Louisa CHAPMAN 1900 - 1998

I was born in February 1900 in a keeper's cottage at Callow Hill in the parish of Virginia Water, Surrey. A heavy fall of snow the day after I was born prevented father's mother, who was a practising midwife, from coming up the lane and mother sat up and bathed me under a blanket. I do not remember the house as we moved when I was a baby, but I know it was a gamekeeper's cottage on the edge of the woods and up a side-lane off the road leading to the hamlet of Callow Hill, Virginia Water, Surrey. This road and the one between Virginia Water Railway Station and the lake formed cross-roads near the church : there may once have been gallows there, the name Callow Hill being a corruption thereof, but it is more probable the meaning is 'fresh' or even 'treeless' or 'bare'. In 1972 the cottage was still there, apparently unchanged except for the addition of electricity. My sister, 18 months the elder, does just remember living there, but I do not.

In the summer mother kept the butter cool in a spring in the woods. Father was seen passing the cottage by my sister when he was out with a shooting party; unnoticed by him, she followed him till tired out, to be found later asleep in a dry ditch.

Sporting days ending, presumably with the Countess de Morella's advancing years and the departure of her sons, father was given a change of house and job at the Countess's estate Wentworth, He became night watchman at the 'big house' and we moved into Bagshot Lodge, one of the gate-lodges.

I remember Bagshot Lodge very well indeed and sometimes return to it in dreams, though it has been considerably altered and improved. Being modernised and it is very different from the house I remember. In the place of the laurels that faced it then on the other side of the drive, there is now a rather larger house in similar style to the new lodge, while the gates no longer remain closed and locked.

It was a better house I imagine than at Callow Hill but had only two bedrooms. The Lodge was on the main Southampton Road from London, not far from the Wheatsheaf Hotel. A milestone just nearby proclaimed the fact that it was 21 miles from Hyde Park Corner, definitely country in those early years of the century.

As Dad was nightwatchman at 'the big house' mother and we three children were responsible for opening the big gates when the Countess's family went out or visitors came in during the day, the keys hung in the porch. We lived rent free but could never all go out together as the big carriage gate had to be kept locked, even at times the two smaller ones at each side. Where they opened on to the London / Southampton road was directly opposite a hilly road that led to Ascot, so we had a perfect view of the traffic, mostly horse-drawn, to and from the races during Ascot week.

My father told us that the main road was made, or rather I expect, improved, with earth taken from the estate leaving a large oblong hollow which became the garden of Bagshot Lodge as it was called then. Another childish belief for which I cannot vouch, is that the living room had such a large bay because it was built by the road authorities as a sheltered place where the Countess could sit to view the road and its traffic - this being in return for the earth she allowed them to take from the estate.

When completed as a dwelling house, Bagshot Lodge was quite attractive, brick built with a sturdy rustic porch containing two seats at the front door. The Lodge had a living room, large and roughly square, with a good bay-window where mother kept her pot-plants. There were five interior shutters the size of doors that had to be put up at night in the right order in the very roomy bay window and which were stacked during the day in the next room, always known as the 'next place'.

The 'next place' was a smaller room (or more accurately described as a food-cupboard leading to a large tiled scullery) like a square passage leading from the living-room to the scullery on the left and the stairs on the right. It had a fire-place back to back with the one in the living-room, but this was never used and had a table standing in front of it, with tins of arrowroot, custard powder and so on, on the mantel-shelf above it. There were shelves for the crockery and china in the alcove by the chimney breast, a window opposite this, a food cupboard or larder, and a cupboard under the stairs. It was a draughty room and we never sat in it, having no window or form of ventilation - and the wall of the back kitchen or scullery. (Note that one of Louisa's notes mentioned a window whereas another said there was no window) Three steps up from the floor, was a door to the stairs with a brass doorknob, which had to be held while being cleaned to prevent it rattling and possibly disturbing my father, who as the nightwatchman usually came home in the early hours and my sister and I prided ourselves on being wakeful enough to speak to him as he came softly up the stairs and past our room bearing a candle, though we knew we should only be told to be quiet and go to sleep.

The scullery had a dull red and blue tiled floor, housed a copper in one corner, an old cooking range, a big mangle with wooden rollers, a scrubbed table under the window, a long bench on which flat boxes of apples or a pig's carcass would be placed, cut up after having been hung to bleed and be scalded with boiling water. When the keeping apples had been picked they were laid out on it in a shallow box. On the wall above was a shelf carrying the box of shoe-cleaning materials, brushes and black-lead for the cooking range together with the hearthstone; my brother's box of 'tools for the amateur' and some of my father's more professional tools. Dad still had a gun but we children never knew where he kept it; mother used the small shot to clean the decanter.

