IN COURSE OF EDITING

MEMOIRS OF GODFREY THORNTON ORLEBAR (1904-1989)

of his childhood at Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire. He was the only son of the Reverend Edward Yarde “Ted” Orlebar (1872-1949) and Lucy Eleanor “Ena” Orlebar nee Thornton (1879- • 1952). Godfrey’s paternal grandfather was the Reverend Augustus Orlebar of Willington, Bedfordshire who is the subject of the book’The Reverend Augustus Orlebar’ by Gordon Vowles. Godfrey’s great-grandfather, the Reverend John Scobell (father-in-law of the aforementioned Reverend Augustus Orlebar) was a central character connected with the Lewes Riot of 1857, upon which much has been written.

Godfrey Thornton emigrated from England to Ontario, Canada in 1937 after his marriage to Mona Grace Clifton and died there in 1989. His three children, Jeremy, Caroline and John were all born and brought up in Ontario, Canada where there are still descendants today.

The memoirs were written from 1973-1975.

 STEEPLE MORDEN, CAMBRIDGESHIRE 1904-1921

My father and mother were now in residence at Steeple Morden Rectory, Royston, Cambridgeshire. The house was a late Victorian white brick building. One approached it from a drive some two hundred yards long, through a lush green meadow on either side, full of buttercups and daisies in spring. There is a stile in the distance over the pasture, and a plum and apple orchard to the right of the stile, over the fence (not rectory property). The gate from the drive into the rectory garden is a good iron one, white with a sliding catch. One then drives up to the front of the house, which has an unpretentious porch with two tall shiny magnolia trees on either side of it. They were a special kind and bloomed in spring. In front of the house was a circular patch of gravel to turn round a horse and trap, and beyond the gravel, a lawn with a tennis court, and a bank to the right with a flower bed full of forget-me-nots in spring. Around the lawn are four giant beech trees. The one to the right is a green beech; then a giant old yew, then immediately behind the lawn, a glorious green beech tree, and a majestic copper beech – my mother’s favourite tree.

To the left of the lawn is a pink May tree. A tiny shed for the mowing machines nestles out of sight beside the copper beech. To the left of the lawn is a rose bed with other roses and lavender round the house also. To the side of the house is a croquet lawn and rose beds, beyond that a tinkling clear running stream fed from a spring which flows through the property with more meadows beyond. Behind the beeches and flower beds are Victoria plums, gooseberry bushes, Coxes oranges and Blenheim orange apples – and wire netting and Boulton and Paul chicken houses.

The elms in the meadow are outstanding. There are two and have been described as the finest elms in all England! The soil is first rate.

Behind the house is a kitchen garden. It is roughly half an acre with every kind of vegetable and heavy potato crops were fertilised with cow dung. There are bushy white Pinks as a border and a little green house where toads gather with little frogs about the tank. They are silent and very personable to a small boy. There was an old garden wall with peaches on it, the fruit protected by Muslin bags and one solitary fig tree: my father’s pride.

Behind the wall, oh joy! The farmyard, the farm horse stable, the cow shed, the barn, the bullock yard, the coach house, the pony and hunter’s stable, two loose boxes and two stalls. To the near side of the house is the dairy where milk is separated and the cream saved for butter making. The village would come for the separated milk- two quart dips for a penny. To the left of the stable yard is a small orchard where I was allowed to keep many rabbits in the 1914-1918 war.

Beyond the farmyard and the numerous wire netting chicken pens of various breeds, (light Sussex, Rhode Island reds, white wyandottes and white leghorns) which laid eggs and talked chicken language, lies the glebe of some two hundred acres with the very best clay loam land. It grows wonderful crops of roots and barley and corn and has always been well-farmed and nourished. It is a tradition in these fertile parts. It grows sturdy docks, in reality weeds, but a sure sign of the best of land!

Now may we go into Steeple Morden Rectory? The room to the right as we enter is the drawing room with the Morris wallpaper. The Thornton family children’s group hung in the drawing room from 1915 until1918 when it returned to St. Johns’s, M0ggerhanger. My mother had it copied by Miss Spencer of Odsey, a dear friend and artist.

