Fareham Revisited

By Michael Stephenson

Fareham Revisited started out as a poem, which Michael Stephenson was inspired to write when he was reflecting on how much his home town had changed since the 1950s and 1960s. The poem and its sentiments struck a chord with so many people that he decided to write a book about Fareham that would evoke more of these memories. The book was privately published in 2004. This new revised and expanded edition will delight anyone who remembers the town in its heyday - and will also intrigue newcomers. Part-memoir and part-history, Fareham Revisited perfectly captures the allure of the shops and cafés along the ‘Golden Mile’, the alleyways or ‘drokes’, the old cottages, the market with its livestock, the coal barges at the Quay and the well-known characters, including dairy boss Tom Parker who drove around Fareham in a four-horse-power carriage, though his milkmen still used the horse-and-cart. For bus and railway enthusiasts this, too, is the perfect book, as the author casts an expert eye on the bus companies that plied their trade in Fareham, with their distinctive livery, and remembers the last days of steam trains, of which he had a privileged view, as the house in which his family lived was next to the railway line.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chaplin Books
• Release date: Jul 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781909183933

Michael Stephenson

Michael Stephenson is an expert on energy and climate change and has a unique mixture of experience in modern climate and energy science, policy, “deep time” climate science, and coal and petroleum geology. He has published two books on related subjects and over 80 peer-reviewed papers. His recently published book Shale gas and fracking: the science behind the controversy (Elsevier) won an ‘honourable mention’ at the Association of American Publishers PROSE awards in Washington DC in February 2016. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology. In addition, as Chief Scientist of the British Geological Survey, Michael Stephenson has represented UK science interests in energy, as well as providing extensive advice to the UK Government.

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Down on the Farm

Although I was born in the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley, near Southampton, in 1942 - a contentious ‘war-baby’ some would have you believe - I have always considered myself a ‘Farehamite’ on account of the fact that my parents were living in Fareham before and during the time of my mother’s pregnancy, and continued to do so after my arrival.

My mother was born Vera May Harbour, in Surrey Street, Portsmouth - a descendant of smugglers and other miscreants living on the Isle of Wight - but had been living in the Fareham village of North Wallington when she had moved there with her parents in the early 1920s. She was, at that time, the eldest of three children and her father, Leonard, was a Mechanician in the Royal Navy. He had joined the Navy as a stoker in 1909, and was present at the 1916 Battle of Jutland during World War I serving on HMS Narborough - or Narbrough, depending on which account you read – an ‘M’ Class Royal Navy destroyer and part of the 13th Flotilla.

There was a touch of irony in this situation because the Narborough had been built by Samuel White’s at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, the Island where my grandfather had been born in 1891. It was during that period that my grandfather was made-up to a Stoker Petty Officer therefore becoming, at that time I believe, the youngest ever Stoker in the history of the Royal Navy to achieve that Rate. Before the end of hostilities in 1918, he had been promoted to the Rate of Chief Stoker Petty Officer and just over two years later reached the rank of Mechanician. In 1931, following a distinguished career spanning 22 years, he was placed in the Royal Fleet Reserves; a position, I believe, only offered to men chosen for their impeccable character and outstanding record. His naval career, recorded for prosperity on vellum, is certainly worthy of that distinction. At the age of forty-eight he was still just young enough to be called up for World War II but he saw little active service at sea, spending most of his time onboard HMS Victory and at HMS Dolphin, Gosport. Grandfather left the Navy soon after World War II - rated then as a Chief Mechanician 1st Class - and found himself work at the shore-based HMS Collingwood as a civvy, retiring from that establishment during his sixty-fifth year. His association with the Royal Navy had lasted for 46 years.

