.
I was twenty-three years old
My Family.
Reginald Saunders Langlois, born 21/8/1910, my father.
Kathleen Mary Phyllis Langlois, née Hodgetts, born 20/10/1910 my mother
Children: Reginald Charles Edward (myself) born 24/1/1936, Annette Mary,
Elizabeth Ann Rosemary.
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Percy Le Hardy Hodgetts, born 27/04/1882 my grand father, my mother’s father.
Gladys Pinel Hodgetts, née Anley, born 22/10/1884, my grand mother,
my mother’s mother.
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James Ferdinand Charles Langlois, of Sion Hall, Longueville, St Saviour,
born 23/04/1884 my grand father
Desiree Langlois (nee Saunders) born 26/8/1882, my grand mother.
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Auguste Louis Philippe Saunders, my great-grand father on my grand-mother’s side.
Desiree Saunders, my great-grand mother on my grand-mother’s side.
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Charles Edward Langlois, of Les Cosnieres, Swiss Valley, St Saviour,
born 31/01/1886 my father’s uncle.
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Dorothy Ena Kennedy, née Langlois, born 02/08/1906 my father’s sister.
Brendan Bartholomew Kennedy, born 02/01/1901, my father’s brother-in-law.
Children: Patricia Margaret Barbe, Finbarr Brendan David, Angela May,
Michael Dermot, Teresa Bernardette, Kevin Patrick Helier and Brendon Francis Paul,
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Desiree Fardon (nee Langlois) my father’s sister.
Reginald Fardon, my father's brother-in-law.
Children: Charles A, Desiree, James, Robert.
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James Ferdinand Saunders Langlois, of Val Poucin, Grouville, born 13/04/1909,
my father’s brother.
Dorothy Ada Edith Langlois, née Campbell, born 10/08/1911 my father’s sister.
Children: Dorothy Jean born 16/05/1935, and James Philip born 19/02/1940
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Edward George Langlois, born 18/12/1915, my father’s brother.
Iris Joan Langlois, née McKee, born 22/04/1918 my father’s sister-in-law.
Children: Peter, Colin, Pamela, Susan.
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Douglas Thurston Langlois, born 14/07/1914 my father’s brother
Mary MacKinnon Langlois, née Fletcher, born 13/10/1909 my father’s sister-in-law.
Children: Cynthia Mary, Fay Mary,
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Percy Osmont Hodgetts, , born 26/10/1908 my father’s brother-in-law. my mother’s
brother. Melba Hodgetts, née Langley, born 13/04/1910, my mother’s sister-in-law.
Children: Colin William John, David, Vivian.
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I arrived
I was born in 1936 in the family home known as Sion Hall (presently called Hotel
L'Emeraude ) in the parish of St Saviour in the Island of Jersey, Channel Islands,
British Isles.
And now with my cousin
My Ancestors
My great grand father and his brothers came over from France in 1845. Two of them
were farmers, one was a cobbler and the other a furniture maker. They lived in a cottage
in the Parish of St Clements along the South coast of the island. I know very little
about my great grandparents on my grandmothers side except to say that my great
grandfather’s surname name was Saunders, that he came from Scotland and that he
was a fisherman. I remember him as being a very kind, gentle man and a great storyteller.
He was quite small, maybe five foot tall, with a huge silver-white beard and was very
strong. He had fished most of his life and was capable of catching dangerous conger
eels longer then he was tall. He used to make his own wicker fishing baskets, as did
most fishermen in those days. Most of his fishing was among the rocks at St Clements.
The waters around Jersey on a spring tide rise forty feet from low to high. On a low
tide great grandfather Saunders would walk over the rocks and climb across the gullies
to his favourite fishing grounds. Although sandy beaches surround most of the coast
of Jersey, this area of coastline is completely covered by rocks. The rocky area along
the coast is over three miles long and the tide goes out for over a mile.
Great grandpa Saunders, my Grandmother Langlois's father
Great grandpa and Great grandma Saunders
Great grand mother's family, Les Cosnier
You should have seen the big one
Great grandfather would have fished for Spider Crabs, Lobsters, Conger eels and a lot
of different types of shellfish including Ormers (Abalones). My last memory of my great
grandfather Saunders was of his coffin covered with flowers being placed on a glass sided
hearse pulled by two black horses and of some of the family getting into horse drawn
carriages. I can remember waving as they moved down the road. I must have been about
three years old.
My father and mother having a night out
Another outing
My mother ......
My grandfather and grandmother Hodgetts my mother's parents,
Richard Enraght Hale Fletcher, grandfather of my cousins Cynthia
and Fay Langlois, the tall one is my uncle Eddie then my mother and father.
My sister and I
Looks fun
My first memories were when my baby sister appeared on the scene. I was eighteen
months old. It was not too bad because, as she grew older she would only play with dolls.
She always did girlie things while I played with toy tractors, my tricycle and other boy’s
things. However, when I was a little older, I borrowed the wheels from her pram to make
my first soapbox. She only discovered this when she tried to push her dolls pram and found
that the wheels were buckled. That was when war started between us and thereafter I could
do nothing right. Sixty years on we are the best of friends.
Started moving
A year after I was born my father, mother and myself moved to a farm called Gros Puit
at Bagot in the parish of St Saviour, only some two miles away from Sion Hall. I think we
moved because my father wanted his independence. We spent three years there . My
father grew tomatoes, potatoes and loads of green vegetables. We also had cows and
pigs but it was hard work for my father as he was just starting out to farm by himself. In
1939 he suffered a big setback when he discovered that he had arthritis at the top of his
spine which confined him to bed where he spent most of the next eighteen months on his
back.
Our next-door neighbours, the Pallot family, and work people from Sion Hall came
every day to keep the farm going. They were a great help, as we could not have
continued without them. At the farm my sister learnt to drive at a very early age. She
cannot have been more than two and a half when she got onto a Fordson tractor that
was parked on a slope and somehow managed to take the brake off. The tractor took
off with her sitting on it but she kept it in a straight line and parked it half in and half out
of an asbestos garage. Considering her age, she had done pretty well. Unfortunately,
she had taken the gable end with her. We had to forgive her for asbestos is not very
tough, is it?
Growing up
In 1940 I was four years old and beginning to understand a lot of what was going on
around me. My father was in bed, my mother was very worried and friends and family
were calling at all hours. I remember a lot of shouting and arguing from which all I could
make out was that we were going to move away somewhere. I later discovered that the
friends and family were trying to persuade us to leave the island because the Germans
were coming and my father would not have been able to work for them, had he been
made to. However Dad had the final word. He said, " We are staying". Mum had
started packing and crying all at once. She just wanted to do what was best for
everybody and did not want to go either.
I have no memory of the Germans arriving in the island but I do recall them being here
very well. One afternoon we were looking out over the fields from my father's room
watching the German soldiers going around doing their exercises. They were running,
jumping and crawling about on the muddy ground, leaping over low walls and climbing
over high ones, when one of the German soldiers had the bright idea of using a wooden
barrel he had found nearby to help them over a very high wall. It worked well until some
twenty odd soldiers had passed over the wall with the help of the barrel but, with only
two or three men to go, the barrel started to collapse, the bottom gave way and the
next man trying to get over disappeared inside. We were too far away to see if they
were laughing but fortunately they could not see us doubled up with laughter.
Unusual transport.
Transport was something to remember. My father's back problem had been improving
when he managed to find a very heavy bicycle somewhere. As before the occupation he
had always used a car, he must have found this kind of transport very hard work. As we
were only permitted to use our tractor for farm work, he made a luxury trailer for my
sister and myself to tow us behind his bicycle. The body of the trailer was made from a
heavy cabin trunk and the big fat wheels and tyres came off a couple of large
wheelbarrows. One fine day, my father, very proud of his invention, took us in the new
trailer for its maiden journey. Only a couple of miles on its test run we were on the way
home when he must have lost concentration for a split second and hit the curb pretty
hard. We bounced around like a ball because of the big balloon tyres and turned right
over tipping us out onto the hard pavement. Strangely enough I can remember that
incident as if it was yesterday.
In 1941, when I was five and my sister three and a half, we were on the move again.
We moved to another farm where, this time, the soil was very good. It was well drained
and had better shelter from the cold Easterly winds. This was Stirling Castle Farm whose
buildings dated from c.1590 - a wonderful place where everything was small, even the
only toilet around the corner behind the house. Compared to Sion Hall this was a dolls
house and I have many good memories of this farm. The farmhouse is situated halfway
up the side of a valley and the land branches away from it. Near the house we had glass
frames to bring on young plants and on the larger fields we grew wheat and oats for the
cattle and for making bread. We also kept cows for milking.
Germans everywhere.
There were German soldiers everywhere, probably because it was a valley and it gave
them plenty of shelter from RAF or USA aircraft flying overhead. Although it was
forbidden to collect leaflets off the ground, my mother used to find it satisfying to get
them before the Germans did and collect arms full of paper and silver foil. Every time
we harvested our crops we had by law to hand over a large amount to the Germans, at
least half I think. One day the Germans turned up in the yard with a very heavy wagon
drawn by two very large shire-type horses to collect the straw that was due to them.
They set about in a very business like way loading the wagon and the load got higher
and higher with a man working by stacking the straw squarely on the top, when suddenly
the horses who had been standing very still took fright and moved, dislodging the man
on the top of the load. He must have fallen at least fifteen feet onto the cobbled yard on
his head, from which blood was pouring. Without hesitation, my mother dashed indoors
for a bowl of water with Dettol and offered to clean the wound but the officer in charge
pushed her out of the way, tipping the bowl at the same time, and proceeded to clean the
mans head with a news paper. My mother was even more upset when she saw the
damage on the man's head yet she was not allowed to help in any way. He was taken
onto the road and had to wait until the soldiers had finished loading before being taken
off for treatment. Throughout the occupation she never forgave the Germans for the
treatment they gave to that man.
Being a youngster during the occupation was not as bad as it was for adults, who were
always looking around for things on which to survive. It was even harder for people living
in the town who had to come out to the farms to glean in the fields after the corn had been
cut. They had to pick the grains by hand off the ground to make bread and I would try to
help them but my fingers soon became sore as the dry stalks cut into them.
A German ...my friend
I was playing in the fields one day when a German soldier turned up with a spade to do
some digging. I remember that he gave me a grin and offered me the spade and, when I
shook my head, he grinned again. I thought that I had made a friend. He looked about
the garden for a while and started walking towards the farmhouse. I followed my new
friend and stayed nearby when he started digging on high ground near a pathway close
to the house. He must have been there a long time because he had dug a hole as big as
a table. It was so deep that, from where I was standing, I could not see the bottom.
When I think about it now, he had done a fine job of making a neat hole with straight
sides and he had even cleaned up the soil that he had taken from the hole. As my new
friend could not speak my language, when I asked him why he had dug the hole he just
smiled and, when he had finished, he shook my hand and went. I never saw him
again although I sat near the hole for several days waiting for him to come back.
Fed up I went in doors and told my mother about him. She said that he seemed a
nice man. I asked her how she knew and she said that she had been looking through
the window all the time while he had been digging that hole. (She called it a" dug out").
Nobody came near it for weeks so, bit by bit, I took it over. I dug steps into the sides
and put bamboo canes close together on the top to make a roof out of bits and
pieces, door knobs, nails, tin cans and so on, I could turn that hole into anything
I wanted - a plane, a tank or even a submarine. My new friend had given me the best
present I had ever had. I heard my father telling someone once that he reckoned
the German had dug that hole near the pathway and close to the house just for me.
The windmill.
As I said before, living at this farm brought back
many memories. A short distance from the house,
just over the brow of the hill, there was a windmill
used for pumping water up to a large water tank
for the cattle. The windmill was constructed of steel
and was quite tall as it was erected in a draughty
valley. It had four giant legs and a wooden shaft
that came down from the vane into the ground, the
idea being that the shaft goes up and down about
twenty inches and pumps water from a well. What a
great plaything for someone like me. I used to go
over the hill and down the valley to play on this
windmill. I would climb up the shaft to about ten
feet and wrap my legs around it, going up and down
for what seemed like hours. Well, that was until my
father caught me. My mother and father had been
looking for me for ages. Dad would always shout at
me when he was angry but Mum would always give
me a piece of her mind and then smack me. I
remember this time she smacked me across her
ironing table in the kitchen. Talking about that kitchen,
the doctor turned up to give my sister and myself our
vaccination injections and I ran away to hide. I
did not wait to see where my sister went, nor did I care.
I hid in my dugout but my father knew that I would be there and was all right about it. Once I
was with him in the top field near a water storage tank while he was milking the cows by hand,
when there was gunfire nearby. They were firing at a large aircraft passing over the island when,
suddenly, there was a loud crash. A chunk of an aircraft had fallen in the field and a lot of small
fires appeared. They turned out to be pieces of hot shrapnel. My father suddenly
scooped me up and we dived under the water tank, just in time as another piece of the
aircraft dropped onto the field very close to us.
The Chateau.
Across the road from our farm was a brick built, three-storey house that could be called
a chateau. It was set in its own grounds but my memory of the house and land is a little
blurred. It was empty during the occupation and was looked after by caretakers. One
was called Bob and he, his sister and brother used to take it in turns to come from town
every day. I would walk around the house with them and was fascinated with the beehive
they had up on the top floor. They let me travel by the dumb waiter (a mini lift just large
enough to hold me). Outside in the garden they had a petrol motor that powered a water
pump and, because they were not too good on mechanical maintenance, their pump took
a lot of patience to get started. They always took the spark plug out, laid it on an oily rag
soaked in petrol and lit it to heat it up. It worked most times but, if not, it would grow
cold and they would have to go through the whole process again. What I remember most
is the huge sunken rose garden. I wonder if it is still there. At the top of the hill the Germans
had taken up residence in a large property called Oaklands where they had a fuel
tank dump.
My father thought it was very convenient that he had someone who worked for him on
the farm that knew how to siphon petrol for the tractor and, at night, he would take a
little from the German's fuel tanks and put it into smaller tanks on the other side of the
hedge. He would only siphon a small amount from one or two of the hundreds that were
there. Thank goodness they never caught him as he was good with engines. He got a
BSA three wheel motor vehicle running. It had a flat platform on the back and helped a
great deal when my father needed to carry light weights around. As the platform extended
well over the rear axel, the driver had to remember to load up the front first. We lived on
a very steep hill and, if the BSA had been badly loaded, the little vehicle would have
lifted up in the air and there was every chance the load would have come off. One day
my father and I with the little BSA were climbing up this hill empty when we passed
some German soldiers. They laughed at us and tried to hitch a lift. My father said he
would take a couple of them but that we might tip up if we took more. Two jumped on
and off we went, steadily, but some of the others we passed thought that they would take
a lift as well and, although the first two told them to get off, it was too late. The little
three wheeler reared up and discharged its load, landing the soldiers on the roadway.
My father thought there would be trouble, but the soldiers sitting on the road laughed and
waved to us in a friendly way.