Behind the drawing room is our father’s study with his upright roll-top desk, wing chairs, presentation clock from the parishioners of Woburn Sands, New College shields, Radley shields and Oxford University shield. On the left of the front door is the dining room and through a hatch the big kitchen and scullery. The dining room furniture was old oak and there were a few mice who popped out at evening “high tea”. The oak chairs had rush seats and came from Heals of London. We have them here in Canada – lifetime friends and hearts of oak!     Prints of John Pym, Sir Francis Bacon and Godfrey Thornton hung on the dining room walls.

The stairs go up from the hall. Halfway up, where the stairs turn is the “House of Commons”. There were three maids’ bedrooms, my parents’ bedroom, my father’s dressing room and the nursery with its iron bars over the window, which looked out over the front lawn to the green and copper beeches. The spare room and my tiny bedroom looked out over the croquet lawn and over the stream. There were two more bedrooms at the back of the house.

The bathroom, perhaps the largest upstairs room, also contained the Willington billiard table and my father’s chest of drawers where he kept his clothes. He brushed them himself to make them last and look like new for years. My father used to sing the music hall songs in his bath. I guess they did at Tetworth Hall where my father used to visit his Uncle Gus and Aunt Hester. There was only one bathroom in that big house. What a wonderful place to stay!

There was a rather ghastly cellar under much of the house. The water was pumped daily to the top of the house by hand. It took a man a good hour to do this. He then polished the boots and shoes or Reg Brown did them.

I forgot to mention the garden my father gave to me. It was in a corner by the house in the kitchen garden near the terrific raspberry canes, where you could lose yourself and “fill up”. My little garden was a yard and a half wide by the same long, but to me it was the most important spot in all the grounds, because it was for me to do my best in. As I saw the very efficient way the grounds were tendered by the men, I did the best I knew.

After having lived in one room in Poplar as a curate and a tiny house in Woburn Sands before being appointed to this beautiful country living, it must have had a tremendous effect on E.Y. Orlebar. Ely Anglo-Catholic discipline and service on the one hand must go on, and it did with my father’s and above all my mother’s enthusiasm for all church matters.

Sunday matins were completely abandoned and the sung Holy Eucharist took its place. Some of the old timers muttered in their beards, but got to take part. Vestments came to Steeple Morden and I swung the censer in a scarlet cassock. The communion service was very long for a small boy. Dad used to tell me to sit down in the thirteenth century niche in the sanctuary. Being Ely trained Dad fasted until after the ten o’clock mass but one Sunday in the early years he left the altar in a dead faint, and from then on he gave up this inhuman practice.

The village was encouraged by preaching and instruction to go to communion at each service. As they were very early to bed and very early to rise people they cooperated, so that there came a time when there was only one individual who would come up to the communion rail at the ten o’clock: young Percy Brocket by name. He was a “diehard”. He never gave in. Some folks called him stubborn. I thought he had guts.

The church was dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. There was a clear light over the altar. St Peter and St Paul were on either side of the clear light. “No man hath seen God at any time”. As I knelt at the altar I felt so thankful for the Apostles and I knew a great deal about them in my small way, owing to my mother’s devoted instruction.

The church had no lady chapel when my father and mother came to Steeple Morden, or side altar. My father got this done. There was a place for an altar, probably torn out by the Roundheads. Now all early services were taken at the chapel. Evensong was a never to be forgotten experience, as I sat next to my father with Lewis Jarman the butcher and Walter Pepper the blacksmith, with his beautiful baritone voice and five boys to the side. In front were twelve men and ten boys all told. The lozenges were handed round by the choir.

Dad preached with fire, especially on St Paul in those days. Ethel Watts played the organ. She was utterly devoted. The organ was in the nave near the vestry. Ethel was completely hidden from the choir and congregation by a green baize curtain. She never saw real daylight, but she had a powerful voice and sang out. Ethel was dependant on a boy who sat in a tiny niche in the nave to blow the organ. He had to watch the lead weight attached to a string on a nail. If the weight went below the danger line Miss Watts was out of air! Then she would push the curtain away to see if the boy was doing his stuff.

