Part Four 1946 - 1964 Colin Wilton-Smith “I remember the honesty and trust displayed by the occupiers - good old days!” In January 1963 I started work as an articled pupil with Hall, Pain & Foster, Chartered Surveyors and Estate Agents, at 48 West Street, Fareham (now Beals Estate Agents). I was one of three articled pupils and we were required to collect rents on a Monday of each week. One week covered the Gosport area; the alternate week was Titchfield and the Western wards of Fareham. The Titchfield rent round involved, amongst others, the collection of rents in Catisfield Lane, the centre of Titchfield village and areas close by - some 50 or 60 properties with weekly rents of anything between 10 shillings (50p) and 15 shillings (75p). I rode a BSA 250cc scooter, a lethal machine - lots of power and little stability. On one occasion, before the village was by-passed and when Catisfield Lane led to the village, I skidded into a ditch scattering the rent money amongst the leaves and with the scooter ending up somewhere down the road. Rents in the village were collected mainly from East Street, the cottages in Church Path and West Street. In those days if the tenants were not in, the door was left unlocked and the rent and rent book would be on the table inside. Most of the tenants were employed in the market gardening/ strawberry industries and during the strawberry season, bags or punnets of strawberries would be left for me, testing my aptitude of riding the scooter fully laden. At the time of the carnival the whole village was virtually closed down and we moved the rent day accordingly. The rent round included the semi-detached villas on the north side of Hunts Pond Road. One of the tenants, a lady in her sixties provided a service to nearby residents of laying out the deceased on her parlour table. This was rather unnerving when trying to collect rents! Apart from the main road, almost all the side roads in the area were unmade with the council just starting to adopt and surface these. Most of the fields were cultivated with strawberries but the developers were beginning to acquire this land. Hall, Pain & Foster acted as agents for many of the farmers and smallholders and I was involved in measuring up and preparing plans of land to be sold. We were still using steel chains as a measuring tool at this time with the units measured in links. My abiding memory of these times was the simplicity of the homes from which I collected rents; most just had a front parlour and a very simple scullery 1 Village Voices or kitchen, very rarely was upholstered furniture present - just hard chairs and a kitchen table. I remember the honesty and trust displayed by the occupiers - good old days! Leslie Ellis On returning to England Leslie went back to Harrogate and worked in the casualty department of Harrogate hospital. It was there he met his wife Denise who was a nurse. Denise’s family came from Switzerland but lived in Harrogate. Leslie and Denise were married in 1947. In 1947 Dr Ellis heard from the chemist in Harrogate of a general practice for sale in Titchfield, Hampshire. The chemist’s brother was Dr Windermer and he wanted to retire. Leslie and Denise bought the house and the practice at No. 1 Coach Hill and travelled down from Harrogate in an Austin 7. Dr Ellis practised in Titchfield until his retirement in 1985 aged 70. However, he still lives in the same house, and is now aged 101 years. John Ekins Soon after moving to Catisfield, I can remember being taken to Dr Windermer's surgery and a little later, with the advent of the NHS, meeting Dr Ellis for the first time. The consulting rooms were in what is now 'The Old Surgery'. The door from the street opened into the waiting room and you had to keep track of who was in front of you in the queue, there were no appointments then. My mother's rule of thumb was if there was a bicycle outside the wait would be longer. In fact we seldom waited as long as an hour - so it was much the same as today! Between the waiting room and the consulting room there was an anteroom where, I recall, Dr Ellis had a Bunsen burner for testing specimens. In those days there was much more touching and feeling of the patient, “Stick out your tongue, say Aah”; feel the glands in the neck, take your temperature and out with the stethoscope. There was much more interaction with the patient. If you were really ill ‘out of hours’ then Dr Ellis or one of the partners would come to attend to you. Dr Ellis was in partnership with Dr Edwards who soon moved to concentrate on Locks Heath. Both had a good reputation but to a child Dr Edwards was a less forbidding presence than Dr Ellis. Dr Walsh joined a little later and seemed to split his time between Titchfield and Locks Heath. Most ailments, especially coughs, would result in a prescription for some kind of jollop. Prescriptions would be made up at the chemist, still in the same shop today. I recall it being run by Mr. Dunne who lived over the shop but later moved to Catisfield. 'Be Done by Dunnes' was the banner he displayed at one carnival. 2 Part Four 1946 - 1964 Although we lived next door to the Catisfield Post Office stores, for some reason my mother did not choose to shop there. We would have groceries delivered from Lusby’s in Fareham. A Mr Goddard would come out on a bicycle to take a weekly order, which would be delivered a day or two later in cardboard boxes. John Maginnis, “Have you heard the one about the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman?“ Well at Follands we have one of those stories which, although not so lewd as the usual type, has the greater merit of being true. In our Process Department we have Mr George Templeman, who started with us as a Salt Bath operator in July of last year. During the following September, Mr Alex Wilson, was engaged in the same department for the same kind of work. In December, Mr John Maginnis joined us, same department, same job. These three men, now engaged upon this process work of annealing light alloys, met for the first time in Titchfield way back in 1940 when billeted with the 12th Commandos. They had terrific times together, having taken part in Operation Archery, the Lofoten Islands raids on Norway, when they went communication busting. They also went over to Normandy on D-Day,. The one point of that great event which, they seem to resent more than anything else, is the fact that they had to start out at the unearthly hour of 7 a.m. that morning. They set out 65 strong, but five hours later there were only 27 of them. 3 Village Voices However these three came through safely and unlike most instances of this kind their forces friendship became cemented by coincidence. Each was a single man at that time and believe it or not each of them married his landlady of those early Titchfield days and they are settled in these parts, for good we hope!’ Mike Ferris “Telephones were very rare among ordinary working people” We used to supplement our coal ration by buying coke from the gasworks. Coke was not rationed. The major problem with coke however was transporting it home and many people used to line up on a Saturday morning to buy a bag, which they either took home in an old pram or perched on the frame of their bike. A woman’s bike was best for this because the bag fitted in the ‘V’ without being obstructed by a crossbar. The other supplement for the fire was timber of course and there was a plentiful supply of this available if you had the means to pay for a full load, and either a small truck, or horse and cart to collect it. A horse and cart was certainly the case with my family. This timber was obtained from a large storage area in Locks Heath, where timber recovered from the bombed-out houses in Southampton and Portsmouth was purchased and stored by a dealer. There was little that wasn’t available from this depot and many sheds and pigsties were constructed from material purchased there. The timber for burning invariably consisted of nail-ridden floor joists and similar that all had to be sawn by hand to length and many saws were ruined by the nails. The main industry in the village was the tannery, which processed several types of hides but principally cow hides. Most children from the school were shown around the tannery and other local places at some stage. Titchfield Mill was a working mill but I seem to recall that the miller 4 Part Four 1946 - 1964 told us, when we were shown around, that he did not produce flour, but largely ground oats and barley. Telephones were very rare among ordinary working people. I knew of no one at all who possessed one. There was only one public telephone box in the village - situated at the bottom of Southampton Hill outside the public toilet. The Coach and Horses pub had a private telephone in their living quarters, which the landlady allowed people to use in an emergency.