That Witt Family, part two

from I'd Rather Be In Deeping April 2020

Vine House Farm

The Witt Family, Part Two ‘Messing about in boats’ to Witts End!

By Maggie Mckay

Ann Otter’s experience of education at the Girls’ High School had been much happier than Dick Witt’s at the Grammar School. She excelled in a number of subjects, especially music, and after finishing school she went on to Secretarial College for further education. A year later her first job took her to the GPO in Peterborough from where she transferred to the telephone exchange. This entailed shift work, however, and the afternoon shift ended at 10.00pm, too late for the last bus to Deeping which left at 9.15. One solution was to cycle to and from work, which she did many times, often playing her Hohner mouth organ on the way; the other option was to take digs in Peterborough when she was on the late shift, which she sometimes did too. She eventually became acting supervisor at the telephone exchange and she was also put on to training new staff.

Like Dick, Ann was keen on all kinds of sports. They both loved the water and as a child Ann, and her friend Joyce Newton, often swam in the river which ran at the bottom of the gardens on the south side of the Market Place. In the winter there was ice skating at Cowbit Wash, and anywhere else there was ice.

After the war ended the young couple moved into the old cottage next door to The New Inn (now The Deeping Stage). The house was one of those owned by Ann’s parents, and between 1945 and 1956, their four children were born there. Their growing family did not put a stop to their sporting activities however. They were both members of the Deeping tennis club, and they routinely partnered one another in tennis matches and tournaments which they also often won – to the dismay of other players in the district, who could be heard to moan, ‘Oh no, not the Witts again!’

After being demobbed and settled in Market Deeping, Dick Witt set up his own engineering business with a partner. This was known as Witt and Butcher and later became the firm of GBW, (Garford, Butcher and Witt) manufacturing sugar beet harvesters designed by Norman Garford; when his sons were almost grown up, the firm became R. F. Witt & Sons and a factory was built on Godsey Lane on land owned by Ann’s father. Dick’s main regret in the first post -war years was that when Molecey Mill was sold he was not in a position to buy it. He loved the mill, had had a happy childhood there and would have liked it to be his family’s home; but that was not to be. After the sale of the mill Dick’s parents, Cyril and Florence, moved into the house next door to Dick in Market Deeping.

The company was now doing mainly general engineering, but Dick always wanted to try his hand at something different – like boat building! The first boat was a speedboat on which the family often went to Snettisham on the Norfolk coast. The local carpenter, George Frost, made water skis so the family could water-ski at the same time. The idea was fine but the water skis were not much good and the children spent more time in the sea than on the skis. Gillian was usually fastened into a German life jacket that her father had picked up during the war! Being in the sea was the best fun of all.

After the speedboat Dick went on to build a much bigger vessel that could actually accommodate his whole family. This was a six-berth cabin cruiser, on which they had many excursions, often out into the Wash where they would gather huge cockles from the sandbanks and samphire on the way back to their mooring in Spalding. These cockles were the biggest and most delicious any of them had, or indeed have since, ever tasted, Gillian says.

By the end of the 1950s life in the Market Place was changing. Dick disliked all the traffic and noise and hankered after somewhere quieter. By chance his wish was fulfilled when, one day, he saw a 23-acre field that was for sale, along Outgang Road, and on an impulse he bought it. He had a house built on the land and at the beginning of the 1960s the family left the Market Place and the river for their brand new home, Willowfield.

years was a great wrench, Gillian says, especially since her passion was for boats and water! For the younger members of the family it was different. Marilyn, third in the family, was already keen on horses and riding, and she competed in many pony and horse events. At Willowfield there was plenty of space and Ann and Dick set up a riding school for their daughter. It was run by Ann and was a great success, eventually being known as The South Lincs Equitation Centre. David, the youngest, was also competing by this time and he took over the riding school when Marilyn married and left. Older brother, Alan, (who had followed his father into the engineering business), had taken up motorbikes. He started grass track racing, went on to speedway and even raced vintage bikes.

For Gillian, who had just left school and started working, the move was less welcome. She had to get the bus into Peterborough every day after a two-mile bike ride from Willowfield. She really missed living in the Market Place since she loved the boats and the river.

Dick had always been a risk-taker and that was what decided him, at the age of 60, and unbeknown to Ann, to take his pilot’s licence! The family greeted the knowledge of their father’s latest accomplishment with some apprehension, which was not lessened when they learned that what he was proposing to fly was small, rather fragile looking microlights! However, all went well, more or less, and over the next decade Dick in his microlight became a familiar sight in the skies above the Deepings. His career as pilot only came to an end when he was well into his seventies and Ann put her foot down - she had had enough of getting calls from irate farmers into whose fields of corn Dick had been forced to land! Eventually the running of Willowfield passed to younger members of the family and Ann and Dick moved into a bungalow in Maxey. Supposedly the house was built on what had been Alan’s ‘rubbish dump’! However,

16 the bungalow was in fact ‘pleasantly’ situated on the corner of two lanes and, sense of humour intact, they named it, ‘Witt’s End’. It was Ann and Dick’s final home together - but they enjoyed it for more than 20 years. Dick died at home at the age of 84 and Ann lived to be 95. Two lives well and fully lived.

Words: Maggie McKay Research Maggie McKay and Gillian Berry (nee Witt)

Afterword: the Ashton Mill engine. A chance occurrence in 1996 brought Dick Witt briefly back into engineering. When Gillian was visiting Ashton Wold, near Oundle, Northamptonshire, she happened to glimpse an old Blackstone’s engine. It was an ESI twin-wheel engine which had been used at Ashton Mill to generate electricity and pump water. A visit was arranged for Dick who saw that it was identical to those that he and his fellow engineers had been building at Blackstone’s in 1937, and all such engines passed through their workshop in those years just before WWII. The discovery coincided with the planned opening of the National Dragonfly Museum in Ashton. The museum sponsors would happily display the engine as part of the history of Ashton Mill. But it needed extensive restoration. Dick was once again up for the challenge – and, now nearly 77, he took it on! It caused him considerable anxiety; some missing parts had to be made and, with Alan’s help, some bits from an identical engine that was unrecoverable were used. The work caused him many sleepless nights. But it was all worthwhile The reconstruction took six months, but it was finally displayed in the National Dragonfly Museum as an integral part of the mill’s history. What could be more satisfying than this for an old engineer?

Note: Ashton Mill was built to supply electricity to the Rothschild owned Ashton Estate. Miriam Rothschild, following on the research of her father, Charles Rothschild, was the world’s greatest expert on fleas! She made the gardens at Ashton a haven for all kinds of wildlife, especially insects, and supported many ecological and other benevolent causes. She lived at Ashton all her life and died in 2005 at the age of 96.