7b Holdings was a small holding which gran (Win) worked for over forty years. They were given the tenancy because of Grandad’s (Joseph) medical discharge form the Army after WW1 service. When the board asked him what had happened to his eye he said “…an elephant kicked me“!
It is where her three children grew up and where Jean and I stayed each summer for most of the long school holiday. Below are some memories…
Gran wrote:
…when we moved to 7b Holdings, near Lewes, it was a new world for Peter after living in a town flat. At first he asked if he could go outside to play, but soon got used to the wider surroundings. We lived there from March 1921 till 1962, keeping chickens and growing vegetables on about an acre of land. During the Depression, we lodged four miners from South Wales for a time.
She was given the tenancy because granddad had been invalided out of WW1; when he died she was not allowed to stay on so moved in with Peter.
Gran (Win) – Back Door & Veranda
Bo writes:
I have no chronology of my summers spent at Gran’s smallholding, just many memories of a long hot summer which must have encompassed at least four years and possibly more. I think I must have spent time there from the age of five through to ten and maybe afterwards but I can’t be sure.
The way I remember it is that mum and dad would take us down there on the first weekend of the long school holiday, leaving the following day. They would then join us for the last week when they took time off from their jobs. When they came our outings were more exciting and further afield… but always carefully planned to cost the little our parents could afford.
Playing on the fish ladder on the Sussex Ouse where sea trout come upriver.
During our time there we were left more or less to our own devices apart from a variety of daily chores that we were given.
Cricket at 7B
7B was a large semidetached house with outbuildings and a few acres of land which was my Grandparents’ livelihood from the end of the first world war until Grandad died and Gran moved in with Peter, dad’s brother. It was part of a small hamlet of maybe 8 houses. In the early days before all of Grandad’s sight went he would help to an extent. I have a few memories of him occasionally helping by following a garden line and planting beans or lettuces hoeing the furrow, planting the seed and raking over the line. The only problem was that he couldn’t see, so some rows were perfectly parallel to others, but some, where he forgot to move both ends of the string line appeared as ‘Vs’ and ‘Ws’ when the plants broke through.
In front of the house, bordering the ‘main’ road (A26) was a hedge and a large lawn surrounded by flower borders. Looking from the road, to the right, a wide gravel drive went past the house to the old wooden garage, long-since empty but for the accumulated junk of many decades, broken cloches, worn-out tools, old chemical toilets et al. The drive branched off to the neighbouring chicken farm, which we just called ‘Hobden’s’ after the lady who owned it. To the left of the lawn was a hedge that separated the house from its twin. The unused front door had borders either side mostly laid to perennials and Gran’s growing efforts had to prioritise making a living from fruit veg and especially flowers. I recall a very tall plat we used to call ‘thimble’ flowers as the yellow petals surrounded a central ‘thimble’ shape of closely packed stamen, that protruded in the middle. They were so tall you could touch their tops from the bedroom windows.
Me ( aged 6 or 7) under the front windows at 7B – I loved that green corduroy jacket!
The lawn was regularly mown (to keep up appearances) and one of our chores (no doubt make-work to keep us from under Gran’s feet) was to take an old knife to slice through the roots of plantains and daisies and remove them from the pristine grass. In those days there was no artificial fertiliser or other chemicals used and the organic lawn sometimes housed pygmy shrews. I recall laying on my stomach, alongside dad, with on old leather-clad brass telescope extended in front of us so we could wit these inch-long critters going about their chores.
On the outside Gran’s house and outbuilding smelt of creosote and another of our chores was to top-up this weather proofing on the front door or ‘Sussex boards’ that half-clad the house… or at least those we could reach without using anything other than a step-ladder. The tumble-down garage was never given the treatment and its sun-silvered boards sagged and leant and was ‘too dangerous’ for us to enter (although we sometimes did). To the right of the house between it and the garage were a few pear trees making this shaded corner a retreat from the summer heat.
Behind the house was the ‘kitchen garden’. An area cultivated for the household’s use. It was overwhelmed by the smell of the huge blackcurrant bushes that were visible from the kitchen and living room windows. Close to the house were culinary herbs. Beyond these were fruit bushes and veg and the brick-build outbuildings where all the tools and cultivators, balls of bast and boxes used to grow and sell their produce. To the right of the current bushes, before the ‘garage’ was devoted to flowers that do ot do well in the wind… ranks of asters, dahlias, freesias and all.
