Bessie May's Memories

Bessie May was my mother. 

She was born on the eleventh of May, 1909 - hence her name, a Tuesday as it happens - and passed away ninety-four years later in 2003. Her parents, Edward and Alice Louisa (nee Sparkes) Blacker were Bristolians, but she was born and brought up in the villages of Stanton Drew and Pensford. She married my father, Maurice Bertram Veater at Totterdown Gospel Hall, Bristol, in 1936, and subsequently had five children. I was the last, at the relatively late age of forty.

About thirty or more years ago I was anxious to record some of her memories before it was too late. The following is what we produced together. There is nothing remarkable about it but it does contain many fascinating little details and anecdotes. 

The world she describes, despite the passing of only around a hundred years or less, has undergone remarkable technological and social change, probably more so than in any other similar human epoch, and personal memories illustrate them better than anything else. They may also be of greater interest to those with local connections to the North Somerset and Bristol areas.

By 1909, the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions had transformed Britain from a relatively sleepy, predominently rural nation, to a bustling, crowded, smelly, urban one, based on coal and iron, heavy industry, shipping, manufacture and commerce. An Empire over at least a third of the globe, provided the raw materials and a market for the finished goods. Britain had a head start in innovation and manufacture and then exploited it.

In 1909 it was at the cusp of its greatness and on the brink of a war that destroyed it, a process of decline that has continued to this day. Yet paradoxically the living conditions and life expectancy for the majority has vastly improved. The economic verities are hard to fathom.

Even in the North Somerset village of Pensford, these national changes had their effect. A railway station came to the village in 1873 linking Bristol and Frome, with connections at both ends to an amazing national railway network, that by then had been created. 

Two local collieries were opened, Bromley in 1860 and Pensford in the same year my mother was born (1909) Mines and railways, transformed the process of coal distribution and domestic heating and also impacted the environment in a big way. Green fields were hidden under slag heaps, embankments and cuttings ensured a level permanent way.

With the railway also came telegraph and telephone wires, and telephones gradually found their way into the homes of businesses and the upper classes. "Compton Dando 234" still rings in my head.

For the majority without them, communication relied on the delivery of letters and in urgent cases telegrams. During the 1914/1918 war, the black framed telegram took on an altogether ominous reputation, families dreading their arrival. My mother as a small child delivered them all over a network of footpaths. My father spent more than thirty years delivering letters on a push bike. I believe he lost four uncles to the war!

Roads became tarmacked and motor vehicles started appearing. Progressively the horse was replaced by the tractor and the harness maker gave way to the mechanic. 

The Education Act of 1888 resulted in the appearance of State schools everywhere, and Pensford's appear in 1905 and 1915. (My mother remembers the second one being built, for which the cottages opposite her house were demolished) 

The school leaving age was raised to twelve in 1899 and then fourteen by the 1918 Education Act. The Education Act 1902 resulted in the expansion of secondary education and the need was recognised to rationalise the many school leaving examinations. Both my mother and father passed the entrance exam for Bristol secondary schools but my mother was too shy to take up the place. My father joined the very strict St Mary Redcliffe school until the age of fifteen or sixteen.

Domestically, conditions improved. The meager old age pension introduced for those over seventy, with other social benefits, by the Liberal Government in 1909, transformed the lot of those that survived to that age. Gradually health care and midwifery improved until the introduction of the National Health Service in 1948.

Pre-First World War, village life was dominated by the class structure. Everyone fitted into, and was affected by it. Working, middle and upper classes knew their place. My mother's father was a working class docker at the new port of Avonmouth. Nevertheless he was able to afford to have built a brand new bungalow just outside the village, where the family moved, in 1930. She comments on how she regarded the Battens as being 'middle class'.

My father's father, Arthur William (1878 - 1950) on the other hand, being a self employed business man, regarded himself as lower middle class. He was a master saddler working in a dying trade. My mother's family were Chapel/Liberal, my father's Church of England/Tory - that is until an evangelist arrived on the scene, but that's another story entirely. 

Although old houses remained substantially the same, the arrival of 'council houses' from the '30's onwards and 'improvement grants' from the '50's, transformed the interiors providing bathrooms and kitchen with modern amenities. I was to directly benefit from these, things that are today taken very much for granted. 

