History |
The First Half of the CenturyThe old Queen Victoria died in 1901 and Edward VII ascended the throne. He was already middle-aged and was not popular with country-folk because of the way in which he treated Queen Alexandra, for gossip was not only about the goings-on in the village but involved the rich and famous all over the country. The King had actually visited the parish of Langton Matravers as a boy when he was taken on a walking holiday by his tutor. They stayed incognito at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Swanage for a night, and the fierce proprietress, unaware of his status, made the Prince sleep on a truckle-bed in a corridor. The party then walked along the cliffs and descended to Dancing Ledge which was in those days still a working quarry. King Edward died suddenly in May 1910 and King George V ascended the throne amidst general rejoicing.
POPULATION The population of the parish continued to rise steadily. In 1901 it stood at 827. In 1911 it was 878. By 1921 it was 941. By 1931 it had fallen slightly to 889 but by 1941, due to influx by evacuees, it had risen to 1167. COMMERCIAL DIRECTORIES Commercial Directories had first appeared with the Post Office Directory of 1846 to be followed by Kelly’s Directories after 1875. The 1903 edition gives the innkeepers as J Forward at ‘the Ship’ and Maria Edmonds at ‘The King’s Arms’. By then the postmaster was Frank Bower’s son Ernest. Saul Bower was a beer retailer at the ‘Sweet Content’; Mrs Selina Lock was the shopkeeper at Acton; William Millward was the grocer in the High Street; Thomas Lander and George Chinchen were the two village bakers; Samuel James Smith was living at Garfield House and he had become a JP by 1907; William Bullen was the village blacksmith; Miss Blanche Brodie was still living at Elm Wood House. By 1915 John Abbott was the Licensee at The Ship and Walter Speer at The King’s Arms, and the blacksmith was Harry Ryall. Reginald Bartlett was a Builder; Misses Elizabeth and Annie Cooper were running the Sweet Shop near the King’s Arms, which had previously been Millward's Stores. William Wingate was a Marker Gardener. Reginald Corbett was Headmaster at The Old Malthouse Boarding School, and Oliver Marsh was a Cabinet-maker. The farmers and stone-masons were also advertised. By 1920 Frank Trent had taken over at The King’s Arms, and Bert Heath was the Parish Constable. Miss ME Dymond was residing at Twoleas House. Oliver Marsh was now advertised as ‘Builder’, and Miss Susan Chinchen had opened her tiny shop. In the 1923 edition Apartments are listed at Garfield, run by Mrs Lena Beath. Oliver Marsh is then listed as Builder and Undertaker. Bartlett and Nichols are listed as Motor Engineers and Bus Proprietors at Hyde Garage. The Purbeck Co-operative Stone Industries Ltd, with Tom Webber as its Secretary, is also listed. By 1927 Lt Col Louis d’Arbon Strange was living at Garfield House and the resident Police Constable was WE Tolley. In the 1931 edition Mrs Anne Howe, District Nurse, is listed as living at Lynford, The Hyde, and Eustace James Crawshaw had opened his school at Garfield. Miss Jessie Smith Bower had opened her little shop on Chapel Hill and Thomas William Lovell was proprietor of a rival Langton Bus Company. Miss Amy Knight had opened Steppshill School of Domestic Science and two Haulage Contractors were listed, both in the name of Lucas. Spyway Preparatory School is listed, with Headmaster Nigel Chapman. By 1935 Tom Davis was the publican at The King’s Arms, but John Abbott was still at The Ship. The Directory noted that there was a telephone at the former. Steppshill was a Boarding-House run by Mrs F Legg. Mention was also made that under the Dorsetshire Review Order Langton Parish had lost some one hundred and three acres to the growing town of Swanage. Miss Gabbitas was then Headmistress of Leeson House Girls’ School, Mr Christopher Lee-Elliott was the new Headmaster at Durnford Preparatory School, and Eric and Geoffrey Warner were Joint Headmasters at Spyway Preparatory School. For the first time two artists are listed: Miss J Welsh at Quarr Cottage, and Miss EM Wilson at the Barn Studio, both on the Valley Road. By 1939 Mrs Amelia Eastment had opened a Boarding house at Seacombe in the High Street and, opposite, Mrs Gordon Lander had opened the Rookery Nook tearooms where the Coopers‘ shop had been. Mr Victor Haggard and Mr Evan Hope-Gill were by now Joint Headmasters of The Old Malthouse Preparatory School. LOCAL TRAGEDIES On 21st January 1901 John Phippard aged sixty-eight was killed in a quarry accident but no further details have come down to us. It was probably the collapse of a tunnel in a mine. In November 1902 Mrs Fanny Jane Short Bullen, wife of the blacksmith who lived and worked at Anvil Cottage, drowned herself in a fairly shallow pond which was just over the wall from the High Street immediately opposite the Village School. She left five children, James aged three, Florence aged six, Maria aged nine, Louisa aged twelve and Laura aged fifteen. She was buried in the Anglican Cemetery but no monument was raised in her memory until her great-grandson David Burt, a stonemason, made a large stone seat with her name inscribed upon it looking towards the northern hills. In 1909 thirty-four-year-old Henry James was drowned when he fell from the cliffs near Dancing Ledge whilst bird-nesting. In 1912 Frank Burt aged fifty-six was killed in another quarry accident. It was, nevertheless, to be another half-century before the dangerous quarry-mines were all closed by an Order in Council. SHOPS On Saturday 29th March 1902 Millward’s Shop in the centre of the village re-opened with a new double-sided shop-front. Previously it had operated in a cottage which jutted out across the stone pavement. This made the premises much more prestigious and altered for ever the appearance of the centre of the High Street. It still remains in 2012 as the Post Office Stores. At about the same time the then Post Office Stores run by the Spencer Bower family moved up the High Street from what is now number 22 to what is now number 26, and a double-sided shop front was added some years later, to compete with Millward‘s. Meanwhile Smith’s Shop at the extreme west end of the village had become a rural Department Store. A new section was built in the centre of the ‘square’ in front of the original shop premises, with