Reminiscences from the early 1950’s to today from Coldwaltham, West Sussex, UK

Let us start in the early 1950’s   

What about the layout of the village then? Not much different than from what it was twenty years before that., I should not wonder!

There were few new buildings except for some in the Council estate. Life centred around the church and the small local school. Let us take a preliminary tour to see it as it was.  We will start at the railway bridge at the southern end of Hardham. We will deal with this ‘hamlet’ later. We will use the present tense for fun. Just imagine you are me as child, aware of everything! Enjoy.

We are on the A29 proceeding toward Coldwaltham and on to Watersfield. On the right is Mitchell’s farm. A relatively small section of land upon which vegetables and particularly raspberries are grown. My mother sometimes works there picking the fruit, she gets money by the number of punnets picked. I get to eat them too! - rather too many sometimes. Opposite this there are farm buildings for storage of equipment and a cottage.

Proceeding along the road a bit there is a turn off to the right which was the Old London Road but it now leads to Cooper’s Farm house past first the 1930’s “Lady Doctor’s house” as it is known, then on to Mr. Michell’s house. If you keep bearing left, you will rejoin the A29 road. If you turn right just after Cooper’s house you will be in King’s Lane which is flanked on the right by several houses together including a couple of ‘tide’ semis; the rest (3or 4) are private cottages. On the left are fields all the way down terminating at the end of the made-up road at Mr. Float’s house. Once we leave the cottages on the right we get into pure farmland. If you keep going along this lane you will get to Secomb’s Farm and the road toward Fittleworth.

Now let us go back to Cooper’s House. Proceed along the old London Road, across the A29 and toward the Labouring Man Pub. Several established houses here. Oh, yes, on our left, we just passed a horse-riding paddock complete with jumps. It is owned by the Cooper’s (Roy and Gloria). On what is left of T.O.L. R. I know of a few who live there: My friend Raymond Johnson lives in a cottage right next to the pub. Across the road is the bus stop for the Southdown bus and also the ‘Old Forge House’ where a Miss Ford, a retired school teacher, lives. She has big tortoises which I love to visit from time to time. They say she was an extremely strict teacher who used to poke her students in the back with a knitting needle. She had other punishments apparently. The other day she told my Mum that she will soon emigrate to New Zealand. At the end of this little diversion we enter the A29 again. Right opposite the intersection is a big field and you can see my school at the end of it. We turn left onto the main road.

On the right is a house where Mr. and Mrs. Duke live. Just a bit further along there is the White House owned at this time by an Ethel Charman. My Mum and I lodge there in a bed-sitter. When we look out of the window, we can see the smallholding owned by a Mr. Tommy Grace. My mother works there sometimes. The white house has electricity but no main water supply, so we get it from the next house in a large container. This house next door is the business of a Mr. Charley Williams. He is a general greengrocer who grows his own stuff, sells it on site and tours the village selling out of a van. He also provides fish. His land finishes at the church and is adjacent to Saint James’ School. There is a lane to his house opposite the Old Priest House across the main road where there is the beginning of a lane which leads to the Greatham road across a railway bridge. On the South side of this lane there is a large field owned by the Clarke family of Watersfield. Their house is opposite to Rowland’s butcher Shop. Somebody said there are plans to build a housing estate on this field as well as on Tommy Grace’s smallholding land.

A word about the lane to the School. After the School there is a small driveway to the Vicarage, a large building with a big garden. The vicar (Mr. Newcombe) is a Ham radio enthusiast. Beyond this, further up the lane is the Dudman’s property. They run a haulage company.  A large family which lives in a pair of long corrugated iron roofed buildings. They have quite bit of land. Several of this family went/go to the local school. One of the elders runs a funeral director’s firm (undertaker).  

