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June, 2010:

Frederick William Boyton Smith – Part Two

Jun 23rd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Smith had an unusually stylised signature which, while distinctive was yet legible. His forename was scored through with a backstroke from the “B” that also served to cross the “T” in Boyton, before passing through the loop of the “H” in Smith, to extend some way beyond; the hook of the “H” was then doubled back in a broad sweeping arc to entablature the whole name of Smith. (See photo in photo section.)

How well Frederick W.B. Smith and Thomas Hardy knew each other has long been a matter of uncertainty and speculation. What is known for a fact is that the two men were born within three years – and within three miles – of each other, and were virtually fellow townsmen of Dorchester who most likely often saw each other in passing without being aware of each other’s identity. And while Boyton Smith was no writer, Hardy was an amateur musician, having learnt the violin and how to sight-read music from his father who had been a player in the family’s gallery band at Stinsford Church.

The two men however, were evidently in almost daily passing contact from as early as the late 1850’s, for the office of the architect John Hicks, where Hardy was working as an articled apprentice and to which he would have walked each day, was situated in South Street, where Smith was then living. This office was also next door to the home of the great schoolmaster poet and scholar William Barnes. But it is likely that the intermediary who brought Smith and Hardy together was Walter Fletcher, a long-time walking companion of the latter, who also happened to be a friend of both Boyton and Sydney Smith. Fletcher was present during Sydney’s last visit to his elder brother in 1877, and it is probable that, quite independently, Smith was acquainted with many of the same people in Dorchester as Hardy was. He would therefore be familiar with many of the same aspects of life in the neighbourhood, and would have been involved in many of the same organisations.

An example of this close involvement came in 1904, when Boyton Smith was commissioned by the Society of Dorset Men in London to set ‘Praise o’Dorset,’ a poem by Barnes, to music for the occasion of their inaugural meeting. For the 1922 Dorset Year Book the Society’s founder and vice president, William Watkins, wrote a piece in which he imagined himself fifty years on at the annual dinner in 1971 and commented: “..it is glad beyond measure to hear the well-known strain of Boyton Smith’s setting to Barnes’ ‘Praise o’Dorset.”

In 1907 Thomas Hardy OM, JP was appointed President of the SDML, and in a journal letter of November 23rd of that year described Smith’s musical efforts on the organisation’s behalf, giving the composer’s address as Wollaston Road, Dorchester, having moved from High West Street, showing that by that year the composer and the writer were evidently known to each other and in rudimentary contact with each other. This interaction is likely to have increased exactly a year later, when the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society (later The Hardy Players) staged a production of Hardy’s ‘The Trumpet Major’ under the direction of a local chemist and JP, A.H. Evans. This production is of interest since it included four settings by Boyton Smith of Hardy’s poetry: ‘Budmouth Dears;’ ‘My Love’s Gone a-Fighting;’ ‘The Night of Trafalgar’ (from The Dynasts,) and ‘Valenciennes’ (from Wessex Poems.) Smith also provided a harmonisation of Harry Pouncy’s setting of Hardy’s ‘The Sergeant’s Song,’ also from Wessex Poems.

The tune of Budmouth Dears seems to have struck a popular chord with London Society, for in a letter to Pouncy in February 1908 Hardy mentions that: “it is true that the song Budmouth Dears has hit the London taste – all reviews quote it nearly.” But it had been one particular scene from The Trumpet Major, enacted in isolation, that had inspired the Rector of Holy Trinity, Rowland Hill, to include it as a piece of whimsy at that year’s May Fair. At this point it is thought that Boyton may again have become involved, since by this time he was Holy Trinity’s organist. In a December 1912 production of The Trumpet Major at the Cripplegate Institution in London, music of the Boyton Smith songs was reproduced in the programme of this performance.