Behind the sheds was the real business bit of the small holding which was cultivated almost down to the end of the holding where a reedy stream separated it from the cow fields beyond. The garden grew anything and everything… tall ranks of runner beans and sweet peas, lower rows of peas, French beans, irises, calendulas (or callen-doo-lahs as Gran called them). There was row upon row of potatoes, broad beans, cabbages and cauli, carrots, leeks and lettuce all according to season. In spring glass cloches protected the young lettuces and tomatoes from wind and rabbits.
It’s no wonder that Gran’s dinners were legend… the centre might be a chicken from the neighbours too old to sell but still flavourful and tender when slow roasted in the Aga cooker. Then the rest straight from growing to eating in an hour or two, tasty Jersey Royal potatoes, fresh minted peas, luscious green beans slow cooked because family got the ones that first picking had missed so needed her touch to make them stringless and tenderised.
The house one way had pigs and the other chickens. I think Gran let the chickens roam on part of her plot in exchange for their meat and she fed the pigs in exchange for bacon, sausages and the odd pork joint… this vegetarian of over thirty years standing can still smell the crackling as it crisped. Nothing roasts meat as well as the gentle heat of a range. I can also remember eggs and bacon which Grandad demanded everyday with home cured bacon accompanied by the freshest eggs possible. Another one of our chores was to collect eggs on a neighbouring farm where the chickens roamed free. Our task was to find the corners in the hay-loft and nettle patches where the hens had deposited their bounty. I recall standing in the hay loft and dropping eggs down on the loose hay where Jean would retrieve each one to put in the big woven basket we used to collect them. Our payment was in eggs to take back to Gran. The same was true the other side at the ‘Hobdens’ where we would enter the massive shed and help collect eggs from their nest-boxes all the time suffering the overpowering stench!
The living room was a large room stretching from the kitchen garden to the front of the house. At the front was the ‘other’ room. It wasn’t really used but housed an upright piano, stuffed chairs and a display cabinet with Grans best china, coronation mugs and small porcelain pieces. On the mantelpiece was a wooden camel with a tasselled saddle gleaned from Granddad’s travels. The room smelt of dust and disuse. The living room with its black range, Grandad’s wing-chair and the dining table and chairs, a settle and phonogram that was used to play ‘Talking Books’. On the sideboard there was a stack of large cardboard containers of several 78 records of someone reading out a novel or biography. They were supplied by the blind charity St Dunstan’s whose headquarters was in Brighton. Sometimes, so long as we were completely silent, we were allowed to listen alongside Granddad… I recall being enthralled by Thor Heyerdahl’s ‘Kontiki’.
Above the phonogram was a photograph of Granddad as a jockey holding the tether of a horse alongside, I think, Tsar Nicholas II! The living room smelt of coal and tobacco and the strange smell given off by the wooden spills that he would use to light his cigarettes from the open range.
Past the dining table was the kitchen door with a butler sink and draining board opposite a meat-safe* and the ‘Raeburn’ another range that was mostly used to heat water for the tiny bathroom which was at the end of the kitchen next to the pantry. The bathroom doubled as a kennel! A wooden ‘door’ was hinged over the bath so it became a platform, covered in old blankets for ‘Trixie’ Gran’s black Labrador. The pantry was stuffed full of Kilner jars of pickled onions, piccalilli and green tomato chutney, marmalade and blackcurrant jam and all the other ways Gran had of making the garden’s bounty available all year. There were also copious rows of old mustard times used to store seeds. The oddest thing was Kilner jars full of milk bottle tops. This was an early form of recycling. The metal foil lids were washed and kept and sent off to St Dunstan’s who somehow raised money from them for their work.
The kitchen had a stable door Kept half open in the summer to cool the house. Running from there along the back of the house was a veranda with its lights screened to keep out insect. At the end was another storage room and the one toilet in the house… replete with its overhead flush and chain and a hook from which dangled squares of newspaper cut from the Radio Times for use as an alternative to the Izal toilet paper which was as hard and uncompromising as Gran. Next door the storeroom always had an overwhelming smell paraffin (used to fill ‘oil’ lamps) and Jay’s Fluid (used in the chemical toilets stores there).
