R.M. Beaumont "In his own words" part 5

When I was at Worcester, Quarter Sessions presented few problems. I can only remember one Court Room at the Shire Hall; this was conveniently situated in relation to the office of the Clerk of the Peace. The Judge's Lodgings were immediately behind the Shire Hall, so the Magistrates could retire easily from the rather high bench where they sat. A permanent staff consisting of a Butler and his wife lived there ready to receive and look after'the Judge at Assizes. The Chairman of Quarter Sessions could also stay the night, if he needed to, as was the case in my time when the Chairman was the retired, and much respected, County Court Judge, Farrant, whose home was in London. Farrant always came up to Worcester the day before the Court opened.

On one occasion, after a long and hard fought trial which had lasted all day, until about tea-time, the moment came, after Defendant's and Plaintiff's Counsel's arguments, when the Chairman had to sum up. But Farrant remained silent, with his head in his hands. After a minute or two Mr Bird got up and turned round to face him. He quickly realised that the Chairman was unwell, so he turned again and said that there would be an adjournment of twenty minutes for tea. The Chairman was helped to his feet, and the Magistrates retired, Mr Bird with them. A few minutes later Mr Bird came back, and beckoned to the two Counsel. He told them that the Chairman had been feeling faint and had not made full notes of the evidence; so he was unable to sum up. But Mr Bird however had made notes, and if Counsel agreed it might be possible to read an adequate summary from these. Both Counsel readily accepted, as they were tired of a rather dreary case. Mr Bird delivered the summing up as the Chairman still did not feel well enough. The Prisoner [sic] was found guilty and there was no appeal!

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By the next Sessions Judge Farrant had retired. But he forgot this and turned up as usual, and had to stand down at the request of the newly appointed Chairman!

At Beverley the atmosphere was different. The Sessions House, at the north end of the town, is a beautiful building in the classical style, circa 1711, part of an enclave of local government buildings including the former House of Correction and some buildings used by the Police. Fronting the Sessions House was a magnificent beech tree which when I first saw it was somewhat neglected. The main court room is very fine and in the long room behind (where buffet lunches were laid on) there were some contemporary chairs.

So those of us who needed to attend court took a taxi from the office with all the indictments and other documents together with an enormous collection of whatever books and reports might be needed.

A day or two before the Court opened the Chairman (this was Lord Halifax when I first went to Beverley), would appear at County Hall and take over Sir Godfrey's chair and desk. Smoking a cigarette (without offering one to Sir Godfrey), he would then go through the cases carefully and consider all the legal issues. But despite his vice-regal manner (as Lord Irwin, he was in fact Viceroy in India), he was friendly and conscientious.

It was my job to prepare, on separate pieces of paper, short notes on the offences to be tried and the essentials of evidence required. If, as generally happened, other issues raising legal questions arose, I had to think quickly and be ready to hand up more notes if needed. However, Sir Godfrey was never better than when in court. And a young barrister once told me that he had been recommended to 'open' his career at Beverley because the Bar considered the East Riding Quarter Sessions procedure to be a model of smooth efficiency.

Lord Halifax retired from the bench when he became Foreign Secretary and the German crisis loomed.

After the formal opening of the Court and whatever civil business there might be, including appointment of committees, most of the Magistrates who did not want to deal with the criminal matters left, leaving the Chairman and half a dozen or so sitting. It was very unusual if business was not concluded by five pm. Though on one occasion in the War I had to drive Mr Fenby home to Bridlington very late in the evening.

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BEVERLEY - 2

As the East Riding County Council's solicitor I had to deal with Town and Country Planning. Indeed I owed my appointment to my experience of this at Worcester. No real attempts at planning control had been introduced. But an emergency had sprung up, in that Butlins (who ran holiday camps) had acquired a large area of coastline south of Primrose Valley and towards Hunmanby Gap, where they intended to construct a large camp on the cliff top. Since the view from Filey of the Bay looking towards Flamborough was outstandingly beautiful and largely unspoilt, most of the natives, including the area's two or three representatives on the County Council, regarded Butlins' plan with horror. However, the camp would have been a 'goldmine' to Filey, whose own Urban District Council would have all the extra rates.

The County Council had recently appointed E.R. Voyce, a young qualified town and country planning officer. Under the then Planning Act, of 1932, if the County Council was to get any effective control over the situation it was essential to get the 'planning authority', which was the Filey U.D.C., to pass a resolution to delegate its powers to the County. Filey Council was very keen to have the camp, but had no officer who knew anything about design or planning, and indeed had never considered the subject at all until that time. So there was an evening meeting; Voyce and I appeared before the assembled dignitaries of Filey. I started off by explaining what the Act said, and that if Filey wanted to exercise any control over their coastline and view, the Council must pass two resolutions - one to assume powers under the 1932 Act and another to delegate them to the County, which the County would then use for the benefit of Filey through its qualified staff! Voyce then explained what he thought should be done, namely to have the camp set back away from the cliff edge and to tidy up the projected layout by planting trees and so forth.

For some while, the Filey people did not welcome these ideas. They feared that Billy Butlin would gib at the interference and the extra cost. But eventually the more sensible views prevailed, and Councillor Caine (who I remembered and revered as "Andie Caine" from my boyhood - he had owned some brilliant Pierrots) turned the tide for us. So the resolutions were passed, and the view saved. Billy Butlin co-operated with all Voyce's suggestions, and the camp was built, complete with a special railway line. It was a success for many years, but has now gone. And Filey, alas, has been transferred to the "North Yorkshire" council.

