I am really pleased to welcome a guest writer for this week’s post. My cousin Sue has prepared a memoir of her early years and memories of her life in Oxted, the home village of the Spilletts and the Carver’s, in Surrey. Sue and I share the same Great Grandfather whose daughter, Ada, was my grandmother and his son Henry was her grandfather. Sue starts her memoir with Henry and Sarah Spillett’s arrival in Oxted, having moved to Oxted from Bersted in Sussex, in 1900. It is an evocative memory of rural life after the second world war.
Henry and Sarah Spillett had moved to Oxted, Surrey, by 1900. Many of their children who grew up in Oxted, lived in or around Oxted for the rest of their lives. My mother, Eileen Turner, the last of the Spillett family, moved away from Oxted in 1986, just before our son, Ben, was born in 1987. She lived in Alcester, Warwickshire, near to myself and my husband, Stephen Toms.
Oxted was my hometown, the place I lived until I was 18 years old, and where the Spillett family lived. Oxted is a town in two parts, the old village of Oxted, where we lived, was separate from new Oxted, which grew up after 1884, when the railway station was built. The railway linked Oxted to London, but it also divided the town into two parts, by a subway under the railway line. Oxted is now a commuter town.
Six inch to the mile OS map of Oxted and New Oxted. The school that Sue attended in Beadles Lane is circled. The brown line above shows the High Street where she lived and also where the Wheatsheaf pub can be found. Note how the railway line cuts the town into old and new. (with permission from National Library of Scotland)
Oxted is found in Surrey, to the south of the chalk hills of the North Downs, and on the east /west A25 road. It is to the south of the M25 motorway.
Two small tributary streams flowing from the North Downs, meet in old Oxted, and then flow south to the River Eden.
The name Oxted derives from the old English ‘ac’ meaning oak, and ‘stede’ meaning a place. The 3 oak trees in Oxted were famous in my childhood but were damaged in the great storm of 1987.
Oxted is found on the Greenwich Meridian which passes through Station Road East and East Hill.
The early medieval manor of Oxted was centred on Oxted Court Farm to the south of St Mary’s Church, somewhat isolated from both old and new Oxted. By the mid-17th century, Barrow Green Court appears to have superseded Oxted Court Farm as the manor house This was held by the descendants of the Hoskins Masters family, who appear later in my story.
The settlement of old Oxted was founded in the 13th and 14th centuries, to the south east of St Mary’s Church, where the Guildford to Canterbury Road met Beadles Lane (leading to the south) and Brook Hill leading to the sharp ascent of the North Downs and London to the north.
The street plan of Old Oxted does not seem to have changed significantly since mediaeval times, although the gradient of the east / west running High Street and A25, was altered during our family’s history.
The development of new Oxted, after the advent of the railway, was supported by Charles Hoskins Master, through his Barrow Green estate selling parcels of land for building, and the gifting, in 1924, of Master Park for recreation and a country fair. Many roads bear testimony to the Hoskins involvement e.g. Hoskins Road and Hoskins Walk, and the famous Hoskins Arms Hotel, now private flats.
The Hoskins Arms Hotel, Oxted, c 1955 (copyright The Francis Frith Collection)
My grandfather, Henry Spillett married Rosina Payne and lived at the bottom of Old Oxted village in the cycle shop created by Henry’s father. My mother, Eileen, grew up living above the cycle shop. Rosina‘s mother, Amelia Payne, also lived here at this time.
Henry’s siblings lived and worked in and around Oxted. Mabel married Henry Winter and had two children, little Mabel and Audrey, and lived in a nearby village of Limpsfield. George married Doris Faulkner and lived in Hurst Green. Ada married Clarence Carver, who was involved in running the Wheatsheaf pub and the cycle shop. William, or Bill, married Dorothy Pett, and later Christine, and then moved away from Oxted. Laura married George Brown and had two children, Monica and Gill, and lived in Hurst Green.