First school
In the last year at Stirling Castle Farm I started junior school with my eldest sister (by the
way, at this time I had another sister who was born in a nursing home in St Helier). It was
principally a girls' school called the Convent FCJ. A few young men were accepted if
they had sisters at the same school and also a few non-catholics like myself. Perhaps
the war made them bend the rules a little. At assembly in the mornings the non-catholic
boys had to sit at the back of the hall, whereas non-catholic girls could sit with all the
others. I was quite happy as I had two or three other non-catholic boys for company.
That school was dear to my heart. I learnt how to make jewellery boxes out of used post
cards. You have to make holes all around the cards then place the cards back to back.
Using blanket stitch you then joined them all together and they even had a hinged lid. I
have never forgotten those boxes. I also learnt to tie up my laces. When I kicked off
my shoes one day in front of the teacher, she suggested that I might like to learn how to
untie and tie them up properly. It took a week to learn and she made me do it twenty
times. I cannot remember learning anything else. Oh yes! We learnt how to be kind to
others. Each of us in the class had to collect money for our own adopted boy or girl from
another country. I chose a black boy from Africa because I liked the kind look in his
eyes and I think that I managed to collect five pennies for him. One more thing - you
were not allowed to carry matches.
One day the teacher asked us all to empty our pockets to play a game of something or
other and, to the class's horror, I took a match box out of my pocket. It was spotted by
the teacher who was very angry with me, even when I told her that there was nothing in
it. She picked up the box, shook it and it rattled. She was fuming and was even more
upset when a little, curled up woodlouse fell out. We had never seen her so angry.
Saying that she would have to smack me, she turned around and picked up a piece of
stick. She had tears in her eyes when she turned back and told me to hold out my
hand. At seven years old you can fake being brave but, when I held out my hand, I was
pleasantly surprised to find that it did not hurt-in fact that the piece of wood she was
using was elderberry which is quite soft. Within half an hour the whole school knew that
Mother Carmel had beaten me. Twenty years or more after I left that school Mother
Carmel still had my photograph up on the wall. She always kept her favourite pupils
on that wall.
Grandpa hiding
I asked my father one day what the noise was coming from in the loft and he said that it
was probably a mouse or perhaps a bird that had got caught up there. He went up to
take a look and came down saying that he could not see anything and he was sure that
it was not a bird. A few days later when I heard the noise again, I thought it was a mouse
but I said nothing that time or on other occasions when I heard it. We had a lot of mice
around the farm and they did not appear to do any harm. It was only at the end of the
occupation that I discovered that Grandpa Hodgetts had spent three weeks up in our
loft in the dark. He had been born in Birmingham in England and, had he been found,
would have been deported to Germany as were the other English people here.
I remember Grandpa Hodgetts cultivating a patch of about thirty perch of land at the
farm and spending many hours there, as he wanted to be self- sufficient, which was a
credit to him. He grew five perch of potatoes and twenty-five perch of tobacco. The
family considered he had his priorities right. When Grandpa cultivated the tobacco crop,
he bundled the giant leave together and hung them up in the rafters around the farm
buildings to dry. He then placed them in a homemade press which was only about
eighteen inches long and five inches wide. It had a lump of wood on the top of it to
squeeze the juice out of the leaves and I can just see him now tightening the screw
down bolts every day with loving care. During the occupation, lighter fuel was
non-existent and matches were hard to find so you either had to do without or think
up means of igniting your home-grown cigarettes or pipes. Grandpa had a friend in
the motor trade who came up with the idea of using a four-cylinder impulse magneto
which, by joining all the leads, produced a longer spark that worked well. Grandpa
had the idea of using a tin with a hole in the lid with a piece of window sash cord
through it as a wick. The oil in the tin came from many sources such as used engine
oil, fish oil, and chicken fat and sometimes all three. I shall never forget the horrible
smells of the burning oil and of grandpa's pipe.
Back we go.
I have good memories of Stirling Castle Farm which we left at the end of 1943 when
I was seven years old. My father had spread his wings and it was then time to return
to Sion Hall to work with his father again. What a change it was for my father.
Instead of a thriving tomato growing industry, the packing sheds and the land looked
more like a ghost town with only a few potatoes planted and a mere five people
working there instead of the fifty or so there had been before the war. Every year
during the occupation Grandpa Langlois made sure that the tomato seed had been
sown, the seedlings pricked out and that thousands of plants were ready for planting.
He said throughout that the war could not last for ever and that, when it was over,
everyone would want tomatoes. He was right and he was ready. When Jersey was
liberated on the 9th of May 1945 my father and grandfather immediately organised
the planting of all the tomato plants they had prepared months ahead. My
grandfather's foresight had paid off.
Next school
It was at that time that I changed schools and I was given an interview at Victoria
College Preparatory by Miss Cassimere. Fortunately I passed and started straight
away. I remember little of my days there. Our first classroom was a wooden
building raised off the ground with concrete blocks. I was no academic and my poor
results brought me many Saturday mornings in detention. Three detentions in a row
brought a caning from the head master, Mr. Thorne. I enjoyed art and woodwork
but not reading and writing on which I found it difficult to concentrate. I spent three
years in the Prep before going up to Victoria College.
I enjoyed being at college though I did not care for some of the teachers.
I can remember some of the friends I made:
Troy, Norman, Palmer, Foott, Stent, Brooker, Wakeham, Lane, Smith,
Rumfitt. Allo, Syvret, Touzel, Vibert, Dorey, Farnham, Baudains, Labey,
Voisin, Allen, Le Brocq, Godel, Pallot, Stead, Colley, Titterington, Abel,
Copp, Picot, Talbot, Sarre, Carter, Barette, Beckford-Smith, Egglishaw,
Bower, Blackwell, Grady, Burton, Cabot, Carter, Cavey, De Carteret,
De Gruchy, Miller, Drelaud, Le Riche, La Marquand, Clyde, Hucker,
Le Cheminant, Verriers, Pittard, Clark, Hamon, Renouf, Horsfall, Vibert,
Stride,
Alcock, Gwyther, Lewis, Miles, Harris, Ferbrache,
Jones.
I thought the prefects were a bit heavy handed at times - especially as they had the power
to use a shoe on your backside if you misbehaved. The prefects I remember were Haden,
Gould, Green, Gaudian, Tiffin, Christin.
The teachers I remember at college and prep. were Postill, Thorne Salt, Horn, Marshall,
Hamon, Nicoll, Green, Blomfield, Col. Finch, Coats, Black. Douglas, art master at
prep.. Mr. Harris and the caretaker, Mr. Lewis were helpful to me.
I left college as soon as I was fifteen years old and it was not a minute too soon.
Only in the last ten years have I realised that my backwardness at school was due to being
dyslexic and not to being lazy. (that is my story and I am keeping to it)
Sion Hall.
Grandpa and Grandma Langlois and family
Marble statures in the background before grandma's boys painted them
Grandma Langlois was a bit of a dare devil in those days
My great grandmother, my grandmother, my aunt and my cousin,
are all called Desiree.
Grandma Langlois's coffee morning
Grandma and Grandpa with friends sunbathing on the dunes
I should explain a little about Sion Hall. My Grandfather Langlois bought it in the 1920's.
It was a very large house with many bedrooms, probably fifteen or more, and all the
rooms were very large with large windows looking out over the countryside.
Approaching it from the front, you would first notice the enormous pillars supporting the
balcony which ran its full length. I was told that, had you visited the house in the early
1930's, you would have seen four or five full size white marble statues of beautiful,
scantily dressed ladies near the main doors. My grandmother had them removed
because her four sons would not stop painting them. The building was divided into two
homes with us living on the left side and my Grandfather on the other. There were many
more rooms on my grandfather's side of which the most memorable was about fifty feet
long and twenty feet wide with a large open fireplace at one end surrounded by giant sized
arm chairs and huge sofas. In the centre there was a heavy, ornate black oak table that
opened out to nearly fourteen feet with matching chairs and sideboards and, at the other
end of the room, there was a full-sized billiard table with all its accessories, including
boxed-in overhead lamps. Against the wall, there was a rack holding many cues as
everyone in the family had their own. I remember that there were huge pictures and heavy
curtains. Grandma Langlois' favourite party trick, which greatly annoyed Grandpa Langlois,
was to persuade Buddy, the large St Bernard who weighed in at over two hundred
pounds, to jump up on the billiard table, lay on his back and have his tummy tickled. The
grandchildren loved that game. It is strange the memories that come back to you as you
grow older. As I write this, I remember the large, D-shaped fish pond filled with large,
white water lilies. Behind this there was a dark tunnel of rough stones. Inside it was
spooky, with the strange sound of water always dripping on to the stones, which I now
realize were lava rocks filtering the water before it returned to the pond. We none of us
ever dared go through it.
War Time Dances
Can you imagine a house with its own ballroom? At Sion Hall that was to be expected.
The huge room with a proper dance floor also had a long conservatory leading off it
which was filled with geraniums. During the occupation, not only those who lived nearby,
but people from all over the island came to the dances, which were held every two weeks.
The music came from either a wind-up gramophone or, better still, a live band, led by
Eric Harrison. The dances started fairly early in the evening as the dancers would have
to be back home before curfew at about nine o'clock Those people living a fair distance
from Sion Hall must have had difficulty dodging the German patrols if they left the dances
too late. I would sit on the window ledge three stories up, with my legs overhanging the
sill, waving to the people going home. It was some time before my parents found out what
I was doing, while my sisters were asleep in their beds. We were supposed to have had
a young woman looking after us while the dance was on but she must have joined them.
New tyres
I remember the time I painted my bicycle with old paint that I had found in a shed. I mixed
together a little out of each tin I found and it came out a sort of grey-pink. A couple of
weeks later I asked Grandpa Hodgetts, my sign writer grandfather, why the paint on my
newly-painted bicycle was still soft and sticky. He said that I should have mixed the paint
in the cans before using it and that I must have only used the top of the paint with the
linseed oil. He offered to repaint it but I said, "No thank you. I will wait for it to dry."
Grandpa smiled. He knew better. On another occasion, I remember my father putting new
tyres on my bicycle. They were made of rubber hose pipe which he wrapped around the
wheels, threading a length of thick wire through the hose and tightening it with a pair of
pliers to keep the tyres on. When I was on my it, I could count the number of times the
wheel turned because, each time, there was a small bump where there was a join in the hose.
Sion Hall had its own electricity plant-110 volts and the family had to be careful not to turn
on too many lights at one time to avoid burning out the complete system. The Lister single
cylinder engine had a large and very heavy flywheel and took two men to start it They
would crank up the starting handle into the right position, take a deep breath, shout GO
and swing that handle as fast as they could. It did not always start but, when it did, all the
lights that had been left on would come on as if it was daylight. No one was allowed in that
engine room and no one was allowed to smoke anywhere nearby.
When I peeped through the doorway one day, I saw rows of glass tanks with wires
going from one to the other. They made strange, fizzing sounds that puzzled me as I
could not understand what was going on. Even the clocks on the walls bore no
resemblance to those I saw in our house. What a mad world when you are young!
The fire.
One night we were over at grandpa's house with a few cousins, aunts and uncles having
a noisy party, as was usual when we were all together, when there was a loud banging
and shouting at the back door. Dad and Grandpa rushed outside, calling over their
shoulders: "Get out of the house! The shed is on fire.” Without any hesitation, Grandma
Langlois took charge as she did in any emergency, though not usually as worrying as this.
We were herded out of the house through the front door and into the garden, where she
made sure that we were all together. We could not stay there as huge lumps of burning
straw were blowing over the house and over our heads. We had to run across the road
and up into the field to get out of danger. The noise coming from the direction of the fire
was horrendous and it was difficult to hear anyone speaking.
The smell from the fire was unforgettable and indescribable. We must have sat for some
considerable time in that field by its light, when my father came across to tell us we
would not be able to go back into the house as there was a danger the sparks could set
it alight. We had to go up to Uncle Jim's farm at Val Poucin, about half a mile away
over the brow of the hill.
We spent two or three days with Uncle Jim and Aunt Dorrie who let us do whatever we
wanted. We had almost forgotten about the fire at Sion Hall until Dad came up to take
us back home. Although it was close to home, we had not been able to see or smell it
from Uncle Jim's farm. It was only as we walked along the yard behind Sion Hall that
the smell of the smoke and the heat of the fire made me feel ill but this was forgotten
when we were confronted by a German soldier standing about fifty yards from it,
warming himself with the heat of the dying embers. My father said that he had been
there since the day before because he had had instructions from his commander to keep
everyone away, and he was not going to move for anyone. He saluted my father as we
passed him. There were water pipes everywhere and, when I was told that the fire engine
was coming back to collect them, I realised what I had missed. "That would have been
even more exciting than the fire!"
Suddenly an enormous explosion from the centre of the damped down fire shook the
whole area. It erupted like a volcano with straw, bamboo canes, timber, steam being
hurled up into the air. As Dad and I hurried away, someone called out, "the fire engine
is on its way back". The fire ignited itself many times over the following three weeks
and I would only have to throw a stone into the ashes for it to ignite again. The
German guards only stayed for a week.
On one occasion when the German guard had left, I was on my own near the fire,
fascinated by its bluish colour as it spread across the top of the hard, crusty, charcoal
embers, when suddenly a blue flame shot out like a tongue. It began to lick the bottom
of one of the railway lines that had been used for supporting the roof of the shed. I
watched it for a few minutes and could not believe my eyes. The upright was falling
down and that tongue of fire had cut through the metal. For weeks after the fire had
dampened down, family and friends dug large deep holes and buried the burnt out
electric motors and tools and anything else that the Germans might have seen. Luckily
the German guard had stayed at his post at all times and had not seen what was
lying in the ashes. Had he seen the burnt out motors or the charred carcasses of pigs,
he would have reported us and the Langlois family would have been on their way to
Germany.
Ours was the biggest farm fire during the occupation. For years after the occupation,
my grandfather Langlois would tell his friends how he had lost one million new bamboo
canes, hundreds of bales of hay, boats, a car and two lorries, some owned by others,
that were hidden behind the straw and the stacks of bamboos. There were a couple
of dozen large electric motors that the Germans would have liked to get their hands on,
as well as a load of tools and tons of nails that were to be used for making tomato
packing boxes. Hidden in the shed from the Germans was a complete mill for grinding
wheat and corn. Thankfully, I was not told about the sixty pigs that had perished in the
fire while they were hidden from the Germans in soundproofed pens well-screened
from prying eyes.
Another fire
The fire at the Palace Hotel at Mont Millais in 1945 was thought to have been started
deliberately by anti-Nazis causing an explosion in the cordite store. It was the worst
fire that Jersey saw during the occupation. I understand German naval students used
the hotel. As I returned to school the following afternoon, I heard small explosions and
saw soldiers picking up things in the surrounding fields and gardens and putting them in
sacks. There were craters all over the area as if there had been an earthquake. To this
day I do not know what they were collecting with such urgency.
Oasis
Sion Hall was a wonderful home. It was a fun place, always open to family and friends
with people dropping in all the time. Thinking about it now, it seemed to be an oasis in
another world. Germans were everywhere on the island but I do not remember them
coming around our home. Every half mile or so they had built look-out posts, some up
trees, some built into walls. There were ammunition dumps and fuel dumps and just
about everything you could imagine. The German soldiers used fields as if they owned
them, they drove about in tanks, they rode and pulled wagons with horses, they did their
manoeuvres but the only time they ever came on to our land was to erect tall steel or
concrete posts with thick wire on the tops to prevent enemy aircraft from landing.