The font was at the back of the church. Chris Newell was the verger. He went to plough all week. The Newells had a daughter, Dolly, and two younger twin girls. Chris liked Fordham’s fine ales in moderation. He was a splendid verger for years in his gown with the velvet collar. As the choir processed around the church, as we did at 10.00 to rouse the congregation, Chris led it with his verger’s staff across his breast – the only way to have a verger, as he feels he has an important part to play.

One walked over a lovely field of buttercups and daisies and cow pats to Steeple Morden Church. This part Norman and later dated flint stone church with a small, unpretentious spire was surrounded by a well-kept churchyard behind iron railings. As one proceeded through the gate one had to cope with some twenty youths who congregated there to stare insolently. We said, “Good evening” but they rarely answered.

The Church of England school was nearby; the bakery (Mr South’s) across the road, with Lady Frances Tufnell’s small period house next door. And Walter Pepper’s blacksmith’s shop nearby. There were two blacksmith shops in our village. Walter Pepper kept one and in between holding heavy horses legs and putting on their great iron shoes, he sang in the village choir and at village concerts. He had a glorious baritone voice. I can hear it now as he sang “All Folks Joined in the Floral Dance”. I like to think he does it still.

Some two hundred and fifty people lived in or about our village. There were three public houses, the chief ones perhaps were the Bell and the Green Man. The Bell was on the Rectory Road and Mr Brown was the host. He had a lovely family. Jack Brown went out to Canada in 1912 and Reginald followed his elder brother after the First World War. The Green Man was the other public house I remember. Mr Grayling, the proprietor there, had a good many cows, who got most of their living off the roadside grass, minded by boys of school age.

There were Sunday School treats in the meadow; swings put up for special days and sweet scrambles handed out by my father from a big tin.

Mr Broad was the schoolmaster, a splendid man. Mrs Broad assisted him. Their son Lewis Broad became the well known historian.

My father was a cricketer MCC, a good all rounder. Cricket stood my father in good stead in village life. He scored many runs there – and was forgiven a hundred fold for his, at times, indifference to parish work. There was no recreation ground to begin with so Mr Broad and my father cooperated and the two men approached a very generous and kindly farmer and cattle dealer, Bert Parrish, and acquired a good sized peat field which became the recreation ground for the village. A good pavilion was put up and a horse drawn roller purchased. They are in good condition and in use today at the recreation ground.

The sullen youths melted away at the church gate. Some joined the choir. They played the national game against all villages. This was a great victory for national reform.

We had a mule, Jimmy, who lived in a loose box in the rectory farmyard. He used to have his head out of the top part of the loose box all day, apparently asleep. Jimmy had two jobs. The first was to pull the rectory lawn mower. He had to wear leather shoes that were strapped on his feet and ankles. He also pulled the lawn mower on the recreation ground, again in his leather shoes, and then returned to sleep. We stroked his nose as we passed by each day.

At Guilden Morden, Cambs, the next village to Steeple Morden, there were lots of black cattle belonging to a Mr. Sandeman of Sandeman’s Port cattle, the Galloway  breed. We used to walk and pick blackberries with Miss Grey there, armed with hook sticks to pull the blackberries down. The village of Litlington lay on the other side of Steeple Morden. There my father took out 500 acres, more or less. He had twelve cart horses and farmed in a very big way, Mr Phillips in charge of a big dairy herd of pedigree shorthorns. The parson at Litlington was a Mr. Edwards. We had a wonderful men’s supper with Mr Phillips in the chair. It was a hearty, friendly meal with great sirloins of best roast beef and Yorkshire puddings and beer.

The Reverend Edwards, parson for Litlington and my father, parson for Steeple Morden, were guests of honour, with my father and the bailiffs presiding. Of course Dad was a guest of honour; he employed three quarters of the farm workers in the tiny village. I was also present at the supper and I suppose about eighty or so. After supper the men sang their favourite songs, many about the land they loved. This is one of the many outstanding songs, sung by all present, in the chorus:

There was one good man

There were two good men and they mowed Down the meadow.

There were three good men There were four good men

And they carted the ‘ay away, ‘ay 432 and a 1 and they all worked well

They mowed the ‘ay, they carted away And they called it jolly good fun

“Where have I got to, mate”? says the singer to get his bearings. The singer continued on to 100 good men and I reckon the field would be mowed by then good and proper. A steamy room with lots of beer and speeches, as I remember. King Edward V11 was on the throne. W.G. Grace was playing for Gloucestershire and England cricket.

