CD1

(62 mins)
 

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SITUATION / BORN BRUSHFORD 1934 / FAMILY BACKGROUND / MOTHER SWISS / CARNARVON ARMS HOTEL / HOME FARM /WHORTLEBERRY PICKING

[RecordedTuesday 29^th January2002, in his home, which is above his workshop, at Dulverton.]

His flat is actually part of an old mill in Dulverton. It was half converted when they went there. They converted it into a more liveable flat. His business is garden machinery and repair. There might be noise from the workshop below.

He was born in the parish of Exebridge. Largely they were associated with Brushford. He was born at Hillside which is part way between Exbridge and Brushford. He was born in October in 1934,actually at his own home Hillside. His mother was Swiss. His father was local and came from a family that he has done quite a bit of history [research] on. So they were a pair that lived there for quite a long time until his mother's death and subsequently his father's death. His father met his mother when she was an au pair at Brushford rectory. At the time his father was associated with the church and he met her there and married her in Switzerland.

When they came back his father had Hillside built in 1932. His father's name was George Gibson and his mother's name was Gabrielle. He would have imagined that she spoke English because she came over as an au pair. She probably came to learn the language as well. He doesn't know how long she had been in Brushford before they married. His father ran the farm for the Carnarvon Arms Hotel at that stage. Then he took on a partnership in the Carnarvon Arms Garage which is opposite the hotel. He worked there for the rest of his life. He was 65 when he died. His mother died when she was 41, quite young. So CN was 17. He thinks she died of cancer. They didn't let on to him in those days. His father died of a stroke. He virtually died at his desk. He never retired.

If you go further back his grandfather and before that, his great grandfather started in the Carnarvon Arms Hotel in 1874. His great grandfather started, he came from Tiverton actually, the Black Horse pub. Before that the family came from Cornwall, that was a long time back. His great grandfather had a pub called the Queen's. He was supposed to have been caught stealing in London. He went there for an apprenticeship. He was quite a young man and he went to London to learn the licensing trade. He was caught stealing but it was later proved that someone had planted the money on him. He got enough local support in Brushford, from the gentry such as it was, to get a Queen's pardon. He thinks it was lovely and a nice little story. He doesn't have the actual pardon. He thinks his cousin has it. He was a tenant of the Carnarvon Arms then. His great grandfather was called James. His son subsequently took on CN's grandfather and they bought the hotel and made it into a limited company, which it remained until 1946. Then it was sold and that was the end of that!

One of CN's recollections of his father running the farm, was that he converted an old car. He thinks it was during the war when everything was short. He converted it to cut hay. He got a horse drawn mowing machine and put it in the back of it. He remembers mowing grass with this ghastly contraption, that he had invented.

 It's one of the things that sticks in his mind of early farming. Also riding the shire horse between the Carnarvon Home Farm and Exham which was like an attachment to the Carnarvon Farm. So somebody had to ride the horses and he remembers riding this great shire horse between the two farms. It was a mile or a mile and a half. Those two things stick in his mind as early memories. He didn't really come from a farming background but it was one of the things he wished he had been able to do, but never could. [laughs] He could never really get into it, because it was never in his blood to do it.

His very earliest recollection was perhaps being taken out on to the moor, whortleberry picking! It was a moor-type pursuit, which doesn't happen anywhere else. [Reflects that your early life doesn't come back that easily until you have something that triggers it.] Sometimes the weather does it, the sky or the heat and you think oh! whortleberry picking, which was when you were about 4 or something. He probably did it with his mother and his elderly aunt. Perhaps she wasn't elderly then. Even though he is getting elderly he remembers them as elderly aunts. It might have been great aunts. [Back to top]
 

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BROTHER NEVILLE / CARNARVON ARMS HOTEL / HOME FARM / CARNARVON ARMS GARAGE

CN had one brother, Neville. Their house was at the top of a drive about 50 yds from the road, and they played in that drive. They weren't supposed to go out in the road. There was a gate and they would lean over the gate. In those days there wasn't much traffic. At that time they were repairing the road with a steamroller. There was a gang of men working which was something nice to watch. They talked to the workmen. Because the workmen called each other Bill or whatever, Bill was the first name that stuck in their minds as children. They called each other Bill from then on. They still do, which is 60 years on. They thought it was a hell of a thing to call a chap Bill. They were impressed by it. It was a workman-like name.