A subject that was allied to the possible eyesore of Butlins' Camp was advertisement hoardings beside Highways. There were thousands of these. Objections could be lodged against them on two grounds – that

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they distracted drivers from authorised road traffic signs, or on amenity grounds. Sometimes, the advertisers could be persuaded to remove the hoardings or resite them in places where they would be less offensive. But one firm was particularly difficult to deal with. This firm had a series of boards at Spital Corner, where the road from Malton to the coast divides for Filey or Scarborough. It was a wonderful site for advertising, as approaching traffic was confronted with it, and there were trees behind. The local councillors wanted to use it as a test case, so I was instructed to prosecute. I decided to take the case myself, not to brief Counsel and not to spend money on expensive experts. So I photographed the signs myself, and got one of the local councillors to say he found the hoardings to be distasteful. Best of all, Sir Godfrey persuaded the artist Sir Frederick Elwell (whom of course, he knew) to hold forth about the countryside and how it was being destroyed by garish signs.

Against me, the case was argued by Counsel, but Elwell was more than able to hold his own, and the Magistrates ordered that the signs be removed. I fully expected that there would be an appeal, but there was none, and the case was a huge help to us in dealing with other sites.

I did not take very many cases before the Magistrates. But one - which actually found its way into some of the reports, those dealing with food and drugs matters - related to the dilution of milk. It had recently been found that the freezing points of cream and water were sufficiently different that it was possible to establish with reasonable certainty whether water had been added, as was the case in this particular - and hard won – battle.

All this is just a little of my work at Beverley. My personal life was governed by the places where I lodged. After a month or two in Bridlington I decided that I needed to live nearer Beverley, and this was when I moved to live with the Everinghams, and from them I moved to the Opies at Etton. It was a large and pleasant early Georgian Rectory complete with garden, in which I happily helped, producing vegetables. Blossom, the nanny goat which liked me and which used to wait by the gate for me to get home from work on my old Raleigh, was also keen on vegetables, and used to pretend to help me in the garden. I have already mentioned Mr Opie, his two parishes, and his horsemanship.

The big house in Etton was occupied by a schooner magnate from Hull, an alien to village life. But somehow he knew Joan Hacking, and when she came to stay on one occasion, I was invited to dine - a stiff affair with a Butler, much silver, and port.

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During all this time the shadows of war were hanging over our lives. Indeed they had lengthened since I stood on Great Malvern Station discussing the Spanish Civil War (see above) and learning about the Nazis' support for General Franco, who at that stage we had wanted to win. And even before that was the Italian invasion of Abyssinia - fairly obviously a practise run for a more serious game. I had been sent on a short ARP course before moving to Beverley, but once there, I do not think I was much involved in the preparations for possible war. But I do remember being surprised one day by a bevy of WVS ladies coming down stairs from the Council Chamber - one of them was Jewel Jackson, with whom I had played on Filey sands and who went on to be the head of the WVS in the East Riding. I have often sat on the seat in Scarborough that Jewel gave in memory of her brother Maurice.

ARMY

I always thought that, as a T.A. Reserve Officer, if war came, I should be called up. Throughout late August and early September 1939 the weather was brilliantly sunny and hot. Some people from the office had got into the habit of lying out on the grass in the County Hall garden at lunchtime, and that was where I was when the telegram was handed to me instructing me to report as soon as possible to Captain Ford at Newark Drill Hall.

I left a lot of my things at Etton Rectory, including my bike, in the stable, and packed up the rest and drove home to Southwell. My car then was the Armstrong Siddeley 'Z plus' sportsman's coupe (Registration WF 8765) which Sir Godfrey Macdonald had had new and which I had bought through the main distributors in Leeds when he traded it in for a saloon.

(1998 note, revised 2017:- this car was called Woeful, continuing the tradition of naming by the registration letters. When Richard sold it in the 1950s he retained all its servicing and oil-change information and its clock, which he then used by his bedside for the rest of his life. Some papers about this and several other cars are in the family archive but I have forgotten what happened to the clock).

My orders were to report to Fred Sketchley, who was then temporarily in charge of "A" Company at Arnold. I got there in time for a bread and cheese supper, and slept on the floor in the back of the Bonnington Cinema. Next morning we sorted the men into two platoons. I had no uniform, but wore my T.A. badge and carried my Repton swagger stick! Charles Ransom soon appeared, and others, Tony Gamble, Renwick, Simpson, and also Ted Beckwith. He was certainly the most efficient of the officers, and kept us all on our toes. Having absorbed all

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of the information in the Training Manuals, he could not bear to see anyone doing nothing.

After some weeks at Arnold we joined the rest of the Battalion at Finningley RAF station, presumably for the purpose of guarding it against saboteurs. Us officers enjoyed RAF luxury and modern quarters. Some training was done, and some trenches were dug. My chief memory is of cycling around in the dark as an orderly officer and going along the road to Epworth at about midnight to see that our guard was awake in his post near a bomb store. There were daytime trips to a Bank in Doncaster to draw cash for pay.

But that comfortable existence soon ended when the whole Battalion moved to Shildon in County Durham. This was a coal-producing area, and had suffered greatly from unemployment, so the locals were quite pleased to see us. I was billeted some distance from the building which served as officers' mess, in a miner's cottage on the other (north) side of the Stockton & Darlington Railway. Training was done on land north of the town which I think was part of the Surtees estate. Nearby a section of the Roman road to the north had an exposed surface down the steep bank to the river Wear. Most of the officers went on a "firing course" on the Yorkshire Moors above Leyburn - sleeping in wooden huts - and back at Shildon the winter weather grew worse, with banks of snow three or more feet high at the sides of the road.