Litlington was small in cottages but tremendous in arable land and it was a sight to see the noble shire horses being curry combed and brushed after a hard days work, one man to three shires, and then to see them let out into a yard just full of clean wheat straw, and to see them roll, one after the other, until their coats began to shine again, through the straw, Dad talking to Mr. Philips all the while.

One arable field alone at Litlington was 150 acres and they had two reapers and binders going round the huge field, three horses abreast. Great wheat land! It may have seemed a bleak spot to live, but it was some of the greatest barley and wheat land in all England. God save the King! Let’s get out the breeches, corduroys and pigskin gaiters and ride, ride, ride over the wonderful fields!

The household at Steeple Morden was a considerable one.

Nurse Parrot looked after Rachel and me in that nursery with the bars in the window.

Nurse Parrot was very tiny with black straw bonnet, which she seldom took off. In character she was very like the nannie in the play “Upstairs Downstairs”. She was very domineering towards my mother, and her meals were brought up to her, as she never left us, except when we were taken down to the drawing room at tea time to see my father ‘and mother and their friends.

My sister Rachel was adored by Nurse Parrot. She was her “Lovey Dovey” and Rachel became a little demanding herself, crying for a handkerchief every night. Nurse Parrot appeared to dislike me and was sadistic to me. When she was doing her hair in the small nursery glass, she always made a point of catching me out at something I never did! She would then tie my arms behind my back to the chair, but my dear sister would creep up and release me. According to Nurse Parrot I must have untied myself…”Lovey Dovey would never do that”.

My father had three pupils. The one learning “Farming” was Mr Grimshaw. Mr Cecil was coached by my father for Cambridge and Mr Farmer for Oxford University. They made a house in the copper beach tree and loved to whistle and sing in it to annoy Nurse Parrot. To say the least, this rather delighted me.

When Nannie Parrot left, our dear governess Dorothy Grey took us over, and everything was fair and square: no favourites. The country came alive. The high blackberries were there to be picked; the pigs, the horses and the cows became friends and we laughed and sang, and the animals were talked to by Miss Grey and us. She was an angel to us and all who knew her. Rachel had her dolls which she loved. Nannie Parrot came to visit us. Miss Grey was with us. Rachel was still “Lovey Dovey” and lo and behold, I was “Sony Boy” for the day!!

Miss Daniels on the Green and also Polly Franklin, the Covent Garden farmer’s daughter and many others in the village were visited by Miss Grey and us. Rachel and I learnt to sit in the chimney corner with the old people and the bacon.

My father started to farm the glebe in about the year 1909. He knew very little about it, but the urge to get near the land in the agricultural Steeple Morden was very natural. My father advertised for a farm bailiff and Mr Phillips applied. My father said “his heart sank” when he saw this sturdy man with his cap squarely on his head, his beard and whiskers. He was a formidable figure for E.Y.O. to deal with probably. My father engaged Mr Phillips and he was ‘a winner’, an absolutely first rate natural agriculturalist, widely respected by all at Steeple Morden. He was out to get the very best out of everybody and he had learnt from Mother Nature the great intrinsic art of good husbandry. My father was safe from farming blunders, and woe betide any boy leading the great magnificent shire horses into the stacks of wheatsheaves, barley or oats. If they wasted time on the way, Mr Phillips would give them a bit of his mind.

Mr Phillips, the farm manager and family came to live in a cottage opposite the recreation ground to begin with. My mother sent Nellie Phillips to a school of cookery and she became our greatly loved cook at the rectory. I used to go and see what she had got to eat at the rectory, and on “Stir Up Sundays” we all stirred the plum pudding. This my Mum and Dad enjoyed so much. If I got a nuisance, like Nellie’s father, she would give me a ‘piece of her mind’.

Annie, the other Phillips sister became our beloved housemaid. She endured the tragic loss of her soldier boy, Wilfred Thompson, in 1916.

There was always a house parlour maid and others about as everything had to be done by hand. It was a wonderful training for a girl to make a home later and they knew it, and were part of the family.

