R.M. Beaumont "In his own words" part 4

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WORCESTER

The first part of these notes was necessarily concerned with infancy, childhood, and learning things - first at schools, and later something about the Law of England, which, it was assumed, would earn me a living in my maturity.

But learning about things should never stop, and I still try to go on learning.

I must now go back in time a year or two, to when my father thought that I should join the Territorials. He had a word with Bertram Abel Smith, whom he knew well, and indeed they were distant cousins, since the first Abel Smith had married Jane Beaumont, sister of George Beaumont of Darton, and "we" had banked with Smiths in Nottingham ever since.

Bertram Abel Smith served with the Sherwood Foresters in the War, and I think that he was the Honorary Colonel. Having ascertained that I was qualified - by reason of service in the Repton OTC - he arranged for me to be commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion. It was convenient for me to attend the necessary "drills" at the Drill Hall in Newark Road which was then occupied by half of 'B' Company of the 8th Foresters - whose HQ was in Newark. Lt.Col. A.C. Clarke was then the Commander of the Battalion, having brought it back from France. Several other officers from the War were still serving, including my Uncle Charley Stephenson. He was the Signals Officer, and wanted me to succeed him when he retired. But first I had to undergo some training (map reading, etc.) under the eye of the Adjutant, Capt. de Burgh.

I was also supposed to know how to ride a horse. This instruction was done from the Drill Hall in Derby Road, Nottingham, and I remember riding down the tram lines into Wollaton Park where I was taught about trotting, galloping, and so on. I do not think I quite fell off, though I was very sore afterwards, and fortunately for the Army and its horses I never had to ride one again.

Other instruction was given by the regular Sergeant at the Southwell Drill Hall, or by Sgt. T. Templeman or "Sammy" Baxter at (I suppose) weekly attendances. I learnt all about the Army Rifle then in use, and the Lewis Machine Gun - which had a multitude of "stoppages". Periodically we went to target practice at the range at Epperstone.

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My first Annual Camp was on the Duke of Portland's estate at Cuckney. Uncle Charley was still a member then, and gave me bits of useful advice. I was very shy and timid with the mess formalities. I skipped part of the camp because it was the month before my Law Final, and the need for revision was an acceptable excuse. John Kirkland had done the same the year before.

Other friends on the camp included Charley Ransom, Brian Bradley, Ted Beckwith, Tony Gamble, and Peter Branston. 'B' Company commander was Capt. Ford from Newark. Several other of the officers had served in the War including W.C.C. Weetman, now a Major, and second in command. We were visited by Bertram Abel Smith and by Colonel Nicholson who, 1 believe, had fought in South Africa.

The next year's camp was at Ulverston in Furness. By that time I was the Signals Officer, as Uncle Charley had retired. I knew the Morse Code and the Semaphore and how to use the heavy phones, but apart from that I do not suppose that I was much good. Nor did I get on very well with the men.

Most of the time I was in the TA I was still unhappily toiling at County House, studying advertisement for jobs. But these were few and far between. I was selected for interviews at Chesterfield, Norwich, and Lewes, but I failed to get the posts. I did not want the one at Chesterfield. I did not mind losing the Norwich one as I did not particularly care for the Clerk there - who was moreover a friend of KTM. But Lewes attracted me and I wanted that job.

KTM despaired for me because he felt I should have been appointed at Lewes and that failure must have been my own fault (he thought that he had fixed it with the Clerk, who of course he knew well). So I was dejected. But, of course, the tide turned at last.

I was appointed as Assistant Solicitor to Mr C.H. Bird, the Clerk of the Peace and of the Worcestershire County Council. My starting salary was £250 per annum - rather meagre even for those days, though there was an understanding that it would be raised in due course subject to satisfactory service. I do not know why they appointed me as one of the other three candidates was better qualified. Mr Bird did not take much part in the questioning, but I took an immediate liking to him when afterwards he came to tell me that I had been selected.

We discussed where I should live. I thought Malvern, which I already knew, as we had been to stay at Colwall a few years earlier, and Mr Bird said that he would try and find me digs. He even invited me to

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stay at his home in Great Malvern the weekend before I was due to start work. So I returned home from Worcester that evening with my tail up.

KTM's reaction was typical. Far from expressing satisfaction and wishing me well, he said he thought it was a disaster for me. He said he knew Bird (they had served together in Devon), and he was "no good". This dismayed me, but I was still delighted that I should soon be free from Nottingham toil and criticism!