Grandpa Langlois and my father considered them a hazard when they ploughed the
fields so they removed them. They cut the wires, pulled the ten feet or so long posts
down and dragged them into deep trenches that they had made earlier. Sion Hall was
a very large building, the type the Germans might well have requisitioned for their own
use so I could never understand why they did not.
Our farm was not very active during the last two years of the occupation. I think that
we must have just been ticking over, growing small amounts of produce such as wheat,
green crops, root crops and sugar beet. Sugar beet was a new crop to the farm. It
had many uses and I remember Grandma Langlois drying it in the AGA cooker for
making tea as well as bottling it as a sweet syrup for just about anything that needed
sweetening. I did not much care for the sugar beet syrup but preferred her dried
carrot tea. Grandma was always busy in the house for she had a large family to look
after as well as people calling in all the time. Although her children, two daughters and
four sons, were married, the boys would often go along to Sion Hall to have a meal.
One morning I remember the men were sitting around the huge kitchen table finishing
their second breakfast of the day and putting the world to rights, when there was a loud
crash. Grandpa had gone over backwards in his chair, banging his head on the wall
behind him. Fortunately he had only dented his pride and his sons were all falling
about laughing. It was his habit to lean backwards in his chair to relax and talk after
his meal and he was a heavily built man, six feet tall and weighing about two hundred
and thirty pounds. Grandma had called out to him not to lean back, but it was too late.
The day before, without telling him, she had moved the large dresser he used to lean
against to do some decorating!
Collected Uncle Ed from prison
I cannot remember the date but I do remember going to the town prison where Uncle
Ed was being held because he had broken the law. He had sold or given an outboard
motor to a group of young men so that they could escape from the island. They were
only a short distance from the shore, when the German soldiers had fired on them and
they were captured and questioned. Under pressure, they told the Germans where
they had obtained the motor. Whilst in prison the family was allowed to take in food.
Grandma Langlois considered that her son needed fattening, so she made sure that he
had plenty. She made enough pies to feed Uncle Ed and half the prisoners.
There were no half measures with Grandma. The horse cart was full to bursting with the
Langlois family when we set off to fetch Uncle Ed. It had a wagon style cover over it
and Duke and Pineau, our two farm horses, pulled it with ease along the flat road, although
they were not too happy when we reached the cobbled road inside the prison. They
jumped around a bit but soon settled down when we stopped. With Uncle Ed on
board and everyone cheering, the horses decided that they had had enough of the
cobbled roadway between high granite walls and took off at the gallop for home. To
onlookers it must have looked like a scene from the gold rush days.
Red Cross-parcels
Towards the end of the occupation the Red Cross sent parcels to Jersey on a ship
called the Vega. My father used to take me along with him with Duke the horse
and cart to collect the Red Cross parcels for the local shops. They arrived just in
time for the population, many of whom were suffering from malnutrition. The
parcels contained mostly tinned goods such as Klim, which was a powdered milk,
Maple butter, syrup, prunes and chocolate - food no one had seen for years.
The Radio, 8th May 1945.
Studebaker below is similar to my father's
I will never forget the day the adults started acting strangely, dancing and calling out to
each other. I was playing in the back yard when my father called me indoors to listen
to the wireless. "What's a wireless?" I asked. He was indoors by then so I hurried
in to join the family. In all the excitement I remember there was a lot of laughing and
crying and everyone was hugging each other. My father stood over by the fire place
with a strange piece of equipment in his hand that I had never seen before. It was
attached to a dark coloured box-shaped thing on the floor and had wires attached to
something I recognized as a battery. Sounds and voices came from it and my father
told everyone to be quiet because Winston Churchill was going to speak. You could
have heard a pin drop as Dad said softly "we have waited a long time for this moment ".
We heard the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, say " our dear Channel
Islands are also to be freed today." There was silence in the room. It was hard to
believe that the long war and the occupation of our islands were over. When I asked
my father where the wireless had come from he explained that it had been in the
sitting room all the time, in a cupboard under the floor next to the fireplace. He went
on to tell me that, when the Germans arrived in Jersey at the beginning of the
occupation, they requisitioned his brand new Studebaker car but, before they took it
away, he had very carefully removed the radio so that it did not look as if there had
ever been one. If they had caught him with a radio he would have been punished or,
worse still, sent to Germany. Many detainees were sent to Germany from Jersey
and never returned. They died over there. My father's car was never returned to him
but I have a memento - that radio is in my loft.
Infill
Over 67,000 mines were laid around the island, The Organization Todt used up to
6,000 slave workers, mainly Russians and Spanish Republicans. British Intelligence
estimated the death rate amongst slave workers to be 40%. 1,200 people, British-born
islanders, were deported to Germany. There were more than 140 attempts by islanders
to escape - but it was extremely dangerous. Nine people drowned, 24 were imprisoned,
and one was shot on the beach. The Germans insisted that it was not their responsibility
to feed the islanders, whilst Churchill was determined to let the Germans starve - even
if this meant that the islanders starved too.
What a day! Liberation Day, 9th May.
The British troops liberated us the day after our neighbouring island Guernsey. It was
well worth the wait. We were up very early and went out into the yard, where my
father was already cleaning the BSA three-wheeler and my mother was busy
tying red, white and blue material all around it. They told us to be ready quickly as we
were all going on the three-wheeler to see the British troops landing in the island. This
was going to be exciting as we had never been on the truck together. My father had
always insisted that the three-wheeler could only be used for farm work as we only
had a small amount of petrol. He had bolted a wooden rail around the back of the
truck to keep us from falling off and must have worked all night to get ready. It was
a fine, sunny day when Grandpa and Grandma Langlois waved us off as we drove out
of the yard. We were so proud to have transport to take us to see the arrival of the
British troops. To be honest, I could not imagine what all the excitement was about
until we reached the Longueville road where dozens of people were rushing towards
the town and waving to us as we passed. We waved back and would have liked to
have given them a lift, but the small three-wheeler could not carry any more. My father
passed me the horn with the rubber balloon on the end of it. It made a lovely raspberry
sound and we all took turns to blow it.
I hate this picture of my mother taken soon after we
were liberated after the occupation, she must have
lost four or five stone through strain and stress.
As we approached the town, we had to slow right down because of the huge crowd
going towards the Harbour. It was very noisy with people calling out to each other,
the music of gramophones coming from the houses, the blowing of our horn and the
noises made by our exhaust silencer which had begun to split open.
I do not know how we managed to get through to the area by the Victoria Harbour,
but I do remember looking on, fascinated, at the sight of the boats coming out of the
water on wheels and driving up the slipway by the life boat station. We spent many
hours cheering and watching the soldiers bringing equipment ashore. I had never
heard such a cacophony of sound as I did that day from the crowds of people and
the vehicles. We moved to the front of the Pomme d' Or Hotel on the Esplanade
where the crowds were at their noisiest. They were calling out to the British troops
"throw more sweets" and every so often, as a shower of sweets was thrown into the
air and over the crowds, there would be more cheering. The people had not seen
sweets for over four years. We had stayed on the front for some time, making as
much noise as everyone else, when my father said that we would go down towards
First Tower to see the Landing Craft on the beach. As he had left the three-wheeler
at the Victoria Harbour, because we would not have been able to drive through
the crowds, we walked everywhere. We were almost carried by the crowds going
in the same direction.
What a sight
As we walked along the Esplanade in the front of the Grand Hotel, we saw three
enormous Landing Craft like whales about half way down the beach.
There were huge trucks and jeeps parked up on the top of the beach and vehicles,
small and large, going to and fro to the Landing Craft. Soldiers and sailors were
everywhere. Right down at the water's edge, hundreds of men in uniform were lining
up to go onto the Landing Craft. These were German prisoners who were to be
transported to England. By contrast with the cheering crowds we had just left behind
on the Esplanade, everyone here was quiet. You could have heard a pin drop as
the people lined up along the sea wall to watch, with only the distant sound of the
trucks breaking the silence.
Reflection
The people sitting along that sea wall might have been thinking about the nightmare
they had just experienced for the last four years, about their loved ones, family and
friends, from whom they had been separated for those four years or about the
member of their family who died at home because he or she was diabetic and unable
to receive treatment for it during the occupation. They might have been thinking of
seeing again the sons, the daughters or the husbands who had been called up or who
had volunteered to join the services before the war. Some people just sat
wondering what was going to happen next.
Back to normal (if we ever could be)
My father and grandfather returned to their business of growing tomatoes as soon as
they could after the occupation. The plants were waiting to be planted and the French
workers were waiting to come to Jersey as they had before the war. Transport had to
be arranged for carting the plants and bamboo canes to the fields so they went to a
machinery sale at Springfield Sports Ground and returned to the farm with a few lorries
and other bits and pieces.
This was part of their shopping list.
Lorries ... 1x M.A.N. (German) diesel, long wheel base, flat platform. It was used
occasionally for heavy loads but was difficult to get started.
It spent most of its time in the farm garage and finally ended
up in a field rotting away.
1x Studebaker (US) petrol, six-wheeler. Used every day and easy to drive.
It was ideal for driving over the land with its twin rear axles
but not the sort of truck you would use to go down to pick
up the weekly shopping from the local shop. When cash got
short my father sold it to a haulage contractor who used it
for many years.
Studebaker truck similar to the one below
6x Krupps (German) petrol, troop carrier, wheeled version of the half-track.
These were my favorites. They had fold-flat windscreens and
removable hoods and were so adaptable, they were used
for carrying produce such as tomatoes in from the fields without
too much bouncing about due to their fantastic suspension and
their six wheels. They were also used to collect vraic (seaweed)
on the beach from the right hand corner of Havre des Pas near
the Fort d'Auvergne hotel. After a good storm the vraic would
have been driven into that corner up to three feet high, making
it easier to load onto the lorries. The loads could not be any
higher than four feet because of the restricted height of the
Havre des Pas swimming pool bridge under which the lorries
had to pass to return to the slipway.
Krupp troop carrier, similar to the one below
1x Lancia (Italian) diesel, long wheelbase, flat platform lorry with a hand primed
hydraulic starter motor. It was used half a dozen times and the last
I saw of it was when it was being towed out of the yard at Sion
Hall after being parked there for many years.
1x Make unknown, charcoal powered, (converted from petrol) small flat
platform truck that Grandma was not happy with as it made a
mess when it was parked in the yard and people would walk
through the tar or pitch that it dropped on the ground. I never
did see it on the road.
1x Dodge (Canadian) petrol, long wheelbase, flat platform, converted
to a fifteen feet flat platform truck. Like the Studebaker, it
was easy to drive and my father took it with him when we moved
to The Brae. I would drive it around the fields collecting boxes
of tomatoes that had just been picked and taking them back
to the farm. On several occasions I was allowed to drive it
on the road down to Normans tomato packing store at
Commercial Buildings in St Helier when I was only fifteen years
old, accompanied by a person with a driving license of course.
1x
Stower (German)
four-wheel steering, three-seater radio vehicle.
50x Bicycles (German) heavy duty with reverse pedal brakes.
The bikes were hardly ever used, maybe only ten at
the most, the rest were left to rust in the shed.
Various types of trailers, carpentry tools, garage and machine tools, grease.
Electric motors, miles of cables, winches with cables from barrage balloons.
That would have to do for the first year. Fuel was no longer a problem, as it was
arriving in huge quantities. The farm had its own underground petrol fuel tank.
Our wonderful Staff
A skeleton staff of Jerseymen was kept on throughout the occupation just to keep the
farm ticking over. One was called Frank Davy and the other A. Le Lievre. In 1940
they earned £1.15s. 0d. for a forty-eight hour week. They were Jacks-of-all-trades
for, with a farm the size of Sion Hall, it had been a full time job for them just doing
the maintenance around the place. Now it would be different. Forty to fifty French
workers were due to arrive within the next few weeks to look after the tomato crop
and they would bring their families with them. The men and their wives would work in
the fields while the grandmothers or the aunts would look after the children. Those who
did not have the luxury of baby-sitting grandmothers in Jersey would have to leave their
children with carers back in France. Some parents might not see their children
for anything up to five months.
Their main aim in life was to work hard and earn a lot of money to take back to make
their homes in France more comfortable. As an example in 1947 they could earn as
much as £8.17.9 for a 95 hour week. French workers had been coming over to
Jersey for years and they would normally return to the same farms each year. Although
many had not worked in Jersey for five years, within a couple of weeks of their being
back you would have thought that they had never been away.
When they first arrived on the farm they would go into the building that was going to
be their home for the next six months. The first to arrive had first choice of the loft and
they could choose for their family whether they would have the left side or the right side.
When they had chosen, they would build a wall of straw bales to screen themselves
off from the next family and so on throughout the loft until it was full. There might have
been as many as six families up there. The men in the family would normally be making
the family nest while their wives would be preparing their first meal. The older children
were sent out to the fields to pick up any wood that they could find so that their mothers
could build up the large communal fireplace to cook their meals. They must have
guessed that Jersey had been short of food, and they were right, because when they
arrived they had enough food to last them months. They brought cheese, ham, bread,
beans, dried fish and sausage as well as wine, cider and calvados. They invited us to
share some of their food with them for they knew that we had not been as fortunate as
they. We thanked them for their kind offer but told them that we now had enough food.
They were also occupied and liberated but they were liberated a year earlier than we
were, although they were only living sixty miles away. The British powers-that-be
decided that it was in everybody's interest to let us sweat it out for another year. In that
last year many Jersey people were starving and, had the Red Cross not helped us with
their parcels, many of our islanders would have died. I have never understood the
reason behind the British government's decision to keep us imprisoned for that extra year.
Within a couple of weeks the farm was back to normal. Grandpa Langlois had managed
the operation very well, as was expected of him. The family rallied around and so did
the neighbouring growers. That first year after the occupation was going to be difficult
for everyone. Nobody knew what the future would bring except that it would be a
testing time for all. Grandpa had always said that a luxury crop like tomatoes, and they
were a luxury in those days, would be wanted after the war as the people in Britain
would be fed up with only bread and potatoes. As usual, Grandpa was right. He had
put all his eggs in one basket and grew thousands of tomato plants. There were tomatoes
everywhere.
Grandpa's Yachts
Grandpa's passions were the family and his yachts. He often had a fleet of yachts of
anything up to four. He loved to have yachts as some people have dogs. His favourite
yacht was the Callou, built in 1935 of wooden construction, 41 feet long and weighing
about 12 tons. The rig was sail/ketch with a diesel oil engine. It upset him greatly when
the Germans requisitioned the Callou on their arrival in Jersey at the beginning of the
occupation. They used it throughout the war as a patrol boat in local waters and made
many modifications. They bolted a large machine gun on the deck up on the bow and
cut bulkheads away in places for easy access. Grandpa was even more upset when he
discovered that the diesel engine had been wrecked. As soon as Callou had been
returned to him, he insisted that his yacht should be checked over for booby traps.
