Chenies History

Introduction

Track List

Prelude:

Next

I thought I would start by just telling you how I came to live in Chenies, and just give you an idea of life then, and then go through the village and the different places, the different people that used to live here. My husband had lived in the village all his life and was 12 years older than me and used to give me little bits of information that had happened well before my time, and my father-in-law used to tell me things as well. Where I’ve picked up little odds and ends, oh yes there was Fred Smith who also had lived in the village most of his life and would give me little tidbits, and I keep thinking of these things and jotting it down.

My father was a parson in Herefordshire. We’d lived there for some years and when it came to the end of the war my father took the services of Thanksgiving for peace, and then about a fortnight later he was taken ill on the Sunday and died on the Tuesday. And this obviously was a terrible shock to my mother, and my brother who was at boarding school and myself – but there was worse to come, because when she notified the diocese that my father had died, the letter back came that she would have to be out of the rectory in six weeks, which as you might well imagine was a nightmare because there was nowhere to go. There wasn’t money to purchase anywhere or anything like that, there weren’t the council houses in the same way in those days or anything like that. So in that six weeks there had to be a decision as to what would happen to my mother, and it was decided that she would go to live with her parents who lived in Chorleywood. I would go into digs and carry on in the land army, my brother would leave school at the end of that term because there wouldn’t be any finance to keep him at school, but he would be sixteen and so he was going to go into the air force.

Then the next thing was what to do with the contents in the house. Now there were two very supportive farmers there, and one of them suggested that my mother sorted out a minimum of furniture that would just make a small home if she was ever likely to get one, and he would put it, store it in the attic of his farm house. So that was the decision, and the rest was to be sold. So then we were sorting through things and she had quite a lot of lovely china that had come down from my father’s family including a lovely dessert service -which I loved – which was Royal Worcester with a turquoise edging to it and a different bunch of flowers on each plate, and so you’d got the place sitting plates, and then as they used to have it the ones that went up in a tier like that for the middle, but as my mother said, ‘well you can’t keep anything like that, that’s got to go in the sale as well’.

So everything was sorted out, a nucleus of a home was kept, and then the auctioneers years came in and lotted it all, and an auction took place in the garden of the rectory. I shut my mother in the kitchen because obviously she was absolutely distraught. I was feeling pretty upset but there you are, I was the eldest, I had to get on with it, and I was there at least to answer questions, produce keys where necessary and all that sort of thing, and you watched your home disappearing down the drive on cart and horse or wagon or once or twice lorry, cars and two or three cases, barrows. And it all disappeared and then the rest was taken up and put into this farmhouse. And my mother came up to Chorleywood to live with her parents and I went into lodgings with the mistress, the junior mistress of the village school, and as I say my brother was to come out of school at the end of the term.

Horse Box to Chenies:

I left school at 16, and because I’d always played on the farm all my life in the holiday times, and loved it, and learned to milk and work with the horses, and this was at the beginning of the war, the obvious thing was to go into the land army. But of course, I wasn’t old enough. Eventually, at 16 and a half, I tried, and I was given a long interview, and because I had actually been working on the farm for some time, and because I was a bonnie girl, as they described it, they allowed me to go in at 16 and a half, instead of 17, which was the legal time, which was a great bonus, because I then got a uniform, which helped with the clothing and so that was absolutely great. So I worked through the war years in Herefordshire on a farm there, time went on. I obviously corresponded with my mother every week by letter. Weren’t phones, well, not with the likes of us anyway. Life was beginning to settle down and quieten down, and I’d got my friends round me. I’d got a very good boss, and I was beginning to settle down and feel quite happy, and when it got to the end of November, I had a letter from my mother saying that the farmer, Bill Simpson, who lived at the manor house, wanted somebody to work in the sheds and also who had experience of general farm work for the rest of the time. For this, he would give us three rooms in the manor as a tied cottage to myself. Well, I didn’t want to do that. I was beginning to settle down, I’d got my friends. I didn’t want to move on. But I was the eldest, I had responsibilities, so I came up and had an interview and accepted the job, and I had to give my notice in. I also had to notify the land army that I wanted a transfer. And this I did, and heard nothing, and heard nothing and heard nothing.

