CD2

(64 mins)
 

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WAR YEARS / EISENHOWER'S TRAIN / TROOP SUPPLIES / ITALIAN PRISONERS OF WAR / POLES AT PIXTON / INTEREST IN TRAINS / HORSE DOCK / DULVERTON STATION / TRANSPORTING ANIMALS

CN always remembers cheese being rationed in the war but they could always find cheese, because of the farming bit. The time was grey because the travel wasn't there. He missed going on the moors, things like that, because there was no fuel. He remembers being taken on to South Hill when there was a plane that crashed a German bomber or something. You could see the craters on Winsford Hill from when the bombs were dropped there, when the Americans were up there and messed about with it.

He remembers the train that Eisenhower brought into Dulverton station. It seemed endless because there were so many carriages, so many troops were down there. He hung over the bridge watching the train and it went on for ever. There were troops galore on the moors then. His uncle was a signalman in Dulverton and they used to go down and see him. Perhaps that was why they were there and why he's interested in railways. [background noise from workshop] He was taken to watch the train and Eisenhower was on the train. It must have been noisy because Americans are noisy anyway. It's the size that sticks in his memory and how big and how full of troops.

The troops on South Hill had to be fed and supplied and it all came by rail. So the trains must have been in and out quite frequently. The Eisenhower train unloaded all the troops at Dulverton. He remembers Italian prisoners of war because they were made to work. They had been captured and brought down there and spread about from their camp, which may have been at Baronsdown. They were let out to work on the farms. They probably had one. They certainly used them and for all sorts of purposes. There were several families who settled here after that, from the Italians and the Poles.

He thinks the Poles were something to do with Auberon Herbert because he a lot at Pixton. They were at Pixton for quite a long time. They were related to he Carnarvons weren't they? Auberon Waugh served with the Polish Army during the war. Then some Poles came back with him. There were some Italian families around afterwards. They may have died out now. He was quite young. The war never struck Somerset. He remembers the gloom of the radio and the papers. He wouldn't have known what a banana was until 1948!

He was interested in trains because of seeing them bringing stuff in, and going to school on trains and going shopping on trains to Taunton. Supplies coming in by train during the war and horses going out by train and cattle going out by train. A lot of things were moved by train then. They built a special horse dock in Dulverton, by the bridge particularly for hunting horses, in Dulverton station. It was of course in Brushford, although it was called Dulverton station. Although CN lives in Dulverton now, he spent a large part of his childhood in Brushford. The station was imprinted on his mind. The built the horse dock specifically for the conveyance of hunting horses. The odd thing is that when they build a horse dock, in a normal goods vehicle that belongs on a railway, they don't unload on the end, they unload on the side. In that particular dock they were made so they could unload on the end as well as the side. That was one of the things that was peculiar about them. He remembers them driving cattle into the other side, over the railway bridge into the cattle docks, that was in the markets, then driving them into the trains. They went off to London for slaughter. [BJ queries background humming from the workshop] CN sys they make a lot of fuss about transporting animals today but it has always been done. [Back to top]
 

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RAILWAY RECORDS / EXEBRIDGE SAWMILL / THE CHEMICALS / GOODLANDS COAL MERCHANTS / RAILWAY BROUGHT PROSPERITY / RAILWAY MAINTENANCE / GANGER / UNCLE ARTHUR SIGNALMAN / FATHER'S SIBLINGS

If you look at the records of the railway, unfortunately CN was born in 1934 and the busiest period of the railway was 1935. Although the railway was started in 20s and 30s. That was when it was really busy. He supposes it was on the run down a bit even during the war.

It struck CN as a very busy place because all the coal came in, and wood went out. There was a sawmill at Exebridge. They had put up a sawmill at Exbridge which was known as The Chemicals. It was to supply railway keys which are the wooden blocks to hold the railway sleepers to the rail. They jam it in. They made thousand upon thousand of railway keys, they were about the size of a brick. Then they went on to make all sorts of half-finished products, such as pit props and sleepers, everything else that goes with timber. They ran a lorry between The Chemicals and Dulverton Station. They put a lot in the station yard. If you look at early photographs it's littered with timber. So they must have been doing it in the 1800s as well. Where that came from then he doesn't know.

The Chemicals burnt down when he was a young child. He remembers leaning out of the bedroom window and looking across Exbridge and seeing this place go up in smoke. You could see these flames going up. They rebuilt it again. It fed the railway with a lot of timber.

They brought in coal for distribution all over Exmoor to Dulverton station. That was why Goodlands was there. They were coal merchants. They were a Tiverton firm. He's doing some research on them because they had their own coal wagons and they need to model them and they can't find out what he livery was and who made them. There is a history written about Goodlands. One day he will find out.