Whilst at Shildon, Geoffrey Wills told me that his wife was coming to stay the weekend, and would like to meet me. They would be staying in a hotel. Would I go to dinner? I had not met Geoffrey's wife, so I was taken aback when she said, "Richard, I wanted to meet you because I have a bone to pick with you. A few years back you and Vivian Lucas left four frightened girls surrounded by the most terrible cows on the Upton-on-Severn golf course!". Fortunately Rosalind Wills (nee Jewell) remained a friend until her death not many years ago.

During that terrible winter I developed bronchitis, and it turned into pneumonia. The miner's wife with whom I was billeted, Mrs Hodgson, kept me in bed with hot water bottles and for a few days my absence from the Mess seems not to have been noticed. Mrs Hodgson (who could see that I was rather ill) supposed that they would send the M.O. to me, but no-one came, until Fred Sketchley found out where I was. For a few days until my high temperature came down, I was kept in bed and nursed by my landlady, and when I got up, I found I was very weak. I went down to the Mess to discover that preparations were being made for a move to Northern Europe, Finland as was thought then (where the Finns were fighting the Russians). A few days later the Battalion left, from Darlington station, to go to Norway, which had

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recently been invaded by Germany. And Neville Chamberlain made his unadvised remark that Hitler had missed the boat (or was it the bus?).

Obviously, I had not gone. I was not well enough. Those of us who were left made our way to Derby - I went there in John FitzHerbert's open Morris Minor, which he had asked me to deliver to his sister, together with his belongings. John's father was the Archdeacon of Derby, and I knew where they lived. I then went on to Normanton Barracks, where I shared a room with Peter Branston for a few nights. Whilst I was there I represented a man at the Coroner's Court. I do not remember the facts of the case, but I got a ticking off from the Coroner, which I reported to the C.O. He supported what I said in Court and said, "I shall never ask Mr [Coroner] to come to the Barracks again!"

I was in fact given a short leave to get my strength back. When I felt better I got in touch with the East Riding County Council and found that my departure had been a contributing factor to a disaster - the extra strain had caused Sir Godfrey Macdonald to have a coronary heart attack, and he had had to resign.

I was given the job of Signals Training Officer, based at Markheaton Park. This beautiful mansion was used as billets. The officers' mess was in the basement. The previous Signals Officer seems not to have adapted his training programme to wartime conditions (ie to train them faster), so a large proportion of his intakes had been failed. My knowledge of Infantry Signals was archaic. But there was a good Sergeant, and when a new intake arrived, he and I selected the men who seemed to have the potential to learn. Then I reorganised the Training Programme to try to make it interesting. So after a little basic Morse, we went out on imaginary schemes. One of these would involve climbing the medieval tower of All Saints Cathedral and sending and receiving messages to and from a distant high point. We saw some other flashes being sent from elsewhere, which could not be accounted for either by the Army or the Police. Their sender was never found!

I had a room in a school on the left hand (north-east) side of the Ashbourne Road, where about twenty men were lodged. I slept in a separate room, on the floor, except in the hot summer months when we lay out on the grass or in tents. This was when we saw, in the sky, the bombing of Coventry, forty-odd miles away. And the Midland Station was also bombed, and the Germans tried to destroy the Rolls Royce Aero Engine factory.

I was required to learn to ride a motorcycle, and I found it easy enough, on the road to Ashbourne. I was once sent to stop all traffic coming into Derby from the Uttoxeter Road, to check identity cards. I was not

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actually told who or what we looking for, but we were certainly armed, and caused a great nuisance to travellers that day.

Shortly after the fall of France an order reached me from Normanton Barracks telling me to drop all training and lay a telephone cable from the Barracks to Burnaston Aerodrome. Immediately. We only had two drums of cable, so I straight away told the C.O. that I did not think it would be enough, and he said to lay it as far as would go and then report back! We started from the Guardroom, and laid the cable as best we could, hanging it on trees or posts across side roads or private gardens out to the main Derby to Burton road. From here, it was easier, as there were tall GPO telegraph poles, and we made good progress to within about a quarter of a mile of the entrance to the aerodrome. Then we connected up one of our antiquated First War phones, and much to my surprise, the system worked, and we reported back that we had gone as far as we could.

After the war when I once had occasion to motor down towards Burton I was amused to see our cable still hanging in places!

Much of the climbing up the telegraph poles had been done by a keen and active young Lance-Corporal called Eric Mercer, who was clearly fitted for promotion. So we recommended him for a Commission. He duly went to an O.C.T.U., passed, and in due course returned to us as a 2nd Lieutenant. A circular came out from the War Office asking for surplus field glasses to be surrendered. I had a pair, with my name on the case, which had been given to me on my twenty-first birthday by Dr Jacob. I offered these to Mercer, who was about to be sent out to Egypt. I did not really expect to get them back, but in due course the glasses were safely returned.

(1998 note, revised 2017: not without a little sand in the case, it was said. Eric Mercer, who became Bishop of Exeter, had retired to a village in Wiltshire. Caroline and I delivered the glasses to him once again. I think he was somewhat bemused. It happens that his son Patrick, later MP for Newark, had commanded the Regiment, and through Bishop Mercer I entrusted to him a variety of papers and memorabilia relating to Richard's wartime activities that I found in the loft at Bishop's Drive. I had discussed these first with David Crane at Halloughton. Amongst them were postcards from several of the officers and men, who of course had been taken prisoner in Norway, sending thanks for parcels. Something which Richard had evidently quietly organised, and never said anything about. I retained a list of the items, which were intended for the Regimental Museum / Archives).

At Markheaton, besides the signallers there were some transport trainees, whose officer in charge was Jack Hancock, with George Dodd for tracked vehicles. The Camp Commandant was Captain Griffin. We had a most competent cook called Chuff, who produced amazing meals from a dingy basement kitchen with a small door out onto the Park. The Sergeants and men were equally well served. And the Hall hummed with life.

