CD1

(63 mins)
 

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BORN NORTH WALES, 1924 / 1933 TO DULVERTON WITH MR BROWN / JURY HOUSE / SCHOOL

He lives at Kings Corner Dulverton. He was born in 1924 in North Wales. His father, who was working for Mr Brown, who moved [to Dulverton] in 1933, brought the family of youngsters down. His father was groom for Mr Brown at the time, who moved to Jury House, which is about a mile out of Dulverton at the top of the hill that goes down to Hele bridge. Mr Brown retired and came down to do a bit of hunting in 1933. PK thinks he can remember that it was 24^th of March. He was nine. He can remember it because it was the Grand National day, and of course he was very excited. They were youngsters coming to Dulverton, which they had rosy pictures of, painted for them [Laughs]. There were five children in the family. It was debatable whether they would come with Mr Brown at one time. A couple of months before he moved, he changed his mind and said he would do some hunting. He had thought that he would retire from riding altogether, he played a lot of polo in N. Wales, then he decided he would carry on hunting. Hence he brought the Kennedys along.

Mr Brown lived in Jury House. The Kennedy's lived in Jury Lodge, towards Pixton. It was part of the Pixton Estate when PK took over when his father died, but at that time Mr Brown took it on with his place. When his father died it switched back to PK. He was working there then. His father died in 1948. By which time PK had been in the Air Force and out again. He was the main carpenter down there [at Pixton] then.

Dulverton was quite good to start with, but PK was a bit disappointed because it wasn't as it had been described to them, as a romantic place. He's got used to it since, obviously, as he's still there. He lost his friends from Wales. He's an outgoing sort of person and had got friends with lots of people up there. They had got used to the fields and woods up there, where they had played and made caves [Laughs]. It was just what they had got used to growing up. Then when they got to Dulverton it was all change. They got into the swing of things after a while. The other children mimicked them because they had a bit of a Welsh accent.

PK has a sister younger than himself. He's seventy-five now. He was nine, nine days before he came to Dulverton. He went to the local school until 1938. Dulverton school was a little bit poorer than the school in Wales. It was quite a good school they went to up in Shotton. At Dulverton {he didn't know whether they called them classes} he was in class three. In Shotton he was in class one, so you can tell the difference. He thought he had been upgraded! The class sizes were about thirty or thirty-two. The classrooms were always full. He got on fine with the other children. They found a few mates to play around with. It was usually football or cricket or finding some one to have a row with! [Laughs] You know as you do. When you are at school, you don't agree with everyone all the time. Sport was their main pastime.

At home they played amongst themselves, as there were four of them. So they were able to keep themselves amused some way or another. They were allowed to run around the woods at Pixton. Nobody bothered them. So they more or less carried on as they were in Wales, once they got used to the area. [Back to top]
 

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PIXTON / CARPENTER / SAWMILLS / WEIR / TIMBER

Before he left school, Mrs Herbert, who ran Pixton then, asked his father what PK wanted to do. He wanted to be a carpenter. So she said they would like to have him on Pixton. She didn't come to ask for him until a year after he had left school. He was desperate to earn some pocket money so he went to the local baker delivering bread. The baker was called Walter Pike. PK went into the bakehouse in the morning and did some bake housework, making buns and doughnuts, and then back home for breakfast. He got back in time to meet the van and the driver then go on the rounds. They were out for hours, until ten o'clock at night delivering bread. In those days people ate an awful lot of bread. They delivered about six or seven loads a week, mostly bread. He hated every minute of it. He was waiting for Mrs Herbert to say come on to Pixton. His father would not let him go and ask. He said you don't do things like that; you have to wait for them to ask you. So PK didn't ask. It was more than year later, fifteen months, when he went to Pixton. He started at Pixton November 1939. They knew Mrs Herbert because the lodge was only a quarter of a mile from her house. Mrs Herbert involved her with all the tenants.