The railway brought a lot of prosperity to the area. It wouldn't have been the same without it. There would have been a signalman. There would have been porters, gangers, linesmen, they were all to do with the maintenance of railways. A ganger is the man who looked after the actual rails, the points and the sleepers, the keys. They made sure the actual track was right. The linesmen looked after all the telephone lines and the communication. So they worked together. Between each station they were linked, electrically linked, so you couldn't get a steam engine on the line going one way and a steam engine going on the line the other way.

The GWR was one of the few railways that had that system. It was impossible unless the electrics failed to get one going one way and one going the other way on a single track. There were no passing places say between say East Anstey and Dulverton. So you need some sort of electronic control so that they can't do that. Of course with steam engines you couldn't do that because they were steam. So they had a process where you carried a token on that stretch of line and there could only be that token on that stretch of line which was linked electrically with the signal box at the other end. That was the system.

There would have been the station master, who was the boss, so there was probably two dozen people altogether. Not a great number, and the ticket collector, of course. The station master would have done that quite often. There would have been a cleaner or two. It was a moving population because they were used at other stations as well as your own station. CN's uncle was signalman all his life. He was called Arthur Smallridge and he married CN's father's sister, CN's aunt, and lived in Brushford all his life. He remembers being allowed to ride on the footplate of an engine up the station platform as a youngster. That was something!

CN's father had a lot of sisters, he thinks he had 4 sisters, and one brother. They were all older than he was, he was the youngest. They weren't involved in the hotel as such. A lot of them went away and did other things. His older brother took over the hotel, then he went farming after that, when he sold the hotel. [Back to top]
 

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CHILDHOOD RECREATION / SHOOTING RABBITS / DOGS / FERRETS / CATS / NELDER BACKGROUND HOTELS & GARAGE, NOT FARMING / FEEL FOR COUNTRY PEOPLE

[BJ asks about recreation as a child] CN thinks that because they didn't go to a local school he remembers being slightly isolated. They were taken to the seaside. Because of the war you couldn't do sports.

They were taken shooting. Even when he was a very young person they always went shooting. That was rabbits of course. That was great recreation, netting and shooting rabbits. That was a Saturday afternoon pursuit. Usually they did it locally, probably on the farm, and Tom Yandle's fields. Their house was bordered by his fields so they were allowed to do it there. He mostly remembers doing it with his father and probably his uncle. 

He wasn't allowed his own gun. They weren't farmers as such. That's where the difference was. They lived in a house that was not a farm house. His father was not of farming stock. His father had his own gun. CN remembers being allowed to use it. He's sure he didn't have his own.

Dogs were another thing. They had dogs. If you go shooting you have dogs and they had spaniels. They had a red setter called Dash. Then they had spaniels after that. It was animals and ferrets, because you were country, although not farmers, you were bordering on it. CN and his father looked after the ferrets. His father was quite fussy with his ferrets. So he was probably told to look after them. If you've handled ferrets, you can handle most animals. They are very temperamental.

He doesn't remember shooting his first rabbit, but he remembers they had cats as well. Cats bred. Country life being what it is, if the cat had a litter, you didn't welcome or want, you always went up and shot them. He remembers his father going up and shooting these kittens. That is not a nice memory. It didn't happen very often but it stuck in his mind. It was a very cruel thing to do but it was part of life. It was something that he did that CN wasn't happy about. They were shot not drowned. He didn't see it. He thinks he was a bit soft. They never did it with puppies because they didn't get out of control. He doesn't even remember having puppies. He only remembers fully mature dogs. They were for shooting as well as household pets. Animals were part of life. He just remembers that as something not very good! He thinks if you are brought up with animals it's good experience for anybody. It makes you see the other side of life a bit.

CN wasn't a farming person. They weren't of farming stock being hoteliers, and his father having interests in the garage industry. His father farmed, but he wasn't really of farming stock. He thought of himself more as a businessman and not as a farmer. From his background he obviously wasn't a farmer, but he had to farm to keep the Home Farm going for the hotel. So it was probably enforced farming. Having said that, living in West Somerset, you're bound to take farming on board with you. You have to have it but not necessarily be in it! If you have lived there for most of your life you have a certain feel for country people and farming is a large part of it. It must go on like that. No doubt things are going to change in the future, but they won't change that drastically. The country bit will still stay with people who were born and bred in the country. [Back to top]
 

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FATHER'S TRANSITION FROM FARMING TO GARAGE / WAR AG / FATHER / EARLY MEMORIES OF GARAGE / LEARNING ENGINEERING IN FORCES / NATIONAL SERVICE / REME [ROYAL ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS] / SERVICES GOOD DISCIPLINE

He doesn't remember much about the transition from farming to the garage because he was quite young and he was away at school quite a lot. He thinks it was the war years where the transition happened. He wasn't aware of it, one coming and one going. It must have been a gradual change, where his father probably had both interests.