After the second world war (when Oxted was bombed as it was en route by planes heading to London and was in reach of the V1 doodle bug), my grandmother, Rosina, was provided with a new house. This was next to the cycle shop and was called 15 High Street Oxted. This is where I grew up and by that time Henry had died, I believe from cancer, in 1944
My memories of Oxted as a child are the substance of this writing, because at that time many of the characters in our family were still alive, and life had changed little in the village. Although throughout my childhood my grandfather‘s family lived quite close, and we received birthday and Christmas cards, contact seem to be limited. My grandmother, Rosina, also kept in contact with some of her family, and some of her brothers and their families visited us.
I shall recount some of the memories of this family contact. One Christmas my father, Sidney Turner took me to visit Laura and Doris, who lived in a similar area of Hurst Green. We walked there in the morning, while Christmas lunch was being prepared at home, we visited one aunt after another and exchanged presents. At the second home, I was given ginger beer, while my father had a celebratory beer. It was home brewed ginger beer, from a flagon, and had an unhealthy look about it. I was nervous drinking it, but it was amazingly tasty. I sat on the stairs at the side of the kitchen, and I remember to this day my first ever mouthful.
Some of the members of the family came and went to our house. Old Mabel was huge. Little Mabel also was quite big but obviously younger, nearer my mother’s age. Bill, I think, was still running the Wheatsheaf pub when I was a child, but during that time he left his wife Dorothy and went off with Christine. My grandmother used to receive and send letters regularly to them. The Wheatsheaf pub was then taken over by the Crick family, and this was the first time I gained access to the family pub through the back door, with their daughter, Penny. Mr Crick was a large man and a member of the Magic circle. He was a magician, and Penny was complicit to many of his tricks. The house at the back of the pub was not pleasant. It must have had a concrete back extension, probably built at the end of the war. It was cold and damp and regularly flooded. The river, running next to it was not an asset, and in 1968 when I was due to go to college, it became a raging torrent and nearly flooded our house. A storm had caused the river to rise, but debris had blocked its normal route under the road tunnel. The river started to rise, ponded, and came over the road, rushing down the alleyway between our house and the Wheatsheaf.
I shall now talk about some of the prominent buildings and shops around Oxted.
St. Mary’s Church of England primary School opened in Beadles Lane in 1872 but began to transfer children to a new school between 1963 and 1974, in Silkham Road, new Oxted. Henry and Eileen Spillett and Susan Turner (me) all attended the Beadles Lane school. The secondary school, in New Oxted, was opened in 1929 and was the first co-educational grammar school in Surrey. It opened with 22 pupils but by 1932 had grown to 120. My mother, Eileen, attended here and obtained her school certificate.
Eileen Spillett’s School Certificate 1939 (from the collection of Sue Toms)
I went to Beadles Lane School in 1955 and by the time I arrived it already felt old-fashioned. There were six classrooms, two playgrounds, a shed or dining room, headmaster’s office and teachers house. I enjoyed school and flourished, and I suppose I was a ‘trustee’. I took messages, carried money to the office, was ink monitor and organiser for injections and photographs. I think it was a happy school although there were some strange incidents. The headmaster’s family suffered from polio and we all had to be on the lookout for the symptoms. Later an outbreak of whooping cough and mumps decimated the attendance of the school for a time. However, the building of an open-air swimming pool transformed my later years and I spent as much time in the water as I could. I used to go home for lunch but rush back to play with my friends who didn’t. Girls skipped and played kiss chase with the boys who were not allowed out in our playground! We made slides on the icy playground in winter.
Old Oxted High Street c 1955 (copyright The Francis Frith Collection)
Many of the shops in the village were quite old and run by the generations of the same family. Peter Smith was a butcher. ‘Pete the meat’ used to amuse us by hanging up a pig by its front legs in his open doorway and then chopping it in half. His wife had a sweet shop on the inside of the butcher shop, and sold cheaper sweets like spaceships, sherbet, blackjacks, etc.
The London Stores was an emporium selling everything edible from cold meats and cheese to loose biscuits from a tin, (broken biscuits too), and more exotic fruits and tinned food. I was sent out with the shopping list so we could have a home delivery by Mr. Lavender the manager. Other shops included a hairdresser, where I worked as a teenager, a vegetable and fish shop, an electrical store, and another sweet and cigarette shop and post office. This was where we bought more substantial bags of sweets, chocolate and a Tiffin chocolate bar on Friday. This was a treat by Grandma Rosina.