Neville is five years younger than CN. He was much more academic. He went on to university and went on to an academic career. CN wasn't that way inclined. He was a chap to use his hands.

They had a chap who managed the farm at Exham and he was a big chap, Mr Bown [?sp]. He came up to help haymake. They had an old lorry that they carried hay on. Coming out of a gateway it was quite steep. They always overloaded the lorry. As the lorry went up the slope it stood on its end. The two boys had to sit on the bonnet to keep the front wheels down. It is a silly memory that comes back, he hadn't thought about it for years.

His grandparents owned the Carnarvon Arms Hotel and turned it into a company. The Carnarvon Arms Farm was called the Home Farm. It supplied the hotel with eggs and milk and all that sort of thing. That's why they kept the farm. It was only a small farm. It was 50 acres or something. It wasn't any great size. It was kept to supply the hotel and then that didn't happen.

The hotel didn't make much money over the years, although they always reckoned it did. If you look back in archives of it, if you can find them, its always said that it had to borrow money to make it survive. Subsequently that's what killed it. All through its life it never made the money it should have made. It's hearsay but he suspects it's true. That's why his father didn't go on with the farm as such and went into the garage business.

The garage ground belonged to Lord Carnarvon originally. Then the partners of Carnarvon Arms Garage Limited, in1908, they leased the ground then they bought it. It was never anything to do with the hotel. He thinks his father took the partnership just before the war. He came out of the hotel. He took a partner ship with Edward Anderson, who lived at Winsford. He ran it until Anderson pulled out. He thinks it was the late 50s. His ran it with CN until he was 65, when he died. He was born in 1900, so it was 1965. CN ran it on. [Back to top]
 

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ORIGINS OF HOTEL / BRUSHFORD MARKET / GREAT GRANDFATHER FIRST LICENCEE / COMING OF RAILWAY

The hotel was originally built by Lord Carnarvon, people think, as a railway hotel. It was to promote the market which was put in Brushford. He had put the market in Brushford because he knew the railway was coming in 1873. It was a free market. The Dulverton people had a market in town. They didn't like that [a market in Brushford] because it was taking the stuff away from their market. Lord Carnarvon who lived at Pixton at the time, used the hotel as a hunting lodge. Then he thought he would promote the market further so he built an hotel to support the market. It wasn't for the railway at all. Of course the railway helped it.

He then leased it to CN's great grandfather who was the first licensee. He bought the first licence from a country house in Battleton. He's never been able to trace where it was, but he's got the paperwork that says he bought this licence. He had to have a licence to sell liquor. So he had to buy a licence, he had to apply to transfer a licence, because he couldn't buy one, because of court proceedings. The country house had had a licence and then didn't use it. Before that he ran the Black Horse in Tiverton. CN doesn't know if he owned it.

The hotel prospered because of the railway and the market. There's no paperwork for when the Nelders bought it so he doesn't know the price. They think the paperwork might be in the archives in Hampshire, where the Carnarvon records are held. The archivist wasn't very helpful. One day perhaps.

The railway came in 1874, so that produced good trade for the hotel. There's a story he recently read (he's writing the family history) that was written in the Times. There was a gentleman who was travelling in the train between Morebath and Petton Cross. There was a loud report and some shooter had shot pellets through the window of the train. It was reported in the Times that the railway ought to take better care of their passengers because when people were shooting pheasants they were shooting at the railway. It was reported because in the early days nobody wanted the railway. They thought it was a new-fangled invention. When this fellow got in the carriage and got shot, he criticised the railway. [Back to top]
 

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ADDITIONS TO HOTEL / NELDERS EARLY ENTREPRENEURS / LIVERY / STAGE COACH POSTER

The hotel has been added to quite a lot over the years because they ran a livery. Originally CN has records of them being builders merchants. If you look at the picture of the early hotel you can see there is actually a builders yard round the edge of it. He thinks they sold building materials and salt and stuff like that, and horse feed. So they were an enterprising lot.