Towards the end of that summer I was getting frustrated at the lack of necessary training equipment and the failure of the Colonel Q.M. at Normanton to get any response from York stores to my "indents". The

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stuff we had was quite out of date and there was not enough of it. Eventually the Q.M. lent me a truck and a driver! The York Barracks were in Fulford, and as the gates were open, we drove straight in and aimed for what we thought looked like the store. This was very naughty of me, of course. But I was only a civilian in disguise, and walked right in to the Store with my Sergeant. Up one side of the store, we could see little of the kind of stuff we were looking for. Then we spotted some drums of cable at the far end. But we had been observed, and a uniformed man rather crossly wanted to know who we were and what we were up to. We pleaded ignorance of the proper procedure, and showed him our list of wants. A lot of the best stuff in the store was in what looked liked leather holsters, and we were told, "That's all Cavalry Stuff," but the only cavalry was in Palestine, with tanks, and we eventually persuaded the man that they could not possibly need the sort of gear that was designed for cavalry of horse! So we came away with some quite useful things.

On the way back we ran into very dense fog around Daybrook and on the Nottingham Ring Road. We had to grope our way back to Markheaton, taking it in turns to put our heads out of the window to help the driver. When I told the Colonel Q.M. that we had returned from York with a good load of things he was very much put out!

Alas! the fog and cold laid me low again. It did not get to pneumonia this time, but I was pretty knocked about. Moreover the East Riding County Council had started pulling strings to try to get me back, since coping with the bombing had made things impossible for Stephenson to cope with all the problems.

Fortunately for me, the medical organisation was better than at Shildon, and I received attention. I was brought before a Board, whose members seemed to be aware of the strings being pulled, and I was declared unfit and discharged from the Army. The Chairman (if that is the right word) made it clear to me that as soon as I had recovered sufficiently I was expected to return to my old job.

(1998 note. The letter from the War Office was dated 24 January 1941).

BEVERLEY - 3

So I retired to Southwell where my parents, and Annie Rushby their maid-of-all-work, and Selby, all fussed after me. My father made arrangements for me to see Dr Jacob, who was on the point of retiring. He examined me, but did not say much to me except that for a few

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months I must have a good long lie down in the middle of each day. After a week or so I returned to Beverley.

I found County Hall transformed. Stephenson was using my small old room as a sort of bedroom, having been the natural candidate to succeed Sir Godfrey Macdonald as Clerk of the County Council. But since he was quite unqualified there was a bit of a hiatus about the Quarter Sessions. The magistrates had tried to call J.R. Procter back from retirement to be their Clerk, but as Miss Wray put it, the old man had "gone to jelly" and could not be appointed. Eventually some time limit in an obscure Act of Parliament took effect, and Stephenson automatically became Clerk of the Peace.

Besides being Deputy to both offices (as I had been under Sir Godfrey) I found that I was also Deputy Controller of Civil Defence, and I was given the more urgent job of helping E.R. Voyce and the W.V.S. to establish Rest Centres and organise Emergency Feeding, especially in the Hull area.

Stephenson had of course moved into Sir Godfrey's room and I now occupied the very grand room that Stephenson had had before the war. It had a large desk, the space underneath which was now used for storing crates of emergency rations. The whole of County Hall was full of dried foodstuffs such as sugar and flour, and there were mattresses all around, as the place was used - as were all the churches and other public buildings - as accommodation on nights when Hull was hit.

At the end of the passage was the County Civil Defence Control Room, which was manned at all times, being somewhat protected from blast by a high wall of sand bags in the garden. The Control Room was run by W.J.N. Bryce, the County Surveyor, who was getting over injuries sustained when he ran his car into one of his own Road Blocks.

I also became Registrar of Deeds. This building too was full of food, stored under all the tables. Luckily there was not much conveyancing being done, and the Deeds Registry was able to live up to its reputation and continue sending out Searches by return of post. Many of the Deeds of the period must bear my signature. On Memorials we used a facsimile signature on a rubber stamp which I still have in my desk now.

(Note, 2017: I sent the inking stamp, or one of them, to East Riding Archives in December 1998. They have also got the original edition of these notes, all with reference zDDX968).

At first, I used to go back to Etton to sleep. But Mrs Opie began to feel the strain and suggested I should go to the Murrays at Bishop Burton. The Murrays' children were grown up; their son was in submarines,

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and their daughter Elizabeth married to an Air Force Officer (later, Air-Commodore Manning) - her daughter Esther is my god-daughter. Mr Murray had been a notable scholar but both he and his wife were now elderly. I did my utmost not to burden them more than absolutely necessary.

Bishop Burton seemed an even more feudal village than Etton. Most of the land was owned by a squire and managed by an agent called Mr Young who lived in a nice house behind the Mere. I never met the squire; but he was said to indulge in cock-fighting.

Fortunately my law-clerk Miss Wray was still around to help with the Quarter Sessions although there was much less of this to do.

I took my Army camp bed into the office and put it beside my desk. When air raids became frequent I slept there most nights with the telephone beside me. People flocked out of Hull. All sorts of buildings were adapted for emergency accommodation, and we were criticised by an MP for housing people in pigsties!!

