History

Memories of Chagford in the early twentieth century

Chagford is fortunate to have long boasted a thriving Local History Society working hard to preserve knowledge of its past for future generations. For almost forty years, as part of that work, the Society has collected memories from local residents, many of whom lived in the town all their lives. Most of the interviews focus on capturing the routines of daily life in the first half of the twentieth century; on the rhythms of farming, mining, school and family life before the transformations wrought by the private motorcar and television. It is impossible to do justice to the richness of this material in a short piece, but I hope these snippets will give you a flavour of what is there.

For instance, two well-known locals, Dol Rice and Nesta Weeks, recall picking wortleberries on the moor as children around the First World War. Dol Rice comments that she could earn 1s 6d [7½p] a pound by selling the wortleberries to a woman at Sandy Park who would send them up to London. Farm worker Gideon Webber, offers vivid memories of pre1914 elections on Dartmoor, including tearing down Tory election posters on market day and painting a local farmer’s sheep in Liberal Party colours. Perhaps most remarkably, Margaret Cousins tells a story about how the mistress at Holy Street Manor used to let her and the other female servants back in after late-night dances in Chagford: ‘and she’d let us in (laughs). Yeah. She used to have a piece of rope tied around her toe, when she went to bed, and it’d hang out the window. You know. And she came down – and I expect she only … wanted to see if we’d got any young men hanging around. We left them at the gate (laughs).’ There can’t have been many servants who had such obliging employers in 1930s Britain even if the mistress’s main aim was to make sure no men came back to the Manor. It doesn’t happen in Downton. It is striking that many born-and-bred Chagfordians tell stories about what originally brought their ancestors to the district. Speaking in 1996, Les Rice, the champion folk dancer, explains that his great-grandfather had been a champion dancer in Wales before moving to South Zeal in the nineteenth century and helped establish the local tradition of step dancing. Similarly, Edna Rowe explains that her grandfather was from a Liverpool sea-faring family and only came to work as an engineer in Chagford because his father had died at sea and his step-mother didn’t want him returning to Merseyside after college. Finally, Maurice Courtier comments that people often claimed his unusual French surname must be because a paternal ancestor had been a prisoner of war at Princetown during the Napoleonic Wars.

The interviews also include a number of stories that testify to the strong pull of Chagford for people with historic connections to the place. Eric Webber recalls that his grandfather went to London to learn saddlery as a young man, but came back in 1898 when the chance arose to buy a local business on the market square (and so Webber’s store was born). Dick Rowe’s family story was even more dramatic. Although his ancestors had farmed for generations at Easton, and were related to the Rowes of Buda (but not, he stressed, the Frenchbeare Rowes), his father George had been born at Axminster, in East Devon (where he trained as a baker), and later moved to Frimley in Surrey. Like grandfather Webber, what brought George back to Chagford in 1907 was the chance to buy a local business - the bakers on the corner of the square. Dick himself trained as a fine confectioner in Surrey, where many of his relatives still lived, and took over running the shop after the war in 1946. Readers may well have similar stories of being pulled back to North Dartmoor by historic connections. When asked about how Chagford had changed, many interviewees comment that in the past they had been able to buy anything they needed in Chagford, but no longer. Nesta Weeks recalls that Chagford had once boasted four different tailors, whereas now there was none. Similarly, Margaret Cousins declares ‘I can’t understand about the shops disappearing’, before adding: ‘they’ve all got cars these days, and supermarkets, and I can’t blame them either. But, um, in those days you couldn’t go so you had to have what was here.’ Older residents were particularly conscious of how the car had changed things for the worse. Speaking in 1997, ninety year-old Edith Smerdon, who had grown up at Middlecott and farmed in the area all her life, recalled how Chagford square had changed:

‘Yes, it was very quiet – different. I think when I go up to Chagford now it’s terrible really, in my opinion, with all this traffic, when you could walk, only a few years ago, you could walk about fairly carefree…, you know, comfortable up there, couldn’t you? As children you could play in the streets you see, and everything.’

With the issue of traffic control now often seen as something dividing incomers from locals, it is salutary to recall that not long ago the issue played out very differently; cars (and their owners) were the unwanted incomers.

Jon Lawrence Chair, Chagford Local History Society