A Darite Boy. Crowsnest Playmates

The Cottage in which we lived adjoined another; very similar in appearance to ours, which also looked down over Crowsnest, this was occupied by a spinster Ms K who owned both properties.

Originally Granny and Granddad H rented our cottage from Ms K, but when Mother and Father married, Granny and Granddad H moved out to live in a cottage in the nearby village of Common Moor, leaving Mother and Father to take over the rental, which was at that time two shillings and six pence a week.

In the British coinage at that time there was a coin known as half a crown, (two shillings and six pence), and eight half a crowns equaled the old pound.

As a skilled stone mason, Father’s weekly wage at that time was about three pounds ten shillings, consequently half a crown represented one part in twenty eight. Therefore just 3.57% 0r 1/28 of his wage was enough to pay the rent.

Ms K a typical grey haired Victorian lady, always dressed herself in black ankle length billowing flowery dresses on her feet she wore soft leather black lace up Victorian shoes. She was very short in stature and almost as wide in girth, ‘and due to the length of her dresses’ when walking appeared to float across the ground.

Ms K was a Devout Methodist; every Sunday, morning and evening, complete with bonnet, dressed in her finest black, bible in hand, she’d attend services at Darite Methodist Chapel.

Living in the house with her was a lodger, Jack T, who worked her small holding caring for eight or nine milking cows of various breed, and a hundred or so laying hens, one mule, and a few pigs.

During The Second World War Jack T signed up as a part time Special Constable in the local Liskeard police force.

Though respected, he was not always thought fondly of by the locals who showed him scant affection. After the war it became harder to scratch a living from such a small farm so he became a full time ambulance driver in Liskeard, and his extra income helped subsidise the smallholding.

Ms K, washed, cleaned, and cooked for Jack T just as a wife would. She was a thrifty woman never one to fritter away money. In cooking nothing was wasted; for she could turn every morsel or scrap of food into a pleasing snack or meal.

No one left Ms K’s kitchen feeling hungry!

Stretching along the complete frontage of the two cottages a timber and glass veranda had been erected.

This glazed veranda was home to a grape vine and several tobacco plants. The root of the vine had been planted outside the veranda in the garden; and the trunk entered the veranda through a round hole in the floor. The stem trained and up to the glass roof, where it then branched out along steel wires, spanning the entire roof.

Once a year Ms K or my Father had a pig slaughtered, when the blood of the animal was saved, then poured over the vines root to nourish it.

During the summer months bunches and bunches of ripe red grapes would hang down from the branches moist with the early morning dew. Those, that we did not eat ourselves were sold to the neighbouring commune.

About eighteen inches high all along the front of the veranda ran a solid concrete sill about two feet deep, and on this large pots of green leaf tobacco plants grew. When the leaves had ripened and turned brown they were harvested and stuffed into huge Hessian sacks.

The sacks were taken to Liskeard railway station and dispatched to Wills Tobacco Factory in Bristol. There the leaves were cured, shredded, and they were converted into cigarette rolling tobacco.

Fifty percent of the tobacco yield was retained by Wills, which they sold. The remainder returned to Jack T and my Father, who were both smokers. Father a forty a day man.

In the spring when Father’s share of tobacco had all gone up in smoke he would resort to buying  one ounce of Digger Shag, and one ounce of A1 each week. This was carefully mixed to give strength of smoke that that suited him.

On occasions, when for some reason or other Father couldn’t, or felt too tired to roll his following day’s supply of cigarettes he’d bribe me and my sister (who was three years younger than me) to roll them for him, for a little extra pocket money.

Sitting at the solid pine kitchen table in the evening, the room illuminated by the light of a paraffin wick lamp, my sister and I would go to work, and about an hour later the job would be finished and forty neatly rolled cigarettes would be ready for Father to inspect and put in his tobacco tin.

Over the years we became quite adept in the art of hand rolling cigarettes.

Chickens, not known to be the most intelligent of animals, would as often as not, lay their eggs wherever they were inclined to do so, having scratched a nest for themselves they would then squat, lay their egg, and smugly rise, clucking loudly, as if to say “I have laid a egg, here it is, here it is.” Be it in a barn or in the hedge rows there were always clutches of eggs to be found, and rarely did they lay in the chicken hutches provided for the purpose.

When I was about seven Jack T approached me with a business proposition. The deal was as such that every evening I was to scour the paddocks and collect the day’s crop of eggs. Those with my name on I could sell, or give to my Mother.

Equipped with a large cane wicker basket dangling from the crook of my arm, I’d set off. An hour or so later with several dozen eggs carefully gathered, to my absolute amazement I had gathered four eggs with my name etched in blue on the shells. Not bad for an evening’s work I thought!

Over the following weeks I noticed fewer eggs with my name on, on the occasional day I received no reward at all. It was not long before I realized that Jack T had penned my name on the shells himself, all motivation lost, my egg collecting days came abruptly to an end.

Diagonally across the bottom of Darite School’s playground runs part of the Liskeard to Caradon Rail line and beyond that lies a field which Ms K often rented for grazing. At the end of the school day Jack T would often ask me to bring Ms K’s cows home for the four o’clock milking.

Cows have a pecking order. The most dominant leads and the most submissive follows; in this case the most submissive happened to be an elderly lady named Daisy.

She was a small nice natured, beautiful Jersey Cow who allowed me to climb upon her back and ride her all the way to the lane bottom, there dismounting I’d collect an empty milk churn and follow the cattle up the lane and home to the milking parlour.

Each cow had its own stall and would eagerly enter it, and having tethered them I would head home to the cottage for tea. The cows fed, watered, and chewing their cud would patiently wait to be milked.

It was Jack T who normally did the milking which normally took a little over two hours to complete.

