Marion had a great love for the history of her birth place. She sent this piece to me originally on an audio tape, having dictated it in the local dialect. With her permission and assistance it was transcribed. It is repeated here with the permission of her son's family.
Most families have at least one skeleton in the cupboard. Our particular skeleton has rattled its bones all down the years. In the 19th century everything was not as idyllic in our village as it seemed. Class distinction formed a rigid ladder, graded from the village idiot up to the squire at Stoke Farm. Poor old Adam lived on the bones and scraps given to him at the kitchen door. The footman told him to "Put 'em on the mat and bark at 'em."
Beware if you skipped over a few rungs socially. Squire Vernon and the Canon reigned supreme at the top. Next came the gentleman farmers, then the tenant farmers. The Phippsfamily lived at "The Plain" and the brothers, George and Harry Savage owned the farm in the village by the canal.
Harry was famous for his ability to add up columns of figures. He could go straight up the columns murmuring "compte, compte, compte" and always produce the correct answer.
The Tew family had built the Georgian farm houses and they with the other tradesmen came next on the ladder, along with the top people at the Park; the gardener, the butler and so on.
John Child was the butcher. Thomas Amos kept the shop by the canal. The Woodward family were at the Boat Inn. Nat Sarrington the baker lived up mill end, where he was reputed to throw the currants off the mill chimney into his buns. When he returned from The Boat in the evening he often called out, "I'm coming Sarah, I'm coming Sarah, I'm coming Sarah." Sarah was the pig, not his wife!
Ginger Underwood was the blacksmith. The forge was by the bridge near Amos' shop. The tale goes that he tried to build a baker's oven in Shutlanger. He found it very difficult to fit the bricks into the dome of the oven. And poor George had a problem. It was still not solved as darkness fell. And he was literally holding the bricks up on his bent back. The baker's wife came out to pay him so he said, "Missus, you've given me me breakfast in the oven, you've given me me dinner in the oven, you've given me me tea in the oven, so now you'd better pay me in the oven." She gave him the money, and out came Ginger, and of course down came the bricks.
Even in those days, young chaps didn't always work from dawn to dark, and did actually have time on their hands. They used to dare each other to do dangerous escapades.
At the end of the 18th century there were murderous gangs of sheep stealers around. Young Charles Tew tracked them to a barn in Tiffield and was spying on them. They heard a sound as he tried to see what they were doing. They jumped up and chased him all the way back to Stoke. This gang was known as "the Moonlighters", and later they were hanged in Northampton.
Josiah John Charles my grandfather was always known as Charles Tew. He too was an athlete and quite proud of his achievements. He told me these stories as I sat on his knee before I was school age. He was the only one who could jump the canal. Not at the wide part, but where it narrowed at the swing bridge. This was the wooden bridge which the farmers swung across to drive their cattle over. It was between the Stoke Locks and the tunnel mouth. The boys once dared my grandfather to ride Savage's bull. He managed to mount the animal but didn't get far as it ran against a tree and his leg would have been broken if he hadn't jumped off quickly, just in time.
Another time they dared him to spend the night in the churchyard. At midnight they tied tin cans to the donkey's tail, and let it go in the church yard rattling the cans as it trotted around. Charles caught the poor animal, which was very relieved to get rid of the noisy attachments. The lads often used to go down to Shutlanger and stand on the turn with the village men who congregated there regularly. All local topics were discussed on the turn. In hot weather they lounged under the huge elm trees near by.
Jabez Hails and his wife Rebecca had come from Northampton to take over the bakery and the small farm when Rebecca's mother, Mrs Ford died. They and their family lived in the old farm house next to the bake house, by the school. Their son Harry was deaf and dumb. Sadly in those days there was little sympathy for the handicapped, and the boys teased Harry because he made strange grunting noises. Jane, his eldest sister, defended him. She used to rush out and box the young men's ears. Charles used to tease Harry on purpose to make Jane run out and box his ears. Not the most usual way of meeting the young lady of your choice! Jane was not popular with the Tew family as she was a Northampton rebel, reading Dickens by rush-light, and moreover she was a Baptist, who expressed her views quite forcibly, even to the Rector.
The skeleton rattled again, Charles' grandfather had unfortunately fallen for a girl who was not approved of by the family. She came from down the village and was on the very bottom rung of the ladder. This was even worse than marrying a dissenter. The unfortunate girl had become pregnant, and on her death-bed she cursed the family to the third and fourth generation. After Charles and Jane were married they lived in the Stoke bake-house. The oven was only used on Sundays, to bake the Sunday dinners when folk were in morning service in church. At feast time, Charles went to the boxing booth. Jane did not approve, and one night she set off to fetch him home. Even then, it was not the done thing for young ladies to go out alone at night, so she disguised herself in her husband's top coat and bowler hat. On her way over the bridge, she passed friend Adam who called out, "Good night Miss Tew." So much for her dis guise!
Once Adam was given an important job to do. The customers at the Boat were pre senting a tureen to a well-known bride and bride-groom as a wedding present. Adam was asked to present it, and of course was told exactly what to say. "I've always respected you, and I'd like to present you with a Tureen from Landudno." He duly learnt his party piece having repeated it many times it ran thus, "I've alluss suspected yer, and I'd like to resent yer wi a tuddle a marine from Llandidllum." He often commented that Madam me lady from the park had gone out in the la-di-da; The Landau.
The midwife from the village was called Pop Tew. Little Eleanor was born in 1880; she was tongue tied, having a membrane under her tongue which prevented it from wagging. Poptook a pair of scissors and cut the string. Later on they could not stop the girl from talking. They were not exactly grateful to Pop.