They must have done a lot more. He has a yellowish stone cider jar and it says Nelder and Sons, Wine and Spirit Merchants, Carnarvon Arms, Dulverton. So they must have been into all sorts of stuff. They were early entrepreneurs. They must have done a lot of horse dealing. He has got a letter that his great grandfather wrote to some lady to whom he had supplied a horse. It made it seem that it was probably the best horse in the world when probably it wasn't! CN says he was bulling it up properly. It was what someone would have written hoping that the horse was going to be OK when probably it wasn't as good as he said it was.

They were great entrepreneurs so that was why they built on to the hotel. They built the stables because they had these horses at livery. They put a lot in horse dealing. They had an interest in coaching. [BJ refers to a painting on the wall] That comes off a glass plate that Mr Pedder who is a relation of Bevan's in Lynmouth, let CN have. The plate was a photographic record of a poster that was made for a 4 horse stagecoach, called Tally Ho, Which ran across Exmoor, between the Carnarvon Arms Hotel and the Lyndale Hotel and the Tors Park Hotel Lynmouth. It was in 1893 October 3^rd. [turns to look at poster on wall]

It depicts the charges for that coach. It says from Mountsey Hill Gate to Lynmouth, 5/6d. He supposes that would have been single. It was signed by C W Nelder and co. so it was obviously a company in 1893. T S Beva who was Lyndale Hotel, Lynmouth and Cecil Bevan who was Tors Park Hotel, Lynmouth, must have had a partnership to run this coach. They ran it across the moor to Lynmouth and he thinks it failed fairly quickly. He doesn't think it ever made any money because there is no record of it going on very long.

It's a nice bit of poster work. It's nice to think it came off the original glass plate. The National Park [Authority] had it done for the Heritage Centre in Dulverton and gave CN a copy. The National Park had a lot to do with the Heritage Centre in the earlier days. So they go a lot of material together. They asked for the plate. They got this poster printed out full size in colour. That was John Pedder who gave it to him. CN still has the plate.

There are some other things on the plate but he hasn't got them printed off  There was more than one poster on that plate. There was a poster of the hotel and those hotels. It was done as a commercial thing. The plate was done so they could produce the posters. It's a lovely bit of work. So they were involved with transport quite a lot but he doesn't think they were terribly successful. There's no record of it running for any length of time. [Back to top]
 

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HOTEL VISITORS BOOK / HOTEL NOW / FAMOUS FRENCHMAN / TELEPHONE NUMBERS / HOTEL RECORDS / HERITAGE CENTRE PROJECT / FATHER TO GARAGE BUSINESS

Still looking at the hotel, CN hasn't got much after the turn of the century. It must have been well patronised by the railway and the hunting fraternity. There are a lot of famous names who came to the hotel. Byron being one who came. He wrote a poem down by the river. Somebody has got the visitors book where he wrote something in it. CN has got brochures that tell you that.

The hotel produced brochures throughout its life. He has 4 or 5 of them. One or two were before the turn of the century and one or two were after. It gives you a history of the hotel in the brochures because you can see the changes which occurred over that time.

There is also the book that Toni Jones produced has got some information. Toni Jones owns the hotel now. CN was talking about the Nelder period which was between 1874 and 1946. There was a famous Frenchman who came to hunt and he used to blow his horn wildly, a French horn, and he thinks that was after the war. The other famous people are recorded in the visitors book.

If you look in the old trade directories of the time, they always advertised. They advertised in the RAC handbook. So you could see how things changed over that period of time, in the adverts. You can see it through the different type of advertising, things like phone numbers, which started as Dulverton 2, because it was the second place in Dulverton to have a telephone. The PO was Dulverton 1. The Carnarvon Arms garage was 3. Subsequently they have added the numbers but they all remain, because the Carnarvon is still 323302. It went 02 then 302, then 2302 then 32302. He thinks that it still has it's same number is quite interesting. He wouldn't think that many places have got that!