A more intensive collaboration between Hardy and Smith certainly occurred about September 1910 when Smith harmonised some books of traditional carols once owned by Hardy’s father and grandfather. The carols were used in a production of Under the Greenwood Tree under the title of ‘The Mellstock Squire’ in November 1910, on which occasion Hardy received the freedom of Dorchester. Significantly, there exists in the Hardy Memorial Collection in Dorchester a photograph showing Hardy at a rehearsal of this play. The harmonisations of the carols appears to have been completed in early October and were much appreciated by the Dorset County Chronicle as well as Hardy himself, for Smith’s manuscripts were found among the author’s papers in his study after his death.

It appears that Boyton Smith and his father had leanings towards arranging Dorset’s traditional folk music, though many of these pieces never made it to publication. A list produced by the SDML, includes ‘Merry Bleake o’Blackmwore,’ a setting of Barnes by Smith, and ‘That Do Vollow the Plough,’ a traditional air that Smith harmonised. It is likely that this interest in folk music was responsible for involving Smith with the Society, since among the Society’s objectives to promote or encourage were a fuller knowledge of folk-lore, literature, natural history, art and music. Hardy himself, in a letter of 26th December 1907 to A.M. Broadley confirmed he was “…looking for some old Dorset psalm tunes, either composed by Dorset men, much sung in Dorset, or bearing names of Dorset places for the Society of Dorset Men in London.”

Fellow Durnovarians of Boyton Smith became enthusiastic officionados of his music and obviously relished the local associations it invoked. For instance, in the November 2nd, 1905 edition of the Dorset County Chronicle it is noted that at the previous evening’s Old Grammarians Annual Dinner, those present sang their favourite anthem Praise o’Dorset to Smith’s music. Hardy was a member of the Old Grammarians, for he held the position of Governor of Dorchester Grammar School. The Smith setting of Praise o’Dorset was also played during a forthcoming Hardy Players production of The Woodlanders.

Naturally, William Barnes had been a life-long mentor, fellow townsman and friend of Hardy, and it seems likely that Boyton Smith also set further works of Barnes to music as well. After all, Sydney and Boyton Smith attended Barnes’ school, and their parents also had close association with him. Following an enquiry about Dorset songwriters from Major William Arnold, Hardy replied in a letter of November 23rd 1907: “Mr Boyton Smith of Wollaston Road, Dorchester, has lately at the request of the Society of Dorset Men in London, melodised some of Barnes poems which are sung with great success at the Society’s meetings and he might be willing to do the same with any you might choose…Barnes’ poems in Dorset dialect, some of them set to music by Mr Boyton Smith.” That Hardy clearly approved of Smith’s settings of his poetry and incidental music for his productions is shown in the writer’s recommendation of the composer to Major Arnold and Granville Barker as one who could portray Dorset as equally well in music as Hardy had in the written word.

But in return, what was Boyton Smith’s opinion of Hardy’s work?  Clearly Smith’s settings were undertaken as commissions from local societies, and not merely because he was inspired to write them as unsolicited labours of love. It is possible that the settings would not otherwise have been a commercial proposition, for he was a typical Victorian composer of light pieces for the sheet-music market. Since even Kipling – who of course was an author and poet – once confessed to Hardy that he did not understand the people and places in his Wessex novels, would it have been likely that an upper-middle class composer like Smith could have appreciated the plots and characterisations of rustic novels? Smith, as far as is known, had no interest in, or little time for reading, but he was not alone in pursuing a career of composing for the Victorian parlour.

On February 23rd, 1911 the county Gazette bore the following sorrowful statement in an obituary column: “It is with sincere and deep regret that we have to record the death of Mr Boyton Smith which, after a short illness, happened at his residence in Wollaston Road on Friday night within a week of his 74th birthday.”

