“A Darite Boy. A Shropshire Man”

Darite Village, and June the 2nd 1939 would be of little interest to most folks, but to me it was quite eventful, it was after all the day I was born to become ” A Darite Boy”.

Father had been enlisted into the army (The Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry) and found himself posted to some backwater of India, leaving my Mother, a local midwife, and Granny H to cope with my birth.

Later four other siblings were to enter the world in the same small bedroom of the four roomed thick walled granite cottage that nested into the side of Caradon Moors, East Cornwall.

The cottage overlooked the village of Crows Nest which sat in the vale below. Higher up and to the rear is the village of Darite.

Liskeard was ancient Stannary and Market town, and though only some five miles distant, in the era of horse and carriage the town seemed a world away.

There was only one entrance door to the cottage, which was known as the front door. (Don’t ask me why it was known as “The Front Door” when it was the only door to the house).

A main feature of the kitchen being a huge black cast iron cooking range, upon which a large soot blackened cast iron kettle continuously simmered, all set for tea brewing. The cooking range, along with the black Welsh slate floor, were blacked and polished every Thursday.

Every Friday and Sunday Mother baked for the coming week. The smell of freshly baked Cornish Pasties, Rabbit Pies, Meats, and Cakes would pervade the entire house. Friday was Pasty day.

Every spring a Horse drawn cart would arrive with father’s blackened well rotted garden manure, this was carefully trenched into the soil which over the years had become very fertile. Father always said “If you can’t eat it don’t grow it” The garden yielded fresh vegetables most of the year. And it was said he could spot a weed before it decided to grow!

At the end of the garden was a steep rubble lane, this lead you to Darite above, and Crowsnest below. Cutting across the lane below the garden is the old Liskeard and Caradon Railway line.

Behind the house is a small paddock, and beyond that another disused Liskeard and Caradon Railway line that also lead across moorland through the village of Minions, and onto the surrounding mines, and Cheesewring Granite Quarry.

To the left of our own house were another three paddocks along with a ramshackle assortment of small granite stone outbuildings where Father reared a mixture of animals, There were Pigs, Calves, Chickens, Bantams, Indian Game, Ferrets and the odd goat or cow. “If you can’t eat it don’t rear it”

The first four or five years of my life are mostly lost in the fog of time, broken only when Father returned, discharged from the army at the end of the Second World War with malaria.

Before being conscripted into the army father had served his Apprenticeship and had become a stone mason Journeyman. The term originated in the regulations of the medieval trade guilds; it derives from the French journée (‘a day’) because journeymen were paid daily.

Each guild normally recognized three grades of worker – Apprentices, Journeymen, and Masters. As a qualified tradesman, a Journeyman might have become a master with his own business but most remained employees.

However Father was paid weekly and worked as a Stone Mason at Caradon Quarry hewing headstones and such.. For thirty five years.

At the age of five I became a pupil of Darite County Primary School.

My first form teacher was a lovely tolerant silver haired elderly lady called Miss Snell, who taught me for three years, then I was moved up a form.

The Head Master at the time was Bill Pearce who had little time for boys and preferred to teach girls. My Mother as a child was taught by him, and whereas she was an outstanding pupil winning national calligraphy awards, and was an talented water colour artist, I found the three R’s rather hard going, and was a very slow learner.

Bill Pearce soon picked up on the fact that I was left-handed, and he was determined to change that. One week he caned me every day, Monday to Friday for writing with my left hand. Apart from the shear pain of the caning  I felt ridiculed and began to think myself as not normal and from that day on I loathed Bill Pearce and became a rebel and the bane of most people’s lives, getting myself into all kinds of mischief.

All through my childhood both Mother and Father tried their best to inspire me and to respect authority  they tried their up-most to rein me in, but it was to no avail.

Mother a very self willed woman channelled her energy in three directions, Cooking, Reading, and cultivating Orchids. Her cooking was unpretentious, but sumptuous; she also had natural ability as an Orchid grower, and was quite an authority on the subject.

The evenings would find her immersed in a book, reading by the light of a paraffin lamp until ten pm. Then both Mother and Father would retire to bed.

Father was a very quiet man, not one to waste breath on idle chat, he would rise from his bed around five am, scrub up, and in silence have his breakfast, (usually milk sops and a cup of tea, pick his back pack up which contained a flask of tea) and his daily crib (food) then walk the mile or so uphill to Caradon Quarry. The laborious climb would take about forty five minutes, depending on the weather.

It took less time to return from the day’s work about thirty minutes as it was all downhill. So around five thirty Father would enter the kitchen, eat the days main meal followed by a piece of home-made seed cake, a cup of tea, and then out to feed and tend to the animals he kept. Once finished you would find him taking care of his garden until nightfall, when failing light prevented him from doing any more  he would return to the house.

After scrubbing up, he would have his supper, chat to Mother, and then go off to bed promptly at ten pm. (We had no Radio or Television in those days)

My four Grandparents were the only people who really inspired me and had a lasting influence through out my life.

Granny and Granddad B lived in a two up and two down terraced miner’s granite cottage in Minions Village. Granddad B (Joe as he liked to be called) had dust on his lungs (from years of quarry work) and was basically chair bound.

His days were spent sitting on a wooden Windsor chair in the kitchen corner. He seldom moved, except to answer the call of nature, or stroll laboriously to the local tin hutted Snooker Hall which was situated some thousand yards away past the South Phoenix mine there he’d watch the balls run along the brushed green baize on the tables, chat with his male friends and smoke a few pipes of black twist tobacco, then labour back home to his chair.

Granny B had given birth to five children, four boys and a girl, Ron, Owen, Dot, Donald, and Arthur the youngest. At the time of my birth only two of their children lived at home, Owen and Arthur.

Owen Worked as a farm labourer and owned a pony called Laddie.

Motorbike mad Arthur (Matchless and Royal Enfield’s) worked at Cheesewring Quarry for a while, and then became a timber logger.

At the age of about seven or eight most Sunday mornings at about ten am I would set out along the old railway line and walk the three and half miles to Minions to see Gran and Granddad B.

Granny B  always cooked Saffron flavoured currant buns on Sunday’s the sweet scented smell of the warm Saffron would flood through out the kitchen as she took the buns from the oven tantalizing our nostrils. Once the buns had cooled she would hand me one or two cut in half and laden with butter.

In the afternoon, if the weather was kindly, Uncle Owen would allow me to ride Laddie out across the moors and down to Rilla Mill Village,

or over Caradon Hill past Donkey pond and out to Pensilva Village where Uncle Don lived with his wife Phoebe.

Returning to Minions about supper time I’d rubdown, water, and feed the pony then meet Uncle Owen outside the Cheesewring Hotel for a glass of lemonade before heading home.

Each Christmas on Boxing Day I would be allowed to ride with the East Cornwall Hunt. The frosted moorland glinting gloriously in the morning sun, sure footed Laddie would keep up with the larger horses with ease. Putting up a Fox was of little importance. More…