And so it was. A month later I went and spent a happy weekend at the Birds' small house near the middle of Great Malvern. This became a home from home for what were, perhaps, the happiest four years of my life. Mrs Bird was rather an invalid, so their home was all on one floor. Their daughter Rosamund was at home, partly to care for her mother. She was semi-engaged to a rancher in the Argentine. There was a soldier son, Basil, in the Worcestershire Regiment. Whenever he was on leave he came and took his sister out. That first weekend I fixed up my digs at a boarding house run by a Mrs Etheridge, and walked up the hill with Rosamund.

On the train to Worcester on Monday morning Mr Bird introduced me to two regular travellers. Mr Stallard was the Diocesan Registrar, an old man but full of kindly wisdom. Roger Russell was a much younger Worcester solicitor, with whom later on I would go on bicycle outings. I also got to know other local people. Perhaps the first was Miss James. W.A. James from Southwell having written to his sister, she asked me to tea.

(Note, 1998: Rosamund Bird’s rancher husband was called Ted Gillyatt. Rather late in their lives the situation in Argentina became intolerable for them and they moved to Canada. Basil Bird died in 1989 aged 83. His son Jonathan (in California) and Richard corresponded).

Then there was Hope Wadsworth, whose family were well known in Nottingham. Hope lived in a modern house in Evandine Lane, a pretty but winding and narrow lane from Colwall Green up towards the British Camp. Living in this rather isolated spot Hope, an intelligent and kind elderly spinster, was able to get about by bike and in a small car. She had recently bought two ancient black and white cottages close to Colwall church - which is a mile from the village. She had the cottages repaired and converted into a Church Room, which was considered a very virtuous act. The Bishop of Hereford came to an opening ceremony.

Hope introduced me to a Miss Chorley who, with a friend Miss Bellett, had bought a house in Mathon Lane and divided it into two for themselves. "Chor" introduced me to the Stephen Ballards, who owned a lot of the land in Colwall and were fruit growers in a big way. I

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became friends with young Stephen (known as Bill), and we did a lot of walking together at weekends, sometimes just looking at the fruit trees. The Ballards also owned Bank Farm below West Malvern, which they had planted with fruit - mainly cherries. Bill's parents, who were always kind and hospitable, had a lovely house with an enormous walled garden in Old Church Lane. Bill had a sister called Anita who ran the house, and older brothers Ernest, well known for his Michaelmas Daisies, and Fred. Fred lived in their father's old house which appropriately enough was called The Winnings. He had been successful in making a good tunnel through the hills for the Great Western Railway, and had also been responsible for the fine viaduct beyond Ledbury. Fred was the Chairman of the County Council [Herefordshire], and also of the Malvern Hills Conservators, which he virtually ran. He was a powerful character.

Ernest Ballard had a son called Philip who was a fine naturalist, travelling to remote places and introducing new plants to this country.

In the office it was my responsibility to deal with legal matters concerning highways and bridges so I got to know B.C. Hammond, the County Surveyor, and his deputy Brook Bradley. The Council was busy widening and improving the main road from Worcester to the boundary with Birmingham City as well as sections of the road through Kidderminster and Halesowen.

But besides the Highways people I met the Director of Education, who lived in Malvern and used to join in parties with the Birds. When there were word games he expected everyone to play in French.

On one occasion the Chief Constable kindly suggested to Mr Bird that I needed som exercise and might like a walk around the hills near Suckley. In fact, he had a rough shoot there, which the local policemen managed, and needed a beater. There were a lot of wild pheasants in that wooded countryside. In fact, I was called upon often by Police Headquarters to give advice, and when I left Worcestershire, to my surprise the Police gave me a good fountain pen. I still have it.

(Note, 1998: A Waterman, made in Canada).

Through the Birds I got to know Dr Norish and his wife and daughter at Upton-on-Severn, and through them I joined the Golf Course there. It was a primitive 9 hole affair, and the Club House was a wooden shed with a small supply of drinks and a moneybox. Cows were everywhere, so the greens were fenced. You had a free shot if your ball landed in a wet cow pat or hit a strand of barbed wire.

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Photographs. Richard's father. Richard's mother.

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Photographs. Richard as a young man. Richard photographed by Gordon Hull FRSA. Richard taking over an Emergency Food Van at County Hall, Beverley.

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Vivian Lucas (Mr Bird's Articled Clerk) and I were playing a round there one afternoon, when we began to catch up with a ladies foursome who were going slow in front. Vivian lived at Malvern Link with his parents and thought he might know who the ladies were. He knew one of them, and thought that two were daughters of Major Jewell, who lived close by. I knew this name because my cousin Joan had told me she had been to school with one of them. In order to try to get in front Vivian and I manoeuvred the cows so that they quite surrounded the green and blocked the ladies in!