The village saw the arrival of a District Nurse and a policemen, both provided with a house for the purpose. Who knows who did the 1909 delivery of my mother - she doesn't say, but I assume a midwife was called to that cottage in Stanton Drew. Forty years later I was born at home in Pensford - a house called 'Maranatha', that my father owned -  because my mother had a deep aversion to hospitals and doctors. This lasted to the end of her life and she died at home, with medical care - again leaving much to be desired.

My mother had numerous potentially fatal illnesses: as a child she had mild Ricketts a vitamin D deficiency disease and Measles; in her twenties she had throat infections, diptheria, TB and pneumonia but survived them all, much to her credit and little to medical science. Even in the 1930's it was rudimentary and rather Heath Robinson. My father had religious reservations regarding vaccines, so I did not have any until I started work. More recently I think the retained scepticism has held me in good stead.

My mother contracted TB prior to the introduction of either vaccination or anti-biotics. Although Penicillin was discovered by Fleming in 1928, its purified version wasn't readily available until the early '40's. Streptomycin effective against TB, wasn't isolated until 1943. She reports her doctor gave her an injection, but she was never told what it was. Maybe it was the recently developed sulphonomide drug 'Salvarsan'? In any event only one injection is unlikely to have been effective against anything! 

Interestingly, Paul Ehrlich who researched and developed it, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908, the year before my mother was born. She provides some details of her six month stay in the Sanitorium on the Quantocks, reliant on fresh air, barely decent food, exercise and the occasional 'collapsed lung', then the only known forms of treatment for the disease. 

My mother was an intensely shy and private person who avoided crowds or social functions, other than religious ones connected to the Plymouth Brethren, which she attended regularly throughout her life. She neither smoked or drank alcohol and avoided medical preparations. Neither of my parents gambled or swore. From the time she was married she ceased paid employment, though rather amazingly took up cleaning for a local wealthy family for a couple of days a week in her sixties, which gave her a new lease of life. She had always been an honest and industrious person.

She was not tactile or gushing but she was genuine and fully committed to family duties and household tasks, ensuring cleanliness, order and home cooking at which she was very competent. She could knit, sew, play the piano and garden. She specialized in flowers, my father in vegetables. 

Interestingly in her comments she said little about her children. You must make of that what you will, but all her children kept in close contact with her to the end and she always welcomed them to her home. She undoubtedly had a well-founded Christian faith, rooted in Methodism and later the Open Brethren. It was sincere and understated.

She was loyal and caring, taking in her brother-in-laws' orphaned twins just before I was born; cared for both her mother-in-law and father when they were both aged and infirm; and cared for her sister when she suffered a mental collapse and looked after my father during his long decline from Parkinsons Disease. She lived a further seventeen years after his death. Last but not least, she put up with me!

I hope you find her account interesting. (TTV)

BESSIE MAY VEATER'S MEMORIES

(As told to her son)

Stanton Drew and Pensford.

I was born in a remote Somerset village called Stanton Drew, about six or seven miles south of Bristol, mainly famous for its prehistoric stone circles and quaint 'Round House', the latter located next to the road to collect tolls in the Eighteenth Century. The year was 1909. 

My parents were both Bristolians and my father at this time was working at the docks in Bristol and later at Avonmouth. Previously he had worked on coastal steamers transporting coal from South Wales to western ports around the tip of Lands End. 

His parents used to visit this village with horse and cart, selling mostly footwear from the business they owned. My father accompanied them and liked the place so much decided to settle there when he could. When he got married, he found a cottage to rent in the Barton at Upper Stanton Drew. This is it now! 

 

My mother was never really happy there, finding the isolation more than she could bear and missing the city so moved back to Bristol. Then she tried again and this time was more successful. By this time they had had both a boy and a girl but the male child had died before leaving Bristol. I was born in a little secluded square at the edge of the village overlooking green fields, with a narrow lane leading to the next village, Pensford. There was no water in the houses - you had to collect it from standpipes fastened to posts here and there in the village. A short distance away we collected our milk in a can from 'Druid Farm'.

Move to Pensford in 1911

We didn't stay there very long, moving to another cottage by the River Chew in Pensford three miles away. This was more accessible being on the main A37 and having a railway station all to itself as well as a Post Office. The cottage was very pleasant, secluded, facing south with the river running by on our doorstep. We remained there for the next nineteen years and my younger brother, Charlie, was born there.