Going past the church and the lane to the school there is a graveyard. There are just bushes on the other side of the road shielding Clarke’s field. Keep going up the hill and you get to the village hall. Opposite is a big house The Brown Owls and some newer cottages. A little further along on the hall side is the post Office and Store owned by a Mr. Besant (a.k.a. “Bezzey”) next to two semi-detached old cottages. My friend Roy Tunnicliffe lives in one and his dad is a plumber. All these properties back onto what we call “the Common”; a large, wooded area complete with three sand pits. I do not know who owns it, but we get to play on it; at least the big kids do! We are now at the crest of the hill. This quickly dips down to a crossroads. Turn left and you are on the Greatham road, turn right and you go up Champ’s hill toward Fittleworth. If you go up this latter road you will come to Coldwaltham House on the left and Ashhurst Farm on the right. Keep going and you will pass “Muddy lane” and then Jim Secomb’s Farm. Before you get to Ashurst Fm. Corner there is a steep road up to the left which leads to Lodge Hill. This used to be owned by the Paddon family but has become a Conference Residential Centre. Lodge Hill is up on the top of a woody knoll and overlooks a good bit of the village.

Go back to the beginning of the Greatham road then on your right there is the large Council house estate. Many of my school friends live there. The Greatham road passes through the wild brooks including the river and extensive cow pasture soon leaving the southern boundaries of the Parish. Adjacent to the council houses to the north there are some old cottages and there is an old farmhouse on the right as you leave the housing estate. One mile to the south of the crossroad, we come to the hamlet of Waterfield at the base of Swallow hill. There is the Three Crowns pub, Bell’s Garage, and a general store. There are several old houses along a lane to north, leading to a playing field and one branch eventually reaching Jim Secomb’s Farm past another.

The lane to south leads to a few houses and eventually the railway electrical substation and the brooks. At the top of swallow hill there is the Swallow Inn.

So now you have a gist of what it was like in the early 50’s. So now for many changes since then.  I write, now, from the present time looking back to the beginning of these big changes.

The changes which have taken place up to the present day are truly awesome. One hardly knows where to start. One of the saving graces about the UK is that most of the buildings are sound and remain so over the decades. Demolition is not taken lightly. Rather, new buildings are added around existing older buildings. True there may be extensive renovations but usually the existing plans are only added to without drastic intervention. So, let us start at the beginning of my little cursory tour.

Mitchell’s old farm is larger now than I implied. I do not know whether more land has been purchased and added or the land that was owned is simply used more now. Anyway, its use by the present owners seems more diverse and more efficient. There are more buildings in the complex. The road to Cooper’s farm has many more buildings now and the hedges are much more overgrown. The Horse Paddock seems to have the same use. The main farmhouse has been added to. But the King’s Lane buildings are much the same with a few out-building additions to that south side of the lane. The fields have hardly been changed. The preservation of agricultural land is always slower to be overly modified. We also see the most renovation toward and including the Labouring Man. Some larger buildings have been added between this road and the main road. Since the 50’s. most of the drastic changes are between the Labouring Man and the Council Houses crossroad. This has become the core of the village including Maple Leaf, Silverdale and ArunVale. In this area almost all the former agricultural land has been converted to housing. The start of it was in the mid 50’s with the building of Canadian style houses on what was Grace’s small holding. It became Silverdale. It was controversial at the time not only because of the loss of the original use of the land but the new style of the buildings. Now we do not care so much about the latter! Then the first of the Arun Vale subdivision was begun with three bungalows on Clarke’s field right by the road adjacent to the lane which ran by the priest house. As a teenager I helped a bit with the building of these; at least I made the tea for the workers and carried some bricks! I presume they had planned out the future destiny of the area by this time and it simply grew exponentially. It is now the core of the village and extends right up to the old Council estate and down to the beginning of the ‘wildbrooks’. Now the latter has become a nature reserve or bird sanctuary. There are now many regulations to keep this running well. When I was a kid you did not even need a fishing license.

Up the road towards Fittleworth from the crossroads, on the right, there used to be a tile factory. It was active until, at least, the war. At the back of it was a large sandpit with pale silver sand which was prized for this factory. Anyway, the sandpit was used extensively during WW2 for armament practice by allied troops. Many of these soldiers used to visit our family fruit farm (Ashurst Farm). My Mother remembers the Canadians well, particularly one, who happened to end up being my biological father…. another story! I used to play with my friends in this dis-used factory and in the sandpits. We used to fly model airplanes, played all manner of games, and climbed the sandy outcrops. Above this was “The Common”. This was really a misnomer because it was, and still is, owned by the Bowerman family. In recent times they have extensively developed the area. They created beautiful gardens and ran music concerts up there; where we, as kids, used to freely play. There were three sand pits. There was the one I have just mentioned and there was James’ pit and what we called Dudman’s pit… not sure if the latter is true, but what the heck! I think they got sand from there anyway. There used to be regular bush fires because of the extensive gorse. This plant burns quickly and fiercely.