I was no good at golf but I sometimes had to oblige Mr Bird. The Malvern Course however seemed to be entirely up hill. It was exhausting. But not as exhausting as cycling back from Upton-on- Severn with my clubs. Seven miles that really are uphill all the way.

Mr Bird always made amends if he press-ganged me into things. One treat was to lend me his 10 HP Lanchester (Registration WP1) to take Mrs Bird into Cheltenham for a shopping spree, where she regaled me with a good tea.

Another Sunday outing which occurred two or three times a year was to Hasfield Court, to the Meath Bakers. Mrs Meath Baker was the daughter of Mrs Bryan, an old friend of my mother's, who lived at Oxton. The Meath Bakers lived in a large house with a good garden and a lake with a small boat. But the garden was only about ten feet above the River Severn flood plain, and on one occasion the river lapped at the edge of it, and trees and hedgerows seemed to be floating. I used to take the children in the boat on the lake. When the flood was up they got me to take them over the fields and through the hedges as well. The children were Lucinda, Judith, and Gregory. Once they and a cousin took me for a walk to the edge of the next village to see a witch whom they knew. They had noticed that one of my hands and wrists was covered with warts and they said the witch would cure them. The old lady was sitting on the step of her caravan in an orchard. She had a look at my warts and told me that she could cure them by giving them to a tree. This she proceeded to do. She told me that I must not go to a doctor for treatment, but should ignore the warts, and that one day in a few weeks I should find that they had completely vanished. I thanked her and gave her five shillings, and it turned out exactly as she said! The "witch" told me that in future I could always cure warts myself in the same way. This I found also to be true.

(Note, 2017: Richard once told me to go and speak nicely to a walnut tree about some things on my own hand, and indeed I thought it worked. He loved this kind of thing, like water-divining, stone circles and the strange power of the “ghosty patch” at the top of Littlemoor Wood).

The Meath Bakers had another daughter, Pru, who was too young to play with us. Pru made a fuss of me. I always had to sit next to her at tea. When I first went there Mr Meath Baker senior was alive, a very old man, and very kind to me. His son Francis later used me as a pilot to

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guide him pulling his caravan - to Oxton I suppose - which was a very hazardous journey as the caravan swayed and pulled his car around. He died soon after, and Mrs Meath Baker married a local doctor whom the children called Uncle John. But he also died and she married a third time, becoming Mrs Brooksbank.

Judith Meath Baker kept up with us, and years later let us have one of her puppies, a brilliantly intelligent Norwegian Buhund called Jossie, who was the light of Mary's life and my own in our house in Bishop's Drive, Southwell. Sadly, Judith herself died of cancer. Her brother Gregory now lives at Hasfield Court, and works in London.

Another visit was to Hereford. I stayed there with Mr & Mrs Hodges. It was his father who had bought East Bridgford Hill from my family. He was, I believe, a Surveyor with the Herefordshire County Council, and he invited Mr Maples, the Clerk, to meet me. Mr Maples was quite old, and virtually managed the County Council under Fred Ballard. We played a game of bridge and Mr Maples hinted strongly that I might like to move to Hereford, since his deputy was about to leave. I resisted the temptation because we regarded Herefordshire, beautiful as it was, as backward. In the much more recent reforms it was combined with Worcestershire but now they are separate again.

Work in Worcester was intense, and sometimes interesting. I was put in charge of records. There was no Archives office, and all the Quarter Sessions and other old records, including Deeds and deposited plans, were squashed into a small strong room off the main office. Files - of correspondence - were added and thrown out from time to time without any proper consideration. Other things, including sacks and boxes delivered to us by the British Records Association, went into the cellar. I could not hope to do more than glance at these, and to report the more important arrivals to the "Records and Charities Committee". I was, however, sent on a short course at the Public Record Office to learn a little about what not to do.

On one occasion when I was looking through a sack of papers a document fell out at my feet. It was a contemporary record by a member of one of the three families who had been present at and had joined in the destruction of one of the arches of Upton-on-Severn bridge shortly before the Battle of Worcester in the seventeenth century! These were Royalists, seeking to impede the crossing of the river by Cromwell's troops. The operation had turned out to be of little value. But the record was of interest, and probably relevant to a plan which was then current, to replace the bridge.