He, my father and I went down to the harbour with a load of tools to do some work
on it.. Grandpa's and my father's first job was to unbolt the heavy gun, waltzing it
towards the side where Grandpa appeared just in time to give it a good push over the
edge and onto the harbour floor. It was dragged up onto the slipway near the South
Pier Shipyard. In a short time Grandpa had a new engine supplied and installed.
Talking about yachts, this fellow turned up in St. Helier harbour from France. He had
sailed his 'pride and joy' over to Jersey - a distance of thirty miles. I never knew how
or why, but he parked his boat and himself up at Sion Hall for several months.
Grandpa's Yachts
One of Grandpa's crew / friend
Callou 41 ft built 1935 wood sail/ketch oil engine
Desiree 30 ft wood, built for my grandfather in the 1930's
Large lifeboat 30 ft conversion
Dessie 72 ft HDML .... Similar to picture above
From St Malo
St Malo after the war
Before the occupation, two of Grandpa's Yachts, the Callou and Desiree, were used
for transporting British troops from St Malo to Jersey when they were cornered in
that part of France by the advancing German army in 1940. The two yachts were part
of a flotilla of other privately owned yachts whose owners volunteered their help along
with other yachtsmen.
In 1951, Grandfather's largest Yacht, Dessie, a converted HDML British naval vessel
seventy-two feet long, was used on one occasion for a Royal duty. My Grandmother was
asked if Dessie could be made available for carrying The Duchess of Kent to Guernsey.
The Duchess of Kent had been visiting Jersey and was going on to the other island when
mist and fog suddenly came down, preventing the cross channel passenger boat from
leaving the island. Guernsey was clear of fog and it was decided to take the Duchess on
a smaller vessel with an experienced crew. The crew, including some of the Langlois clan,
had assembled on board a couple of hours before departure when a car from
Government House arrived with a canteen of cutlery for the Duchess to use on board.
Grandma put her foot down and said that "if my cutlery is not good enough for the
Duchess of Kent then neither is the boat". I heard later that the driver put the canteen
of cutlery back in the boot of the Governor's car and headed for home.
The Duchess of Kent heard that my grandfather, the owner of Dessie, was in hospital
recovering from a serious accident. She asked that the flowers given to her on her visit
to Jersey be passed on to him. That was very thoughtful of her I think. Grandpa's
accident in St Malo was caused by a mooring rope that was made fast on the dockside
and around the bow bollard on the boat. He was up on the bow when the boat suddenly
lurched, Grandpa stepped backwards and his foot was caught in the rope, twisting it
badly. It was decided by Grandpa, who was always in charge, that Dessie would return
to Jersey as soon as possible. The journey did not take very long in the dark until
they reached the Dogs Nest, from where it took ages to find the way into the harbour
because of the search lights on land which illuminated Elizabeth Castle for the Summer.
They were badly positioned facing the approaches to the harbour, thus making it
difficult to see the way in. Grandpa did not recover from his accident having spent
several weeks in hospital undergoing one operation after another to combat gangrene.
Tomato Grower Extraordinaire
Grandpa Langlois, known to many as Pop Langlois, was a hard task master. He played
hard and he worked even harder. He knew how to make a good living, owned a lot
of property, farms, houses and land and was respected by all those with whom he had
dealings. The high quality of his tomato exports also earned him the respect of the produce
merchants throughout Great Britain. He was also respected by his workers to whom he
was always fair and with whom he spoke in their language, Breton. He always rolled up
his sleeves and worked along with them. On the quiet he would say to friends "you
always get the best from them when you show them what you can do" He would start
work with the first ones in the morning and still be there with the last ones at night.
The Boss, Grandpa Langlois.
Grandpa was the last one to see his tomatoes, as he was the one covering the twenty-four
pound boxes with paper before they were sent down to the habour. I was so proud when
he let me hand him the packing paper.. He never sent anything but the best though I remember
one occasion when a load of tomatoes was returned from the harbour by an inspector and
Grandpa took one look at them, found them to be of good quality and had them loaded
onto another lorry and sent back to the harbour. Later, he heard that the inspector who
had refused that load had turned back many that day but, when he asked to speak to him,
he was told that he had taken early retirement. In the height of the season my father and
grandfather would have as many as five or six lorries waiting in a queue at the harbour.
One man would unload the boxes from the lorry to the waiting dockers who stacked them
on a platform to be hoisted by a crane onto a cargo boat. He would then move it to one
side and go down the queue to move all the other Langlois lorries up until it was his turn to
unload his next one. In the meantime, a lorry would arrive from the farm and join the end
of the queue when the driver would collect the empty one, returning to the farm for his
next load. I cannot see them doing that nowadays. During the tomato harvest, my
grandfather spent most of his time in the packing sheds while my father was out in the
fields with the tomato pickers. It was quite a sight, to see thirty people in line with their
backs bent along rows of tomato plants, stopping every four yards or so with full baskets
and taking them to the lorry at the end of the rows. There would be someone on the lorry
to take the basket and tip it carefully into a box that could hold thirty pounds. I was
allowed to help. In 1946 they grew as many as one and a half million tomato plants on
bamboo canes. In most of the fields they were able to grow up to five trusses before they
were stopped from growing any more.. From the time they were planted until they were
cut down at the end of the season, the French workers looked after them doing piecework.
One family could look after forty thousand plants during the season. The first season after the
occupation must have been the best one for producing the biggest crop as the land had had
a rest for four years. My father's brothers, Eddie and Jim, were also very big tomato growers
and his brother Doug had a smallholding.
New Cars
At the end of the 1946 tomato season the whole family went on a spending spree one day
and bought a few vehicles from St Helier Garages. My father had an Armstrong Siddley,
Uncle Jim had a Humber Hawk, Uncle Ed had a Humber Super Snipe and Grandma Langlois
had a Sunbeam Talbot Sports saloon. I cannot remember what cars Grandpa or Uncle Doug
chose that day but I am sure they each bought one. They also bought new lorries, tractors,
trailers and farm machinery as if they were going out of fashion. I can only remember the ones
in this list but there were others.
Ferguson tractor with every conceivable extra was the first on their list.
David Brown tractor with most attachments.
Eight feet wide rotovator on rubber tyres
Commer lorry with long wheel base.
On the move again.
1947 Early February, I was just eleven years old and still at Victoria college when we moved
to St Brelade on the other side of the island. My father and the bank had bought a house
called The Brae and a farmhouse called Tabor Farm. There was a lot of land surrounding the
two buildings, much of which had not been touched for years, and my father planned to grow
very early crops, mainly tomatoes. The land was covered in bracken, wild lupins and gorse
and there were hundreds of rabbits and rabbit warrens everywhere. It would have made a
good wild life area. In addition, the Germans had been pretty busy in that area during the war
and had left heaps of barbed wire and hundreds of galvanized steel posts that had to be pulled
out of the ground but this did not deter my father from getting down to working the land. All
the scrub land, the wild lupins and the bracken were rotovated in, .the gorse cut down and
burnt and roots pulled out. When that was done, the whole area was rotovated again and
then ploughed,. Our new neighbours said that the land had never looked so well. As my
father did not have enough space under cover for storage, grading and packing tomatoes,
he drew up a plan for a huge store with a purpose built packing shed of over seven thousand
square feet, which was very large in those days.
Studebaker truck similar to the one below
My father had brought the Studebaker truck from Sion Hall to use at The Brae and it proved
very useful in building the new store. It was taken to the quarry, loaded with concrete blocks
and, when it returned, was driven into the right position next to the walls so that the block
layers could use it instead of scaffolding. The store went up in a very short time, thus
encouraging my father to do more building. He also needed a greenhouse for growing tomato
plants. A heap of steel girders and boxes of glass arrived and, with a gang of our farm workers,
a glasshouse one hundred feet long and sixty feet wide was erected in three weeks. My father
had installed under- soil electric heating cables, a system still in its experimental stages, and I
remember farmers telling him that he was taking a chance using that system.
My father's new glasshouse
The only other underground electric soil heating system of any size was in South Africa and,
unfortunately, a glasshouse heated by electricity was uneconomical to use. It had been a very
expensive installation. Without heating for the glasshouse, my father had to buy in all the tomato
plants, starting with a hundred thousand plants plus thousands of seedlings that we pricked
out and grew on. That first year was a headache for him for the soil, although rested for so
many years, was lifeless and very dry. The land was not as fertile as at Sion Hall, where the
soil was deep and moist, and our first tomato season at The Brae was almost a complete failure.
All that hard work was for nothing.
Life went on
During the Spring of 1947, my father bought a couple of secondhand, fast motor boats,
thirty-six feet long and with a top speed of twenty-four knots. They were built by a
company called The British Power Boats Company owned by Hubert Scott-Paine,
a very famous figure in power-boat circles before WW2. They were worked on by a
famous gentleman by the name of Thomas Edward Lawrence, otherwise known as
Lawrence of Arabia. His daring exploits in the Great War (WW1) made him a living
legend. The boats were berthed in St Aubin's Harbour and one of them, the Elizabeth,
which was used most, was moored against the wall on the deep mud near the harbour
mouth. The idea of keeping it on the mud was that it had little in the way of a keel and the
propellers and propeller shafts were protruding through the bottom of the craft, so the
mud would have cushioned them from being damaged on the hard harbour bed. The
other craft, the Annette, was berthed on a heavy duty wooden cradle up against the
Bulwarks. The Elizabeth had been used during the war as an Air Sea search rescue
launch and the Annette had been used as a fast harbour fire fighting craft. They both had
twin one hundred hp Meadows petrol engines. The Annette had, as her main fire fighting
equipment, a Coventry Climax twenty-four hp side valve petrol engine and pump. This
was taken off the craft immediately my father took delivery and it went straight up to the
farm where, within a couple of days, it was pumping water onto the crops. My father later
said that it was the water the pump that he was after and he had the craft for nothing.
Miss Kris
Before the war my father used to race around St Aubin's Bay and other bays with a
little, flat- bottomed, clinker built racing machine with a thirty-two hp outboard motor.
In those days, this boat was pretty fast and several of his contemporaries had similar
ones that they used for competitive racing. In the 1950's, I remember one of my father's
friends, Artie Le Sueur, took his speed boat out of St Aubin's harbour on a trial run.
As he headed towards St Aubin's fort as fast as he could go, there was a flash of light,
his outboard motor had caught fire and the craft sank in seconds as one would have
expected when the craft had lost its transom. Artie survived his disaster.
My father's racing machine, Miss Kris, appeared just after the occupation as if by magic.
He must have hidden it very well on the farm, for this piece of highly polished furniture
was his pride and joy and he would have been very unhappy had the Germans taken it
away from him. At the end of the occupation, he took the family down to the beach at
Greve D'Azette with the boat on a four wheel trailer. It was a fine day and very warm
as we proudly pushed boat on its trailer into the sea. I had to stop when the water came
up to my chest, and my father told me to wait for him on the beach while he launched the
boat, when he would come back to fetch us. My mother called out to him that the trailer
was floating and that he would not be able to launch the boat in the water. My father then
had to pull the boat and trailer back out of the water and unload it on to the beach.
He handled it as if it was made of glass and he took so long to unload it that the tide had
receded a further twenty feet from us. He then had to pull his beautiful, highly-polished
boat over the rough, sandy beach to catch up with the tide. I can appreciate now how he
must have felt at having to scratch his bottom on the beach just to please the family.
This was to be our first trip in a boat and was well worth waiting for.
The Brae ... it's History
The Brae was an award winner and its design won the House of the Year in 1925 in
The Mail newspaper. Much of the work that went into the plans was done by the owner
T. C. Pullinger CBE . J. P. He was a car and an aircraft engine designer and was
also Managing Director and part owner of Arrol - Johnson Ltd., well known car and
aircraft engine manufacturers. T.C.P. retired to Jersey in 1926 and I understand that
it was he that built car showrooms and workshops at Red Houses, St Brelade. The
present Horse and Hound public house is where the showrooms would have been and
the very large building at the rear was his workshops.
The Brae was finished in large, split flint stones. It was a three-storey building facing
South, with a large conservatory running along the West side. Water was supplied by a
self-powered ram pump that had been installed in the bottom of the valley and lifted
water over eighty feet high to the top of the house. The design of the house was well
ahead of its time and the coal fired central heating system would have done justice to a
house four times the size. There were radiators everywhere, including the garage and
there was glass-wool insulation between all the floor joists. The gardens covered over
five acres and the valley at the rear of the house had a large, formal pond with a stream
trickling water over small water falls leading into a lake with an island in its centre.
On either side of the lake, pond and stream enormous hydrangeas and rhododendrons
grew on the steep slopes.
The Brae was demolished in the early 1960's and The Silver Springs Hotel was built
in its place.
Getting on with Growing
Tabor farm
The land around Tabor farm and the gardens of The Brae had to be the best drained
in the island, in fact in was too well drained, much to our cost. My father's aim had
been to grow very early tomatoes on the land that he had purchased in 1947.
Fortunately he had continued to work with his father at Sion Hall and, at the same time,
he was organizing everything at Tabor Farm. Working on the two farms sharing tractors
and lorries took a fair bit of juggling. The farms are seven miles apart and when you are
sharing labour, perhaps ten men, the time spent on the road is costly. 1946 to 1949
proved very profitable years for Sion Hall for nothing went wrong. The French work
people came over to Jersey regularly but were living in stark
conditions.
Fifty to one toilet.
The workers' toilet was situated over the manure heap in a wooden enclosure that had
a door with no lock. Its seat was a piece of wood 2" wide and 3" deep which ran the
width of the cubicle. I remember the time when the manure heap caught alight and the
person inside the toilet shot out screaming with laughter. Someone had lit a newspaper
and held it under his friend's bottom while he sat there and, in so doing, had set the
manure alight.
My father had a foreman at Tabor Farm, Bill Hinnard, who looked after the day to day
running of the farm while my father was working at Sion Hall. It was very tiring running
one farm and helping to run another and he soon decided to give his full attention to
Tabor Farm.
.
One day in 1947 there was a tap on the door and half a dozen senior Scouts asked if
they could camp on one of our fields. My mother said that she was not sure as we
did not have an outside toilet but they had no problem with that as they had their own.
They asked how much it would be to stay and my mother said we could not charge
Scouts but they insisted they had to pay and they were the first of thousands that we
had staying on our land as campers.
Shooting again
Before the occupation, my father, his father and his brothers belonged to .22 miniature
rifle clubs around the island, where they only fired at targets. Most were crack shots and
they won many awards. During the occupation they would have had to hand their guns
into the Germans and after the occupation they started up again. My father and many
of his friends, club members, obtained a large wooden shed that the the Germans had
built somewhere in the island. They dismantled it and carted it on my fathers lorry to
a site up at Pier Road, where it was reassembled for use as their clubhouse and rifle range.
It was an exciting time for me to be included in the evening the club was officially
opened by Sir Edward Grassett, the governor of Jersey. He named the club, St Helier
Miniature Rifle Club. He made a speech and went on to fire the first shot. Maybe it
was because I was the youngest there that he handed me the spent cartridge after he had
blown into it, making a whistling sound. He told me to keep it as a memento of the
special occasion.
All that must have made a lasting impression on me as I had my first shot that evening
and continued to shoot regularly for the next twenty-five years, first at St Helier and
later at St Brelade's rifle clubs.