This is where I grew up, attending the school next door, whilst the second was being built - opened in 1915 when I was six. To build it a number of cottages had to be pulled down and the tenants rehoused. Most ordinary people rented their accommodation in those days and only relatively few owned their own home. Pre the First World War only horse and carts used the roads. Now motor vehicles are constant with frequent huge juggernauts too wide for two to pass at the same time! As children we played in the road without danger. Marbles was a favourite game of children then. Today a Warden is required to ensure children pass over it safely and can you imagine playing marbles in the middle of the road now? How times have changed.

'Mousehole'

(The two houses near right have gone. The one with the children standing in front is the 'Mousehole' referred to in the text. Ed.)

Our near neighbours lived in the oldest cottage in the village. (Not actually accurate but perhaps the quirkiest? Ed.) They were two spinster cousins. One was a skilled dress-maker. I was always fascinated by the tiny interior of the cottage and used to sit inside on the quaint old settle. (It's not called 'Mousehole' for nothing. Ed.) From the main room there were three little steps to a long narrow room adjoining the road. Later this became a shop. 

These two old ladies never did any sewing on Saturdays or Sundays. One always put on her best clothes, her jewelry and her wig. We used to think it very strange wearing a wig! She would stand outside and ask me who all the people were as they passed by. Her small garden always had the same flowers: Nasturtiums and tall white and yellow Daises. A carpenter who lived further up the hill, always brought them chopped stick for kindling. Without fail he would stop for a chat but it wasn't always the truth. We knew he invented stories about local people.

The school playground which adjoins the property led to problems. Most days a football would fly into the garden but only if she was in a good mood would she give it back. Quite often you could smell the balls burning on her fire. After the sisters passed away the house was bought by my grandmother who sold it again not long after. It is still there with just a few minor alterations and additions from when Mrs Tressider lived there. Interestingly she also lived in and modernised the house where I grew up, now called 'Waterside', and kindly showed me around when it was completed some thirty odd years after I left it.

Three Churches

Two Anglican churches and a Wesleyan chapel served the community. (Interestingly she doesn't refer to the Gospel Hall that she attended virtually her whole life. Presumamably she didn't picture this as a 'Church'. Ed.) One Vicar  served both Publow and Pensford. The chapel was served by visiting Ministers from Bristol.

The Blacksmith and Wheelwright

The village possessed numerous curiosities and attractions for children's attention. I well remember the Blacksmith's shop (Now Bridge House garden.  Ed.) in a roomy, cold building with little light. At the back were enormous bellows to blow the fire. It suddenly went from dying embers to fierce heat turning metal red and white. These he hammered into shape on his anvil with deafening sound and bright sparks flying everywhere. Across the way he shod the horses hooves.

There was always plenty of work for horses around the district for hauling carts, working on farms and in connection with the pits, not to mention those used for riding and pulling the carriages of the gentry. My mother in law had a pony and trap in which she used to travel the lanes alone, sometimes at night, delivering finished leather goods and visiting her relatives in Winford, Dundry and as far away as Wedmore.

Sometimes the blacksmith would make a iron hoop with a glider attached for local boys. At the time this was a common toy often appearing on photographs of the period. Girls played with wooden tops. Around the corner from the Blacksmith was Batten's builders and undertakers. 

Out side this building a circle stone was set in the ground on which was located wooden cart wheels to which a red hot metal rim was dropped. When quenched with water it would contract, securing it firmly to the wheel and holding the wooden spokes firmly in in place. We used to watch them being spun on our way to the shop.

The Sadler

Opposite Batten's yard was the harness-maker's shop (Later to become Harry Flower's butcher's shop and part of Bridge House. Nor does she mention that the harness maker was in fact her future father in law! Ed.) with astable door. Someone always seemed to be leaning over it telling village news. At the other end of the village street (I assume what became Veater's saddlery. So it seems that Flowers and Veaters must have later changed ends? Ed.) outside on a rail above the window carcases were hung on hooks. I suppose there were no flies in those days? Later this became the sweet shop. I remember the shining copper scales and brass weights and the nice lady who owned it.

Mill House and Weir

Around the corner was was an old mill house and the ruins of the paper mill. The house was effectively on an island shared by the Thomas a Beckett church, surrounded by water with the mill race on one side and the river on the other. A little further on was the weir with an ancient narrow bridge under which the river rushed with a roar. It carried the footpath from Stanton Drew and Bye Mills and many people fished from it. 