a large shop window, to house the Clothes, Footwear and Haberdashery Department. Nevertheless, there was still trade enough for smaller shops. The one in Acton hamlet continued until 1920. Miss Jessie Bower’s little Sweet Shop opened in a stone-built shed on the north side of Chapel Hill. Miss Susie Chinchen’s small shop continued at the tiny premises now known as 32 High Street. Its main attraction to the men folk of the village was that it remained open during the evenings so they could buy cigarettes, tobacco and matches for themselves after work, and also soft drinks, sweets and medicaments such as Epsom Salts and Bile Beans for their wives and children. There was also Chinchen’s Bakery which had been opened in 1860 and a second Bakery at what is now 51 High Street, run by Albert Lander. After the end of the Great War Robert Ballam, who began his stay in Langton as delivery-man for Smith’s Shop, established a small Grocery Stores of his own at what is now 71 High Street. It is interesting to note that all these shopkeepers except the Brown Bowers of Acton were Methodists. By 1931, counting the blacksmith, the shoemaker, and the tea-room, there were thirteen shops in the parish. NEW IDEAS FOR A NEW CENTURY In 1903 there was a plumber living in the village, and in the following year mention of a ’cab proprietor’ is found. In 1904 ’Magic Lantern’ shows were first given in the Sunday Schoolroom. The operator was Mr George Thomas Hunter, Headteacher at the School. The machine used, though rusty, is preserved in the Parish Museum. When the machine ran down during performance, someone shouted ‘More gas, Andrew!’ and this became a saying in the village thereafter if someone or something was ’running out of steam.’ The Music Master at Durnford Preparatory School, Mr Howell, was very energetic. He put on several ambitious Recital programmes involving Oratorio items in the Parish Church at which the Church Choir joined forces with the Durnford School choir. The programme of one of these is preserved in the Parish Museum. The Church Choir had been trained by Mr Hunter and paid by Rector Hawkes personally. Many anthem sheets were acquired at this time, including those by West-countryman Caleb Simper. Five of these are preserved in the Parish Museum: ‘He Watereth the Hills’ (Harvest Anthem for Soprano and Bass soloists and four-part choir); ‘He is Risen’ (Easter Anthem in four parts, with a passage for Trebles only); ‘While the Earth Remaineth’ (Harvest Anthem); ‘Peace on Earth’ (Christmas Anthem for Soprano or Tenor Solo and four-part choir); ‘All Thy Works shall Praise Thee’ (Harvest Anthem for Soprano, Tenor and Bass Solos and four-part choir). The wind-up gramophone was first heard in Langton in 1905 at a Mothers’ Meeting, and several homes then aspired to get one. By 1908 there were several pianofortes in homes within the parish as well as several at the Boarding Schools, so a piano-tuner came to live in the village. The need for a District Nurse to operate in the area was expressed in the Langton Parish Magazine. In 1908 the idea of Old Age Pensions was begun but only if the person to receive it had contributed by stamps on a card for at least five years previously. The first motor-car was seen in Langton at this time. It belonged to Miss Hind, the sister of Rector Coulter’s wife and of Mr Hind who was to become the Senior Master at The Old Malthouse School. The first Motor-Bicycle in the parish was owned by William Bradford, son of the farmer at Putlake. The first push-bicycle, a very tall model, had been owned by Tom Saunders back in 1880. In 1908 the two Miss Lester sisters arrived on holiday for the first time since they had left the Rectory at the time of their father‘s death. They bought gifts for the four Anglican Sunday School teachers and one hundred presents to hang on the Church Christmas Tree for local boys and girls who attended that School. One little girl called Beatrice Bartlett kept for the remainder of her eighty-one years the thimble which was her present. In August of 1904 a Concert had been held in the Mowlem Institute in Swanage in aid of Langton Matravers parish funds. £17 was raised. It is interesting to note that the national life-expectancy for males was only forty-nine years in 1911. In 1913 the first six Council Cottages were built in the parish. They were of red brick with slate roofs and were sited on Steps Hill where they were very much in evidence. The first cremation of the parish took place in 1908 when Serrell Michael Rogers, the unpopular drunken lord of the Manor of Durnford, died aged fifty-seven. The Sexton, old Aaron Marsh, could not understand why he had not been asked to dig a grave, and when it was explained to him he said, ‘Well, I was always told that the wicked would get burnt, but I thought that would be in the next world’. In 1920 most of the property belonging to Samuel James Smith, who had migrated to Swanage, was sold. It included his former home, Garfield, Vectis View (now re-named Cull’s) and Anvil Cottage with its forge, all in Garfield Lane; Fig Tree Cottage, Little Fig Tree and numbers 47 and 49 all in the High Street; and eight acres of land at Purbeck’s Acton Fields. The illustrated Bill of Sale is preserved in the Parish Museum. However, the Smith family retained the Shop at the west end of the village. LOCAL QUARRYMAN SENT TO PRISON In 1904 there was a great upheaval in the Stone Industry of the area. George Lander, a rather self-opinionated quarry-owner, claimed that Queen Anne had given a charter to the Ancient Order of Purbeck Marblers permitting them to open a stone quarry wherever they pleased with or without the permission of the landowner. He therefore went into a meadow just west of the Langton Matravers parish boundary and opened a quarry in the middle of the field. The farmer complained to Mr Bankes of Kingston Lacy, the landowner, who, as usual was very understanding and did not want to prosecute, although the field had been virtually ruined: he nevertheless took out a Court Injunction forbidding Mr Lander from entering the field again. The indomitable quarrier went in again, however, and got out a load of stone. The owners of the stone wagons, sensing danger, refused to hire him their vehicles, so he obtained the loan of one farm wagon, though without horses, loaded the stone, and this was then hauled by a party of men and boys to the Stone