Above the living room and next place were two bedrooms, the front one being quite large so that part could be screened off for my brother's single iron bedstead : the cot now empty and usually piled with clean towels and sheets, had been baby Harry's.

The big front bedroom was over the living room and also had the bow window overlooking the drive and gates. This entrance was the one mainly used by visitors and the Countess and her daughter, Miss Ada Cabrera who was practically a hunchback through a fall from a horse (or so were told) and was a very retiring person.

Sister Dollie's and my bedroom was over the 'next place' and looked out over the garden to the woods of the estate, composed of firs, oaks and sweet chestnuts mainly, with laurels and azalea planted along the edges of the drive. Growing up to and around the window was a Gloire de Dijon rose, from which father would ceremonially cut a bud for each of us to wear on a summer Sunday afternoon. He himself had a special holder for placing in a buttonhole and which contained a little water. Our bedroom door was never shut at night, nor the one at the foot of the stairs, and the threat to close them was only made by mother when my sister and I kept on talking long after we had gone to bed. 'Dollie' was an inveterate chatterbox; father said she 'would talk the hind leg off a donkey' and 'argue black was white with a gatepost'. When cross at what he considered her cheeky ways, he would tell her to go and put her knees under another man's table! He also said, a little later and in reference to her numerous and ever-changing boy friends, that she 'would go all round the orchard and pick a crab(apple) at last'.

The back doorstep was a slate slab, from under which ants (emmets, not the large wood-ants) emerged in their thousands on hot days, all of them winged. The front door was protected by a well built rustic type porch with two seats and a large coir mat - a throw-out from one of the horse-boxes, where it had hung to save the horse injuring itself.

We had candles to light us to bed before gas was installed, and a small oil-lamp standing on a wall bracket, was left burning till mother came to bed. Our living room was well lit by a double-burner brass hanging lamp. This was bought when our parents realised how dangerous the standing lamp was, as the table was covered in the afternoon and evening when meals had been cleared away by a red chenile cloth edged with bobbles, so attractive to little fingers. The standard lamp was placed on the bare kitchen table in the 'next place'.

We had no water indoors, only a pump at the back of the house which was well wrapped up in winter. Besides this we always took the precaution of drawing a pail and kettle full before night in order to be able to thaw out the pump next morning, also to make the first pot of tea. At the side of the house but on the back wall were two big waterbutts. Between the back door and the pump was a bench, also a table at which as many jobs as possible were done in fine weather, eg. washing-up, preparing vegetables and the fresh herrings that were brought back as a treat by any member of the family who made a trip into Egham for shopping, or to see our friends there or at Englefield Green, and cleaning and replenishing of our oil lamps and their glass chimneys. We dipped the hand bowl into one of the waterbutts and used the cool soft water for washing our faces, hands and hair. My sister and I have not done this for years and the old wooden butts have been replaced by a covered iron tank, but mother did so all her life and kept her lovely skin to the end. The water from the pump was tested when my brother had diphtheria and found to be quite safe. Will was kept at home when ill. Both the Cottage Hospital, still there (gone in 1980's), and the Isolation Hospital, now gone, were built at Englefield Green (perhaps the higher ground was considered healthier than the river-meadows of Egham) but the isolation may have been full at that time. Mother hung a sheet soaked in disinfectant over the bedroom door and allowed no-one but herself to enter; but when she was otherwise engaged Doll and I maintained communication with Will by means of a bucket on a rope, similar to the method still (?) in use at Hampton Court 'Grace & Favour' apartments. We shared the comics friends brought to relieve his loneliness and even sent the cat up to keep him company, yet we did not have diphtheria. Dad had a bonfire on the potato patch of the old comics and magazines, and Dollie and I cheerfully helped burn them.

Only the front and back of the house had windows and the side wall bearing the porch, the Gloire de Dijon rose growing up the back wall to our bedroom window, and the blank wall was covered with ivy and although covered in ivy it was ideal for playing ball against. We also used to throw our oranges against it on the theory that this made them juicier, after which we cut their skins just enough to hold a sugar-lump and sucked them. Spiders and earwigs sheltered in the ivy and Sparrows nested by the dozen although discouraged by my father, who knocked out their nests with the clothes prop as fast as they built. He was never cruel to animals but considered 'spadgers' a pest and townsfolk incurably sentimental for feeding and encouraging them and the pigeons.

