Cowden, My Home

© Copyright 2003 Ian Platt. All rights reserved.

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Contents

PROLOGUE.

Chapter 1 Childhood Memories

Chapter 2 Boyhood days

Chapter 3 Life at Old Mill

Chapter 4 Starting Work

Chapter 5 The war days

Chapter 6 Married Life

Chapter 7 Our Own Home

Chapter 8 the Years Between

Chapter 9 War Clouds

Chapter 10 Daphne’s Early Married Life

Chapter 11 Eric’s Return to Civie Life

Chapter 12 the Years to Retirement

Chapter 13 I Join Up

Chapter 14 Square Bashing

Chapter 15 I Join the Signal Section

Chapter 16 My Life with the Buff’s

Chapter 17 Active Service-France

Chapter 18 Active Service in the Line

Chapter 19 On to Italy

Chapter 20 the Italian Line

Chapter 21 Farewell Italy and the March Retreat On the Somme

Chapter 22 On To Ypres

Chapter 23 the Great & Last Advance

Chapter 24 On Into Germany

Chapter 25 Blighty and Demobilisation

Chapter 26 Village Life In The Two Wars

Chapter 27 Village Life In The Two Wars

Chapter 28 Village Life in the Two Wars

Chapter 29 Village Life In The Two Wars

Chapter 30 Village Life in the Two Wars

Chapter 31 School Days

Chapter 32 School Days

Chapter 33 School Days

Chapter 34 1st Scout Troop

Chapter 35 Cowden Choir

Chapter 36 The Final Chapter

Chapter 37

Chapter 38 Epilogue

Chapter 39 My Grandfather

Cowden, 

My Home.

Louis H Dale

The story of my life and times

In a village in Kent 1898-1972

Photographs.

Cover. Louis, Kit and daughter Daphne.

View from the Heathersome wood across the valley towards the village of Cowden on the right and Kent water on the left.

Page 4 View from 2 post office cottage attic widow East along the High street.

Page 5 View from the Church Yard West along the High Street. Dates unknown.

Cowden My Home

By Louis Dale

FOR MEMORY’S A RARE AND WONDERFUL THING AND IT EASES ALL SORROW AND PAIN AND GIVES YOU THE HOPE TO STILL CARRY ON TILL THE TIME THAT YOU’LL MEET ‘EM AGAIN.

PROLOGUE.

I lay on the warm sunny bank in the Sussex field that has always been called Hilly Field and looked across to the little village of Cowden , in Kent and listened to the old church bells pealing across the valley , taking me back to the days when I was young , and hearing them then.

As I lay, I could see the rectory on the opposite slope of the valley, and the old church beyond with its shingled steeple leaning slightly to the West. Down in the valley I could see the old mill cottage (which stands in Kent) our family home from 1906 until 1928.

Running close by is the stream, the Kent Water that divides Kent and Sussex, and wending its course along the valley, till it disappears from view at, what used to be Kent Water Mill .

Some of the village I could see as it nestles amongst the lush green hills of Kent, Sussex and Surrey and away in the far distance the hills of Mark Beech and Hoppers Bank.

Here on this lovely day I lay and thought back 68 years to the first. memories I had of this village , that has been my home all my life and where I , Louis Henry Dale (I have always been called Lewis ), youngest son of Harry and Elizabeth Jane Dale was born on February 6th 1898 ; and of my four brothers , Percy , Sydney , Leonard and Roland in that order.

Here in this village I was born, christened and lived all my married life, from 1920 till 1966, when my little wife, Kate Elizabeth died on September 20th 1966, aged 66 years

So by a strange coincidence my dear mother and my dear little wife were named Elizabeth.

Here in these same fields’ 100 years ago, my father, a boy of 10 minded a flock of sheep owned by the Miss Whatleys of Holtye House. Here no doubt he listened to the birds singing in these same old oak trees where they are singing now. Drowsily I listen with the warm summer breeze fanning my face and the clouds drifting high above me.

Slowly the trees and the clouds blurred into a woolly mist and Islept.

Chapter 1 Childhood Memories

Woolly mist, drifting and twisting around me, and in between glimpses of childhood. Not long enough to concentrate on but enough to remember as they quickly flash by. The lovely tasting cough mixture (of a brand still in the shops), when I had whooping cough and which I couldn’t get enough of. A taste I remember to this day. A glimpse of my little cot and crying in the night when I couldn’t get to sleep till my mum came and took me into her bed and of snuggling up close to the warmth of her breast and falling asleep, perfectly contented. Of going in my pram with my mum to Hever station and visiting an old friend there and the bunch of flowers she gave us with some sprigs of Southernwood. (Or Old Man as the country folks call it) with its lovely smell as they held it to my nose, and which even now carries me back to those far-off days.

