My father was well known in Weston Coyney. Whenever I went out with him in public, it was, ‘Hello Bert.’ Or, ‘How are you, Albert?’ Or, perhaps a little more formally, it might be, ‘Nice day, Mr. Bentley.’ One reason why Father was so readily recognised was that he was the chairman of the parish council.
I don’t know exactly when, but sometime in the early 1930s, the tree in the middle of Caverswall Square was hit by lightning. The parish council decided to replace the tree and restore the old set of stocks. To commemorate the event, an inscription was set in the stone in the supporting wall:
‘This Tree was Planted by the
Caverswall Parish Council
on the 9th Of March, 1935
to Replace the Old Constable Wick
Tree which was Planted Here
on or about the Year Ad 1670’.
Coincidentally, the date was also my 5th birthday. So Father, because of his position on the council, has a little niche in the history of Caverswall. Another reason why Father was well known was that he was employed as an accounts clerk for the L.M.S. at Stoke railway station. He kept a pile of railway time tables at home. When any of our neighbours needed to take a railway journey anywhere they would come and knock on the door to ask Father for help (people did not have telephones in those days). Father would get out pen and paper, and, in his beautiful copperplate handwriting, would make out a list of routes, stations, times, changes, etc. and our neighbour
would go home happy.
Weston Coyney, according to my parents, in the early 1900s was merely a set of country crossroads with one or two houses and Weston Hall a short distance away. This changed, however, when it became the site of a housing estate in the early
1920s. My parents moved there about 1925. They told me that there were then forty eight houses, with no gas or electricity. Mother claimed that she ruined her eyesight by reading at night by the light of a paraffin lamp. The village was given the somewhat pretentious name ‘Garden Village’ which apparently didn’t last very long.
In contrast to Weston Coyney, with its relatively recent status as a village, the neighbouring village of Caverswall, a few miles away, dated back to
before the Norman Conquest. Caverswall played a notable part in my boyhood. One of my earliest memories is that of the celebrations of the Silver Jubilee of King George V. The festivities were held in the field behind the Red House. I still remember
my disappointment when I missed the call to enter the foot race for five year olds.
The same field behind the Red House was used for Caverswall Wakes Week, which was held every summer before the war. The swings and roundabouts were driven by a huge steam engine. We used to watch as it came lumbering through Weston Coyney on its way to the fairground. I was torn between getting a close-up look at this fascinating creation of iron and steel, but, at the same time, keeping at a safe distance since Mother said that the engine was so old that it could blow up at any time.
When the war came, Caverswall Wakes was cancelled. It never came back. Which
was a shame; it was so much fun.
Our church was in Caverswall. From time to time, Father would take my brother and me to church, leaving our industrious mother at home to get the Sunday dinner ready. I enjoyed the service as long as we could sing my favourite hymns like O God, Our Help in Ages Past and Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us. But it ended there.
The vicar was the Reverend Gower-Jones. The Reverend had an impressive, ringing voice but what I remember above all were his sermons. They went on so long and were so mind-numbing that I think that was when I first appreciated the meaning of eternity. I would sit in my pew, waiting for the time to pass, lost in day dreaming.
Some times I would look at the stained glass windows, at the figures illuminated by the light from outside, making up stories about them in my imagination.
One window was dedicated to Charles Coyney. Who was Charles Coyney? Did he have anything to do with Weston Coyney?
Our reward came when church was over and Father would cross over the Square to the Red House. Before going into the saloon to socialise, he would drop us off in the kitchen. There we would be taken over by Mrs. Breed, the landlord’s wife, who would give us lemonade and chocolate wafer biscuits.
My elementary school was in the Meir. Our headmaster was Mr. ‘Joe’ Heath. Every morning before lessons the whole school would assemble in the main hall for prayers. One morning in September, 1938, at the end of prayers, Mr. Heath said he wanted to speak to us. He told us that Mr. Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, had flown
to Germany to visit Herr Hitler, the German Chancellor.
The two leaders had come to an agreement and signed a peace treaty as a result
of which, war between Britain and Germany had been averted. I am sure that Mr. Heath had served in the Great War, as we called it, since his relief at the news was so clearly obvious. He was also full of praise for Mr. Chamberlain.