During the summer it also doubled as meeting place and diving platform into the pool beneath it. It was the place for local boys to show off and girls to be impressed by their antics. It was also a gateway to the fields and Old Downs which we regarded as common land. We welcomed the Spring and Summer when we could venture forth with a picnic or take our tea to the hay field. It sometimes took four days to clear a field from cutting the grass to making the rick. Only much later did hay barns appear. During the war (I assume both 1st and 2nd? Ed.) women took the place of men for harvesting.

Flower Pickers

We had no holidays as such, only an annual trip to the seaside or an afternoon at a tea garden with a few races (? Ed.) for a sixpence. Children played more outdoors then, even when it was dark. The village had no street lighting. Occasionally a conjurer would visit the school. I thought it was great fun. On summer bank holidays, crowds of people would arrive by train for a day in the country side walking the footpaths and gathering by the river, returning in springtime with armfuls of bunched Bluebells. I used to wonder what they did with them all. All the flowers had been been pulled up by the white stem at the root!

Head Injury Accident

When I was six or seven I fell off a low wall behind what is now the 'Miners' Welfare Building'. It was on a Sunday and I hit my head. They said I had to go to hospital but I said "No"! I didn't even have the doctor call. The District Nurse may have come and dressed it but I can't remember now. Eventually it healed over but I still have the scar on my forehead.

Near Drowning

Then I nearly drowned! We used to go out in the fields to play. Mother used to make us sandwiches to take with us.  I was playing with my sister and fell in the river from the bank. She was going to take her boots off - we all wore leather lace-ups as children in those days - but decided to come in straight away and got me out. I remember lying there with water going over my head! I didn't appear to be frightened at all. My mother came around and wrapped me in a shaw. However I never learned to swim but was more cautious in future.

Measles

Next I remember I remember being home from school suffering from the 'Measles' at the same time as they were building the new one - 1914/15. I never had any injections but the school doctor examined me. I used to hate it and still do hate doctors. He never discovered anything wrong with me despite my illnesses.  We used to have Mr Bromham come to see why you stayed away from school.

Feeling ill at Aunts 

When I was about ten or eleven I used to go and stay with Aunt Nellie who lived in Percy Street, Bedminster. She was a dress-maker and had a treadle sewing machine going all the time. She used to make most of our clothes. Whilst there I felt really unwell and sent a postcard to my mother asking her to come and collect me. I thought the fish and chips had upset me. I had awful headaches and stayed in bed. I had a bad journey back, walking to Temple Meads and I didn't know how I was going to make it to Castle Street where my mother was doing her shopping.

Contracting TB and stay at the Sanatorium

When I was twenty-six in 1935 I had a cough that I couldn't get rid of. The medical people came and took a swab and the result came back positive for Tuberculosis (TB)  so I was sent away to the Sanatorium the other side of Bridgwater - Over Stowey in the Quantock Hills. I was there for seven months from April to November. I went there on the back of Maurice's motor bike and I couldn't speak when I got there! They said, "Fancy coming on a motor bike!" Dr. Raeburn was very nice. He came to the bungalow at Amercombe. A girl there from Pill used to talk about him all the time.

The Sanatorium was a pretty miserable experience. You had to stay in bed all day. They put a sign over it saying "SILENCE. Not allowed to talk." They put me in a big ward. A woman made out I had stolen her cuttlery, if you ever did!  So I said I wouldn't stay there any more and they moved me to another ward. Lady Stanley had owned the building and they said her ghost walked through the wards at night which terrified the Night Nurse. They made me clean the floors. We had to go for walks over the hills and the men walked the roads to keep us apart. And then they reversed it. That was the 'treatment for seven months.

I didn't have any pills or medicine, though some girls had 'AP' treatment which consisted of collapsing a lung at Bridgwater hospital. This rested the infected lung - or one of them. Whether this was effective I do not know but the girls seemed alright when they returned.

Every month we went for X-Rays in a very dark room. They may have shown them to me but I can't remember.  My cough got better and I returned home. We girls used to make our own fun. A girl from Wells was in bed all day sick but at night she got a new lease of life and mimicked the nurses and we would all scream with laughter. In fact the Night Nurse complained about the noise. The same girl from Wells was always saying she was going home but never did. I think she later died from TB in hospital at Wincanton. All the cleaners came from a Taunton mental hospital.