Depot in Swanage where the Supervisor, Mr Charles Burt, refused to accept it. A series of photographs of this incident was taken, from the field in question eastwards down to the Stone Depot, which reveal that only a handful of men was involved and of those only Lander was a quarry-owner. George Lander was sent to prison, not for stealing stone, or for ruining a lovely meadow, or for trespass on some-one else’s land, but for disobeying a Court Order. BLIND GEORGE CORBEN George Corben was born at Acton in 1824 and was blinded by smallpox at the age of one year. At fifteen he was taught the trade of basketry, as was usual for blind people in those days. In adult life he lived with his sister at Gallows Gore in the parish of Worth Matravers but when she died he was homeless. He was observed by Rector Coulter of Langton, dirty and swearing loudly, having been taunted by local youths at Herston who hit him and ran away, having offered him food in the form of sandwiches which had been filled with excrement. Next Sunday evening the Rector preached a sermon on this matter, asking if any parishioner would consider taking in ‘Blind George’ as he was locally known. At the end of the service Reg and Mary Bartlett told the Rector that they would ‘give it a trial’. They lived in a cottage with three small bedrooms and had a son and a daughter, but the son’s room was divided with a curtain and an extra single bed jammed in for the old man. He was brought to the cottage just before noon on the Monday. They burnt all his stinking clothes and then bathed him and dressed him in clean second-hand clothes. When Mary cut the old man’s toe-nails, he got up and said, ‘It’s a miracle, Mary, I can walk properly again’. He was never known to swear again and regularly attended Services at the church. He was very musical and sang lustily. His favourite hymn contained the line ‘Ye blind, behold your Saviour come!’ He also played the flute. Sir Reginald Palgrave, Clerk to the House of Commons, had a house in Swanage. His daughter Mary got to know of Blind George and wrote a book entitled ‘Blind Jem and his Fiddle’ which was published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. The story was loosely based on the life of the old man. George died on 4th December 1908, aged eighty-four, having spent the last six years of his life in happiness, known and respected by all those within the village. The Bartletts paid for a small headstone to go over his grave, inscribed with his favourite hymn-line, but a later rector had it taken down and it was then broken up and used as a base for another grave-plot with kerb and chippings. How vastly different are the principles of Anglican clergymen! THE WOMEN’S INSTITUTE The first Branch of the Women’s Institute was established on Anglesey in 1915 but by 1919 there were more than 1200 Branches. A Langton Matravers Branch of the Women’s Institute was formed in 1922 by Miss Evelyn Dymond. During its first ten years of existence it was very active. It included the Folk Dancing Teams and a Drama Group. The former won a great many medals, certificates and cups for Folk, Morris, and Sword Dancing. The latter entered the annual Shakespeare Scene competitions. For example, in 1924 they won a First Class Certificate in Country Dancing, awarded by the Dorset Federation of Women’s Institutes; in 1926 they received a First Class Certificate awarded by Mrs Helen Kennedy, the famous specialist in Folk Song and Dance; in 1927 they were awarded a Class A Championship Certificate for their production of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Act 5, Scene 1); in 1928 they were awarded Honours for Folk Dancing and Morris Dancing: and again Honours for both in 1935. The teams appeared on three occasions at the Festival of Folk Dance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where they were greeted with prolonged applause and shouts of ‘Good old Dorset!’ THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918 Patriotic feeling had run very high in the village during the latter part of the War in South Africa when an effigy of Kruger was paraded up the High Street and then burnt. In 1914 most young men were eager to volunteer, as such sayings as ‘It will all be over by Christmas!’ were rife. However, when the war eventually ended it was recognized that this had been the most terrible conflict to date, involving enormous numbers of troops from many nations and tremendous expenditure upon armaments. The conditions in the trenches of Flanders were truly dreadful and there had been horrendous almost unbelievable slaughter due to the incompetence of elderly generals who were utterly out of touch with the situation. Thousands died without one yard of territory being gained. It is estimated that the war had cost £50,000 million, with thirty million casualties and over nine million deaths. Britain’s National Debt had risen from £708 millions in 1914 to £7,435 millions in 1919. When the Langton men came on leave, which was usually once a year, their last Sunday Evening service whether at the Anglican or Methodist churches ended with the extremely emotional hymn ‘God be with you till we meet again’, which gave no comfort to the lads or their loved ones as the chorus to the several verses repeated over and over again ‘Till we meet at Jesu’s feet’, which seemed to preclude the possibility of meeting again in this world. In the Parish Museum there is a letter from Bertie Bower, eldest son of the ‘Whistler’ Bower family of Langton, written to his first cousin on Sunday 15th July 1917, only a few weeks before he was killed in action. He recalls that a year ago precisely he was on leave, and adds ‘Should like to be home today’. He reports heavy rainfall and continues ‘I hope it will keep fine for a bit, as wet weather out here is as bad as the war’. After conscription had been imposed in 1916 one Acton lad of the ‘Gad’ Bower family who was the only son of his parents and adored by his mother and two sisters did not report at the appointed place and time so the police came to arrest him and take him to Swanage Railway Station. The two policemen took pity on the lad, and walked him along the public footpath south of the village so that no-one saw his disgrace. He was killed in action on the front line five months later. When the last of that family died seventy years later the boy’s clothes and other belongings