About Will Bonner
Memories Growing Up
Born and raised in an English village during the 1920’s and 30’s
I was born in an old terraced cottage on the edge of a river which passed through the village. The downstairs consisted of one small sitting room, with the front door opening directly on to the road. A single window looked out across the river to a meadow. Cows grazed under the horse chestnut trees there. Behind the sitting room was a tiny kitchen which also served as a passageway to the back door. A narrow brick stairway in one corner of the living room led to two upstairs bedrooms. The three boys slept in one bed in the back room with no heating, and in the winter, blankets were supplemented with heavy khaki army coats. Kerosene lamps, candles, and a coal fire provided the light and heat downstairs. A communal pump in the back yard which was reminiscence of that time supplied the water which had to be carried inside by a white porcelain coated bucket. Last, but not least the toilets suspended over holes in the ground, were situated for obvious reasons as far from the houses as possible. On a cold wet and windy night, if you had to run across the yard to do a number 2, that cold flat seat with a round hole cut in the center, was to say the least not very inviting.
My father was born in a small market town in the vicinity. The family of fourteen owned a haulage business, with a stable of cart horses to pull the wagons. They also had a confectionary and green grocery shop, managed by one of my aunts. When motor vehicles came on the scene, the family left it late to make the transition, and lost the haulage part of the business, but retained the shop. After that, my father worked as a quarryman at a local stone quarry. During the summer months when he worked overtime, I would walk up there after school to take him a can of tea and a sandwich. I can picture him now in that labour intensive environment, shoveling away on the top of an immense heap of crushed stone. I muse at the thought in these modern times of him being convicted and sentenced to hard labour. I am sure that he would have considered it some sort of a vacation.
My mother also came from a large family, and was born in another village about 3 miles away. She lived in one of the miners terraced cottages down the lane from a coalmine. My maternal grandfather and the men in the family all worked down the mine. At a very early age she went into domestic service at a local Gentleman’s College until she married my father. They lived in the village all of their married lives.
Getting back to Riverside, at that time most of the property in the village and surrounding area was owned by the lord of the manor. Yes lords of the manor were still about at that time, and the term congers up all of those bad connotations contained in a Hollywood movie. As I grew older I listened to a story recounted by my mother. I was born with a health problem, and there was no health service in those days. When the lady of the manor found out, she would visit every week to see if the family was coping, and bring medicines to treat me until I had recovered. Medicines at that time were very limited. Ointments were the choice of the day, and she would appear with several jars of different concoctions. I think the notion was that if you applied it in proximity to your problem it would penetrate and before you know it you were cured. Either that or things got worse and you died. In my case my recovery was probably due to the bloody minded genes of the Bonner family. The moral of this story is that in my own experience there were probably very few lord’s of the manor at my early time of life that fitted the movie concept.
Memories of my very early upbringing are obviously a bit hazy, but they get clearer at around the time I first went to the Church of England Primary School located as one would expect alongside the church. I remember my mother walking me along Riverside and past the church to attend my first day at school when I was not yet five years old. I can still see the main room as it was then with it’s large fireplace. During the wintertime with a red hot fire going, bottles of milk which were given free to the children at that time would be lined up in front of the fire, and at break time we would drink the hot milk through straws.
I remember our head mistress very well. She lived alone in a cottage on the edge of the village. As I got older I would do chores for her after school. At the onset of winter it was my job to prepare the kindling and set the fires in both downstairs and upstairs rooms. I believe she lived for quite a while in South Africa which prompts me to remember the very first time I went up to her bedroom to set the fire. Propped up against the wall next to her bed was a massive Elephant gun that she kept there for her protection. Shotguns were a common site on the farms around the village, so at that time I did not give it’s presence a lot of thought. When I look back on it now however I try to conjure up the carnage that would have ensued had circumstances arisen for her to have discharged that weapon in her bedroom.
I lived in the riverside until around the age of eight or nine, and got involved in the village activities throughout the seasons. As with most people in the village living in similar circumstances to ourselves life was not easy, but you had to put up with the adversities and manage them on a day to day basis. Right up to the present day I see photos of the river looking towards the church on a bright sunny day. It is a most idyllic setting and could be used in any tourist brochure. Just recently I received a photograph of just that setting but with the river in flood. This reminded me of just one of those adversities we occasionally had to put up with. During the course of continual heavy rain we would walk up the lane and look across the fields to see the amount of overspill from the river forming large pools which would warn us to get prepared.