First T V viewing
The first time that I saw a television set was when my father and I had been invited by
Ernie Le Sueur, who had an electrical business in St Helier, to a hotel on the North
coast of Jersey. The north coast is the highest part of the island and would have
been the best place to receive the strongest signal.
He had set up aerials outside and indoors and he had also assembled television sets
with all types of gadgets attached to them. I do not remember the name of the hotel
but I do remember that it took a long time to reach there from home as it was on the
opposite side of the island. Ernie collected us and drove us to the hotel to see
his new toys, as my mother called them.
I think it was over a period of six weeks that we went along to that hotel to look at
television. I can only describe what we saw as a fuzzy dark grey and black screen.
Some evenings Ernie and my father got very excited with when they thought they could
see images of people moving about. On a fine evening with perfect weather conditions
they could certainly see something, but the people turned out to be the highlights on the
cheeks of the BBC presenter.
It was over a year before my father was able to take delivery of a television set from
Ernie, as we were living on the south of the island and could not get a strong enough
signal. When the set arrived, we spent hours every day watching the test card, waiting
for something to happen.
My Bike
For a couple of years, I had been going to school on a bike that I had put together
with bits and pieces that I had salvaged though sometimes I would have taken the
JMT number 12 double-decker bus from the terminus at St Helier to the bus stop
at Tabor Chapel. The bike served me well then, quite by surprise and for no
apparent, reason I was given a brand new Raleigh touring bike with three-speed gears
and a dynamo. It was beautiful but very heavy. I did not know then that it would be
my biggest present for several years. Cycling on the flat was easy but the hills were
hard work and St Aubin's Hill was the worst part of my daily journey. It was so long
that I had no strength left when I got to the top. Every afternoon as I struggled up the
hill the driver of the number 12 bus would give me a toot and the conductor a wave
as they passed me. One day the bus had stopped at the St Aubin's school stop,
when I caught up with it and I was chatting to Bob, the conductor, when it moved
on up the hill. I carried on talking to Bob as I held the vertical handrail and the bus
was pulled me effortlessly up the hill. Bob was a little angry with me at first but soon
came round to the idea of my hitching a life as I was careful.
That's Entertainment
From the late 1940's, dozens of shows were held in Jersey. I think that Springfield
had the most popular entertainers such as Nosmo King, well known for his songs such
"My old Dutch". He took his name from the side of a railway box wagon. He had
noticed that, when the door on the wagon was closed, it read NO SMOKING and,
when it was open, it read NOSMO KING.
Jack Hubert Watson, actor, Nosmo's son,
Larry and Babs Gordon, dancers
Jack Train and Harry Duke, comedians,
Cal McCord, lasso twirling cowboy and singer, used a forty-foot long
rope with which he could encircle his horse while he was sitting on it without
touching it. I thought that was very impressive. Eleanor Lee, Cal's wife
had a beautiful singing voice.
Our family struck up a long-lasting friendship, particularly with Cal and
Eleanor for over forty years, exchanging Christmas cards and visiting
each other. The friendship started I think when they used to come up
to our home for parties with other members of the cast of the show.
Just thinking about it now makes me think how lucky we were to have
met these fine people. They always asked us if we would like a show
and they always knew the answer would be "yes please" First Cal would
go out in to the paddock and do his lassoing act by jumping in and out
of the spinning rope and do a few tricks including lassoing up to ten
people. He would then ask us to try to do the same but nobody ever
volunteered. We would all go indoors, the children sitting on
the stairs, to listen to someone telling jokes and someone else singing,
but the evening always ended with Cal singing songs like "Maisy Dotes
and Dozy Dotes" and "Old Mac Donald had a Farm", and everyone's
favourite "Mamma's Little Baby Love Shortening Bread". They were
wonderful days.
Jersey Grand Prix.
Masaratti, Bugatti, Ferrari, Jaguar, Talbot and my favourite ERA and
other cars came over to Jersey with World class drivers. I can remember
some of them such as Bob Gerard , Prince Bira, local drivers John Bennett,
Mike Lord Louth. Two Grand Prix races were held, one in 1948 and the
other in1949. They started at the Grand Hotel end of Victoria avenue heading
west to and around the hairpin bend at Bel Royal Garage and returning along the
inner road to West Park.. I cannot remember how many laps there were but I
can remember the horrible smell of hot oil , burning tyres and worst still the strong
smell of exhaust fumes. The noise from the exhausts was unbelievable despite
the cotton wool my grandmother had plugged in my ears Two years following,
my grandfather Hodgetts had painted Prince Bira's lucky mascot, a little white
mouse, on the side of his car and the Prince had given him a few tickets for the
family for the area on the side of the road opposite the pits. With a smile, my
father said we could not refuse them and that we had to go. My father followed
loved motor sport and always took me to took me to the sand races at St
Ouens, the hill climb at Bouley Bay and the scrambles around the island. His
friend, Phil Touzel, whom he had known for many years, was always at these
events for it was he who used to set out the course with rope. My father had
other friends who were always part of the motor scene such as Buck Margire
and Gordon Bisson.
Fun over, back to work.
By July 1949 we had had a good potato crop at Tabor Farm, the prices having been
very good for the early ones that year. Our early land had made a big difference.
As with a lot of farms in Jersey, growers would expect to grow two crops out of
the ground in one year. My father was still learning about the soil in St Brelade
and the soil around Tabor Farm had not been cultivated for a long time, had dried
and needed life putting back into it. After the disastrous tomato season of 1948 due
to the drought we had that year, although my father had irrigated most of the plants it
could not be called a profitable one, the soil need more feeding In September and
October 1948, hundreds of tons of vraic, (seaweed) was delivered and spread like
a deep blanket all over the land. The vraic must have been at least twelve inches
thick and was left to rot for a couple of weeks before it was lightly rotavated in.
That was my job. I enjoyed tractor work and the tractor had lights so I was able
to rotavate in the dark. As soon as I returned from school each day I had work to
do before I had any time to myself. My first was to feed and water Duke in the stable.
He was a beautiful carthorse used during the day for different chores on the land.
I would then collect the four cows from the field, give them water, take them to the
stable and hand milk them. I would then switch on the hot water boiler and prepare
the food for sixty pigs that were housed in the stables for fattening. The water took
two hours to heat up before I could pour it into steel buckets and add the pig food
to it. The twenty or so buckets took a lot of stirring and was a very warm and smelly
job and the pigs had to be fed as late as possible in the evening so that they would
rest afterwards. At about ten o'clock I would bring down to the stables my small
terrier, Peter, and Rex, who was half red setter and half labrador, and, after banging
hard on the door, would send them in to chase the dozens of rats off the buckets
of pig food. They caught two or three most nights and once they caught seven.
.
Rex
Sometimes, in the bad light of the stables, I would be about to pick up a bucket to
give to the pigs, when a rat as big as a cat would jump out of the shadows just past
my head and climb up a rough stone wall, disappearing through a hole in the ceiling.
Then I was thirteen, now I am sixty-eight and I still do not like rats. I can still
remember feeling the warmth from their bodies as they went past me in the dark.
Planting time
Irrigation was going to save our crops, especially for our tomato growing and, with
the soil looking much better than in previous years, my father thought that the next
season would be the best that we could hope to have. The soil had been tested and
was found to be just the right balance for tomatoes. In April, tomato seedlings were
bought from a grower who had heated glasshouses and my father, my mother and
other helpers pricked out the seedlings in trays holding fifty plants.
The glasshouse my father had built two years earlier was just the right temperature
for the plants. The seedlings were put into the boxes which then were laid close
together on the floor. He had planned to plant about two hundred thousand that
year and the work for that many plants would have taken six weeks or so, doing
them every day. Once again I helped with the pricking out of the seedlings but I
preferred to place the trays on the floor. My father was the only one allowed to use
the watering can and later the sprinkler on the hose pipe as he thought we might be
a little heavy handed if we did it. He was right of course.
After a month or so we began to take the plants out of the glasshouse to harden up
before planting. They were going to be the very early croppers. However, before
we could do that we had to build a solid screen two feet high around the area where
the plants would be hardened off. We found that old doors were perfect for this
purpose. Once the screen was up and the plants were tucked in , we covered them
with hessian sacking to protect them from the sun and the wind. We had taken out
some eighty thousand plants to harden and they looked very healthy. The soil in the
fields was prepared and ready when, at the beginning of June, there was a huge
drop in temperature with a very cold, biting wind and a heavy frost. I think it was
the 7th. We lost the lot. . The remainder of the plants would not be ready for
another month. We had sowed cabbage and cauliflower seed so that we might be
able to sell the plants to recover some cash as most of the crops had been near
failures since we moved away from Sion Hall.
My father decided to cut our losses and, instead of selling the cabbage and
cauliflower plants, we planted them ourselves. The cauliflowers would not be
ready for harvesting until November but the three separate varieties of cabbage
plants could be harvested through the summer months. We also planted lettuce
and other marketable crops as we were willing to try anything by this time.
We grew a large area of vegetables, mostly cabbages, that we sold locally although
we sent the bulk to the UK. We would ring around and visit the shops and hotels
in Jersey to sell our produce and were lucky enough to be able to supply many of
them, which gave us a bit of breathing space cash wise.
What did upset my father was that when he approached the local supermarket the
RM Stores, later called Le Riches Stores, he was told that, as they had a contract
with Covent Garden Market to supply them with produce all year round, they would
not be able to take any from him. That was too bad as they were less than half a mile
away and could have had a better deal. My father was furious when he discovered
that the store was buying its cabbages from Covent Garden who, in turn, were buying
them from Langlois, Tabor Farm, Jersey and, what was worse, that the returnable crates
had to be sent back to Covent Garden before being returned to us in order that the
store might reclaim its deposit. What a mad world!
Tomato glut
There was always a surplus of tomatoes at the end of each season due to the
fluctuations in supply and demand and, if possible, an outlet had to be found for
this. Perhaps because of our price, we were lucky enough to have a contract with
a canning company at First Tower to supply them with overripe tomatoes - runny
ripe. After picking, we had to store them in a vermin-proof outhouse for a week or
so before delivery to the canners. We would then load them on to our Dodge lorry
the day before in order to make an early start the next morning. Late arrival at the
canners meant waiting in a queue all day. I have never forgotten the smell of the
loads of rotten tomatoes each time we entered the shed to collect our lorry, though
this memory is nothing compared with that of the sight of the hundreds of rats
jumping off the load and scuttling past us out of the shed. Dozens would still be
on our lorry eating the fruit and it was only when we thought that we were rid of all
of them, having beaten the sides of the lorry to frighten them away, that we would
drive down to the canners. As our loads were usually large, it was doubtful that we
had rid ourselves of all of them and it was only when the driver started tipping the
tomatoes at the grader and cleaner that the horrible episode was repeated. After
a dozen or so boxes had been emptied he would find himself holding one from which
two or three tomato-filled rats would jump. This did not concern the canners as, not
only was it a usual occurrence, but the tomatoes were to be washed and cooked and
made into soup, canned in twenty-five gallon cans and shipped to troops in Germany.
No luxuries for us, I had to clean thousands of iris bulbs by hand.
Irrigating.
The tomatoes we eventually planted thrived in the good soil, fed with vraic and with
the fantastic irrigation system, and brought some success to our farm. On the far side
of the road, my father had built a large reservoir in concrete to hold about half a
million gallons of water to irrigate the fields on that side while, near our house, he
excavated the pond in the valley to four times its size to create another reservoir.
The reservoir in the valley was topped up steadily from a stream but the one across
the road had to be filled by tankers, which seemed a good idea at the time. However,
when cash is short, you have to adapt and tankers were out of the question. It had to
be another DIY job. My father found where the nearest water supply was and devised
an alternative plan. The land was now good but his choice of crops meant that they
would not survive a normal Summer, let alone a drought, without irrigation. He found
that the Coventry Climax water pump he had taken off one of his boats was ideal for
this as it was very powerful and, in fact, was exactly the same as that used on fire
engines. We also used a brand new Lister, two cylinder diesel engine with a three
inch centrifugal pump on wheels.
Water from Corbiere
La Corbiere
This granite structure is situated near Corbiere
where we collected the water for our reservoirs
There is a large volume of water near the surface just off either side of the Corbiere
road and we collected it from one of the quarry pits near to the large, old granite
construction. The water was crystal clear and we would go down into the hole with
a JAP engine water pump to pump the water out into the square and round tanks
on the back of the lorry or the tractors and trailors. I remember that, on hot days,
when we had filled the tanks, we would swim in them before going back to the farm.
We thought it advisable not to swim in the quarry as we had been warned there
might be explosives left by the Germans from the last war. It is understood that
Corbiere was the most fortified area in Jersey and Jersey was the most fortified in
Europe, so it really was not a good idea to swim or play in that area so near Corbiere.
Grandpa's camera.
In 1949 I was thirteen and was just about ticking over at school, trying to keep up
with others, when we got to hear that a famous person was going to visit Jersey.
He was none other than Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. The school
was very excited when we heard that some of the boys were going to be able to
see him going along the road at West Park. I thought I would have no chance of
going but I was wrong. I was on the list and one of the chosen few. Of course I
was very excited and boasted to everyone of my good fortune. My grandfather,
Percy Hodgetts, told me to take his Kodak Brownie box camera with me but that
I must take great care with it as he had looked after it right through the occupation,
having hidden it from the Germans. Had he been caught with a camera in his
possession he would have been punished so I realised how dear it was to him. I
was proud that he trusted me with it, especially as I had never used a camera before.
He took went to great lengths to show me how to use it and added that there were
'three left for the day'. I said that was fine but I really did not know what he meant
by three, although I was shortly to find out.
As the proud possessor of a camera I pointed at everything along the road
pretending take pictures like a reporter. When I reached West Park, I joined my
group of school friends proudly carrying the camera in its box, unable to wait to
show it to them. In my excitement as I reached into the box I must have pressed
the lever on the side of the camera as there was a lick sound, I remember
Grandpa saying that, when the camera clicked, turn a wheel on the side to move
it on. As I did so it clicked again and someone passing by admiring the camera,
told me to be careful not to waste the last film. I did not waste the last film. I think
that the picture I took of Field Marshal Montgomery was brilliant. Later I found that
the first click had taken a picture of the bottom of the camera box and the second
click was a picture of my chin. Later Grandpa gave me his camera and I am proud
to say that after fifty years I still have it .
Life carries on.
On the farm, things did not change very much except to say that although money
was not coming in as it had at Sion Hall, we were still staying afloat. My father
had sold eight plots of land for building overlooking St Brelade's Bay. Each plot
was about 1000m, the least expensive selling at £450 and the most expensive at
£800. This latter would sell at £300,000. today. It felt as though Christmas had
come again when we sold this land and, in fact, today. It was just as if Christmas
had come when we sold that land and in fact it had. It was the end of 1950 and
things were tight but not so tight as to stop the family going to London Christmas
shopping and to see a few shows. We saw Brigadoon with Bruce Trent and, after
the show, he invited us to his dressing room behind the stage. When he lived in
Jersey he was a good friend of my mother and father. We saw South Pacific
with Mary Martin, whose son, Larry Hagman, was in the chorus. He later played
JR in the TV soap, Dallas.