were found neatly folded in the drawers and wardrobe of his former bedroom, moth-eaten to shreds, but still preserved. Some men who volunteered and were turned down on account of age joined what was affectionately termed the ’Grandfather’s Regiment’. Two from Langton joined this Regiment which served only in the United Kingdom. They were Robert White and Reginald Bartlett and they served in Wales. All the families with serving soldiers or sailors dreaded the delivery of a telegram to tell them that their loved one had either been killed or, even worse perhaps, ‘Missing, believed killed’. Annie Baker Corben, who lived with her mother in the eastern section of what is now 37 High Street had had an illegitimate son whom she christened after his father who had jilted her. When the boy, Arthur Haysom Corben, who was adored by his mother, enlisted, Annie volunteered to be a nurse and was given the rather unenviable job of tending wounded German prisoners-of-war. One day Annie received the dreaded telegram informing her of the death of her son, causing her to suffer a severe stroke which left her paralised down one side and unable to say anything except ‘Ah, to do’. Annie, sustained by her son’s pension, lived on in the cottage after her mother’s death until she herself died in 1950, aged eighty. Clairvoyants rather cruelly told mothers that they could reach their sons and convey messages. Mary Bartlett of Langton regularly attended Spiritualist Meetings in Swanage, unknown to her family, though in her case not to get a message from her son Reg who had been declared ‘Missing, believed dead’ but to prove that he was not dead at all but somewhere suffering complete loss of memory. She put advertisements in French newspapers under the heading ‘Recherches’ and refused to have her son’s name added to the Langton War Memorial until many years later. Mr George Reed, who lived in the cottage known as Vectis View (now Cull’s) and who was the excellent headmaster of Langton School was eventually forced by cruel criticism to enlist. His place was taken by Mr Blaber, who lived at Sea-spray Cottage on the path to Dancing Ledge because his wife was suffering from Tuberculosis and had been prescribed sea air conditions. Tuberculosis was a great scourge, especially in country areas. The Blaber’s only son Thomas was killed in the war. In the first twelve months of the conflict the price of wheat rose by 80% and that of meat by 40%. Posters appeared bearing the legend ‘Save the Wheat and Help the Fleet. Eat less Bread!’ By 1916 veal, lamb, bacon and ham were well out of the price-range of most families. Bovril was highly recommended, as were lentil, pea and haricot-bean soups. The Illustrated London News extolled the virtues of sorrel, dandelion leaves and nettles as vegetables. The shortage of bread and potatoes was quite serious, as these were the staple diet of many working-class families. During the war the country got its first taste of rationing, as some foods and other commodities were in very short supply. By 31st December 1917 sugar, meat and fats were rationed. Coal was also rationed. In the same year British Summer Time was begun. Meanwhile a compulsory ploughing policy meant that an additional 2.1 million acres were cultivated. There was an extraordinary rise in paper currency during the war when the One Pound and Ten Shilling notes first appeared. When peace eventually came, and the list was published of those of Langton Matravers who had given their lives in the service of King and Country, a local carpenter made a copy of one of the many Wayside Shrines found in Flanders and this was erected in the Church porch, where it could be visited by Nonconformists without their having to enter the church. The list of twenty reads: Arthur WildgooseFred LocktonHenry Hawkins Thomas BlaberThomas NormanArthur Corben Reginald HarrisCharles BurtFrank Harris Thomas MundenGeorge LovellBertie Bower Walter StrattonAugustus BowerErnest Bower Arthur PuckettCharles BowerWalter Harris William HobbsReginald Bartlett In addition there were some who returned to the village with serious injuries. For example Edward Diffey had joined up as a drummer-boy and then later went into the front line in Flanders where he was so severely wounded that one of his legs had to be amputated. He learnt the trade of shoemaker, married and had a daughter, and was always cheerful and possessing a good sense of humour, although seldom free from pain and having great difficulty in walking. There were also some others who had been gassed, wounded more than once, and traumatized, and for whom life would never again be as it had been before 1914. During the war years the consumption of alcohol had decreased, but the practice of smoking had increased considerably. AEROPLANES Langton’s first fatal air accident happened in 1918, though the victim was not actually a resident at the time. The village, but especially the Preparatory Schools of Durnford and The Old Malthouse, knew Peter Rylands well as he had been a pupil at Durnford, was the nephew of Mrs Pellatt and Mrs Corbett, and had often landed his ‘plane on the school playing-fields or in Twoleas Meadow during the war years. He was killed in a flying accident just after the war ended. A stained-glass window was given to Langton Parish Church in memory of him. Originally in the sanctuary, it has now been moved to St Leonard’s Chapel. Meanwhile the parish became used to aeroplanes. In 1919 Colonel Louis d’Arbon Strange DSO MC DFC of the Flying Corps came to stay with the Bartletts of Osborne Villa at Mount Pleasant. With him was his wife Marjorie, their son Brian and the Nanny, Jenny Ross. Thereafter Colonel Strange, whose brother owned farms at Worth Matravers, kept his planes in the great barn at Renscombe Farm in Worth and later still had a landing-strip beside the road from Langton to Worth where a ‘wind-sleeve‘ indicated its location. He wrote a famous book entitled ‘Recollections of an Airman’. THE PARISH CHURCH When the Rev E Clifford Hawkes left in 1900 he was succeeded by an Irishman, the Rev Joseph William Coulter, who was a great organizer, a brilliant preacher, and whose wife, who was greatly respected and loved, played the pedal organ and trained the large choir. The organ had come from the Church of The Lady St. Mary at Wareham when that church installed a larger instrument. It had been made by Bishop