Right at the crossroads in front of a raised pile of soil I remember seeing an old petrol pump from bygone years. I wonder if there was a petrol station there.

There were some beautiful, thatched cottages right on the corner of this crossroad. I hope they are still there. Probably the oldest houses in the old Council estate are the ones right by the A29. One was inhabited by an Eadie Goble. She was a character. She once told us of her trip to lake Como, Italy. I remembered this and two years ago, I went there, remembering well her reminiscences. Talking of characters, we must realize a lot of the old accents of our ancestors have died out or are almost gone. Anglo Saxon was/still spoken by Coldwaltham residents. When I say “still” I am stretching it. There was a lady I remember. She was a Mrs. Adsett and she spoke the closest to the old Anglo-Saxon dialect. Would that we had taped some of those conversations. I think Sandra Sayers does allude to this in her book. The old Sussex accent is fading fast or even…! “Yer teeth be lik a flock of ship just shard, dat come from de ship-wash; every one of em bears tweens, an nare a one among em is barren”.

 All villages like excuses for fun and celebration. Historically this has always been driven by the church or some sort of religious impetus. They could be Fetes, Carnivals, or any celebration of important political events…Jubilees, Coronations etc. Our village was no exception. I have attended many such events on the vicarage lawn or the patch of grass by the village hall. Now, apparently, the village hall is used for coffee mornings and several other sundry activities. There used to be a youth club there. Is it still running?

I now hope that there is no prejudice regarding church attendance. There used to be. Good people were supposed to go to church regularly. The Vicar might stop you in the street to canvass and try to make you feel guilty for not attending. This kind of died out in the sixties but I think that is good. I am rather surprised that Saint James’ school is still so tied to the church. I would really like some feedback on this! We have so many faiths now and diverse outlooks on life.

Nevertheless, the local church is beautiful. I am not particularly religious and do not follow an organized faith, but still appreciate the history and architecture of the place. The Norman tower, the bells, and the stain-glass windows I remember. I was a choir boy and recall all the rituals of the services. I used to get sixpence a service and two and six for weddings. I remember when they put in the central heating for the church. Hitherto it was freezing. A great improvement. And then we had the ‘Deathwatch Beetle’ in the belfry! There is History all around. You have the supposedly 3000-year-old yew tree. You have Earnest Shackleton’s wife buried in the churchyard. And you have the legend of the tunnel from the Priest House to Hardham Priory. Good stuff!

Coldwaltham goes back a long way and is even mentioned in the Domesday book. One wonders what events happened in this village with the tumultuous shifts in religious politics that occurred. How many arrests, how many punishments and what manner of retribution!? We will never know.

I mentioned the sand pits in the area. Someone today asked me about the source of iron for building etc. Well, one of the pits mentioned (now covered over) was “James’ pit which had lot of iron ore nodules imbedded in the strata. Such would have been used over hundreds of years.  Much of this darker sand would have been used and still is to make bricks throughout Sussex. There are quarries and brick works all over. When I was a kid, Dudmans used to make breeze blocks with a sort of press device which I learned to operate. Many haulage companies like Dudmans benefited immensely from the construction of Gatwick Airport in the late 50’s. There were many loaded trucks on the road North at that time. There used to be an active canal system years ago and we can still see what is left of the old lock gate system on the ‘Wildbrooks’. The brickwork is still there but very broken. The Home Guard used to practice with their ‘Sticky bombs’ blowing bits off it during the war. This canal ran from a bend in the river Arun right through Hardham toward Pulborough and joined the Arun there.

After the WW2 there was a great drive to rebuild the fabric of the Country. In the 50’s the employment situation was different. Most of the armed forces which returned had to find jobs. Many worked on the farms and I remember them still wearing their old battle dress etc. Why not.