Pixton was a private house with forty odd rooms. They had a big staff. The Pixton family were closely related to Lord Carnarvon. There was about eighteen or nineteen staff indoors. They had grooms and gardeners. When PK went there, there were seventeen or eighteen estate workers. There were eight or nine farms, or even more. There were about sixty-eight cottages. Many years ago when he went there it was much bigger. They had Hawkridge, Brompton Regis, Upton, Skilgate. They all belonged to it. They had all gone except Skilgate when he started. In his time it was about three and half thousand acres he thinks. He understands that there were six or seven carpenters there, but when he went there, there was only one elderly carpenter, who he joined. PK wanted to be carpenter just like a boy wants to be an engine driver, he fancied making something. He's made quite a lot since. It was a good start down there. Anyway it was a job. The hours were regular. He agrees that you have to start at seven o'clock in the morning until five, but at least he did finish at five. Whereas delivering bread, you never knew when you were going to finish. It could have been seven, eight, nine, or even ten o'clock.

PK thought he was going to be a carpenter and a carpenter always wore a white apron. So he got a white apron. When he got there, the old carpenter was away finishing a job, and he didn't need any help, the agent, who was the boss, said I want you to do some creosoting! The white apron didn't suit very well. So they dressed him up in a sack. He was disappointed. He didn't expect creosoting to come into carpentry. He had to creosote some fencing that had already been made to go round a house at Allendale, down at the bottom of Pixton Park, near where Amory Road is now, one field across from Pixton Way. The carpenter he worked for was called Jack Maddock. He was getting on a bit, but he was a very good carpenter. PK got on very well with him. Just before PK was called up in 1942, he had a heart attack and died. It coincided with PK going into the army. When he came back again there was another man there, so PK did a year or two with him. Then he left and PK was on his own. He was fifteen and a half when he started at Pixton. His second day was rather like the first, still creosoting, because there was quite a bit of fencing to do. After that he got down to brass tacks, down to business, Marking out things and mortices and tenents [?sp], and that sort of thing.

They had a big workshop, which is now a luxury house. They had a carpenter's shop and sawmills, for cutting their own timber. He was based at Weir, which was the working area of the Pixton estate. It was where the farm was and the estate office, sawmills and carpenter's shop. It was about three miles out of Dulverton on the Minehead road towards Brushford. [Pauses] It was like a little head quarters. There was four or five cottages and a farm. There was a large sawmill. In the carpenter's shop there were these three big benches, so it was quite big. When he was there it was empty because there was only the two of them in it. They were always out working on farms. On certain occasions, if they were doing someone's roof, and it was raining, they would go and help in the sawmill. Or they could go and make gates, doors or windows in the carpenter's shop. They worked it together.

There was a man in the mill all the time. He sawed the wood for making gates for farmers. When they came down to pay the rent they wanted a dozen gates. So he would make sets of gate materials. So they always had to have a bit ready for when the farmers came. The farm manager, Bert Goss, had a house at Weir. He was a nice chap and they got on with him very well. He was a nice character to work for. They didn't get too involved with the other estate workers, who also did the forestry. They brought in any trees that they wanted in the sawmill. They would say they wanted oak, or mostly chestnut or larch or spruce. Oak, larch and spruce were the main woods they used on the jobs they did. They would bring them in when they were wanted or bring in a supply. Then they could put out some to dry. They didn't have much to do with the rest of the staff. They knew them of course but they didn't work with them.