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Upton bridge in those days was a very unsound structure which the County Surveyor declared to be unsafe for heavy vehicles. It was narrow and had a swing span to let the tall boats sail through. The interest lay in the fact that the three landowners were liable to contribute certain fractions of the maintenance cost, charged upon identifiable land. The County Council negotiated the redemption of these liabilities, and we discharged the owners' lands from the liabilities in return for capital payments made by them towards the cost of the new bridge. For logical geographical reasons, the new bridge had to be in a different place, and the new position involved slicing off the corner of an old closed churchyard. A Consistory Court was called and the Chancellor of the Diocese required the County Council to advertise its proposals and to notify the descendants or known relatives of the twenty or more burials whose names were still legible on stones. This we did. The burials were all before about 1850 and we only received one objection - this being from a relative of a Naval Officer who had served in the Napoleonic Wars. An open court was held, and I appeared before the Chancellor, Cotes Preedy QC, and the Registrar Mr Stallard. The Chancellor gave his consent to our proposal subject to strict conditions about the preservation and reburial of any human remains. This was of interest to me in my later career at Southwell. And Cotes Preedy junior was a Nottingham barrister!

Another incident was the "Affair of Nafford Bridge". There was a public footpath using lock gates to cross a stretch of the River Avon. The path was well used and undoubtedly an old one. No other crossing existed nearby. But the lock gates were rotten and the crossing was becoming dangerous. As Highway Authority, the Council owed a duty to see that the footpath did not become obstructed. There was also a possible claim for damages if somebody fell in. It was my job to advise the Highways Committee about the matter.

Now, the [Lower?] Avon Navigation Company had been created by Royal Charter long ago, in the reign of Charles II I think, and it was responsible for making the lock and the gates. But the Company was moribund and probably insolvent. What should we do? In the course of researching this problem I delved into the history of this ancient chartered company as well as into the case law that seemed relevant - that was pretty ancient too. I gave Mr Bird a fullish memorandum about it and he was impressed, giving me the credit for it when it was circulated to Members (KTM would never have done that!).

I cannot remember what happened about the footpath now, but I still have a copy of my memorandum somewhere.

(Note, 1998. The Nafford memorandum and a site photograph are now in the famiiy archives).

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Meantime I had bought myself a car! It was a 1927 Austin 12 HP open tourer. It cost me £30, and I persuaded Woodyatts Garage in Great Malvern, from whom I bought it, to fit two new tyres as well. This was a wonderful car. It never showed any signs of letting me down. But its hood and sidescreens, which one put up in bad weather, were distinctly draughty; and the big flywheel made changing up a slow business. I had a friend in Malvern, rather older than me, called Inermagen(?) who worked in a Bank and had no car. He rather envied mine! His parents lived in Ilminster, in Somerset, and he did not see them often. So one weekend I arranged to take him.

We set forth at 1.30 pm on Saturday when work ended. It was early Spring, cold with snow showers. The windscreen wiper was a manual one, so I nursed a hot water bottle and had to use it once or twice as we crossed the Mendips. Mr [Inermagen] senior was the Head Master of the grammar school, and he, as did his wife and the school itself, reminded me of our grammar school in Southwell. They were most welcoming. I slept happily on a mattress on the floor of what was sometimes a school room. The next day I went over to Sherborne and Anne Acland took me to see the Abbey. Presumably Westland at nearby Yeovil, where her father worked, were then making helicopters. After lunch I collected [Inermagen] and we drove back to Malvern. This expedition convinced me that I could rely on "Fiery", as my car was called.

(Note about Westland, Yeovil, helicopters. I think this is anachronistic but I decided not to change Richard's text)

So the next exploit was to drive up to Galloway, stopping en route with the Ellis family who were holidaying in the Lake District. In those days you could drive across the Iron Bridge at Bridgnorth, and Fiery's cooling system was tested by the cmb up Kirkstone Pass.

I joined the family at Dalry. My father, who was quite tireless, got a guide, Mr Penman - who ran a garage and was a notable local historian - to take us walking from north to south along the eastern ridge of the Rhinns of Kells. It was the longest and toughest walk I have ever done, before or since, and I could hardly crawl to the place where Mr Penman's driver picked us up. My brother Tom was absolutely exhausted too. But my father, then aged nearly seventy, thought nothing of it at all.

My father did not approve of Fiery. He did not think it was a suitable car, especially when he found that I was taking the Chairman of the Mental Hospital near Bromsgrove to meetings in it (though he thought it was fun). My father knew Mr George (later Sir George) Kenning

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through my London landlord Mr Green. So he got Kennings to produce a small Morris Oxford saloon for me. It had only done a small mileage, but it was a dud car, and was always letting me down with minor failings. So as soon as I decently could, I got rid of it and changed it through Thornes Garage in Worcester for an Austin 6 cylinder.

