Reg's Beautiful Water Garden 

on the Island of Jersey UK

 

 

 

             You might like to take a look at   My Life   By Reg Langlois


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My new Fairy Garden,  please click on to        http://www.reg-fairygarden.co.uk/

 

   

           .

                                          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 abl