of London, had two manuals and a pedal board, was operated by tracker action, and had ten stops (Open Diapason, Stopped Diapason, Principal, Twelfth, Fifteenth, Cornet, Trumpet, Oboe, Sesquialter and an octave coupler called a ’Cupola’). It was installed in the south chancel aisle where the strong sunlight through the south windows severely warped the mechanism. Though it was moved to the north chancel aisle as soon as the damage was discovered, it never functioned properly again. In 1914 it was decided to purchase a new instrument, to be built by Binns of Yorkshire. This completely filled the north chancel aisle, had two manuals and a pedal-board, pneumatic action and thirty stops. A professional organist was appointed in the person of Mrs Martin Hunt ARCO who lived in Swanage. However, she appeared only at major Festivals, leaving other services to be accompanied by her unpaid pupil Miss Beatrice Bartlett. After a year of this, the Rector and Churchwardens decided to terminate Mrs Hunt’s employment and offer the post to the pupil, although she was aged but eighteen. She retained the post for the next sixty-five years and was much loved and respected by the choir for her own devotion to them and to the music of the church. One of the first major events of Rector Coulter’s incumbency was to undertake the underpinning of the chancel and font areas of the church as the tiled floor had become very uneven and the sanctuary steps were sloping badly. This was all put right at the cost of £700. During these works a large pit of bones was discovered which was thought at the time to be a relic of the Black Death but which was actually more likely to have been the parish ossuary where bones were deposited when the sexton was digging a new grave in the little churchyard which had been used over and over again for some eight hundred years. Mr Coulter had a good sense of humour and told of the occasion when the aged and saintly Bishop Wordsworth of Salisbury came to stay at the Rectory overnight after an evening Confirmation Service. The Coulters had no male household servant and thought it would be unseemly to send up the female servant with the hot water next morning, so they trained the gardener-boy during several days before the event. He was to knock on the door and call ‘My Lord, it is the boy with the hot water!’ Nerves got the better of the lad on the day, however, and the bishop, who was on his knees in prayer at the time, was somewhat startled when a loud voice proclaimed, ‘My boy, it is the Lord with the hot water!’ During this incumbency the church choir numbered thirty-six: twelve men, fourteen boys, and ten women. The women did not robe but sat on chairs in the chancel aisle alongside the organ. After the new organ was installed, and after so many of the choir-men had gone off to war, girls were admitted, robed in black skirts, black velvet collars and black velvet berets, with a shorter jacket-like ‘surplice‘. The ladies, still unrobed, sat on chairs raised by two platforms at the rear of the north and south choir-stalls. Later still, in the 1950s, when the colour of the choir cassocks was changed from black to purple, the ladies were to be provided with purple academic-style gowns and white collars. The well-trained, fully-robed, four-part choir then lasted until 2004. Mr Coulter was elevated to the rank of a Canon in 1916 and left for Calne in Wiltshire. His replacement, the Rev. Ernest J Tadman BA, was very different. He enjoyed processions, which he invariably led. He had served in the missionary field in Africa and told the children of the Day School and the Sunday School horrendous stories of massacres and mutilations, weeping copiously the while. However, he had an ungovernable temper for which he was feared. One of many examples will here suffice. At one Children’s Service on a Sunday afternoon he was telling the assembled children about a particularly gruesome beheading of a little girl when he caught sight of a choirboy called Tom Stockting who was grinning. This, as his family and close acquaintances knew, was how the lad dealt with any situation with which his extremely nervous temperament could not cope. The Rector flew into a rage, pulled him roughly from the choir-stall and then struck him so hard on the side of the head that the lad was propelled forward and fell down the three chancel steps, ending up sprawled on the floor of the nave. Mr Tadman then announced the next hymn, which he sang lustily, and which contained the line ‘then we shall stay the angry blow’. Miss Rosa Harris, the very efficient and much-loved Sunday-School Superintendent, put down her hymn-book and left the church. She handed in her resignation later the same day (Note 161). Four years later poor Tom was in trouble with the police, who believed that he had stolen something, though the lad swore that he was innocent. Fearing a prison sentence, he hanged himself in a tree of Leeson Estate, just south of the Gully settlement. Miss Harris was by no means the only parishioner to leave Langton Church because of Rector Tadman's rages. Nevertheless, Mr Tadman was punctilious in his visiting throughout the parish, including the far-flung cottages, as he believed that all who dwelt in the parish were his parishioners, not merely the Anglicans. He trudged about tirelessly in a pair of enormous boots, drank innumerable cups of tea and always read a prayer before leaving each cottage. Regular Sunday worshippers at both Matins and Evensong realized as the years progressed that this Rector had a pre-prepared sermon for each Sunday of the Christian Year from which he did not digress in any way during the thirty years of his incumbency at Langton. The fact that no topical references were ever made in these sermons, and that worshippers had heard the sermon so many times before, did not make for concentration. Men folk invariably had a snooze. Womenfolk mentally organized the week’s meals or the next day’s shopping list. The Church Choir was affiliated to the Royal School of Church Music in 1939, and thereafter adhered conscientiously to the rules and standards of that organization. Many young choristers thought of Mr Tadman as being God’s superior as they often heard him declaim ‘Almighty God stop rustling those pages!’ THE VILLAGE SCHOOL The 1902 Education Act abolished School Boards and replaced them by elected Local Authorities. However, Langton School was a Church of England foundation so the Rural District Council and the Diocesan Board of Education had to work in tandem. In the same year Empire Day was inaugurated on the date of Queen Victoria's Birthday. At Langton School this was always marked by a study of the various parts of the globe which made up the great Empire, the singing of patriotic songs culminating in the National Anthem, and saluting the flag. Later, in the late 1920s, under Headmaster Peart, these celebrations ended with a half-day holiday. In May 1905 Dorset County Council issued a report on School Attendance in the county. It came as a shock to the village to learn that Langton School came bottom of the list. Questions were asked and it emerged that the headmaster, Mr Hunter, was hated by all his pupils and by most other villagers as well except perhaps by some of the ladies with whom, although he was a married man, he openly flirted. As the enquiry progressed, Mr Hunter absconded with one of his female Assistant Teachers, taking with him the School Savings Bank. Mr JT Rowe was appointed on a two-month temporary engagement until the new headmaster, Mr Leonard Hinton, arrived and things began to improve drastically. In 1907 regular medical Inspections began in schools. Mr Hinton complained that no groundwork had been done and that therefore the work in the upper classes was very difficult. He also said that the children spoke so badly that he often failed to understand their answers completely. He condemned some of the older desks and six new double-desks were purchased. Mary Rosa Bradford was appointed Monitress for the Lower Infants and almost immediately things began to improve. Some time later two boys, William Bradford and Edward Harris, lifted one of the desks as high as their arms would reach during one class. They were severely punished but Rosa Bradford the Monitress came into the headmaster’s room and questioned his authority to cane her brother. She was told to leave the premises. A new Syllabus was then constructed, to include not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but also Geography, Drawing, Grammar, Singing, History, Geometry, Physical Exercises and Object Lessons. In 1905 a Government Inspector condemned the Infants Department classroom so it was pulled down and the present easternmost section of the school was built, complete with bell-cote over the south windows. The bell is preserved in the Parish Museum for it was taken down after being cracked by an over-enthusiastic pupil who was announcing the commencement of morning assembly. The same Inspector sacked Pupil-Teacher Miss Jane Savage on the spot when, standing outside her classroom, he heard her expound, ‘Now, childern, you mus’ learn that the peacock be the father-bird o’ the turkey’. As numbers increased, the cottage at the west end of the school, which had formerly housed the Head Teacher, was converted into a classroom and additional cloakrooms. On St. George’s Day 23rd April 1912 the children were all assembled in the playground at ten o’clock, when the flag was raised and saluted, and the National Anthem sung. On Ist May special Maypole Exercises were performed in the playground and a collection was taken among the children for those suffering from the ‘Titanic’ disaster. The total of six shillings collected was forwarded to the Lord Mayor of London’s Fund. Upon the Accession of King George V the whole school again assembled in the playground and the flag was raised and saluted and the National Anthem sung, as well as the song ‘King George’. When headmaster George Reed returned from war service in 1918 the school began to obtain a name for excellence. He had added gardening to the curriculum and obtained use of a field near the settlement called Castle View as a Football Pitch. His assistants from 1920 to 1940 were Miss Freda Barnes, Mrs Bastone, Mrs Margaret Nichols, Miss Olive Bean, Miss Beatrice Bartlett, Mr C Watts, Miss Daisy Harris, Miss V Sara, Miss H Shiner, Miss M Pearce, Mrs A Gauntlett, Miss Kate Keats, and Miss B Cull. Only Mrs Nichols and Miss Keats were to remain for any great length of time. When Mr Reed left in 1927 his replacement was Mr Ivan Emerson Peart who at first continued to live in the Reed family home at Vectis View in Garfield Lane, so called because a view of the Isle of Wight, which the Romans named Vectis, could be seen from the bedroom windows. He was to remain headmaster until his retirement in 1962. Mr Peart’s Senior Mistress was Mrs Nichols and his Head of the Infants Department was Miss Keats. INFLUENTIAL LANGTONIANS Very little was done in the parish of Langton Matravers during the twenty-year period from 1918 to 1939 without one or other of the group of leading citizens being involved. The list included : Mr and Mrs Thomas Pellatt of Durnford Manor House and Preparatory School Mr and Mrs Reginald Corbett of The Old Malthouse Preparatory School Miss Amy Knight of Leeson House and Leeson School for Girls The Rev Ernest J Tadman, Rector and Mrs Gwladys Tadman Mr Ivan E Peart, Headmaster of Langton School Miss Evelyn Dymond OBE of Twoleas House Mr Oliver Marsh, Builder and Funeral Director Mr Reginald Henry Marsh, Clerk to the Parish Council and Tax Collector Mr Reginald Coates Bartlett, Builder and Decorator and Proprietor of the Blue Comfy Cars Bus Company Mr Leonard Nichols, Junior Partner in the Blue Comfy Cars Bus Company and his wife Mrs Margaret Nichols, Senior Assistant at the Village School Miss Kate Keats, Head of the Infants Department at the Village School Mr Ernest Bower, Chairman of the Parish Council, Shopkeeper and Postmaster Mr William Horlock, farmer at Langton Manor Farm, and his wife Annie Mr David FW Saville, and his wife Beatrice who was Organist and Choir-trainer at the Parish Church. For example, the three Boarding Schools engendered a considerable amount of work of all kinds for local people. Their proprietors were generous supporters of the Parish Church and all its works. Mr Pellatt, who was a Playwright, wrote and produced excellent Revues just before Christmas of each year in the Durnford School Playroom. Miss Keats and Mrs Tadman organized Musical Concerts and Operettas. Miss Keats’s Netball Team was also very successful. Mr Peart ran excellent and very productive School Allotments for the older boys in The Hyde. He also regularly read poems at concerts. Mrs