Firewatches were established in Beverley but we escaped serious bombing, as Hull took the brunt. One particular raid knocked out the Hull Civil Defence HQ itself, putting the control system out of action and killing the controller. The Regional Commissioner, General Sir William Bartholomew, ordered the Clerk to the County Council to go in and take control and re-establish Civil Defence. This Stephenson did, with his customary efficiency as an organiser. But I do not think he went to bed for three nights. During one of these days I had to get in touch with him and I can remember driving a little Austin Seven car as far into Hull as I could, among all the debris. I had to park in a side street as I could go no further, and continue on foot, until I found TS and the new HQ. For this service in Hull Stephenson was given the CBE, which he richly deserved, but the incident is not recorded in the book "Hull at War".

My own nearest contact with disaster occurred late in the war when we thought air raids were a thing of the past. I was now lodging at 4 Norfolk Street, and, at about 4 am the Air Raid Warning suddenly sounded. I got up hastily, put on a pair of shoes and my army greatcoat, and rode my old Raleigh bike down the darkened North Bar as quickly as I could go. Just as I got to the Bar I heard a plane and realised that it was firing. I lay close by the wall of Bar House, the bike having been left to fall in the gutter. I confess I was rather shaken as I cycled on my way to the Control Room. And on my way back I saw that the red pillar box

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immediately on the other side of the road to where I had lain had been hit, cut open and unfolded like a book.

Whether from that raid or another, St.Mary's church in Beverley still has a pew containing a bullet embedded in the wood.

I had moved into Beverley after spending about a year at Bishop Burton. At 4 Norfolk Street, Mrs Lambert had a large late Victorian house and it was rather a select area near the Police HQ and the Octagon - part of the old House of Correction. Mrs Lambert had been a farmer's wife and now had one or two boarders. She had an old servant called Lily Rispin, with whom I kept up for years, and she fed us well, adding to our rations an occasional egg or rabbit from farming friends.

One Saturday I cycled to Hornsea with the young Roman Catholic family who lived opposite. It was the only time I ever went there, and we found a gap in the wire entanglements and were able to picnic on the sands. All of us were surprised and impressed by the lake or "mere" behind the town.

My friends in Beverley included John Hare and his wife Mary, and the Lloyds (Molescroft). Geoffrey Lloyd was the nephew of Doctor Lloyd, of Southwell. He was the Engineer in charge of Hull Docks. There were also the Thornleys, the Tardrews (?) (Vicar of St. Mary's), the Beachells (Wold farmer and tenant of Lord Hotham), the Huzzards, the Sedgwicks, and many others, who flash into my mind. But above all I have the clearest memory of and the most respect for, Thomas Davis Fenby. Fenby succeeded Earl Halifax as Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and made it his business to tighten things up. He was already Vice Chairman of the County Council, and though he was a Liberal he worked in harmony with the Chairman, Colonel Jefferson, who was a Conservative. Harmony became doubly important during the war, because an Emergency Committee was set up, which met at frequent intervals, and which I normally attended.

Fenby was important to me in many ways. He saw me as the future Clerk of the County Council, and in the meantime appointed me as clerk to a committee of which he was chairman, which regulated roadmen's wages. I enjoyed the meetings in the various northern capitals - Newcastle, Durham, Carlisle, and the TUC people greatly respected Fenby.

As the County Solicitor I had to become involved in anything which looked as if it might lead to litigation. One such was the pollution of the river Hull. I had to go up the river in a small barge to see what was

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happening. The Driffield Canal was acting as a sewer, but Driffield had expanded a good deal and there was also a large wartime hospital.

After the war I acted as the Returning Officer for the Holderness Division in the General Election, but by the time that was all over I was coming to the conclusion that I did not want to continue indefinitely in my position. What might be called Home Support was lacking, and I had no really close friends to share my troubles with - except Sir Godfrey, and I did not want to bring him into it, as he would have been greatly embarrassed.

My relationship with Stephenson had become an uneasy one. I respected his great administrative skill. But his positions seemed to have gone to his head. I heard constant complaints about it but could do little without being disloyal. TS spent his time motoring around the County attending ceremonies, with his secretary who was now suspected of being his mistress.

I had also become rather worried about my elderly parents, neither of whom was very well, and my father was I feared starting to be unable to look after his own affairs. I was fairly confident that his friend and solicitor W.N. (Noel) Parr would be glad to have me and that I would be able to take over the Southwell Diocesan Registry when he wanted to give that up. So after agonising over the decision for some weeks I made up my mind to resign, and wrote to the Clerk accordingly.

The very next day the County Council Chairman Colonel Dunnington Jefferson suddenly walked into my office holding the letter in which I had given in my notice. He sat himself down opposite me at my desk and said he would not accept my notice for twenty four hours to give me the opportunity to change my mind! He made it clear that he wanted me to stay, and that it was a "moral certainty" that I should take the place of Stephenson when he retired - which would be due in about four years. I thanked Col. Jefferson, but I can remember saying that I did not think Stephenson would in fact retire in four years time. Since he was enjoying himself so much I thought he would probably stay as long as he could! Although I spent another sleepless night, I decided not to withdraw my notice.

I have thought back many times about that decision. It completely altered my life. I was on the threshold of an interesting and perhaps successful career, and I threw it up. I could have easily managed the work, if I had a home base in Beverley, or if I had married. But there was no likelihood of that, and as I have said, I had no-one to consult and did not like to consult Sir Godfrey. In any event, he could not have known how Stephenson had changed since his time.

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Before my notice expired I must have been due some holiday; and I took Dr Thornley to Eire. Petrol was still strictly rationed, but 1 had enough of my ration saved to get a full tank which would get my Armstrong Siddeley to County Donegal, and the Irish Government offered a special ration for visitors (I had applied for this, but the coupons had not yet arrived). When we got there, to a little place called Ardara, my tank was nearly empty, and I asked the hotel proprietor if he could let us have a few gallons unofficially until my coupons arrived. To my surprise he said we could have as much as we wanted, and that petrol was so plentiful that they had given up bothering with the coupons in those parts. We did some fishing, I know, but since I have forgotten all the details of the holiday, I suppose I must have been very tired, what with the war and with the strain of my decision to leave Beverley. I know we found everyone in Eire very friendly. The IRA were not active then.