Smith had passed over on the 17th, and throughout the three columns that followed this paragraph, many facets of his character and work were cited. It is recorded that his “masterly knowledge” of organ playing gave the congregation at Holy Trinity the opportunity to hear a proper interpretation of liturgical music. So much was music a life-long love of Smith that he devoted every hour to it. No labour was begrudged, and his genial disposition and inspired enthusiasm met with a ready response from choir men and choir boys of Holy Trinity across the twenty-two years of his association with the church. Indeed, such was his devotion to music that he persisted in it to the limit of his endurance in his declining years, and it was a sad day when, through advance of age and frailty, Boyton Smith was compelled to resign his position as organist. Not least among those who mourned his passing would have been Cannon Hill, who brought to Smith a friendship as close as the friendship towards the minister’s predecessor, Henry Everett, had been.

Smith dearly loved his home town, where he was furthermore a generous and charitable citizen ever ready to help any good cause, his great talent contributing to the object in hand. His acts of kindness were many and this aspect of his personality won him the hearts of many. For Boyton, loftier ambitions would always subordinate to unselfish consideration for his fellow citizens. Yet out of a patriotic duty, he managed to find time for service in the Dorchester Corps of the Volunteers that in those early days saw the enrolment of many Dorchester townsmen. The obituary further noted that Smith had served as the first ever Weymouth representative of Trinity College, London, for a number of years. As a tribute, the music for the first Sunday service at Holy Trinity following Smith’s passing was of a special character. The Dead March (from Saul) and his arrangement in G of the Te Deum was impressively played by his organist successor, Edgar A Lane. On this occasion the special preacher was Arthur Hippersley Smith of Langton, East Yorks, son of the Curate in Charge, Revd. P.A. Hippersley Smith. At evensong canticles were sung to the composer’s favourite tunes, as well as a rendition of his beautiful anthem “I Will Lay Me Down in Peace.” Following the Blessing the choir sang the sublime quartet and chorus “Blest are the Departed” (from Spohr’s “Last Judgement.”) Special services of remembrance were also held at St. Peters and All Saints.

Frederick W Boyton Smith left his wife Penelope and five children behind, the most prominent of whom was his surviving son Sydney, who was by the time of his father’s death the Revd S. Boyton Smith, vicar of St. Clements Church, Bristol. The others were Florence (Mrs Edward Salisbury of Streatham;) Margaret Ada (Mrs G.H. Lock of Shrewsbury;) Helen (Mrs Philip Harding) then living in Canada, and Frances (Miss Boyton Smith.) From these, Boyton Smith had eight grandchildren.

 

Click on this link to hear Phillip Smith play Boyton Smith’s ‘ Isle of Beauty.’ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Phillip+Sear+Boyton+Smith&aq=f

Powerstock – St. Mary’s Church

Jun 15th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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I made my first visit to Powerstock on the first Saturday in June 2006. It was the first real summer’s day we enjoyed here in Dorset that year and just the right time to get away from the county town and visit a country church. I recall three ladies were sharing a bench and the shade from an overhanging tree while their husbands were laid out on the grass soaking up the sun and staring at the wisps of cloud suspended in an otherwise clear blue sky. I returned to the parish on the first Saturday in June this year and again I was blessed with a fine sunny day.

The church, dedicated to St. Mary, sits in a commanding position at the centre of the village above the junction where four lanes meet. The village is small but by Dorset standards Powerstock is a large parish that takes in the hamlets of West Milton, Wytherstone and Nettlecombe.

In the second-half of the 19th century our Victorian ancestors were busy restoring churches all over the country; in Dorset it is difficult to find churches they didn’t work on, sometimes tampering and meddling unnecessarily. St Mary’s at Powerstock didn’t escape their attentions but here the restoration was justified to remedy a dilapidated structure that was too small to accommodate a growing congregation.

No sooner was Thomas Sanctuary installed as vicar of Powerstock than he determined to have better education for children of the poor and better church accommodation. Work on the church started in 1854, under his supervision, and took five years to complete. Sanctuary was vicar here from 1848 to 1889 and his wife is thought to have designed and painted the holly and ivy decoration on the walls in the nave.