There was a dairy at the top of the village, owned by Mr Lenton, which bottled milk and was delivered by Millie the milk and her horse and cart. The horse knew the route so intimately that it would move on automatically between stops.
The milk cart outside the dairy c 1908 (copyright The Francis Frith Collection)
The dairy and Bell public house c 1908. (copyright The Francis Frith Collection)
Miss Cox was the sister of Hilda Cox, who married Rosina Spillett’s brother, Benjamin Payne.
Miss Cox ran the original post office, and general store that sold newspapers and necessities such as toys, cards, all sewing materials, cheap medicines, etc. I had Bunty, Girls Crystal and the Beatles magazines ordered weekly, and my mother had Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Own. My granny Rosina, who lost a sight in her later years, used to buy dish cloth yarn, which she knitted into dish cloths to keep her busy. Mrs Cox, before my time, had an ice cream, pastry and sweet shop that was sporadically opened when she made ice cream and pastries.
Nevil, the local organist and choir master, when my grandmother was a chorister, was the son of Cakey Blakey the local wealthy coal merchant. He delivered coal but was grumpy and always filthy black. He wore a huge leather jacket on his back on to which he lifted sacks of coal.
The Locks were a notorious poor and huge family living on the nearby council estate in Springfield. Mr Lock had a bike and ladder and used to pass our house twice daily, pulling on and off the gas lamps in the village. I was not allowed to visit or go into the Locks house, but I was very inquisitive to do so as their garden was occupied by so many interesting and unusual objects, parts of cars, tin cans, a toilet bowl, and an armchair.
After I was born the Spillett’s cycle shop was taken over by Mr Hillier, his sons Ian and Clive running it as a cycle and motorbike shop and repair yard. Ian kept contact with my mother until she died and my claim to fame was riding pillion when Ian did stunt rides at a local fair on Bushy Park.
There were 4 pubs in Old Oxted, and they all remain. There was the Crown, the George, the Wheatsheaf and the Old Bell. The latter I visited a few times, but it was very old-fashioned. Tony Hancock was said to visit it. The Wheatsheaf Inn seems little changed from the outside although it’s back garden now seems to be used in the summer. It is proud to say it is not a Gastropub but a local pub.
The Wheatsheaf
The flats I used to know as Brewhouse Flats were once a brewery. It is now known as 42 High Street Oxted.
The bottom half of old Oxted was altered when buses and later double-decker buses began to use the A 25 going up the High Street. It was too steep and needed the top of the hill removed, but before our house was built at the bottom of the hill, the road was raised to control the steep gradient. As a result, our house was lower than the pavement and road. The house opposite had a similar fate. This made our front room quite dark and my bedroom on the same level as the top of the double-decker.
My mother quoted the following about the steep hill.
“After a wedding a van lost its load of crockery out of the back doors, and everything scattered down the hill. We all ran out of our houses to look. Even though I was young I can remember the excitement”
This is a current view of 15, High Street, Old Oxted, where we lived. My bedroom was the smaller window on the left, Rosina’s room was on the right.
15 High St
This was the view of Old Oxted before the 2nd World War, before 15 High Street was built. Note the house to the right of the Wheatsheaf pub, which housed many of the Spillett family. This was destroyed during the war. To the right again is the cycle shop owned by the Spillett family.
Old Oxted. The Wheatsheaf, the Spillett’s house, and the Spillett’s bicycle shop on the left hand side.
New Oxted played a less important role in my life. It had a library (well used) council offices (a holiday job for me ) Woolworths for buying records, a nursery (aged 4 I collected the ice buns for 11 o’clock break), a station, (school journeys and trips to London and the disco at St Aggies on Saturday )There was a post office (my mother worked there and I was a Christmas post girl on a man’s bike), and an electric shop with an apprentice (Alan was my first boyfriend ). The pre-mentioned cinema (Kinema, linked with the Hoskins family), the Hoskins Hotel ( Saturday lunch time drink ) and a police station. I worked at Mr Butcher the Baker in his shop, and I developed a love of currant buns and doughnuts…. and I hate cream cakes!
Mr Butcher the Baker
Oxted. Station Road East. C 1965 (copyright The Francis Frith Collection)
Oxted. Station Road West c 1965 (copyright The Francis Frith Collection)
St Mary’s Church.