Of the maids at the rectory who made a fuss of me and carried me down to the rectory to fuss over me even more. One day at the seaside at the choir outing when I was small and they tried to make me paddle in the sea, and I yelled my head off. Of the two cats who grew up with me Tiny and Fluff and as I grew older I loved to stroke and hear them purr. My mum crooning a lullaby to me when I was ill and restless. Till at last she soothed me to sleep. My dad with his whiskers I liked to pull and the smell of tobacco when he was smoking his pipe and jogging me up and down while singing a nursery rhyme to me. The spring day when I sat in my pram and watched my mum hang up the washing on the clothes line in our garden and seeing it snap and dance as the rough wind blew and the plum tree just coming into bloom. Of the French marigolds my brother grew in our garden, and every time I see them it takes me back to when I saw them then.

Glimpses of childhood and as l grew older the memories become plainer till at three years old I remember them clearly

The memory of a big black dog (which my mum said was a retriever) and whose name was ‘Major’, which came up from the rectory where my eldest brother was working as gardener. I loved this dog, and would sit and stroke his silky coat, and he would give my face a lick. I still have a photo of the old dog and me with my arm around his neck and dressed in a frock, and my golden curls hanging around my shoulders. In those days all the boys and girls wore petticoats and frocks, till they were four years old, and it was a job to tell a boy from a girl. I was often taken for a girl.

We had now moved and lived in Church Road, the bottom house opposite the church, which was to play such a part in my earliest memories. My mum and dad had had my four brothers, and I expect they wanted me to be a girl, that is why they gave me the name Louis which I suppose was the nearest they could get to a girls name.

How nice and warm and clean I felt as I knelt on my mother’s knee and lisped my little evening prayer. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. I had just had my bath in front of the fire and was feeling sleepy. Come on, little man (my mum often called me that) say Goodnight to daddy and the others and then, up wooden hill, down sheet Lane and into dreamland.

So wrapped in a blanket, I was carried up wooden hill, down lovely warm sheet lane and into dreamland.

But it wasn’t always so. For sometimes in my dreams I heard lovely music and woke up to hear it coming from downstairs and I knew it was my big brother’s phonograph and I would start crying. When my mum came I would cry Percy’s phonograph till if I promised to be good I would be carried down, with a blanket around me and sit and listen to the buful musdick .

I knew nothing where this came from except that somehow it was all connected with a shiny tin horn and wheels that went round and round. Some years later I would know how all this made the buful musdick. So later and almost asleep I would be carried up to bed and into dreamland.

Now Ro, my mum said take Lou for a walk by the School. Not too far but he hasn’t been out all day and needs a little fresh air, but don’t stand about as it is cold.

So we started walking down the road to the Fountain corner, me wrapped up in my nice warm coat and gloves, and away down the road till we came to the School. Suddenly there was a long rumbling in the distance followed by another and another. I was frightened and said, What’s that Ro. Funder? (He was seven years older than me and knew lots more than me). Nohe said, That’s the great big guns at Portsmouth on the big battleships. I was really scared and started to cry and said, lets go home Ro, so we turned round and made our way home. I remember the red wintry sun, setting behind the bare wintry trees up on School hill and beyond. When we got home and Ro told my mum about it she said. Yes that’s quite right, They were firing a salute to Queen Victoria as they bring her across from the Isle of White in between a line of battleships to Portsmouth and then on to London to vLie in state’ as they call it and to be buried there. She died last week, she said. They told me long afterwards that this was in 1901 and I was nearly three years old. Now I was home and I felt safe with all my brudders and my mum and dad there.

How kind of them to give me this nice aniseed ball. I was sucking it and really enjoying it standing on the pavement in front of Mr. Fry’s (my uncle’s) butchers shop and looking across to the forge opposite where they were shoeing a horse. I was interested and forgot everything, even the aniseed ball, and it slipped down my throat and I couldn’t breathe, and I started to go blue in the face and everything went black. Then someone got hold of me turned me upside down and shook me until the aniseed ball rolled out and I started to gasp and cry, and a great big man was holding me in his arms and talking to me. Then he took me home to mum and told her what had happened and she started to hug and kiss me and I felt better.

Some years later they told me all about this and that the man’s name was George Hodges who drove the great big horses in the brewer’s dray. He always talked to me after that and I liked him a lot. I don’t know where my aniseed ball went but I never had any more after that. They told me that this happened when I was three years old.

