked like a miniature country cottage. In this was the estate fire engine: a horse-drawn vehicle with a steam boiler and engine to drive the pump. The boiler fire was always kept ready charged with coal, wood and paper. But I was told that when a fire actually occurred in the big house the Hitchin Fire Brigade had arrived and put it out before the local team found the right horses and before the boiler was hot enough to raise steam for the pump. The fire engine did get occasional use when it was used to help “Puffing Percy” to empty the swimming pool at the end of summer.

Everything within the ornamental grounds and gardens was prepared to be looking at its best by the King’s Walden Flower Show on August Bank Holiday, when the public were allowed in. The organisation of this fell mainly on my father’s shoulders and made him a very busy man at a time when other folk were relaxing in the heat or on holiday.

The lower part of the cricket field was covered by tents and marquees set up by Garratts of Luton. These, as at most village fetes, would contain the entries into competitions for the best vegetables, flowers, cakes, jams, needlework, drawings and so on. Local nurserymen would have exhibitions of their wares, such as Harkness and Wheeler of Hitchin. Prior to the show, there would have been judging of allotments within the district and awards would be announced at the same time as the prize giving. Regular features on the entertainment side were the refreshment tent, run by Slaters of Luton, who used to have a restaurant on Park Square, the Luton Red Cross Band, which had then recently won the National Brass Band Championship and a bee expert who demonstrated the handling of bees behind a curtain of netting. The Squire’s daughters would bring their ponies along to give penny rides and, for the wee ones, there was a Shetland pony or a small pony and trap. For the active folk, there were races, including a father’s race (usually won by John Parkin), coconut shies, bowling for a pig, throwing the cricket ball and one or two others that I have forgotten.

Normally, buses coming through Kings Walden passed once each hour: one going to Hitchin, returning an hour later on its way back to Luton. But on the day of the Flower Show, they would arrive from both Hitchin and Luton at ten-minute intervals for two or three hours, packed full of people determined to have a good Bank Holiday in the country. For many country people and townsfolk too, for whom a going away holiday was way beyond their means, the Flower Show provided an ideal day out.

The recently celebrated centenary of PG Wodehouse has served to remind us of his favourite character, Jeeves the butler. King’s Walden had its butlers; I can recall four. Mr Cunnington, a short man with a kindly face, retired when I was quite young, although I used to see him quite often after we moved to Hitchin in 1935, living as he did quite close to us in the Offley Road. He was followed by a Mr Frost, who used to drive around on a motor bike and side car. His wife didn’t take very well to country life and they departed fairly soon. As the Squire remarked to my father: “I don’t think he was quite our type”. Likewise, a Mr Kinder who followed on but didn’t stay for long after his wife presented him with a small boy called Jackie. It was then announced that Mr Shaw and his wife were returning. He had been butler there when I was very small, but had left to better himself at a big country house in Wales.

When I hear the word ‘butler’ I always think of Mr Shaw, a man who had dignity and an aristocratic bearing. He had a resonant voice devoid of local accent, unless it was the kind of accent acquired by people who have spent their early life in India. I have no idea what he may have been like to other staff within the house in the “upstairs downstairs” hierarchy, knowing him only as the nearest neighbour who went to work and came home at odd times throughout the day. When the ‘family’ moved in their routine to the hunting lodge, the London House, or Scotland, he would go too. He relaxed in the garden, or walked round the estate with his gun and his own retriever. From time to time, he would bring us excellent packs of playing cards and glossy magazines that had been discarded at the big house. For when they played cards they used a new pack for each game. In retrospect, I visualise him as a loyal, restrained and discreet retainer who, like Jeeves, would be capable of giving sound advice when asked. If it were otherwise, I was still too young to hear about it.

Mrs Curtis, the housekeeper, I can remember but dimly. Mrs Keys, the head cook, I remember as a plump lady with rosy cheeks, shouting orders to lesser folk around the kitchen. There was Ida, the housemaid, who came over to the gardens to enquire whether a plumber could go over and unfreeze the pipes. There was George Nobbs, the ‘Odd Job Man’, who was quite handy with the cricket bat and achieved the ambition of every King’s Walden cricketer by hitting the ball out of the ground into the lake. He left and was replaced by Harry Day. Miss Ingram, the lady’s maid, left to take her place in the retinue of Queen Mary.

