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Barbara Murfin nee Sarney born 1940s
Edgar Wallace story
I seem to think Dad's childhood was very Just William. Short trousers, long socks, hand knitted, no longer elastic enough to stay up his legs and so gathered at the top of his boots, grubby legs and ankles and a hand-me-down jumper with darned mending, meaning the jumper was more darns than jumper. A stub of pencil, a bit of string, a special stone, a clean hanky that immediately got dirty the first time it was taken from his pocket.
Sim, as a lad, helped Stan Hall the milkman with his round. Stan’s farm was at the top of Blind Lane. Stan Hall lived in a huge bungalow on the Straight Bit not far from the footpath entrance to Jennings field, on the other side of the road (it’s not there now as some houses are now built its place). The milk was put in a large churn with a tap at the bottom, and the churn sat on the back of a small cart pulled by a pony. Anyone needing milk would bring out their own jug to the cart for filling. The story goes that Sim’s job did not last long as one day Sim did not close the tap completely and the milk all ran away. (Indoors milk was kept cold on a marble shelf in a pantry, the only refrigeration a house had in the 1930s, a cotton or muslin cloth draped over the top. Many of these food cloths had beads sewn around the rim to give the muslin weight to keep it in place.)
Sim’s older brothers and sisters, perhaps leaving school at 12, had live-in jobs, or worked at the factories down the hill. Paper making was a very labour intensive industry in the early 1920s. Though not quite as intensive as it had once been when one of our forefathers, John Sarney, set out to smash the paper making machines – mechanisation stealing much needed jobs – and was caught and sentenced to deportation to Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania. However, he never left England. Held in a prison hulk, the government repealed the deportation order, and he was reprieved from his journey to the other side of the world, and returned home. Dad had many romantic tales to tell of this. The John Sarney involved never worked in a paper mill though. He was the landlord of the Leathern Bottle, a pub on Spring Lane on the Bourne End, River Thames side of the village. He encouraged the protesters by giving them a room in which to discuss plans, and I’m sure selling plenty of ale to encourage the flow of rhetoric.
The New Prospects household also had a cat and a Chow dog. The dog's name was Ruby. The poor cat was put through various children type experiments. One of which had Sim hanging out of the front bedroom window, the poor unfortunate cat upside down held by its legs. When Euphan was ready, lying on the grass, the cat was dropped to see if cats always do land on their feet. I don't know the outcome but it was never tried again – the cat could not be found for days.
Of his school days I know very little. He would have gone to the infants school in the village and more senior education would have been in Wooburn at the school near the bottom of Juniper Lane. Wooburn because this part of the village, Blind Lane, was in Wooburn Parish. I think, like me, he also suffered from 'word blindness' or dyslexia. 'Someone had to be bottom!' he used to say. Yet he had a very logical, practical mind. I never saw anyone beat him at draughts though many took up the challenge. He was fantastic at precise practical drawing – tools, furniture, daily items. He would work at problems, things, and ideas until he completely understood them in his own way. He taught himself to use a slide rule (the calculator of the 1950s) and he made it look so, so easy, until you looked at the instrument yourself. It was a ruler with lots of tiny numbers on it, in the middle of the ruler was another ruler also with lots of numbers on it. You held the outer ruler and slid the one in the middle backwards and forwards to calculate what it was you required.
He sometimes mentioned football matches between the youths of each end of the village. I cannot ever imagine Sim playing himself, he had always suffered with asthma. It was not always a good idea to win unless you still had the energy to run home very quickly!
The family would have been well fed. A communal pig, chickens in the garden, plenty of fruit and vegetables. Gent was a great gardener. The house sat on an end plot so had a huge side garden as well as a long back and long front garden. New Prospects back garden was large enough for a vegetable plot, two green houses, and numerous cold frames, which Sim helped to build. The left over veg and some flowers were sold on a rack at the Blind Lane gate. There was always a huge pile of firewood under the back window, more than likely gathered from the woods behind the house.
To the side by the back door was a huge garage and workshop, and in the front side garden a swing. By some clever method of ropes and pulleys (and I've tried for years to work out how it was done with no luck at all) the swing could be swung by who ever was in the kitchen once one small grand child had chosen to sit upon it.