I wake up in my little bed in the attic bedroom where I slept with two of my brothers, and heard some banging at the window and looked and saw my brother outside. I called my mum and said, What’s Perce doing outside the window and banging with a hammer. When she came she said Well, little man this is the Coronation day of King Edward the seventh, when the King gets crowned in London everybody has a holiday. And everybody decorates their houses with flags and ribbons and tonight there will be a great big bonfire in the playground opposite the School and there will be a band and lovely fireworks, and if you are a good boy we will go down and see it all. Percy is putting up our decorations now and that’s what all the banging is about

. Mum, can I go and see the decorations when I’m dressed? When you’ve had your breakfast boy. Come on let’s dress you. So later on I went with my brother to see the decorations and how lovely the houses looked with their flags and ribbons. That night we went down and watched the big bonfire and heard the band. Someone told my mum that it was the Stonewall Band, and we saw the fireworks lighting up the sky. I loved to see them but I didn’t like the bangs and soon after we went home. I remember the glow in the sky as we went up the road, mum said it was the bonfires at East Grindstead, Hartfield and Edenbridge I didn’t seem to know where these places were but I saw the glow in the sky. Now I was tired and we got home at last. My mum undressed me and gave me a nice warm drink then carried me up to bed to fall asleep almost before I was tucked up.

It was Sunday evening and my mum had gone to Evening Service and my dad was staying at home with me as I had a cold. Usually we all went to the service and I sat with my mum in the seat behind the door I often looked down at the iron grating on the floor and wondered what was down there and imagined a cat or a dog being inside and couldn’t get out. I used to listen to the choir singing the hymns, some of which I had heard before and some new to me. I used to wish that I could sing like them and my mum. She had a lovely voice and I tried to sing too. In the sermons I would snuggle up to her and sometimes go to sleep. I was with my dad this Sunday evening (as I think I told you) when we were home together he would sing to me and teach me the words of some hymns. Two were my favorites and they were Now the day is over and ’Loving shepherd of thy sheep. When my mum and brothers came in, I would sing what dad had taught me and they were pleased. In the years to come (although I didn’t know it then) I would remember learning those hymns on my dad’s knee when I was four years old, a long, long time ago.

It was a hot summer day and I was sitting in my special place on the old curbstone in front of our door and looking across at the old Church clock and trying to tell the time. I was four years old and beginning to know things and the people in the village. The people that went into Miles’s shoe shop (next door to Mr. Fry’s butcher’s shop) and the shoe shop next door where we took our shoes and boots to be mended by Mr. Camfield. The blacksmith’s forge at the corner of Church road and the ring of the anvil and hammer we heard all day long as Mr. Stapley made the horse shoes and fitted them on the waiting horses. And I smelt the smell of burning hoof as he brought the red hot shoes to the horses and made them fit. I remember the shop near the Crown where my brother Sidney worked for Mr. Clark and where they seemed to sell everything. The lovely chocolate cigars he brought me to suck and made me say Thank you Syd. The scraps which were almost like the crisps of today and which were made from thin slices of fat pork which were roasted till all the fat was out of them and they were lovely and crackly. I loved these and he often brought me some .The noises of the village. The clop clop-a clop of the big cart horses as they pulled the carts and wagons, which rumbled along the street loaded with hay or corn to go on the stacks at Priory Farm. The heavy breathing of the cows as they plodded by me with their moist noses and long tongues hanging out as they came up from Pickett’s Mead to go to Priory Farm to be milked by Mr. Ridley and his boys. All these things were Cowden to me when I was young. So l sat on the old curb and watched the hands slowly turn on the old clock and listening to it striking. It was easy to tell the time by counting as it struck the hour but in between it was harder. l often asked my brothers and remembering what they told me, by the time I went to School, I could tell the time, even the minute; and so my time on the old curbstone was not wasted and in the years to come (if I had only known) I should still see those old curbstones and hear the old clock striking the hours, one by one, through all these years.

Come along, little man, time to get up and my mum lifted me from my warm cozy little bed and half asleep I was dressed and taken downstairs to have my breakfast. I sometimes cried, as I didn’t like waking up at 6 o’clock on a September morning. It was cold and dark and everybody seemed in a hurry. Soon it was time to be put in our vgo-cart’ which was a sugar box on wheels and tucked up nice and warm we start for the hop gardens which were over two miles away. We started with my brothers pushing me and our dinners and bottles of drink packed in beside me. Up we went to the Crossroads and on to Moat lane, over the railway bridge and at last to Bassets Farm where the hop gardens were.

Travelling along too, were other families from the village, most of whom I knew. The mornings were sometimes misty and frosty, with the cobwebs hanging on the hedges and trees, with dewdrops like tiny pearls hanging all along them. So we hurried along to be in the hop gardens at 7 o’clock when the men in charge would shout All to work. The pole-puller would then cut the strings on the tops of the poles and pull them up and bring them to the bins ready for us to start picking.

