Part Two 1914 -1938 Part Two 1914 - 1938
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Part Two 1914 -1938 Part Two 1914 - 1938 Childhood and Families Alan Brind My granddad was Herbert Allen (Jack) Laxton 1884 – 1936. He married Eva Whitear from Titchfield in 1913 and they lived at 81 West St. Titchfield. Jack served for 24 years in the 108th Heavy Battery Royal Garrison Artillery which, as Sergeant, he left in 1926. He was a horseman par excellence and served the whole of WW1 in France and Belgium coming through numerous engagements uninjured. He was awarded a Mons Star with Clasp and Roses, British Army War Medal and Victory Medals. He left the army in 1926 and became a bricklayer and worked on the building of Titchfield Primary School and also the Embassy and Savoy cinemas in Fareham. It was ironic that despite having worked with horses throughout his army career, he died, aged 52, following an infection due to a bite from a horse fly. Donald Upshall As I was the first grandchild in the Upshall family I was named after my uncle who was killed in WW1. If you look in the church you will see his name on the remembrance plaque. My father started the garage on East Street when I was born. Now, in 2015, we've been in business 89 years. Today you don't realise how narrow the roads were then. There were no kerbs. You just walked along the edge of the road. But there wasn’t much traffic then. It is so different now of course. I remember the main A27 road. I used to push my brother in his pushchair all the way in to Fareham where they had all these Hornby toys. I used to look at them in the window as I was a big Hornby train enthusiast at the time. 9 Village Voices My grandfather was the headmaster of the old Titchfield Primary School, when it was in West Street, back in the ‘20s and ‘30s; it was called the National School. In those days headteachers were respected and strict, and when we went to tea with him you had to be careful. When the new school was opened in 1934, he was on the board as a governor so he helped select the new headmaster. I was at West Street for about a year but I didn't used to see him. He had a motto, 'Manners Maketh Man' He had it right across the entrance to the assembly hall. Then we moved to the new school and he retired. When we used to go to his house for tea in the ‘30s we used to sit there and he might have another friend, a headmaster, round and you certainly thought he was special! He used to tell me that people used to raise their hat to him in the street. They were respected then. He used to wear gentleman's boots, nice polished brown lace-up ones. When he caught a bus he always went upstairs to keep fit. I know he was connected to the church. I don't know if he played the organ but he used to go to the church because of the children, his students. If you had to go to the doctor’s you did not need an appointment so you sat and waited for your turn. Dr Windermer and the vicar were very well respected. Mr Mason was the chemist but there were no pills. He mixed up the prescription in medicine form. I was the eldest of ten children whom my mother had to bring up. We used to live in the house opposite the garage, next to the Wheatsheaf pub in East Street. There were no supermarkets, double glazing or central heating and we had an outside toilet. I left home before I was 16 and my sister left for a secretarial job. Otherwise we were a bit crammed but the War was on and we had to put up with it. You look back and think how did we exist? I gave six sisters away in marriage as my father died near the end of WW2. 10 Part Two 1914 -1938 Ben Waterfall “Brother married sister, and sister married brother” I am the grandson of the Ben Waterfall listed on the Titchfield War Memorial but I never knew my grandfather. Nobody ever told me about him and it wasn't until I started looking up the family tree that I found out about him. My gran wouldn't talk about him. I also didn't know, until after gran had died, that my great aunt Flo (Florence) was granddad's sister – no one ever told me. I just knew her because she was married to Grandma Tilly's (Matilda's) brother. Granny had a telegram from the Navy to say that granddad was on his last legs down at Portland and she should get down and see him so she went down there and was with him when he died. Gran lost her husband and son, Berty, in the same year. My dad was the only boy who survived, along with his sisters - aunts Rose, Minnie, Annie (Beryl's Mum), and Em (Emily). Douglas Elkins Once in my boyhood I had to be seen by a doctor, Dr Weir from Lee–on- the-Solent. He lifted my shirt tail and said I had chicken pox! “That will be half a crown,” (12.5p) said the doc to my mother. Children in those days suffered mumps, measles, jaundice, chicken pox, conjunctivitis, thread worms and every other malady known to school children and many never saw a doctor because of the cost. 11 Village Voices I remember I used to cycle into Fareham town and, on one occasion, stood my bike against the kerb to go shopping, for my mother. On my return the cycle had vanished so I had a three mile walk back home. Several weeks later I was astonished to see a boy of about my age riding through Fareham on my bike. I promptly grabbed him and my bike and marched him up to the police station. The police station then was in the large house which is now the Registry Office in Osborn Road South, behind the Magistrates Court. The sergeant sat me in a room on my own and took the other boy into another room to ‘talk’ to him. After some time the sergeant returned and said that he had left the boy in another room for a short while but on his return he found the boy had run away! I was re-united with my bike and went off upon my way. Thinking about this many years later, I think the sergeant gave the boy advice and time to get away before sending me away rejoicing. Paula Weaver My dad, George Rogers, known as Tom, was a Londoner. He joined the Royal Artillery as a boy soldier in 1925 as he wanted to work with horses. His assessment documents state that he was ‘a first class gunner and a promising groom, fond of horses.’ He was based at Fort Wallington. He left the army in 1931 and worked in the building trade. I think he must have met my mum, Flo Ford, here in Titchfield. He told us that all his mates in the army, including him, had to say goodnight to the girls at the bridge in East Street because they were not allowed any further. The villagers did relent eventually because several of the soldiers, including my dad, married local girls and stayed in the village. George Watts George was born in 1931 at number 26 West Street. It was his grandparents’ house and when his parents got married they had the upper rooms. Later the council built new houses at the top of West Street and he moved with his family to the new house, number 72. 12 Part Two 1914 -1938 June Pellatt My great grandfather, William Burgess was the last Town Crier/Knocker-Up in Titchfield. He had three children, William, Ada and my gran Pat. Pat married Harry Bowers and they had four children, my dad was one of them, George Bowers. George worked at Arthur Hales cycle shop from the age of 12 and was later apprenticed at the Upshall’s garage. Arthur Hales used to be partners in the combined cycle shop and accumulator battery business with Edward ‘Eddy’ Upshall, but they separated and he left to open the cycle shop in the Square. Eddy carried on repairing cars at the same site. His grandson Phillip still runs the garage. My granddad on mum's side was Sidney Russell, and his sister was Poppy. Their dad was an educated man who had become a farmer in the area. Sidney didn’t want to go into farming so he joined the Royal Marines. Poppy married Archibald Freemantle whose father ran a pub. Although it was hoped that Archi would join his dad in the pub trade, he became a carpenter and later an undertaker. His grandson John Freemantle still works as an undertaker in the village. I think my gran, with a couple of friends, did munitions work, filling shells in WW1. They went by transport and it was all a bit ‘hush hush’. They had to stop though because the chemicals they were using started to turn them yellow. ( .) Kate Scott ‘Granddad cycled down to Fareham from Nottingham in a day.’ Maud was my great granny on my mother’s side. Granddad, Arthur Stanley Sentanse (Stan), came from Grantham in Lincs. He met granny on the 11th of the 11th 1929, funny wasn't it? He was in the army, the Royal Artillery and stationed at Fort Fareham.