The Last Cowboy in Sussex
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The Last Cowboy in Sussex A farm boy’s memories of Sompting in the 1940s by Bill Lindfield This draft edition without photographs is a working copy and is not to be further copied without permission; contact Lancing & Sompting Pastfinders. Editorial team Mike Tristram (text) and Mike Prince (photos) and other members of Lancing & Sompting Pastfinders 7.10.2008 2 Foreword This is the story that I have often wanted to tell. It is the tale of a lad growing up in an area that was doomed to become a dormitory for all the commercial areas around it. I would like to think that I grew up at its beginning, but in retrospect the change is going on all the time and I witnessed only the period of the most rapid acceleration. Sompting, which is the village to which I refer, is in fact a collection of small hamlets, comprising of Lower Cokeham, Upper Cokeham and Sompting itself. There are two areas, one being Cokeham, which has its own public house, The Ball Tree, and the other Sompting, which also has a public house called The Marquis of Granby. These pubs were, I was brought up to believe, about a mile apart or as near as mattered in that old fashioned world that existed then. It was an area of closely knit people, and a lot of one's business was known by others, but not out of a sense of nosiness, as opponents to the old village life would like one to think, but because each life in many ways was inter woven with the others. In those far off days Sompting was in the rural district of Worthing, but in later years has been linked together with Lancing and in most cases today referred to as the collected area of Lancing and Sompting. A lot of my memories have that link also. I left this area on two occasions, each to join the army. On my return from my first visit I was lucky enough to meet the girl who was to become my wife, and together we were fortunate enough to have three children. These children were born during my second visit to the army, where my good wife and I lived in many different married quarters and consequently the children were born in different places and so had no static roots on which they could look back. We came back when we could and they always looked on Sompting as their home. It was to create a Sompting that was and had been full of change. To record the host of memories that the old village held for me, and describe the manner in which things were done in the past, that I have committed these words to paper, in the hope that they will be of interest to them and their children in future years. Bill Lindfield. 3 Chapter I WESTERN ROAD Western Road, which now stretches from the sea front up to The Ball Tree Inn, was but half that length when I started working in 1941. The road itself was made of flint only, with no tar macadam or concrete surface applied at that time. It concluded about 50 to 60 yards south of the railway line. The foundation for the road had been dug as far as the railway, but it was to be several years before it was to grow into the road we know today. Extensive building projects had come to our area, and this land along with many other acres in our village had been sold for this purpose. The road had been laid to keep pace with the bungalows that had grown almost as quickly as the mushrooms they had replaced. These bungalows, with the exception of one pair, had been built on the eastern side of the road. War had arrived just a couple of years before, and was going to change the world. There was no escape for Western Road. Like many human beings in later years it found itself between the new world and the old. The war had put a stop to the building, and so much of what was previously grazing land now held with pride the new bungalows, while the remainder stood by dejectedly unfenced, uncared for, but as we will see not unwanted. The bungalows on the eastern side nearest the sea had high ground to their rear, but halfway along the road the land dropped away leaving the remainder perched on the higher of the ground, with their back gardens sloping down to their fence, which stopped it tumbling away down a furze and blackberry inhabited slope to a reed filled brook. Beyond the brook the tufted sharp bladed grasses flowed on across the lowland, until once more a reed filled brook stood to halt their progress. These brooks were just two of the many that lived in this area carrying out their threefold task. Firstly, they were necessary to drain the boggy land, and so make into some lowly form of pasture, and secondly, to boundary the area into parcels of grazing allowing some control over its usage, and thirdly, to create supplies of water where the animals could slake their thirst. The brook that ran behind the bungalows ran north and south, and had the road not drifted off in a north westerly direction, would have been parallel. At its northerly end just before it got lost in a small scrub like area, there was a ford where the water shallowly flowed over the shingle base of the brook, giving it the appearance of being clean, but as far as I was concerned it was in appearance only. This ford allowed the cattle to wander from the higher pasture into the parcel of sharp bladed reed like grasses. The further brook stopped them proceeding over more brookland and the higher ground beyond which made up the neighbouring thirty five acre farm. Southern Railway owned this farm, which had obviously been bought as part of, or to extend the large Railway Works which stood on the high ground to the east, and was segregated from the farm by a twelve foot high wooden fence that enclosed it. It was said that there was eleven miles of rail within these works, and at that time it gave employment to a large number of the inhabitants of Lancing. The twelve foot high fence which enclosed it also enclosed the sidings at the northern end of the rough pasture. In these sidings were carriage upon carriage awaiting to be pulled forward, as their turn came either for repair, inspection or for modification. While they waited they stood there aloof, and from their high position looked down at a strip of good pasture, over a bank and the scrub, into which the brook disappeared. Over the rough pasture to the bungalows, and over the brook to the right and on up to the rising ground where lived the briar and the furze, and noticing here and there the trees of Hawthorn, Elder and Elm. Slightly to the east of where the sidings finished and running north and south, and in so doing separating the slope of furze and briar from the good level grazing at the top of bungalows, stood sold old Elm trees. They stood like markers, calling attention to the crossing gates of the railway line. Their purpose was to allow access of cattle and farm implements from one side of the line to the other. These gates were always securely locked by means of stout chains and heavy padlocks, for not only was there a danger from the trains, but this part of the railways was electrified using the ground rail system. The keys to unlock these padlocks were issued to registered key holders only, who had a need to have access across. 4 There were in this area three such pairs of gates. The first pair for whom the large Elms stood as markers opened out to the bottom of Cokeham Lane. Although people were not really allowed to use them, they were regularly used by the people of Sompting as the easiest and most scenic route on their beach outings to the sea. I had with my mother on several occasions, and with my young friends later, climbed the gates and scurried across the rails when we also had been on such excursions. They were in constant use to allow cattle to be driven over the unfenced grasslands I have described. One hundred yards or thereabouts to the west of them stood another pair, the site today being occupied by the Western Road bridge. Now the crossing of the rails is completed high above them, whereas then there would be a decline to the rail and a sharpest climb out again having crossed the lines. There was no road at the northern side of these gates but merely the large arable field called Chalky Ham. Nearer to Ham Bridge some five hundred yards from this pair stood the third. These, instead of a drop to the rail, had quite a rise, and having crossed would drop away sharply again. Access to this pair by vehicle was by travelling down Loose Lane, whereas by foot or by cattle down Blacksmith fields and the brookland below. Whichever approach was made the last stretch to the gates was made over a culvert, below which ran a stream that to us kids created the best tadpole territories in the area. The pair of bungalows that stood on the western side of the road had at the bottom of their garden a brook that ran along to meet this third pair of gates, but like a runner who just could not make the distance, it collapsed into the bank of the railway and disappeared beneath it, some fifty yards short.