The kitchen smelt of food or vaguely of camphor used to keep insects at bay.
I remember only three bedrooms up that dark wooden stairs which had worn carpet on the treads held down by brass stair rods.
The largest room was Gran’s and Grandad’s with a double bed, wardrobe and dresser.
(In my memory Gran & Grandad’s room is redolent with the low sounds of my Gran reading cowboy books out loud to my granddad because he was blind. Grandad could escape all troubles and slip into fantasy slumbers while Gran indulged him in a media that bored her to sleep. Mostly we could hear the rhythm of the story but occasionally some clear words would drift our way like the worst dialogue, from the most tinpot of B movies of the era. We would repress our giggles as Gran’s voice talked of ‘low-down, dirty sidewinders’ called Pete or Seth or Jesse, or threatened to ‘plug you so full of lead your body will sink in the river’. )
Then there was the spare room which was sacrosanct as it was Uncle Peter’s room. Unmarried, he still came ‘home’ at weekends to do his washing and sample Gran’s home cooking. His room was a museum of mysteries. It had a tallboy with the drawers full of labelled geological specimens and fossils. His collection included a beautiful obsidian axe head he had found in a stone age settlement on the downs and many fossil sea anemones, sharks’ teeth, crab carapaces, ammonites, belemnites, lamellibranch’s and even coprolites (fossilised fish shit). There were photo albums of him at the top of any peak that didn’t require roped climbers to scale. Sometimes the drawers doubled as winter storage of apples and pears which permeated the room giving it a permanent odour of autumn.
Lastly, was ‘our’ room. The bedroom Jean and I shared with two deep featherbeds one under the window one against the wall which we fought over. The window side was cool in summer. There was a cupboard of treasure tucked under the eaves full of old toys (Dad’s teddy bear) and clothes (Auntie Rita’s ballet pumps) and cigarette cards, marbles, story books and red Russian riding boots and more.
The way I remember ‘our’ room – the one that Jean and I shared – was with its oil lamps and featherbeds, its treasure cupboard and the old ‘steam’ radio on which we would listen to ‘Journey into space’ only if we had been good. Hunkered down under the eiderdowns scared witless by the aliens attacking ‘Jet’, ‘Doc’ and ‘Lemmie’, British space heroes. It was our retreat on wet days when we would pull out my dad’s old toys from the cupboard or dress up in my Aunt’s old stage clothes from her time as an adagio performer (a form of acrobatic balance that died out with the music halls demise). On Sunday’s, when banished from the range where Sunday dinner was slow cooking, we would fire up our steam radio and listen to ‘Toy Town’ with ‘Larry the Lamb’ or ‘A Life of Bliss’ with George Cole as the hapless, absent minded David Bliss forever telling his dog, played by Percy Edwards, to ‘get down, Psyche!’
I know there was a bed-side lamp in Gran’s room – the light by which she read countless cowboy books to Granddad – which was powered by a cable running from the ceiling light. We had oil lamps to see us to bed. So far as I know there was just one electrical socket in the whole house, which powered the big brown, cupboard-sized, wooden dome of a Radio, with its Cathedral arches of cloth where the speakers were at the front, used for hearing the Six O’Clock News which was followed by the Archers, both of which had to be listened to in utter silence lest Granddad missed even one word. He with his nightly glass of whisky. When the radio was off and the talking book not in use the only sounds would be Gran clattering in the kitchen and the steady, reassuringly loud tick of the mantel clock which was religiously wound every night after the Archers.
I recall seeing grandad once or twice in the garden helping to plant or reap and as few times dressed in his ‘Sunday Best’ of a suit, homburg hat and dark glasses with side shades. I think this was for annual outings to Brighton. Otherwise he sat in his wing chair with old grey serge trousers and a green jumper full of holes. Often times, when he lit is rolled cigarette with a Swan Vesta (red-headed matches) or spill, an ember would drop onto his jumper and create another perforation. He wore a folded ‘white’ handkerchief around his head and across his eye socket. Occasionally, he would pull this off and use the heel of his hand to rub at the missing eye when it itched before putting the handkerchief back. Behind the veil his eyelid was almost sealed over the missing eye-ball. The eyelid was puckered with scarring and a small piece was not sealed showing just blackness beyond.