My father had inserted large hooks into the ceiling downstairs, and with the aid of ropes pull the heavy furniture clear of the floor. Usually by the next morning the downstairs would be flooded. The torrent of water cascading past the front door meant no school for at least a couple of days, and my younger brother and myself having a great time paddling around the living room in the old tin bath, plus having our meals upstairs. Afterwards however when the water subsided we had the job of scrubbing the walls and floor with disinfectant to try and get rid of the terrible smell left behind.
There was always quite a bit of activity going on along the river, especially during springtime and summer. Apart from the Swans and Ducks, two Otters frequented the banks on a regular basis. On bright sunny mornings we would get dazzling displays of colour as Kingfishers maneuvered at speed over the river looking for fish. Riverside was and probably still is for those walking or biking, a shortcut through the churchyard to the top end of the village, consequently this added to the activity of the residents. The entrance to a farm opened into Riverside a few yards from our cottage where we would visit to buy eggs, milk, etc.
There is one item of activity however that is as crystal clear to me now as it was then. At that time a large house about a hundred yards up river from our cottage which had its own boat house was owned and lived in by people respectively referred to by the village folk as the “gentry”. On warm summer evenings we would see the young gentlemen from “the big house” dressed in their straw boaters, striped jackets, and white trousers punting past our house, together with a girl friend relaxing on cushions in the front of the boat wearing a wide brimmed hat decorated with ribbon and holding a parasol. As mischievous youngsters we would follow them along the river bank waiting for the punt pole to get stuck in the mud to be left behind with the boat drifting aimlessly out of control towards the weir on the other side of the village. It never happened. It was a scene epitomizing Victorian times. At some time in the future of which I have no memory, the house was converted into apartments marking the end of an era. I do have one other reference to this later in my article which occurred during the early part of World War 2, and would indicate that the owners of house probably left before the war started.
There came a time when four new houses were built in the village by the County Council. I do not know to this day how it came about that we were to move into one of them, but I will never forget the feeling. It was as though we had died and gone to heaven. The contrast was unbelievable, moving into a newly built house with electricity, three bedrooms, a fairly spacious kitchen, and a bathroom. We still had to carry water in from a pump but it was a minor irritant compared to all the other benefits, but best of all we now had our own chemical toilet situated in the side entrance which was accessed from the house, undercover, and away from the wind and rain. We were all in high spirits and it was decided that we draw straws to get the privilege of being the first to use the “little” room. I remember my Father taking out a box of matches from his pocket and breaking one off to create the short one. Yours truly drew the short straw and all the family stood in front of the open door cheering and clapping as I lowered myself on to a toilet seat that was actually designed to fit my bum!!!!!. The high spirits continued into the evening after the electric lights had been turned on, and it was a big relief not having to elbow your way to get under the dim light of a kerosene lamp to read. Just choose your own space somewhere in the sitting room. Then without warning we were suddenly plunged into darkness followed by the flurry of striking matches to try and locate where we had stored the candles. The lights were finally restored when we discovered that the County Council had only put enough money in the electric meter to get us started.
The move to the new house changed our living conditions dramatically but still situated in a rural environment with fields at the back as far as the eye could see. We had quite a large back garden and each year grew all the vegetables fresh for the table. New potatoes, cabbage, brussel sprouts, beans, tomatoes, onions, radish, and more. I can still look down on it today from the Google Earth Satellite. We also had an allotment on which we grew all the potatoes to store for use during the winter months. The land has now been built on, but it was situated with other plots a short walk from the house.
On my way down the lane to work on the allotment I would pass the Blacksmith’s Shop. In those early days most of the heavy hauling work on the farms was done by horses consequently the blacksmith was always busy shoeing, making wheel bands and sweating them on to carts, drays, and floats, and repairing items from threshing machines during harvest time etc. With other youngsters I would stand in the large open doorway facing the lane watching the blacksmith using the bellows to activate the coke fire and pull out a red hot horseshoe to shape on his anvil before placing it on the hoof creating a burst of smoke, and giving off a pungent smell. I would especially like to stand there on a winter’s day and take advantage of the heat blowing out of the shop. I can never remember being told to get out of the doorway.