The sanitorium was a massive mansion with extensive grounds planted with conifers. I'm not sure if it is still there?  (It is. In 2003 it was an outdoor adventure centre. It is currently on the market for sale. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantock_Lodge  Ed.) There was no heating and the only warmth was a hot water bottle! There was a big dining room but the food was very poor. The best meal was 'hot pot' consisting of vegetables, meat and potatoes. "Rice or Sago" was written on the back of the lavatory door, as it was on the standard pudding. Once when we walked to a cottage for tea, as they were getting it for us we couldn't stop giggling. (Why is not explained. Ed.)  Maurice used to ride down on his motor bike every weekend to see me, and my mother (?) came down as well on occasions.

A young victim of TB

Before going to the sanitorium I worked for a woman at King Road, Knowle called Mrs Rich. She was about twenty-five. She worked at Peak Freans biscuit factory in St Phillips where my mother's parents had lived. She had TB. I used to hear her coughing when she came in. I think I may have contracted the disease from her. When I was at the sanitorium she usd to write to me but I think she died before I had left. She wouldn't go to hospital. That summer she lived in a tent in her garden. Eventually she became so ill she had to give up work and remained in bed most of the time until her death.

Returning home to Pleurisy

When I got home in November 1935, I promptly went down with pleurisy and the doctor wanted me to go back again. Doctor Taylor came and gave me an injection in my back but I don't know what it was. I was in bed for a while whilst the football world cup was on the radio. I wasn't all that ill. 

I used to have an ache in my back. I used to take 'Formamint' - little white tablets which had just come onto the market but I had no idea what they were composed of and whether they did me any good. Maybe they did, as I recovered from the pleurisy. (Active ingredient Formaldehyde used for embalming and preserving specimens. I could have severe adverse effects when taken as medicine. It is today classed as a known carcinogen, mutagen and skin irritant. See: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1215957 Ed.)

Diptheria

But there is more! Before I contracted TB I had Diptheria. Joyce, Maurice's youngest sister had it first.It started with a sore throat and back ache. My father was frighted to death of it and went to enourmous lengths to keep away. When Maurice used to tell me about his antics I would 'laugh my head off', until I had to tell him to stop because it was hurting my throat so much. I didn't go into hospital for it.

Close shave with death

Then I had Double Quinzies or infected tonsils. I had an abscess on them which broke releasing the pus which I had to spit out!  I just put up with it. My mother and Maurice used to look after me. I couldn't laugh and couldn't eat apart from tripe cooked in milk. I also drank Ovaltine and other liquids. It went on for a couple of weeks and must have been serious because the doctor came to see me twice a day. In fact he thought I was going to die but it didn't worry me a lot. I just put up with it. However my father was terrified of catching it. He wouldn't come into the bedroom and would only speak to me from outside through the window.  Funny!

Teeth Trouble

When I was twenty-five in 1934, I hd trouble with my teeth, so I went to see the dentist who had his surgery in a domestic house near the Cut in Bedminster.  He rented the room from the occupier, a Mrs Garlick. Several houses in the terrace did the same for bankers. A dentist called Sampson used to operate from a rented room in a cottage in Belluton where Blackmore and Langdons are now. My mother had her teeth taken out there. I think my dentist's name was Tuffs or something like that.

I went to have one toothout but he removed ten! The room was quite large and another dentist operated from the same house. He had a proper dentist's chair. I told him the tooth I wanted out and he then gave me the gas. He put a black rubber mask over my face and I passed out. As I came around I realised he was removing my teeth. I was without front top teeth for nine months!

As I came around I remember crying and being in shock. I took a long time to get over it. The worst part was as I came round I didn't know where I was or what was happening but I still appreciated the sensation of my teeth being pulled. Maurice was there and when he realised what he had done, he went in and 'blew him up' about it.

False Teeth

We didn't pay for the extractions and the dentist never sent us the bill. We returned on the top deck of the bus which was open with reversible wooden seats. As I said, I was waiting about nine months for my false teeth denture. Over the next two years I had all my teeth removed but one or two at a time. I still do not know to this day why it was necessary but it was common practice at the time. 

I can't remember who made the false teeth or how much I paid for them. The only thing I remember was a meal at the bungalow when I took them out because they were so uncomfortable. They felt like marbles in my mouth. Maurice said to me unless you keep them in you will never get used to them, so I kept them in for ever after.

Deaths

When I was about six I remember three local deaths. First there was Mrs Berry who lived in one of three cottages in the Barton. It was frosty weather and they traced her footsteps in the grass across the meadow to the river. They retrieved her body at Publow, drowned. She was about sixty and they said it was because her husband was friendly with a woman in Salter's Brook.