Employment for people in the village was varied. Many found work on the railway and there were a few light engineering firms around which switched from their war-mode to civilian demands. A firm such a Spirogills in Pulborough comes to mind. Many worked at the large mushroom farm in the Storrington area called Lindfields (pardon my spelling in some of these). I worked there as a teenager during the holidays. They used to pick their workers up in buses from all over. There is still a farm there but under new management and, I think, smaller. It was a good employer. I worked in every department there over several years even as a Uni. Student. Entrepreneurs sprung up… like plumbers, electricians, and home fixers of all descriptions. Many were supported by apprentice programs, day release and new tech colleges.

Gradually Britain got ‘on its feet’. Let it not stumble now! Right up to the late fifties the state of Education was in a flux. In the past, particularly in rural areas, progress of any real measure was not encouraged. The feudal notion of keeping the population in their place remained. There were ‘Standards’…1,2, 3…. etc. which had prescribed but limited achievable goals.

After the two wars the structure of Society and its hierarchical nature begun to be modified. You have all watched ‘Downton Abbey’ and seen how this worked. Now, there are many more opportunities for young people. I was lucky; I squeezed through the net, went to grammar school and on to University. Many were not, even though they had the ability. My first head teacher (before Mr. Norris) in Saint James’ told my mother one day” Oh, he will never amount to anything!” This was not encouraging. But then she still spelt “show” as “shew” …go figure!

The new housing sub-divisions in the Coldwaltham area now have a wide range of demographics. There are professionals of all descriptions, entrepreneurs, people in the service industry. Many commute to nearby towns and to London. Quite different from when I lived there. But I have fond memories.

In my youth I recall many colourful village characters who many of you may have heard of down through the decades. Many are indeed legendary and have provided a good legacy to many today. There was Mrs. Page. She was the hub of the church in her time. She worked tirelessly and was a genius of organization. Fetes, fundraising, and kind donation of effort for the good of so many. ‘Darky’ Pollard a Countryman in the full sense of the word. A rough diamond perhaps but he provided much information about the old ways and was a good organizer himself. He was an accomplished fisherman and he ran the annual boxing day shoot which was famous in the fifties. He had what I remember as a real Sussex accent. Mr. Cousins was a well-known Church warden in Reverent Newcomb’s time…great service. He also won most of the vegetable prizes at the Annual Flower Show Fair. Mrs. Tiltman was a local Author who wrote a definitive work on the village called “Cottage Pie”. She lived in a big house across the road from the Council Estate. It has long been ‘swallowed up’ by Arun Vale’s sprawl. She had an old open-top double decker bus which she used as a studio. We kids used to creep in to play there… she was not too happy with this. I was lucky enough to get a copy of the book from Sandra Sayer when I was visiting ten years or so back. And you have all read Sandra’s book “The Three Hamlets” no doubt.

BTW, go to the churchyard and you will find names that go back multiple decades but have now faded away. Charman, Cheeseman, Puttick, Williams, Padden, Adsett and so on. My apologies to some of you to whom this stuff may not be of too much interest or importance; but, hey, I am old!

One thing that really sticks in my mind is the terrible rabbit disease that went through in the area during the mid-fifties (Myxomatosis). It was concocted and used in Australia to quell the invasiveness of these animals. Unfortunately, it came here and caused devastation of our native population of these beloved creatures, nuisance that they can be. You do not want to witness the suffering that this caused. It inspired “Water Ship Down”. Before the disease, most rabbits lived in burrows. They were ones who caught the disease with a vengeance. The few that did not live in burrows tended not to become infected. So once the pandemic passed, most rabbits did not live in burrows…sort of natural selection here at work. Now they have mostly returned to burrows, a happy ending.

The other day I was reading a book written by a person who interviewed an old Sussex Countryman who was born at the very end of the 19^th. Century. The subject described his way of life as a growing child and his experience during and after the end of WW1. What he described was, no doubt, common to this area in question. Poverty was rife. The class system was stark. Unless you were landed gentry, life was rough. Food as we know it today was quite different. Fresh good meat was at a premium and most had to grow everything themselves and make do with what foraging they could enact. There would be trapping of all manner of critters. All species of birds were eaten. They were caught by whatever method was easiest…catapults, air guns and sometimes heavier weapons. Bird’s nests were raided with no remorse. Medical treatment was very “home-grown” with all kinds of bizarre recipes. There was the Spanish Flu which killed millions. More died from this than from the fighting in the war itself. The Latin phrase ”Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s County) underlined an almost mindless patriotism prevalent at that time. Pure Victorianism. Millions of young people were sent to their early often pointless deaths. Do not think that Coldwaltham Parish escaped this. Let us hope for something much better in our future and that of all that follow us.

