Tag Archives: Free time

Pat Burt: Free Time, Brownies and Guides 1940s

Pat Burt, Heather Doe, with Mrs Hans Hamilton at Guide camp 1945

Mrs Hamilton used to take us into Thorley Copse, in the middle there where the paths cross. We used to have fires in there in the copse. It was used by the public then,but it may have been owned by Thorley Manor. We used it all the time rather than Mill Copse. We used to pick primroses; just the flowers, we never took the plants.

We couldn’t go camping during the war so the only Guide camp I went to, was in August 1945. Mrs Hamilton took us camping at St Helens.

Annette’s not in the photo, she dropped out of guides because she started work at 14 so she was probably working. Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929

Eileen Smith: Free Time, Brownies and Guides 1930s

Eileen Smitth , Effie Pitman:Brownies at Wootton 1929

My aunt was one of the original Girl Guides and I joined the Brownies. The year after I joined, we had a coach trip to Wootton to meet up with other Brownie groups. Effie was there too.
On Armistice Day and Empire Day at school, we were allowed to wear our uniform. There was a big British Legion then too, and they used to have an important Armistice Day ceremony. One year I was the flag bearer for the guides, I was so proud.

On summer evenings, we used to go down to Rofford’s Field, and cut out a turf and make a campfire to cook our supper. Oh it was lovely! We used to wade in the marsh, sometimes with the mud right over our wellingtons, and collect moorhen’s eggs to cook. They were like pullets’ eggs, gorgeous. There weren’t coots, only moorhens. Eileen Smith

David Biles: Free time, Point-to-Point races at Tapnell

Biles family at 1930s Point to Point at Tapnell Farm, Yarmouth.

In the 20s and 30s, the Isle of Wight Point-to-Point races, run under Jockey Club Rules were held at Tapnell Farm when Colonel Jennings farmed there. The course had to be over three and a half miles of hunting country, and the horses jumped broad lane as part of the race.

Jack Seely, Baron Mottistone’s, famous horse ‘Warrior,’ which survived active service throughout WWI, was winner in 1921 and 1922.

One year, Harold Biles won on Edamite, a horse he later sold in Southampton for £300 – an enormous price in its day. Edamite went on to take 3rd place in the Foxhunter Race at Cheltenham and was eventually sold for £2000!

Eileen Smith: Free Time 1930s

Horse racing
Before the war, there used to be West Wight Point-to-Point races

Race card for Point to Point 1939 at Tapnell Farm, near Yarmouth

on the fields up Broad Lane. On the days it was on, Ralph and the chaps who worked at Mills used to cycle up in the lunch hour to watch, and hope they got back in time for the afternoon!
Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

1933 Douglas Biles competing at Tapnell

Alec Cokes: Free Time 1950s 1960s

One time there was a big classic football match going on up the Rec. Jim Ryall then was the Fire Chief – and he was up there watching the football .

All of a sudden two figures came up across the back of the Rec, right across the middle of the playing field and disappeared. It was Dicky Hatch and Dook Henderson. They’d only managed to set fire to the rushes down the marsh. There was a big cloud of smoke.
Somebody said, Jim, Jim, the marsh is burning. He said, let it burn. No point in getting down there with the fire engine, what was the point of that, it wouldn’t do any harm.

I can remember Rodney with his touchwood tin – he used to have a Golden Syrup tin, punched some holes in it with a bit of wire for a handle, get the old rotten wood out the middle of the trees and put something in to start it burning and of course you had a flame and if you wanted to light the marshes or something you just let go! Nothing ever blew up.

