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This story is an extract taken from the recorded memories of Ada Newman, born around the commencement of the 20th century. As a young child Ada lived with her 3 brothers above the general stores which her parents ran. Ada recalls:
Being a very shy child, I did not enjoy being sent into the shop to fetch items for my mother. How I dreaded being told to ask for desiccated soup powder! Was it de-siccated, or desicc - ated I don't think I ever really decided. However I used to creep into the shop with my brothers when it was closed - to sample the sweets which were loose in bottles or boxes and the biscuits from the tins. We even sampled the treacle from the barrels. There was one day when my youngest brother always went into the shop - his birthday - just to make sure that the assistants all knew.
At one end of the garden there was an old cottage where the cheese was kept in a dark downstairs room. On the ceiling of this room were many signatures, to which we added our own - these were smoked on with a lighted candle. James Scott, one of our assistants, used to sleep in the bedroom at one time. But when I remember it, the stairs were getting very rotten and we used to negotiate our way up very warily.
Our drapery assistant was a Miss Banam; a rather plump lass who had greasy hair which she wore in a roll round her head. She used to give us a little packet of sweets each week and I still have a small brown vase with a rose hand-painted on it that she gave me. (She lodged in the village and used to have tea with us on Sundays).
Fred Clarke was another assistant who was with us for a while, until he joined up in the First World War. I have two pretty floral cards and a snap that he sent me from France. His father, Archie Clarke always gave me a bunch of flowers when we walked by his cottage at Polstead.
A Christmas memory is of the holly tree, complete with scarlet berries that father brought home from one of the 'rounds'. How lovely it looked with its gay decorations and with the lighted candles! (We had of course looked at the presents in the pillowcases on our beds by the light of candles at a very early hour).
We always had a Christmas party, to which were invited among others, the Barnardo Home children fostered out in the village. And how we enjoyed playing 'The Old Family Coach', the story of a party that set out to view the Niagara Falls.
Mother read the story and when the name of the person with the name allotted to them was mentioned they had to get up and turn round then sit down again. Whenever the Old Family Coach was mentioned we all had to get up. Those not getting up at the mention of their name had to pay a forfeit. Our favourite character was Aunt Ellen's dear little dog.
One forfeit I remember was to eat a piece of cotton 'rabbit fashion' with a member of the opposite sex. We were given a length of white cotton and as we 'ate' it the boy asked 'Dost thou love me Rachel?' To which the girl replied 'Yes, I think I do, Jacob'. When the couple finally met, a kiss was exchanged.
Another game was 'weighing the honey pots'. Each child in turn had to squat down with hands clasped together under the knees. Two adults then swing the child backwards and forwards by the arms, counting the swings before the hands unclasped. A prize was given to the 'heaviest honey pot'.
Before Christmas mother baked mince pies for the inmates of the Almshouses. We helped grease the tins and put the mincemeat in the pies. These we took round with a packet of tea and an orange.
The Rowley Almshouses were just outside our back gate and when a fair amount of tea was left in our large red enamel pot, we used to take it to an old man called Becky Biggs.
There was another old man called Jakey Willis to whom we took chickens to be killed. I remember seeing him chop off the head of a chicken, and its body running away!
We always kept poultry and one of my earliest recollections is of a cockerel attacking Great Aunt Puttock in the garden. Father used to show Black Minorca's and won several prizes. I can remember seeing them being put into rather tall, round wicker hampers lined with hessian. They were sent to the White City and the dairy show. Father used to bring us a toy back - once it was a gyroscope, which we thought very wonderful.
We always kept cats and a dog - but unfortunately our dog and the Vicar's two old English sheep dogs were bitter enemies, and they lived next door! They had some terrible fights and I dreaded taking our Don for a walk in case we met Billy and Buster.
Sometimes pepper was used to separate them and once the Vicar lifted them up, putting his dogs one side of the rails round his garden with ours on the other side.
The Vicar had one of the first cars in the village and one day he picked me up outside the shop and drove round the back to his garage. He showed me how to switch off the engine, saying, 'There, you've had your first driving lesson' and gave me a kiss. How happily I ran home to tell the others.
This same Vicar had a 120-ft wireless mast in his garden for receiving and sending out Morse. Halfway up was a 'crow's nest' where he sometimes partook afternoon tea.
On Sunday mornings we all used to go to church accompanied by Grandmother who lived in a cottage in the village and used to spend Sundays with us.
How father used to love singing the psalms. Grandmother always had a packet of flat round gelatine sweets - one of which she used to give us during the sermon.
After dinner we used to go for a walk together and a favourite walk was round Polstead Park to see the deer. Another walk was down to Sower's Brook where one of my brothers fell in and I remember he cried most of the way home.
When we were not able to go for a walk on Sundays sometimes we sat round the table and sang hymns and sacred songs, with father playing the piano. One of our cats, called Silly Billy, could not bear to hear us. She used to jump up on to the table and walk round mewing to us to stop.
During the week, a maid used to take us for a walk in the afternoons. A favourite walk in the autumn was down the Park Road where we could shuffle along among the leaves. But once we had a terrible fright there. We met a man coming along with a bull and it charged at us. Luckily we were near the park gates and were able to get safely inside.
I can still see the bull putting its feet up at the gate, and many a nightmare did I have about it.
It was not unusual for us to return from a walk with a frog or two in handkerchief in our pockets.
At Christmas time we sometimes had half an orange each - oranges being a luxury then and only available at that time of the year.
What fun we had in our garden, climbing into the sycamore tree, from which we could see into the Vicar's garden and playing on the swing. We had contests on stilts (a skill I retained, and was able to put to good use sixty years later on a Car Rally in France).
The boys had fun with their iron hoops and I with my wooden one; also marbles and the tops that spun so well in the road outside the shop.
I have a faint recollection of a barrel organ playing on the green, with a little monkey in a red jacket. And I once saw horses being paraded up and down the street for sale at the annual fair. I think this must have been the last time horses were sold at the Fair, but what excitement there was each year early in May as we saw the first caravans arriving with their gear.
How lucky we were to live opposite the green and watch the stalls, shows, swings and roundabouts being erected.
Some stalls were put up in the road outside the shop - one had water spouts sending up celluloid balls that had to be shot down to win a prize. Then there was the coconut shy, the homemade rock stall and stalls where one could buy water squirts or confetti.
Sometimes we were allowed to sit in the swings before the fair opened. But it was the roundabouts with the wonderful organs and the mechanical figures playing the music that I loved best.
How lovely it was to see stalls and roundabouts lit up at night. We could lie in bed and see the reflection of the roundabouts going round and round on the wall and ceiling, and hear the call for the 'Last Round Tonight!' Our father sometimes paid this for and so was a 'free ride'.
On the last night there was a special service held in the church at 11 p.m. at which fair children were sometimes christened. We all walked to the church by the light of flares. In the stalls was the choir with candles in jars, Archie Clarke played the cornet and all sang 'Onward Christian Soldiers', the words of which were painted on a banner.
We got to know many of the fair people; the Crightons, Thurstons, Buggs and Days, and were very sorry to see them pack up and depart. Alas the fair received less and less support as the villagers found other attractions further afield, and eventually it came no more.
The present owners of the house in which I grew up have kindly shown me over it, but it is so much altered, even the stairs have been moved, that I could hardly recognise it. But it will always remain in my memory - the same dear old house in which I grew up.
Ada Newman 2001
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