And about a fortnight later, Bill Simpson sent a message to say, move or forget it. So I made arrangements to move over here, and I had a little mare that I’d saved up for called Flash. And I’d saved for years, always wanted a horse of my own. She was out of a hunter mare by a well known horse of the day, Bunk Away, and she was only two years old, and she’d only been back twice, but she’d been out on the hills and she was in – she was pretty poor, so she hadn’t got a lot of buck in her. Although I could ride, I wouldn’t say I was a professional rider or anything like that. Anyway, we knocked the corners off each other and had a lot of fun together. I obviously didn’t want to be parted with her, so had to sort out and Bill Simpson had said, yes, I could bring her as well.

So I had to sort out – order a horse truck on the railway to take her from Worcester to Rickmansworth, and also order one of the cattle lorries from the village to take me into Worcester. The furniture was to be fetched from the farmhouse, and ‘please would I be in attendance’ at the time which I was, and as they were almost finishing loading up, the car of the previous man that I’d worked for drew up, and he came with four – I don’t know if anybody remembers them – the grape hampers that they used to have, which were about as big as that and round and about that high. They were made out of very thin strips of wood, and the grapes used to come in these, I believe, I’m not sure, in sawdust, but in something anyway. And there were four of these which were to be loaded up. And he said, that’s your 21st birthday present, which would have been just before Christmas. And eventually, when that was unpacked, it was the Worcester service which said, which was brilliant of them.

Anyway, the furniture went off and everything was sorted out. So I said goodbye to all my friends, and we went to Worcester and loaded Flash on the train. And there was just a compartment at the end with a wooden bench, no light, nothing else, just somewhere where you could sit and you could slide a thing along and look in to see if the horse was all right. And off we set. I can’t remember anything of that journey. I think I was so upset I probably grizzled most of the time. I certainly didn’t look out of the window much. As we got to that the middle of the afternoon, of course, being the middle of December, it was getting dark. Suddenly we were pushed into a siding, and it was an enormous goods yard that I could sort of see through the half light. And by that time, nature was calling, and I was desperate to relieve myself. So the engine had gone off, and I looked round, all across, and I could see in the distance, a lot -across a lot of rails – I could see some cattle pens and sheep pens. And I thought, can I reach there and do what’s necessary and get back before the engine. I had visions of the engine coming in, hooking up and going off and leaving me behind. So in the end, I dared myself, and I opened the door and I climbed down. And any of you who haven’t climbed out of a truck like that without a platform, it’s a heck of a long way down. I got down to the bottom and across the these rails. Oh, thank goodness for that! Beetle back again, and climbed up and got in and closed the door and heaved a sigh of relief I was back safe. And a few minutes later, the train came up again, hooked up, and off we went. Well, I think the relief of that exercise, I must have gone sound asleep on the bench, because the next thing I knew, I heard somebody saying, ‘Well, I know she’s here somewhere, because I saw her‘ and a Porter’s light was being shone through. ‘Oh, there she is. She’s in the corner there‘, and it was my mother and my aunt with one of the porters come to welcome me, and we were in Rickmansworth goods yard. So they took the cases and everything and unloaded Flash and saddled and bridled her, and set off out of the goods yard, up past the Victoria Hotel and up and along the top of the Common. Bearing in mind this is just after the war, so there’s no traffic to bother about at all, petrol rationing and everything. Bullcraft Corner down into Chenies, up the court, into the yard, where Bill Simpson came out and greeted me, and he put a loose box all ready for her and feed and everything for her, and we settled her for the night. And I said, ‘What time do you want me out in the morning? ‘And he said, ‘six o’clock‘, right. And I walked round the front of the manor with my mother, and you got the front door. And as many of you will know, there’s a door at the side, and that was our front door.