Left school
February the 13th 1951. It was half term and we broke up at midday. I hurried
home to help my father plant potatoes as we were short of labour. He had only
a couple of French workers on the farm at that time and that afternoon I joined
them planting in the field exactly where my house now stands. I continued working
for my father for the next six years, having taken it for granted that I would work
for him when I left school as did many other farmers' sons in Jersey in those days.
Finch got it wrong, I was not last.
My father knew that I was useless at school and said that, if I wanted to stay on, I
would have to go to another, because Victoria College were putting their fees up
from £11 to £13 a term and he could not afford the increase. I am not exactly sure
why he wanted me to leave school, though it may have been because I had lost
weight in that last six months instead of putting it on as I should have and that I
needed building up.
My first proper job.
One of the first jobs I was given was to collect stones off the fields around the farm.
It took me many months each year to clear only a small proportion of them.
Strangely enough, working hard on the farm was best way to build myself up.
In the next year I had caught up in weight to other boys of my age but it would be
uphill for me from now on. I had left school, was working on the land that I loved
and was being paid £1.10s a week. My father assured me that he would give me a
rise of £1.00 per week each year, explaining that I would have had more had I not
been living at home. I so enjoyed working on the farm that I never counted the hours
I put in and sometimes these were as many as seventy or eighty.
My first car
My father must have thought that I was doing well on the farm because he gave me
the Stower. It was a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, three-seater radio
vehicle as a bonus, although it had a broken stub axle and was up on blocks so
I would not be able to drive it for some time. I used to clean and polish it
regularly but it had been on blocks for a couple of years and, with my poor income,
it would stay there. A family friend believed he could persuade a friend to fix it,
which he did and it was a disaster. When the axle had been welded and reassembled
and was on its test run, the weld gave way causing even more damage to the drive
assembly.
It would be a further two years before I could raise sufficient funds to send the
broken bits and pieces from my vehicle to England. I had been told in advance that
the work would cost £25 0s 0d and that it would take months to do. As I had already
waited so long for it to be repaired, a few more months would not make much
difference to me. I packed all the pieces in a sack and sent them to the engineering
company that had been recommended. Within two weeks they had returned the work
to me, crated and bolted down, with instructions on its assembly, and the bill was
only £3.15s.0d. plus £0. 15s. 0d. carriage.
The Stower was and still is in peoples minds some fifty years on, an odd ball of
a vehicle. It could turn in its own length and it could move sideways. It was a
great talking point and I used it to carry everything and everyone because it was fun.
I would pick up half a dozen friends and take them for a ride around the island just
for the hell of it. What they remembered most was its turning circle. For example,
we would be traveling along the airport road when we would change direction,
turn around in one and go back the other way. In those days the airport road was
much narrower. We would also go to the far end of St. Aubin's harbour, turn
again in one and drive back as fast as we could, much to the annoyance of the
residents and visitors.
Time off
For many years, Mr. Arthur 'Cookie' Newman operated a beach concession
at the church end of St. Brelade's beach He had rowing boats, floats and
hundreds of deck chairs for hire. Whenever I could get away from the farm in
the late summer evenings I would go down to the bay to see if Mr. Newman
wanted any help bringing his rowing boats up the beach. I am sure that he did not
but he always said "Yes please, in a few minutes. Take a boat and row around
for a bit. You can help me later." I always chose a rowing boat called Anne as she
seemed lighter than the others and was easy to row. Sometimes I crossed the bay.
I was always grateful to Mr. Newman, as were many other youngsters. for he
taught us to like and respect the sea.
Duck diving
I enjoyed swimming and duck diving and going down to the breakwater in
St Brelade's Bay in the evenings to swim with friends. We used to show off
to each other by jumping off the it into shallow water, or on a high spring tide,
we would duck dive down to the seabed and bring up stones to prove that we
had reached the bottom. Often a stone would be too heavy to lift out of the
water but you would never have admitted to your friends that you had thought
your lungs were about to burst.
I was stuck in the mud
One Summer evening about eight o'clock as I was finishing work, a friend of my
father came to tell me that my father wanted me to go down immediately to St.
Aubin's Harbour with a cauliflower knife because his boat, the Elizabeth, had a
rope caught in its propellers. This friend drove like a lunatic down to the harbour,
at the same time explaining that I was to dive under the boat to cut away the rope
before it grounded in the deep mud. It had been a very high spring tide which was
going out quickly so I had to hurry. When I felt the rope around the propeller I
realised it was very tightly twisted and would be very hard to cut off.
As I started cutting it in the dark, muddy water, I was just able to touch the
harbour bottom with my toes but as the tide receded fast I was soon having to
bend my knees to reach under the hull to the propeller. As I extricated the last
piece of rope I found that I had actually sunk into the mud under the hull and, had
my father's friend not pulled me out, I would not have been here today to relate
this episode.
In 1953
I was 17 years old and had just passed my driving test when my father told me
to take his car filled with cauliflowers, cabbages, carrots and onions around
the shops to see if I could sell them. He had telephoned them earlier to ask if they
would buy from him but they first wanted to see the produce. Not only was I to
be allowed to drive the car but also to negotiate selling and I was being paid
£3.0s.0d. per week. My father had told me that, unless business improved. I
would have to stay on the same wage as the previous year. The future of the
farm had seemed more secure so I had hoped to earn a little more, but could see
the strain on my parents not knowing where to find enough money to pay the
bills. My father sold all the pigs and the cattle and Duke, the beautiful carthorse,
returned to Sion Hall, as we had only borrowed him.
Living at the Brae was all very nice but we had to sell it as soon as we could to
raise money. We took in lodgers who worked in shows on the island and
my father sold his boats. We were short-handed and had to work many hours
as only two of us plus my father were working on the land We had extra help
with the planting and were growing vegetable crops for a quicker cash return.
This turned out better than we had expected and, although we planted by hand
and not by machine as they do now, we had early land and knew how to irrigate
the crops. The vraic with which we had manured the land two years before paid
off at last as this was just the right kind of fertilizer for vegetable crops. With a
little more help, we continued to grow and sell an ever larger variety of vegetables
and flowers and these, coupled with the increasing number of campers who
stayed on our farm each Summer, greatly improved our finances.
Big turning point
My life took a turn for the better when I met my future wife. At the time she
was seventeen and still at college and I was eighteen. Luck seemed to be coming
my way. Firstly, my wage for a sixty-five hour week had been increased to
£4.10s.0d. and my father had lent me his Armstrong Siddeley car to take out my
girlfriend. This was the car I had used to deliver vegetables to the shops but, by
this time, he had bought another car for himself - an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire
similar to the one below.
The family silver
In 1954 our situation continued to improve when my father sold a further eight
plots of land across the road for building, as well as The Brae. We moved
across the field to Tabor Farm, which although not a patch on he Brae for
quality, was more homely and had a good number of rooms, some of which
were let to lodgers. These were artists whose agent, Billy Forest, placed with
us whenever we had spare accommodation. On my twenty-first birthday in
1957 I was given another big present, a Remington electric shaver. My only
previous big present had been a bicycle in 1949. Times were hard for us.
I wonder
When we were moving from The Brae to the farm house I came across a ships
compass stored in a cupboard. My father told me that, during the occupation,
a friend of his had given it to him as his wife did not want it in the house lest the
Germans discovered it in their possession.. The story goes that my father's
friend was down at the harbour collecting goods for delivery to stores around
the island, when he had seen a fine German ship moored alongside the Albert
Pier. As it was a high tide, the deck of the ship was level with the quay enabling
him to see into the bridge. Never having seen such a ship, he thought he would
take a closer look and jumped aboard. There would normally have been sailors
about but, for some reason, this ship was unguarded. Having spent some time
exploring, he decided it would be prudent to leave before any German sailors
returned and discovered him but, as he headed for the quay he noticed that the
ship's compass was only held down with clips. He released these and took the
compass as a memento of his visit. It weighed over forty pounds. He wrapped
it in sacking, placed it on the floor of the cab and drove off quickly about his
business. I have since wondered whether it was really my father who had taken
that compass but I can imagine the look on the faces of the Germans when they
discovered its loss and I am sure someone received the blame. I am sure they
would have been too embarrassed to advertise its loss in the Jersey Evening Post
I still have that compass!
And talking about boats.
I bought my first boat for a mere ten shillings from Mr. Arthur Newman in
St. Brelade's Bay. Most people would have thought it better left in his yard
but I felt it had potential with a little work done on it and I considered it was
just what I needed. I collected it from the bay and took it home to commence
its renovation. I preferred a bright colour instead of its black finish and tried to
scrape this off but it had been painted with a preservative which had soaked into
the timber. Someone from a boatyard in St. Aubin recommended that I use a
sealer type of paint to prevent this preservative, which was pitch, from leaking
through and he also suggested that I should caulk the gaps in the timbers before
doing this. He explained that caulking meant forcing thick cord between the
timber planks to prevent leaking. I thought I had just the right thing to achieve
this as we had kegs of putty for use on the glasshouses and I could easily apply
this, painting over the pitch with the chlorinated rubber sealant that we were
also using at the time.
The weather was very warm when I started working on the boat. I removed the
heavy tarpaulin and turned the boat upside down.. With a bit of effort the putty
went into the tight gaps between the timbers and, as I continued, the gaps became
a little wider and easier. I soon realised that the heat and exposure to the sun had
dried the timbers, widening the gaps until they could take the thickness of a pencil
but, at the same time, I realised that the putty I had put in earlier had all fallen out.
I returned to the boatyard and asked them for caulking material but I did not tell
them at that time that I had wasted my weekend puttying the boat instead of taking
their advice. Caulking proved to be much easier than I had first thought and, by
the time I had finished, I felt very experienced in it. I then commenced the painting.
My boat was to be silver, which I considered very smart and quite different from
any other boat in the harbour. What with the pitch undercoat and the rubberised
top coat, it took two weeks to dry enough for me to walk on the floor without
lifting the paint off with my feet though, admittedly, it took three top coats to cover
the pitch undercoat.
I thought mine was a fine boat, eleven feet long with straight sides, a flat bottom and
a two inch keel with brass rubbing strip. I had talked my father into giving me his
Anzani two cylinder, four horsepower outboard motor which was in bits in a box
under the work bench. Although I found there were pieces missing and parts
cracked, I managed to weld it together and get it going. It was much more powerful
than was normally needed for a boat of this size but mine weighed more than twice
as much as others of the same size.
At that time, A.T., a good school friend of mine, obtained a brand new Stapley
ten feet long wood clinker built varnished boat that was built in St Aubin, with an
outboard motor. He and I each thought that our boats were the best around. He
was still at college and I was starting my farming career but we were able to spend
quite a lot of time together. If I was working at home on the tractor, he would jump
up and sit on the wing of the tractor and we would chat for ages as friends do. He
would even give me help me to muck out the pigs if I wanted to go out early on a
Saturday night and, fifty plus years on, we are still good friends. In the summer
months we would go down to St Aubin's harbour at six o'clock in the morning
before school or work, take our boats off their respective moorings and cruise
around to the beach at La Haule about half a mile away in convoy. We would
scrub the boats even if they did not need it. A.T.'s boat always came up looking
like new whereas mine, although clean, always came up looking like a block of
sandpaper because of the paint I had used that had never really dried hard and
attracted sand. However, sand sticking to the paint was an advantage, because
whenever I touched or walked on the boat I did not get paint all over myself.
A.T.'s two horse power outboard motor was very quiet, whereas mine sounded
like a WW2 tank. My outboard motor had two horizontally opposed cylinders
with spark plugs that faced in towards the boat. Had I lost concentration steering
the boat, leaned backwards or turned the motor too sharply I would have received
a nasty shock off the ends of the plugs.
Cockle
I had kept that boat for a year when someone offered me £2. 0s. 0d. for it. I think
they were going to use it in their garden as a large flower tub. This was just after
someone had offered me a fine little ten foot long sailing boat for £5.0s.0d.
It was as wide as it was long and had a small sail so I modified the rigging.
I added a flying spinnaker and a bowsprit. The little sailing boat I called Cockle
was a lot lighter than my first one and was only about twenty years old. It was
built of light weight marine ply wood on a light wooden frame had very high,
straight sides, a rounded bow and a transom just large enough to take my four
horse powered outboard. It looked very smart with the hull painted dark blue
and everything else in a dark grey-brown varnish. It had just been painted when
I bought it and I was told that the new patches on the bottom had been well fixed .
It was time to take to the water, so early one morning I very proudly took the
boat down to St. Aubin's harbour to launch it. A light breeze was blowing as I put
it in the water for the first time since the modifications. It sat so well in the water,
looking great, that I could not wait to set off. I raised the mainsail and nearly went
over the side as the five foot long boom suddenly swung across the hull and hit me
on the head. That was my first experience of sailing. Next I raised the flying
spinnaker and, as that looked fine, I hoisted the steadying sail on the stern sprit.
well. I then proceeded to cast off and, thankfully, as it was only six o'clock in
the morning, there were few people about to see what happened next. I had no
sooner released the rope from the harbour wall when Cockle took over like a
fiend and, without warning, headed towards the harbour mouth at great speed.
spinning like a top. I tried to stop her by dropping the sails, starting with the
steadying sail, but that only made matters worse and she just buried her bow
deeper in the water. Had she not had a deep hull, I would have been under
water in seconds. As I hurriedly tried to take down the flying spinnaker, the
mainsail began to rip, by which time I was already outside the harbour and
heading towards the other side of the bay without paddles. In my enthusiasm
I had forgotten to take them. I only kept her for a year, and, when I received
an offer of £20.0s.0d. for her, I did not refuse it as my early enthusiasm for
sailing had been dampened. I dare not tell you what happened when I tried
to use a powerful outboard motor on her.
White Cloud
At eighteen I bought another boat, or I should say a hull, seventeen feet long.
It was a power boat, home built to an American design to take a Ford V8
engine. All I wanted was a motor boat that was economical to use, this one
would take up a lot of my time working on it. It was brand new and had
been stored under cover since it was built. The light coloured varnish on the
decks needed redoing, possibly because the wood had originally been used
for a dance floor and the wax had not been completely cleaned off It had a
hard chine hull with a deep keel.
With the £20. 0s. 0d. that I had for Cockle, I was able to upgrade to a boat
boat that I could use in most weather conditions. It took over a year to get
White Cloud into good going order. I bought a Ford 8 engine for £4. 0s. 0d.
and a gear box for £1. 0s. 0d., with a Ford car steering wheel and column
thrown in for the same price. I also bought a brass framed windscreen, I think
it was from an old Morris car from Mr. Jeandron's motor business at
Longueville. Soon after I had all the bits together and was about to install them,
I was offered an vintage ten horse power Gains marine engine and gear box for
nothing. I accepted this kind offer as I would have had to spend a long time
adapting the Ford engine to marine use.