When asked as a seven or eight-year old to describe my Grandad I said ‘He is little and shouts’. He was short explaining how he became a jockey. His shouting was an endless stream of invective levelled and Gran. This always accompanied the daily ritual of insulin injections. His WW1 injury had not just blinded him but did much damage when he was run over by a gun carriage. He claimed to have been the first person in the UK to have part of his scull replaced with a silver plate and to have survived. The liver damage had resulted in diabetes. The bathroom often held vials of urine complete with litmus paper Gran used to gauge how much insulin to administer. In those days, insulin came in sealed glass vials with a rubber insert in the lid through which one could pierce a needle to withdraw the desired amount. Insulin and needles were in limited supply and the syringe was used for years and needles replaced every so often. But not enough for Grandad as piecing the leather skin of his arms with an ever-blunting needle brought forth cursing the like of which I have barely heard matched. The ministering angel, his spouse, was the object of the tirade. He was little, and he most certainly shouted.
Peter and Dad and all always referred to him as ‘the old man’. It was there delight to talk politics, religion and other matters of the day with him present knowing that there liberal or socialist beliefs and arguments would enrage him. Baiting ‘the old man’ was irresistible.
Peter was the most educated of the clan, unmarried and able to holiday each year walking in the Dolomites or Alps. Most weekends he would turn up at his mums with his weekly washing and sometimes took Jean and me off Gran’s hands for a few hours.
Our summer weeks were full of highlights brought about by Gran’s necessary routines and the pace of life in rural Sussex in the 1950s. Cars were a middle-class luxury still and most people didn’t drive. Although Gran could drive she could not afford to buy or run a car and the nearest shop, a tiny newsagent was over a mile away in Ringmer. The nearest ‘proper’ shops were in Lewes three miles away. As was common then milk, bread, meat and groceries were all delivered or available as mobile stores. The bakery came a couple of times a week, the mobile grocer once a week and that was a highlight. The mobile library was always trying to find new cowboy books for Gran to read to ‘the old man’. Jean and I also waited anxiously for the ‘Corona man’, with his six bottles of pop delivered each week… our joint ration.
When we had pocket money we would walk the long hot road – Ham Lane – to Ringmer to buy ice-creams. Ringmer was a small village with its one claim to fame being a resident – the Music Hall star Max Wall.
Our chores were highlights too, especially the visits to the neighbouring farm. At the end of Summer, we would sit on a fence and watch the harvest. As the combine drove in ever decreasing circles, farm hands and others would stand around the field and as the combine almost finished rabbits and hares would streak out of the last remaining stand of wheat and run the gauntlet of the guns. I remember the rabbits being fairly easy prey with the hares not only racing away but jinking to confuse the predatory guns.
I also recall once watching a family of harvest mice peeping from their woven nest suspended from three or four corn stalks… huge ears and eyes and ridiculously long tails able to coil the stalks like a monkey’s prehensile tail.
I also remember talking with an old farm hand in a smock. This must have been one of the very last smock-wearing yokel in the home counties. When he talked his Sussex accent was so strong I could understand not one word!
Jean writes:
My first memories were of a first birthday party at my grandmother’s smallholding near Lewis in Sussex. Sally a girl of my age was invited from the next farm.
My Grand Mother was a very down to earth lady, she taught me a lot, how to garden, Knit and sew and make a rabbit casserole. Other things like plucking ducks and preparing a chicken for the table. I watched and helped her many times but prefer my meat from the supermarket; country life was different in the 1950’s. The holidays with her and grandad at 7B small Holdings between Lewis and Uckfield Sussex are remembered with joy.
In the seven week summer holidays my parents and brother used to travel on the bus changing buses at Borough Green to get to my grandmothers. The journey there wasn’t pleasant as I suffered with travel sickness even on short trips, I can remember being told to open my mouth to breathe as you can’t be sick with your mouth open and stay near the open window for fresh air. Brown paper was put down my vest once, some sort of drops put on my wrists and sucking boiled sweets were all supposed to work but to no avail, I threw up. Once on the way down my brother drew attention to himself in a big way as my parents discovered he had contracted whooping cough, one big whoop, (we were on a double decker bus) and we had the top deck to ourselves for most of the journey.