During Sanctuary’s time as vicar some of the most distinguished prelates of the 19th century came to Powerstock including Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester, and Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough; also Dr. Fraser, Bishop of Manchester and Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln.

St. Mary’s dates from the middle of the 12th century and consists of chancel, nave and west tower. Aisles were added to the nave in the 14th century when alterations were made to the tower, which was altered again and heightened a century later. The 1850’s saw the north aisle and arcade added but both retain 14th century features. The south aisle and porch are modern.

The chancel was completely rebuilt during the 1850’s improvements, except for the magnificent mid 12th century chancel arch, of which Pevsner tells us “is the most elaborate Norman chancel arch in any Dorset parish church.” The arch is lop-sided, leaning to the south a result of work done in the 14th century when two hagioscopes or squints were made in the wall south of the arch. During the 1850’s makeover two galleries were removed from the west and south sides.

The partly restored 14th century north arcade of three bays and two-centred arches is generally similar in date and detail to the south arcade. The north aisle, said to have been rebuilt in 1858, incorporates four 14th century windows each with two lights – one in the east wall and three in the north wall.

The south aisle is part of the 1850’s expansion and restoration and incorporates a 15th century doorway into the south porch, which has been described by one expert as “a rich work of great merit which would suffice alone to give the fabric very special distinction.” The windows in the south aisle are modern. The 13th century font was reinstated in 1972 having for a time been removed to the churchyard. Special mention should be given to the baptistery window in the west wall. Known as The Sanctuary Window it was designed by Thomas Denny and dedicated at a service on 17th of October 1991. It was presented by the widow of Mark Stapleton Sanctuary. The late Saxon or Early Norman piscina in the chancel was found on a farm not far away in 1925; a vestige of the original building – around its base there is a cable mould similar to the chancel arch.

The west tower is of three stages with an embattled parapet and the arch leading into the tower was opened up during Thomas Sanctuary’s improvements. The west doorway dates from the 14th century. The bell-chamber has, in each wall, an early 15th century window of two lights and is home to six bells: five; 1st, 3rd and 5th are by Thomas Bilbie of Cullompton and are dated 1772; 2nd is by Thomas Purdue and dated 1712. The number 4 tenor bell bears the initials T.P (probably Thomas Purdue) and date 1684. This bell was recast in 1897 when the bells were re-hung to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The sixth bell is a recent addition; hung in 1960 in memory of Mr William Sykes.

There are memorial plaques to Thomas Larcombe, churchwarden, 1610; Montague Rush, a former vicar at Powerstock who died in 1821 and one to Thomas Russell who died in 1788. In the churchyard the graves of Thomas Burt 1747;  James Burt 1774 and Mary his wife 1784; Thomas Burt 1749 and his wife Elizabeth 1751; William Travis 1646, and another William Travis 1682 and Joan Travis 1717; Richard Sanders 1706; Ester Syms 1701; Henry Smith Snr., 1706; Rebekah, wife of John Mitchell 1712. 

For four decades the village of Powerstock was home to Admiral Sir Victor Crutchley VC: he died aged 92 in 1986 at his home at Nettlecombe and is buried in the churchyard beneath a wooden cross with the “For Valour” insignia of the Victoria Cross.

Frederick William Boyton Smith

Jun 10th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Today he is virtually forgotten, yet he fathered no fewer than one hundred and ninety three short salon pieces and organ works. Information about his remarkable life is distinctly hard to obtain, yet he was a contemporary and associate of Thomas Hardy, and set many of the writer’s poems to music. Now, after more than a century, the obscure and remarkable persona of Frederick Boyton Smith has been partly rediscovered through exhaustive researches at the Dorset History Centre and lengthy behind-the-scenes correspondence with Ms Susan Bell, to whom the author of this biographical portrait would like to acknowledge thanks for all her helpful information about Frederick Boyton Smith and his brother Edward Sydney Smith.

