	Sign In Sign-Up

"Stories from The Barkers."

MR BAYNES AND THE CHAFF TREADING
My Dad, Ben Barker is ninety-two but is still pretty "sharp". He tells me the odd tale of when he was a boy and all the pranks he and his friends got up to. When Dad was a boy George Baynes managed Broxted Hall Farm for Lady Warwick. Mr Baynes would often ask the local lads to do odd jobs for him around the farm. One such day he asked Dad and a few of the older boys if they would tread chaff for him. They agreed on a sum as payment and the boys went down to the farm. The chaff was in a large hopper and the boys had to tread, or stamp it down so that more and more chaff could be added. At the end of the day when they went to Mr Baynes for their pay he only wanted to give them half the amount he had promised. The older boys were really annoyed about this so on their way home they let all his horses and cows - about a dozen or so of each - out into the lower pastures.

BROXTED SCHOOL'S CHRISTMAS PARTY
The winter of 1943 was a bad one, with snow and drifts and bitterly cold weather. Mum and I were staying at the Prince of Wales with my grandparents as I had a bad cold and the walk back to School Villas was hazardous. My father was in the army. The pond at Broxted Hall Farm had frozen over and all the children were going down there to slide on the ice. I knew I wasn't supposed to go but I sneaked out and went to join in the fun. I'd only been there a few minutes watching the bigger kids having a great time when my mother arrived to take me back home. I caught heck for that. A few days later I was seriously ill in bed with pneumonia; Doctor Weller made a special trip from Thaxted to visit me as I was hallucinating with fever. As soon as I was on the mend and the weather improved my mother's Aunt Elsie, from Little Easton, came to visit and brought my cousin Brian to cheer me up. Brian went to Little Easton School and he told me that the American servicemen at Little Easton Park had given the kiddies there a Christmas party. I was pretty upset when I heard that the Broxted School children had had no such party. Because the American servicemen came to the Prince of Wales regularly I had got to know a few of them quite well. Many were only about 19 years old and had little sisters at home like me, so they said. As soon as I was well enough to go downstairs I lay in wait for my favourite G.I's and asked them why the children at my school hadn't had a party. A few days later a wheelbarrow full of oranges and sweets was taken to the school for the Broxted children. Unfortunately I wasn't there, I'd had a relapse of the pneumonia and spent another two weeks in bed.
The stories above written by Gillian Barker in AU.

Been chatting to Pa and he says he thinks the van outside the Bell was "Old Primes the bakers van". Mr Primes sold bread - including "quarten loaves" Dad says, plus chicken and pig meal.

Gil also gave this interesting account of her mother's meeting with the Dutchess of Warwick.
"When my mother was little the Countess came riding her horse through the village. Mum and her friends were playing outside at the time. My mother had long, golden hair and the countess reached down, stroked Mum's head and gave her a half crown (2 shillings and sixpence) a lot of money in those days, especially to a child. She said Mum had hair that shone like ripened corn. I don't know how many times I heard that tale as I was growing up. It made a huge impression on my mother"

Lady Warick and her son.
The Countess (Initials on back" of photo- "RJM")

Hi Evelyn - again! I was just talking to Dad and he told me a little something I didn't know. About my great uncle Reg Coyston (married to Granny - Maud Payne's baby sister Elsie) - his father was Lady Warwick's 'horse drawn' carriage driver. He used to drive her all over the county of Essex. I knew him when I was little as he lived with Reg and Elsie and my cousin Brian and I used to stay with them sometimes. Mr Coyston snr. was a tiny, garden gnome type man. Just a snippet. Ta ta. Gill

More stories taken from e-mails from Gillian in AU.
Dad says: C.H. Rogers was before his time, he vaguely remembers hearing the name but that's all. F. Scruby he remembers.He says Fredrick Scruby was a farmer at Church Hall. He thinks it was he who split the property into Church Hall and Church Hall Farm, he sold it all and moved away to Tilty. (Long way!!) He knew the Battiscombe's well and says they had two daughters, Winifred and he thinks Edith. Winifred was my Dad's God-mother. He liked her better than her sister. (?) Mrs Battiscombe taught Sunday school. Dad says it was held at the school and then they were marched to church for the service where some sat in the congregation and others sang in the choir. Dad occasionally pumped the organ when the other boy, Jack Staines, couldn't do it and he also rang the bells (one actually) with Jimmy Prentice. Mr Sparks was the church warden and he would ask Dad and his brother Percy (Barry's grandfather) to cut the lawns at the vicarage as he was getting a bit past it.
He thinks in his day the owners of Church Hall went like this: Scruby, Dakin (not sure of spelling - phonetic), Ward, Butler, Wainman - Dad worked for them all except Scruby and during/at the end of WW2 the Melon's bought Church Hall. We moved to Sussex after the war and Dad worked for Mrs Wainman senior, mother of the Broxted Wainman's (who I think had come from Tiptree), until she went back to Vancouver to live.
During the war a lovely man named Mr Service owned Church Hall Farm, there was a Mrs Service but I don't remember her, I think they were Irish. I was very young but remember him walking to the Prince each day - he had been ill and was required to walk for his health and would come to the tap-room (not the lounge bar!!) for a 1/2 pint. My Uncle Reg repainted his Jaguar for him. He heard me singing one day and wanted to pay for singing lessons for me - I often wish he had!!!! Who knows who, what or where I might be now!!!! The Scott-Millar family bought Church Hall Farm from him I believe. They were still there when I went to Canada.