Hymns and family prayers were sung and said after the sound of the gong, sharp at eight a.m. If Mum was down (and she found it hard to make it!) we had slightly involved hymns such as ‘Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones’ or the lovely ‘Come Holy Ghost Our Souls Inspire’. If Ena Orlebar failed to make it, Dad always gave out hymn number one, ‘Now that the Daylight Fills the Sky’ – easily inspiring and quick to sing, then short prayers. We then all greeted each other with ‘Good morning’ and had breakfast.

Then to the stables. “Peter”, my father’s horse was saddled with his hoofs all blackened, and Polly my bay cob was shining like a rooks wing. How wonderful she was.

Dad would mount and say, “Where do you want to go, Godfrey- round the farm or round the parish”? I always said, “Round the farm, Dad”. We usually did a bit of both to start with, as there was lots of grass at the side of the flint roads for us to canter on, and grass galore for Mr. Grayling’s public house cows. My mother visited everyone and was loved in the village. My father visited in the evenings and there were many problems, drink the worst perhaps, and the children with little food or clothing in consequence.

There were fights on Saturday nights. At the houses where weekly wages had been drunk up the wife was frantic to feed her many children.

When people got too old to fend for themselves they had to go to the workhouse. The tragedy was the men were separated from their wives in this institution. It fell to my

father to break the news that they would have to go after the authorities had ordered it as there was nowhere else, and try and cheer them up. These duties were comparatively few but sad.

There was much tuberculosis in our village, and young men and pretty girls who had been active in life would suddenly ‘go into a decline’ and stay home, never to be seen by the outside world again. A terrible scourge.

These injustices have of course been overcome and tuberculosis is now properly dealt with.

Steeple Morden was anything but a fashionable place to live and there were few friends for my mother from the world she had come from. Steeple Morden had perhaps a radical tradition. There was a Miss Spencer at Odsey with her art and pigeons, and also eccentric Sir George Fordham, who no one ever saw! He married a Mrs Wiegall, a sweet woman, who had two children, Celia and Anthony. Sir George wrote a poem to his wife, Celia and Anthony in welcome. This is the first verse of Sir George’s poem.

Celia is coming to Odsey now And all the birds rejoice

And somebody else is coming too Somebody else fil}. dear!

Coming to fill our hearts with love, And fill them without fear!

Then at nearby Ashwell there was dear Phylis Fordham and her husband Wolverley with the retrievers always at his heels and his black poodle ‘Trills’. They had a brewery at the gate – Fordhams fine ales! Phylis made Ashwell into a model village with all conveniences years and years before the other landowners did a thing for their villages. Phylis Fordham was a great liberal philanthropist in her own unique way and she made a lovely house of Ashwell Bury! Lutyens had a hand in transforming the house and the parish church. Wolverley Fordham died and Phylis was on her own for some thirty years. She was a devoted and sympathetic friend of my mother, her very best friend. My mother’s only close friend in Steeple Morden was Lady Francis Tufnell who came to live in Steeple Morden years later in a period house near the church.

Mrs Sydney Fordham was a friend of all our family who lived near Ashwell. We played much good tennis on the Fordhams’ near-perfect grass court. Mrs Sydney had very blue eyes, as blue as the butterflies on Royston Heath and once a week I would accompany my father and Mrs Sydney as they played their weekly game of golf over Royston Heath. It seemed to them both the greatest possible good to get away from it all.

My mother was not in the least athletic and never played a game except whist when she found it hard to keep awake.

There was also a Mrs Ernest Fordham at the far end of the village near the Green Man, who was estranged from her husband. She had no friends, poor dear, but she had a fleet of scotch terriers, perhaps fifteen or so, who barked incessantly to keep the world at bay. Mrs Ernest was a formidable figure. She employed Mr Arthur Crow as her groom. He was first rate and a lover of horses. He had either been trained or made to touch the car at every sentence he spoke to Mrs Fordham. ‘Yes, madam’. Touch car. ‘No, madam’.