So PK selected the timber that he wanted, more or less. They would make out an order and get the stuff in, in advance. Two men would have horses and a timber carriage and they would bring it in before breakfast, Because they had other jobs after breakfast [Laughs]. They started at seven. There were about three chaps, who did the forestry, in charge of the planting and felling trees. When they got the trees felled, the man with the horses went out and pulled it down from the covers and loaded it and brought it in. It had to be done before breakfast so that it didn't interfere with any farm work. Very often it would be stored to season. If it were wanted instantly, somebody wanted a job in a hurry, it wouldn't be seasoned at all. Mostly if they could they got a bit of timber in, and got it drying for a year or so in advance. It wood be an occasion when they hadn't got much else on. [Back to top]
 

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CARPENTRY / HOUSE / TENANTS / MRS HERBERT&LORD CARNARVON / STATION / HANGING PICTURES

PK's work was farm buildings, roofs, doors, conversions, if they wanted to change from say cattle to pigs. They had work in the house. They always looked after the locks and windows; sash cords were done in Pixton House and house carpentry. Then they got involved with staff in the house. Cottages had repairs to stairs and floors. There was a mason working with them. He did a bit of plastering, so they helped him. Everybody helped one another. They didn't stick to their own jobs. They had to help when there was a limited staff. It wasn't many people to cope with the repairs for so many cottages on the estate. In his time money got shorter and staff got shorter. There were between seven and eleven farms as he remembers. There was always a lot of work to do because several had got into disrepair. Cottages as well. They had to wait until they got around to doing it.

All the staff lived in the cottages, and husbands who had worked on the estate before. Most of the tenants had something to do with the estate before. If one of the staff died, they didn't throw the widow out. She carried on living there until she died, or went to live with her daughter. After the war it was slightly different. A lot of strangers came around and took over the cottages. At the end when Mrs Herbert died he was the only one left. The mason had died, the other carpenter had gone, and it was just left to him. If he wanted to have some help, he had to get a man from the estate. Or they borrowed some men from some building firm.

Mrs Herbert came to Pixton when she married Colonel Herbert, who was Lady Carnarvon's son. She [Lady Carnarvon] was the second wife of Lord Carnarvon. High Kirk at Clare Castle [?sp] was their main house. Pixton was more or less their country house where they did hunting, shooting or fishing. When she died, Colonel Herbert was her son as opposed to his half brother, who later became Lord Carnarvon. He was of Tutankhamen's tomb fame, or infamy, he doesn't know which! His stepmother, when she died, left it to her son, Colonel Herbert who married Mrs Herbert. He had died before PK was born. The Carnarvon Arms was named for a Lord Carnarvon. He doesn't know which one.

The station at Brushford wasn't connected to them. PK was sure that they owned a lot of ground. They cut a road through Perry. Colonel Herbert had a lot to do with that, giving the ground. So that when the station was opened, it made a short cut through from the Bury side into the station. Perry farm is between Pixton and Brushford, between the Brushford road and the old Exe valley road that comes from Minehead. The station was opened in eighteen something, PK can't remember. There's a tablet on the wall at Perry, on the rocks, with all the dates and the names of the men who were the trustees, people who had something to do with cutting the road to the station. He thinks that the road was made e few years later than the station. That was when they found out the station was so convenient, and they had to go all round Exebridge.

The old carpenter that PK knew taught him everything he knew and PK has added a lot since then of course, through necessity. The other chap who came afterwards, he didn't particularly learn a lot from him. He was called Alfred Chilcott. He was an older man, a different natured chap. He wasn't interested in showing anyone anything. He was only there for two years anyway, after PK came back from the air force. He went up to the house quite a lot before he went in the forces. They did repairs to the roof if there were any leaks. They did door repairs or easing doors. They repaired locks. They also had a day hanging pictures. They would have a day changing the pictures or moving the furniture around. When they did that, they had to be there to supervise it. Mrs Herbert did that quite a lot. She thought that by changing the pictures around it didn't get so boring. It made it like another room. That was another bit extra they had to do. He enjoyed doing that. It was cushy job. It was much easier than digging holes and putting in gateposts. [Back to top]
 