We always had a cat, mainly to protect the hen's and pig's food from rats and mice, but never bought tin food for her or the dog, though I expect she ate his biscuit when broken. He never made a fuss of the dog, which had a good roomy kennel under the beech tree, or of the cat, but treated them sensibly, and allowed us to have guinea-pigs or rabbits as pets and taught us to look after them properly. Once he brought home from a tree he felled in the woods a fat sleepy little doormouse to show us, and mum often had a young jay or starling he had found fallen from the nest and put in a large wooden cage till it was tame. We would try to tempt them with all sorts of caterpillars, some of which appeared to frighten them, but they usually thrived on the Armitage's food bought for the baby chicks, after their first meal of finely chopped hard-boiled egg. Mother almost always had a canary too, which would be hung outside the back door on warm days with a rhubarb leaf or cloth over the cage to keep off the sun.

The garden plan was simplicity itself, being divided into four equal parts by straight paths from side to side, end to end, and all round. Where the paths met in the middle the angles were marked by four large flat stones, always covered with broken and empty snail shells left by the thrushes. The Lodge had two sheds, an open one for coal and wood, a lock-up one for cycles, food for the dog, the pig, the chickens; it also contained the board and Wellington powder for cleaning the knives every Saturday morning. This shed was raised on piles and provided a dry scratching place and dust bath for the hens on wet days. The hen house and run were at the further end of the garden and had to be well maintained to keep the fowls safe from foxes, the hens being locked in after their evening feed. However a fox managed to get into the hen house one night and killed them all, but we were given cash compensation by the Master of the Garth foxhounds, which occasionally met at Wentworth House and started the hunt from there. If a hen became broody at a convenient time mum would buy a setting of a dozen eggs and put them in a special coop with a tiny run, but a broody hen at the wrong time was placed in a cramped uncomfortable coop on the theory this would quickly cure her! When they contracted croup, as diagnosed by my parents, a feather (one of their own long quills) was dipped in diluted permanganate of potash (Condy's fluid) and pushed down their throats. One cock-chick was kept to live with the hens, his brothers were killed and eaten just before they became old enough to be aggressive. Dried cocks' wings were used to help clean the flues of the cooking range on Friday mornings.

The garden was a large rectangle between high sandy banks, covered in their turn with beeches, oaks, fir-trees and chestnuts (Spanish). Father placed seats under the beeches overlooking the road with its infrequent, mainly horse-drawn traffic, and it was a pleasant place to be on a summer afternoon. He hung a swing on a branch of the oak, with a notched board for a seat. We either used this properly and sedately or, when not under observation, we children stood upon the seat and used our feet to send the swing from side to side right over the fence and road verge, not seeing the danger inherent in this practice. It must have been a strong well made swing as no accident occurred, the big branches from which it hung had bindings under the ropes to prevent damage by cutting into the bark.

A full staff of servants was maintained at "the House" under the butler and housekeeper, beside a coachman and several stableman, who lived in a separate flat and range of rooms over the stables which housed the carriage horses, Hugo and Bruno, a cob for the dogcart, but no riding horses as the sons had left home after it was said quarrelling with their mother. They had roomy loose-boxes, and were given carrots or apples and perhaps a sugar lump by their mistress when she visited them daily. An old or unsatisfactory animal was not sold but shot and buried in a special spot in the woods if no longer required - in spite of this feeling for them she sanctioned the use of the cruel bearing-rein to force the poor animals to arch their necks. 'Black beauty' was one of our books and I could not bear to see this done, and thought the big farm horses were better off, with their tasselled ear covers, which they wore in the summer after May Day to thwart the teasing flies : their manes and tails were plaited with coloured cords. Towards the end of her life, a chestnut pony called Robin was purchased by the Countess to draw a pony-carriage, just large enough for her and Miss Ada to drive round the estate. The coachman's son Will and I were the same age and when unobserved would go to the pony-shed in a field a little away from the House, catch Robin and ride him bareback save for a sack, but this was discovered and put a stop to when Will gave him a sharp slap and the fat usually lazy Robin started off too smartly for me and I fell off on to my shoulder, and we had to confess to our mothers.