Re the man who was hung in Broxted. It happened when Dad was a young boy - can't get an exact date out of him - Dad was born 1911. He said the guy and his buddies were larking about outside the Bell pub and he was, "accidentally hanged, they didn't mean it to happen so they put his body in a ditch opposite the pub and fled." The tree you mention might just be a very large old tree in the field behind the pub and near the road. When I was young it had been felled and we used to sit on it and watch the boys play cricket or football in the Bell field - as we called it. On it's side the trunk was about three or four feet high, so it was a large old tree, and we had to clamber up onto it. I did a bit of canoodling on it when I was in my late teens too. Dad can't remember who the hanged guy was but he might just suddenly remember so if so I'll let you know.

This is Dad's old home, the yew tree he planted is on the left of the house. The big yew was on the right at the entrance gate but is long gone. My grandfather built this house with his own hands for his big family - it's larger than it looks, goes out the back - and originally had several acres of garden, orchard and a field attached - all broken up and sold separately now, sadly. Gill

Yew Tree House
Click to enlarge.

More e-mail stories from Gillian Barker! Isn't she a great writer?

Thank you for the most recent pics - I cant tell you how many memories they bring back. In inclement weather (in our teens) we used to sit in the church porch and canoodle! There was nowhere else to go in Broxted to get out of the wind and rain!! I'd forgotten all the stones imbedded in the church wall - I can imagine when the church was built all the Broxted people collecting stones off their property - maybe!! When I was in the choir one year we had a HUG THE CHURCH ceremony and literally held hands all around the church and hugged it.
Neither Dad nor I recognised the old Post Office. It used to consist of the brick part only - a duplex. The Post Office on one side with Mrs Davis behind the counter, her husband was a farm labourer, and the Prentice family next door (on the left). There was a long path to the PO door and on either side they grew vegetables. We were all a bit daunted by Mrs Davis - she was small and chunky with a large bosom that rested on the counter as she served us - and she didn't 'suffer fools' at all!!
It was lovely to see photos of Bob and dear Phil Wallis. They weren't able to have children and Mum often talks of them and how Phil would say to her, "Barb, will you have a baby for me?" I spent a lot of my early childhood visiting the Wallis's and can remember Bob coming indoors with Wellingtons covered in chicken poo and mud and poor Phil giving out to him!!
We all wore 'wellies' in those days when we were out and about in the village. Especially in the spring thaw as the gateways to fields would be a sea of mud. I've lost the odd wellie - stuck in the mud - and had to limp home. Usually one of the farm labourers would rescue the boot eventually and drop it off. We all had our names in them!!

Small world! Read this e-mail from Gill concerning Phillip Burton's great grandparents.
A little trivia for you. On April 13th 1956 I sailed on the Empress of Scotland for Canada. Beside me at the rail, waving, stood Phillip Burton's great grandparents, Mr and Mrs Tuckett. They were going to St Catherine's, (Niagara Falls - Canadian side) to spend a holiday with their son (whose Christian name escapes me) and his Canadian born wife Roxey and their little son. (They later had twins.) During the voyage I shared a table at all meals with the Tucketts - sometimes we were the only ones eating in the dining room as we didn't get seasick! (Broxted'ites are made of sterner stuff!!) Fourteen months later, in June 1957, my mother came over to Brampton, Ontario to see me and stayed with the Tucketts (junior) at St Catherine's for a few days, as part of her holiday. Mr Tuckett Snr. wasn't in the best of health and I was asked (by I don't know who but via Mum) to help them all I could on the voyage. I would go for walks around the deck with Mrs Tuckett while her husband rested, fetch things for them from their cabin, get them cups of consomm� and tea etc. My aunt Edie did a little housework for Phillips grandparents in Mole Hill Green and for the Tucketts Snr. who lived a few houses from her and my uncle at Woodgate's End. It's a small world, isn't it? Especially in Broxted.
I believe I told you that my dad worked for Charles Burton at Chickney Hall. He remembers young John Burton and his sister well but he doesn't think John was married then - so he wouldn't have known Phillip and William. Dad used to walk across the fields as a boy all the way to Moor End Farm to get the milk for his mother too.