At the end of a lane next to the blacksmiths shop were some cottages. I can remember distinctly going regularly to one of them. She was a French lady and would invite the children of the village for tea and cakes. Unfortunately for me her cakes were filled with Caraway seeds which were not to my taste. I used to drum up some excuse or another to try and get out of going but my mother insisted. She would always say no you must go; she is a very kind lady to invite you. I can’t remember her name but vividly picture that very small living room crammed with children.
Down the lane there was also a bakery. If the wind was in the right direction the smell of newly baked bread just out of the ovens would waft into our house. The bakery itself was situated behind their confectionery and small goods shop. Every Friday evening when Dad arrived home with his wages, we would each get a farthing ( one quarter of a penny) for pocket money and we would run down to the shop to buy sweets. The proprietor would come out into the shop and wait patiently until we decided what to buy or impatiently if we took too long. There was quite a variety to choose from, Gobstoppers down to Hundreds and Thousands. Even in those days as our pocket money increased the buying power stayed the same or decreased, and the trend has continued to this day.
My uncle and aunt lived for a time at the old mill situated on the edge of the village which had outbuildings alongside the diverted section of the river. It was a veritable playground paradise for the younger generation. I have a hazy picture in my mind of the big living room with a large open fireplace on the left side and at the far end a small semi-circular staircase leading to what was called the music room. A heavy half height doorway opened into a spillway of rushing water also on the left side of the room. The thickness of which dampened the sound of tumbling water in the living room to a low level. As with other parts of the village along the river the fields around the Mill would flood making it inaccessible. When the ground was dry the path from the village past the mill and over the flat iron bridge which I still see from the satellite, and then through a big wheat field to the back of my High School, before the by-pass road was built or the advent of the industrial estate, would be our preferred direct route either going to school or to the local town.
Beyond the Mill the river flowed into a couple of acute bends, and there were times during mid summer when we would swim in the larger one which formed a sort of basin. A man from the village used to be on hand to make sure that there were no accidents and also to teach the youngsters to swim. When I went to sea during the war and came home on leave, he would invite me to their home for afternoon tea.
With the local Fox Hunt Kennels being just across the field there were days when two horsemen would take twenty or so hound dogs through the village outward bound for exercise in the country. On their return the lead horseman would blow the hunting horn to signal the Kennels to have the feed and bedding ready. He would usually blow the horn as they approached our house. I often think of those times with humour when I hear my mother’s voice ringing in my ears as the horn sounded. “quick Will, run out and close the gate, we don’t want the dogs mucking on the lawn”.
From an early age and whilst I was still living in Riverside I attended Sunday school each Sunday afternoon at the church, just a few minutes walk from the cottage. Later on, joining the choir required me to sing at both services at 11am and 6pm every Sunday, and going to choir practice at least once during the week and perhaps more if an event was coming up such as Harvest Festival, Easter, or Christmas.
Each year the annual village fete took place in the Rectory grounds. It was quite an affair with stalls, and games which occupied the lawns down to the rivers edge. The races were held in a field opposite the local pub, where the youngsters would line up in their age group at the starting line, waiting for the starting pistol to go off.
In the field between our house and the kennels cricket matches would take place. There was no Social Security in those days, and like other families in the village we were members of a Friendly Society, which, apart from providing for basic medical needs it had a social component. Events such as race meetings arranged by the members would take place in other villages around and we would be taken by bus or charabanc to compete.
Apart from the Church, the Parish Rooms were a focal point in the village, for the villagers to assemble at significant times of the year or as arranged for such events as Whist Drives, Jumble sales etc.
At Christmas time the children would all crowd into the main room to receive a Christmas present. After the room had filled up, the children would eagerly, and yes often impatiently await the arrival of Father Christmas. Things would get a bit hectic, and be accompanied by a lot of noise, deafening at times. There was always a lot of loud talk especially amongst the elder boys questioning whether Father Christmas existed or not, which left the younger children perplexed. Eventually the local vicar appeared through the main entrance dressed as Father Christmas complete with beard. On one occasion which stays vividly in my mind after all these years, was the sight of a sea of children descending on the vicar making it difficult for him to organize his sack containing the presents, and one boy determined to make his point that Father Christmas did not exit, running up and snatching the beard from the vicar’s face. He was a portly man and after the scuffle he was out of breath, his beardless face decidedly red. All the confusion quickly subsided however and when present giving got underway the misdemeanor had no impact, getting lost in the ongoing activities.