My own father, Louis Stephenson, was in the military too; a soldier serving with the Royal Artillery at Fort Wallington. There was an interesting touch of déjà vu in this situation insofar as my grandfather’s sister - Rosa Ann Solari-Harbour - had previously occupied the home in Wallington that my mother and her parents had moved into in the 1920s. Her husband, John Solari, had also been stationed at Fort Wallington, where he was a Sergeant Major in the Company of military men billeted there at that time. He had been posted to India, so leaving the property free. John Solari had met his future wife whilst he was serving with the Royal Garrison of Artillery at Fort Sandown, on the Isle of Wight, as had his father before him. John Solari’s father - also named John - had been killed in action, but John the younger went on to see the end of his distinguished military service when he and his wife moved to Woking where he became a postmaster.

My father had first met my mother in 1935 when he and his colleagues were exercising their horses through the village streets; forays, no doubt, that would have brought an added bonus to the village gardens too. It is also known that the girls from the village - my mother included - provided a clothes-washing service for the soldiers at the Fort to make some extra income for their families. Not to be outdone, the boys of the village provided opposition to the soldiers during football matches that took place on the watermeadows adjacent to the village street - although I doubt that there was any monetary benefit to families in that respect other than to provide more washing for the girls to do!

The mere mention of the watermeadows brings to mind my own sporting memories of Wallington while I was living there with my grandparents around the 1950s: greyhound racing for one, and fun and frolics on the River Wallington for another. The greyhound racing took place on what I believe to have been an illicit track, which had been set up in a field adjacent to the Council Depot (a former tannery) and the nearby Charlie Collins coal-yard - although I doubt very much that Charlie took part in those proceedings. In any case I am sure the field belonged to Mr Hill, a local farmer. Anyway, the meetings took place once or twice weekly and were watched by a fair number of punters and spectators. If I recall correctly, an old car was used to pull the ‘hare’ around the track using the back wheel as a winch and drum. I had no interest in the racing, apart from being an interested spectator, but I was fascinated by pieces of card about the size of a playing card, discarded on the ground by the punters prior to their departure; white pieces of card bearing mysterious numbers in bright colours, and names - Freddie Fleece and Smiling Joe - of bookmakers and one-time turf accountants. These cards were handed to the gamblers after they had placed a bet and were left behind by the losers, I assume - there was dozens of them lying around! A regular greyhound owner lived right next door to my grandparents, and he kept his dogs at the bottom of the garden. I recall they howled constantly throughout the day, keeping up an infernal noise. His neighbours showed a remarkable degree of tolerance to this remarkable degree of din.

This is the spot where the river sports took place in Wallington Village. The white cottages in the background are where the author lived with his grandparents

During my time in North Wallington it was the practice to dam the River Wallington just above a small bridge that connected Wallington to Broadcut - pronounced locally as ‘Brookut’ - to build up a decent head of water above the bridge for the annual river-sports to take place. This was conveniently adjacent to the White Horse public house. Here, local lads would race their home-built rafts and fight for dominance on a greasy pole laid across the river from bank to bank. Those villagers not taking part would line the banks, giving their own kith and kin encouragement, and hell to those that weren’t. Outsiders, coming into the village for the day, swelled the ranks of the villagers so there was always a very good crowd to watch. Those that preferred to stay wet and dry, and all at the same time, took part in a pram race between the Fort Wallington Tavern and the White Horse Inn, a distance of some two hundred yards or so. As the afternoon wore on, their interest in winning the race became less important than their intention of reaching the next bar - eventually - and their sprints had been reduced to a crawl, occasionally on hands and knees!

Children too were not forgotten. On the swollen river, children took part in model boat races with a small prize for the winner. A homemade boat was best. The secret was to get as much of the ‘boat’ under the water as you could. In this manner the boat caught the flow of the river and not the wind, which might be blowing in the wrong direction completely; fun and frolics, indeed. There was a good community spirit in Wallington at that time and much more of neighbourliness than you might find today. Those with physical disabilities were helped and those with mental disabilities accepted and tolerated by most, if not all. There was one young man - a member of a well-known local family who now operate a very large coaching business - who drove around the village in what must have been one of the earliest forms of an electric invalid-carriage. It was never too much trouble for passers-by to collect his shopping for him when he stopped outside the village shop.