I was rather a shy child, only opening out with a few friends, but have always had a sympathy towards animals, trees and plants, and this feeling even spilled over to inanimate things, for instance my shoes were always placed right to left at night as I felt they must be tired of being left to right all day and would like a change. On frosty mornings I would take a kettle of hot water and pour it on the garden paths to thaw out the grass which grew on them - a most mistaken kindness! These feelings created difficulties of course as slugs and earwigs had to be killed (spiders found indoors could be caught in an empty matchbox or swept up with a brush and dustpan and dropped out of windows). I was assured that slugs had no feelings and cheerfully heaped little piles of salt on them, while dad placed tall sticks among his precious dahlias with upturned small flowerpots filled with dead grass on them, to trap the earwigs, and used to puff tobacco smoke from his clay pipe on to the roses to kill greenfly.

We occasionally got fleas from the animals, and found ticks on the poor cats which they picked up in the fields; beastly things, grey, distend with blood, and needing careful removal to avoid leaving the head still embedded in the skin (I think dad would touch them with a lighted match). Mosquitoes plagued us all summer, breeding in our water butts and around the lake, which was so near we could hear the waterfalls at night. The small black ants living under our back-step had boiling water poured down their holes. Silver fish were found in little-used cups in the 'next place', and clothes moths and wood-boring beetles had to be fought in the house. Dad would deal with wasps nests he found too near the house by pouring in tar and setting fire to it; the ground was sandy and he was able to cover the flames without much difficulty. Possibly because of the pigs flies were a problem, which we tackled in two ways, with folded newspaper or bought swatters, or, the more effective and less messy sticky fly papers (unless our heads touched a badly hung one which then got caught in our hair). Mum also taught us to make little dolls by tying four to six inch bundles of wool at the neck, waist, wrist and ankles, and hanging them on the lamp, its glass or shade - a triumph of faith over experience I feel now.

We very rarely left home, even for a day, but had extensive and varied play-grounds in the woods, fields and brook (the Bourne) of the estate, where my brother fished with rudimentary tackle. The Bourne constituted the outlet from the lake, curving after the falls and stepping stones to pass under the main road and flow on through the estate, under the Waterloo/Reading railway line at Trumps Green, to join the Thames at Chertsey. It ran past Wentworth House, but the part where we played was quite enough, watched by the kingfishers, risking wet feet while picking yellow 'flags' and kingcups, water forget-me-nots and mint, and fished. We would hang over the bridge near the old pit to watch our stick boats pass under, naming them as Oxford and Cambridge in that silly season, taken much more serious by youngsters then, for somewhat nebulous reasons.

On hot summer days we came home from school by it, stopping on the way to look for four-leaf clovers in a likely spot, or running across the steep side of the sand pit so quickly that we did not slide to the bottom half way over; martins nested there. Blackberries grew well there, and all the woods yielded sweet chestnuts, hazels, ground (or pig) nuts, and crab apples for jelly. Besides this mother made parsnip, dandelion and rhubarb wines. After World War 1 there was a craze for 'Jerusalem bee wine', the 'bees' were fed on sugar and yeast and multiplied till no more could be given away and everyone was sick of the stuff.

Virginia Water lake with its falls was only across the road. Our favourite place there was among the Ruins, massive arches and pillars, standing or lying on the grass, originally brought from Tripoli (North Africa) to enhance lakeside scenery when romantic ruins were considered necessary for the purpose. We took advantage of the thick laurel shrubberies and many trees, mainly chestnut surrounding the House to chase the peacocks living there with their wives, in the hope of scaring them into dropping some of their lovely tail feathers. When they screamed in their mournful way, it was said to be a sign of coming rain. In the treetops rooks built and wrangled. We played in the hayhouse among the sweet smelling bales, and listened to the pigeons cooing round the stableyard (the squabs made tasty pies); but I was afraid of falling too far and being unable to climb out.