Nichols ran Domestic Science Classes in the Sunday Schoolroom which produced some excellent meals which the older girls took home at lunch-time. She also produced a play called ’The Compassionate Spirit’ at a concert in the Sunday School Room. Mr Nichols was, after 1924, the Junior Partner in the Bus Company which had its headquarters at Hyde Garages next to The King‘s Arms. Mr Bartlett rented out Allotment Gardens in The Hyde to men of the village for five shillings per annum, as well as being proprietor of the Bus Company which he founded in 1922, and which ran a regular service between Kingston, Worth Matravers, Langton Matravers and Swanage, and also took holiday-makers on outings, such as to Thomas Hardy Country or Cheddar Gorge and Caves, Lulworth Cove, the Blue Pool or Swyre Head. Later a Taxi Service was also added. He also ran the Building Firm which built some thirty new houses in the period between the two World Wars as well as altering and improving many others. He regularly had the work at the Parish Church, the Rectory, the Sunday School Building and the Reading Room, Twoleas House, Leeson House, Durnford School and the Village School. Miss Knight founded the Steppeshill Domestic Science School, which was in effect a ‘finishing-school’ for the girls of Leeson. Miss Dymond, though dictatorial, was indefatigable in local events as she had the time needed for such undertakings. She had been awarded an OBE for work of national importance during the First World War but that was not in Langton. She founded the Langton Matravers Branch of the Women’s Institute, which produced plays and competitions. She also founded the Langton Matravers Folk Dancing Team and the Morris and Sword Dancing Teams which won many medals, cups and certificates, most of which are preserved in the Parish Museum, except for the cups which were held for a year only. She also introduced Religious Drama when her friend Miss Wallace provided nativity tableaux in the 1930s. These were extremely popular. Apart from the ten still scenes they included incidental music provided by the organ and a hidden choir, and there was a spoken Prologue and Epilogue and a poem ‘How far is it to Bethlehem’ spoken by the Poor Boy. A large number of village men, women and children took part. The ’heavenly host’ consisted of a very large number of local children aged from four to thirteen. A huge stage was erected across the east end of the nave, with heavy black curtains. Miss Wallace herself took the part of the Virgin Mary, and her red-haired friend the part of the Archangel Gabriel. All the other forty named characters were villagers. Mr DFW Saville drew the plans for Bartlett’s Building Firm, and painted the scenery for the School Operettas, the Durnford Revues, and the other dramas. He also made and repaired radio sets and repaired clocks and watches. Mrs Saville played the church organ for three services each Sunday, trained the church choir and, continuing the example set by Mrs Coulter, ran the Children’s Choir as a weekly club. Her full choir and junior choir regularly performed items in the various concerts which took place after 1922, programmes of which are preserved in the Parish Museum. She was also the local representative for the Church of England Children’s Society, collecting annually from door to door. Of course none of these ventures would have succeeded without the willing co-operation of the majority of the parishioners so the fact that they were so successful shows that the parish was, on the whole, in harmony at this time. There was, however, the political divide. Four Socialist Members of the Parish Council were elected in 1925 in the persons of quarryman Thomas Webber, his wife Bessie, his sister, Mrs Kate Jones, and also shopkeeper Robert Ballam. The two women of this group were also the first two female Parish Councillors in Langton. These four clashed with the dictatorial and violent Mr Pellatt. Finally, when the latter locked the gate across the public footpath from the centre of the village to Dancing Ledge, the wares and the cliff-path, there was open warfare which, of course, the Socialists won, and Mr Pellatt lost his seat on the Council at the next election as did his brother-in-law, Mr Corbett. Mr Pellatt retired as headmaster of Durnford School in 1935 and was succeeded by the less impressive Mr Christopher Lee-Elliott. BOARDING SCHOOLS Mrs Pellatt’s sister Kathleen and her husband Reginald Corbett, who had been an Assistant Master at Durnford School, founded The Old Malthouse Preparatory School in 1907. The Maltings, which had been running for almost two hundred years, closed upon the retirement of maltster Mr Charles Chinchen Edmunds, so the Pellatts had bought the property. Two years earlier Miss Amy Knight had established a School for Young Ladies at Leeson House to the east of the village. In 1927 Mr and Mrs Pellatt’s elder daughter Hester was anxious to run a boarding school of her own so her parents built Spyway School for her and her husband Nigel Chapman, who had been a pupil at Durnford School. Meanwhile Durnford Preparatory School flourished, becoming one of the most sought-after preparatory schools in the country. The Rev and Mrs Lord had founded a small Boarding School at Garfield on Chapel Hill. When Mrs Lord, who was the driving force, became ill and slipped into a coma her husband committed suicide by jumping out of the top window of the school, landing on a dwarf stone wall below. The school was then sold to Mr and Mrs Eustace Crawshaw. So by 1929 Langton Matravers had five boarding schools in the village. They engendered quite a lot of local employment. THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE GREAT WAR In the centre of the village one of the rooms of Mrs Serrells’ former Durnford School which had for some years been used as a Reading Room was purchased as a Memorial Room to the men of the parish who had given their lives in the recent conflict. A crenellated oak Honours Board depicting their names was erected over the fireplace and a snooker table was added to what became known as the Men’s Club. This room is still known as the Memorial Room. Meanwhile the skyline of the centre of the village had been drastically altered when Webber’s three-storey villa-type house was built, mostly in red brick, on the site of a pretty stone cottage which had had a bow window. The new structure