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Harold Taylor was one of six children who started off life in the 1920's in Arundel, shortly moving afterwards to Chichester. His father worked for the local Council. Here Harold tells us of his grandfather.
My grandfather had migrated to this area from Worcestershire, although I do not know a lot about him. As a child, for some odd reason I believed his forebears had been watchmakers.
I cannot recall meeting Granddad, and I think he died when I was four or five. He first came to the area when he went to work on the Duke of Richmond's Estate, around the 1880's.
He wed a Halnaker girl in 1884. From there he went to Craigwell House, Bognor to work and eventually gravitated to Arundel to work on the Duke of Norfolk's Estate. How long he remained there I do not know, but most of his family worked for the estate. It was not till near the end of my father's life, when he was visiting me in Worthing, that I learned that my grandfather may have been self-employed.
As my father and I were walking to the station one day he glanced up and said, 'Dad had a vinery somewhere about here.' It was then that I learned he had been something of a grape specialist. His occupation seems to have been to go the large houses where he put their grape vines in order.
Granddad had apparently been a clever gardener and won many prizes. My father, with the wartime allotments, did the same. He won the Chichester Show three consecutive years and ultimately kept the cup. He used to grow some odd seeds, of which I recall some blue podded peas. I think it was in 1944 that someone stole his seeds from the show bench.
Poor Granddad!
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