Touch car and on and on. In the end Mrs Crow took the plunge and went to my father and her husband came to us to look after Peter and Polly, and eventually the lovely mare, Kate, who was a cross between a thoroughbred and a Welsh Cob, and could go like the wind. Mr Crow gave up the touch car habit at the kindly advice of my father and was a much happier man, now that he was not under female domination. He had however to fill in his spare time on the farm. I can see him now, heaving those great wheat sheaves in the hole half way up the stack. He was so thankful to get back to the horses, especially perhaps to Kate who was his pride and joy.

My father was indeed getting agriculturally minded. One day he lifted up Rachel’s feet in the stable yard and said, “Let me see how you are shod”. He now employed a horse keeper, cowman and various handymen, and things went along well under Mr Phillip’s guidance, which was always there, steady as a rock.

The farm bailiff was as solemn as a judge all year, but at harvest time he used to take his men into Royston in a farm cart with heavy horse and jog home the worse for wear. Next morning all was orderly for the next 365 days.

We had a glorious white shorthorn cow called White Witch, our foundation cow, whose progeny were wonderful producers also. Roan in the main. One day we watched White Witch from the croquet lawn over the stream in the lovely July sunset. She could open any gate on the farm if she felt like it. Mum said, “I believe White Witch is going to have twins”. She actually had two beautiful roan twins next day. This left a great impression on me that Mum should guess right.

Mr and Mrs Gordon Swan kept the village shop. Mr Swan was an elder in the chapel. We were great friends and we would go down and get a penny worth of acid drops. When we finally went to say goodbye to Mrs Swan we cried a great deal and I realised what true friends we all were. Doris Savage helped in the shop. She was the daughter of one of the blacksmiths whose shop was near the Swans.

Mr Roscoe lived near the shop on an acreage and an orchard full of daffodils. We were great friends and he always gave Miss Grey all the daffs she wanted to decorate Steeple Morden church. He was not a church going man. One day he came to tea and I got on his knee in the drawing room and said, “Mr Roscoe ,Daddy and Mummy think you are an awful man”. I was sent to my room at once. Mr Roscoe laughed heartily; he was such a good, happy fellow. When Mr Roscoe left Mum and Dad came up and gave me a lecture on not repeating their views, but they were laughing. After all, Mr Roscoe’s only crime was that he did not go to church! After that, if any opinion on local people came up, Mum would at once say to my father, “Prene garde, Ted. Prene garde”. (Take care, take care).

Miss Grey helped us with all these friendships which were outside church entirely, and Roscoe used to swing us over his garden wall and his daffodils were gorgeous and he was a riot.

Doctor Woodforde was the only doctor. He lived in Ashwell village and also looked after everyone in Steeple Morden and Guilden Morden villages. He did it all on a motor bicycle on awful roads to boot. He was a splendid doctor and all three villages had the greatest confidence in this quiet, unassuming man, who arrived covered in clay mud as often as not. He had a lovely family and his eldest daughter Dorothy was the greatest help to him in bringing up the children after his wife died.

Mr Roscoe also did all his travelling on a motor bicycle. There were no more of these machines within miles.

STEEPLE MORDEN CHANGES

This was an agricultural community; few cars, mostly horses. We had a car the last two years we were at the rectory but I remember nothing about it. It was an impostor and Herbert Burton who came to us to look after it, used to spend a great deal of time underneath the thing. War was looming and Reggie Brown would call out to Herbert Burton under the car, “Born to be a soldier”. Poor Herbert died in France.

Francis Hunt used to come and stay and sing in the village concert with my mother. Other Hunt first cousins of my mother came. Beauchamp Orlebar came from Hinwick House to sing rather more “coloured” songs to the village, and to play the piano very well really with his nose. Aunt Margaret, Dad’s sister, used to make her yearly visitation with her two sons, Aubrey and Ivor and they played tennis with Rachel and me all morning in the summer. Aubrey became a soldier, Ivor a school teacher. The Oliviers came over from Letchworth: Mr Olivier, a high church colourful parson and his charming wife with their sons Larry (Sir Lawrence now) and Dickie who was eventually at Radley with me and Sybil their very lovely daughter who eloped at the age of sixteen.

My father, Olivier and Canon Baldwin from Baldock would read Shakespeare together in the drawing room, turn out the lights and do Macbeth. My mother found it rather frightening but enjoyed these three distinguished men’s company.

