Memoirs of Rachel Wyldbore-Smith nee Orlebar (1906-1999)

These are the memoirs of Rachel Caroline Lucy Wyldbore-Smith nee Orlebar of her childhood 1906-1921 at Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire. She lived at the rectory at Steeple Morden from her birth in 1906 until 1921 when she moved with her family to Crawley House, Husbourn Crawley in Bedfordshire. Her father, Edward “Ted” Yarde Orlebar was the vicar of Steeple Morden before the move and her mother was Lucy Eleanor “Ena” Orlebar nee Thornton.

The memoirs include the time of Rachel’s prolonged stays with the Wrightson family at Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex and her boarding school days at St Mary’s Convent, Baldslow, Sussex. They are included here as part of the Steeple Morden memoirs as Steeple Morden Rectory remained her family home.

Rachel continued her memoirs in separate writings about life at Crawley House and elsewhere.

Rachel Orlebar was the younger sister of Godfrey Thornton Orlebar (1904-1989) who has also written his memoirs of his childhood at Steeple Morden and life at Crawley House. Rachel and Godfrey had a sister, Diana Mary (1913- 2021).

Inserts in italics and brackets are not Rachel’s words but have been added to give context or clarification.

Rectory Life

 The rectory home – so full of delights for children. The garden with a trout stream; the copper beech close to the green beech where we made houses in the branches         Cricket on the lawn where Godfrey insisted on my bowling until he had made a hundred, regardless of how many times I’d bowled him out. “I made a hundred today”, he’d say at lunch. Later there was tennis with our cousins Aubrey and Ivor Simpson -fierce battles and insults hurled. Aubrey and Godfrey locked Ivor and me in a pitch dark tool shed. Ivor was very calm and philosophical.

There were huge lovely barns, stables and cow sheds, pig styes and fascinating machines for cutting chaff and mangolds. Godfrey and I took to farming. We knew all the big shire horses and ran under their legs fearlessly when they were in the yard.

Harvest – and how we worked! “Hold tight”, we cried and led the horse to the next stook.

We had Polly to ride. She was about fourteen hands and so quiet that if one fell off she serenely ate grass and waited for one to remount. Then came Jenny sent from the Hazells by Great Uncle Frank Pym. She was small, docile and had been the mowing machine pony. To us she might have been Brown Jack ( a famous racing horse at the time).

We staged a gymkhana with Roberta and Estha, almost the only children of our sort in the neighbourhood. They had proper ponies so Polly and Jenny were outclassed and certainly bewildered! My father loved land as well as playing cricket with the village men. He left most of the visiting (of the villagers) to my mother.

All the money in our money boxes, tips from uncles etc went to buy presents for the village children at Christmas in true Thornton fashion. We knew everyone, welcomed them in church where we worshipped with great enthusiasm, my father being rather high church. Godfrey became a server in a red cassock, to his joy.

When I was four, Miss Grey came to replace Nannie Parrot. She must have been about twenty two, so pretty and bright and full of fun. My first lesson in 1910 was with coloured counters on the nursery table, patterns turning into numbers. I have loved maths ever since.

Certainly Miss Grey enhanced our lives. Blackberry picnics became tremendous treats. For Oxford and Cambridge boat race day she made huge rosettes – dark blue for us as Daddy was at Oxford and light blue for the pupils who were being coached for Cambridge by my father. Feelings ran high.

There were about four pupils: Mr Cecil, Mr Farmer and two more. I remember dining room tea with Miss Grey and the pupils, at the end of which we all sang songs of the day, beating time with our knives on the plates.

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you” and “Yip ay addy I aye I aye

Cheer up Gully you’ll soon be dead It’s a gay life but a short one”

Mr Cecil was particularly fond of this. Later he killed himself as he could not pass his exams! But in those days we sang, we laughed, we were happy.

There were morning prayers in the study. My father really only knew two hymn tunes: New Every Morning is the Love and Now that the Daylight Fills the Sky, both quite incomprehensible to me and probably to Annie, Nellie the cook, Florence and the tweeny.

Goodness me, the scent of the Mrs Simkins pinks that came drifting in from the kitchen garden. There were always masses of flowers. My mother sent some in boxes to her London friends. Godfrey and I planted tulips in our own tiny corner- such ardent gardeners, we dug them up every day to see how they were getting on. There was a wild part down by the stream -Snow Drop Valley, Miss Grey called it and an orchard where we were forbidden to pick the Victoria plums. What a garden! Made with my father’s skill and so beloved by us.