The following week, the newsreel in the Broadway cinema in the Meir showed Mr. Chamberlain at the airport, after returning from Munich. In a famous (or infamous) segment, which we have seen many times since, Mr. Chamberlain was waving a copy of the agreement proclaiming, ‘Peace in our Time.’
A year later, when the war began, the Prime Minister was criticised for having allowed himself to be duped by Hitler. Mother thought that was very unfair; ‘Mr. Chamberlain was trying his best to prevent another war,’ she said.
Two days before the war began, a busload of evacuees from Manchester arrived in Weston Coyney. Everybody in the village turned out to witness the occasion. I remember standing with my mother and brother, watching as the bus pulled
up at the village crossroads. The door opened and the children, whose ages must have ranged from about five to fifteen, hesitantly climbed out.
They were all wearing labels tied with string around their necks, like parcels. These, it appeared, had their names written on so that they could be identified by their new guardians, various ladies in the village whom the council had decided should
have billeted with them. Mrs. Sproston, who kept the corner shop, stood weeping while this was going on. ‘Why is she crying?’ I asked Mother. ‘She’s feeling sorry for the children because they are away from home and their mothers and fathers.’
As things turned out, we saw very little of the Manchester evacuees afterwards. We didn’t see any of them at school because it was closed for the first two or three months of the war. To add to this, the first six months of the war developed into an eerily
tranquil period that came to be known as the phony war since there was no bombing: that came afterwards. Before very long, the evacuee families got homesick and went back to Manchester.
There was one exception. A few doors away from our house lived Miss Jenkins. Miss Jenkins was of the same generation as my spinster aunts who had never married because the husbands that they should have had, never came back from the Great War. Miss Jenkins had a family of three children allocated to her. For some reason, when
the other families went back to Manchester, the three children stayed with her. It was rumoured that the children came from a broken home. I have no idea what legal procedure was used, but Miss Jenkins kept her children and raised them
by herself. And so, by an accident of war, Miss Jenkins became a mother with her own family.
When the war came in 1939, we saw a few changes. Father became an air raid warden
and was given a tin helmet with ARP (Air Raid Precautions) printed on it. The air raid wardens had the job of ensuring a strict check on the blackout. They patrolled around the village to make sure that none of the houses showed any light at night that might attract German bombers. Some of the wardens used their authority to be
quite officious, repeating their annoying refrain, ‘Put that light out, don’t you know there’s a war on?’
On one occasion Father had to give a demonstration of how to put out an incendiary
bomb fire with a stirrup pump and water bucket. Fortunately, he was never called upon to put his demonstration into practice. We were extremely lucky. There was heavy bombing in many other places around us but I don’t remember anything but a few random bombs landing in the Potteries.
Mother volunteered for the First Aid unit and was issued with a tin helmet with FA printed on it (my brother, older and more worldly than me, thought that was very funny). My contribution to the war effort was to accompany Mother to her
first aid sessions every Thursday night and be a dummy patient as she and her colleagues practised wrapping bandages over different parts of my
anatomy.
About two years after the war began, the government allowed married women to go back to teaching in order to replace the men who had been called up. Mother became an elementary school teacher again, teaching at schools in Hanley and Longton.
We also became a family of allotment holders. We were given a piece of ground in a field alongside Park Avenue in Weston Coyney. Trying to dig through the surface was like digging through rock. But, we succeeded and eventually turned over and fertilised the soil. Working weekends, we supplied ourselves with potatoes, carrots, peas, turnips, cabbages and other vegetables throughout the war. The allotment holders formed an association and pooled their resources to buy fertilisers, lime, seed potatoes,
implements, etc.
When the war was over, the association found itself with a surplus of funds. As a result, the members decided to start a project to build a village hall. This eventually became Weston Coyney Village Hall, located in the grounds of the former Weston Hall which was abandoned and demolished during the war. Those who today enjoy the amenities of the village hall are in debt to those of us who picked up our spades and forks
in response to the government’s ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign during the war.
Go to Chapter 2 – Dora, Peggy and Blondie