The real story of a past Castle resident - Mavis Standing
THE FARNHAM CASTLE MEMORIES OF MAVIS STANDING,
AS PUBLISHED IN THE FARNHAM HERALD NEWSPAPER
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Part I (Farnham Herald, 29th December 2000):
Memories of a happy childhood spent at Farnham Castle
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It’s always good to receive reminiscences from local people of their lives in the local area. Unfortunately, these are quite often rather long, and it is difficult to edit them to a length suitable for use in this column. Where possible I like them to go in complete and what follows in one such case – I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
I have split the whole article into for parts and drawn some images from my collection which I hope will illustrate the quieter and calmer days in which the episode was set.
Mavis Standing is a Farnhamian of long standing and has obviously lived in a number of locations around the town, but none surely can compare with the period she relates now. I’ll let Mavis, now of Eton Place, Upper Hale, take up the story.
“We moved to Farnham Castle in 1949 when my dad became chauffeur gardener to Bishop Montgomery-Campbell who had recently been enthroned as the new Bishop of the Diocese of Guildford.
“It was the first time we had lived together as a family, prior to that, dad had lived with his family at the Sands and mum and I lived with her brother and his family in Vicarage Hill, The Bourne and later, with her parents at Grover’s Farm, Runwick.
Dad had been a lorry driver for M.A.Rose, Corn Merchants, in East Street and it was apparently quite some time that I was convinced that every man who drove a grey Bedford lorry was not my dad!
“The Castle was then divided into two, half being the Bishop’ residence and part being a Retreat House. We lived in the Gardener’s Cottage, now known as Waynflete.
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“Disused cowsheds and a dairy and a huge farm where the South Lodge now stands. I loved our cottage with its thick walls and diamond leaded windows. We had a long narrow kitchen with an old-fashioned range at one end and a walk-through scullery/larder at the other. Later on they replaced our range with a brick fireplace and gave mum a nice ‘modern’ gas stove.
“Unfortunately, mum was terrified of it and it was a devil to light and on several occasions she singed her eyebrows! We had a sizeable sitting room which was only used on special occasions as it was very difficult to heat. As children we had great fun playing charades and pantomimes on the wide windowsills behind the curtains.
“We had two bedrooms and a boxroom on the first floor. Both bedrooms had black fireplaces which were rarely used unless I was ill, which must have been quite often because I had them all, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, even scarlet fever.
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“Jackdaws used to nest in the chimneys and ‘mutter’ to each other at night, sometimes the nests would fall down. There would be a shower of soot and twigs and a ‘whoosh’ followed by a sooty, bewildered jackdaw sitting in the grate. This was usually followed by staccato cries of ‘DAD!’
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“We had a third bedroom on the top floor over the garage which was rented out to an old Deaconess and also a tiny bathroom with a Heath-Robinson-esque hot water geyser which frightened mum more than the stove! Consequently, bath night was a small tin one in front of the fire on a Friday