The house was comfortable and well-designed, with about eight bedrooms, one of which my father made into a bathroom – the bath looking rather lovely in its corner. My cot was put in the furthest corner and I slept there for a time.

Dad used to sing music hall songs in his cold bath in the mornings, so gay and full of life and laughter. I watched, entranced through the bars (of Rachel’s cot?).

Dad was called “Ted” but Ted to me was spelt with a “G” and somehow got confused with “God”. How we loved him. In winter what a joy to go after tea to the study and sink into the big sofa by the roaring fire and he would read to us in his lovely voice – Dickens or poetry or Alice in Wonderland or sometimes he’d act out Shakespeare and make us shake in our shoes. He could be strict and beat us if we misbehaved. Quite right, my logical mind decided. Absolution!

My mother played hymns to us and sang nursery rhymes as we stood by the piano, singing such songs as Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly:

Lavender’s blue

When I am king dilly dilly You shall be queen

Call up your men dilly dilly

Set them to work

Some to make hay dilly dilly, Some to cut corn

While you and I dilly dilly Keep ourselves warm!!!

My mother was away a lot- always restless, staying with relations; aged uncles and aunts and so on. The day she was expected home we put flags out of the nursery windows. She might have been the Virgin Mary, we were so full of love.

Miss Grey, our lifelong friend, was a second mother, a life enhancer. She supplied all the warmth, security and gaiety we needed. She had no relations except a deceased, rich grandmother who had left her money but the family lawyer had got away with the lot! Left penniless, she ran away from Guernsey where he had taken her and returned to the orphanage in Brighton where she was born and where her mother had died at her birth. My mother told me years later that she suspected illegitimacy. I saw in Miss Grey a mixture of aristocrat and housemaid. I wonder so often if the son of the Grey household seduced the pretty housemaid. The result- the convent, the orphanage, a home for fallen women; the father possibly a soldier leaving for the wars and his mother taking an interest in the small orphanage grandchild. She might have been the Lady Grey who lived in Palmaira Square in Hove. This is all surmise but I wonder. So D.G. (Dorothy Grey) without relations gave us all her love but she had to be obeyed. When she went on holiday a temporary, Miss Alnut, came. How tiresome it was, with us counting the days until D.G. returned.

One delight was to visit Mr and Mrs Swan at the village shop, past the butchers where Aggie  Jarman looked as if she was made of suet and the bakers where Mrs South made delicious sponge cakes. Forty-eight years later when Godfrey and I called in, she called through to Victor, “Master Godfrey and Miss Rachel have come”, just as though we had seen them yesterday! But I digress! On to the shop clutching our pennies in our hot, excited hands. One awful day I dropped mine in the long grass by the school. Oh, agony of mind – but found at last! Would it be too late? Would all the sugar mice be gone? No, they were there, pink ones, 1d each. What delight!

Next to the shop behind a high wall lived Mr Roscoe, a mystery man. Somehow he acquired a bad and rakish reputation but he emerged sometimes and chatted and joked and flirted with D.G.

Then there was old Mrs Daniels to whom D.G. took us to visit quite often at the end of the village and opposite her was the Hon. Mrs Fordham who bred dogs. She was a formidable lady who most people were afraid of but later I made friends with her and exercised her dogs.

When George V came to the throne, what excitement for Coronation Day! Swings were put up in the meadow and sports arranged. All the village poured in. I remember a great crush on Grace, a stalwart village girl of eighteen. Sack races, flower pot races, egg and spoon races, and finally a sweet scramble on the lawn when Godfrey and I stood like gods with Dad flinging manna to the masses!

A high spot was the village concert when our dear mother sang with our cousin Francis Hunt or sometimes Beauchamp Orlebar- both jolly, rotund men who we loved. They were both semi-pros. Francis produced rabbits out of his suitcase for us when he came to stay. He had been a pierrot on Brighton Pier to the horror of his mother, Great Aunt Janie Hunt. He hardly ever had any money and if he did he put it on a horse.

I see my mother in retrospect, looking so pretty, singing so sweetly:

Grandmama was a nice young girl She said ‘Sir’ to her dear Papa

Wasn’t she a goody goody Grandmama? When she met with a nice young man She would blush and put up her fan Then she sighed very softly ‘Ah’!