Of the gamekeepers, I can remember Frank Muddle who was succeeded by Mr Baker (whose granddaughter was married to my son). There was Mr Minns, Mr Fisher, Sam Todd, Mr Fairey and Mr Middleditch.

Breachwood Green School was regarded as better than Ley Green School if one wanted a scholarship to a secondary school. In my first year it was run by a Mr WalfalI who, I am told, was sadistically fond of using the cane. Matters came to a head when Bill Tripp, the strong son of the blacksmith, wrenched the cane out of his hand and broke it. Shortly after that, Mr Simpson took over and standards improved all round. When they took away a shabby old curtain that had separated two classes after morning assembly, the hollow curtain rod was found full of canes which pupils had hidden away.

One innovation made by Mr Simpson in my last year there (about 1931) was an early experiment by the BBC in giving lessons by radio. These were on biology and I didn’t meet the subject again until my 3rd year at secondary school. One teacher there, inappropriately named Miss Cane, was very good at selecting stories such as those of classical Greek heroes from Tanglewood Tales, and I still consider that as a very important part of my early education. She also had her pet aversions which she would push onto us pupils. One example was “to drink a cup of tea as a pick-me-up is like whipping a tired horse”. Mr Simpson used to take one or two senior pupils round the district in his Austin Seven with a large scale ordnance survey map and we would note the crops being grown in the fields each season to see how crops were being rotated. We had one period a week devoted to the school garden, but as a gardener’s son, I was a disappointment, because I enjoyed clipping the grass paths more than planting things, because I didn’t have to remember the long names of plants.

Schools in those days were often closed because of an outbreak of scarlet fever, or diphtheria. It is difficult to imagine how we youngsters used to stay at home struck with fear of the unknown, particularly if the bell of the ambulance was heard as it came by with a suspect being rushed to Hitchin Hospital. We knew all about the deaths in the Great War, with so many ex-service people around the estate, some with limps and others signs of injury we were not allowed to forget. But it was different when a form mate, Stanley Foulds, was brought to the Church in a horse drawn hearse while the muffled bell was tolled sonorously. It was difficult to realise that a mate was as dead as Elizabeth Pannett whose plaque I could read on the wall of the Church from our family pew every Sunday.

Incidentally, it was said of the colourful screen in the Church, which separates the choir from the congregation, that many years ago it was painted black and was rather dirty. The people who set about cleaning it noticed that their scrubbing effort was revealing unsuspected colours and designs, so they restored it to its original attractiveness. Students of religious history should note that there are cyclic waves in human behaviour when man persuades himself that spiritual growth is held back by too much artistic design and ornament within the place of worship. The Mosaic Law expressly forbade the portrayal of human or animal and even plant forms within the temple in ancient Israel, this being a check on the tendency of that people to revert to forms of nature worship and idolatry. Nevertheless, the people did revert to idolatry and suffered as a result. One wonders, therefore, whether these waves of puritanism occur at times when the “collective unconscious” of mankind when under stress tries to avert some threat or memory of disaster by trying to get back to what he imagines to be the simpler, original forms of worship. If that is in fact the case, it only shows that these people, having little creativity themselves, have not recognised how many great works of art have been produced by people inspired with a religious feeling.

To sum up, Kings Walden up until World War II continued to enshrine an essentially rural British way of life, grown from the Saxon village through the memorial system imposed by Norman Overlords, with all its assumptions about the rights and responsibilities of the wealthy landowner towards those who shared his land in return for their labour. It has been labelled a surviving relic of feudal England. Whether that claim amounts to a slur or not, I consider doubtful. We had a hierarchical social structure which took for granted a big disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom of the pyramid. As a community it was almost self-supporting in a number of ways and the existence of the various workshop facilities for maintaining the estate increased its independence. Its use of energy, imported from outside as coal, coke and oil was not very great. The preservation of woodland for hunting and shooting etc., has been argued as one big factor in England that has helped the conservation of the English countryside against the depredations of the developers on the one hand and the factory farmers on the other. The cottages built for workers on the estate were soundly constructed, blending well with the surroundings, unlike the hideous terraced buildings put up by industry for workers during the industrial revolution, so well depicted in the paintings of L S Lowry.