This car's registration was DG 1189, appropriately being the beginning of legal memory. It had previously belonged to Norroy King of Arms, and had his shield on the door. It was the smoothest-running car that I have ever had and its only fault was that in very wet weather the footbrakes were affected and became rather weak. This car went with me to Beverley. I painted out the coat of arms.

In about 1936 I had a painful abscess in a back tooth and had to ask Mr Bird for time off to go to a dentist. Mr Bird kindly telephoned to his own dentist in Great Malvern and made an appointment for me for early next morning. The dentist immediately took the tooth out under a gas anaesthetic, and I had no pain at all. I soon came round and thanked the dentist, started to get out of the chair and then immediately passed out. The dentist was concerned about this and when I came round again, would not let me go. He took me into his private quarters and sent for his wife, who made me tea, while he telephoned to Mr Bird to explain that he was advising me to go back to my digs rather than to the office.

When I sent the dentist a cheque I thanked him for his kindness, and afterwards thought no more of what had happened. But a few weeks later the dentist and his wife invited me to drinks at their house, and I accepted. I hardly knew anyone, and got talking to a stranger, and a girl overheard me saying that I came from Southwell and seized hold of my arm saying "I think you must be my cousin Richard."

This was Mary Oakeley. I would not have recognised her, though she and her sister Rosemary had stayed with my Uncle Rupert and we had met. Mary was working as a School Mistress at St. James's School in Malvern. So began a useful friendship. I was able to introduce her to the Birds and the Ballards and others and she introduced me to her friends. We had good country walks together, and later she took me to Eynsham, near Oxford, to meet her parents and her brother Rowland.

Mary Oakeley became Head Mistress of St Felix [correcting my earlier error - EMB], and a lifelong friend. She stayed with me at Southwell in November 1997, and left me a copy of her own book. She also read these notes and made some suggestions which caused me to add to what I had written about my parents. Just a few days after having done that I was shocked to learn

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by telephone from Rowland that just before Christmas Mary had had a stroke and died.

The subject of walks reminds me that I had visits from both John Becher [Mary's brother] and Michael Mosley from Southwell. When John came it was very hot weather, and we dozed in Fiery in a shady spot drinking Herefordshire cider.

I gave Mrs Etheridge my notice and left her Boarding House at Grey Ladies. Mrs Etheridge was very angry. But an old friend of Mrs Rendel's had a ground floor flat two roads down and needed someone to occupy her spare room and dining-sitting room. I was quite happy there, and there was room in the drive for Fiery. In the flat above lived a married Malvern College schoolmaster called Erskine, and above him was a single master called Ronald, who had played rugger for England. We all got on, and the only fly in the ointment was that my landlady, a retired Nurse, did not feed me very well. This despite the fact that she walked up the Worcestershire Beacon every day and might have been expected to have a good appetite herself!

One day - I stayed there about two years - I received a mysterious message. Would I call upon Miss Sayle, the Headmistress of a well known Girl's School called Ellerslie. Miss Sayle had been given my name by somebody and was looking for a suitable man to share a house which the school owned in Wells Road. The other occupant was Mr Black Hawkins, the School Chaplain, there was a cook-housekeeper, and I should have my own bedroom and sitting room and share the dining room. The rent quoted was ridiculously low, so I called on Mr Black Hawkins at the house, which was called Beverston, to see if would get on. And we did.

Better still, I was allowed to put my car - the Austin 6-cylinder by this time, which was called The Dragon - in a garage in the school grounds nearby. There was a superb view from my bedroom window across the Severn valley towards Bredon Hill, and the housekeeper was a very good cook.

The mention of Bredon reminds me of Mary's cousin, Barbara Paget. Barbara had been brought up with the Becher children as her parents had both died, and was at that time living with her step-father Dr. Devereux at Kemerton, a Worcestershire village at the foot of Bredon. I went over there one day and Barbara took me up Bredon Hill. So I saw the view the other way. Barbara was then at the point of getting engaged to the Dutch doctor Haro Coster van Voorhout.

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At about the same time, in Malvern Priory, Rosamund Bird married her English rancher from the Argentine, and went out there to live. For that occasion I managed to buy a tails suit, which otherwise I would have been obliged to hire. It proved a good investment. I have worn the suit many times since, and it is still going strong.

My last year or two in Worcester were hard going as Mr Bird relied on me more and more. But I was happy to pick up the bits. Vivian Lucas was becoming a great help in legal matters. Sometimes we had to rush out to consult books in the nearby Law Society library. Although I never had to tackle a problem with which I really did not know how to cope, the pressure was very great and I think I was only saved from a mental breakdown by a small miracle.