After tea I would return to the milking parlour to help scrub down the floor, scatter fresh straw bedding about the stalls, then place a scoop of cow cake pellets in each manger ready for the next morning’s milking.  When my chores were complete I would be allowed to go off and play, usually with my pals down the lane in Crowsnest.

Ms K had a Philips Radio which was powered by a twelve volt dry battery plus a six volt accumulator. As a special treat she’d allow me to listen once a week to two serialized programs, (one was ‘Dick Barton (Special Agent)’ and the other (’The Mounties’ a serial about Canadian Mounted Police.)

In return for this favour I had to visit her bedroom when she had retired for the night.

There with her Grey hair neatly plaited, she would be sitting up in bed, nightdress laced up to the neck, as often as not, sipping a small glass of French Brandy.

It was my duty to sit by her feet on the end of her bed and sing her ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ (one of her favourite hymns) whilst trimming dead skin from her corns with a razor blade. At the end of the hymn she’d say “When I die I will leave you all my jewellery”

One day I came home from School, to be told by my Mother, Ms K had passed away peacefully in her sleep. A few days later, mantled in a white shroud she was laid out in a coffin in our front room, there I was allowed to say my goodbyes and look at her for the last time.

Ms K if you read this in your heaven “I’m still awaiting the jewellery”.

Jack T soon found himself a wife and installed himself in his ladies cottage on the St Cleer road out of Liskeard.

The cottages and surrounding land owned by Ms K were put up for sale, a very nerve-racking time for my parents who were afraid they might lose the tenancy of our home.

It was not long before we had a new landlord. A (Mr and Mrs S) had purchased the two cottages and adjoining land. They were Londoners and along with their daughter June, promptly moved in next door to take up farming.

Mother and Fathers rent was now increased to five shillings per week which displeased my parents greatly. From that day on Mr and Mrs S had made themselves enormously unpopular with Mother and Father.

At the front of our cottage a path skirted the garden and led down to the stone lane.

On the left, a little way along the path, a stone lined spring well had been dug into an earthen bank.

The well was only seven feet deep, and its icy cold water was sourced from the old mine workings thousands of yards higher up on Caradon Hill.

Having seeped through the ground and layers of granite the water oozed up through the sandy bottom and was about four feet deep. When we wanted water we would take a clean pail, lean in, and scoop a bucket full out.

Full of minerals from the Caradon’s copper and tin lodes the water was always ice cold and sparklingly clear. About five foot up, and along the sides of the well wooden shelves had been fixed.

In the hot summer months the wells shelves acted as a storage space, and would be laden with junkets (jellies) setting, cakes and sponges cooling, clotted cream and home made jams, for Mother was a very prolific cook.

During the sweltering summer school holidays, the moors of Caradon were fraught with hidden dangers, with open copper and tin mine shafts with huge gaping holes hundreds of feet deep strewn over the hillside. Crumbling engine houses dotted the landscape, and Adders stretched out on the worn granite railway sleepers warming their brown bodies in the early morning sun.

This was the environment in which we were reared, and though aware of our dangerous surroundings, we were fascinated by the landscape, and found the moorland a magical playground.

Down the lane in the village of “Crowsnest”, was a public house called The Sun Inn, now known as  (The Crows Nest Inn).

The Landlady of this establishment during those days was a Mrs E, a Second World War widow who ran the pub singlehandedly.

She had three sons, one was Freddie, and the others were Raymond and Graham .  Freddie’s cousin Brian O also dwelt with them.

Freddie and Brian were two of my playmates. Most summer days would find us skinny dipping in Donkey Pond, among tadpoles, frogs and other creepy crawly creatures that resided in the murky water which was about four foot deep.

At our young age nudity was not an issue, we were too young to know or worry about such things.

Tired of swimming we’d lie on the grass bank beside the pond drying our bodies in the afternoon sun, watching blue or green dragon flies hover over the pond.

When dry we would then take up chasing moorland ponies, or look for fool’s gold in the huge mounds of stone debris excavated from the surrounding mines.

Due to the frequent flooding of south Caradon mines a small reservoir was created into which excess water was pumped, the reservoir became known as Donkey Pond. At one end of the pond was a small sluice gate, during the mining period, when needed the gate was raised to allow water to cascade down the side of the hill and drive the machinery of the sorting sheds or crushing plant below.

Down in the village of Crows Nest was an old grain mill with vast grey granite grinding stones which milled the grain from the local farms. Located at the rear of the mill was a small stream in which sat a water wheel which drove the machinery of the mill.

At times Donkey Ponds water was channelled into the stream to turn the wheel.

Childhood memories at times are a little bewildering, the year, for the most part appeared to be split into two seasons, summer and winter.

In the winter there was less for father to do in the garden or around the paddocks, animals were fed and bedded down for the night, supper eaten, then he would sit near the kitchen fire silently repairing or making new rabbit nets.

After the war food was still rationed. Wild rabbit meat was an essential part of the nation’s diet, and Father was a great rabbit catcher. A shotgun, ferrets, nets and two dogs were kept for this purpose. Spring a dapple Greyhound and Whippet cross, plus Digger a black and white short haired Terrier.

During the dark winter nights around two thirty am Father would creep into the children’s bedroom and come across to my bed. He’d wake me gently and whisper invitingly to me, to go rabbit catching. Wrapped up warm we’d both tiptoe out of the house and I would collect Spring the dog and put him on a slip lead, Father would put a leather harness over his shoulders, which held a wooden box high up on his back. In the box would be fully charged twelve volt battery. Two electric wires connected the battery to a spotlight which hung from his neck.

Taking care not to stumble or fall in the nights darkness we would head off to farmland  half a mile or so away. Father would always have permission to rabbit the ground we went on. He would help out during the summer harvest time and in return the farmers would allow him to rabbit their land.

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