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LODGE GATES / DRIVES / UPKEEP / HOUSE / LANDSCAPE CHANGES

They had to put up all the gates on the Home Farm. The drive gates were quite a thing. There were a least eight of the ornamental gates that needed repairing and painting. They were all painted and chamfered with a big round arch, and a hanging post. They had lock fittings to them so they could lock them every year. They were quite ornate gates. He doesn't think there are any left now. They had to look after those gates. People lived at the lodge gates, to open the gates for Lord and Lady Carnarvon when they passed in the coach. The lodge keeper, usually an estate pensioner, would come out and open the gates. It never happened in Mrs Herbert's time. She got out and opened them. Obviously it was a car in her day. He doesn't remember anyone opening the gates. He lived in one of the lodges. They didn't have to open any gates. It wasn't part of their rent. [Laughs] He thinks the estate pensioners had the lodge rent-free when they retired. They just had to be responsible for opening the gate when they heard the carriage coming. That went out when cars came in.

The drive was called Lady Harriet Acland's drive. The drive went right to Hartford. All the ground where the Wimbleball reservoir is, PK used to ride his bike up there, when they were working at Upton Farm, belonged to Pixton. Often they would be carrying pots of paint, bits of timber, or perhaps a few slates. They would tie them to the handlebars or their backs. It was only small amounts. They had an estate lorry that would take up the bulk of it. If they wanted a bit of batten or a pot of paint, they would carry those themselves. They went up through where the dam is, through the drive. That was continuation of Lady Harriet's Drive, which went right to Bury, through Bury then up again to the lodge and on to Hartford. Drive, up a bit then across the river. It came out at Upton. To them it was a short, cut riding a bike. Lady Harriet was a relative who married into Pixton, about three generations before. PK has got the history. She was member of the Herbert family. Herbert is the family name of the Carnarvons.

All the drives had a name. There was the New Bridge Drive that was from Pixton down to Brushford. There was a Lady Victoria's Drive. She was a sister of Colonel Herbert. It was a family thing. There were a lot of drives within the estate, which all led up to the house. There was a drive from Pixton to Weir, the working area of the estate. There was one that they rode their horses on. They called it the back drive. It came down from the other end into Weir. That led off from the New Bridge Drive down to Brushford. They took some upkeep. They were done with gravel, which was quarried near Tom Yandle's farm at Riphay. There's a little quarry there in one of his fields that was owned by Pixton. It was in the Exebridge area. It was creamy gravel. All the drives were done with it.

The one man who lived in the lodge did the drive up to Pixton, and the drive down to Weir. Others would do the path to church where the staff would go to church on Sunday mornings. That went down through Allendale, through where the Amory Road is now. Others did the drive that goes out at Jury Road. They all had a section to do. They quarried it themselves at Exebridge, using a donkey and cart. They broke up the stones and kept the drive in good order. It stopped about 1910-1920. The church path has got covered with leaves. PK did dig it at one time. A foot below you can still see the gravel there. It's covered now. The front drive that comes out at Jury is tarmaced. There is still the rough drive down to Weir from Pixton. It's patched up with stones. It's no longer cream gravel. The back drive to Weir, across the park, has disappeared altogether, except for a cart track. There's a bit of drive and drive gate up there, that goes down on to the top park, that's very rough. Dragging timber across makes it impossible to travel with a car there now.

The landscape hasn't altered a lot. Amory Road has been built since PK went work there. There's one or two houses been built towards the cemetery. There is nowhere near Pixton. There's an extra house at Weir. The sawmill has been converted to a luxury dwelling. That's it. There's obviously a lot more at Bury now. It's no longer the estate. There is a bit of the estate. The new owner is Sir [?]

Edward Goschen. PK doesn't think they have done any alterations. [Back to top]
 

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BURY - BLACKSMITH / READING ROOM / VILLAGE LIFE / SCHOOL CLOSURE

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Before Bury was just a village with mostly staff living in it. There was a little village hall with a reading room, a little chapel, Blacksmith's shop, and that was it. The river Haddeo split it up of course, there was the lower side of Bury and the higher one That was all part of the estate. PK worked many times in every cottage.

