Tag Archives: 1950s

Pete Smith: Funeral 1951

Funeral in snow from Dog Kennel Cottage 1950

I remember waiting with my Mum in the snow at the bus stop by Heal’s cart shed (on the corner of Broad Lane opposite Newclose Farm) and being very cold. No bus came along, but while we were waiting, a strange sight came into view; a tractor pulling a trailer with a coffin upon it preceded by my great grandfather Robert (Bob) May the undertaker, with his black funeral great coat and top hat. It was so cold that the tractor, from Tapnell Farm, had an old army coat thrown over the radiator to stop it freezing; a very strange sight indeed for a four year old lad to take in. The bus never did arrive due to the snow.

This was the funeral of Mrs Reader who lived at Dog Kennel Cottage up Broad Lane, on December 16^th 1950. Peter Smith b 1946

Jane Phillips: Newclose Farm, Thorley, 1950s

Newclose Farm

How did I come to be milking the herd of cows at Newclose Farm?

Broad Lane to Newclose Farm buildings 2013 Newclose Farmhouse on left, old milking parlour at end of road.

I’d spent a couple of years at a rather grand school in London, Mary Datchelors, which was famous for its singing. It’s left me with a love for classical music, but I was such a dunce! After a couple of years in the Remove, struggling with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, Latin and French, they thought I’d better not go on.

So I came home, didn’t know what to do. ‘You’re too stupid to work in Woolworth’s,’ they told me, so they let me go to work farming.

I did three years at Cliff End at 2/6 a week. There was no keep included, but they bought cakes once a week on a Tuesday. The mice pretty soon got’em so they gave us the mousey ones, and we’d break off the mousey bits.

Do you know that little green magazine ‘The Countryman’? There was an advert in there from the UK Sponsoring Authority. You could go to a farm in France, Belgium or Holland. Well, I went off to Friesland in Holland. At Cliff farm they thought I was going off to darkest Africa – wouldn’t let me take my hoe and my 2 pronged fork that I’d saved up for and bought myself.

After a year in Holland, some time in Derbyshire and then in Devon, Ernest Heal offered me a job in charge of 30 cows at Newclose. Can you imagine how I felt? It gave me such confidence. He left me in charge, didn’t want to know unless there was anything wrong. I was so grateful to him. He opened so much for me in life.

Newclose Farm is on the crossroads and I used to have to take the heifers up Broad Lane to Dog Kennel. What a job! They’d run like mad and there were no hedges, they’d been taken out just before I started at Newclose.
I was smarter with the calves though. I had 6 or so and I bought some halters and used to walk them up through the fields by where Holmfield Avenue is – there was just the one house there. Mind you, I’d be walking them over the crossroads and a bus would come, and the calves would be tying themselves up.

Picking up sheaves with working horses

Char Courtney and Shep Hillier worked there too. Char was in charge of the tractor and the horse – Ernest Heal had the last working horse on the Island. Char was supposed to know the names of all the cows and all about them; which ones needed a stone on the machine when they were being milked and so on. Did he hell! He knew all the horses at the bookies!

One day he was driving the tractor, getting the kale from a field up Broad Lane. The tractor couldn’t get up the slope but the old horse could.

I worked there for about 3 or 4 years till 1956. I didn’t live there, I had a room at The Old House in Yarmouth with a Mrs Weston – £7 a week it cost me, the same as I earned, so Ernest Heal had to make my money up a bit, because I smoked too in those days. In the summer I lived in a sort of shed at the end of Wheatsheaf Lane.

Den ( Dennis Phillips from Compton farm)) and I were courting, while I was at Newclose. I remember sitting in a ditch at the side of the farm chatting with the old roadmen. One of them had a wooden leg so I used to help him chuck up the sweepings into the cart. A lorry went by, ‘Oh look, it’s a Dennis!’ I said and didn’t they tease me!

We did have our own names for places. We called the cross roads ‘Flat Rat cross roads’…

When I left to get married, Ernest Heal gave me several bits of silver plate which must have been in his family. One is a real beauty, a simple epergne, which looks lovely with fruit piled up.
Jane Phillips nee Alder b 1932

Pete Smith: Thorley, Broad Lane 1950s

Broad Lane above Thorley, looking towards Yarmouth and the Solent

Broad Lane

The fields at the top of our garden at North View were owned by Wellow Farm and although they were large, they still had hedges. Sheep or beef cattle were often grazing the fields and I remember going with my Dad ( Ralph Smith) to visit a shepherd up Broad Lane who was living in a field in his shepherd’s hut. This was a wooden hut on wheels that had steps up into it at the back. It had a primus stove for cooking, an old table and chair, and a makeshift bed. It was all very basic but the shepherd seemed happy enough to live there.

A few years later all this changed when the hedges were grubbed out by a crawler tractor to create huge fields. It was the first time I had seen a crawler tractor and I remember being impressed by the sheer strength of the machine as it grubbed the hedges out. The technique used was fairly brutal: an assistant would wrap a length of chain around the trunk of the bush to be removed and the driver would haul it out, roots and all. Later all the hedging was burnt. The crawler used was not a nice shiny new one, it looked dirty and well used. It was something of a mystery to me about how the steering worked as it had no steering wheel.

From time to time, and especially noticeable during school holidays because we were always around, were sudden loud explosions. Mum used to say “That’ll be Uncle Joe again,” meaning that Uncle Joe (who was the last Newbridge Blacksmith) had gone to work at the Quarry at the top of Broad Lane. There they used explosives to blast out the chalk so that it could be dug up and crushed for roads and other uses. The explosions varied from a dull thud to a loud window rattling noise even though we were over a mile away as the crow flies.

