My great grandmother,
Mary Duddridge, died in Tilehurst in 1927 aged 92.
She had an excellent memory and loved telling
stories of her life on a farm in Somerset. An
American cousin collected these stories in 1932,
providing a rich source of material when I
started family history 40 years later. Here is
Mary's account with additional comments from my
visit to the farm in 1999, over 160 years after
Mary was born.
Her parents John
Duddridge and Lena Thorne married in 1824 and
moved to Halsway, a lovely old farmhouse a mile
west of Crowcombe on the southwest slopes of the
Quantock Hills, midway between Taunton and
Minehead. The picturesque two-storied thatched
house stood in a garden with an orchard at the
back. Water came from a spring at the top of the
hill, and until the late 1920s was brought into
the house by a chute in the scullery from which
it fell into a stone basin. The spring water is
still used but to obey modern laws it passes
through a filter and is delivered through taps.
John Duddridge was
honest, upright and industrious, farming his land
well. He was small, a bit pompous, and had
inherited a terrible temper from his mother. Lena
was a sweet and gentle woman and a devoted wife,
though she often suffered from of her husband's
hasty temper. They had two children: John born in
1832 and Mary in 1836.
Farm life was busy.
There were calves to rear, cheese and butter to
make, bread to bake, and sometimes beer to brew.
The cider press is still in the barn but no
longer used. A cheese room was furnished with
racks on which to dry the cheeses. Bread was
baked in a big brick oven built by the side of
the open kitchen fire. Bundles of wood were
placed in the oven itself and then lighted; when
sufficiently heated, it was well swept out and
the bread placed in it. The door was then closed
very tightly to keep in the heat and, if
necessary, a little clay plastered around the
door. The kitchen range was still unknown. The
open fire was kindled on the hearth, and chains
with crooks hung on the wide chimney, on which
pots and kettles were suspended for boiling
purposes, and crocks were placed on the hot ashes
for roasting or baking 'crock pies'. A spit,
placed on irons called 'dogs', was used for
roasting joints. One of Mary's frequent duties as
a child was to sit on a small stool in front of
the fire and turn the spit. Pies, cakes and milk
puddings could only be cooked on baking days in
the bread oven after the bread was removed. The
original four-foot deep inglenook fireplace
dominates the old kitchen, now the dining room.
The open fire has been replaced by a wood-burning
stove and the bread oven is now an architectural
feature with lights inside.
The family believed in
education, as Mary was only five years old when
sent as a boarder to Mrs Chapman at the Stogumber
Chapel House, just three miles from home. Here
she was taught to sew a patchwork quilt. It was
the age of wonderful samplers wrought by small
hands and often setting forth very pious but
decidedly melancholy sentiments. The next year
this school was closed and
Stogumber
Baptist chapel where Mary Dudderidge went to
school as a boarder aged five years.
Mary was sent to Mrs
Sutton at the Watchet Chapel House. Mr Sutton,
the Baptist minister, was a kindly man who had
been a missionary in India for some years, and
tried to soften his wife's heart towards her
youthful pupils. Mrs Sutton was a firm believer
in 'Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child' and any
offender against her strict rules was punished
with a cane or ruler or confined to his bedroom
without food for some hours. Mary and a friend
were the only girls among the several boy
boarders. When the holidays came, a boy was sent
with a pony to fetch Mary, and when passing
through Williton, Mary, wishing to look grown-up,
would whip the pony to make it canter, leaving
the boy far behind.
In 1848, 12 year-old
Mary went to Miss Stockman's School at Bristol,
where she spent many happy years. Part of the
time she was a pupil-teacher, and so allowed to
go more freely than the other pupils. She had
many friends in Bristol and was there during the
terrible outbreak of cholera. Mary and her
brother, John, were great chums and spent much
time driving together to visit many relations and
friends who lived on neighbouring farms. But
these pleasant days came to an end. John and his
father did not agree on many things and
frequently quarrelled. John began to deal on his
own, lost many cattle in a run of bad luck and
decided to emigrate to New Zealand in 1859. Mary
saw him off at Bristol. She and her mother had
packed him a box filled with hand-sewn shirts and
packets of needles, buttons and thread; and also
rice, tapioca and cornflour, provisions for the
voyage which he had in part to furnish himself.
The parting was a deep grief to Lena Duddridge
and mother and son never saw each other again.
John later moved to
Australia where he managed sheep stations. The
great disappointment of his life was that his
only son, Richard, refused to become a 'squatter'.