Accommodation:

Queen Elizabeth’s room was our bedroom, the room next to that was our sitting room, and the staircase went up there. And opposite was our pantry. And to the left, which I believe is the library now, I’m not sure, was our kitchen, and also had a single bed in it for my brother when he was at home. I might tell you that the pantry when the MacLeod Matthews eventually started exploring in there, found that it was actually the long drop, and that was revealed when they took out some of the shelves. So that had been our pantry.

The water – we were allowed to use the cloak room, which was downstairs, and water was brought up for washing up and cooking, and we washed up with a bowl on the window sill and then took it down in a bucket, down to the cloak room. Down at the bottom of the stairs – it’s different now because it’s been cut through, but the passage finished there in what was our coal hole. So next morning, I’m up and out for six o’clock and it’s pitch dark, and I walk down the yard and no lights and no sound or anything, and I get down to the bottom where the dairy was, and I thought I could hear some noise round the back. So I went round, and there was a boiler house there for heating the water, for washing the utensils and everything. The boiler door was open because he was feeding wood into it, and there was a little chap there doing the fire. And he turned around, saw me at the door, and he said, ‘Oh, are you the new land girl‘, So I said ‘Yes‘. He said, ‘What do you come to this bloody place for?‘ I thought that’s a good kick off anyway. But that – that was Little Bertie. Little Bertie was very short, and he reached about to here on me, and if we were anywhere close, he would put his arm round, supposedly, my waist. But it came down much further. And he was a dear little chap. He was like a little monkey, you know, and he lived with the Costa family up at the Mount.

Now, I think next the best thing is to work round the village. I will start down Green Street at the bottom, because I know some of you have come from Chorleywood, and all of you will know Chorleywood, so I can just tell you one or two things about down there when I was a child, having my grandparents in Chorleywood. My grandparents in the first stage, had bought the old Berkeley kennels when they moved down to old Amersham, and my grandfather had gradually converted it. And as they converted a bit, so they lived in it, and then they converted the next bit and moved round. And they lived in the last bit for several years. And then they’d got a bit of ground right at the bottom. And my grandfather built a house there, which he called Old Berkeley, which I’m sure a whole lot of you know, along at the end of Homefield Road, and next to Old Berkeley was a farm, and they farmed all the what is now the houses along Green Street and Orchard Drive, wonderful fields for mushrooms. You could pick baskets full of mushrooms up there, and the Greens farmed and milked there. And as a youngster, I used to love going out with Mr. Green with the pony and float and the big copper churn there. And he’d go and fetch the jugs off the doorsteps and bail the milk out, or cream, or whatever the order was, and everything. And I used to love doing that, and that was once a year when we managed to get up to see my grandparents for a holiday. And the other treat was that the last day of the holiday, Mr. Green had a daughter, Brenda, and Brenda had a horse of her own for riding, and Mr. Green would take me for a ride, and we would go down the track, under the railway bridge, leaving Kingham’s, which was the only building on the right hand side, which I believe is a garden shop now, or something. The rest was all fields, right, Carpenter’s Wood and the Barrel Arches Wood. And that was all fields there, turn left and along the road, which gradually fizzled out at the end into a rough track. And of course, there was no council estate or anything like that at all. Young’s, I think, was the last shop on the left hand side, and that was a great treat to me. Just at the end of the farm track were two wooden huts. One was a newsagent, and the other one was a collecting point for laundry, which I can’t remember the name of it now, but anyway, they used to collect the laundry there. The old Green Street – you come down to the top of Green Street, and then, of course, it drops straight down – but originally, the old road used to go round to the right and then come along parallel with the railway.