The second related to Andrew Porter's brother who jumped off the viaduct! The story was it was because the army had rejected him as being unfit to join for the First World War. They say he lay on the ground at the far end for many hours seriously injured before he was found. I remember Ernie Penney talking about it.

The third was a person who lived in the street. He committed suicide by jumping in the river. He was named Parsons and I knew his sister. He jumped in somewhere up-stream near Bye-Mills.

I went to a funeral at Publow once. Someone from Wedmore who had lost their son but I don't remember the details now or why I attended. (My paternal grandmother lost three of her 'Fear' brothers in the First World War and some of her family lived in Wedmore, so I am wondering if there might have been a connection there? Ed.)

Brass Band

At Whitsontide the Paulton brass band used to parade around the village and march to Publow Church, surrounded and accompanied by children and village folk. At weddings we would tie the church gates. If the married couple were willing, they would throw a handful of copper coins out to the children who would scrabble to collect them, before untying the gates. I think this tradition continues in places to this day. 

I remember your dad's sister Daisy getting married there. I walked down Publow Lane and saw her coming out the gate. Tragically she was to die very young after the birth of her daughter. (Her daughter was the remarkable Kath Travis who passed only recently at the grand age of ninety-nine. Ed.) And another time Mrs Treasure after her wedding, walking up Culvery Lane. 

Weddings didn't bother or upset me but funerals did. I seem to remember them better too. Poor people didn't make much of weddings. They would get married one day and go to work the next!

Wildlife and Flowers

We used to walk up to the pit and pick Cowslips in huge numbers. The fields were full of them. We intended to sell them but never did. We picked Bluebells in Culvery woods in armfuls in spring-time and thought nothing of it. I used to go with Grace Atkins, Olive Hazel and sometimes Lydia Veater to pick Primroses and Violets. We would walk down Parsonage Lane and pick Buttercups and Daisies in the banks facing the sun. We didn't look for birds nests or steal the eggs. I think they told us not to in Sunday School.

Plants

My mother used to like gardening and bought plants. We didn't have a large garden at the cottage but when we moved to 'Milestone Bungalow' at Amercombe in 1930 we had lots of space for them. In the cottage my father grew his own but when we moved he began buying them from a plant shop in Bridge Street, bringing them back on his motor bike and side car. Michaelmas Daisies, Lillies and Berberis.

Chickens 

He kept fowls and hatched chickens. The collected eggs he would take to his sister and sell to all the people in the street. He also sold the eggs to Maurice's older brother Albert, back from Australia, at ten pence a dozen. Albert had a grocery round at Knowle West at the time. (Albert William (born 1903) returned to Australia and remained there until his death in New South Wales in 1972. Ed.)

Rats, Mice, Fish and Moles

Back at the cottage we had ducks in the river and rats which the cat would catch on occasions. There might have been mice in the house but not rats. Your Aunty Alice used to fish with a bent pin but I don't remember her catching anything. In the summer we spent hours in the woods playing houses.  We would make them from stones and fallen branches and would light fires and boil water for tea. 

In the winter we didn't venture out much. We would wade in the stream and catch Loggerheads in jam jars. We picked Blackberries in the woods and sold them to Robinsons for jam. Only high class farms had game. There didn't seem to be any foxes around. Some people used to catch Moles and Rabbits for their skins.

Gospel Mission (1923)

My father is left of the sign, my mother is third row back in white dress on right. (Ed.)

First of all they had a children's meeting in the winter of 1922, in the Publow old school rooms in the High Street located just before you get to the new Gospel Hall (Now closed and converted to a house. Ed.) Two men ran them, Mr Royce and Mr Harry Linton. (He used to wear leggings and Annie Bilk nick-named him 'Leggings') They used to cycle out from Bristol from October to March. At their last session, Mr Turner from Totterdown announced that Mr John Brown would be coming for a Mission, which he did later that year - 1923.

I remember the first night of it on a Sunday. Mr and Mrs Deaton arrived a day early on the Saturday and were waiting in the field outside the tent. They lived in Pensford Hill and later moved to a cottage in the High Street. I went on my own or with other Chapel friends like Olive Hazel and Grace Atkins. Mr Brown the evangelist and later missionary to Africa, lived in the tent in partitioned off sleeping quarters. 

As to grace Atkins, she had been adopted but it was said she was a survivor from the Titanic!  In fact boys in the village called her that. She and her sister lived in the first house up Culvery Lane. She had a collection of lovely dolls and bears. Mr Atkins was a postman and had a beard.