Wasn’t she a goody goody Grandmama? Grandmama at about eighteen

Fed and wed up at Gretna Green

Wasn’t she a naughty naughty Grandmama?

This would bring the house down. The other high spot was the men’s supper at Christmas when all the men who worked on the farms gathered for a great feast of roast beef and Christmas pudding and beer. I was the only female allowed to be there, a great treat but fearsome as I had to recite at the end of supper:

To wit to woo a merry note

 While Greasy Joan does keel the pot

Over at last, praise be, and now the men sang in turn.

At Christmas time came a splendid priest to preach on behalf of the waifs and strays.

Alas, I have forgotten his name; it may have been Buckle. Once it was engraved on my heart. We felt strongly about the Ws and Ss as well we might at that time. We worked for weeks before, encouraged by Miss Grey, making pin cushions and frightful little mats etc for our private bazaar.

We also got up plays and performed them on the billiard table which curiously was in the vast bathroom! The household came and applauded and paid 6d each. Splendid”!

In 1913 Diana duly arrived on 12th August. We were thrilled – what an enchanting baby she was.

It was drummed into me that girls were inferior to boys which I took as a matter of course; a fact of life which never worried me!

We had few visitors but when they came, how welcome they were. Not so popular were the great-aunts, Connie and Alice Pym, clothed in black bombazine and looking like huge tea cosies. Alice was rather odd. She once took Mum and Aunt Mary to a tea shop when they were little and asked if they liked meringues – then ordered one and ate it herself!

Connie was formidable. She bossed us about and once threw her muff at Dorothy Hunt, unmarried daughter of Great-Aunt Janie Hunt.

I was seven years old when the first tragedy of my life took place. Beloved Miss Grey had to leave as the schoolroom was converted into the nursery or rather a shrine to Diana. I shall never forget the agony! Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing on my bed that fatal morning when my second mother left. I think she felt it as much as I did. There has always been a golden thread between us which lasted till she died aged ninety-one.

My maternal instincts were strongly developed. Every night my favourite dolls and teddy bears were arranged beside me in bed. So anxious was I that they should be comfortable that I frequently fell out of bed!

But now Diana – here was a doll to outdo them all and I concentrated on my much­ loved sister.

Godfrey went to school at Hildersham House, Broadstairs and I was sent to Ashwell to do lessons with Celia Weigall. Every day in all weathers I set off in the pony cart, driven the two miles by the groom. One time I stayed for a fortnight and they were all very kind but I was told not to run on Sunday! I was desperately homesick. The visit ended at last. Celia and Miss Holton, our governess, were invited to come back with me for tea. When we reached our top drive gate I leapt out to open it. But then caution deserted me. I let it slam behind me. I ran and ran and ran down the drive, through the bottom gate, into the house, into the study and my father’s arms. Home, thank God! “Where are Celia and Miss Holton”? Where indeed?

Looking back one realises that children often want to shut out strangers however kind. They feel they are a threatening force.

My mother was nowhere to be seen. She’d probably forgotten we were coming.

Sometimes we went to Brighton where the great aunts Connie and Alice lived in Hove and also Great Uncle Fred their brother and various relations. Dressed in a scarlet coat made from my deceased Grandfather Thornton’s Grenadier Guards’ uniform and beaver hat, I paraded up and down the front with Nannie pushing Diana in her pram. Oh, the incredible boredom of this procedure – and I missed Miss Grey’s stimulating company and also Godfrey.

Sometimes Diana held court and various elderly gents came to pay homage, Uncle Fred and Reggie Orlebar among them. I felt so proud of her. She looked enchanting in her chariot.

One morning my father took me to a dairy. I looked with delight at the big pans of creamy milk which reminded me of home. To my joy my father ordered two tumblers. He also took me to a swimming bath but the water was so cold I was frozen.

Soon, came a great change. Through Dorothy Hunt (a maternal relative) it was arranged that I should go and live in Essex in term time with the Wrightsons who lived at Felix Hall, Kelvedon, the idea being that I should be a sister to their little girl Sylvia who had four brothers. I was now about nine years old.

I travelled down from London by train with Mrs Wrightson, a lovely, darling person who I later called Aunt Helen. I was very shy and never spoke to grown ups if I could help it, so it must have been pretty heavy going for her. We were driven in a dog-cart some way from Kelvedon village.