Frederick W Boyton Smith was born in Dorchester in September or October 1837, and is recorded as having been baptised on October 13th in Dorchester’s St Peters Church. Frederick was clearly born into a musical family, for his father, also named Frederick William Smith, was a musician; his mother, Helen Boyton and her sister Clara (who was a teacher of music) were the daughters of Richard Boyton, a professor and teacher of piano. Helen was originally from Clifton, Bristol, where she married Boyton’s father in September 1835. To avoid confusion with his father, Frederick jr. is usually known as Boyton Smith. The 1861 census shows that Boyton Smith’s father was originally a Kentish man from Deal, had moved with Helen to Dorchester. He is recorded as being ‘a professor of music and dance.’

At the age of four, Boyton is recorded as living with his parents and brothers Sydney and Walter at Cornhill, Dorchester, but by 1851 the family had evidently moved to 16 South Street. However, the census that year does not include Boyton, as by this time he was studying the organ under George Townshend Smith at Hereford Cathedral, and instead is noted in that town’s census as visiting the home of one Mary Ann Watt on census day. It is thought that Boyton was probably a boarder at the Cathedral school rather than living in with Townshend Smith, but it is uncertain whether he received further training in the subsequent years. By the time of Dorchester’s 1861 census the Smiths had moved to 53 High West Street and Sydney Smith had left for Leipzig in 1855 to study piano, violin, cello, harmony, counterpoint and composition.

Boyton Smith, too, by 1861 had left Dorchester to live in with a spirit merchant’s widow called Ann Gare and her two daughters in Chard, Somerset. The connection seems to have been through Boyton, who by now was recognised as a professor of music, possibly working for the British National School where Mrs Gare was Mistress. One of her daughters, Janette, is recorded as being an assistant at the school, which was situated close to the Gare home in the High Street.

While Boyton and Sydney would have learnt music from their parents at an early age the former’s earliest known published piece was a transcription for piano of a two-part song by Mendelssohn called “Greetings” in 1861. The rest of the decade continued to be a productive and fruitful time for Boyton, during which time forty compositions were published. These were variable pieces suitable for the drawing room, many being for the piano, but also including arrangements based on operatic songs and melodies. There are also songs based on the poetry of Longfellow, Kingsley and Goethe and one piece of sacred music. Most of these works were published by Chappell & Co, Edwin Ashdown, Weeks & Co, or Novello. Of especially high value to Gilbert and Sullivan officionado’s is an arrangement of a lost song from a comic opera by Sullivan called “The Chieftain,” first performed at the Savoy Theatre in 1894.

Boyton appears to have had a penchant for giving his pieces titles in French such as “Sur le Lac Morceau de Salon pour Piano.” This reflects a trend for all things French at the time among upper class Victorian ladies and a good deal of published sheet music in the 1860’s either came from Paris or else purported to come from there.

Yet despite his prolific output in catering for the 19th century demand for drawing room pieces, Boyton Smith and his music are largely forgotten, and even in his home town his name is largely unrecognised and his achievements undocumented.

In 1864 Boyton Smith married a Clifton woman. Penelope Mary Ann Rawle, Penelope had been born in Clifton in 1842, but the 1861 census clearly shows that by then Boyton’s future wife was working as a governess at Burton, Winfrith Newburgh. The birth of a son, Sydney, was registered in Dorchester in 1865 showing that the family was living there by then. The Dorchester Holy Trinity Baptism Register notes that Sydney was followed by Florence (1867), Helen (1868) and Margaret Ada (1869.) The 1869 record gives Boyton’s occupation as organist (he was appointed Organist at Holy Trinity) and his address as Alexandra Terrace, Dorchester.