SOUTHWELL AGAIN

So in the Autumn of 1945 I returned to Southwell. I went to Nottingham to see Mr Parr, and also Dick Ford, who had come out of the army having been a Gunner, stationed locally. I did not know any of the office staff, except Mr Stokes who had been Mr Parr's cashier and had handled our income tax for many years. It was agreed that I should come for a three month trial period on a small salary.

The office was in an old Georgian house up a little yard off Friar Lane. I occupied a small dark room on the ground floor, to the right of the front door as one entered. It had been Mr Morley's office. There were no amenities, except an antiquated internal telephone system and a book case with not much in it. But the old house had been adapted for office use, with two large strongrooms, one downstairs for tin boxes and one upstairs for deeds and account books.

The office accounts were written up by hand in copper plate writing by Mr Stokes, or by Mr Lenton, the Ford cashier, who sat opposite one another in a room upstairs. Behind my room was the Diocesan Registry, occupied by Mr Sims and Miss Young - she had been doing the job since she was a girl in the then Registrar Doyley Ransom's office. Leading off the Diocesan Registry was another small strongroom which was sacred to church stuff.

(1998 Note: In ‘A Long Glance Back..." Richard wrote "I arrived on the scene ….. knowing that Mr Parr.... would like me to take his place. So did Canon Lee as both had known me since boyhood. Thus I had plenty of opportunity to find out how the Diocese worked and to learn some law which was quite different from that for which I had been trained. Gradually I began to do some of the work which Mr Parr had done, as he soon made me his Deputy.” Richard did of course succeed Noel Parr as Diocesan Registrar.).

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For some time I did not really have enough to do, so I soon learned all about the Registry department. Mr Parr gave me various things to do as they came in, and I also managed to get the odd Quarter Sessions' defence from KTM's Shire Hall staff, though I found that time-wasting and profitless.

The Ford family "ran" the racecourse. When there were to be races it was usual to apply for an Occasional Licence. Once or twice I appeared in debt cases in the County Court, and once before Denning in the High Court - a case which we lost. Coal Nationalisation threw up interesting cases. But on the whole "law life" was less demanding than in Local Government, and I felt like a fish out of water, rather as Godfrey Macdonald must have felt when he arrived at Beverley.

A few of the men whom I had known when I was an articled clerk, or whom I knew, were around, notably Fred Sketchley and David Crane, both of whom had spent much of the war in prison camps. There was also Charles Ransom, who was farming not far away, and Tom Forman Hardy at the Guardian Evening Post. He was so much under his mother's thumb that he soon moved to Hardy's brewery at Kimberley.

Michael Argyle, now practising as a barrister, Charles Hanson, Norman Hanson, Myles Hildyard, Assheton Craven Smith Milnes, Philip Lyth - naturally new people emerged from the shadows, and some of them solidified and became friends. One was the notable scholar and writer Henry Thorold, whose family home at Marston, filled with its beautiful pictures and antiques, became a place almost of pilgrimage, particularly after he retired from his job at Lancing College and came to live there permanently. And Henry’s cousin Anne Acland, my childhood friend, went back to live at nearby Syston with her husband Ian Gordon.

(Note, 2017: I was at Lancing when Henry Thorold taught there. He would famously call boys Sir. “What kind of car do you drive, Sir?” “I don't drive a Car, Sir, I drive a Rolls-Royce.” It was thirty years old and apparently received no maintenance whatever. I am pleased to have known such a character, and especially that my own children may just remember him, as we called on him once at Marston. From him also I have the phrase “preserved by neglect.”).

Some of the people who swam into my ken at the office also became friends, none more so than William Spalding. I knew him first as one of the owners of Griffin & Spalding, and old and important Nottingham shop. He was a trustee of Mary Dickinson's Charity, of which I was clerk. He became a friend despite being about twice my age, and supported me on an occasion when the other trustees went against my strong advice. He died on the same day as my mother and left me a generous legacy but kept me busy as I was also his executor. He knew, and knew that I knew, that I would earn the legacy in the personal care and attention that I gave to his estate and that of his widow.

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Another was Mrs Fowler, whose husband had been the Colonel of the 8th Foresters at the time of the Kaiser's War. She lived at Leamington, and died there, leaving me with two elderly servants and a dog to care for. And a third was Mrs Dudley Forman, whose beautiful house at the top of the Park was full of lovely things which she had to keep selling off in order to maintain her household - and the house belonged to her late husband's trustees and had a leaking roof!

A more personal worry arose because of my old friendship with Pete Gauld. He practised as a doctor in Staffordshire and had two children. Then Pete's wife died suddenly. Near to him lived a divorced lady, a talented musician and a communist, who had a girl the same age as Pete's son Colin, and an older boy. She looked after Pete's children and eventually, he married her. Now, I was his first wife's Trustee. I held a small fund of her money for her children. Then out of the blue Pete's new wife telephoned me one day and asked if I had seen him (he was apt to call in from time to time). But that day I had not seen him. A few hours later she rang again to say that Pete was dead. His car had hit a tree. She later remarried her original husband, of whom Colin, fortunately, had become very fond.

A while later Mary and I invited Colin, and his step-sister Bridget, to stay at Riber, and I went to Matlock Station to meet their train from London. As I waited there was an announcement, "If Mr Beaumont is on the Station, will he please go to the Station Master's office for an important message." The message was short and shattering. Bridget's father had dropped dead. I was to put the children on the next train back.