When Rachel and I were small children, Aunt Janie came to stay with us at Steeple Morden Rectory. She was the eldest Pym daughter, Grannie Thornton’s eldest sister. She had married a Mr Hunt who was a parson and held the living of Odell in Bedfordshire.

They had a large family. Only Dorothy Hunt is living today at Tanners, Kelvedon, Essex. They were all brought up at Odell, Bedfordshire.

In 1911 we had on the glebe at Steeple Morden a number of farm animals and they all had names. Aunt Janie was then decidedly stout, but later she became a very beautiful old lady. She went with Rachel and me on a tour of the farmyard enquiring the names of all the farm animals. She was genuinely interested, which is so wonderful to small children. We came to an enormous pig and lent over the sty to scratch its back which is customary with country people. Aunt Janie scratched the pig and it grunted as is their custom. Our great-aunt enquired the pig’s name. We answered happily, “Janie”. do not know how Mum sorted out that one. Perhaps Aunt Janie never told her.

The Bishop of Ely, Doctor Chase, came and Rachel and I mimicked our parents who were on this occasion “in a flutter”. “Eggs and bacon, my Lord”? “Tea or coffee, my Lord”? We had never heard anyone made such a fuss of before! It was proper respect.

Canon Randolph was principal of Ely Theological College and lived in the Old Armour at Ely. He was the greatest possible inspiration to my father and eventually my mother and myself. He was a cripple and racked with pain. Canon Randolph was a disciple of the Oxford Movement so my father came out of Ely a High Churchman, though in later years He thought more of the Middle Way.•

Life went on happily for us all except my mother found living on the clay soil after St John’s trying but enjoyed Steeple Morden and her mission in life.

One day in 1914 in June the army had huge manoeuvres and we watched the artillery pouring through quiet Steeple Morden, four horses to each gun carriage. The White Force had white hatbands versus the Red Force who just had khaki. An officer stood in our meadow with my parents and he thought real war was very likely. Dad and I journeyed to Leighton Buzzard and on a hilly spot King George V rode by, surrounded by his generals, Lord Roberts and others. There were a few village men in caps staring at the King on his horse. Dad went among them exhorting them to take off their caps, which they had not thought of, but did happily.

The war broke out in August, 1914- the war that changed everything. The Litlington farm went along well, as did things at Steeple Morden. The men enlisted with no question, and the casualty lists came in every day, and our mother cried a great deal.

I had been sent to Hildersham House, St Peter’s, Broadstairs, that nest of Victorian preparatory schools. I was most unhappy there the first term, after the joys of my mother and Miss Grey. Later I enjoyed the games part of the school. We played St. Peter’s Court and met Prince George there who was playing for the second eleven. Later we moved to Hill Brow, Barby Road, Rugby and got enthusiastic about Rugby School. We watched the great Kettermaster  play rugby for the school and school House.

One day in the holidays my father and mother disappeared. They came back after being absent some three days and announced to Rachel and me that we were about to leave Steeple Morden forever and that my father had purchased Wavendon Farm, Buckinghamshire and Deith Farm adjoining (no doubt on a big mortgage).

We said our fond goodbyes to our happy childhood, Steeple Morden and its splendid people.

Wavendon Farmhouse was being modernised as our new home. It was also on heavy clay soil which seemed odd to me as that was what my mother was supposed to get away from. Needless to say, my mother was not keen on the move. Dad was on fire with· the idea. Miss Grey left me and Nurse Crane was looking after my sister Diana. Reggie Brown went with us to look after the shorthorn herd at Wavendon. He has since become a very big farmer and insurance agent in Canada. The big, big stumbling block was that Mr Philips had had enough; he would not leave Steeple Morden. So my father who knew nothing practical about farming had no managing brain behind him. Mr Buch, the horse keeper, went to Wavendon from Litlington, but he was a horse keeper, not by any stretch a manager of men.