So my mum and brothers would start picking the hops from the bines and dropping them into a large sacking bin which was fastened to a long oblong framework. In the mornings we little one’s sat in our carts and prams till the sun had made it nice and warm and then we would run around and play and sometimes mum would give me a sprig of hops to pick into a box or upturned umbrella.

So they kept picking till about 10 o’clock, when we would have some sandwiches, some eating whilst some kept picking and so till 12 o’clock when the men would shout All to dinner. Then we would have our dinner sitting on the heaps of poles that had been picked and sometimes boil a can of water to make some tea. It tasted lovely and all our drinks and food was flavored with the bitter taste of hops and seemed to make you even more hungry and our hands would be covered with the sticky black stain of the hops. Sometimes mum would put me to sleep on an old coat.

At 1 o’clock the men would shout All to work and everyone had to start picking till nearly 5 o’clock when the men would shout No more poles and they finished the poles that were pulled and we got ready for home.

During the day the measurer would come round and measure all the hops we had picked in our bins and a man would enter how many bushels you had picked into his book and marked your card with that amount. I heard my mum say one day Oh! Its eight bushels to a shilling this year and they had to pick a lot of hops for eight bushels.

When the hops were measured they were tipped into large sacks or pokes as they called them and loaded them on the farm wagons to take them to the Oast House to be dried and pressed.

What a thrill for us little ones to see the great big cart horses and hear their jingling harness as they plodded along. Then I remember the lovely little caterpillars called ‘hop dogs’ that were fat and fluffy and about the size of your little finger, which really looked like tiny dogs. We used to take one or two home and keep them in a jam jar and feed them on hop leaves.

But it wasn’t all perpetual sunshine and some days the storm clouds would gradually appear and the distant rumble of thunder would make all our mums talk among themselves and some would say Oh! I don’t know I think it’s going round and we shan’t get any of it. While someone else would say I think we shall. Look how the winds turning the leaves on the trees and that’s usually a sign we’re in for a storm .

So everyone would go on picking while the sky grew dark and the big raindrops began to patter down. In the distance we could see the heavy rain coming towards us and then a flash of lightning, followed by a roll of thunder. And everyone bundled us children into our carts and prams together with all our possessions and scurried away to the big cart shed at the end of the field. First winding the hops they had picked in the sacking bin and again winding this around the wooden frame, so forming a pocket with the hops inside to keep them dry.

Then we would all crowd into the shed, huddling up together while the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled and the rain lashed down while we little ones cried and clung to our mother’s skirts. So we stood or sat on the farm carts till at last the storm rolled on and the rain ceased and now we must go out again. Our mums start picking enough hops to make a load for another drying in the Oast House and we little ones must stay in our carts and prams as the ground around the bins was soon churned into mud from the soaking rain.

This was when hop picking was a miserable job, as the soaking wet bines made everyone’s arms and hands wet and the bines scratched their arms and hands too. What relief when the welcome cry No more poles was shouted and everyone could get ready to go home, with many complaining of the rain making the hops press together and so measuring only half they would have done if they had been dry.

Now came the weary tramp home, arriving there wet and muddy and tired and sometimes late and preparing an evening meal and putting up the next days food before going to bed with morning coming all to soon to start again for the hop fields. As I grew older I realized how much our mothers slaved in the hopping season to earn extra money to buy new clothes and boots for us all and to help us all live a little better during the year. Even now after all these years I have only to smell hops or tar (which they used on the ends of the hop poles) to take me right back to those days in the hop fields when I was a little boy.

I stood by my mum in the pew behind the Church door and watched for the choir to come out of the vestry and come around the Church singing one of the Christmas hymns I loved to hear. Mr. Turner (he was my Godfather) came first carrying the tall shining cross; followed by the choirboys. Three of my brothers were there with their school mates (mum said there were twelve) and then the men followed and there were ten of them (so she said when I asked her) my dad was there and he gave us a special look when he went by singing with the others. Some of the others I knew, Mr. Camfield, Mr. Gearing, Mr. Barlow and his two sons, Mr. Wheeler, Mr. Chesson and some I didn’t know then. How lovely it was to hear them singing as they slowly went up the Church and into the choir stalls, followed by our Rector, The Rev. Graham Jones. My mum sang with them and I tried to but I didn’t know all the words. In the sermon I snuggled up close to her and almost went to sleep. After all I was only three.

Later in my life (although I didn’t know it then) I should be singing in the choir and on special occasions singing solo in