Raymond England's Seavington
RAYMOND ENGLAND’S STORY
From a conversation with Raymond and Nigel England, Ry Coffman and Carolyn Farler at Raymond’s house in Seavington St Mary on 9 December 2009.
There are several families of Englands locally. Raymond has been in the village 81 years and has never lived anywhere else.
Raymond was born in 1928 – Raymond Cyril England, born in School Lane next to the Parsonage, in the right hand side terraced cottage next to George Sills . Raymond was christened at St Mary’s. There were four children in his family; Raymond is the oldest, Wilfred his brother (who lives in School Lane); Vera, married to Malcolm who lives at 1 West Street, is Raymond’s sister. Bridget, the youngest sister, was Eric Gillard’s first wife who has passed away. (The herbaceous border at the hall is dedicated to her). All his brothers and sisters live in the village. The family moved around the Seavingtons to Upton Lane, and Townsend, then to 1 Winchester Cottages in Water Street. Then they moved down to the farm in St Mary’s opposite the kennels.
Many of the cottages in Seavington St Mary were agricultural workers’ cottages owned by either Manor Farm or West Street Farm. When Mr Jefferies of West Street Farm passed away on top of the corn rick suddenly, Mrs Jefferies wanted to stay on in the farmhouse, so 90 acres from West Street Farm and one house were taken over by Manor Farm. The labourers, Harry Drayton and Andy moved over to Manor Farm too.
When Raymond went to school, the teachers at school were Miss Kiddle and Miss Skentfield. Commander Jesamen and Miss Kiddle were the two forces in the village at that time. Miss Kiddle would clip you round the ear with no hesitation – a good teacher but very strict.
Asked about his school days, Raymond said that English was his favourite class; he was in a class with four girls, they used to all sit on one big long desk. One was Pam’s mum, one used to live opposite the pub, and one was a Reyland. His worst lesson was arithmetic.
When Raymond was at school his teachers were Miss Kiddle, who taught the older children, and Miss Skentfield who taught the younger children. The local policeman PC White used to threaten to tell Miss Kiddle if any of the boys misbehaved. There were about 30 in the class and 35 in the younger class. Raymond told a story about his schooldays. ‘ The children had to line up to go into the school, boys on one side and girls on the other – one day they were lined up waiting to come in, mucking about, and Ted Shires got smacked across the ear because he was not behaving himself. Poor Ted used to suffer with chilblains on his ear and he had to stay in after school and write some lines. Well, when school came out at 3.45pm in those days and we were walking down the path and Ted was coming down behind us – he had got out of the window and run down home! But he had to suffer for that, the next day he had to write even more lines. We did feel sorry for him with his chilblains on his ear; you don’t see people with them now. He did suffer, poor Ted, and Miss Kiddle’s hands were big and rough. The good old days!’
Raymond played football for the village and acted as scorer for cricket. When the evacuees were living in the village, they all came to the school and the children were all packed in like sardines. Their teacher, Miss Eggleton, came to Seavington with them. One day at school, she wanted to know all the people that lived in Seavington and she said to Raymond ‘I expect you can help me out there’. She called Raymond out to stand by her desk and he recited the names from the top of Townsend right through the villages.