Each year the village Horticultural Show took place in the village hall and on bonfire night -behind the hall - a bonfire built by the toil and efforts of the local children was lit and a firework display would be arranged for the benefit of one and all. I am sure this spirit was not unique to Wallington and it would have been pretty much the same wherever you went, especially in the villages. Things were not perfect by any means and we, as children, got up to mischief on the odd occasion or two, just as you would expect. We dared each other to knock on people’s doors, and went scrumping too. There was one occasion that we found a window open in the village hall; we climbed in and each helped ourselves to a bottle of pop. In the strictest terms this was theft and a criminal act. However, we didn’t vandalise the hall, we didn’t scrawl graffiti all over the walls, and it never crossed our minds to set the place on fire. Why would we? It was there for our benefit too, despite our selfish behaviour.

My father had first enlisted in the Royal Artillery at the age of 16 - he had signed up in Liverpool during 1930 after falsifying his age - and spent much of his time at Fort Wallington as a groom, taking care of the officers’ horses. Life would have been very tough during the period of the Depression. Although military service could be tough and uncompromising too, at least it was paid employment of a sort. As was required during that military era, it was necessary for him to go cap-in-hand to his Commanding Officer to ask for my mother’s hand in marriage and for permission to be joined to her in wedded bliss. Permission was granted. As my mother was already in the throes of motherhood, and was carrying my elder sister, this was quite expedient!

He had also ridden the parade ground on horseback at Fort Brockhurst, in Gosport, from where he took his discharge from the Army in 1936. He remained a Reservist but found himself regular employment working at the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum, just on the outskirts of Fareham, studying for a Royal Medical Psychological Association Certificate, the precursor of the later Registered Mental Nurse (RMN). The family also took up residence on the hospital estate, moving into one of a small terrace of properties known as Knowle Cottages. This was to be the start of my family’s long association with this mental institution, which later became known as Knowle Hospital. However, at the onset of the World War II, my father voluntarily returned to the Colours and spent some time overseas with the British Expeditionary Forces in France.

For years after my birth I laboured under the delusion that the term ‘war-baby’ simply meant that you had been born during the war, and it was only much later that I learnt it could be a derogatory term too. However, I am pleased to record that, despite my father’s service in France, in the year prior to my conception and birth, he was on English soil and - at the moment of my delivery into that fractious and divided world - was an inpatient at the Royal Victoria Military Hospital, having surgery to his knee, which he had injured playing rugby! How my mother came to be an inpatient at the same hospital I do not know, but there she certainly was, taking up residence on the maternity wing.

In many respects I am rather proud to have been associated with that truly magnificent building that was once the military hospital at Netley - which, incidentally, was described on my birth-certificate as being in the Sub-District of Eastleigh, in the County of Southampton - and was greatly saddened by its demise and eventual demolition during the 1960s. Only the Royal Chapel stands in Victoria Country Park today as a testimony to the fact that, built on that very land in 1856, just after the Crimean War, stood a sanctuary for the fallen of two World Wars: where shattered nerves were eased, broken men were mended, and last rites presumed for those beyond all hope and care. Before its sad end, however, the hospital was to claim one last vestige of national publicity when a well-known pop singer of the day was sent to the hospital for a psychiatric assessment after he claimed that he was mentally ill to avoid his call-up. This was after receiving his papers for National Service, so must have been in the late 1950s (National Conscription to the armed forces ended in 1960). I am sure the man’s stage name was Terry Dean - if I am wrong I must offer my sincere apologies to him.