The War Ag [County War Agricultural Executive Committee] was one of the institutions that sticks in his mind. His father did something with the War Ag It was a ministry thing. They looked after farming things but it was also involved in transport. It was to do with the supply of implements and tractors and lorries and the War Ag. They kept some of these at the garage. That must have been just at the end of the war. The War Ag must have kept going after the war. They kept these lorries or vans. They went down to the garage and got in one of these lorries and pushed it down he road, and thought they could start it. They couldn't, so abandoned it on the garage forecourt. He doesn't remember who was with him. They knew they would get into trouble doing it. It was because they were part of the garage and CN was allowed to go down there and mess about with tools and stuff and they knew the vehicle was in the lock-up, so they went down one evening and pushed it out. They hadn't got a clue really, so they pushed it on to the forecourt and then ran home! Perhaps it was the early years of vandalism. [laughs]

His father must have wanted to run a garage. His interest was there in the village. [BJ suggest that she interrupted CN earlier when he was talking about his father's reservations] His father had no engineering background. He ran it until he died. [aside re dog] CN remembers being down there [the garage] with his father and being taken down there. No doubt that was where CN's engineering started. He remembers his father writing to get him a job, because he was worried when he left school. CN didn't have too many qualifications. His father wrote to all sorts of people, like Bristol Aerodrome Company. CN remembers all these letters coming back saying they didn't think he was suitable. CN thought it was trying to fly for no reason. So he went into the forces and learned engineering there anyway.

He was conscripted in Exeter so he joined for three years. He did training in Sussex at Lingfield, in Ellesmere in Shropshire, in Dorset he did some. Then he did some other drill training. He went into REME, which is the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. That taught him all the engineering he had to do. [pause to let dog out]

His National Service was mostly spent in the Suez Canal. He was two years out there. It was rather uneventful but interesting. He liked the services. They were good discipline for him. He only spent three years in there. It was a year longer to give him more money. If you went in for two years you got less money. Then he came out fairly undisguished. He didn't make any rank. He enjoyed himself there. He spent a bit of time in the guard room! That was for poor discipline. There was a lot of young men in their late teens doing too much drinking. So you had to do extra duties. [Back to top]
 

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ARMY GREAT LEVELLER / COMMISSIONED OFFICER HIERARCHY / WORKING YOUR WAY UP / MECHANICAL TRAINING IN ARMY / MIDDLESEX MOTORS APPRENTICESHIP / MARRYING WIFE BETTY / RETURNING TO EXMOOR

CN enjoyed his time in the army. It was a great leveller of society. He thinks it is a wonderful organisation. He thinks that it did him more good than probably everything else he ever did. It brings everybody down to one level. It doesn't matter who you are. It was the most interesting part of his life. It was at a time when he was most impressionable, in his late teens, everything sticks on you and it moulds your life. He was brought up in a very sheltered environment, and he was not very worldly wise, all his time was spent in a very countrified situation. It made the biggest impact on him that any thing could ever do. It levelled him out. It moulded his personality.

He thinks it's a great shame it isn't done now. It does young men more good than ever anything else would do. We will miss out in a period when there is no conscription. It made him more worldly wise and much more of a person. He thinks it would suit most people, because it's a leveller of society. He thinks that if conscription had gone on, we would have had a much better society now. The discipline was there and that's what is lacking now, in all young men today. Without the army they don't get this levelling. They tend to be suppressed or on top. It's what everybody needs. They don't have to go on with it.

There will always be the hierarchy of commissioned officers. If you want to go on and be commissioned, it's not very difficult to do. If you have been in the ranks you know what it's like to be there. When you go up the ranks you know what it's like to be down at the bottom. He thinks that is right. It's a good experience and people don't get that now. It's the decision of the person. They can do it if they want to do it.

[BJ asks about the ones that don't start at the bottom] He thinks they should. He doesn't think you should be able to join any society right at the top, in any walk of life, whether you are a street cleaner or a knight of the realm. The army, the forces, is where it levels it all up. If you are at the bottom end of society and you know what it is like and you've got the chance to do something better and the army puts it into you, and you then know what it is like to be disciplined, you can then go up if you want to go up.