Through a wooded drive and a second gate and there in the distance surrounded by a vast park was an enormous house which I took to be Buckingham Palace transported! We walked up the palatial steps to the portico. The front door opened and we were greeted by a terrifying shout of “BOO” from three rampageous boys. My nerves were shattered – but all at once there was Sylvia! Lanky brown hair, a brace on her teeth, showing no sign of her future loveliness. But so friendly and welcoming; she enveloped me with kindness and took care of me from then on.

Into the vast dining room where the life-sized portrait of Sir Thomas Weston hung, a forbear of Aunt Helen’s, to eat a vegetarian supper of nut cutlets – very nasty!

I was rather over-awed by the size of the house – a great hall and billiard room where we played and a tremendous double staircase which we used for team races down the banisters. I often dream of this.

Sylvia’s twin Chris had TB glands so was kept at home instead of going to school. The idea was that we should live outdoors as much as possible. Aunt Helen built a great concrete two-storied verandah at one end of the house. Very ugly! We did lessons at the bottom and slept at the top in all weathers, summer and winter. Snow was often on our beds. Roger, the eldest son was at home and also Anthony and Richard aged five. Every evening we undressed in our bedrooms and then rushed to the verandah to bag the best beds. It was like a dormitory and Harry and Helen Wrightson often slept there too.

The 1914 war had started and there were camps on each side of the park. I shall never forget the evenings when, from the verandah, we could hear the bands playing for the soldiers as they marched to the station, drafted to France.

Aunt Helen thought it would be nice if we did an uplifting play for them in a tent. It was called The Little Flowers of St Bridget. Sylvia and I took part with great enthusiasm!

There were cat calls, whistles and cheers. It seemed an odd choice!

Most of the men-servants had left by then; Percy the footman (with whom Sylvia had been in love), the butler and various others. But there still remained fat old Nursie and a regiment of maids. We had two governesses; Miss Wilson, pretty, slim and fair and Miss Jenkins/ dark and vivacious.

But the boys were beyond all control and rampaged and played them up unmercifully.

Anthony, the third son, was slightly more civilised and was good with grown ups. We disapproved and called him “Ant”.

Richard, a firey child, dressed usually in bright red, had to be treated with care.

Harry Wrightson sometimes wore a uniform but he commuted to London every day to his insurance firm, Matthews Wrightson. Later he stood as MP for Leyton. A very handsome man, he and Aunt Helen were a wonderfully loving and attractive couple.

Aunt H. was very high church. There was a private chapel and we went every day, taking Ratty, my white rat, to prayers. We took it in turns to ring the Angelus at noon. Having to climb on a high brick wall to reach the rope, we frequently fell off! Clang, clang, clang! Every week Father George came to hear our confessions. We made out our lists of sins with care, sitting together at the school room table. One day I unwisely stated the fact that I was hard up for sins and could only muster three. “Rachel”! they cried, “Give us your paper”. The boys wrote out a long list. After the confessions Father George came out to the garden to play hide and seek with us. God will forgive me I thought but Father G. will not bear to touch such a sinner. Great was my relief when he caught me in his arms!

I adored animals and one term I had taken my beloved white rat which had been given to me. He had ruby eyes and the softest fur and oh, such gentle little feet. Sometimes I took him to the kitchen to persuade the cook to give us food for a midnight feast. Alas!

The servants hated him. When I recovered from a bout of flu I was told he had died. The boys cheered me by staging a great funeral. We laid him on a black mat covered with flowers, parading through the whole house. It must have cheered the staff considerably!

Next term I tried a canary but as I refused to keep his cage door shut he inevitably flew away.

All the Wrightson children were devoted to cats. They had one each. They took these to bed with them and they must have acted as good hot water bottles!

Ratty used to arrive on my pillow having left his cage and run through the house. Oh Ratty, how brave you were! May you rest in peace!

The house was full of officers billeted with us and Miss Wilson inevitably became engaged.

There were dances when Sylvia and I were allowed to look on. Dressed in our best frocks, we waited by the door of the ballroom. I remember praying that some officer would dance with me but alas, no luck! “Rachel is very silent”, said one grown up to the boys. “Does she ever speak”? “She makes more noise than all of us put together”, Chris replied.

It was a strange life. I certainly missed out on ground work and French as far as lessons were concerned.