Six weeks isolation at Grans followed, I think I caught it but not as bad as Richard. Come to think of it I tried never to be ill at Grans, even though I was!. Gran had remedies, some were truly horrible a spoonful of Ipecacuanha was enough to kill or cure. It was a liquorice based cough mixture type thing that she made herself rather than the real stuff.
A cold cure was half an onion covered with brown sugar left for a week. The syrup was then administered. (Bo writes: I remember it contained brown sugar, onions and vinegar among other things as dad used to make it too – eeeuuuu!) For a Sore throat a teaspoon of Vicks vapour rub!. Grease was rubbed on a burn. Most of her cures tasted or smelt bad. I got a kipper bone stuck in my throat and was given a cotton wool sandwich (yes a slice of bread with a layer of cotton wool!) I hated it, but it worked. I used to love Kippers but never ate them after that.
It did seem like endless summer days outdoors, but it must have rained sometimes because that’s when playing dressing-up in Auntie Rita’s old stage costumes kept us amused. I was fascinated with stage make up and wearing the ballet shoes or the red Cossack boots, we crossed our arms, squatted and tried to dance putting on a comedy show for the grandparents to endure. Granddad was not a patient man but had a love of the theatre and books so didn’t discourage us from acting or reading.
There were cupboards full of treasures to make things with, Buttons, Cotton reels, elastic bands, bits of wax candles, which ended up as spinning tops, and tanks. Ask Gran for anything she always had it in the cupboard. Many times I played with Rita’s old dolls house it was a grand affair, my father had made the outside of it from snail shells, glued onto a wooden frame so he told me. From a distance it looked like grey stone. Dad was close to Rita as a child as there were big gaps between them all, Dad was over five when she was born and Peter was thirteen.
The garden took priority and was worked most days.
Mondays was a wash day, hand washing in the kitchen sink and putting large items through the mangle the hot water had been heated on pots on the stove. In the afternoon, the ironing was done. No electric iron for Gran, for many years she heated the flat irons on the wood burner in the main room ….you tested them by spitting on them to see if they were hot enough. I was allowed to do handkerchiefs then pillow cases. No fancy ironing board either the small kitchen table was covered with an old blanket and sheet on top
Tuesdays was when the Co-Op van called with supplies at the gate and we used to be given pocket money for wagon wheels, sherbet dabs or lollypops I think it only came once a fortnight. Occasionally we would go by bus into Lewis taking bunches of parsley to the Butchers and the Fishmongers and sometimes drop off bunches of flowers, peas or beans that had been ordered. Gran would get library books for grandad and we were allowed one book each and in later years exchange Grandad’s talking book. If there was time before the bus back came, we had an ice cream or a drink.
Wednesdays was Grans housework day, sweeping and washing floors, it paid not to get under her feet on those days we were sent out to play or our job to beat the mats which were hung over the line. When you came back in fear for a drink of water, if allowed in there was newspaper steppingstones.
Thursday and Friday afternoon the Gypsies came around to buy the flowers they had ordered the previous week. The gipsies – what wonderful exciting scary people they were, they did have brightly coloured scarves and gold teeth and earrings. They were mysterious, dark-eyed, dark-skinned women who spoke in a foreign language. Three or four were regulars and were invited in for a cup of tea with Grandad which he thoroughly enjoyed. They smiled a lot and they drove a hard bargain, but Granddad I am sure would have got the better of them. Gran had nothing to do with the money transactions .They always tried to get my grandmothers best roses and Dahlias from the front garden, sometimes one of them would turn up late hoping everyone was occupied in side, but my gran was on to it.
In the mornings I used to love picking and making up the orders with gran, once picked we tied them up with raffia or string and put them all in the old tin baths and pitchers which were filled with water. Gypsophila, Asters, Calendulas, Larkspur, Dahlias, Phlox, Zinnias and Wallflowers. This was all done in the outhouses which used to smell amazing. What bliss that was, if I go in a florist shop now the memories come flooding back.