In February 1866 Boyton’s younger brother Walter, a bookseller by trade, died from nephritis aged only 25. By 1871 the family was living at 39 South Street, close to the home of Helen, Boyton’s mother, who had been widowed the previous year. The census shows that another son, Frederick, was added to the family only one month before and the presence of three servants show that by then Boyton Smith was well-to-do in his capacity as a professor of music. Indeed, the 70’s again saw the publication of another forty or so small compositions and works for the organ. These included sacred music such as “Lo! I will Give you Rest;” “Andante con Moto” (an organ piece) and arranged piano duets such as “The Flying Dutchman.”

However, most of the forty compositions of the 70’s hang on lightweight pieces for the parlour in the manner of “L’Echo du Tyrol” fantasy for piano, or “Jeanne de Arc,” a gallop de salon. “The Love Who’s All to ME” was a popular ballad, while “The Ash Grove” was a well known aire. Yet Boyton was also moved to write music designed to help beginners and students, seen in, for example, “The Pianists Daily Practice” and “The Russian National Hymn.”

But the 1870’s also spelt tragedy for Boyton Smith. The family had evidently moved to Melcombe Regis soon after the 1871 census day, for the Cemetery Chapel there records the burial, on January 2nd, 1872, of the infant Frederick at only 9 months and in January 1876 the burial of a later infant son, baptised Frederick Walter aged only ten weeks. The family’s address was then 2 Frederick Place, Melcombe, but by 1881 it was Lawn House in Lennox Street, where Boyton’s other daughters Helen and Ada also resided. Here another baby, Frances, was born in 1881.

During the years in Melcombe Boyton’s occupation is given as Music Teacher, where his pupils would have attended at Frederick Place. During the 1880’s Boyton was still composing and arranging, his tally for the decade being about another 45 pieces. The Boyton Smith’s with their daughter Helen were still living at Lawn House on census day 1891, their youngest daughter Frances by that time being a boarder at the same school in Wyke Regis that Helen had attended ten years earlier. It is possible that by this time too, Sydney, was studying for a BA in Durham, for the same ‘S Boyton Smith’ appears as President of the St. Cuthbert’s Society, on that city’s St. Cuthbert College’s register in 1895.

Though only 50 when he died in 1889 Edward Sydney had by the end of his life established himself as a prolific composer in his own right, searches having brought up details of four hundred and sixty-seven published compositions. We will publish a brief biographical piece about Sydney Smith shortly.

The end of the 19th century saw the publication of a great volume of sheet music for the middle class amateur to play at home. During this period Boyton Smith published his “Fantasia” based on four more Sullivan operas as well as other opera-based arrangements and waltzes. Yet a discernible shift in genre from parlour to sacred music is evident in Smith’s repertoire during the 1890’s. In all, seven pieces of church music for Novello’s Parish Choir Books and organ pieces such as his Grand March in D were published. The latter is still played occasionally as the recessional at church weddings, though its composer’s name has long since become disassociated with it.

Sometime before 1901 Boyton Smith had evidently moved back to Dorchester; for he is listed in that year’s census as living at 56 High West Street. Very near his parent’s former home at No. 53. He was then 64 years old, still a professor of music, though one ‘employed on his own account.’ Living with him was his wife Helen, her 84 year-old spinster aunt Mary Jane Rawle and one servant. The couple’s elder daughter Florence had become Mrs Edward Salisbury living in London with her husband, their four-year-old daughter, and sister Frances, then twenty years old. Florence and Edward had married in 1887 in a ceremony witnessed by both Sydney and Frederick Boyton Smith. Ada had married George Herbert Lock and was living with her husband, two daughters and sister Helen, then 32, in Shrewsbury. In 1893 Ada had published a composition of her own called “Romance for Violin and Piano” under the name of Ada Boyton Smith. Boyton Smith’s son Sydney went into the Church, becoming an Anglican clergyman who married an Irish woman from Enniskillen called Mary Cooney. By peculiar coincidence the 1901 census shows that Mary’s father William was living in Clifton with her and Sydney, so maintaining a Bristol connection within the family.