The Gains engine was built in the 1920's and had cylinder priming taps on its
cylinder head. A friend of mine said that he would enjoy doing up this vintage
engine as a project. He got it going on an engine bed, until the head gasket began
leaking water. He took it apart and skimmed the head, made a new gasket and
started it up again but, after going well for a few minutes, the impulse magneto
gave up. After fixing that he had problems with the geared water pump, and
thus matters continued for some time. Having put it all together, he found that
it was overheating and suggested that it might be an idea for me to install the
Ford 8 engine I had bought earlier, just to be on the safe side. He gave me all
the help I needed in installing the Ford and the other bits and pieces. We made
a few unusual modifications, such as cutting off the Ford gearbox, just leaving
the clutch and clutch housing to give me the facility of having a neutral gear.
I was then able to release the clutch and move forward very smoothly as if in a car.
The steering column gear box was modified and we were able to cut a pulley into the
steering shaft, running the steering cable through and around the hull to the rudder.
The rudder was made from the base of one of the German galvanized posts that
we had around the farm and it was welded to a short length of propeller shaft The
fifteen gallon copper fuel tank had come from an old lorry that had seen better
days and all the clocks on the dash board were from a Ford van. We used a
simple push pull switch for the ignition and ran water through the exhaust system
to cut the sound of the exhaust.
When White Cloud was freshly painted and varnished, I launched her on the beach
at St Aubin. She floated well and, with her brilliant white hull and mirror like varnish,
she looked beautiful. I was very proud as I went into the harbour to moor her up
alongside the other boats. My girlfriend and I spent as much time as possible on our
boat. It was now 'our' boat. As she was still at school and I was working on the farm,
we had little free time but we took it out whenever we could. We had White Cloud for
further five years.
On one occasion we met the Royal yacht Britannia, with Queen Elizabeth, the Queen
Mother on board, as she rounded Noirmont Point. We were the nearest boat to the
Britannia as it anchored in the bay and received a wave from the Queen Mother as
she stood near the rail on deck. We had nearly missed reaching there in time for, as
we set off, the anchor rope with the anchor attached had slipped off the highly polished
deck when we hit a bit of rough water and had slowed us down. Had it caught on
the bottom we could have turned over.
Later on in the evening of the Royal visit, we took seven members of the family
across the bay to take a closer look at the Royal yacht. It was moored in St Aubin's
Bay and there was not a single boat around as we approached. We were so close
we could have touched her side but thought better of it as we might have been seen.
We saw no one until we passed under the bow and anchor chain, when we waved
to an officer looking down on us from the point of the bow. He did not return the
wave and was obviously not a friendly type.
1957
I am now twenty one years old and still working for my father on the land at
a mere £5. 10s. 0d. per week for sixty to seventy hours. During that
summer, for the very first time I asked my father for a rise. He looked at me
blankly and calmly said that, if he had more money he would give me some
but that, as we were on the subject of pay, it might be better if I were to find
another job or, better still, work on the land and also do part-time work to
earn more money. I had never seen him like that before but then I had never
before asked him for more pay in the five years I had worked for him for
fear of what he might say. Life was hell for me after that conversation and
nothing I did was right in my father's eyes. He would ask friends and
acquaintances if they had any work for me.
That October he was approached by Jack Bardin of the Duwks service that
ran between West Park and Elizabeth Castle. Jack needed to maintain his
vehicles but this must be done under cover and our stores were perfect for
that work. They agreed a price and, at the same time, Jack was asked if he
had work for me. He said that he did and that I would have to work a forty-
eight hour week as he was so busy. At £9.0s.0d per week the pay would be
almost double that I received from my father and, if I worked for him in the
Summer, it would be £12.0s.0d.
My prospects had improved. I had a new job I enjoyed with less hours and
I was able to spend more time with my girlfriend. I could work part time for
my father to pay for my keep and earn a little pocked money at the same time.
Our Vespa
Of the changes at that time one was that, for economic reasons, I exchanged
my German Stower jeep for a Vespa scooter. The jeep was very heavy on
tyres and fuel and I must have kept Goldsmith's Garage on Victoria Avenue
in business.
There were a lot of changes around that time, one of the changes was swapping
my German jeep, the Stower for a Vespa scooter for economic reasons. The
jeep was very heavy on tyres and fuel, I must have kept Goldsmith's Garage
on Victoria avenue in business. While on the subject of Goldsmith's Garage
and the jeep, I once bought a heavy duty, wooden cased battery from them.
After a few months it needed recharging, so I put it on charge at the farm for a
couple of days until I thought it was fully charged, when I gave it my normal
test of flashing a piece of wire across the terminals. To my horror, the whole
battery exploded, leaving nothing except small pieces up in the rafters. The worst
thing was the noise which left my ears ringing for weeks afterwards. I was lucky
not to have lost my sight and I never tried this again.
Thank you Jack
I began working for Jack Bardin the following week when he had brought
the Duwks up to the farm for maintenance. We had to remove the engines,
gearboxes and fuel tanks from all three of them, as well as the axles, drive
shafts and wheels. Once everything had been removed, the first two vehicles
had to be wire-brushed inside and out. Anything that appeared to be rusty
had to be taken down to the bare metal with a hammer and chisel and repainted.
Hammering inside the bodies of the Duwks was deafening but I grew accustomed
to it. The third Duwks was new to the company and had recently been brought
over to Jersey. I understood that it had been on standby duty for the Suez Canal
crossing. It had been painted in sand-coloured camouflage.
When the Duwks first came to Jersey, Jack had the outer ribs and panels
removed and this was to be the case with the last one. He always suspected that
there would be rust inside the outer ribs and that eventually the panels would rust
through. He was right for, as we began to cut away the panels , we saw the start
of the rust. In those early days we only used hammer and chisels to cut off the ribs
and panels. which was hard work and noisy. It took months to do all the work on
such large vehicles for we were only two while Jack would be back at his workshop
stripping down the six GMC engines and spare parts in preparation for the coming
season. What I admired about Jack was that he practiced what he preached when
it came to any engineering work and he was and is a master of engineering. He
taught me the bare essentials of how an engine is assembled. If I had a problem
he was always prepared to stop his work to show me what to do. His philosophy
was 'It has gone wrong. We know we can fix it but why did it go wrong? Let us
find out now'.
That goes for many things in life.
DUWK Driving
It was the beginning of March 1958 and all three Duwks were painted and ready
to take down to St Aubin. The idea was that the Duwks would be towed along
the road under their own steam on a pretend tow rope, as they were not taxed
or insured to be driven on the road. Jack was in a hurry to get them across to
Elizabeth Castle before the next tide. My father stood in the farm yard while
Jack made his arrangements, thinking out loud how he would tow them down,
when my father came up with the bright idea that I could take his elderly Armstrong
Siddeley which was used to take the produce to the shops. My father's approval
was enough and we set off very slowly along the road with me driving the car
towing a long, thick rope with a Duwk attached. In my mirror I noticed that Jack
was catching up with me and, to take up the slack in the tow rope, I would have
to increase my speed. Instead of ten mph we were doing a steady twenty and I
began to feel a little more confident that all was well until we reached Woodbine
Corner, when I came to an abrupt halt in the centre of the road and waited for
Jack's DUWK to slam into the back of me. He had accidentally driven on to the
slack tow rope, stopping me in my tracks and having no time to brake. I remember
looking in the mirror, watching the Duwk coming closer until all went dark. Thank
goodness the Armstrong cars were built like tanks but, in a second, the Duwk had
converted it from a four door saloon with a large boot to a two door with a flat
platform at the back. Jack paid for the car to be straightened out and my father
later said that it looked better then than it had before.
The remaining two Duwks were accompanied by a tractor and not towed. When
all three were on the beach at La Haule we set off in line to West Park slipway.
Jack had told us to go no faster than him and we did not but I would never have
believed that vehicles the size and weight of the Duwks would have been capable
of doing sixty miles per hour on that surface. We must have made quite a sight
from the land as we jumped over the shallow gullies caused by the water running
off the land. However, that was the first and last time that Jack ever permitted
us to travel at that speed. Perhaps he felt guilty about the damaged car and this
was to cheer me up. It did.
Within two days of delivering the Duwks to the workshop at Elizabeth Castle, we
were ready to start driving. They were filled with fuel and all possible checks
were completed. Jack was not going to allow his safety record to fall with
breakdowns. Over the winter we had gone through every inch of them and were
fairly confident that we would have a trouble-free Summer.
I was somewhat nervous at the prospect of carrying my first passengers as I
had never been involved with groups of people before. Working on the farm
I only had to deal with people on a one to one basis and I would now be
responsible for twenty or so passengers.
Although the weather had been perfect during the Spring and early Summer,
there were few visitors about and I had only to take a few castle maintenance
workers and cafe staff to and fro. We had placed the boarding ramp in
position near the slipway and had put up the signs advertising our service.
Jack could tell that I was becoming a little jittery and told me not to worry
about meeting the public. He had felt the same when he first started driving
and he would accompany me for the first few days to give me support.
Jack gave Andre, the other driver and myself a last minute pep talk Firstly,
he told us that the customer was always right and that we must treat them
with respect. Secondly, we must not take more than twenty passengers
over the land and no more than twelve on the water. 'I was thinking of only
half that number' I told Jack. To which he replied 'Wait and see, my boy,
you will be surprised.' Jack kept his word and did help me for the first trip.
However, there was a build up of passengers wanting to go to the castle and
he had to carry some of them on his Duwk. I had no time for nerves that day
or after for, by its end, I had carried over three hundred passengers. Jack had
cured me of my shyness and I never again thought of this as a boring job.
By the season's end we had carried over thirty thousand passengers.
One of my little passengers
All daily maintenance, fuel top up, oil changes and complete washing down of
the Duwks had to be done before we could set off from the castle each morning,
which meant a very early start.. I frequently left home at five thirty in the morning
with my newly acquired Vespa scooter and, if the tide was out, I was able to
dross the three quarters of a mile of green, slimy concrete causeway to the castle.
concrete causeway to the castle. Occasionally if I was a little late or a little
early in my timing, the water might just be over-lapping the causeway by a few
inches but, if the tide was rising, there was no turning back. I was committed
and had to press on through the shallow water at speed. It would be some forty
years before someone came up with the idea of a water scooter with wheels.
If the tide was high and it was impossible to get out to the castle in time for
work, we would go down to St Helier harbour and take my boat, White
Cloud, which was moored there for the Summer season. White Cloud, with
its eight horse power engine, ran beautifully for the whole season with one
exception. She was full of engineers when we ran out of fuel just ahead of
a ship with twelve hundred passengers. It was headed for the harbour mouth
and could not avoid us so we had to get out its way in a hurry. We pulled
up some floor boards and began to paddle furiously. As the ship sailed past
the passengers cheered and waved to us and it gave us a blast on the horn.
I worked for Jack during the autumn months until my father wanted help on
the farm. As Jack could only support one person with work over the Winter,
I agreed to help him, but my wage was poor, so he allowed me to do some
outside work for other growers and, at the same time, I had rented some land
for growing flowers. I bought a Ferguson tractor with implements from my
father and was able to undertake rotovating and ploughing contracts for
other growers. In the early days my ploughing customers would pay for the
fuel I used.
My matrimonial future
We became engaged in 1958, having known each other for five years. My
fiancée was secretary to a bank manager and, for the first time in my life, I
had managed to save some money during the Summer.. My life had become
more settled with work for my father to pay for my keep and tractor
contracting for others. We were able to rent for six years a small one
bedroom bungalow and land for £5. 0s. 0d.per week in St Brelade.
The land was in a steep valley and only a quarter of it could be worked
with the tractor while the remainder had to be worked with either a small
walk-behind-tractor or by hand with a spade.
1959. We were married
After six years we felt sure we must be right for each other and we were married
in September at St. Ouen's Parish Church on a beautiful, sunny day surrounded
by our families and friends. Our reception at the Grand Hotel cost as much as
twelve shillings and sixpence per head for the food and as many drinks as we
wanted. In those days people drank spirits rather than wine and those who saw
us off at the airport had driven there having consumed whisky, gin, martinis, etc.,
as well as the traditional glass of champagne. The roads were not very busy and,
other than when there was an accident, the police did not concern themselves. Needless to say, it was a very happy occasion and the only upset for me was
having to wear morning dress. In those days I hated dressing up but I think
Moss Bross would have been impressed had they seen me the day before
parading their top hat while driving the tractor.
Honeymoon
Badgers Holt
Oxford
It was my first time away from Jersey in eight years and it was to be the last
time for another eight. We went to London by air on a BEA Dakota and
hired an Austin A40 car from a car hire firm in Berkeley Square. Driving out
of London was a big headache for me as there was much more traffic than in
Jersey. At home I was confident but, behind the wheel of a new car,
surrounded by double decker buses I found it impossible to see where I was
going. Seeing a gap in the stream of buses I pulled over to the left and stopped.
Within seconds a policeman's face appeared at the window. He asked what
was wrong and I told him I was lost but that we were trying to head for Oxford.
He assured me we were on the right road, put up his hand to stop the traffic
and waved us on. I breathed a sigh of relief.
We toured South-West England, driving from Oxford to Stratford on Avon,
where we spent the next night in a room with no key. The receptionist told us
that they had no keys for the rooms as the American tourists took them as
souvenirs. The following day we visited the beautiful city of Bath where we
stayed in an annex to one of the large hotels in one of the crescents overlooking
a park. The elderly lady in charge of the annex looked exactly like Margaret
Rutherford and could not do enough for us when she discovered we were newly
married. She even went as far as moving one of her guests to another room so
that we could have the best one in her hotel. She really was a lovely lady.
The following day we headed for the South coast and stayed over night at a
new motel on the newly constructed Exeter bypass. It had only just opened
and it was the second one built in Britain.
Newly built Exeter by-pass Motel
We crossed the River Fal on the King Harry ferry.
The following day we drove down through Dartmoor in Devon to a picturesque
little seaside town called Fowey in Cornwell. We stayed the night in a guest
house. It had very unusual floor covering in the bedroom. The owners had
planed and varnished the wooden floor and all around the room they had laid
a frame of black lino on which that they had created a very intricate design with
paint. I asked them how they did it and they said that they had just tipped the
paint directly from the tin. They were proud to show me other rooms, even the
stairs, where they had done exactly the same, the only difference being in the
colour of the paint applied to the same black lino. Every wall of their guest
house was decorated with murals depicting local scenes, all painted by the
landlord who was quite an artist.
One evening the refrigerator broke down and they were taking it apart to
try to have it working for the next day. I volunteered to help and, between
us, we eventually started it up again. After a cup of tea and a long chat, I
went up to bed at about 4.00 a.m. My wife was not amused though, in time,
she grew used to my nocturnal habits
Back to reality, with £5. 0s. 0d.
Back in Jersey in our own home, called the Bungalow, Quaisne Common,
St Brelade. Although only twenty feet by twenty with four small rooms, to
us our bungalow was a mansion and it was to be our home for the next six
years. It faced South in a secluded valley overlooking Ouaisne Common
and the sea and had with it eight vergees of land on which I intended to grow
marketable crops. We had one small, wooden shed which might have taken
a small car had the doors been left open. We could not be overlooked so
tractors, ploughs and vehicles were left in the open covered with corrugated
iron sheeting to protect them from the elements. Massive pine trees shaded
us in Summer and protected us from the south-westerly gales in the Autumn
and Winter. The land was very sandy, having formed part of the Ouaisne
dunes and our access to the bungalow was on a track across the common - a
distance of some 400 yards from the main hill. In the Winter, I had to mark
our route home with long bamboo canes as the common was regularly flooded .