The fact that their lives and their houses were so much in the hands of the Squire made the tenants respectful, but not to the extent of destroying their sturdy independence of mind. Some modern political systems seem to try and do this by persuading people that national governments now take the place of paternal squire, to provide for them and to protect or reward them in return for their wealth-creating labour. Some industries indeed tried to create a caring paternal housing system for their workers. People may have forgotten Cadbury’s Worker’s Township of Bournville, or a similar experiment by Olivetti in Italy, or indeed the present day set up in a number of Japanese industries. These take what was good in the feudal system and transpose it into a modern setting.

Looking back, I think that the Squire was more accessible to workers on the estate than is a modern industrial director to staff and workers below the junior executive level. The Squire would have known more about the affairs of those on his estate than factory personnel officials know about many of the workers whose records they are supposed to keep. One general labourer around the gardens was a noted alcoholic, for the sake of his family he was given many chances to pull himself out of the mire, rather than be turned out. A young chauffeur, who had sired a child on one of the housemaids was allowed a house provided he did “the right thing” and married the girl. My father who suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of 52, was given a pension above the normal level until all of us children were earning a living.

So, all in all, it was a good life for most of us, as children we could roam far and wide, plenty of room for animals as pets, we could travel on the bus to Luton for ‘The Pictures’ at the Palace Cinema, with its orchestra conducted by Sydney Phasey, who eventually became quite famous. If the last bus back from Luton only came as far as Breachwood Green, no matter: it was quite safe to walk the rest of the way along dark roads. My father’s family season ticket cost 25 shillings for 6 months of bus travel; anyone of the family could use it and it was usable to either Hitchin or Luton. We had quietude after dark, when the chime of the clock over the stables kept everyone informed of the hour. The distinctive sound of somebody’s bull-nosed Morris Cowley with the Hotchkiss engine could be heard in the distance going through the gears as it climbed the hill to Breachwood Green. The snuffling of horses in the Park would seem at once near, yet peacefully remote. If we wanted to go to London for the day, no bother, we could get onto a Strawhatter Coach at Luton Park Square and get there for half a crown return fare in comfort.

The Church choir did have a yearly outing. I remember two trips to the Hendon Air Pageant, one to Folkstone, and, dimly, before I was old enough to be in the choir, a trip to the Wembley Exhibition, of which all I can recall was the non-stop railway and boats which travelled fast down a slope into a water splash.

Bicycles were always important for getting around, yet at night-time paraffin front lights were still in use, rear lights not being thought necessary. After all, if you thought a car was coming behind, you could stop and get off close to the hedge. It would probably be the only car that night anyway. One might become the proud possessor of an acetylene lamp. These were well-made bicycle lamps that required a little planning and preparation to light; the bottom unscrewed and calcium carbide was put in, quantity according to the length of the journey. Into the top was poured about a half a cup full of water and a little tap was turned on allowing the water to drip slowly onto the calcium carbide, reacting with it to give off acetylene gas to be lit with a noisy pop at the burner. This gave out a good white light, better than the yellow flame of paraffin lamps and harder for the wind to blow out. But woe to the man who got his calculations wrong and the flame went out before his journey’s end. It was a bit tricky to recharge the lamp with chemical or water in the dark, ghostly tales were told of people who had to use urine to keep the flame going till they got home.

I remember using my bicycle with such a lamp, borrowed from my father, to go to the annual Christmas party at Tompkins Farm at Wandon End and, from this farm now, one can watch planes on the runway of Luton Airport. To me then, it seemed the last outpost of civilisation.

Occasionally Frankie Farr of Parsonage Farm would hire steam engines to plough his field near the timber yard. The pair of engines that did this work were much bigger and heavier than the other traction engines in use. Their names were Napoleon and Wellington and we regarded the oily faced men who tended these mighty beasts with great awe. The plough they pulled to and fro between them seemed enormous too, as it travelled between the engines on either side of the field at almost a running pace. I learned afterwards that these drivers could sustain nasty lacerations if the steel cable pulling the plough broke and came snaking back onto the engine doing the pulling.