Nell always got into trouble. One day she went to play with her friend Ethel Amos, whose parents Tom and Laura kept the shop by the canal. Behind the premises was a rope walk, where the thick barge ropes were made. Long strands of hemp were twisted into strong cords. Nell ran too close to the twisting ropes and her dark curls became twined in the machine. She was rescued without serious injury. Her curls were not always appreciated. She went with her sister Katie to stay with her aunt Ellen in Northampton. Ellen's patience ran out when she tried to comb out the tangled curls, so she cut them off. Nell came back looking like a little boy. When her mother Jane met the children at Roade station she declared, "Here's my Katie but where's my Nell?"
Thomas and Laura Amos helped the barge people in all sorts of ways and were greatly loved by their customers. During the small pox epidemic Laura nursed one of the canal people's babies back to health. No body else caught the disease.
One day Jane, who was a great friend, called to visit Laura. When she knocked a voice called out, "Laura, Laura", but nobody came to the door. Jane was quite annoyed and asked Laura to explain when next they met, who was calling. "Why didn't you answer." Then Laura remembered, nobody was at home, except the parrot!
The Boat was a respectable pub and the landlord and his daughters were in the upper tradesmen's bracket socially, along with the Stoke Park staff, the gentleman's servants, who, or course, spoke the Queen's English. The present owner of the Boat is still a Woodward and this is one of the few real Stoke Bruerne families left in the village.
Shutlanger pubs were relatively lower class. Men used to drink away their labourer's pay until late in the evening. One frustrated wife took her husband's dinner down to the Horse Shoe with the comment, "'Ere y'are Garge, Here's yer dinner, perhaps Mrs Denny will give you a bit o' salt."
Even at Stoke the men got lively at times and Joe Valentine used to dance "the brush" which was quite a complicated performance. By the 1890s there was a new spirit abroad. The rector's wife, Mrs Lee, was a highly respected lady. She had given money for the construction of the School-church in Shutlanger which Charles Tew built. The men were expected to bow to her and the women curtsied dutifully. However, young Lewis Child, the butcher's son was dressed up in his Sunday best with a little bow tie when Mrs Lee swept up the "Pitchin." She greeted Lewis but he did not respond with the required obeisance. "Where's your bow?" said the great lady. "Here maam," replied the boy patting his new tie. The church school was a day school until after the first world war. There was much opposition to its closure and my father, William Charles refused to let me walk to and from Stoke twice a day until I was six. I became terrified of the attendance officer and thought my dad would be sent to prison if I stayed away from school.
I used to go up the lane to have my dinner at my great aunts' house if the weather was bad. These were my grandfather's spinster sisters and there was also a batchelor uncle. The eldest aunt was Charlotte Selena. My grandfather was Josiah John Charles. Then Euphemia Ellen, Marion Jane, Clara Henrietta and lastly Robert George Henry.
I heard strange things during these visits, including the story of the family curse. None of the sisters had married. They had a strong belief in the occult. Clara had seen a headless ghost in a lane at Cropredy while she was governess there. There was talk of a coach and horses which drove from Stoke Park House to the Turn Pike on occasions. Actually in the second world war the soldiers stationed there were more afraid of the spooks than of the German bombers.
Euphemia Ellen was the home-bird who had always kept house for the family and for Robert George Henry, Uncle Harry. She rarely went out, except to church on Sunday in her best clothes. Small girls were paid pennies to do the shopping. She used to talk about portents of death. The whistlers would come and bang on the windows and the ticking spider would tick out the time in the walls.
Charlotte Selena had been a model in London and there was a beautiful photograph of her in her hey day in the parlour. She was to be married to a famous bone- setter but he jilted her at the last moment. Her wedding clothes still lay in moth balls upstairs. She rarely went out any further than the bottom of the garden wearing wooden pattins to keep her shoes out of the mud.
Marion Jane had died some years earlier.
The other member of the family was a white terrier called Vicky. Even as long ago as the 1920s Vicky was successfully operated on for a growth and recovered.
The closet was in the garden, next to the barn. There were two box seats, a large one for grown-ups and a small one for children. They were scrupulously clean. The wood was scrubbed regularly till it almost shone.
One of my uncle Harry's last jobs was to repair the altar rail in the church. A young man came along and the conversation went thus. Uncle, "Hello young shaver, are you in the choir?" "Yes." "What do you sing?" "Beass." "I'll tell you how to get a really good voice. Go and stand in the cut up to your neck for a bit and you'll sing beautiful next Sunday." A day or two afterwards they found the lad in the cut and he wouldn't come out.
My father's sisters used to enjoy telling stories. Aunty Nell's favourite was about Joey Higham who had an unruly mop of hair. "His mother smothered it wi' lard and hammered it down with the bellers. But afore he got half way across Green Close "it ris." Even in this gen eration there was a great fear of the occult -- hooting owls and the death watch beetles. None of the sisters married.
My father William Charles remembered the big fire at Stoke Park. In 1883 he was wakened in the night by shouts of "fire, fire." People were running with buckets, tin baths and any useful receptacle to help put the fire out. After the fire only two wings of the original Indigo Jones building remained. Squire Vernon employed my grandfather to build the Victorian mansion according to his own ideas. It was a style incorporating Belgian gables. A beautiful wrought iron gate was brought from Belgium, but during the second war it was taken away for scrap iron. Much damage was done to the gardens and statues which were broken. Some years ago the Victorian building was taken down and only the original pavilions remain. My father was delighted because the firm who bulldozed it went bankrupt. They couldn't knock it down, it was too well built.
There were no boys in the family to carry on the building work so this particular branch of the family tree has withered away like the famous fig tree.
Most of the names in this story can be found in the family tables on this site.
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