CN did all his mechanical training in the army. Then he went to Middlesex Motors in Harrow, where he did an apprenticeship. He got married up there in Harrow where he met his wife Betty. They lived up there for a couple of years after he got married. Then they came down to Exmoor and they lived with CN's father who was then remarried. Then they went to live at Hartford Bottom which is Brompton Regis. They lived in a cottage there for a couple of years. All that time he was working for his father at the garage. He got married in 1956. Then he moved into Dulverton into Rock Cottage. [Back to top]
 

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JOINING FATHER IN GARAGE BUSINESS / MOVING BACK TO BRUSHFORD / LIVING WITH FATHER / HARTFORD BOTTOM / FERAL CATS / ISOLATED EXISTENCE

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[BJ asks how sure CN was about going into the garage business] He has always wanted to do something mechanical. That was where his talent was. He knew that in the army, or even before perhaps. So after the army he knew that he wanted to go into engineering of some description. Motor engineering, as it was the thing his father was in, was bound to be the thing he wanted to go into. It was a natural progression, that he should do that, having gone in the forces, learnt mechanical engineering, and learnt motor engineering.

Then he went to Harrow to do the apprenticeship. So it was a progression on to help his father in the garage. He was in Harrow three or four years. He married his wife there. Betty was the secretary in the garage there. They had their first child up there. They lived in a flat in Stanmore. Then they came down to Brushford. 

His wife was quite happy to move down. She was a town girl but she didn't want to stay in town. She was quite happy to come down with CN, but she wasn't happy to live at his father's home, naturally enough. There was dissension as you might expect. His father gave him the job of being in the garage there, which was fine, which is what they expected to happen, but living at Hillside wasn't particularly good. They only lived there for 6 months. His father had remarried and it as not the same as being with his mother so there was not being at home sort of attitude, it wasn't quite the same. Of course Betty didn't really agree as you would hardly expect to happen. So they moved out pretty quickly.

Then they went to Hartford Bottom. They lived there for two years, something like that. That was quite an interesting period because he cycled the route along Hartford Bottom to Bury and to the garage every day. It didn't last very long because the route was so tortuous. It was rough. Then he motorbiked it for a short while. That was along the river. Even today it is as rough as it was then. They didn't have much money then. He borrowed a car off Tom Yandle, that he had discarded. He drove that along the bottom for several months. The registration was BFJ. It was an Austin Cambridge 1938. That was in the late 50s. So it must have been a fairish old wreck then.

They were very isolated, but they liked it and enjoyed it. He looks back and wishes he could still be there, because it was a nice place to live. It was right down in the bottom of the valley. They had no electricity. They had a very temperamental engine. They rented the house from the Pixton Estate for 10 shillings a week. It was pretty basic but it did have a bath in it. He thinks they must have had a Rayburn. The engine was small and never ran anything very much but lights. So if you wanted to do ironing, you had to turn all the lights out. He had his son when they were in London, they had Sue at Hartford. He thinks they had Christine at Rock. His son's name is Gary. Suzanne is his eldest daughter and his youngest daughter is Christine. He doesn't remember the dates they were born! There were 2 years between each. So it was within 6 years of being married.

They didn't get flooded because they were higher up at Hartford Lodge, which was well above the river level. They had feral cats there. He remembers foxes eating the chickens they kept there. The foxes ate them all. He remembers the stags boeving, which was very noisy in that particular valley. He remembers fetching firewood because they had the run of the woods to pick up firewood. They bought an old Fordson tractor, very old, and they ran it up the track, to get wood. That's what he remembers about that place because they were for ever stoking up the Rayburn and the open fire. They were all wood fed. Of course the open fire wouldn't burn unless you had the doors open. So he devised a system. He put some pipes under the floor, so it could get the air, and that was when they got the feral cats in the house. He got up one morning to find cats in the living room! They had come up through the air pipe. So they had to bung it up with wire netting!

That was a nice little place to live. He enjoyed that. Betty couldn't go on living there with three children needing doctors and all the other things that go with children. She couldn't drive at the time. So they considered it best to move. Whether it was better he doesn't know. He always considered it one of the better places that they lived. He doesn't know if Betty would go back to it now. Perhaps it's slightly romantic to look back on it, and very impractical. It's a different age now. She came from a town and found it very isolated there and couldn't drive, so she had to push the children in their pushchair everywhere either up to Brompton Regis or Bury. It's two miles either way. They didn't even have a telephone there. So Betty had to go up to the village to phone. This was the 50s! It was rented and they didn't have much money so they didn't think a telephone was a necessity. [Back to top]
 