In summer we were nudists and became very expert on the trapeze, daring each other to more and more stunts. I used to hang naked by my ankles, my long fair hair streaming down and the boys pushing me higher and higher. I imagine the governesses had given up.

At Feering where Aunt Janie Hunt lived, the boys taught me to swim by the simple method of taking my clothes on their heads to the other side of the river. “Swim over, Rachel”, they cried. I swam!

I loved Sylvia dearly and we seemed to be soul mates.

Home for the holidays where Diana was becoming companionable, I enjoyed playing with her and watching her have her bath by the nursery fire with Nannie singing her old familiar songs.

Godfrey and I spent much time out on the farm which continued to delight us.

At Felix Hall tragedy struck! Harry Wrightson caught the deadly flu and died suddenly.

And Aunt Helen soon died of a broken heart, the doctors said.

It was 1919. Now it was decided that Sylvia would go to school at North Ferland and I was sent to St Mary’s Convent, Baldslow near St Leonalds-on-Sea in Sussex, a glorious house and garden which had belonged to Augustus Hare. The Reverend Mother was Sister Agnes Mason, a Cambridge friend of my godfather, Uncle Gus. There I made friends with Felicity Warner, known as Flicky, whose father, General Warner was later to become our MP in Mid Beds! I was fairly happy. We were well taught but there were so many petty rules and to go to bed at 6.30 in high summer was a great strain. However, we worked out many ingenious ways to circumvent them.

We were forbidden to go round the wood at the end of the garden. One day Flicky who was a rebel, dared me to go round with her in break time. We tore round- back just in time, praise be! No dark strangers had leapt out of the bushes to kidnap us. Not that we expected that-we had no idea why we should not explore. Alas! Flicky had dropped her handkerchief. It was found with the inevitable name on it! Hells bells! “Has anyone else been round the woods”? I lifted my trembling hand. For a whole week we had only bread and water. No one was allowed to speak. It seemed a pretty hard fate.

Rosemary Hart, Flicky and I wrote and illustrated a prospectus for “Bonnie Baldslow School”. I have it now and considering we were so young it seems quite talented and witty. It was found! My picture of two tottering nuns with the caption “Several sisters are kept at the school for the amusement of the pupils” luckily amused the head, Sister Dora.

In the holidays, Godfrey and I were sometimes sent to lvybridge in Devon to comfort Uncle Evelyn Orlebar and Aunt Minnie who had lost their beloved only child, Bob in the war. What a Paradise for children! They lived at Rutt, a house they had built on the edge of Dartmoor. There was a small farm and moor ponies to ride. Godfrey, an intrepid rider, would ride bare back to lvybridge every morning to fetch the tough-cakes for tea which we ate smothered in Cornish cream and honey from the farm.

Aunt M. enveloped us with love. She took us to Thirlston and other lovely seaside places for bathing and picnics – and also to Plymouth in her large chauffeur-driven car. Her grown up niece, Aleen Dart, was often there and added to the cheer.

About this time my father, who had a passion for land decided to give up his parish and transfer his family to Wavendon, Bucks where he had bought a thousand acres. We were to live at Park Farm, a bleak and uncompromising house. However, fate decided otherwise!

Three miles from Wavendon at Husbourn Crawley, Beds, lived Valentina Wynter (nee Orlebar), first cousin of Dad’s. She had inherited a half share with her sister Arrabella of the lovely Georgian Crawley House with 108 acres. She had no children, having deserted Mr Wynter and returned to her mother, Aunt Charlotte, after one night of marriage!

Arrabella had married her cousin, Captain Orlando Orlebar. They had one son, Orlando, who lived an invalid’s life in Bedford and was thought to be somewhat arrested. He had no interest in Crawley. His parents were now dead. Valentina had the willing of the estate, known somewhat pompously as ‘Crawley Park’. Uncle Gus’s son Harry was the rightful heir, but he had disappointed Valentina by not calling on her when he was in camp nearby. Bob (son of Rachel’s Uncle Evelyn Orlebar and Aunt Minnie) had been killed – so there was Godfrey and there was Ted! I think it was the twinkle in Ted’s blue eyes as well as his love of land that decided Valentina to leave him her share, on condition that he lived there.

I remember a few years before being taken to see Valentina in her black wig and red shawl. I was sure she was a witch. Now she was dead. So we moved into Crawley with its fourteen bedrooms and my Pa became a landed gent to his delight.

For photographs of some of those mentioned please visit Orlebar Images