Every morning I had to be at the Home Farm Dairy well before 8am with three cans to be filled with milk for ourselves, the butler's and the labourer's wives, who both lived near the Church, a little way beyond the school, so I delivered them before going into the playground. On Saturdays I always found threepence in the butler's wife's can, twopence in the labourer's but this was often accompanied by an orange or a couple of gingernuts. The milk was skimmed but only by hand and was quite good. Great shallow pans stood round the dairy on slate shelves, full of milk waiting for the cream to rise. The Countess liked rich milk so had Jersey cows, and bantam and Guinea fowls were kept for their small rich eggs. One morning I was so afraid of the turkey cock (Bubbly Jock as my father called him) that I flung the cans at him, spilling all the milk, which forced me to return to ask for more; this required courage as the farmer's wife was a scold : her husband invariably dropped off to sleep during the morning Service at Christ Church, so we assumed that she not only nagged him all day but half the night as well. Their daughter was grievously crippled, the aftermath of rheumatic fever, caused her mother said by being put to sleep in damp sheets at her first place 'in service'. To be fair, on looking back I realise that she must have had a great deal to put up with - hard work, a trying (at least she thought so) husband, a crippled daughter, their only son 'gone to the war'. In later life I suffered from tubercular glands, caused one Doctor said by raw milk drank as a child.

Mr Stroud attended Matins at Christ Church and invariably went to sleep during the sermon, which read by the aged Vicar, Rev Molyneux, and who I must admit did not exactly amuse young people either, besides which, the farmers had probably been up very early. We never went to Evensong, so I do know how well, or ill, attended that was. The Countess and her daughter Miss Ada Cabera, very round-shouldered almost hunch-backed from the accident when young, went in the morning till the Vicar offended her by taking in one of her sons when she had quarrelled with him and turned him out of the house and off the Estate. I think (but this is vague) that she estranged her other son/sons too, and it was rumoured that one entered the Kaiser's Deaths Head Hussars and that she herself had German sympathies. For a time she attended Egham Church, which involved using the carriage and pair, coachman and footman. We children had to watch for their return so she should not be kept waiting at the gate.

Our school was called Christ Church and was connected with the Parish Church, but must in my time have been taken over by the Surrey County Council as our books and equipment were supplied from Guildford, the County Town. (This may be wrong, of course). The building consisted of only two rooms and a lobby, with the clothes-hooks and four cold water basins; three steps led up to it, which bears out the theory that it was built on brick pillars over marshy ground. The big room had two doors, one opening from the lobby, the other leading into the smaller Infants' room, which possessed three doors, one from the lobby, the one into the big room, and an outer door with three steps down to the girls' enclosed asphalt playground : this sloped down to a row of lavatories, and also had a tall bolted gate opening on to the schoolhouse yard and back door; through this gate Miss Annie Harriet Brant, our Governess all the time I was there, would convey shovel fulls of live coals from the schoolroom fires to get her own going in the late afternoon. The Infants' room was heated by a Tortoise stove shielded by a stout guard; its dreaded possible drying effect thwarted by the constant presence of a zinc bowl kept well filled with water and stood on top of the stove.

Christ Church School had only about 60 pupils in all my time, 1905 to autumn 1914, with the headmistress Miss Annie Harriet Brant and two assistant teachers. We were proud of our school, not without reason, for we had an excellent governess, and always won a goodly proportion of prizes and awards in various classes at the annual Egham Flower Show in competition with other bigger schools in the district. This was quite a big affair, with sideshows, swings and round-a-bouts. Miss Banks had charge of the infants, and Miss Hubbard the intermediate classes up to Standard 3, after which Miss Brant taught every subject to the mixed assortment of ages, abilities, backgrounds, besides having responsibility for running the school, ordering supplies (and how I loved helping to unpack a fresh consignment of books, clean and glossy, with their intoxicating smell of new bindings and printer's ink; even the new history books were a joy in their shining green covers (history was not one of my favourite subjects); the old geography books were a faded blue). At the back of the store cupboard we found some old slates, with their pencils, setting our teeth on edge when we tried them out. During the morning and afternoon 'breaks' girls often sat on their coats in the smaller asphalt playground opening of the infants' room and reserved for them and older girls, and played five-stones or marbles as we called it: (ones), (two's) up to (fives), 'down the well', 'Jenny creeper', 'hard & softs', were parts of the game I remember. We were all allowed to play in the large earth playground, with its flagstaff in the centre, round which we stood to sing patriotic songs on Empire Day. On one exiting day a new piano arrived and the old harmonium was banished to the lobby, or cloakroom; with the piano came portraits of King George V and Queen Mary, to take place of Edward VII and Alexandra above the two opposite grates halfway down the big room.