The blacksmith did a lot of ironwork for them if they wanted it. They had priority because the estate owned his shop. PK thinks he had cheap rent on condition they had priority. If they wanted anything they had to come first. He was the only blacksmith for the estate. He was the only one that PK could remember there. When he left, it finished as a blacksmith. PK went over there as a boy to take patterns and drawings, saying they wanted this or that. He used to say that if PK wanted them in a hurry, he would have to start blowing the bellows for him to do the work!

They had ornamental hangings made for gates made, brackets if they needed to do a special job, guttering brackets and hurdles and gate nails were made there. They were rough nails that gripped into the timber when he was making gates. They were thinned out at the end so they could be turned over. So they never had bolts, they just put the nails in. You would order a dozen from him, when you were doing some gates or lambing hurdles. It was anything of that nature. The brackets were for putting up shooting, guttering, on the houses. He could make anything really. He was a clever blacksmith. He could make iron bars for making holes when PK needed them for putting in gateposts. Any bit of steel they needed, like cold chisels, he always made them for them. He was quite a useful man.

The blacksmith bought his material himself. A lot of the shoeing irons he did, came from Germany. When the war started he was struggling to find some other source of supply. He was named Jack Thorne. He was an amusing old chap.

He ran a taxi as well. He had an old car that he repaired with patches of stiff metal. He would go down to the station to meet people off the trains. He would take pensioners into Dulverton for their pensions. He was a useful character in the village. When he had to meet someone he'd leave and be back again in twenty minutes. He didn't keep to any set times. He didn't shut down at five o'clock. He just carried on and did the work that had been ordered. If a horse came in he would still have to meet a train but he managed. He was a big chapel man. He played the organ in the chapel. So he was a much required person! [laughs]

When he had to meet a train it was quite amusing. His wife came out into the porch and reminded him it was time to pick somebody up. He had a complete shirt front, collar and tie all fixed up. She would fix it. Then take his leather apron off. He always wore a pair of breeches. Then he always wore a sort of sports jacket. He would change his cap, and then he was ready as a chauffeur. It was a filthy shirt underneath from blacksmithing. It was like a plastic shirt front with a collar and tie on it. Nobody was the wiser. He didn't bother about the shoes because he was sitting in the car. No one could see them. He didn't go to the trouble of opening the door for them. They had to get in themselves. He would change his cap. He had an old greasy cap in the shop, and his wife would bring out the jacket, shirtfront and cap. In two minutes he was ready for taxi service. He was an amusing but a valuable character in the village.

The Thornes garage in Dulverton later on was no relation. He had one son who went to Watchet to live. PK believes he's dead now. The organ the blacksmith played was in Bury church, which is now a cottage. Someone had it converted eight years ago. PK hasn't been down there for eight years, but when he was working there, extra houses kept popping up. It still looked the same. You could recognise it. Other houses, which people had bought, they had done them up and changed them. It was an improvement. The village looked better for it. It's a very quiet village now and it was before, in spite of the horses coming in from far and wide. It was a common thing. Nobody got excited about it.

They amused themselves. They were a close-knit village. They were always doing something like whist drives or dances in the reading room. Som one would play an accordion or something like that, a piano. They would amuse themselves probably better than they would today. [Comments on the popularity of television] People didn't read in the reading room. They used it for recreation or learning. At one time, to improve the education of the working population, reading was taught there. That's where it got it's name from originally. No one went reading in there in his time, that he can remember. It was mostly social events. The Women's Institute met there.