The Railways:

Down there just one or two things that might interest you about the railway. Of course, it was all steam. An enormous amount of goods went through. And I can remember as a child standing on the bridge down- Clements Road, isn’t it? Standing on the bridge, and counting, over 100 trucks going through there, and they went through regularly. All the stations had big goods yards, coal yards, and all of them had cattle and sheep pens. Very, very active. A lot going on. And I can remember, even after we were married, we could write and order chicks on a certain place, and they would write back and say, they will be on such and such a train at Chorleywood and you went down and they were there. And absolutely incredible. And also, I can remember ordering something from a shop in London that some, I think it was bed linen or something, and ringing them up. And yes, they’d got what I wanted. And yes, that’s all right, it would be on such and such a train, which would be at Chorleywood at such and such a time. So you just biked down and picked it up. Absolutely brilliant, when you think of how things are, difficulties of getting things now, although we’re supposed to have moved on. Also another bit of interest from Amersham to Aylesbury, if you go on that line at all, you will realize at several points a bridge goes over the railway where a lane has come down from some village a little bit behind, and at those points, there were steps down from the bridge to a wooden platform, and certain local trains you could hail and they would stop and you could get on and go to Aylesbury, brilliant. All the railway embankments were cut regularly. Everything was kept down, scythed, or bill hooked, or whatever, there’d be gangs of men working the railway embankment. And it amused me.

Once there was a letter in the paper when there was all the episodes about the leaves on the line, and somebody is saying, Well, why did they plant these trees on the embankments? Well, they, of course, they didn’t plant them. It was just seeds that came from the trees, which would have been kept down when the embankments were cut. But of course, once the steam died out, then they didn’t bother about it so much. They did it because the steam, because of the danger of the sparks getting on to anything dry and catching fire, and then that could spread through to crops. But once the steam had gone, of course, they began to slacken off, and then you got this overgrowth on the embankment.

And one more thing that might amuse you was after we’d had the children and I’d got one, I think about what six and baby in arms, the trains used to go through to Woodford Halse in those days, which was south west of Northampton. And we had some friends that lived in a village called Byfield, just outside Woodford Halse. And so I used to take the children up there at half term, and so go into the station and ask for the tickets. And I went in there one year and asked the tickets and the ticket man said, Did you do this journey last year? So I said, Yes. So he said, You didn’t pay enough. I said, Well, I paid what I was asked. So he said, Well, you didn’t pay the full lot. I said, of course, money was very short at the time, so I’m scratching about my purse. That’s what. How much do I owe you? I don’t really know if I’ve got enough. He said, Oh, all right, well, we’ll leave it for now, but I just thought I’d tell you. So there must have been a notice up on the wall, must have been there from one year to the next, saying this woman with two children didn’t pay her proper fare last time. Incredible. Yeah, so that’s anyway. It’s a few things that happened with the railway line.

Chenies Estate:

 Chenies, as you know, was a part of the Bedford estate and we had a steward who kept us all in order and there were certain rules and regulations that you had to abide by. And there were four men. Alf Holloway, Jim Atkins, John Biggs and Sammy Beeson. That’s right. Those were the four who worked actually on the estate and their responsibilities were keeping all the fencing in order, and all the boundary hedges were all cut by the estate. The rest of the hedges were cut by their tenants and all the grass down Green Street and the verges were cut by sythes by these men during the season and all kept tidy.

And you came up to Great Green Street Farm, which was Tom Dickens. And Tom Dickens was a very good farmer and won a lot of prizes with his stock and with his crops at the county show. He had a herd of short horns, which he milked and he also had a very good flock of sheep. And I can remember once coming along the road on my bike and I could see one of the sheep cast in the field and I leapt over the fence and ran over and tipped her up and held her there until she’d collected her wits and the bus that was going along the road stopped and the driver got out and said, are you all right? Now you can imagine that happening in this day and age. Uh, so that was Tom Dickens anyway, and there were no cottages opposite in those days. only Great Green Street Farm. And Fred Smith, who I mentioned to you earlier, told me that his father had worked on that farm many years before, and every year they walked the sheep up to Hyde Park and stayed up there for several weeks grazing. And then walk them back down again to Green Street. Yeah, it’s a bit interesting.