At the time when Boyton Smith embarked on his career as a composer, other European composers, whether of piano music or more ambitious works for orchestra, were much in vogue, while England was regarded as something of a musical backwater or desert, which not even the great Godsends and legacies of Elgar, Parry or Vaughn Williams could entirely dispel. The only way a young English composer could hope to gain recognition or financial reward was through the composition of pieces for gifted amateurs. Over the decades Boyton Smith recognised the opportunities that the growing popularity of British musical comedy presented. By the beginning of the 20th century this medium had established itself as the most successful school of operetta in Europe. But as the century progressed the nature and character of Smith’s repertoire changed. Music with commercial potential diminished in importance, a luxury of omission Smith perhaps felt he could afford now that his children were financially independent.

Between 1900 and 1919 Boyton published another twenty-eight pieces of music, half of these being sacred music for the Church. But during this period too, another highly important and ultimately world-renown figure was about to enter his life. He was not a composer or primarily anyone with a career in music; nor was he some distant nonentity from afar off, but a world-renown contemporary who had lived and worked in Boyton Smith’s own town and neighbourhood throughout both their lives. Two men who had made names for themselves in their own ways and had perhaps rubbed shoulders without getting to know the measure of each other.

So did Frederick William Boyton Smith join the throng of the many notables who were friends or associates of the great Thomas Hardy…

To be continued…

[Cut and paste or click on this link to hear Phillip Sear play Boyton Smith’s ‘Isle of Beauty.’ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Phillip+Sear+Boyton+Smith&aq=f

My Brief Wartime Escape to Dorset

Jun 2nd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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It was the autumn of 1943, the blitz over London and its suburbs was intensifying when my parents decided it was time to find somewhere a little safer for us. When I say us, I mean myself a lad of 7 years, and my baby sister who at that time was around 9 months.

We lived in a little end of terrace house in Norbury, South London and every night we were obliged to scramble into our air raid shelter for protection, but the introduction of Germany’s ‘flying bombs’ meant that our safety could no longer be guaranteed. My Mother’s brother and sister had already made the move to Dorset with my cousins, and it was therefore quite natural that she should write to them to see if any accommodation could also be found for us.

It was not long before my mother, myself and younger sister found ourselves in the village of Leigh. How we travelled there, I cannot remember, but we were evidently expected and were taken to stay at the vicarage in the centre of the village. Reverend and Mrs Back made us welcome and gave us a large downstairs room at the rear of the property as our ‘bed-sit’ for as long as we needed it.

The vicarage was reached by a drive from the main village street and the local school was situated to one side of the gateway. Village life was strange for me, and I didn’t make friends or see much of the local children outside of school. The school was very small by comparison with the one I had left behind and consisted of only two classes. As a Londoner, I was treated with suspicion and it took me some while to get used to the mixed ages of my classmates, and the fact that our teacher taught us on every subject.

It was my role, every morning before school to walk down the vicarage drive to the farm which lay on the opposite side of the road on the corner of the road leading to Yetminster. I took a milk can with me and this was filled up with fresh cows milk by one of the two ‘foreign’ men who were working there. I subsequently learned that they were Italian and although resident in this country at the start of the war they had been taken into custody and then assigned to work on the farm at Leigh. I still remember their funny accents as both they and I grappled with payment for this daily milk supply. My mother used to take us out for walks at the weekend, and we walked for miles all around the local lanes and when necessary as far as Yetminster where they had a few more shops.

Staying in the vicarage, we felt obliged, of course, to attend the parish church services. The church was a little way along the village street and then down a side turning. The services were strange to me and I soon became bored. On the other hand, my uncle who was living in the nearby village of Evershot was a Methodist lay preacher and would come over to Leigh every few weeks to take a service in a little chapel. I looked forward to those times as it was good to see someone who I knew and also I would more easily follow the service.