There was one activity that occurred at the Parish Rooms of which I have very little recollection, but it involved Drama evenings. In those days with no Television, and no radio for some of us, it provided an entertaining evening out. I remember the layout of the stage which was positioned in the far left corner of the main room. Curtains were arranged to cover the kitchen door so that the actors could enter without being seen prior to stepping on stage.
After getting settled into the new house but still at school I started to get some part time work from the local farms. The entrance to a farm was practically opposite to our house. After school I would go to one of the fields outside the village and bring all the cows through the village back to the farm for milking. As a boy it was a bit scary when I got them into the village in case any dogs ran out and set them bolting. Very occasionally one of them would start acting crazy, bucking up and down their front or rear legs skidding away from them as though they were going to fall down on the road. The farmers had a name for it in those days. “Don’t worry youngster they are only having a bout of the GAD”. Now that we are better informed it was probably more than likely that the animal had mad cow decease.
I had various jobs on the farms throughout the seasons. Potato picking was agony after the first day even for a youngster. When you got up to go to the fields on that second morning your back was as stiff as a board and torturous to bend. If you could overcome that second day, from then on it was just a case of keeping going, because you were paid by how many bags you had filled by the end of each day. When the time came around for harvesting the corn, I would be involved in some shape or form when the Threshing and Binding machines were in action. In those days because it was a labour intensive exercise, they employed Double British Summertime to provide more daylight hours to get the job done. The farmer used to adopt the same procedure each time a field was cut. They would keep cutting until only one small island of wheat was left standing in the center of the field. At that stage everyone would stop work and the shotguns were loaded. As the game was flushed out it was shot. A big “no no” in this day and age.
At the bottom of our lane was the Gamekeepers cottage where all the Pheasant and Partridge were hatched ready for the annually Pheasant shoot. When they had matured they would be set free to go only to one place where they could find refuge, which would be the man made covers (densely populated trees and shrubbery surrounded by open farm land). When the shoot was arranged we would be paid to “Beat the Covers”. The guns would wait in the open field as we progressively walked through the covers beating the shrubs and thickets with sticks to disturb the game which would fly out into the open towards the guns. The sound of a big Pheasant lifting itself from the cover of a thicket into flight just two or three feet away frightened the living daylights out of you making your hair stand on end. At around midday you would break clear of the covers to find a long trestle table containing beer, cider, lemonade, porkpies, and sandwiches etc, and we were told “ come on youngsters tuck in”. At the end of the days shoot the game was set out in a line on the ground in braces (pairs) and we were allowed to take say a couple of rabbits. Before the shoot my Mother would always remind me “whatever you do don’t bring back Pheasant”
Another item that has stayed in my memory involves a local farmer. The details of how things came about are somewhat vague to me now but go along these lines. One winter’s morning he was sitting on a low stone wall on the main road when a car traveling at speed skidded across the road, and the accident resulted in his legs getting crushed. All the details about the accident are now a complete blank to me, except I never remembered him walking again. Which brings me to another small job I acquired. When the weather allowed, he would pull up outside our house in his horse and float and I would run out and sit beside him. We would proceed through the village and out to the fields and it was my job to open and close the gates for him to take the float inside and look at the cows, etc., or pull some ears of wheat or oats for him to taste, and perhaps Turnip or Swede. We would be away for three or four hours and when he dropped me off back at the house, he would always give me a sixpenny piece. Once inside the money was given up to be shared with my brothers because it was considered easy money.
Around this time, it was what I think of now as the “rent man, insurance man, and milkman” era. Each week the cash was allotted and placed on the dresser in the lounge room with their respective books to be receipted. We would quite often leave the house with the door not locked for the tradesmen to let themselves in to collect their money. During that time, we never had any money stolen, which could not be said if we adopted such procedures in this day and age.