The village shop at Ley Green was, when I first became aware of it, run by Mrs Squires and later by a man named Mr MacDonald or MacDonnell. He enlarged the business, and used to come round once a week for grocery orders. He would come indoors with pad in hand whilst my mother tried to think what she needed. Each week he would try and help her decide with the same recital: Salt? Mustard? Vinegar? Pepper? Every Saturday morning in summer his Morris Cowley car would enter the Park and drive up to the cricket field carrying bread and cake, a crate or two of TolIy Ale and bottles of fizzy lemonade to help the cricketers stave off hunger and thirst later on in the day.

In previous days, there was a fine avenue of elms, probably now destroyed by Dutch Elm disease. These stretched diagonally across what we knew as Barn Meadow from Parsonage Corner to the main entrance of The Bury. This was supposed to have once been an older carriage-way, which was superseded. In the same meadow was a ditch of such shape that it must have been man-made, but whether it was part of an older earthwork I could not say. Possibly for training hunters.

When I started secondary school at Hitchin, I used to travel on the bus with the son of Mr Wright, the head gardener at Temple Dinsley, Preston. I often used to visit him there and walk round the grounds which belonged to Lady Carnarvon, widow of Lord Carnarvon, who with Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in February 1923. Later this property became the Princes Helena College.

Quite a few years back when David Frost became a TV Interviewer, he was talking to a certain Mr Heffer, leader of the Stevedores’ union and renowned as a homely philosopher. When asked what he though of the English workman in comparison with his American counterpart, he said: “The American workman sees himself working towards a higher position and eventually running his own business. The English worker sees as his eventual aim becoming a leisured country gentleman strolling in suitable attire around an estate with a gun under his arm and a dog at his side. He works, not motivated strongly by desire for money or power, but for eventual leisure.”.

Perhaps the life of the Country Squire was not so leisurely as some imagine.

PloughStock 2007

2007-06-27T02:03:00.000-07:00

Saturday 23rd June was PloughStock. If memory serves, then I reckon this was the fourth of these events held in the grounds of The Plough pub in Plough Lane, Ley Green.

For the uninitiated, PloughStock is a mini music festival which raises money for charity. On the subject of charity - or not - we were very sad to hear that someone had felt moved to complain about this enjoyable and always trouble-free social gathering, even before the event.

Organisation was excellent and a number of local people contributed time, money and resources. Those of us lucky enough to have attended would like to thank Boyd, Vic, Andrew, Robin and Russ who collectively organised the event and took care of the sound for the bands. Thanks also to Plough landlord Dave for the hospitality, and to the bar staff for their patience.

If I have missed anyone out, please remind me and I'll edit this to add them.

While much of the country was slowly submerging, Ley Green enjoyed a fairly warm day with a fair amount of sunshine and just a couple of spells of rain. It was certainly not wet enough to dampen spirits or hamper enjoyment of the music.

The performer line-up consisted of The Guitar Bastards, The Von Trapps, The Trailer Trash Orchestra, Freak Four, Sons of the Soil, Bill Lennon and, last act of the evening, 24 Carat Purple.

All the bands did a fine job. There was a great mixture of styles, from rock and blues to punk, alternative and bluegrass. Deep Purple tribute act 24 Carat Purple provided a great old-school rock finale to round off the music as darkness fell.

Here are a couple of videos of the day's entertainment. Apologies for the poor quality of the first one - I kept resolution low to eke out as much video time as I could from my camera.

Firstly, Bill Lennon...

Then 24 Carat Purple. Here's a better video of the headline act made by someone else who came better prepared!

I'll post a few more photos and video clips a bit later.

New Site

2007-04-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

For various reasons I am changing the format of KingsWalden.com. It is now a Google Blogger blog. That will make maintenance and updating much easier.

As time allows, I'll be reinstating the old content and articles and adding new stuff. The dedicated pages for local businesses and other establishments will return, including the page for St Mary's Church.

Instead of the forum we had on the old version of the site, on this version you will be able to post comments and discussion on specific pages. I.e., on the page about the church you will be able to conduct discussion regarding St Mary's by posting in that page's Comment section.

The decor is temporary. I'll pretty things up a bit when I get a moment.

Cheers,

Rick

(By the way, if you see posts by "Buddhu", that'll be me. Don't ask, it's a long story.)