Mick, he was a bugger, he’s a bit older than us – and he was very good with these bows and arrow he used to make. We used to get in the middle of the Rec. a whole gang of us, about twenty of us, and he would fire this thing up in the air. He’d have reeds for arrows with a bit of elder for the tip and a feather and a nail stuck in it, and he’d fire it straight up in the air – a game of chicken, watching this thing to see which way it was going to go. Alec Cokes b 1945

Alec Cokes: Free Time 1950s

‘ Brimmo’ – he was one of the gang leaders and his sort of base was in this builder’s yard just down the bottom of the garden. We had our Dinky toys and all the rest of it in the yard. There were several of those little cannons about – they were yacht race cannons really for starting races. They used to take them on their boats and fire them off. They weren’t very big, only about nine inches or a foot long. There was no gun carriage, it didn’t look like a little gun, it was just a brass pipe basically. It wasn’t a miniature cannon but it made a bang when you fired it. In those days everybody used to load their own shot gun cartridges, so everybody had shot and wadding, it was in every back garden shed.

This toad hopped out of the water butt – somebody fired at it with a catapult and missed it. The suggestion came up that we get this cannon and trig it up, and we’ll get this toad. We went indoors, got the cannon set up on a couple of bricks with a couple of bricks holding it down, rammed it and all the rest of it, lit the touch hole and all retired round the next pile of bricks. We were all cowering behind the bricks and – nothing.
Everybody said, ‘ Well, what are we going to do then?’
Dicky in the end went out round and kicked it, and it went off. Of course, it fell off the bricks and he got one of the pellets lodged in his eye. He went home because he only lived in Ommanney Road, and didn’t tell his mum. The next day at breakfast, she said, ‘What’s wrong with your eye, Nipper?’ And he said, ‘I’ve got something in it.’
I think it was the lead poisoning that caused him to lose his eye rather than the impact. Alec Cokes b 1945

Mary Lord: Free Time 1950s

Bluebells in Mill Copse 2013

If we went anywhere, we went by bus – train was too expensive – but we didn’t go far. Yarmouth was our world. I loved Mill Copse and spent hours there. The bluebells, primroses … I hated it when it was all planted up with conifers. I was a great presser of flowers, had a collection of pressed wild flowers. One year in Mill Copse I found butterfly orchids to press for my collection. In later years I went back to look but never found them again! Mary Lord nee Hayles b 1936

Alec Cokes: Free Time at the Dump 1950s

The Dump was quite a big thing in our little lives and the dump was always alight.
Do you remember those Kiora bottles with the big clamp? We used to get those and half fill them with water then put them in the fire and stand around watching – eventually they would just blow to bits because the top wouldn’t come off, and that was another chicken game. If you were close enough to see it properly you could see it boil and you’d have steam and water but immediately the water disappeared and it became steam, you were out of there, and this glass used to go everywhere!

Yarmouth Quay with the Dump seen burning in background

Alec Cokes b 1945

Phil Kelsey: Free Time at Sandhard 1920s

Sandhard

One of our trips was to go to Sandhard with my mother and the rest of the family. We used to get in the boat down by the Mill.

Sometimes mother got in if it was reasonable but she didn’t often. George and perhaps the rest of the kids rowed over to Sandhard, dumped them off, then rowed back to the bridge. There used to be a landing stage right in the corner there and we used to get Mother in there and take her across. We used to drop her off there because, probably by the time we were coming back, the tide would be gone out. It was awkward to get out down the Mill so we used to drop her off there, and one or two of us used to come and scrabble up over the wall down the bottom. Phil Kelsey b 1920

Eileen Smith: Free Time at Love Shore 1950s

The only problem you had on the beach was the guns going off above you from the sailing. The West Wight Scows were anchored off Love Shore and Dr Drummond’s, his was white with a red band round it, and was called Pillbox. They used to race every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon and they had their gun in their little shed at the bottom of the Deacons’ garden. Sometimes they’d never fire the gun, they’d say: Bang!
They didn’t like us down there because we were shouting and laughing and goodness knows what. They couldn’t stop us because the lane going down to the shore was a public right of way. We used to walk right through to the next lane, along the stones from Fryer’s Lane right up to the Common. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Yarmouth and Thorley Voices

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