The family had an allotment and Raymond and Wilfred had to help; his father had two spades and he used to borrow one extra from a neighbour and used to say to the boys that they had to go with him down to work on the allotment, this was when he was 13 probably. When he was 14 he left school on a Friday and started work on the Monday. While he was at school he had had a job delivering the Evening Post six evenings a week by bike to about 60 houses from South Petherton and was paid 4/6d per week. When he was a boy, his father would give Raymond a 1p each Saturday and he used to go up to Mrs Rowsell’s shop (next door to Swan Thatch) and get 8 chocolate caramels for that penny! There was a good selection of sweets evidently. Old Mrs Tucker who ran the shop used to sell sweets out of a jar. Her husband Mr Tucker used to go door-to-door selling paraffin in Seavington from an old lorry. In earlier times there had been two other shops in Seavington St Michael – one at what is known now as Swan Thatch and another next door, Mrs Rowsell who used to sell the sweets. Later the shop moved to Seavington St Mary. When he was due to leave school, the baker in South Petherton asked his mother what he was going to do after school; she said he didn’t know so he offered Raymond a job at the bakery in South Petherton doing the rounds. On Saturdays he had to go over to Yeovil and deliver bread to shops then do the round in South Petherton; he didn’t like the fact that he didn’t get home on Saturdays until 9.30pm. It meant he couldn’t go out with his friends on Saturday night! The bakery was in West Street in South Petherton. It was a big bakery with six vans going on different rounds everyday – Raymond used to go on a different round every day so that if any of the drivers was ill he could go out with a relief driver and he would know the way. He couldn’t drive because he was only 14. He was at the Bakery during WW2. After the bakery job, he went down to Lopen to work at the flax factory – thrashing out the flax with machines. The local farms used to grow flax which was processed at the Mill in Lopen. After that Raymond went to work at Court Farm in Upton Lane which was run by the Bonning family. He worked there for a while, and then around 1953, he moved to work on Manor Farm for the Madge family and worked there for many years. When he got married, Mr Madge bought Rose Cottage in Seavington St Mary for Raymond and Christine to live in. At first he worked for Richard’s father (Simon’s Grandfather). (The Madge brothers had originally farmed on the Dillington Estate at Whitelackington.) Richard’s father moved to Seavington taking over Manor Farm from the Jacobs family. Raymond said the Madges were good people to work for. He was the chief tractor driver – and there were 2 others. Manor Farm had a dairy herd (at first there were some Devons but over time the herd became Friesian). Old Mr Madge loved his sheep but Richard didn’t like sheep like his father – he used to call them “Woolly Coated B’s”. Crops on the farm at that time were potatoes, sugar beet, mangels, swedes, and turnips to feed the sheep in winter.
There were 12 people working on the farm at one time in those days. Farm labourers stayed working on the farms throughout the war as they were exempt from war service. The sheep were mostly Dorset Horns - there was a full time shepherd and his boy, a cowman and his wife, 3 tractor drivers and some labourers – now there are only 2 but they don’t need to grow the fodder crops to feed the sheep. The sugar beet had to be hauled into Ilminster. There was a farmer’s market in Ditton Street near where Tesco is now and at some time later in Station Road near where the garage is, in a field there. Animals from the farm were taken into Ilminster to the market. There were lots of orchards in the area, five on Manor Farm growing cider apples. Where the England’s currently live (St Mary’s Close) was also an orchard. Picking apples was a wet day job; Richard’s father used to say. ‘If you like a glass of the cider you have to come and help pick up the apples. So with your long black mac and your leggings you went under the trees picking up the apples.’ Cider was not made on the farm but the apples were taken to a farm in Ashill to be pressed by lorry. When the barrels of cider were brought back they were racked off, (poured into different barrels) and left. Nothing further was done to it; it just had natural yeasts and sugars to make cider. Sid Male used to take the apples sometimes over to Ashill and sometimes Raymond took them. When he went to work every day, the first job was to go and fill up your bottle of cider in the cellar. The cider was very strong - they didn’t worry about driving a tractor in those days. At lunchtime you would stop for lunch at 10.00am and have your bottle of cider, bread and cheese. All the tractors had to be cleaned after a day’s work and were put back in the shed gleaming at the end of the working day. At the end of the day, before all the workers went home for the day, they went into the shed and had a tumbler of cider. (Nigel said he still could picture that cider barrel now with the tumbler on top!) The apples from the farm used to make about 5 hogsheads. West Street Farm, which also had orchards, was farmed by Mr Jefferies and when he passed away, the Dillington Estate took over the land and Richard Madge farmed the land.
Raymond married his wife Christine, who worked on the Rutter’s farm at Allowenshay, in 1953. She and her mother milked the cows by hand to start with. They probably had about 50 cows which was a lot for those days. Four people did the milking including Christine and her mother. The Rutter Brothers owned the two farms, farmed by – Mr Edwin (father of John Rutter) and Mr Jim Rutter (as Nigel used to call them). There were two farms in those days with two dairies, the Upper Dairy and the Lower Dairy. Nigel saw his first TV in Mr Jim’s house!
ry Coffman
4//5/2001
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