Friday the Corona man used to come and deliver the ‘pop’ as we used to call it, 6 large bottles of fizzy drinks. The green grocer used to deliver as well and expected a whiskey and a laugh with Grandad, Granny used to get the local gossip and find out what all the distant neighbours were up to. Grandad used to talk politics and get the latest dirty jokes. Grandad was colourful in language; he could speak five languages and lived in Europe from the age of nine until his twenties. With swearing he was the master. Gran used to tell him “shush Pete there are children around” but he took no notice. The words, the stories and the sayings I heard in my childhood, it’s taken 40 years to realise what some of them meant!
Saturday Uncle Peter came home and to get his washing done for the week and usually an argument with his Father. We always had a dessert for tea at weekends usually apple pie and cream. Visitors would arrive, Uncle Jack, granddad’s brother and Auntie Annie who had bad legs or Auntie Ella my grandfather’s half-sister, Jet black curly hair and lots of jewellery. Bebe (a nickname) Evelyn was another relative she was always carrying a little handbag and had a well-spoken voice. Once she bought her son Julian aged about 12 he was a chess champion and went to a posh school I was told. ‘Auntie Doss’ came who was no relation of ours, but an old friend of Grandads. She was a loud Londoner who had worked in the Theatre but now worked as the ‘Cloakroom’ assistant at Glyndebourne. She wore high heels, lots of makeup, perfume and a fur cape. I remember them saying her husband had been quite famous comic and song and dance man .Uncle Peter disappeared when she came as he couldn’t stand her. I remember laughter, jokes and lots of drinking when she came. She came to stay with Auntie Rita in later years I think the stage had been their connection. (Bo adds – I well remember Auntie Doss and that she always smelled strongly of rouge, which she once showed me in her huge handbag)
Sunday was low key. Bacon and egg Breakfast. Best clothes, Walks in the country, Roast dinners. Tea outside in the garden on a hot afternoon around the back of the Lilac bushes just me and my brother. Cheese sandwiches, strawberries and cream, rock cakes that we sometimes made ourselves with gran’s supervision..
The vicar from Ringmer came to visit late afternoon on his Bike. Cake, tea or a wee dram was the order of the day. He always left saying something like “…hope to see you in the congregation one Sunday”. I don’t remember Gran or Grandad ever going to church unless it was a christening or wedding.
The days were routine, but we had freedom to visit the Jersey cows at the bottom end of the gardens and feed then milk-thistles, play around the old pump out the front which had been used by all the small holders at one time. Take Lassie, the black Labrador dog out for a walk up past the Cock Inn. She was not very well trained and would pull all the way. You couldn’t let her off as she would run after rabbits and not come back when you called. Indoors in later years she had her own chair and would growl if you disturbed her. (Bo adds: I remember once she was under the table at tea time and I bent down and peered under the table-cloth to see her and she bit me on the nose!)
We would visit the farm down the road where Sally lived play in the hay barn collect the eggs and then climb up the belt that sent the hay to the roof space of the barn. Once we went to help with the harvest, walking behind the old baler and stacking the sheaves upright in threes. They grew Oats, bearded wheat and Barley. I remember being horrified at the end of the day the combined harvester would go from the borders of the field inwards. Eventually a small oblong remained, the rabbits would then run out, the pheasants fly up and the men would shoot them. I was used to eating game and had seen Dad hunting which I felt alright about, but it didn’t seem fair that they were trapped in the small space of standing corn. It was the end of the days’ work when and my brother and I had our first drink of cider. I was about ten yrs. and my brother seven or even younger. (Bo adds: I recall we used to throw things into the works of the combine harvester such as our handkerchiefs to see them tightly strapped to the bales with string when they came out the other end.)
There were times when Grandad became strict, the 6 O’ clock news on the Radio, we were warned never to make a sound during this or when the ‘Archers’ was on. The internal doors had those latches on that you had to press to open and they would rattle, if granddad heard it he would shout “Be Quiet!” in a huge voice followed by a lot of swearing. The good side of him was that he used to make Toffee and Russian fudge, full of sugar and he was a diabetic. It was never in neat squares, stored in a tin, when offered it we would go for the biggest pieces we could find. He was a great story teller and I would listen to his stories about his grandfather being sea captain and a bit of a pirate. He had powder burns on his face he said from the canon fire. Tales of his own travels through Europe with his brother Otto. Of being stable boys and young jockeys. In France, Germany, Austria and in Russia riding horses for the Tsar.