By this time, the train was coming in. I met the children, said nothing to them of the message, and drove them up the hill to Littlemoor Wood Farm. After supper and a game, when the children were going to bed, Mary and I agreed that I would tell Colin and she would tell Bridget. Both these poor children cried themselves to sleep that night, and in the morning we had to send them home to London.

Meanwhile Southwell affairs had loomed large in my life. W.A. James began to fail after the war, and eventually died. Provost Hugh Heywood asked me once or twice to find things in the Minster Library, or to get information, and after a while I suggested he should leave me the key. That was how I became the Minster Librarian, though I suppose the Chapter confirmed the appointment. There was no-one else to do it, and I spent a great deal of my spare time learning what was there and studying the early records.

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Quite soon Hugh Heywood warned me that Sir Frank Stenton wanted to see the "White Book" - the Minster's most valuable archive. But after a search in the Library, I had to report to the Provost that it was not there! And only then did he remember he had lent it to Nottingham University - without entering anything up in the appropriate book.

Sir Frank Stenton came, and since he actually wanted to size me up, I invited him to The Burgage for tea, producing the White Book for him in a tattered brown paper parcel. The boards were loose and so were many of the vellum leaves. Stenton shuddered, and said we were not fit to have it in such a state, and that he would take it to the Bodleian Library to be properly restored. Which he did.

As and when I could get the money, I was now set on a continuous programme of archive restoration. I acted as Minster Librarian for nearly forty years - with only a short gap in the middle when a lay clerk took over following a difference between me and Provost Heywood - who would allow Grammar School boys into the Minster Library unsupervised. After a time the lay clerk left, and since there was no-one else available, I took over again. I produced various booklets, and recorded what I could in and around the Minster, including those of the gravestones in the churchyard as were still legible (this had never been done before). The "Monument Book" was the bedrock on which Mr Cripps filled in the details which the Church Commissioners required from every Cathedral; and Southwell was the first to produce the inventory. In fact I was told that York, which has thousands of monuments, copied our method. I also tried to list the Masons' Marks in a basic way.

I was glad to be able to hand over the Minster Library to Harold Brooke - whose modern mind comprehended computers, enabling him to produce lists of things as they should be listed nowadays, which I could not have done. But sadly, I attended Harold's funeral a week before writing this paragraph (April 1997).

MY FATHER AND MOTHER

(This section was written at the suggestion of Mary Oakeley in December 1997, after Mary Beaumont had died and only a month or so before the end of Richard's own life).

When I returned from Beverley in 1945 my father was approaching his eightieth birthday. He had been born on 7th October 1865, the second son of George Beaumont, of Bridgford Hill, and his wife Emma (nee Heycock). My father went to a "Dame School" at Leominster, and later

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to a Preparatory School (Richard did not know where), and then on to J. Gould's house (later Mitre) at Repton.

Although my father was a magnificent sportsman he was forty-three by the time he married, so he was in his fifties by the time I was old enough to play cricket or other games. I can remember taking over a couple of his bats, and how they stung my hands badly on a hard hit. He once put on his whites (he had been a member of Notts. Amateurs) to bowl balls to me in the garden. But his real passion was shooting. I still possess some of his records of shoots starting from 1894-53, showing that in that year he was shooting with his uncle Tom.

(Uncle Tom: Thomas Elliott Beaumont (d.1899) who lived at Kenwood, Sheffield).

The woods shot were at Daneswood, Heydon, and Cawston, the parties including "Bedford" and "G.B." In 1894-5 they shot 1,415 pheasants and 302 partridges! Later shoot records show visits to Scotland with the Beardmores in 1904-5 and there were more of these later on, as my mother told me. It was on these trips that my father will have met the Tullis family amongst others.

(Bedford: means W.J. Bedford, whose wife’s mother [or grandmother) Ann Charlotte was a Beaumont - sister to Richard (of Old Trafford), George (Richard’s grandfather). Uncle Tom, and Henry (of Grantham). It was from W.J. Bedford (whose family ran John Bedford & Sons Limited, a Sheffield steel and tools manufacturer) that Richard's father bought a “picture by Poole" for £23 in June 1923. Many of us admired the picture, of the Eiger, the Monch, and the Jungfrau. It hung in the dining rooms at The Burgage and Popely’s Piece.)

(G.B. might perhaps be Richard's grandfather, who died in 1899)

Records of about 1905 show local shoots on Manvers land at Saxondale, and from 1925-38 the Stapleford Syndicate which was run by Captain Aldred. Members included Beevor, Branston, Higgs, Kendal, Kinmont, Nicholson, and Warwick. My father's accounts show much detail, including about how much of the game was given away locally. But, sadly, I cannot find anything about the Oxton shoot which he shared with Higgs. At Edwalton and Normanton by Plumtree my father usually picked old George Parr up and took him to walk up fields of roots by the Midland line "signal box field" - it was horrid walking.

(Note, 2017: The shooting and fishing account books were lent to Nottinghamshire Archives, but are now back in the Family archive along with much other material. I thought it best to keep everything together, so that I can look at it all, though in fact I have not yet studied the shooting records. I found that the County Archive wanted to “pick and choose” somewhat).

My father also very much enjoyed fishing. For some years he looked after the river Greet fishing club at Southwell. This club fished the water between the "Silk Mill" and the "Upton Crossing". My father was not quite as good at fishing as he was at shooting, and he was certainly not as good at casting a fly as my Grandfather Hacking or Uncle Cuthbert. My father's irritation when he saw no fish was only mitigated by the satisfaction of smoking one of his nose-warming short pipes (of which he had bought a gross!), with the added bonus that the smoke tended to drive away midges.