One morning, when I was sitting at my desk feeling swamped and unable to decide which of several urgent problems to tackle first, Hope Wadsworth walked in. She had come to Worcester to shop and had parked her car in the yard close to my window and had seen me at my desk. After a few words, she must have realised that I was quite exhausted. She went down the corridor and found Mr Bird, whom she knew well, and must have told him that he was risking my having a breakdown. She had nursed as a VAD in the War and saw what she thought were the symptoms. She told Mr Bird that she wanted him to let me have a long weekend off and she would have me to stay and put me straight to bed. Mr Bird came back to my room with Hope, and picking up the most pressing files himself, told me to go. And I went to Hope's house and slept the trouble off and survived. It was really my own fault, as I liked the work and in fact I have never stopped doing so.

One of the extra things I had taken on was being the Honorary Secretary of the Malvern Priory PCC. The Vicar was the Revd. (later Canon) H.M. Bartleet, a quaint-looking character who always wore the most antiquated attire including a shovel hat. He was an excellent and most caring Parish Priest. He personally kept a massive inventory of names of the occupants of all of the houses in his parish, and included small and surprising bits of information about many of them. If he noticed that regular church attenders were absent for long, he would very soon find out the reason, and if sickness was the cause, he was soon at the patient's bedside. Running the PCC was a new experience for me and I only just got into the job before I left Malvern. I remember some terrifying elderly gents at the meetings, which were held in the Littleton Rooms at the bottom of the churchyard. Most of them were Colonels and I never seemed to get their names right. But at this time I did get to know James McNeil Rushforth, a very eminent architect and expert in coloured glass, who taught me a lot.

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The ancient stonework of the Priory was eroding in many places. Rushworth told the inspecting sub-committee to "mix cow-muck and lime to a wet slurry and cover the stonework with the mixture." Perhaps there was bit more to the advice than that, or perhaps they took no notice of it. A lot of new stone work seems to have done since, both inside and outside the church, as I have noticed on my periodic visits back there. Rushworth's main triumph that I can remember was re-ordering some of the beautiful glass in the east window.

I kept up with Canon Bartleet after the war when he was a residentiary canon in Worcester Cathedral. I liked and admired him a lot, for he never ceased to labour in the service to which he had been called. Before he died, he gave me his Dictionary of the Bible.

One weekend the Birds motored up to Southwell and stayed at The Burgage. KTM was invited to dinner, and the two Clerks to County Councils did their best to be polite to one another, though I would say that the atmosphere was tepid! My father drove them out into Sherwood Forest. On another occasion my parents came to Malvern and stayed with the Birds. My Mother and Mrs Bird became great friends. And I can remember trying to keep up with my father's pace walking past St. Ann's Well and up the Worcestershire Beacon.

Towards the end of my time at Worcester I remember very clearly Mr Bird, Roger Russell and I standing on the platform at Great Malvern (waiting for the fast train to come tearing down the hill from the tunnel), discussing the dreadful world events. First, there was the King's involvement with Mrs Simpson. Second, there was the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. And third, the German threat.

(Note, 1998. Richard moved to Beverley in 1936. However (see below) the discussion may have been about the Spanish Civil War).

I had already been sent on an A.R.P. course at Stoke d'Abernon in Surrey and had heard Commander Hodsell talk about gas, blackouts, emergency legislation, evacuation, reception areas, and the various duties of Local Authorities with the command structure required.

The first thing that Mr Bird organised was fire fighting at the Shire Hall. The old hoses were unrolled (some of them were rotten) and the spray equipment was tested. Then it was thought that Queen Victoria could do with a bath. Her statue in the yard was covered with pigeon- droppings. The power hose was tried out with good effect, but sadly, we knocked off the Queen's head! It had to be put back on next day.

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Although Mr Bird's legal memory was still excellent, he was very reliant on me for all sorts of support. But we both agreed that I should get some other experience in another county if I were to succeed him in four years time when he planned to retire. Colonel Milward, the chairman, said that he would give me a good testimonial. He did so in full measure, and added that if he were still Chairman in four years time he would be expecting me to apply for Mr Bird's job.

And that was that! I left Worcester with many regrets, having been selected to go to the East Riding of Yorkshire on my first application. I returned to Worcester only once or twice, and made more frequent brief visits to Colwall or Malvern.

(Note, 2017. In October 1991 Richard invited us to stay with him at the hotel at Colwall. We met Bill Ballard, and another friend, called Mary Carver. Richard exhausted himself walking in the hills. He insisted that a little further on we should find the “Pink Cottage” where we could get refreshments. But of course it was no longer a tea room!).

