One of three sisters born into an East Grinstead household in 1908, young Olive May Sharman (nee Hewitt) recalls the character of her fellow siblings.
'Violet (called Vi),good, quiet, helped Mum with the rest of us and at home.
Grace, small not very strong, very lady-like and always kept herself very neat and tidy, never seemed to get dirty or tear clothes. Mum used to say 'The stork should have put her down the gentry's chimney pot instead'.
Me, Olive (called Tom), always in trouble for losing my temper and lashing out at someone, tearing clothes, breaking crockery. Very willing to help Dad or do boys' jobs, but hated washing up.
Up to climbing trees and haystacks, collecting wood, milk or odd jobs to earn a halfpenny, apple or piece of cake as I was always ready to eat; and tried to dodge indoor jobs by sitting in the lavatory and reading or climbing a tree and sitting high up and lost to the world. Read until my sister called.
When we were old enough, Vi, Grace or myself used to get up very early, take a small can with a lid and join the other children to go to the Dairy on the Imberhorne Manor Estate and get our penny-worths of hand-skimmed milk, fresh every day from the cows. We used to have 'two pennies worth' each morning and Mum made lovely milk puddings in our old fire oven. | 
Imberhorne Manor looking from the south. The Victorian building was demolished in the 1950s.
| Governess (our school teacher|) took us all on many nature walks and was interested in all the flora and fauna we found and brought to school. Frogs, flowers, branches of strange trees, pine cones, the earliest daffodils, tadpoles -- even injured birds. She would also lend me books on poetry and stories of the land.
We hadn't many books at our house and I was 'reading crazy'. I was also very lucky, because we had parents who helped us with our reading although Dad had left school at twelve years old.
Dad used to say to us 'Every day, you can learn a new word or something to help you' and he was right. He seemed to have lots of Uncles, Aunts and Cousins. Many of them were really either friends of Mum and Dad or very distant relatives, but 'kith' was an established country custom of those days.
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