Then further up you come to Little Green Street Farm and that was Bob Dickens, who was Tom’s brother, somewhat smaller farm. And most of the ground was the other side of the road and went down right down to the river and along to Bullcroft Corner. And you went down just down the road as if heading for Chorleywood. And then you turn left in by the wood there down to what we termed Turvey Lane, which was next to Turvey Wood. And you went down there for most of the ground and eventually right down to the bottom, to two River Meadows where the dry stock were kept. And I can remember I used to love going down there. It was my job sometimes. ‘Oh, Joy, will you just go down, um, by the River Meadow as you’re going home tonight or at lunchtime or something? Just see the dry stock’s all right’? And in the spring the wild orchids there were absolutely beautiful. You could pick bunches of them and take them home. I went down there in more recent years and I couldn’t find any, and I, I don’t know if anybody’s been down, found any recently, but I think what happened was after it ceased to be the Bedford Estates, of course the dikes and ditches weren’t kept cleaned out after that, so the drainage wasn’t done. So of course it got more boggy and you’ve got the cloven hooves of the cattle that would be digging everything in, and I think that’s probably what ended them.

The fields down there, I’ve worked in a lot with various jobs. One time somebody let off a gun in the wood next to it and the horse bolted and went straight through a gate. Mercifully, the gate was pretty old and rotten, otherwise she might have damaged herself, but took the cart through as well. Yes, on the right hand side, as I was telling you, you turn off the main road to start to go down through the fields. There’s a small wood, and after the war, they created a camp there for the children out of London to come out and have a holiday. And there were two sheds which were presumably bucket toilets, and they used to have a large tent and that went on for several years. I’m not, I can’t tell you when it stopped, it just sort of suddenly seemed to disappear and die out. But they used to come there a lot.

Down in those fields. A bit of interest, I’m sure you all know there’s a gate opposite the water works and the Duke of Bedford many years ago in my father-in-law’s time, used to like to come over here shooting and fishing, and he’d stay at the Bedford arms. And when he came over, he caught a train to Boxmoor, and then a horse and carriage would be waiting there for him, come down through Sarratt. And then one of the estate men, usually my father-in-law, had to unlock the gates and they came along through the top of that field, through the wood, up Holloway Lane, across the common and into the village to cut off the whole of the Bullcroft Corner. And of course, the gates were locked behind as well.

Also, I worked with Arthur Nunns, one of the village characters. He was a 1914-18 war soldier and he punctuated about every fourth word with a swear word. I’ve got a wonderful vocabulary. I don’t use it, I hasten to add, but I bet I could beat any of you with it. I can remember we were coming up the lane one day, and of course it was in the winter and it was rutty and everything, and we got a load of hay from a haystack down there on, and I was driving the tractor and he was on the drawbar and he’s swearing away for all his work. In the end, I stopped. I said, Arthur, for goodness sake. And he said, what? And I said, well, you don’t keep half, keep on, don’t you? But I don’t think he realized. I think it was just his manner of speech. He didn’t realize what he was doing, but he was a great character.

Years afterwards when my daughter was doing a 20 mile walk for some charity down in Old Amersham. And so we were going round trying to get sponsor money and he sponsored her a bit and he said, ‘what are you gonna do about your feet? You wanna look about after your feet for doing that‘. And gave her one or two tips and everything. And she did this walk, and then we went round to collect the money afterwards, and he said, ‘and how many blisters have you got’? So she said, ‘I haven’t got any’. ‘You got no blisters’? So she said, ‘no, look’. ‘Well, you’ve done very well. I’ll give you sixpence more for that! That’s brilliant’. You’ll see a photo of him at the back there in his favourite spot at the Bedford Arms, but he, he was one of the characters of life.