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I do not know whether my father had ever been in love before he met my mother. I doubt it. I never heard anything. There was certainly no scandal in my father's case. He was probably very shaken by the by misbehaviour of his eldest brother, the "scapegrace" Charles.

My mother was a very different character to my father. She was always quiet and unexcitable, and most caring to her children. She used to maintain that she had never had a proper education! But when my Grandfather was Vicar of Cromford, she did go by train every day to the Derby High School for Girls. When the family moved to Chesterfield he sent her to an up-market school at Bedford, where she became ill (because she was not being looked after properly), and had to be brought home.

(I have the Mozart sonatas that she was given as a school prize at Derby in 1893. / think both Richard's parents were accomplished pianists. Grandfather's accounts show that he was renting a piano when he was an articled clerk).

She learned, somewhere, to play the piano quite well, and she kept it up even when her fingers stiffened with arthritis. She tried to teach me to play, but in a typical lazy Beaumont way I never kept it up!

Johnny's death devastated my mother and she took a long time to get over it; indeed she got pneumonia, and I wonder whether it partially a consequence of her having lost a son. She was a very good cook, and also managed the household affairs with skill, including the servants, when we had any (which we certainly did in Nottingham). At Wollaton, my mother had more work to do, especially since she had to go into Nottingham to shop, a trip which would take most of the morning there and back, and she would return with her purchases in a basket on the front handlebars of her bicycle.

My mother's death in May 1963 was a blow to me (his father had died in 1952). Though it was not unexpected - we knew that her heart was failing - it happened one morning, quite suddenly, in the Hacking manner. By coincidence William Spalding (aged about 92) died the same day, and since I was his executor as well as my mother's I was kept very busy for a while.

And a mother is quite irreplaceable.

AND LASTLY

(This last section was the most incomplete)

The most important event of all occurred in May 1960 when I married Mary Becher, in Southwell Minster. Of course, I had known Mary for very many years, since children's party days, and I had always known and liked her widowed mother Vera, her brother John, who came to see me at Malvern before the war, and her younger sister Joan. Indeed, I had spent part of a pre-war summer holiday as a guest of the Bechers at Arisaig, where Joan Becher later inherited an estate.

(1998 Note, amended 2017: Gertrude Veronica Gale. Her father Henry (a talented water colour painter who changed his name from Coore to Gale) died when she was a child, and Vera and several sisters moved to Southwell with their mother, who married Dr Henry Handford. Vera married John Pickard Becher in 1911. Vera lost her husband and her two Handford half-brothers in the First War and her son in the Second. I remember Vera Becher very well and also Richard & Mary's wedding, for which I had time out of school).

Arisaig was a place which was to become important and familiar to me later, when I would visit most years with Mary to stay with Joan. More important to me still, however, is the land which I bought in Derbyshire. The hills near Matlock, and the walks among them, have always entranced me since I was a schoolboy at Riber, and one morning early in 1957, in the train from Rolleston Junction to Nottingham, I spotted a small advertisement of the forthcoming sale by auction of High Leas Farm.

I remembered High Leas well from my school days, so I decided to go and have a look. It was very run down, but it has a wonderful position looking south down the Derwent Valley. The landlord, lately deceased, must have been a bad one, and the farm suffered from lack of water. The tenant, Mr Woodward, was elderly and rather unprogressive. The house needed attention. I decided to attend the auction, on 24 July 1957, and bid if there seemed little competition. I bought the place, and the adjoining part of Littlemoor Wood!

My first step was to consult Tom Cartwright who, with his wife, farmed the adjoining Low Leas Farm. He put me onto Mr Brumwell, a local builder who eventually became a good friend. We made the house at High Leas wind and watertight. Later, with the help of a water-diviner - a Wizard - we bored, and found water. And I added to and improved the farm buildings in various ways, with the aid of some grants.

I have mentioned Littlemoor Wood Farm, which lies the other side of the wood and only half a mile from Riber castle, in connection with Pete Gauld's children. A few years later I bought this place as well. After a while Mary and I started using Littlemoor Wood Farm as a holiday home, but after we gave up occupying it we have leased it, with its fields, to Simon Groom.

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I also bought the fields and farm buildings of Low Leas, with a yew tree - then dead-looking, but now thriving - which a Forestry Commission expert has told me is nine hundred years old.

At first, after our marriage, Mary and I lived in a flat created upstairs in The Burgage - in what had been the nursery part of the house. But after my mother died we took over the whole house - and the staff - and lived there until Mrs Becher's death in 1970. This occurred whilst Mary and I were holidaying in Trinidad to celebrate my retirement as a partner in Perry Parr and Ford.

Mrs Becher had moved from her old house "Minster Lodge" into a smaller one called "Popely's Piece" and it seemed sensible for us to move there. So I sold The Burgage, not without reluctance (and at the wrong time, in view of what very soon happened to Southwell property prices!). But I kept the gardener's cottage where Selby still lived, and the kitchen garden, which he and I shared for a time, and it kept us both active and happy. After Selby died his wife continued to live there until she left to go into a Nursing Home in Newark, and I sold the cottage. It has, with its various outbuildings, been restored and made into quite a pleasant house which, as I write this, I see is now advertised for sale. Strangely, John and Angela Radford, the current owners of The Burgage, have got that up for sale as well, as they are finding it too big. So I could buy the whole property again! But it would not turn the clock back. And, most sadly, the very fine Black Hamburgh vine which Selby cherished, and which year after year produced the finest grapes anyone could imagine, has been demolished. However, John Radford has done his best to preserve The Burgage's ancient mulberry tree, and has propped up its branches more than ever we did.