The church that has been converted to a house used to be a school in the week and a church on Sundays. They built a little chancel on the back, and put a screen across. There were some people called Greenhaugh (not -hall', Greenorge [?sp]) [hesitates over pronounciation], who had a daughter who was a teacher. He was the headmaster and she was the under teacher. The school was next door to him. He thinks it is still called the schoolhouse. All the local children went there. PK can remember going to school in Dulverton when there was a sudden influx of children. They had closed the Bury school. It was about 1936 or 1937. Some went to Brushford and some came to Dulverton. From then on the church was a permanent church until ten or twelve years ago when it was sold. It belonged to the estate, and converted it into a house. It's changed hands several times since. [Back to top]
 

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WAR SERVICE / PIXTON POST-WAR / CENTRAL HEATING

PK came to Pixton in 1933 and war broke out in 1939 so he had been at Pixton six years. At the time they lived in the lodge. There were two lodges. They had just about got a radio but it happened that the battery was flat. They hadn't got electricity. The people across the way their radio was going so they fixed it up in the sitting room opened the window and they all listened to it on Sunday September 3^rd. They listened to Chamberlain declaring war. They all stood in the drive. It was a lovely day. There was his father, mother, and brothers. At least one brother was working then. There were four of them. The next-door neighbours had got two children, so there were four of them. In PK's family there were six so there was ten of them altogether. They wondered whether they would have to go. In the end all PK's family went. Three went in the army. He was the odd one out. He went in the airforce.

He was fifteen when the war started and eighteen when he was called up. He was actually eighteen and a half because he was delayed. When he went for the medical, he had a bad cold. They sent him home and said they would call for him because they passed their medical straight away. He had to have a cold didn't he! [Laughs] They all went for their medical in May then they got called up in October. He went for another medical in August and was called up in December. He chose the Air Force because he had joined the ATC in Dulverton. They formed the Air Training Corps in 1940. He took an interest in aircraft and said that was for him. He was disappointed because he didn't pass the medical. He had exceptional eyesight and bad feet. So he didn't qualify for air crew. That was his ambition. It never materialised so he went as an airframe fitter. That was what he was all the way through, for four years and nine months. [Back to top]
 

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LIGHTING / LAMP BOY / GENERATOR / TURBINE AT WEIR

Candles and lamps lit the house. There were brackets everywhere. There was a room, which they converted to a boiler room later, just called a lamp room. They had a boy seventeen or eighteen, and he was called the lamp boy. He trimmed the wicks and filled the lamps everyday with oil. It must have been difficult up there without any electricity. It was put in in 1928.The firm was Hancocks from Sparkford. It was renewed in 1968. When it went in 1928 it was with it's own generator. That was up in the stables and garage. It was kept in order by the chauffeur, who was also an expert on engines, so he looked after the diesel engine for the generator and kept the batteries in good order. The generator lit Pixton and the three cottages around there. He doesn't know the power of the generator but it was quite a big one, a diesel. It managed it all. The lights were quite good.

The house was rewired in 1966 or 1968 and they had another engine put there while it was the flood in Dulverton. They were doing the base for the new diesel engine in 1952. It was because the leaves were creating such a disturbance. There was a turbine down at Weir that drove the generator. It was collapsing in the fall when all the leaves got into the millstream. It was driven by water. So they bought an engine then. That was a twenty-eight horsepower engine. That was how it was until they sold Pixton. PK looked after the diesel engine. They had a firm into do the servicing but they stopped it and started it, and switched it over to run the saws. They could put belts on to drive the saws. It was also a secondary generator for the electricity if the leaves had stopped the turbine. They could switch over. So they were never without lights at Pixton. That was the general idea. They got fed up with being in the dark when the leaves were falling.

The millstream came in from Hele Bridge It was more than a mile down through the trees. The turbine drove the saws as well. There was a lever to switch it over on the engine. There were no batteries. It was direct drive. They had batteries at Pixton but not with the engine, or the turbine. Water was cheap running for most of the year but in the fall the leaves were a problem. They made all sorts of gadgets to keep them out but only succeeded to a limited degree. When it was the real autumn fall it took a bit of sticking. You would see lots of leaves piled up by the turbine.

He doesn't know what happened to the lamp boy. He expects he grew up and left. He got fed up with trimming lamps. He stopped on for a year or two. That was in 1928. PK didn't come back until 1933. He had disappeared by then. Perhaps he had gone in the army. [Back to top]