Peter Smith b 1946

Carol Corbett: Harbour, houseboats 1950s

Aerial of harbour showing houseboats 1950s

A childhood friend, Kay Green, lived on a houseboat moored off Bridge Road. I loved to go there to play – it was so wonderfully different. We’d play around the rocks, painting faces on them and using the seaweed for their hair, and being hairdressers.

There was another houseboat moored the other side of the bridge. An old man lived there,maybe Colonel Mitchell, and Kay and I used to take meals to him from Mrs. Green. His boat had boots hanging from the ceiling. Extraordinary!

Billy Doe: Harbour Master 1950s

Billy Doe, Harbour Master

Billy Doe rowing launch in harbour: photo, Janet Hopkins

The big effort was when they used to go across to Lymington, seagull egging. When there was a marsh over there, there used to be trillions of the things, black headed gulls, and they used to sell them as plovers’ eggs – that’s what they called them. The Harbour Master when I was small, was Billy Doe. When he retired the Harbour Commissioners gave him a launch, about eighteen foot.
The Commissioners gave that to Billy so he didn’t have to row across to go egging, because he used to go across egging as well. The launch had a little Lister diesel.
The season of the year to collect seagulls eggs was about April on.
I can remember going across with grandfather. All the marsh was separated by little streams and the old fellows all had their own little bit; they used to bang a stake in with their name on. They all had some agreement with all the old fellows from around there and the first thing they did – the first day you went over – was to break all the eggs.
You broke all the eggs you could see, and went back a couple of days later and they’d pretty much be fresh. Alec Cokes b 1945

Colin Smith: Harbour, Theo Osborne Smith’s boatyard 1930s

Father had the boatyard that, at that time, came straight on to the water when the tide was up. There was a lot of sedge and so on, but there was a channel along the

Smith’s Boatshed 1970s

first of all, and up to the back of the Institute, the Liberal Club I believe they called it in those days. Just beyond, the stream ran along to what was the Dump, the beginning of where they used to bring the lorries in and dump off rubbish. Now they’ve covered the whole lot of course.

My grandfather started the yard there as I understand it. Grandfather’s name was Theo Osborne Smith. He used to have the name on the sign. His first shed was an old ex army canteen. He bought it and had it re-erected there, and there was another little arched type of building behind as well. He originally started up at Oxford on the Upper Thames and then moved down, first to Fawley, over at Ashlett Creek. He had a little business there, and then for some reason, I haven’t got a clue why, moved over to Yarmouth. He specialised in mostly little centre-board type of sailing boats, twenty foot or twenty two thereabouts and so on. He built one of them, the ‘Menomopote’ it was called, Child of the Ocean. I don’t know where they got that name from. A very unusual boat, very easy underwater shape and the top sides were paired off and came round into a kind of chine and at midship it came right up to the gunwale (or gunnel) . He was a very advanced designer. I don’t think my father took it to the same extent. Colin Smith b 1921

Annette Haynes: Free Time, Concerts and pantomimes, 1940s,1950s

Annette Holloway as Demon Glum in Pantomime at Con Club

Our pantomimes were always very well supported. So many people were in them and others came to watch. We used to go to Mrs Hans Hamilton’s house sometimes rehearsing for the pantomimes. I always remember this fire in the middle of the room.
Annette Haynes nee Holloway

Betty Coates-Evans: Free Time Pantomimes, concerts, 1950s,

Mrs Hans Hamilton front right and Sam McDonald with cast from Guides and Brownies including Mollie Mallett and Effie Pitman centre stage :photo Mary Lord

We’d start about 6 months before the performance and often practise and rehearse 6 evenings a week. We’d give performances at Wilberforce Hall in Brighstone for 2 nights, 2 nights at West Wight School – there was a good stage there, 2 nights at Yarmouth at The Con Club.

Mrs Hans Hamilton used to write the words and play the piano too. Although she was one of the rich people in the town she worked really hard for the community. If she told you what to do, you did it! She didn’t stand any nonsense but it was such fun.

Effie Pitman was usually the Principal Boy – she had such good legs – , with Mollie Mallet.

So many people were involved. Barry MacDonald’s father used to play the drums for us, Malcolm Mallet the butcher, and Raich Doe( harbour master) used to build the scenery for us.

Betty Coates Evans b 1938

Audience at Con Club, 1950s : Free Time photo Carol Corbett

: Guide and Brownie Pantomime at the ‘Con Club’ 1950s

Sue Russell: Harbour, lifeboat, 1950s, 1960s

Lifeboat Crew 1966

Our Father was lifeboat Coxswain for many years and the maroons were let off from our garden, under the clothes line. We always had to make sure the line was empty of clothes otherwise they would have gone up too. I was paid, I think it was two shillings and 6 pence, to time from when the maroons went off to when lifeboat left the harbour, which was a lot of money in those days. Sue Russell nee Hayles b 1940

Services: Laundry 1930s ,1940s, 1950s

At the end of Heytesbury Road was the Solent Steam Laundry. A very loud whistle was sounded there to mark the start and end of work shifts at 8.00, 12 noon, 1.00pm and 4.30 Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

There were forty or fifty people who worked there, they were big employers. Alec
Cokes b 1945

My Mum used to send her sheets to the Laundry when she was first married. She didn’t have a washing machine. Ruth Mills nee Kelleway b 1945

My Grandad worked up the Laundry, and wanted me to go and work there but I didn’t fancy it. Brian Pomroy b 1937

Yarmouth and Thorley Voices

Learn about the history of Yarmouth and Thorley from the people who have lived it