I remember the first night of the Mission and the first hymn: "Why should I charge my soul with care? The wealth in every mine belong to Christ, God's son and heir, and he's a friend of mine." Another was, "One day when heaven was filled with his praises, One day when sin was as black as could be, Jesus came forth and was born of a virgin, dwelt amonst men, My Redeemer is he."

The first night the tent was quite full. The Mission continued for the next six weeks! It was located in the field next to the Viaduct.The farmer was Bert Wookey. He and his wife had a boy and a girl. His wife and children went to the services every night. Acker Bilk's mother who went to the Chapel, played the organ. Everything else was done alone by Mr Brown. He was about twenty-four or twenty-five at the time and I had a bit of a crush on him. Acker's mother liked him too.

I used to like (Fancy? Ed.) Gilbert Penney and his brother. Gilbert lived to be a hundred years old and died only recently. (1999? Ed.) After Chapel we used to put our arms around their necks. We used to sing a lot of choruses in the Mission often with arm movements and gestures, such as in "Wide wide as the ocean, High as the heavens above, Deep, deep as the deepest sea, Is my Saviour's love."  I was brought up in the Chapel and enjoyed the singing.

Grand mother Veater and Vanda Penney were converted as were many others I believe. One was Mr Mack. (Later killed in a road accident on the outskirts of Pensford. Ed.) When he saw the tent he thought it was a circus and that's how he became a Christian! He worked for the Webb family and his wife always went with them to Totterdown Gospel Hall, whilst Mr Mack remained at Pensford in the new Assembly that was set up after the Mission ended.

I attended the the six weeks of the Mission nearly every night. We had a grand tea party at the end and photographs were taken. The whole thing was a village novelty and the weather remained good throughout. My future husband Maurice was also converted there. I knew him but wasn't very close then. In fact I didn't think much of him. When we went into Bristol in Dando's open top car with a hood for the scholarship (About 1920) he sat next to me but we didn't speak. The one petrol pump at the time was outside Dando's bakery in Pensford Hill.

Gospel Hall

After the Mission was over, they brought a wooden hut and placed it on leased railway land next to the viaduct, where it remained as the 'Gospel Hall' for about the next sixty-plus years, although the new Gospel Hall was opened on the Common in 1959. I used to attend the evening gospel services and remember thinking how cosy it was with the coke heater in the middle and rush matting up the sides. But I didn't go to the morning 'communion' or 'breaking of bread' meeting until much later on. I continued attending Chapel Sunday mornings and the Gospel Hall in the evening. People used to come from all around. The Penney family -  Leonard, Gilbert, Vanda and Olive - all went to chapel, but would also come to the Gospel Hall as well on special or odd occasions.

When my dad died in 1962 we moved from Maranatha in the village to his bungalow, where I had lived before my marriage. My sister Alice and husband Reg, moved into our vacated house and being 'chapel' and an organist, she continued to utilize the old Gospel Hall for informal children's meetings. 

(Of course there is much that my mother did not cover or relate but I hope the above provides a little unique insight into a village life over a century ago. Ed.)

ANOTHER PARALLEL MEMOIR BY RUTH FLOWER

(Ruth Flower, nee Veater, was my grandfather's youngest sister's daughter. She was therefore my mother's cousin-in-law. She died suddenly and unexpectedly at home in Farmborough on Monday 26th May, 2014. She wrote two articles about her mother's family for publication in the local magazine, but sadly her death intervened and the second seems never to have appeared in print. There is an appreciation of her life at the bottom of this article. Ed.)

Prior to her sudden death, Ruth Flower wrote her memoir about her mother'sfamily with five sons that enlisted in the1914/18 war. A war which finished forever a way of life which had continued almost
unaltered for centuries.

"My mother, Amy Beatrice Beish, nee Veater, had five brothers who enlisted in the 14/18 war. Mother, the youngest of 9 children, was born at Chew Magna, her father was the local saddler. The family
home is still there - it is now an Estate Agent's office. (Now a wine merchant. Ed.)

"Arthur, mother's eldest brother who was also a saddler, did not enlist in the Army. He lived at Pensford and tended the pit ponies at Pensford Pit until its closure.

"Three of mother's brothers, Walter, George and Leonard emigrated to Canada in the early 1900's and enlisted in 1914 or 1915 when they were sent to train at a military camp at Niagara.