was a copy of the hundreds of such houses which William Webber had erected in Wandsworth, London, and tie-stones were left on the west side of his house in Langton as Mr Webber hoped other cottage-owners would agree to demolition and further new building in the same style. Now 39 High Street, it remains totally out-of-keeping with its surroundings. In 1918 a Reform Act gave the vote to all men over the age of twenty-one and all women over the age of thirty. At the same time women were admitted to the House of Commons. Ten years later total equality of franchise was achieved. In 1921 the Railway Act caused the Wareham to Swanage line to be handed over to the newly-formed Southern Railway. Throughout the nation there was a tremendous amount of unemployment; wages of those in employment were lower than before the war; there was a shortage of a good many commodities; there was a housing shortage; and there was considerable poverty. This caused the rise of Socialism, and the first Labour Government took office under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. In May 1926 there was a General Strike, which caused much hardship and which was eventually unsuccessful. In 1931 came the ‘Great Slump’, and Britain was forced to accept a Government of National Unity at the same time abandoning the idea of Free Trade. In 1922 Parochial Church Councils were begun and the Anglican office of Parish Clerk was extinguished. Reginald Bartlett, who had been the first robed chorister in Langton, was the last of Langton's church-appointed Parish Clerks. The parish of Langton Matravers suffered during this period from the widespread poverty, but not as severely as did some in other parts of the country. The old Langtonian political rivalry between Anglican Conservatives and Methodist Liberals gradually ceased. In January 1925 three plots in The Hyde were sold to a speculator called Sydney A Reynolds who built upon them three asbestos-lined ‘Poolite’ bungalows of differing designs, one of which has lasted for eighty-five years. On 10th September 1929 Swanage Grammar School opened its doors to boys and girls who passed the Entrance Examination. In the same year the possibility of having refuse collected was discussed by local government. Also in the same year tarmac was added to the road from Acton Gate to Swanage for the first time. Girl Guides and Brownies were also established in the village under the direction of Mrs Don and her daughter. A group photograph is preserved in the Parish Museum By the Statute of Westminster of 1931 the Dominions were recognized as independent states and many migrant sons and daughters of Langtonians were now officially declared ‘foreigners’. In 1931 the eastern boundary of the parish was altered and many acres were lost to the growing parish of Swanage. To commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935 several public seats (with stone ends and plank seat) were installed in the village by the Parish Council. These still remain. In the same year the second row of Council Cottages was built on Steps Hill. Apparently in 1935 Henry Justice Ford, the illustrator of Andrew Lang’s famous books on Fairies, came to live at June Cottage in Durnford Drove which had been built by Mrs Sarah Stockting. Local lads of the time can remember that a recluse lived there and that the curtains were never opened, and the weeds in the front garden were waist-high. Apparently he left in 1937 and later admitted himself to the Derby County Mental Asylum where he died. In 1935 a rival Bus Company was established by Mr George Ford in Corfe Castle which ran services through Kingston, Worth Matravers and Langton Matravers. It was called the Safety Coaches. In 1937 a Speed Limit of thirty miles per hour was imposed throughout the village. In the same year the Southern National Omnibus Company bought out the Blue Comfy Cars and their headquarters, known as Hyde Garages. Shortly afterwards the petrol pumps were removed. The garages were later leased to the Studley family’s Sunnyside Dairy, which had a shop almost opposite in what had been Vye’s Butcher’s Shop, so it wanted storage space and parking for its delivery vans. In 1936 the village was connected to Mains Drainage. A Langton haulier named Len Lucas bought a ‘Peerless’ Truck which far out-rivalled the strength of vehicles of other firms of the area. The Peerless firm had originated in Cleveland, Ohio, but by 1930 the British Peerless models were sold under their own name. The Langton specimen was driven by Harold Foot. INTERNATIONAL SITUATION In Germany social conditions following the war were much the same as elsewhere but in addition the crippling reparations which had to be paid each year were bound to cause bitter resentment. Those drawing up the Treaty of Versailles and forming the League of Nations had wished to ensure that Germany could never again cause such havoc in Europe but actually the converse happened and it was too late by the time that the rest of Europe realized this. The German nation first obtained release from reparations. Then they re-fortified the Rhineland. Meanwhile their National Socialist Party seemed to re-unite the country and restore its national pride. Germany was admitted to membership of the League of Nations in 1925. At the time of the world slump Adolf Hitler emerged as the German leader. In 1934 he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations. In 1935 he re-introduced conscription. In February 1938 he occupied Austria. In the autumn of the same year he obtained for the Greater Germany the Sudetenland, formerly part of Czechoslovakia. In March 1939 he annexed the whole of Czechoslovakia. Finally, in August of that year he invaded Poland, of which Great Britain and France were both guarantors. So on 3rd September 1939 Britain found herself once more at war against an over-ambitious and by now extremely efficient Germany with a track-record of atrocities against civilians and merciless treatment of anyone with a Jewish background. The British Government had finally realized how things were going as early as 1937 so Air Raid Precautions were put in place. An ARP Post was set up in the grounds of Durnford, with Mr Gillott as Commander, Mr Will Webber as Chief Warden, and Mr W Barnes as his Assistant. Central Government also issued Gas Masks to everyone. |
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