On one occasion I had to rescue the postman who had drifted off the track
and was stuck in deep water. He was in too deep for a rope to be tied
around his bumper so, standing on my tractor seat, I lassoed the whole van
to tow him out.
As we had the Armstrong Siddeley car my father had given me, I sold
my Vespa. The car was in a poor state of repair, with the gear box
trying to part company with the engine and the front mudguards and
some of the bodywork starting to break away. I no longer had access
to the farm petrol pump and the car was very expensive to run so we
soon decided to give it up and buy something not only more economical
to run, but able to carry light loads of produce for delivery in the Island.
We bought an elderly Jowette Bradford van with a spare engine and
gearbox for £10. 0s. 0d. To say the least, it was a bit rough and had its
bodywork hanging off, but it was just what I needed. I cut the wrecked
metal body off just behind the cab and added a flat platform on to the
chassis. The timber for the platform was made of two heavy doors and
I reinforced the edges with metal strips from an old bedstead.
The Jowette 8 hp engine was designed in 1906.
The van had a few nasty little quirks, possibly because of its age. The throttle
cable jammed from time to time, although I greased it regularly, and it made
the engine run fast at the most inconvenient moments. The hand and foot
breaks pulled the van up very well when the roads were dry but, when they
were wet, they turned the van into a spinning top. The gearbox was quite
unusual with a dancing gear lever that moved about like a butterfly when you
tried to change gear, darting out of the way and sometimes coming right out of
the top of the gear box. Driving at night it was almost impossible to push it
back back into the gearbox but the worst was when all three things happened
at the same time.
We did very well with the little van. It carried all our produce from our small
holding to the local shops and hotels, as well as the loads of logs that we had
cut for sale to the local residents. With tractor contracting and lawn mowing
with my new mower, I was working very hard.
A little later, I upgraded to a Ford ten hp van with wooden bodywork, which
was pretty sluggish and discharged black smoke. It left a plume of smoke
wherever we went. This was so embarrassing, that I bought another engine
and, as I was fitting it, I heard on the radio that President Kennedy had been
assassinated.
My Ford was like the one below
My next means of transport, a Peugeot 202
I rented more land to grow narcissi and iris for cutting for export and, at the
same time, I grew plants for sale to our local shops. I still recall potting one
thousand five hundred cacti to sell. I had bought a job lot from a grower who
was giving up growing and who had kept them as a hobby in his glasshouse.
I carefully took off dozens of shoots and planted them in clay pots, some
being at least thirty inches tall and others as small as my finger nail. I used a
good potting mix with a pebble topping and, to me, they looked pretty good.
These all went into my homemade cold frame with old doors for its surrounds
and glass frames from old greenhouses.
I spent weeks working on the cacti, opening and closing the frames watering
the pots and weeding them. When they were ready I delivered them to a local
supermarket, who promised to take all I could grow, as long as I did not offer
them to other shops. They set up a good display and I gave them two hundred
to start with as they thought that they could sell a lot. The arrangement had
been sale or return but, as they only sold five pots in the first two weeks and
another three the following week, they asked me to collect the remainder.
On my way home I called at other smaller shops offering them my cacti at a
heavy discount to take them off my hands but I must have been dreaming to
think that, with Christmas coming, I would be able to be rid of them. Not a
single one wanted them so I decided to keep them until late Spring in the hope
of selling them then but, by the end of January that year, I had lost them all in
one of the worst freeze ups we had ever had, despite the fact that they had
been under glass with sacking insulation over the top. After all the time, effort
and care I had put into these cacti, this disaster proved to be a learning curve
for me.
As flower growing was profitable at that time and as I wanted to expand my
business, I looked around for a glasshouse to rent to grow iris for export,
with a second crop such as lettuce, tomatoes, beans or potatoes for the local
trade. My father suggested that I might take over his large glasshouse, doing
some work for him on the farm in payment. This arrangement seemed fair
but the glasshouse, having been used for tomato growing, was now full of old
farming equipment that had been stored in the main shed but was now dumped
there as the shed had been rented out as storage to different businesses.
St Brelade Battle of Flower entry, built in the shed at Tabor Farm
One of the first businesses to rent space was Jack Bardin with his Duwks then
Aviation Jersey from Beaumont with crates of aircraft engines and spare parts.
For a short time during one summer, the St Brelade Battle of Flowers float
was built at the farm, then Tantivy Coaches used it to brush paint their coaches
to a fine, enameled finish. After them came Normans store, who had a contract
for supplying the airport with bagged cement, of which they stored several
hundred tons in this shed. This took weeks to clean up after they left and years
later cement dust still drifted down from the rafters. Tucked away in a corner
of the farm buildings, away from all this dust, was a cabinet maker and joinery
business, making good quality fitted furniture for hotels and homes.
Again I had to learn the hard way.
In whatever space was left in the glasshouse after moving all the junk to one
side, we planted lettuce plants and iris bulbs during the autumn, when the soil
was cold and damp. We knelt on planks of wood to plant to avoid
compacting the soil after we had forked it up.
The glasshouse was situated in the bottom of a small valley and, as there
was a row of trees to the east of it and a large shed to the south, it had
very little sunshine for a good part of the year. Although part of the valley
had been filled in with rubble and heavy clay like soil before the glasshouse
was built, the soil in the it was water logged. This was not so noticeable
in the Summer but in the Winter it remained wet and the lower part of the
glasshouse was often flooded so that, as there was no heating, many iris
corms and lettuce plants rotted..
My father had built the glasshouse principally for growing tomatoes in the
late Spring and early Summer and had not used it when damp. I had been
using it for two years and had added loads of compost and fresh soil to
try to drain it, when my father said I was to paint the internal steelwork
with a special chlorinated paint during the Winter months while I was not
using it. We never considered that this would effect any future planting
but we were wrong. In the Spring, I filled the house with tomato plants,
took great care of them and prepared the wires for them to climb. They
were growing well and we had anticipated a good harvest when we had a
very hot day.
As usual, I went up to the farm in the early morning to open the ventilators
in the roof when I smelt what I can only describe as a gas of some kind.
I thought it was from the new compost so I did not worry too much.
However, that evening when I returned to close the vents, the smell was
still there so I left the vents open all night. The next day was even hotter
and the smell was even stronger. The tomatoes were showing signs of
wilting. I asked the opinion of a friend who immediately asked if I had
painted the glasshouse lately. I said that I had painted it with chlorinated
paint some five or six months earlier and was told that, as the temperature
was now much higher, the gas was only now coming out of the paint. The
plants had been gassed but, strangely, although I had lost the top of each
plant, the bottom trusses did very well. That was the last occasion that the
glasshouse was used for crops. The following Winter, Falles Hire Cars
filled it with hire cars for storage, barring one small corner which later
became a large amenity block for the campers' use.
Our income was improving and we were not keeping all our eggs in one basket
as before. We had a successful garden contracting business together with the
smallholding, where we grew flowers for export. The tractor work was also
going well and, in a very short time, I realised that the garden contracting was
needing my full attention so I had to give up the extra land that I had rented
for £10.0s.0d a vergee. I just kept the land around the bungalow for growing
bedding plants around the bungalow for growing bedding plants.
Overnight success.
In a very short time the tractor contracting business was also overtaken by what
proved to be the more lucrative business of garden contracting. This involved
anything from designing and landscaping to minor demolition on building sites in
preparation for garden layouts. I frequently employed as many as ten people at
a time and took on everything I could. One of the first major jobs was to clear
and clean up the site of Jersey's first multi-storey housing estate at the end of
Green Street. We had to clear loads of heavy-duty barbed wire left by the
Germans during the occupation and the builders had not helped by having
bulldozed the rubble and barbed wire together onto the area we were to
landscape. Once the buildings were built, it was impossible to access the site
with any kind of transport so that everything had to be moved manually for some
thirty yards. We also had to remove from the site a large block of reinforced
concrete foundation that had been used as a base for a pylon and this was five
feet wide and weighed at least two tons. As it would have been impossible to
break it up into smaller pieces without the use of a heavy-duty jackhammer,
that we could ill afford, we decided to bury it in situ.. We dug a large hole
about eight feet deep adjacent to the concrete, though we were a little
apprehensive that it might roll in by itself before we were ready for it. As we
were working on a steep slope it might well have missed the hole and rolled
down the bank to crash into the main tower block.
A learning curve
I jumped at the chance of having the contract for cutting down and clearing away
three hundred and fifty trees with their roots from a well known Jersey manor. The
owner wanted his trees thinned out and a large area put down to grass once the
trees and roots had been removed. I gave him a price for the job which he accepted
without hesitation. I was later to find out that his lowest quotation had been three
times higher than mine.
In addition to the original contract, we were asked to fell other trees around the manor.,
two of which remain in my memory as a nightmare. One of them, a Scots pine, with a
trunk fifty feet high and a diameter of four feet, had to be cut down to five feet from
the ground so that it would be level with the top of some very expensive metal fencing,
part of which was embedded in the trunk. As this would have been impossible to
remove, I decided to take it down in one piece but it would have to be cut at the right
angle so that, when the trunk came down, it would kick out and away from the fence.
This problem was compounded by the fact that the tree had to fall between two
buildings.
That was a near miss.
However, the other tree was an even greater problem for me. It was one hundred and
twenty feet tall but had died and the owner wanted it down. It had towered over the
parish for many years and, due to old age, it had lost all its branches and was completely
shrouded in ivy. This enabled me to climb up some sixty feet to secure a rope which
would be used to pull the tree away from the rhododendron shrubs beneath. I then
tied the other end of the rope to my little Land Rover and began to cut the trunk, which
was about thirty inches thick. I made a very large 'v' cut so that the tree would only
fall in the direction of the Land Rover and then it was the turn of my assistant to cut the
far side of the trunk so that the vehicle could take the strain. Hardly had I placed any
strain on the rope when it went slack and I thought it had come away. There was a
sound like thunder and the earth shook as the tree came down, missing the Land Rover
by inches. The top twenty feet of it had broken off and bounced ahead of me.
Still learning
In all weathers we had worked on that job, the grassed area was growing well and
had had its first cut. I could now send my account to the customer as we never asked
for payment before completion. I was paid within two months but with a note advising
me that, as the job had not been completed within the stipulated time, I would not
be receiving the full amount. Altogether the work had taken five months, three weeks
longer than agreed, as I had not taken into account the very wet conditions we were to
encounter when we had to sow the grass area - nor did the customer. He withheld
more money than I would have made in profit with eight men working for me as well
as the hire of a JCB and two lorries to remove and clear the tree roots.
Luckily this had not been my only contract for I had other work in the Island, including
that for the States Housing Department cutting the grass around their estates. Despite
competition from the Hamon family and Joe Bredonchel of Star Gardens, we had more
than enough work to keep us busy. We would undertake basic landscaping of gardens
from scratch and could do this easily and quickly, keeping costs down for the customer.
Go cart track at Belle Vue and the golf driving range at
La Mielle at St Ouen
This was one of our most varied and interesting projects, starting with sixteen launching
pads on a concrete base for the golf range at La Mielle in St Ouen and re erecting chain
link fencing around the driving end.
Up at the go-cart track we excavated an area of one hundred and fifty feet long and
one hundred feet wide for a boating lake. Once it had been dug, we had to lay a large
sheet of butyl rubber matting over the excavation. Problem one was that the sheet was too
short and had to be extended by something like thirty-five feet. The manufacturers had
made a mistake in their calculations and had to send a man over to rectify this mistake
by adding more material and joining it together with a special hot iron.
The second mistake was ours and was made when we installed the large sheet and began
to fill it in with clean sand, as we had been instructed to do by our clients. The idea was
that, by covering the bottom of the lake with five inches deep of sand, it would be protected
from damage by the boats. On the first day, when we had laid about twenty tons of sand
with the help of five or six men, we felt as if we were going to be ahead of schedule and that,
if all went well the next day, we would only need a further thirty tons of sand topped up with
water and we would be at the end of that phase. However, when we arrived at the go-cart
track to begin work, we found to our amazement that every grain of sand had disappeared
from the bottom of the lake.
There had been very little wind the day before while we had been carting the sand so we
had assumed it would still be there the next day but, during the night, the wind had risen and
had blown the sand up the slopes and away. We then decided to wet the sand as we carted
it and, although we too became very wet, it did the trick. Before excavating the hole for the
lake, we had cut and removed all the turf for further use on the banks. Some of these were
as much as nine feet high and fifteen thousand square feet of the turfs had to be laid on sand.
Most of the banking was steep, in places as much as forty-five degrees and, as the Summer
holiday season approached, our clients wanted the work to be completed, and it was with
the exception that the turfs had to be continually watered.
We were about to leave when they asked us to do some extra work which involved
widening the go-cart track on the corners and banking them up. I wanted to give the
corners a Brooklyn type banking on them to add to the thrill of carting, but the clients
said that I was to go by the plans that some racing association had given them. The plans
looked very boring but the clients were paying so we did as instructed. We were then
asked to re-erect all the fencing around the perimeter of the stadium, seven hundred feet
of which was chain link eight feet high and, with security in mind, we attached barbed wire
along the top and bottom of it. Two hundred and fifty feet of wooden fencing was erected
along the most exposed area of the stadium as the oak posts used previously had broken
off at ground level due to strong winds.
We also laid a railway line at Belle Vue to take the client's mini passenger train and carriages.
The railway took a route through a landscaped area and along the top of the banking
overlooking the boating lake. When this too was completed, we were also asked to build
a go-cart track for juniors.
The bomb
That story could have had a different ending had I detonated the incendiary bomb that
I had hooked out of the bottom of the excavation. I had been using a scraper blade on
the back of my tractor to level the sandy bottom of the lake, when one of my men
picked up a lump of rusty old iron and was about to throw it to one side when someone
called out that it was a bomb. He dropped it on the spot about five yards behind me
and ran away as fast as he could. I called the police to ask their advice as to what I
should do with it. They told me to stay nearby and that they would collect it with their
bomb disposal officer. They soon arrived and, picking it up very carefully, handed it to
the man sitting in the back of the car, placing it on his lap. In all the excitement I had not
noticed that that man was a school friend and neighbour of mine called Tony. Both he
and the bomb were taken down to St. Ouen's Bay where he was able to blow it up
safely.
Working on a large property in Park Estate, St Brelade.
One
of the jobs we were asked to do.
We were asked by the owner to fell a large oak tree as the builder had realised
that he would not be able to build the top floor and the roof of his house extension
as it was in the way. The builder had reached a height of about eight feet with
lightweight blocks and the idea was that we should wait until his men had finished
for the day before we began to cut the tree down. felling the tree The block layers
placed boards above the freshly built walls for us to walk on. Thankfully, the mortar
they had used was of the quick drying type or, had we knocked a wall down, the
rest would have followed like a pack of cards.
Another job was to prepare the ground for planting a rain forest of three hundred
rhododendron bushes in a small valley on the property. First of all we had to spread
over one hundred loads of soil that had been delivered to the garden, mostly by hand