The boy had no love for the land, but went before
the mast on the S.S. Carlton, the highest masted
ship in the world, before or since. Richard
sailed to England but was too diffident to visit
his father's relatives. However, they knew of the
ship's arrival, inquired at Lloyds, and located
him at the Sailor's Home in London. This was the
first of many visits to his Aunt Mary's home, as
he later married his first cousin, Mary's
daughter.
Mary, who settled down
at Halsway with her parents after her schooling
was completed, was a pretty girl who had her fair
share of fun and flirtation. On February 19th
1855, she became engaged to her brother's school
friend Henry Shorney. They married in December
1862 when her parents moved into Culverhays
Cottage and turned Halsway Farm over to them.
Trying to find Culverhays Cottage in 1999, I
asked for it at the Post Office in Crowcombe but
the lady behind the counter was a stand-in: 'Who
are you looking for? "Well, my great great
grandparents lived there 150 years ago'. 'What a
pity', she said, 'you've missed the post master,
he might have known because he is about 100
himself.'
Both mothers joined the
young couple at the farm in 1868 after the deaths
of their husbands. Of the two grandmothers, sweet
and gentle Grandma Duddridge was the favourite.
Grandma Shorney had a more difficult nature. Her
little weakness was medicine and she loved to
dose herself with quack remedies for real or
imagined ailments. Grandmothers then were very
different from those of today. They covered their
hair with lace caps and when invited to tea,
carried circular cap baskets containing the
dainty lace caps or in the case of a widow, a
tulle cap with streamers. In later years, Mary
Duddridge loved to tell the story of her cousin
Lena Duddridge who at the time of her second
marriage had lost all her hair and wore a wig. So
cleverly did she manage things wearing a lace cap
by day and a night-cap in bed, that it was
several years before Mr Heynes discovered his
wife was bald. Coming into her dressing room
unexpectedly one day, he was startled to find her
changing her cap and wig. 'Well, Lena,' exclaimed
the mild-mannered Cornish man, 'this is a
surprise!'
Life at Halsway had its
dark days of anxiety interspersed with the colour
and excitement of frequent visits between
relatives and friends. The centre of their social
life was the Baptist Chapel at Stogumber. For
many generations, the Chapel was filled with
Duddridges, Shorneys, Shepherds and other
relatives and friends. A cousin, Laversha
Duddridge, played the old organ for the chapel
from around 1880 until she died in 1945. The
chapel is now Stogumber Arts Centre with its own-labelled
wine.
Mary and Henry had six
children. The youngsters of the Shorney and
Duddridge clans were very special friends. The
men often went rabbiting - a day in the woods
with ferrets and guns, followed by a hot supper
at one of the homes and a pleasant evening around
the roaring fire. It was a family joke that
Arthur, the youngest child and my grandfather,
chose one of these evening for his entry into the
world.
Other pleasures were a
20 mile round trip to Taunton market in a two-wheeled
wagonette, or to Watchet where Mary could get a
better price for her butter and eggs. No account
of life at Halsway would be complete without
mentioning Elizabeth Gadd, who during the week
worked in the fields. On Saturday morning she
helped bath the children. A big tin bath was
placed in front to the hearth fire, and as each
was washed and dried, Elizabeth piggybacked them
so that their little feet would not get cold on
the stone floor.
The final quarter of the
nineteenth century was a period of great
depression for farmers. The family had a real
struggle farming. Since Henry became a semi-invalid,
his sons had to help on the farm when very young
and their education suffered. They had
governesses at first; and later the boys went to
Mr Huggins' school at Crowcombe. Mr Huggins
taught writing magnificently, but knew little of
grammar or history. He caned often and was brutal
to those he disliked. Walks to school had their
pleasant side. In the spring, there were
primroses and birds' nests in the hedgerows. In
the autumn, the boys filled their school bags
with apples to munch on the way. A great calamity
befell the Henry Shorneys with the occurrence of
liver fluke (called coad in Somerset). Henry lost
a flock of sheep three consecutive years in a row:
1879,1880 and 1881. When son Edgar was only 12 he
skinned 40 sheep in one month. These were dark
days with very heavy monetary losses. The boys
all worked very hard, too hard for their tender
ages, as their father was in ill health and
deeply depressed by the ill fortune that seemed
to dog him. Fortunatelv Mary had a strong
constitution and a very optimistic nature, both
great assets in those difficult days. After 6o
years in the family, their beloved Halsway was
sold.
After leaving Halsway
there followed 10 years of wandering as the
family rented four farms in turn (one in
Somerset, two in Berkshire and one just over the
Oxfordshire border) before settling at Langley
Hill Farm in Tilehurst around 1895. After Henry
died in 1909 Mary moved between their son Edgar
at Langley Hill Farm, Calcot, and daughter Kate
Frazier in Tilehurst.