Despite all of that, I have always harboured a huge disappointment that I was not actually born in the village of Wallington where my parents were living; a fact that will annoy me until my dying day. My older sister was born in Wallington, and in 1950, when she was staying for a time with my grandparents; she suffered the consequences of a huge explosion that rocked Priddy’s Hard and Bedenham Jetty in Gosport. Ammunition barges blew up alongside the jetty, sending a blast along the waterway to Fareham Creek, up the River Wallington - on the banks of where my grandparents lived - and toppled Margaret off the wall on which she was unsuspectingly sitting. Fortunately, she was not injured. She must have thought the war had started again! Considering the distance she was from the explosion - about three miles - this event was quite extraordinary. Ironically, not many years before, a relative had worked at the same Priddy’s Yard, as a munitions worker. She was not alone: there were hundreds more just like her. Strangely, those that handled explosives developed yellow skin! Few people were untouched by the war effort. And so it was, from these interesting beginnings - starting in the 1920s when our associations with Fareham Town began - that members of the family have now been living in the town for well over ninety years.

As far as the immediate family was concerned, there was a brief sojourn to Gosport, between 1945 and1949, and another to Birkenhead on the Merseyside - my father’s place of birth - between the years 1949 and 1952 before we eventually returned our roots to Fareham where I have lived ever since. I am very much a ‘Hampshire Hog’ and proud of it. I still have the remnants of my local accent and I would be quite capable of conversing with you thus:

I ad’n odd day or tooo down on the farm when I wer a nipper. Monner Hill’s it wuz, up Down Barn. I wuz livin in Wallington at the time wiv me granparents. I remembers one day, John Strugnell and I findin a calf led down over the meadows. Jus bin born it ad. We went up the farm and told in (the farmer that is). I remember he’d give us a couple of bob for our troubles. Well, two bob were a lot of money to us in them days, but I spec that calf were worth a lot more thun that tho. Don’t oo?…

I was to spend many happy days ‘down on the farm’ mostly in the company of a Mr Coffin, a patient and tolerant man who was a neighbour of my grandparents in North Wallington. During the summer, of course, I was with him in the fields, gathering in the corn. The first thing he did in the morning was to sit down and sharpen the cutter on the harvester with a stone, or a file ready for the days’ toil. The cutter was about six feet long with a large number of triangular blades; it took him quite a while to complete the task. The binder used was rather ancient, to say the least - Mr Hill, the farmer, was not known for his extravagances - and I remember the binding-string was a constant source of trouble when it kept breaking. It was a noisy contraption with a large rotating ‘paddle-wheel’ that drew the corn onto the cutters before it fell upon the wide rotating canvas bed, carrying it to one end of the machine to be bound. To me, it always seemed like it would shake itself to pieces when the corn was being harvested.

A binding machine

Without prompting, I had taken it upon myself to walk alongside the binder, standing the sheaves into shocks as they were thrown from the binder during its noisy progress over the field; the sheaves were not heavy and, being full of youthful exuberance, I found it quite an easy task. The corn, wheat, barley or maize was cut in a circular motion towards the centre of the field and on the binder was a very long staff for beating the rats when they appeared from the remaining few yards of corn. They had been driven there by the relentless march of the binder, and by the racket created by the binder and tractor combined - and not a Wurzel in sight! Rabbits, too, were forced to flee the coming of the binder and it might well have been the rabbits we were after with that big stick. However, I must confess I was not into rabbit meat myself. In any case, myxomatosis was often found in the warrens then, so that should have been enough to put anyone off.

Later, the sheaves would be carried up to Down Barn Farm by a horse and cart and put through the threshing machine. The thresher was turned over by an adjacent tractor via a huge leather or canvas belt. In days of yore a steam traction engine would have done the same job. Mr Hill did have a traction engine on his farm; it lay idle outside one of his barns. There is a story attached to that traction engine. One day Mr Hill offered to sell the traction engine to a fellow Hampshire man for £50 - the offer was declined. The last time the engine changed hands it did so for three hundred thousand pounds! I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this little tale but it did come first hand from a man that should know - the Hampshire man’s son - Fred Cutler.

