LIFE IN STOKE ST GREGORY

This page has been composed from information given to me by Olaf Chedzoy.

I feel very privileged to have a relative like Olaf, who can remember life in Stoke St Gregory before changes happened after the 2nd world war. His memories of Lane End House are very interesting. The property stayed in the ownership of one family for a long time, and things did not get changed or updated.

LANE END HOUSE

Lane End House was brought by Albert Chedzoy, where he lived with his wife Sarah Dorcus and their 8 children, and grand daughter Doris. The property included some 11 acres, and Albert also owned a number of fields in West Sedgemoor and Currymoor which were used mainly for growing willows. 4 of Albert's children never married, and continued to live at Lane End House, and carried on life exactly as when their father was alive.

Lane End House in the 1940's was in a time warp. The down stairs rooms all had flag stones, with a small room with a boiler for boiling the washing. (this reminds me of the 1900 house on TV). There was no inside toilet, but an outside earth closet. Electricity was available in the village from 1937, but our occupants thought it would be a fire risk, so continued with candles and oil lamps. This lack of electricity also meant that to boil a kettle, a fire had to be lit, so there was always a fire burning, either in the vast open grate in the lounge or in the Kitchen Range, where Florence did all the cooking for the family. The family kept cows for milking, this was done by hand twice a day, morning and evening by Herbert. There was a dairy at the back of the house, where Florence skimmed the milk, with a shallow perforated metal disk, putting the cream into dishes. There was no refrigeration, and most of the cream was put into churns to make butter, again they had to be turned by hand. During the war years, most people in Britain suffered from lack of butter, but at Lane End House, clotted cream was on the menu daily, along with other produce from the animals they kept.

The evenings were spent playing cards on the kitchen table, the lack of electric light didn't matter, as an oil lamp provided enough light for this, also the whole family could join in. They weren't great readers at Lane End, Olaf can only remember seeing a Bible, a Prayer Book and a Dictionary there. But they did read the newspaper every day, the "News Chronicle" and for more local news every Friday Herbert would walk to the Bird in Hand at North Curry. The sitting room had a dresser which held some of the china that belonged to the family.

Outside, there was a large barn, with a smaller cattle store at the end. There was also a pigsty, a withy-pit where they stored withies which had been cut in order to keep the sap rising, and an area where they stripped withies. In the main barn, they kept a variety of old farm equipment, mostly dating about the end of the 19th century in design. Franks cider press was kept there, they made cider every year from their apples, and stored the full barrels in the barn. There was also storage bins for animal foods - cattle cake and poultry food. The barn had an extension which stored half barrels and odd things like chains for the cattle. Olaf remembers that although these buildings contained a large collection of items that were rarely used, the earth floors were kept swept clean. Another outbuilding with a low galvanized iron roof contained odd items relating to withies, and withies were often stored there after bundling.

Lane End House was quite typical of rural houses in the first part of the 20th century, my mother also remembers similar living conditions in her village in Wales. What makes Lane End House so remarkable is that they didn't have electricity laid on until the 1960's.

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