St. Mary’s Church
St Mary’s Church was well used by my Gran Rosina. She was an altar lady, cleaning and changing dirty altar covers and replacing flowers. I also was a member of the choir along with Miss Malden, grans best friend. Gran used to organise the youth choir, washing and ironing our surplices and neck ruffles, getting us ready to parade into the service, and tapping us on the head if we talked. I spent a lot of time at church as a youngster as my grandma Rosina cleaned the brass and arranged flowers for events such as weddings. I had to play in the graveyard by myself. I also read precociously young, and as a result was asked to read in the morning services on a Sunday at St Mary’s. I also joined the Baptist Church in Beadles Lane old Oxted, which now appears as Hopscotch Nursery School. Here I used to go to a Sunday afternoon service and was part of a children’s meeting after school on Wednesdays, where we did Bible study with Mrs Lindsey, who lived in a tiny house backing onto the milk yard I believe it was a girls only club, and I enjoyed it until after I sat my 11+ exam. Mrs Lindsey gave three of us a 6p piece upon passing our exam and we were very proud of our achievement. My best friend Norah, who got an interview, and subsequently passed her 11+, was given one shilling. I wasn’t meant to see this but returned from the toilet in the corridor as a shilling was passed over. I deemed this to be unfair! While my grandma tried to explain that it was probably because Norah was very poor, I wouldn’t go again to any of the meetings, nor would I speak to Mrs Lindsey.
In the 1950s and 60s, 15 High Street Oxted, was modest. It had a small kitchen, living room and front room, that we used at Christmas. We had three bedrooms and an inside bathroom, a luxury, as the cycle shop, previously, had an outside toilet and tin bath.
Our kitchen had basic requirements. A larder, and later a small fridge, a sink and clothes drying rack. A coal fired stove, to heat the water, and a gas cooker for cooking food. Later my father built cupboards and a small table.
We had coal fires, later gas, in the two downstairs rooms and my grandmother, Rosina, had a three-bar electric fire upstairs.
The two bedrooms upstairs were big enough for a double bed and a double wardrobe, a chest of drawers and dressing table. My room, half the size, squeezed in a small wardrobe and dressing table.
A lot of my clothes at this time were made by my grandma, Rosina, and my mother, Eileen, who knitted my jumpers. My father was quite handy and made a sledge, a dolls house, and some of the cupboards and furniture in the house. Our food was plain but wholesome. My father‘s allotment provided some vegetables, my grandmother cooked suet and rice puddings, and made jam and bottled fruit. We minced our leftover meat, toasted bread on the gas stove, and had cod liver oil tablets and senna pods to keep us healthy. We never had central heating, and a black-and-white TV and telephone only came along when I was almost at secondary school. The phone box was up the road, and we used it. We had no washing machine and dried our clothes on the clothesline in the kitchen. This was normal in the village. However, we did have this inside toilet and bathroom which many neighbours didn’t have. We had a laundry in Old Oxted when I was a child, and many of us used it for sheets. I believe Henry’s sister, Ada, worked there before she married.
I don’t think my life as a youngster was that exciting. I played with my two neighbours, Jackie and Stephen, and we roamed far and wide along the river valley. I played occasionally with children from school, Judy and Christine, who lived in new Oxted. At weekends, as my family didn’t drive, we tended to do local things. I went to the allotment with my dad. We went on long walks, and I rode my bike. As a teenager I ventured further, going to the cinema with friends, the local dance in Hurst Green, and visiting an ice-skating rink and bowling alley in Croydon and Streatham. I joined a couple of youth clubs and even went camping in Germany! My first trip abroad! I hitchhiked to Brighton and northern Europe against my mother’s wishes. I visited my father who worked in Guildford and lived in Woking after their divorce.
Finally, I’m glad I grew up in a rural village near such beautiful countryside. By today’s standards I lived a sheltered existence, however, I realised that my education widened my expectations considerably. I was the emancipated seventies girl, who never wanted or excepted male dominance. I enjoyed London life when it was available, and it’s interesting that my son now lives there, and its cultural facilities are now readily available again. But I still have a fondness for Oxted, and its family connections.
Leave a Reply