The sheaves were pitch-forked from the cart onto the thresher, and fed into the noisy bowels of the machine. After finding its way through the digestive system, the cereal was collected in sacks, the chaff was lost to the winds, and straw came out of its nether region to be fed into a baler. The aroma around the thresher was very distinctive, and the air was thick with chaff-laden dust. No good for hay fever then? To the best of my knowledge the fields were never burned off after harvesting like they were a few decades later. The shire-horses for the carts were kept on Down Barn Farm and were looked after by a Mr Stone, I believe, who lived at Riverdale Cottages in North Wallington. The harness was blackened and the brasses shone. Since those days I have always had a soft spot for these lumbering, gentle giants; much more majestic than those frantic and silly Shetland ponies so beloved by small children. From personal experience, I could think of more sensible breeds for vulnerable children to ride.

On the same farm, a few cows were milked by hand and I can still recall the sound of the milk ringing into the zinc bucket. I had several goes at this routine myself but never really mastered the knack, although it seemed quite simple at the time. After the milking was finished, the milk was cascaded through a ‘cooler’ for use on the farm. There were butter-making apparatuses on the farm too, but I never saw them used.

On occasions I would go down to the village of Funtley in Mr Hill’s ancient Dennis lorry. The lorry, a Dennis Pax I believe, was driven by a man named Cyril, who lived at Clapgate and swigged cold tea from a ‘flip-top’ Corona lemonade bottle - as did Mr Coffin, actually. As far as I am aware these bottles were unique to Corona insofar as the stopper was attached to the bottle by a spring-wire contraption. To release the stopper, the wire was pushed forwards and the stopper popped off. To secure it again, the stopper was replaced and the wire pulled down. A modern equivalent is applied to the bottled lager, Grolsh, which uses exactly the same principle. This was also the time when there was ‘money-on-the-bottle’ to encourage its return to the shop. It may only have been a penny or two, but it was a reasonable deal.

It was Cyril’s job to collect offal and innards from Fontley Abattoir for putting onto the fields as manure. On most trips I would be invited into the abattoir to watch the animals being slaughtered and skinned. The cattle were first shot with a metal bolt in the forehead and were then rotated in a large drum to sever their necks. The drum was then rotated again and the carcass made an undignified exit onto the floor before being hoisted aloft by its hind legs to drain. Pigs and sheep were stunned with an electric charge before their necks were cut by hand. The skill of the men skinning the carcasses with knives was incredible. I was never squeamish. In fact I was rather fascinated by it all - apart from the awful smell of that offal slopping about in the back of the lorry on the way back to the farm! I know this may appear rather cold, and such barbarity may seem harsh in the light of today’s thinking about animal welfare, but that’s the way it was then. For all I know those methods may still be in use today. However, I doubt that I would be so agog with the spectacle now.

A Fordson Major tractor as seen on the farm of Mr Montgomery Hill

A 1930s Dennis Pax as used to convey offal from Fontley Abattoir to Mr Hill’s farm

I probably felt very important during those labours of love - especially on the farm - although Mr Hill gave me nowt for helping out. I was very young, so I doubt I worried too much about the lack of remuneration. In any event, the experience of life in the countryside was far more valuable than money and it was a wonderful way to spend one’s school summer holiday. In addition to his ‘steamer’ Mr Hill had a number of other venerable vehicles on his farm, including two small Dennis lorries - probably Aces or Pax’s of 1930s vintage - and a couple of Fordson tractors. Today, restoration enthusiasts would give good money to own such treasures. Mr Hill’s farm-cottage is still there today, as is one of the outbuildings that I remember so well, but it is not now worked as a farm. Mr Hill too, has long since moved to pastures new. By the financial standards of the day I imagine Mr Hill would have been well off, but you would never have thought so by his appearance. He was hardly the world’s snappiest dresser and his attire, as I recall, was basic to say the least: a thick linen shirt with the collar and studs missing, a wide leather belt holding up his well-worn trousers, and a battered trilby hat. His personal transport was a Humber Hawk or Snipe, which he drove up to the market on Mondays and down to a large caravan site he owned in Wallington to collect the rents. I remember that occasion when me and my close friend, John Strugnell, visited the farm; the only time I ever actually went to his front door. I was struck by the smell of paraffin wafting its way out into the fresh air. No doubt this aroma emanated from the paraffin lamps that lit his home, for he had no electricity down on the farm.