On leaving Wooburn school Sim was apprenticed to a cabinet maker at Mr Gomme's works, G Plan. Here’s another one of Sim's tales: A Mr Ebenezer Gomme and a John Sarney started a company. Mr Gomme having the money, Mr Sarney the skill. Sim always said that while a Sarney worked at G-Plan all would be well. Big brother Jim (William) worked as Mr Gomme's chauffeur for many years. Jimmy, Jim's son worked there too, for a short while but his real love was steam engines. Sim always said that when the Sarney's left Gomme's it would fail. Within two years of Sim's death, Gomme's had closed its doors, the G-Plan label sold and the factory deserted.
By now at New Prospects the Sarney siblings were moving on. Jim had met a young lady and moved to Kingsmead. Gwen and Dick, (Dorothy) had married the Town Brothers from Loudwater. Gwen moved to Loudwater. Dick to the Straight Bit. Dora married and moved to Cookham. Euphan married and lived at New Prospects until she and John moved to one of the new houses at 11 Oakland Way.
Sim, still single and living at home and working at Gomme's, was making pieces of the wooden Mosquito aeroplane, the wings I think. Both Gomme's and Ercolarnie’s 'Ercol', along with Parker Knolls and other furniture factories, enrolled into the war effort producing this plucky little wooden aeroplane. Mosquitoes were light in weight and incredibly fast in flight, they were used for many purposes during the war. Sadly they never had the glamour of the beautiful Spitfire but they were undeniably a useful ‘working war horse’ of the skies. I believe only one working Mosquito survives. Being made of wood they were not as durable as the metal planes.
One of the men Dad worked with was a chap called Bill Bunce. Bill and Peggy, his wife, lived in a tiny cottage opposite the Hatters Lane turn off on the A40 London Road. 'Shangri La' was the tiny cottage beside a footpath leading to the water treatment works at Wycombe Marsh. Topps Tiles and DFS are now (in 2017) on the piece of land where the footpath went. It was here Sim met a young evacuee from London, Barbara Ellen Norris. After a two year courtship they married in Grove Park, Lewisham, London. Barbara in a soft baby blue satin dress and Sim in a smart new suit. Sim was 24, Barbara 19. Barbara was an apprentice at Molyneux of 48 Grosvenor Street, London W1, dressmaker to the Royal Court, also of Paris.
As there was nowhere available to live, they started their married life with Sim's mother and her second husband, at New Prospects, Blind Lane. This was not unusual at the time. Wages were small and there was a shortage of housing after the Second World War. Today's problem is not a new one. This was where myself and my younger brother David were born.
At New Prospects I remember a very large front garden, huge double wooden gates onto the road. This was the only part where we could play. A huge, to a small child, garage and shed to the side. It was big enough to hold all Dad’s tools and our transport, the Matchless motor bike and side car. In the back garden was a large vegetable plot, two green houses one with a hot stove and fat pipes going all around the glasshouse, one with cold frames attached, and by the back gate a pond. The hedge at the very end had a gate leading to a large field and down into Northern Woods. We were quite a bit older before we were allowed through the gate. I think our family, were in the front room as it was a little larger of the two main rooms. The house also had an indoor bathroom, and TWO toilets indoors.
When we were older we were sent across the road to buy Tizer. Tizer was kept for the grandchildren, and there were plenty of us! It was always on the floor of the larder, right at the front. It was bright orange, It had a taste of its own, certainly not of orange. Bought from a little shop across the road, in a front room where there was everything for sale. I had always thought two spinster sisters ran it but I’ve got that wrong, it was a family. The ‘sisters’ were mother and daughter. Their name was Sykes. You went down the path to the front door, then inside down the hall a little way and into their front room. One Sykes, possibly the daughter, the bell on the front door warning of your arrival, would be standing behind the counter ready to do business. She must have had a lot of patience while we spent our sweetie penny. Should we buy Black Jacks and Fruit Salads or maybe a sherbet flying saucer? Cousin Katherine Platt says ‘The shop belonged to a Mr and Mrs Sykes. Mr Sykes would deliver goods to my mother on The Straight Bit on a Friday. Then return on the following Tuesday to collect that weekly order. Their daughter's name was Pat. After Mr Sykes died, Pat did the orders I believe and Mrs Sykes ran the shop.’
After six years and two children Sim at last found a cottage owned by Mr Peter Jennings situated on the Common. Exactly, Sim said, one mile from the water tower, and Prospect Villa. This was the furthest he ever moved in his life. To read more about Sim Sarney go to Virginia Cottages on The Common.
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Blind Lane going towards Bourne End c.1930
(picture from Flackwell Heath Village website)
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How it looks today
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