On hot days we drilled outdoors and very occasionally went to sit under the shade of trees at the bottom of the playground for a lesson, from which we all looked up in excited wonder if an early aeroplane flew over. Boys and girls played rounders, cricket and football, perhaps not strictly according to the rules. Boys played tip-cat, rolling marbles into small holes they dug near the school wall, while younger ones acted driving horses with reins made of string or coloured circular thin ropes we made on cotton-reels with four nails on top, with a hairpin to lift wool over stitch by stitch. Nearly everyone had a hoop, iron ones with 'skimmers' for boys, wooden with plain short sticks for girls. In their season tops were played, 'conkers' hardened and strung for battles - 'Inker, Onker, my first conker'.

After an accident outside the school during the Ascot week when a boy suffered a broken leg being run over while turning cartwheels for ha'pence, school was closed for that week instead for Whitsun. The boy was carried in and laid on the big needlework table under the glass-fronted case in the big room that housed our meagre museum exhibits. An equally poor library was housed in the Infants' room; we were allowed to borrow these books to read in the dinner hour on wet days, after we had eaten our sandwiches or cold meat-pies, with a cold water to wash the food down if we needed a drink. Before being dismissed at 12 o'clock we stood to sing from Psalm 145 "The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord and thou givest them their meat in due season. Thou openest thine hand, and filest all things living with plenteousness."

Everyone walked to school, some from as far apart as Egham Wick (on the edge of Windsor Great Park), Portnall Park and Knowle Hill. My brother and sister and I had not nearly so far to go and could when required by mother go home to dinner, though we all hated doing this, much preferring to spend the 1 1/2 hours playing with the other children in Clockhouse Woods, which was allowed in those days, we understood by order of Prince Christian who was said to be fond of children. In the Autumn we picked up many sweet chestnuts, causing much trouble at home with our stained pinafores and hankerchieves. We would scout round the Clockhouse kennels, half scared, half thrilled, by the baying hounds and the horse carcasses hung up for their food.

I remember vividly the few holidays we did have, one with mother's younger brother Harry (Liddamore), a gamekeeper from Bransgore, near Christchurch, in Hampshire : while there we were taken to Bournemouth for the day, but having no swimsuits just tucked up our frocks into our knickers and paddled - I disgraced myself by trying to sit on a floating log which threw me off so my clothes were soaked. We ate raw carrots and the dog's biscuits, while cousin Reggie distinguished himself by falling down the well. We were sorry to leave such a free and easy existence. Mother took us to London Zoo one hot day, which gave her a bad head for the next two, but was the cause of a treat for us children as she did not feel equal to the long walk from Virginia Water Station and hired a cab (horse drawn Hansom); glory indeed, especially for me as I was allowed to sit up on the box by Mr Reeves, the cab owner : I was fascinated by the rythmic movement of the horse hindquarters, brown and glossy. I am afraid his horses had a hard time, as he was also a coal-merchant and they used to draw the coal carts, - and Virginia Water is a hilly district. I am glad horse-drawn trucks and buses are no more.

My baby brother Harry died in convulsions at Bagshot Lodge, and my little cousin Bertie was drowned in a ditch running down to the Bourne at Wellington Lodge. Harry was buried in an unmarked grave in Christ Church churchyard, under the beech trees near his little cousin Bertie their graves are sunk now and the grass is level and mowed above them. Dad's brother John and his wife Louise moved to Warren Lodge by the common, but she never recovered from the shock of the tragedy and died after a few years in Brookwood. The Chapman family all lie in Virginia Water churchyard. (Note : the earlier Chapmans were buried in Egham St. John but Louisa was obviously unaware of this).

The Estate was sold after the Countess's death in 1915, and after a short period when it served as a private girls' school, it was sold, to be converted into the well known Wentworth Golf Course. Tenants were allowed to buy their cottages, which was an opportunity for my parents to purchase Tortosa Cottage in Trumps Green, a well built three-bedroomed house near Virginia Water Station. This provided a bedroom of his own for my brother on his return from R.A.S.C. Service in East Africa in 1919, and was easier for me as I was then working in the Waterloo offices of the old LSWR (London South West Railway) in the Rates and Charges Dept. Our neighbour still kept pigs and my father, who had given them up by then, dug an artful trench from the side of their pen to drain it into our garden by the rhubarb bed, (of course the pigs always had a raised and roofed shelter where they slept on dry bracken and were a great deal cosier and more comfortable than animals kept on slats or concrete can ever be). They like company too and appreciated having their backs scratched with birch brooms, the stiffer the better; its makes them grunt with pleasure.

Louisa wrote a several papers on her life. I have edited them to some degree to eliminate repetition etc., and finally ended up with the above.

Now on WikiTree