I had another labour of love while staying in Wallington with my grandparents - helping out on a small farm lying off Drift Road. This was the same road that my father would have ridden down to court my mother before I was born. There were cattle there, but in the main the creatures living on the farm were chicken, ducks and geese. I recall cooking pig-swill in a large copper and feeding it to the fowl. Occasionally the geese would take umbrage and attack me for collecting their eggs. And who could blame them? I was unafraid of their antics, and rumours that geese could break your limbs by flapping their wings were quite beyond my experiences. The birds were free-ranging in every sense of the word, and they laid their eggs anywhere and everywhere; in stinging nettles were the most inconvenient places! I never did know exactly where those eggs ended up after I had collected them all; it wasn’t in my mouth, that’s for sure. Needless to say I enjoyed those times on the farms: the experience as a whole, the fresh air, the freedom, and most of all the wide-open countryside.

Considering how short it was - not more than two hundred yards in length - Drift Road was an interesting thoroughfare, connecting the village of North Wallington to the military establishment of Fort Wallington, via Military Road. At the upper end of Drift Road there stood some military buildings. These belonged to the Royal Navy and were outside the walls of Fort Wallington but not connected to the Fort. I imagine these building sprang up during World War II. At the lower end, where the road met North Wallington, stood - and still does - the White Horse public house. Behind that, and off Drift Road itself, was the brewery of Saunders, now a collection of houses. In the same area lived relatives of my mother’s side of the family, the Fitzgerald’s. Not far away was the home of Mr Misselbrook, who single-handedly built himself a remarkable caravan based on a Ford chassis. There was also a pretty thatched cottage (‘Pickles’) and the home of Mr Edney, a man I will acquaint you with later.

Nearby lived Uncle Sid (Harbour), my mother’s brother. Uncle Sid was a businessman who had a grocery shop in Ann’s Hill Road, in Gosport. In his spare time he also worked a piece of ground behind his home rearing chickens and later, it was said, mink. He was also one of the few people in the village to own a car - a black Vauxhall 14 with a fluted bonnet. I recall doing him a favour one day by cleaning the dust from the paintwork with a piece of dry-rag. I never could understand why he was so ungrateful. Along the same road, and on Military Road itself, there lived many well-to-do people - residences where Admirals had lived and had, no doubt, employed many local villagers for domestic service in the past. This was a common occupation for young girls in the days not long before I write of. My mother was employed in-service at a large house at Bridgefoot, and her sister at Heathfield Manor, later a private school and now the Oast & Squire pub. During World War II the house was the home for a number of Wrens who were working on the D-Day operation in underground tunnels under Portsdown Hill. On the occasions of having a meal there, I often wonder what it must have been like for my Auntie Doris wandering around with the rest of the servants.

Despite its village image, Wallington was very industrialised in the 1950s, especially around the Broadcut area where ‘Pat’ Duffy’s car-breaking yard was to be found. Also in the same vicinity was Schweppes Ltd (drinks, mineral water and later Coca-Cola), Faulkner’s (heavy transport), a Civil Defence establishment, the transport yard of the then Fareham Urban District Council, and Fareham Ambulance Station - not forgetting the nudge-nudge wink-wink, illicit greyhound track. In North Wallington a company called F H Gung & Son made sausage skins!

Many local residents carried out businesses within the village or nearby, too: Charlie Collins (market gardener and coal supplies), Lush’s (haulage), Harry Luckett (haulage and coaches), Bert Clifton (haulage contractor), Mr Tull who had a smallholding behind St Edith’s children’s home along the Wallington Shore Road (later the Roundabout Hotel), and Mr and Mrs Dixey who had a market-garden nestling alongside Wallington Hill. I had earned some pocket money there hoeing the weeds from between the lettuces. They sold their produce from a wooden hut standing on the land and later moved up into Fareham town. The village also boasted two public houses: The White Horse Inn and The Fort Wallington Tavern which my father no doubt frequented