The Hunt and Early Sabs
This is not a celebration of the local fox hunt, I'll get that straight from the beginning. Please read on, as it is an account of foxhunting by a country boy.
Shapwick was host to the local hunt on Boxing Day. Once, the showbiz personality, Jimmy Edwards, joined on horseback. The gatherings at Cross was, to be fair, an "event" in the Village year, and indeed a very colourful spectacle.
As I recall, hunting was mostly carried out on the land farmed by the Tory family, and the Hyde Farm fields.
Fox earths were encouraged to flourish in the copse called "Wills Wood" - this was "Fox Covert" to us, however - and in other locations also, no doubt. Nurture, then kill on the basis of being a pest. Odd way of thinking.
The threat of "Foxey" to country folk livelihoods was made very clear to me as my Dad and I inspected the bloodied remains of our chickens after a nightly visit from our red friend.
Despite this, I could never see the sense of hunting the ruddy thing. Hunting is not the most efficient way of control. It is simply a social event, built around the hunt. My Uncle and other chums began to find ways of fighting back. We took actions to disrupt, in some small way, the hunt...
Before the hunt set off from Cross, we would be very busy with binder twine, wrapping it round and round the various gateways. This really frustrated the huntsmen, as they had to dismount and untie or cut the twine! And all this time, "Foxey" was getting away...
Another time, we were leaning over a gate and "Foxey" can puffing along just a yard from our feet. A minute or two later, and "Johnny Hunt" rides up, and bellows "Now then, boys, which way did the fox run?". To a man (or boy) we all pointed the same direction. You can guess "Foxey" had gone the other way!
We probably did little to save "Foxey" and his chums, but I feel I did something and at least, I can claim to have been an early "hunt sab", although the phrase had not been invented then.
So, how can a country boy claim to be anti-hunt - well, I can say that there were many in my Village who did not agree with the hunt, but because they were employed by people who hunt, and live in tied cottages courtesy of people that hunt, it might have prevented free speech and action. Also, the country way of life is very different from the county way of life, which is what hunting is.
If foxes must be controlled by hunting with hounds (and I disagree), then do it but why turn it into a social event?
Stag hunting on Exmoor and the Quantocks is another example of the social county etiquette getting in the way of reality. If it is so efficient, why do they shoot when culling in Scotland? Why, when the tufters are out early to spot the "lame" stag, these guys are close enough to shoot the poor thing there and then. But, no, they just have to hunt it later when the poor sad things on horseback have breakfasted. Sad.
I will end my anti-hunt spiel by admitting to those who turned up to shoot pheasant one misty morning only to find no birds set up by the beaters...the boys went through the kale field half an hour earlier and put the quarry into flight and away from trouble.
Enjoyment through the death of another of God's creatures? Very sad and rather worrying...
The Great Blizzard
Many will tell of the Winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest, snowiest and longest of them all!
Shapwick's southerly climate was no protection at all and it suffered along with most of the Country.
As I recall, the first flakes of snow fell on Boxing Day, and did not let up for that night, or the next day or the next night. That gave us quite a dollop of snow. And then the Blizzard struck. So much snow that the drifts filled the lanes from hedgetop to hedgetop. Opening the door between the outside passageway of our house revealed a wall of snow as high as the door.
And then, around New Year, the frosts set in. Night after night after night. Forming a thick crust of solid frozen snow that you had to jump really hard to crack through.
Later, from the sky came snow pellets, little round bits of snow, somewhere between sleet and hailstones. And that stuck to the crust.
It was, of course, a white paradise for the village children. Snowballs and snowmen were popular whilst the snow was still fresh, but impossible after the first frosts; skating on the frozen flooded area in the corner of Conker field (no skates of course, but wellies were very versatile!) - run like hell across the snowy field down the slope towards the ice and see how far you could slide.
The only traffic were the odd tractor that could manage to get about on parts of the lanes. Most stock was indoors thankfully, and food was nearby in hayricks and barns. Water was a bit of a problem however. I do not think us kids really understood the hardship that the farmers were undergoing - to us it was great fun.
Because the village was cut off, the school bus could not visit. So, no school - I swear we missed a whole term but think now it must have been a half term, still, quite a few weeks off school!
After a week or two, someone send a crawler tractor - a bulldozer - with a big metal blade up front, to carve through the drifts on the Badbury road. Dismay, dismay... But wait, although the drifts had been swept aside, the blade had left a shiny frozen surface as clear as glass and as slippery as ice - it was ice! Great, now nothing, even a tractor, could travel that road. And so the school bus stayed away!
Badbury Rings after snowfall is an ideal place for sledging. Three ramparts in succession, gave the chance to sledge from the top one, down into the dip, up and over the middle one, down again and up over the lower bank, and away across the sloping downland. Could we do it? well, we tried all kinds of sledge (all homemade of course) but doing all three proved impossible.
One day, we were joined by a local well-off family who had little Johnny perched atop a splendidly varnished super-sledge that must a cost a bob or two. And it did go well too, not enough to do the three banks though. We had brought along a bit of old corrugated-iron sheet, with one end curled up a bit. Our earlier efforts had finally disintegrated after punishing runs (bear in mind also that the sledges were hauled up from the village and back again - a round trip of two and a half miles). The bit of tin was all we could find...
Still, we took the sheet to the top rampart and joined the nobs who looked somewhat down their noses at our "sledge" (and at us too!). Little Johnny set off on his Rolls and did quite well. Now it was our turn. Two aboard and one shoving from behind - and off we went. Down and up, down and up, down and away. away across the downs. Yes! The moral? A bit of old tin beats the best money can buy! Has that feat been equalled since?
Igloos were constructed, not from nice blocks of snow, but of flatter chunks of frozen ice and snow, and these lasted long into the eventual thaw that arrived in February.
I know we old 'uns always say the winters were worst in the olden days, but has there been one like that since?
Demolition and Fire
During the Fifties and Sixties, quite a number of the older cob and thatch cottages along with most of the wooden and thatch barns were demolished.
It is probably true that the cottages were not really up to scratch and were not fit for living in. Even refurbishment into a "picture-postcard" cottage was impossible due to the cob walls, extremely thick made of chalk, straw and goodness knows what else, but no damp course meant demolition was the only course.
The actual demolition was a great sight for the Village kids, big lorries, crawler tractors, lots of workmen, and huge bonfires in the old gardens. All was removed or burnt, leaving just an empty area where once the building stood.
The following cottages were demolished in a short space of time...
- Granny Hathaway's next door to my house
- Granny Frampton's on the corner of Piccadilly
- Two cottages next to Tommy Cakes (unoccupied in the fifties)
- Granny Monkton's in Piccadilly
- The cottage at the corner of Ram Lane and High Street
- The Frampton's cottage just along Ram Lane
- The cottage along Ram Lane near the Pond
- The large farm house near the Church
- The thatched cottage along Stewart's Lane
- The barns at Kings Dairy and near School were destroyed by fire.
The first by stray straws during the burning of straw after harvest in the adjoining field that first caught light to the barn in the field, and then across the road to the complex of old barns.
The latter was a much earlier night time event, noticed by me through our back windows, when the whole sky was lit up by flames. And soon after, the Wimborne fire engine came clanging through, but nothing of the barn remained next day.
A beneficial by-product of the cottage removal was the opening up of the cottage gardens, with all the fruit available for scrumping, and excellent playgrounds and dens.
