I suppose my first memory of Yarde was being allowed down from the tea table, going outside and being beaten to the ground by the geese just outside the back door. I was rescued by Auntie Hilda. Hilda was one of Grandma and Grandad’s children, who was a spinster and lived at home. The last time I was putting some flowers on Auntie Hilda’s grave, I heard her say ‘you budevel (beautiful) boy’ and I thought I wish she had been appreciated more for those big embarrassing kisses and for her unstinting care and love that she showered on all her nephews and nieces.
I used to love visiting Yarde, the table was always laid up with lovely home made food and plenty of thick cream. Grandma’s bread and soft homemade butter was cut so thinly that the butter came through the bread and it was hard to tell which was the buttered side.
On Sundays there would be ten or twelve at the table. I remember being allowed to crawl out under the table and would go out and root through the household dump for treasures. I still cast an eye over skips to see if there is anything useful in them.
Once, having been let out from the tea table, I decided to put some water in dad’s car with a tin from the dump and water from a puddle which I poured into the petrol tank! Of course we didn’t get very far and dad had to borrow his brother Sid’s Austin Seven to get us home. It was a foggy night and about a quarter of a mile from home, when turning a sharp corner, the front offside wheel went up a rising bank and turned the car on to its side. I remember dad stood on the side of the car, helping to get mum out.
With hindsight, life appeared very simple then, but of course was very hard work. Everything was done by hand and anything that needed carrying was on your back. There was no electricity or mains water and the house was heated with open fires. The cooking was done on an oil fired stove or over the open fire in the kitchen.
Rosalind, my sister, and I were staying there when the stove caught fire on Christmas morning, with flames licking up to the cupboard where the shotgun cartridges were kept – lots of panic, but it was finally put out.
During one summer there was a plague of what were thought to be black beetles that came out at night from around the open fire in the kitchen (they were probably cockroaches). Grandad caught and kept two hedgehogs in a little run. They were let out when everyone went to bed and this continued until all the pests were gone.
I remember Grandad as quite a reserved person who I wish I could have known for longer..to know him as a young man rather than as a child. He used to smoke St Julian tobacco in his pipe which I loved the smell of and would know to this day if someone was smoking it.
We knew Grandma more because we had her for longer. She was a kindly, wonderful Grandma, who I don’t remember ever telling me off for anything I did. I still have a dictionary she gave me inscribed ‘For a good boy, to Colin with love from Grandma’. She loved doing crosswords. It was she who would occasionally take us to Bideford by train from Yarde on what is now the Tarka Trail I remember wondering how on earth my Grandma Britton knew my Grandma Cottle and even where she lived in Bideford! She also seemed to spend ages talking to other ladies at the panier market, who of course she would have known as she herself used to sell butter and cream there.
I think food parcels must have been sent from Canada as occasionally a large multi coloured stick of rock would be given to Rosalind and myself.
An abiding memory for Rosalind and myself was when Uncle Frank and Auntie Elsie (dad’s sister) would call in at Yarde on the way to a Hunt Ball (Uncle Frank was Master of the Torrington Farmers Hunt and for a time was the longest serving Hunt Master in the country). We were amazed and in awe that anyone could look and smell so good. We had never seen anyone look so grand!
Grandad and Grandma had ten children. It is said that Grandma agreed to marry Grandad on condition was that they never smacked their children. My parents never smacked me, I never smacked mine and they never smacked theirs. Fairness, thrift, honesty and hard work was the order of the day and it has served the family well and has been ongoing.
