Midhurst Magazine. Issue 31, Spring, April 2020. The 60th year edition.
Life got better over time: Peter Sydenham remembers Duck Lane in the late 1930s. When I lived. as a small boy, in a shop on Red Lion Street during WW2, we did have a running cold tap water, an inside toilet and mains electricity; we were well off – except rats sometimes ran over us in our shared single bed! With no heating apart from a one-bar electric radiator it was far from luxurious.
Living conditions in the District for the majority of its residents have changed greatly for the best as the centuries have passed. In Norman times the majority of the people had almost none of the national wealth; a situation that largely remains to this day but with it being much better spread. Wealthy land-owners ran farms and other enterprises, using the rural population as serfs – not much better than being an owned slave with minimal rights – who were ‘tied’ to their Lord’s properties and subject to his whims. This situation slowly improved over many centuries but much still exists today.
In the late 30s the super-rich Peggy Guggenheim lived in a Harting cottage with minimal heating. And no hot water supply. She stayed in bed all day to keep warm. The major Midhurst District land owner, Lord Cowdray (father of the current Lord) had started to upgrade his many yellow-painted properties, but that ceased for the duration of the war.
In the 19th century the landed gentry began to have their wealth reduced by major government reforms; many were stripped of their money-making privileges. By the 1930s social reform was well under way but many in rural areas still lived in dire circumstances. In the surrounding Midhurst District villages, and even in town, many dwellings had no inside toilets and bathrooms, no mains sewerage connections, mains electricity or a reticulated water supply. Ronnie Boxall tells us, in his A Midhurst Lad book, that he lived in squalor in
The several local mansions usually enjoyed the latest services and products. In some cases, the owner, for they were under no law-based compulsion, even generously provided water and electricity supplies for his rural workers. Here are presented some insights into life since the Midhurst Society was formed in 1961.
Some Must Have-to-Haves in the 1960s
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