The records are scattered unfortunately. CN has some, but they are mostly photocopies. CN's cousin has done some research. Toni Jones has got some. There are no plans unfortunately. It's very difficult because you can't research any, getting together, but he has got some photographs and a lot of postcards of the era have recorded the different stages of the Carnarvon. It was much photographed for postcard work. You can see it from the postcards instead of from somebody's photographs. Nobody would want to photograph a hotel as such, except for a postcard or from a staghound point of view  He has one or two of those. Even those were done on postcards. So postcards are quite valuable actually. He's got those. He keeps them.

Also there is project they are doing down at the Heritage Centre. They are building a model of Dulverton Station in 1935. He has had to do a lot of research. They had to get the Carnarvon reproduced in scale form, so he had the university of Exeter survey it for a thesis for a student. The student used some modern technique of computer technology to take the heights and he converted that for them into scale form. It was part of his thesis so they got it done free. So they got the plans produced so they could produce the scale model. So the scale model is now down in the Heritage centre until they have the model railway built. He has done quite a lot of research one way and another, probably more than most. There would be no need for anyone else to go into it. He needed to do the research for the model, for the railway model, and so it went on and on.

[BJ asks if his parents were still at he hotel when he was born] He was born 1934. No by then his uncle had taken it on, who's name is Reg Nelder. He took the hotel to run with his wife, Edith. He's pretty certain that they had taken it on by then. Perhaps his grandfather was still living. He and his wife ran it until 1946, for twelve years. CN's father went to the farm and the garage. He thinks it's possible they were in partnership. His father branched out and went into the garage business. [Back to top]
 

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CHILDHOOD MEMORIES OF HOTEL / FATHER BUILDING HILLSIDE / FATHER / UNCLE RAN HOTEL / TB / CONVALESCENCE IN SWITZERLAND / SWISS CONNECTION / SCHOOL

CN doesn't remember the hotel from when he was young because he didn't spend much time there. He just has vague recollections of going down and playing with his cousins. He admired a watch that belonged to his aunt, and as children do,and took it home. He was caught with it and had to go back and apologise. He coveted this watch, and was made to take it back! He doesn't think that he wanted to steal it. He just wanted it. That's early discipline he supposes, telling you that you can't have everything you want.

He remembers going and playing with his cousins, John and Robin. John was much older. Robin is 73 and CN is 67 so he's 6 years older than CN. The farm was adjoining the hotel. They never went in very much, because it was not the place for children. They had a bungalow out at the back. It was only a tin shack. The children were allowed to go in there and play. He thinks they had built it for the children to play in, or even to live in, because children were really to be seen and not heard!

CN's father built Hillside. In that period in 1932, before he was married he lived in a bungalow at Exbridge. He only found that out recently. He looked out of the window at the bungalow to watch them building Hillside, that he had built before he was married. He lived at the hotel originally. He was 32. So he was relatively young. Well, it was not young to get married.

His father was in the army at the end of the First World War. After that he must have come out and helped run the hotel and the farm he's sure, in that period between 1918 and 1932. CN doesn't know much about it. His mother was 10 years younger. His father went to West Buckland school, but he never went to university. He was in the ARP during the war, because CN thinks he was still farming then. He was in a protected profession. He was farming as well as the garage. If he had only been in the garage he would have been called up and he wasn't. So he was what they called a protected profession. His uncle was in the Home Guard. He doesn't think hotelling was a protected profession. His uncle wasn't called up, but he was older. Perhaps he was too old to go in the war. He thinks his uncle was a commander in the Home Guard.