However, the idea was to live in Wavendon Park Farmhouse, and it was having much inflated money spent on it by my father. There was a sentimental attachment to my father’s scheme. Wavendon, owned by the Bonds from America, had belonged to the Selbys and an Orlebar had lived there. He had lost many children because of bad drains and the family had eventually moved to Crawley House which Robert Charles Orlebar had built with the help of his wife’s money on its lovely light land and its gravel subsoil. In the meantime, my mother had gone to Canon Randolph of Ely and asked him if he thought Ted was doing right to give up his ministry and to farm instead. Randolph’s reply was, “Let Ted follow his own conscience”.

So we had a big farm of 400 acres at Wavendon which required the heaviest possible horses and three or four of them in tandem to plough an acre a day with a man and a boy. Horses were worth anything up to £150 for farm work.

Dad went round to the pedigree shorthorn sales to fill up the cowherd with expensive buys from Chivers, Lord Lucas and so on. They had expensive pedigrees but did not put nearly as much milk in the pail as did White Witch who still queened over the herd.

Wavendon Farmhouse was almost ready for occupancy after Mr Hutton, the contractor had had men doing it up for months when suddenly, Valentina Wynter (nee Orlebar) died at Crawley House. Husbourn Crawley, Bedfordshire. The will was proved and she left Crawley to my father as tenant for life, only so long as he paid Orlando Orlebar in Bedford the rent for the property.

Dad wrote to me at Radley telling me I would be coming home to help run the estate, aged 16 ½. My mother told my father, and especially me that it was the worst day’s work my father had ever done. However, things were tightening up and my father anyhow was unable to pay Radley fees.

I said to my father, “Make up your mind, Dad, which you want: the Wavendon Farm properties or the Crawley properties”, but his reply was “I will keep them both. Crawley is my little pleasure place and farm, and Wavendon is our farm”. He had no one at Wavendon he could trust and we all got into Crawley House, rented from Orlando Orlebar of Bedford. Wavendon struggled along rudderless.

The depression came. Wheat was almost unsaleable. Horses were worth £30 instead of £150. The agony and worry were on my father’s shoulders.

It is difficult to write of England to explain how the countryside was to the present generation in 1975. The First World War and the Depression changed everything for the working man and for the aristocracy.

NOTES:  Godfrey Orlebar ended up having to try and farm the land at Crawley Park without horses (except for borrowed ones) and no transport.     Even Polly, beloved by all the family, sadly had to be sold as well. Godfrey’s father, the Reverend Edward Yarde Orlebar narrowly avoided bankruptcy.

Although there was a family tradition that Crawley House was built by Robert Charles Orlebar, records show that the house was in fact built by Reverend Daniel Shipton in 1777 and 1778 and formed part of the 1807 marriage settlement of Daniel Shipton’s daughter Charlotte when she wed Robert Charles Orlebar.

Godfrey’s younger sister Rachel Caroline Lucy Orlebar also wrote her memoirs of her childhood at Steeple Morden.

Godrey’s daughter Caroline recalls that her father kept in touch with Miss Grey throughout her life and that she used to make presents such as knitted socks and scarves for him and all his family which she sent to Canada at Christmas time.

Godfrey and his nineteen year old daughter Caroline came out to England from Canada in 1961 and visited Miss Grey where she was living in a very basic room at Saint Mary’s Home, Church of England convent (now Rottingdean Place apartments) on Falmer Road, just outside in Rottingdean. Caroline recalls what a lovely, happy, affectionate person she was. Of course, Godfrey and Miss Grey reminisced a great deal about the old days.

As related by Caroline, in later years her father and mother invited Miss Grey to come out to Canada to live with them so that they could take care of her but by this time she was too old to travel.

Godfrey Thornton was born on Christmas Eve 1904. In later life he wrote, “In 1969 we visited Mrs William South, the wife of the late Mr William South at Steeple Morden, the man who drove my parents from Ashwell station to our village in 1902. Mrs South was very old but radiant, as she sat by the kitchen stove at the Bakers. She said, “You know your father preached on Christmas Day 1904 from the text ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a child is given’. It was indeed Christmas, but it was also EYO’s way of telling the village of my arrival.

We visited another old lady who had been my mother’s maid. She had never married. She lost her soldier boy Wilfred Thompson in 1916. I walked in after all those years – she was just the same. “Hello Annie”. “Hello Godfrey”  ! knew I was home!