Around the time that we moved from Riverside I can never remember anyone in the village owning a motor vehicle or telephone. On the rare occasion when it became necessary to make contact by phone, we would walk up to the Post Office and use the phone inside the shop. Because of our lack of phone know-how the post mistress would do the dialing and make the contact for us. Right up to his death in 1986 my father never had a telephone installed in the house.
Although there was some traffic along the main road and occasionally through the village my first recollection of someone owning a vehicle was one of the local farmers. He purchased a Lanchester car with a pre selector gear box which was quite advanced for those times. When I say that we would occasionally be involved meant pushing him out of a ditch, one has to go back to that time when just about everyone would be sitting behind a horse with no steering required. The horse knew the score and took you where you wanted to go with a gentle tug on the rein and nothing more than the countryside around to distract you.
One time we had the need to call a taxi. It was a notable happening. We stood looking through the front window waiting for it to arrive. A gleaming black Rolls Royce pulled up at the front gate. We quietly trooped out trying not to garner any attention, but the neighbour's curtains were fluttering obviously wondering if one of the family had died. The funeral parlour would sometimes use their vehicles as taxis, making it a guessing game for a casual onlooker. As I grew older the Post Office would use their car as a taxi. A picture of one vehicle has remained with me all of my life. Its approach down the lane was signaled by the house shaking and the windows rattling. We would run out to the puffing, rattling, wheezing and other mechanical sounds of the steam lorry loaded with sacks of wheat on its way to the flour mills. The immense weight of the loaded vehicle propelled on steel wheels fitted with hard flat rubber as tires shook everything in sight, and as it passed the house, we would bend down to look at the red hot cinders dropping into the cinder box suspended under the engine. Should such a vehicle be allowed on the road today, the transport company would have been inundated with claims from home owners and others?
I was in church during the 11 am Sunday service when it was announced from the pulpit that war had been declared. From that point on its impact on the village gained momentum, affecting everyone’s lives.
During the war the stately home of the lord of the manor was turned into a prisoner of war camp for Italian prisoners, some of whom would work on the local farms.
A Home Guard unit was formed in the village. A local farmer was the sergeant. When one thinks of the Home Guard these days, Mr. Mannering and his supporting characters in the TV series “Dad’s Army” comes to mind. Believe me he was not like Mr. Mannering. The unit would go into the fields around the village to practice, and at times go up to the Quarry to use live ammunition, throw live hand grenades etc.
During the early part of the war before the Air Force had gained its strength, enemy aircraft flying over Britain had a fairly free rein, both at night during bombing raids and also during the day when they were flying reconnaissance missions. I remember an incident around mid-day when I was working with my Mother in the back garden. The sound of German aircraft approaching was very distinctive because of their non synchronous engines in contrast to the British which were synchronous. The sound could be described as a monotonic throb. When I heard the sound, it was very loud indicating that the aircraft was both flying low and close to us. I pushed my mother to the ground and we both lay there as the plane roared over close to treetop level. I raised my head to plainly see the swastika markings, and the rear gunner sitting behind his guns in the glass bubble protruding from the tail section. I held my Mother down for fear that we would be seen and shot at. The plane banked towards the top of the lane and we heard gunfire. Afterwards we were told that two ladies cycling along one of the lanes had been fired on, but to this day I do not know if anyone had been injured or killed. This was one of the many lessons I learnt regarding the depths of inhumanity that some people can descend into during times of war.
Regarding “the big house” mentioned earlier in this article, there was a German family staying there during this period, and as you can imagine there were lots of rumours circulating around the village at the time. Strict nighttime blackout regulations were in force and people were saying that their curtains were often open to show the lights on the north side of the house which could guide enemy aircraft to the main arterial road. Rumours are just that, so we never knew how valid they were. Shortly afterwards however the authorities came and collected the German family, and they would have been interred for the remainder of the war, which in any case was the normal course of events.
Not long afterwards I went to sea and my growing up in the village came to an end. Throughout the war and afterwards I traveled all over the world.
When the time came for me to go to sea in World War 2, I didn’t give a second thought to the way I had conducted my life growing up in the village. Especially the long hours spent during the summer days on school holidays, by myself, roaming the quiet countryside around the village.
Now that I am able to look back at the traumatic times that I had to endure at sea during the war and afterwards as an “Agent or Spy”, I know for certain that those years growing up in the village gave me something substantial that I was able to draw on to get me through.