The Story Of A Boy From Misterton

I am often tempted to say that my life has been uneventful. Perhaps if we are looking for startling and exciting events I could say that I have experienced very few such. But some years ago I wrote on scraps of paper, and at random, and in very brief note form about my life as a boy and as a teenager. I wrote names of village characters whom I shall never forget. I wrote scrappy sentences about village events some of which recurred annually, and some which were of only passing importance. Then there were various impressions I got, possibly wrong impressions, about people, about happenings and about buildings. I am quite sure the Misterton of my day has changed a great deal, in fact I was privileged only recently to meet a lady who lives at Misterton, and on the train from King’s Cross to Peterborough I was able to ask her a few questions about people who were my contemporaries, and about the village in general. I am hoping in these pages to create something of a picture of my fellow villagers, and of their lives, their habits and customs at a time so different from the mad rush of today with its computers and television, its motor-cars and Inter-City trains.

I was born in 1907 - on August 25^th to be precise. My birthplace was the end cottage in a row of tiny dwellings known as Draper’s Row. My father Thomas Gagg had left it a bit late to get married - he was 38 and my mother was 35. I am told that the first thing that happened to me was at the local Feast - Sept 14^th Holy Cross Day, when an oldish person named Sarah Hornby took me on the “switchbacks”. I was about 20 days old, and when my mother heard of this I believe she was somewhat upset. Anyway I survived this whizzing around in space, and grew up to be a healthy boy, despite the fact that my parents were poor.

My father at that time worked in a brickyard, digging clay and loading it into little barrows which were clipped onto a metal rope and were conveyed on tiny “railway lines” to the brickyard itself, ready for cleaning and pugging. Occasionally we, my mother and I would walk the couple of miles to see my father at work and to take him something to eat and drink. (Bottles of cold tea were welcome drinks in those days for men working outdoors, in brickyards or in the fields.) He often had to dig clay in shocking conditions, sometimes over the boot tops in slush. For this work he received on average about 15/- or 75p per week. He paid no National Insurance - the scheme was only in its infancy in the years prior to the Great War. If the weather was too bad for him to work, he received no pay for days lost. He invariably cycled to work - he was very proud of his bike and kept it well oiled, well shod and very clean.

His buddy in the clay field was a man of upright character, a firm supporter of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and named Joseph Cousins. Joseph always walked to and from work. He and his sister Hannah lived together in what was then regarded as a modern house, and I was always welcome there for it was only a matter of yards from my home in Draper’s Row. The house always smelled of herbs, for Joe and Hannah were collectors and growers of many culinary and medicinal herbs, many of which were hung in bunches from the ceilings of the kitchen and the living room to dry. They had a remedy for almost anything, and would offer to their neighbours, including us, many dried concoctions. There was always a strong smell of apples and other fruits about the place, and I seem to recall that I never came away without an apple or some other fruit in season.

Those were the days when gardens and orchards were so important for wages were barely enough to keep one in the bare necessities. We had only a small garden at Draper’s Row, but my father gardened it very economically, so we were never short of potatoes which he harvested into what we called a ‘pie’ and what is more widely known as a ‘clamp’, in which the potatoes were heaped up, covered with a thick layer of straw, and then enclosed in earth dug from around the clamp. Dad also grew celery plants from seed, and these when tiny plantlets were sold to local farmers to plant out into beds. I can see the women now, each with a sack to kneel on, planting the tiny celery plants with a dibber, and being paid so much a thousand for their back-breaking task. But back to our struggle to “make ends meet”. My grandfather had a shop near the church - it is still there so I am told - and he had no help except for a boy who ran errands and helped after school and on Saturdays with various jobs.

My mother used to go each morning to do various chores like washing the shop floor, scrubbing counters, preparing bacon and cheese, and doing those jobs which it was considered women were better at than men. Bacon came in huge wooden boxes, packed in salt and these flitches or sides of bacon had to be washed until they were free of salt and then hung up to dry before they were fit for sale. My mother found this job very trying in the winter time for the salt affected her hands, which would be red and sore. Cheeses had to have a muslin skin and a wax coating removed before they were brought into the shop for sale. Grandfather sold only one kind of cheese, from Canada or America I believe it came. (This is the sort now referred to as “Mousetrap” cheese, but I am of the opinion it was in no way inferior to the many other cheeses on sale only in the towns).

Grandfather sold butter, which came in tubs, and the most popular and the cheapest was called Kiel butter - it came from that part of Germany more famed because of the Kiel canal. He sold only a limited range of biscuits, and these I remember were from Huntley & Palmer. The biscuits were all plain - grandfather would not countenance the sale of the new-fangled cream biscuits. The only relaxation of his “plain biscuit” rule was at Christmas, when he had a box or two of what are now called “Iced Gem” small biscuits with a rosette of coloured sugar icing, and these were given to the children of his customers. I find I shall do a bit of wandering in this account, this narrative, I have already forgotten to say that Grandfather rewarded my mother with a small weekly package of sugar, butter, lard, cheese etc. - nothing of great value - and this was in lieu of wages. But it helped. I can remember coming home from school and complaining that I was hungry and being given a slice of bread with jam spread on it or bread and dripping, to stage me on till father came home from work at 5.30 (or when it was dark early in winter).

My grandfather was a very stern old man. I fancy I can just remember him. He was not a man for showing affection, but he had some very fixed ideas as to what was right and wrong, and he lived by those rules. He was very keen on religion, but he never attended a place of worship. He read instead the sermons of Charles Spurgeon, a fashionable Baptist minister of Edwardian, or even Victorian days, who preached powerful sermons from a large imposing chapel in Southwark known as Spurgeon’s Tabernacle. He would quote passages from “Mr Spurgeon” to his customers some of whom no doubt regarded him as fanatical. I imagine him as a very straightforward village dealer - he sold drapery as well as groceries and hardware. He had learned the art of blending tea, and he was famed locally for his tea. He sold, I am informed four poun

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