Another little bit of interest. You’ve got Bullcroft Corner, the field there, and then you’ve got a hedge and they use, that’s the boundary, the the county boundary hedge. If it’s still there, it may not be there now. I don’t know. Anyway, and there was a deep ditch by this hedge, which always was kept dug out every year and cleaned out. That was always when it was Bedford Estates was always kept cleaned out. And then of course, when the estate was sold, because that didn’t happen, and it gradually began to fill up. And it went right across the road through the ground where Clement Danes is now and right down to a back, a sort of dip at at the end, well, the back of Homefield Road. And when they were building Clement Danes, they filled all that ditch up. And of course the old men in the village were saying, ‘well, they’re gonna have trouble there. They’re gonna have flooding there‘. They filled that ditch up and sure enough they did. Next winter Bullcroft Corner was flooded and there was a real shemozzle there and they had to dig out again and put in big draining things and everything. And it’s quite surprising. I don’t know how many of you have found this, but I found through my life where the older people will visualize trouble in certain areas when they’re developing or something like that, but no, no, no. Nobody takes any notice. And then finally there is trouble, you know?

Estate Rules:

 As I say, the little cottage that, uh, we lived in behind Nan Howe, and Mr. And Mrs. Matthews and Ted lived in the front bit. We lived in the back, one up, one down, and a little tiny bit where you could just get a single room in. There was a sink, but there was no running water. You had to fetch the water in from a tap out in the garden.

Down the bottom of the garden, all three of those cottages had an earth pit. I think they were the last ones in the village. I think most of the others had got buckets. And of course, one of the rulings of the estate was that these buckets had to be emptied discreetly, after dark and they were buried in the gardens, hence they had excellent gardens in Chenies. Another ruling was no washing on Sunday and certainly if you dare to do washing, you didn’t hang it out.

Another rule was that you could pick up wood providing you could reach it from the footpath, but you were not allowed to take wood otherwise. That would be collected and taken for the estate. And I can remember my father-in-law telling me that they had a steward, a Mr. McGregor, who lived up to the Peter Rabbit Mr. McGregor, previous to Mr. Owen, and he was very, very strict. And one night my father-in-law, who, as I said, worked for the estate, was walking back home along the walks and through the woods, and he saw a lovely shoulder piece as he used to term it. He always used to come home with a shoulder piece and saw it up before he had his evening meal. And he saw this beautiful bit, but it wasn’t quite reachable from the path. But it was evening and who would know? So he comes up the church alley down the court, and as he’s about to cross the Green, Mr.McGregor appeared from behind one of the elm trees and he said, Jim. You didn’t pick that up from the footpath. Take it back where you found it and you, you had to in those days or else. So he had to take it back where he found it and try and find another bit to bring home.

Oh, another ruling was that the Green, you’ve got the hill that goes down now, past Ince’s and straight down, but there was another one that turned off to the left when you’d come round the corner and it lined up with the drive to go up to Chenies House. Of course, the idea would’ve been, you see with coaches and horses, you wanted to sweep round there and up. If you’d gone the other way and turn the angle, steep slope, alright, you had certain breaks, but very difficult to break the carriage and get the horses acutely round to go up the drive. The idea of going up the drive would be to go up to the end and round and then sweep up from the corner where the signpost is and then sweep up to the Manor. That road was filled up, I don’t know when. It was some years after I had come round here. And they filled that up and I do remember getting off the bus one night in the dark and going head over heels over the little bit of fence that they’d fixed across to stop people going down it anymore. I’d completely forgotten that it was there.

There was also a footpath from the bit opposite Ince’s, sort of the bottom of the court that went straight across to the cottages, the other side of the Green. And that footpath was there, so you weren’t supposed to walk on any of the other grass. That was one of the rulings also with the estate.

Down the Village:

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The Rectory & more:

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The Red Lion:

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Beyond the Red Lion:

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Miss Palmer:

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The Post Office:

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The Bedford Arms:

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Mount Farm & more:

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Flash & Chenies House:

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St. Michaels’s Church:

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Mrs Kilby & others:

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Teeth, Fire and Cold:

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A House at last:

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The Cherry Orchard:

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Booker Hospital:

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The Tradesmen:

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Clay Pits and Lower Chenies:

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The Manor House:

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Horses part 1:

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Horses part 2:

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Finale:

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