CN doesn't remember much about the war because he was at school. He was between 5 and 10 during the war. He went to some school in Dulverton at first, a private school. He had TB when he was young and he was sent to Switzerland to recover, that was the thing, but not during the war. It must have been before or after the war. He went to his grandparents. He doesn't know why he contracted TB but his brother did also, and they both went at some stage. You don't remember the war years because you were flattened. It was grey almost. He thinks his mother took them over to Switzerland and they were left. Maybe it was just after the war. Then he would have been 10 or even 11-12. They went quite a lot anyway. [uncertain about time scale/sequence of events]

His grandparents lived in a place called Moutier, which is in the German part of Switzerland, which is north of Basle. They went for holidays. They always went by train. The train went on the ferry at Dover. You would stay in the train then they would take the train off and go on in the train to Switzerland. That was like luxury. He doesn't think his mother had any problems during the war although she was German. Switzerland was neutral. He never heard of it. After the war he was sent away to school to Kestrels at East Anstey  It was a school that had been evacuated in the war. Then he went to St Aubin's School in Tiverton. Then he went to All Hallows School in Dorset. That was a public school. Then after that he went straight into the army. He was called up. So he went in for three years, really to make another quid or two. It was better pay! [Back to top]
 

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KESTRELS SCHOOL / LESTER PIGGOTT / ST AUBINS, TIVERTON / TOM YANDLE

Kestrels was windy and bleak. That was where he learned to play rugby. Latin he hated. He had to learn it there. [BJ asks if it was the school that Tom Yandle went to.] CN thinks so. He remembers that he went there when Lester Piggott went there. Everybody says 'you don't really remember, he didn't go there.' So CN says he knows he did! Dick Stapleton had something to do with it. He was well known in the Anstey area to do with hunting. He taught CN but he can't remember what. All he remembers is waiting for the bus to go to school. He waited at Ridlers corner. He was a day boy.

Then he went to Tiverton at St Aubins. At first he was a day boy and went by train. Subsequently he boarded. He went up by the Tivvy Bumper, which was the train that went to Tiverton, because it pulled it down and pulled it back. They never turned the engine round!

Tom Yandle was his only local friend, because he was away at school. Nobody moved around much so he can't remember much about friends. Although the actual war didn't touch them much down there, it was pretty grey, an empty period. They lived next door to Tom Yandle, well two fields apart, he's at Riphay, he's the one that he was most involved with in his younger life, and his brother. Beyond that he doesn't remember too much. Families didn't move about in those days. There wasn't any fuel in the war. That was probably why you didn't see a lot of people. [Back to top]
 

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BOARDING SCHOOL IN DORSET / FRENCH SECOND LANGUAGE / LOSING FRENCH

He was at Tiverton after the war. He did school certificate there, or whatever you needed to get in public school. Then he went to All Hallows in Dorset where he boarded until he actually left school. All Hallow's was on the coast in Dorset, so that was a good place to be. If you were boarding there, there was always scope to get down to the beach and scive off lessons and stuff. He thinks it's gone now.

He used to get stuff like baked beans and bacon from home because you weren't allowed to buy it. You only had a very small amount of money. They had tuck boxes and he was sent food parcels. It sounds like the Red Cross. They went and cooked on the beach at weekends. That was the highlight of the week!

He thinks he didn't want to learn very much because he didn't like school. He didn't like Latin but French was his second language. He can't speak it now unfortunately. Although his mother was German-Swiss she spoke French. He did quite well with English and French, really because he liked them. They spoke French at home. But once he was over twelve he didn't. He was speaking French fluently when he went to Switzerland for the TB business. Where they were sent was up in the mountains, that was the French side, so he knows that he was speaking French then. He thinks it was Gstaad, in Switzerland. Latterly in school it reflected. Although French and English were his main things, he didn't really like school much.

His mother dying when he was seventeen made him lose his French, because they never really went back to Switzerland after that. He thinks he was at school when she died. After that the French bit disappeared. It didn't stay with him. So now, when he goes to France or Switzerland on holiday, if he was there for six months, it would come back. It grieves him. [laughs] If he had been able to go back it would have stayed with him. It's not gone completely because if you go back for a fortnight you can feel it coming back. If he had time he would try and regain it. The likelihood of him living there for six months is pretty remote, now. He's got too many other interests. [Back to top]