BEVERLEY-1

After being offered the post of Solicitor to the Clerk of the East Riding County Council (not yet "County Solicitor") and having accepted it, I was introduced to Mr T. Stephenson. He was the unqualified deputy Clerk and he took me around County Hall and produced to me Miss Wray, the senior clerk/typist who would do my work. Mr Stephenson lived at Bridlington and commuted to Beverley by a fast train arriving at about nine, and at his suggestion I decided that when I took up my new job I would go and stay in Bridlington while looking for somewhere permanent to live.

My father then decided to come up to Bridlington with me and have a look at the Hotel which had been recommended. He and mother and I motored up from Southwell in his latest car (a rather over-large Vauxhall), up the road through Thorne and Boothferry to Bridlington where half board terms were fixed up for me at the hotel. My father was pleased to find that an elderly Nall aunt was a permanent resident, so it must have been a respectable hotel. Then I think that we went on for a short stay at the Crown at Scarborough (the Misses Dixon). I started work at Beverley on Friday 13th October 1936.

(Note, 2017. I still don't understand the reference to a “Nall aunt” and do not think the Beaumonts are related to the Nalls of Hoveringham).

The East Riding was entirely different from Worcestershire, not only in terms of the brisker climate but also in the way the office was run. Mr Stephenson had, I found, started as an office boy and been trained by John Bickersteth the highly respected "father" of the County Council. The County Hall was modem, about 1900 and quite adequate. The back part of it had been extended towards the "Register House" which housed the register of deeds (this system of conveyancing was in force throughout Yorkshire, though slightly different in each Riding). John Bickersteth (who had only been succeded a few years previously by the

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solicitor J.R. Procter) seemed to have run everything including Education. And I think that he must have found he needed a young and intelligent assistant. Godfrey Macdonald (as he was then) was the son of a landowner at nearby Rudston, Sir Alexander Bosvile Macdonald of the Isles - who was on the County Council. Godfrey, a barrister, had no real practical experience in law, though he had specialised in Patents and was knowledgeable as a Mechanical Engineer.

Sir Godfrey had been brought in to assist in about 1930 and when Procter had retired. I suppose that the landowner Members of the County Council decided that he would make a suitable Clerk. In fact, he had worked himself into the job. He was somewhat aloof and cut off from the staff, his office being upstairs and at the end of a corridor. But he was conscientious, perhaps excessively so as he felt that he had not had the right training. By the time I got there Godfrey's father had died leaving him with many burdens such as Death Duties and an estate whose income barely covered the interest on borrowings, so he needed his modest County Council salary.

The County Council prided itself on being non-political. Nevertheless one would assume that most of the landed gentry were Tory. And there was also a sprinkling of Liberals, including the Vice-Chairman, Mr Fenby, who had been a Liberal MP and one-time Minister of Labour. I shall say more of him in due course.

I had little contact with the Clerk, Sir Godfrey, at first. My dealings were with Stephenson or with the Welsh Chief Clerk, Garston, who lurked in the front office and the room behind it. I was in due course to inherit Stephenson's rather splendid room, facing the yard and garden at the back, which was well-equipped with all the necessary Halsbury's Laws and Statutes.

Miss Wray produced sundry files of matters which needed doing. I found I could do everything, though the procedure was a little strange. Letters requiring the signature of the Clerk were collected and taken up to him in the late afternoon. He was a stickler for perfect typing and grammar. No alterations were allowed; imperfections were always spotted by him and the work had to be put right. My letters on legal matters were my own responsibility however.

It took me a little time to get to know the Chief Officers, apart that is from Dr Thornley, the Chief Medical Officer, who had given me a perfunctory medical check when I was appointed. The County Treasurer was a blunt West Riding man called Tree who never let the County borrow if he could help it. The Surveyor was W.J. Noel Bryce,

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the Weights and Measures man was Sedgwick, and there was Tate who managed the many Smallholders with skill and tact.

Sir Godfrey sent for me after a while and invited me to have an evening at Thorpe Hall, Rudston, which is about five miles inland from Bridlington. He gave me directions on how to approach (in the dark) since the private drive from the road is rather confusing. His wife was away, and we had a simple meal. He had inherited an ancient Butler and some other staff. Afterwards he showed his many pictures, some of which were in poor condition. I recognised one of them at once, as I had seen it at the Royal Academy. By Sir Frederick Elwell, it was a "Conversation Piece" showing the whole family, Sir Alexander and his wife, Godfrey and his wife, Godfrey's sister Celia at the piano, and Godfrey's four children, all sitting proudly in the "Long Room" at Thorpe. The children were Somerled, Jean, Nigel, and Daphne. It was a masterpiece, one of the outstanding pictures of its year and one which helped to establish Elwell's reputation. The evening was an enjoyable one for me, and I learned to regard my Boss with considerable respect and he began also to be a friend.