I am sorry to say that Ben BARKER (Gillian's DAD) passed away in April 2004 and we will no longer be able to hear/see his old accounts of Broxted.
We are so grateful for those stories (above) which we have. Thank you Ben and Gill.
Below is the e-mail I received from Gill's husband Jim.

----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Reilly To: jreillyesq@optusnet.com.au Sent: Subject: Ben Barker

Hello Everyone
This is a message of sadness and celebration. Gill's dad Ben Barker died this morning at 2.00 am. He went into the Royal Brisbane Hospital with pneumonia on Monday and had recovered from that. He was on his way down to the ground floor of the hospital at 10.30 am for me to take him home, when he got sick and died 16 hours later from a bleeding ulcer.
Ben was married at 25 and would have been 93 in May 8th this year. His wife Barbara is in Treetops nursing home (formerly Nimbin, (aboriginal word for safety/security).
Ben started out his working life as a farm hand in Essex. He wasn't keen on the low wages and long hours and made a career decision to move upmarket and become a gardener. Not today's gardener who cuts lawns and whipper snips edges but a real gardener who plans and lays out eye beating, soul sentient landscapes. There were no power tools, no drotts, no off the shelf fertilisers or bug killers, just practised knowledge, handed down, experienced and combined with spade and shovel hard yacker.
Ben worked for some very famous people. Most of them are almost gone from our knowledge rings. Rab Butler who was Prime Minister of England, Mr Peat of Peat Warwick Mitchell who were the world's largest public accountants, now amalgamated and gone, amongst many others not so well known but who needed wealth to maintain large estates and harness Ben's skills. Gardening in his day required flexibility, we think our times are flexible, he looked after zoos, tropical plants and animals. gas and electric generation plants, swimming pools and all done when science was a baby.
In a small interlude during 1939 -45 he joined the British army as a transport driver and saw active service in Africa, Iraq, Egypt and Italy. He was captured in Italy by German soldiers and became a prisoner of war. He remained as a prisoner for 18 months and during that time went on the long march from Breslau, now in Poland, to Hanover. This took over three months, no food, sleeping rough each night in doorways, stables, tennis courts, scavenging turnips, eggs anything the land could provide as the Germans provided nothing. On release he returned to England as a skeleton. His own daughter, (six years old) recoiled in horror and refused to go near him.
Ben had a singular force in his life which was, survival under any circumstance. In today's parlance perhaps " don't let the buggers get you down". He was able to keep his mates alive in the camps through this philosophy and was able to impart hope in the dark times. He was still fighting on April 2nd 2004 and never gave in.
He was never a rich man in money terms, but he could always buy with cash what he wanted. He was generous and constantly conscious of giving in return, or in our terms he more than paid his way. He had this fantastic knack of never giving advise. He would question, probe and let you come to your own conclusions. He never took charge. He allowed every one to pass through, without criticism or disdain, but if you decided to trespass too closely you were very aware that a large gardening fist could knock you right off your arse. He had the biggest fist in the world, held in a kid glove.
He was weak in all the nicest manly ways. He burped, farted, drank a little too much from time to time. He was a Liberal through and through. He could never tell you why. Labour always wrecked the country and Liberals always brought it back in balance. After he saw September 11, there was no doubt in his mind, go get em. Saddam deserved what he got. Life was simple and we were making it complicated, for no known result.
He was well loved and well liked. God speed Ben.

| INDEX HOME |Story Part 1 - June 3, 2003--From Los Angeles to Moor End Farm. |
| Story Part 2-Walk to the CHURCH. | Moor End Farm Photos|Broxted Church Photos |
| Story Pt.2 continues to Great Easton.| Great Dunmow and The BELL
|The BARKERS.| TILTY | The Maltings.|CHICKNEY CHURCH | THE GALLERY | Colchester| Old Photos|LONDON-Last Stop!|
|Fat lady's version-Pt. 1|
|Fat Lady's version - Pt. 2| Fat Lady's version - Pt. 3| Fat Lady's version - Pt. 4|
| Fat lady's version Pt. 5| Fat Lady's version - Pt. 6| Version 7| Version 8|
|Fat Lady's - Part 9|Part 10 by Fat Lady|Rain storm-Pt. 11 by the Fat Lady|