Then there was WW2. I was not yet here but I might well have been with all the stories I have heard, read, and seen in the media. It is just I did not have to go and put my life on the line. Members of my family have told me much about life in Coldwaltham during the war as I am sure many of yours have. It started slowly in 1939 with what was called the ‘Phoney’ war. No action that directly involved us happened for quite a while. The only real events that directly affected the village was from the German air force during the Battle of Britain and the odd bomb that dropped nearby from returning planes as they jettisoned their load which was not placed on any specific target for whatever reason. To save fuel they needed to lighten their load to get back safely. There was one famous incident where the school at Petworth received a direct hit resulting in the deaths of most of the children. My mother heard the explosion. There were the dogfights involving fighters from both sides dueling above which was exciting, I guess. And then in 1944 D. Day. The sky was full of aircraft of all descriptions.

Troops were everywhere and the local girls enjoyed this, of course. There were many Canadians and Americans besides our own. The British men were rather annoyed at the Americans; particularly, because they had more money and sundry supplies to woo the British girls! There were many dances etc. in Pulborough and towns about.

There was also the home guard who practiced regularly in anticipation of a possible invasion. There were a few defenses. There is one which can be still seen, I understand, from the Greatham road just to the south of the railway bridge in a field near the barns. It is a large concrete structure to house some sort of large artillery. War measures regarding food production were enacted. Farmers had to grow a maximum amount of food and this was severely controlled by the government. And, of course, there was rationing. This extended to the beginning of the 50’s. I remember it well. Orange, rosehip syrup and milk was provided adequately to all children. Saying all this it took a long time for life to return to any real normal levels. Many young people had left their family to be in the forces or associated organizations. This had a definitive effect on many lives.

One little relatively modern event, at least to me, was the plane crash in the mid 50’s in a field between the “Withy Beds” and the Arun river near the Greatham bridge. Germany at the end of the War had developed a jet. It was not particularly good, so Britain brought out their version; the ‘Meteor’. All people who remember that era will remember this plane. During the ‘Cold War’ it flew over regularly, as did the ‘Hawker Hunter’ and the ‘Swift’. The trouble was the engines of the Meteor were not well developed and were prone to problems. Such a problem happened one day, and the engine did fail. The pilot, fortunately, bailed out. The plane nosed-dived into the field, forming a great smoldering hole. Not much was left of it, but we kids loved it. I still know exactly where this happened. On Google Earth you can still see a shadow. But I know exactly where it was! Some of you, older, people will remember the test flights of these early super sonic planes. The booms were common. Today, we think nothing of this technology.

A word or two about Hardham: This is the small hamlet to the north of Coldwaltham about halfway towards Pulborough. There has been little change to the houses along the road. The most drastic changes which have continually occurred since the 50’s have been to the water treatment facility at Hardham Mill and to the management of the river on the Arun and the Rother flood plain. The facility mentioned has expanded both in size and in the scope of its technology. This is particularly visible by using Google Earth. There have been changes on the Pulborough flood plain. Flooding has been an ongoing problem. Diking has been enacted for many years, but newer changes have been deemed necessary. A new channel has been cut helping to short-circuit the water flow in the Arun river which goes past Pulborough.

Hardham has an interesting old Saxon church (Saint Botolph, the patron of weirs) which has some of the oldest painted murals in the UK. Much work has been done to preserve them. You can still see Roman bricks at the base of its foundation. The old Roman road, “Stane Street” passed nearby, so there was a lot of activity from them in this area. Stane Street is the modern name given to an important 90-kilometre-long Roman road in England that linked London to the Roman town of Noviomagus Reginorum, or Regnentium, later renamed Chichester by the Saxons. There is an old priory ruin set back from the road on the right as you enter the hamlet. Rumour has it that there was a tunnel from the Priest house in Coldwaltham to it; but the truth of this is illusive. There are many stories about tunnels and priest holes in our religious history which adds a richness to our culture.

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