Soon after this I did get to know Lady Macdonald, and I also met Daphne (still a schoolgirl) briefly at a young people's party in Beverley during that winter. The next summer, 1938 I was invited to Thorpe for a weekend, and took what I still think is a memorable picture from my bedroom window looking south across the gardens and ponds to the Wolds and woodlands opposite. The ponds, as they were called, were formed out of the beck known as the Gypsey Race which comes down the Great Wold Valley to Rudston and out into the sea at Bridlington Quay. Below Rudston the stream passes through Boynton, whose Vicar, the Revd Henry Lawrance, kindly invited me to tea. He knew my Grandfather. He was also the Chairman of the Planning Committee, and his son Tony was a curate at Beverley Minster. Whilst I was at Boynton having tea J.S. Purvis, later Canon Purvis, came walking down the Gypsey Race valley. He and Mr Lawrance were the greatest Yorkshire scholars of the time, and Purvis is well known for creating what became the Borthwick Institute. I wish I had known them better.

(Note, 1998. N.A.H. (Anthony) Lawrance, later Rector of Walkington, near Beverley).

Later, the War Agricultural Committee was to ruin the Gypsey Race and afterwards Sir Godfrey asked me to go with him to the Ministry to lodge a complaint and plead for an attempt at restoration or compensation. But we got nowhere. And later still I would take over some of the Macdonald family's legal business, and it was very sad for me when they all died. I have kept up with Jean, who married Nigel Ringrose from Newark, and with Daphne, who married Michael Fell

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and lives in Canada and Iceland. Ian, the son of Somerled and grandson of Sir Godfrey, is at Thorpe now, and I have been there and seen something of the good work he is doing, both to help to educate schoolchildren in country matters, and also to preserve the unploughed Wold and its wild flowers.

Eventually I moved into a small early nineteenth century house on the edge of Beverley. The row in which it stood was separated from the York Road by a tongue of pasture known as Westwood. If Beverley ever had a town wall it would have been there, and there was the ghost of a ditch still. The house belonged to a brother and two sisters Everingham, delightful people, and I had a bedroom at the front and a dining-sitting room below it. I arranged to keep my car at Brough's garage just outside North Bar, and my bike stood in the house.

Later I moved to Etton Rectory, where the Rector Mr Opie was by way of being High Church - except when he went to another parish of which he was also the Incumbent and whose Squire was staunchly Protestant! Mr Opie rode between his parishes on horseback, sometimes at the gallop, his surplice flying. The Opies also had a dog-cart, for shopping, and a goat named Blossom who fell in love with me and welcomed me with tender bleating whenever I came home. I tried to work in the Opies' garden, but Blossom was a great nuisance.

Lord Hotham, the Protestant Squire, looked very frail but was most friendly to me. He thought that we were related as one of his ancestors, he said, was "Beaumont Lord Hotham". He also kept an enormous cricket ground, the front lawn of his Hall.

QUARTER SESSIONS

To return to my work, and to say something here about "Quarter Sessions" in the counties in which I worked, these were part of ancient legal history. It had been ordained in the reign of Edward I that County Magistrates should meet quarterly to try the more serious crimes, those not dealt with at the "Petty Sessions". In due course the function of Quarter Sessions changed and came to include civil business such as Highway Diversions, Poor Law Settlement Cases, Rating Appeals, and Pubs Licensing Appeals. There was also a peculiar duty arising from Title Awards, and this was to determine the "current value of a Winchester Bushel of good marketable wheat".

Until Grand Juries were abolished, before indictable offences could be tried in Court, the Grand Jury had to look at the charge and satisfy itself

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from the summary of the prosecution evidence, that there was a case for the accused to answer and that it was not a trumped up charge. Usually this was so, and the Grand Jury would endorse the back of the indictment with the words "True Bill".

At Nottingham when this was done the document was placed in a fishing net held up to the Gallery (where the Grand Jurymen would be) from the main Courtroom floor by a court official. He would pass it to the Clerk of the Peace and the case could then proceed. This procedure was abolished in about 1931 but not without some opposition! The main quarterly court in Nottingham was followed by an adjourned court at either Newark or Retford.

(The end of the second notebook)