(Facsimile of letter from Leonard to Amy from Niagara )

"Two other brothers, Percy and Morris who lived at Chew Magna, also enlisted. "Certainly four of them were sent to the Somme. I am not quite sure where Morris served. I enclose part of a letter that
Leonard wrote to my mother from the camp at Niagara. Sadly the letter to Mother was not treasured as she had treasured it. I happened to find this part-page when I cleared out my sister's house
after her death.

"Leonard was mother's favourite brother. He had wanted her to go with them when they went to Canada. I still have a gold locket that he sent to Mother. I know he also sent her a ring and a watch; they are lost I imagine.

"I visit France quite often these days and one day I was speaking to a friend there and told her about my mother's brothers who came to France to fight in the 14/18 war. I told her about Mother's brother who was killed at the Somme and how she was always upset at the Armistice services and that I had promised mother that if I ever had the opportunity I would find his grave and visit the cemetery. This was, of course, years before computers and there seemed little likelihood of it happening. My friend said, "Ruth, I was born in the area. Find the details and I will take you there".

"Now with computers, we are able to search for information and I did. I found the grave's location and its plot number. I took the information to France and my friend drove me to the area where we
found the grave of Leonard Veater. It was quite an emotional experience and I was surprised by the feelings that rose in me
as Leonard died years before I was born. I had never met him.

"I thought of my mother as I placed a small cross with a poppy attached in the earth. I felt happy that I had been able to keep a
promise I had made to Mother many years before. "I have no information about his death - why or how it happened - but with the aid of a computer I believe I can find out. The grave is in a small cemetery and all the soldiers at rest there are Canadian.

"What had the war done to the four boys that returned from the war?" Find out in next month's magazine.

Source: Ruth Flower http://www.farmborough.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FF105-Jul2014.pdf


Obituary - Ruth Flower http://www.farmborough.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/FF106-Aug2014.pdf

RUTH FLOWER, Parish Councillor Public Speaker, Actress and 'DJ', died suddenly at her home on Monday May 26 aged 83.

Ruth was born on March 29 1931 and was the third child of Charles and Amy Beish who lived in The Street, Farmborough.

She was educated at Farmborough Church of England Primary and Timsbury Secondary Modern Schools and after completing her education found employment in the retail trade at Keynsham.

Ruth's father, Charlie, was a local preacher at The Batch Methodist Church where she sang in the choir. She was very much involved in village life and in 1947 Ruth took the eye of the judges at a competition to find Farmborough's Carnival Queen and won!

It was on a night out with other locals when attending a dance that Ruth met her husband to be, Ron Flower. They immediately fell for each other and so started a fantastic love affair that lasted throughout their lives and most likely beyond.

Ron had recently been demobbed fromthe Royal Engineers and was the proud owner of a Vellocette motor cycle. Both Ron and Ruth would go off on trips to Weston-super-Mare and Cheddar. They were inseparable and after much courtship they married in 1952 and moved into a cottage at Hobbs Wall. Eventually they took over a shop at the bottom of The Batch, now Stream House,and it was there, in 1959, their son Simon was born.

Ron landed a job with the MOD which meant that the family had to move to Bewdly in Worcestershire and following a few more moves they ended up in Winslow where Ruth opened a fabric shop, 'Ruth's Fabrics'.

The 1980s saw another change when Simon embarked on a diving career in the USA and Ron and Ruth moved to Portugal. Sadly Ron died in 1998 and it was then Ruth decided to return to the UK.

With her talent for singing Ruth had been a member of a local amateur dramatic society where she was well suited and a regular choice for the role of principal boy in the "Stratton Players" pantomimes.  On her return to England she soon became very involved with the entertainment side of life. 

Ruth had bit parts in "Casualty" and also had a role in the film "Stardust" with Robert De Niro. She took part in advertising campaigns for The Nationwide Building Society and Oakhouse Foods.

Known as "Mamy Rock", Ruth was a DJ and travelled all over the world sharing her ideas of life and how to live it. She even performed at the Glastonbury Festival and is listed in the Guinness
Book of Records as the oldest working DJ. Despite all of this Ruth managed to fit in the work of a Parish Councillor. How did she do it?

Ruth's death was a shock to us all. During her lifetime she touched the hearts and lives of many and we shall miss her.

Ruth is survived by her son, Simon, daughter-in-law Tracey and grandson Franklyn

Ruth Flower born March 29 1931, died May 26 2014.

See also:  The Somme:  https://veaterecosan.blogspot.com/search?q=the+Somme