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DOCTORS' VISITS / DR MCKINNEY / HOME BIRTH / RUNNING TRANSPORT / TRANSPORTING STONE /  HAULING TIMBER / EMPLOYEES / GETTING RID OF TRANSPORT / EVOLUTION FROM TIPPERS TO FLAT-BEDS FLUCTUATING ECONOMICS OF RUNNING TRANSPORT

CN had to roar up to either village to summon the doctor. Or he had to take them into the doctor so he had to come back from work and do it. He would have come out. He remembers when Betty was pregnant with Sue, the doctor came out occasionally anyway. Betty used to come out and do wooding as they called it. It was collecting wood with the tractor. The doctor caught her at it when she was about 6months pregnant. He gave her a right blowing up for it, because you weren't supposed to do anything.

He thinks it was Dr McKinney. Perhaps it was Dr Wilson. It was after McKinney, McKinney was their family doctor at home. He was an Irishman. He had been in Dulverton for years. He had an x-ray machine in a wooden shed out in the garden. CN broke his leg and he was one of the first users of the machine. He doesn't know how a country doctor came to have an X-ray machine in his shed! He had a yellow Rolls Royce as well. He was a very bruff Irishman about 60, but a good doctor. CN was frightened of him as a child. [laughs] He thinks he fell out of a tree when he broke his leg. He remembers having the x-ray in the shed in the garden.

Betty had Suzanne at home in Hartford. They had the district nurse out for that. She delivered the baby. She rolled up. It was a bit of a social occasion when she came, as they were a bit isolated. It was something to look forward to, for Betty anyway. It was different for CN because he was at work and he worked quite late. Running a garage he had to work evenings.

They ran some transport as well. So it often meant all night working to get trucks in the morning. They ran 4 lorries as well as the garage. They were largely on timber, although in the early years they had tippers. CN hauled a lot of the stone from Scott's to Clatworthy dam. They had an ancient old petrol lorry. He ran 3 loads a day from Scott's in Bampton to Clatworthy, where they had their own mixing plant, in an ancient old Bedford petrol lorry, which wheezed it's way up there 3 times a day. That was really early days of transport for CN. That was the late 50's.

By the time they built Wimbleball they had moved on to flat-bed lorries when they built Wimbleball and CN didn't do that. They were hauling timber for about a year, mostly to South Wales with pulp wood. They ran 4 or 5 lorries, at one stage when they were busiest. They did it for Sudbrook Pulp Mills. A lot of it they did for individuals as well. They had a contract with the pulp mills. They were paid by the individuals as well.

Sudbrook was in Wales. There was no Severn Bridge so they went up to Gloucester and back down into South Wales, just into Chepstow. That was the nearest town to it. It's right by the Severn. Being a pulp mill it draws all it's water from the Severn. They could only run one journey a day to Sudbrook. They used to haul from all over the West Country, mostly Devon.

The timber came from Devon mostly. They would take it from the wood, where it was cut, back to Dulverton, then go off next morning. They worked either for the mill or for the people who owned the wood. He thinks they were charging a pound a ton then. It was ridiculously cheap.

They took a lot of wood out of Pixton. They had a big wood industry. They employed several on timber. It all started with them because they were sending pulp wood to Chepstow. They took bigger timber to Robert's Bridge or Worcester. It was for tool handles. They took quite a lot of specialist wood up there.

In those days they employed people like Reg Thomas who lived in Brushford, George Saunders who lived in Brushford, Victor Woodcock who lived in Brushford , Ray Courtly, who lived in Dulverton, Bill Hutter who lived in Dulverton. He can't remember the rest. That was going back quite a long way. Eventually they got rid of the transport because it became uneconomic. They had to have bigger trucks. To have 4 wheelers and six wheelers was just not economical  They couldn't really afford to go into artics and trailers. So they packed it in. But they were good times. It was from the 50s to the early 70s.

The business had evolved into haulage as well. Even when he came into the business they had always ran trucks right from the word go. Carnarvon Arms Garage ran taxis and trucks right the way through from their inception in 1908, so it was an evolution. It's been like that all the way through, it's been up and down. During the war he thinks they ran trucks for the War Ag. They were involved with them. Then after the war it was stone because Scott's Quarries was thriving then. Stone meant tippers. They had an odd petrol tipper which he drove. Then stone quarries weren't quite the thing, and flat-beds were, so they went into flat-beds. It evolved to get bigger and bigger and it got to 4 or 5 lorries then it got to the point it was uneconomic. Then it went back down again. It did that through the years. It was not one decision. It evolves rather than making one decision, as country life is! [Back to top]