It was after the finish of one of my uncles evening services that there was great excitement. On coming out of the chapel we were greeted by smoke and it was soon obvious that the thatched roof of one of the cottages was on fire. The cottage was opposite the chapel and backed onto the grounds of the vicarage. After returning to the vicarage I was permitted to go and stand in the garden and watch the firemen at work. The old thatch had, for economic reasons, been covered with corrugated iron sheets and the firemen had to get these off before they could hose the burning straw. Sadly they were unable to prevent the fire spreading throughout the cottage and come next morning only the walls were left standing. I remember the stench of burnt wood and straw was around for days and I still clearly remember the lady and her family who occupied the cottage throwing their belongings out of the windows into the garden in a desperate attempt to save as much as possible.

My mother found it very difficult living in the confined space of the bed sitting room and eventually arranged for a sort of holiday for us in Evershot. We walked with my sister’s pram to a little railway station called Chetnole Halt, where we boarded a Great Western Diesel Railcar painted chocolate brown and cream, and travelled to the next stop which was another little halt at Holywell. This no longer exists. We then walked some distance over East Hill into Evershot. We were put up by a lovely lady who lived in Summer Lane opposite the farm on the corner of The Common. Her name was, I believe, Mrs Gilham and she lived there with her son who must have been in his teens at the time.

Although I only stayed at Evershot for two weeks and visited the village on perhaps only two or three other occasions, I remember more about it than Leigh where we stayed for several months. Having my cousins already living there meant that I was soon caught up with village life and they made sure I was not left out of their activities. As our break was during normal school term time they were all at school during the day, but I remember waiting for them at the school gates and then going off with them to explore the countryside around the village.

My uncle was working on the local Melbury estate and lived in a lodge with his family. I remember visiting them and seeing all the good things that my uncle was helping to grow. My Aunt from the other family, together with my cousin David were living in a cottage in Fore Street that was the home of the local bus driver. Whether or not he owned the bus I do not know but he regularly ran a one man service to the towns of Dorchester, Yeovil and Sherborne. I never got a chance to go on this bus, and I was very envious of cousin David who was allowed to go with him, and was given the task of issuing the tickets to the passengers as they boarded the bus.

Mrs Gilham made us very welcome, and the cottage was very cosy. Her son, who name now escapes me, often played a game of ‘lotto’ with me which I thoroughly enjoyed. Lotto, of course, subsequently evolved in ‘Bingo.’ We never played for money but just for our own amusement, and as a seven-year-old with time on his hands any thing like that was very welcome. I also remember the pictures on the wall of the cottage which I found fascinating and was forever asking questions about them.

Sundays in Evershot were different. We all went to a little chapel where I found the services much easier to follow. To be able to sit with my cousins and just enjoy their company seemed to make this strange existence much easier to bear.

I recently returned to both Evershot and Leigh for the first time in 63 years. I was surprised to find that I did not recognise much of Leigh. It did not help to find that the vicarage has now become a nursing home, the old school along side the drive to what is now a nursing home has been turned into housing, and the farm to which I trotted each morning to collect milk is now derelict. Sadly, I did not recognise any other building or road in the village; so much had changed in the intervening years.

Evershot was different. As I drove down Fore Street I immediately recognised the row of cottages where my cousin had lodged with the bus driver, although I must admit to having totally forgotten the raised footpath all alongside one side of the road. It was also strange to see the road full of parked cars. To see private cars in those rural locations during the war years was very rare and I think we used to walk along the roads as there was just never any traffic.

Then reaching the junction with Summer Lane I immediately recognised the turning and especially Mrs Gilham’s cottage. I did not attempt to find out who lives there now or to ascertain whether her son is still around. I just took some photographs to remind me and then drove away leaving those memories behind me.

As my wife and I drove on to our home in Sussex we marvelled at how far my mother and I used to walk in those days and how much we enjoyed the countryside. It is a different story now with so many vehicles travelling along those once quiet byways that it is just not the same.