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Barbara Murfin nee Sarney born 1940s
Dr Bailey of Clayfields, Whitepit Lane
Dr Alison Bailey, phone number Bourne End 203, via the operator. A giant of a man. His father Dr Selborne Bailey. He set up the practice of Bourne End, Wooburn Green and Flackwell Heath. He was driven around in his Rolls Royce, by Dash his chauffeur. House visits were quite normal. Dr Selborne handed over to his son, Alison, so he could retire. Alison also had a Rolls. There were so few cars on the road but it just seemed right for the Doctor to have a Rolls. There was a great retirement party given by a grateful community of Wooburn Green, Bourne End and Flackwell Heath. It was at a large hall just out of Wooburn on the Cores End Road. It was near the railway line on the Wooburn to Cores End Road (the building is not there now). There was a grateful something or other given to Dr Selborne, but with both Dr Selborne and Alison's help a large screen television set, possibly all of 12 inches, was given to Dash – quite something in those days.
The Doctor Baileys’ money came from the manufacturing of trusses and stays, with a “showroom” in London, possibly Harley Street.
Alison’s first surgery in the village was in a small white cottage at the far end from the Common, on the playing fields, near the house called Wayside. Wayside was the bus stop at the Straight Bit, Chapman Lane Junction. You went through the garden then around the back and in the back door. My cousin Katherine says it was in Mrs Wilke's front room, but I don’t know which branch of the Wilkes's family that would have been. The National Health and Social Security did not start till 1948 so the Health Service was brand new. To get prescriptions filled you either went to Bourne End or Wycombe until the chemist was built in Flackwell Heath (where the video shop is today, in 2017). I cannot remember much about Wooburn Green. If you missed the Flackwell Heath surgery you just headed to Wooburn or Bourne End on the appropriate day. Doctors' notes? What doctors' notes? The Wooburn Surgery was by the green somewhere. The Bourne End one was a shed behind the shops near the railway station. No appointments then, take your place on the hard chairs and wait your turn.
His new surgery was a bungalow along the Straight Bit, possibly the one that’s there now. He had a front room as a waiting room and a small room behind with a desk and a bed. A couple lived in the rest of the bungalow to keep it clean and tidy. This could be the Wilke's connection. There was a notice on the mantlepiece above the fireplace saying “The tip of your stiletto heel is the same weight as an elephant standing on one leg. MIND MY FLOOR.”
There always seemed to be the same older customers waiting to see the doctor, coughing and wheezing in the same chairs as the last time you had gone to the doctors. I went one time with very sore eyes. I got to the door of the consulting room, before mother could say anything, Dr Bailey roared from his chair. “Get that bloody fringe cut.”. He was right – the long hair was upsetting my eyes. Shall we say Bailey was a practical man.
Dr Bailey was an osteopath. This was frowned on by the National Health Service. Should he have practised it he would have been struck off. Many people were grateful for the odd exercises we were given to do whilst lying on the bed. Poor Dr Bailey had an extremely bad back himself. He was a tall and large man, not fat but large.
He also did house calls in his Rolls Royce. He thought nothing of having a couple of passengers, giving them a lift if he were going their way. Sometimes he would arrive on horseback! Dad suffered with his chest and so during the winter he was often ill with pneumonia or bronchitis. Dad was on Chepping Wycombe Parish Council and Bailey was on Wooburn Green Council. Dr Bailey and his wife would often ride through the village on a Sunday Morning. If they passed our house Dr.Bailey would stop and go in and see Sim. Mrs Bailey would wait a while, have a cup of tea, then give up on her husband and ride home. I would stand and hold the horse. One time Doctor Bailey was ages, the horse and I had walked around the Common umpteen times, then the “big” ring – Common Road, Straight Bit, the Common. He and Dad were having a big discussion about local politics and all else was forgotten.
Eventually he came out of the house, collected his horse and rode off. Dr Bailey and Dad had been friends for years, long before we moved to The Common. When we lived at Blind Lane Dr Bailey would arrive, just for a chat and catch up, help himself to pie or cake from the larder on his way out, and continue his rounds. A ten-minute appointment, your appointment, was as long as it took.
When Dad first painted the white around the front windows of Virginia Cottages Dr Bailey went past in the Rolls. He stopped, got out, took the paint brush and wrote ‘capitalist’ across the bricks. As Dad was Labour through and through, Doctor Bailey thought it great to point out that Dad must have some money somewhere. Dad and the Doctor got on very well. Although Dad was poor at writing (I think now he would be diagnosed as dyslexic) he was eloquent in speech.
I don't think Dr Bailey ever visited our house without having a piece of cake or biscuits in his hand on the way out, a habit gleaned from Blind Lane. One time my brother David was very poorly and Dr Bailey visited and said “he will be all right, give him some scrambled egg”. Dad and Dr Bailey got talking, and Mum made scrambled egg. “You don’t make scrambled egg like that”, he said, “get me an egg”. Carefully Dr Bailey made runny scrambled egg for David. We were used to lumpy scrambled egg. He then took it upstairs to my brother who had to eat it. Later David said it was horrible and if Dr Bailey had not been watching he would not have eaten it. Can you imagine a cookery lesson from a doctor today?
Dr Bailey had a large house built near the top of White Pit Lane. It was called Clayfields and is stil there. There was a long drive to garages at the end of the drive. The large house was to your right. It had large bright airy rooms. The children, four of them, had a large garden behind the house to play in and then there was a very large paddock for the horses. While Dad worked on projects for the Doctor we played for hours with the children, in what seemed a huge amount of space. It was very sad what happened to Dr Bailey’s wife. She committed suicide. Village gossip said it was to do with the “change” (menopause). She did not know what was going on in her body. Those things were not spoken of in those days.
Photo of Selborne Bailey, Dr Alison Bailey's father, courtesy of SWOP
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