A Family Reunion
To get to Drum Bridges from Kennford we had to go through Holden Hill. The hill was long, steep and narrow and it was a real chore to get the wagon up safely.
Ticker was put on to the shafts of the wagon with Patchie as a tracer. I led the young foal, Storm, while our Alfie kept close behind the wagon with the molly block to put behind the wheel if the two horses needed a breather. Me mam walked on ahead with Robert and Emily and we gave them a good head start. We knew once we started the pull up the hill we could wait for no one, as the horses would be working flat out.
It seemed never-ending, but once at the top of the hill we pulled up to let the two horses cool down. They were sweating buckets despite the earliness of the morning.
“All right, Patchie,” soothed me dad. “It’s downhill all the way now.”
We knew that downhill could be as rough on the horses as up, for they would have the whole weight of the wagon to hold back, but luckily we had a brake on the back wheels and Ticker would still be by Patchie’s side to help.
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When we finally reached the land at Drum Bridges we found it a pretty place, with young withies growing and a little stream running through. Aunt Ellen and Bob were as good as their word and pulled in right behind us with their lorry and trailer.
Within days me dad had bought a four-square tent, complete with floorboards and a bed for the two boys, for we were too old now to sleep in the same wagon. A Queenie stove was put into the tent and we were finished. Now only me and Emily would be sleeping under the bed in the wagon.
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Me mam gave birth to our Holly on the third of November. They named her for the Christmas wreaths they had been making when me mam went into labour. It was our very first Christmas in Devon.
After Christmas, Robert and me were put into Drum Bridges school, once more relegated into the corner of the classroom. It was not such a bad school. No one was really spiteful to us for the months we were there. It was during this time that our Alfie had his first brush with his powers of foresight. One night, he woke up to see a man standing over him, dressed in a black suit and holding out a tray covered in glasses of wine or some other drink. Alfie was not afraid when he told us of this, though I thought I would’ve been frit to death. He swore it was more than a mere dream or apparition: someone was in the tent but it wasn’t anyone from the family. This would happen again and again throughout his life. When me dad’s sister Touwie died, for instance, our Alfie was down in Cornwall racing his bikes, so we couldn’t tell him she had died as he was out of contact. But he phoned me to tell me she had died. How did he know? Her spirit rode all the way back up to Somerset with him: he could smell her fag smoke all the way and he just knew it was her. And of course we were able to confirm that he was right.
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From Drum Bridges, we shifted on to a part of Dartmoor called Ramshorn Down. This part of the moor has had Travellers stopping on it for many generations. The spot was covered in heather, with a bunch or two of wild snowdrops and daffies peeping out from the thick purple where Travellers before us had dropped or planted the bulbs while sorting their flowers.
We had pulled into a small quarry tucked away from all winds and weathers and protected by big stones. We were to spend nearly two years on the moor. Alfie was now working with me dad and Bob, but me and Robert were put into a new school, in Bickington.
We were amazed by this new school, for on our first day we were given books, pencils, daps and a dapbag, even a hook to hang up our jackets. The whole school gave us a warm welcome and we never once got segregated from the rest of the children. We couldn’t believe our luck as we sat down at our desks with the others. For once we wanted to go to school and me mam never once had to drag us, crying and carrying on.
Me dad had chopped our wagon for a Radar Unit that had been used in the war. It was like a trailer without many windows. It had no kind of heating, so we put a little Queenie inside of it and a bed with a mattress for me and Emily beneath it. It was like having our own trailer of sorts and though we kept the horses for breeding we now had a lorry to tow the trailer with.
Soon me mam announced that she had saved enough to pay Uncle Jessie back for our Little Jess’s funeral and so one morning in May me dad kicked off for Wiltshire with the money. He met up with Jessie at the Devizes Fair, paid him his money and got so drunk that he barely made it home to Devonshire. When he finally did return we discovered that he had smashed the lorry into a tree, nevermore to be driven, and walked the rest of the way back to the moor. We were now one lorry short and me mam let him have it – they had to start all over again to save up for another.
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One fine day me mam’s brother Bobby came to us, full of lush and excited. “Get dressed,” he called, “I got someone who wants to meet you!”
He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we all piled into Bobby’s lorry. He took us up on to the common at Holden Hill where we saw a fine sight. There were big tents and lorries, and people dressed up in fine clothes all running to meet and greet us.
“This is they,” said Bobby, “me two sisters, our Vie and our Ellen.” Me mam and Aunt Ell soon disappeared amongst hugs and kisses from the strangers.
A while later we discovered that these Travellers were me mam’s long-lost aunts and uncles – her real mam Minnie Black’s sisters. They had travelled all the way down from Hampshire, looking for Minnie’s children. It was an enormous shock and there was great joy for us all on that common. If a stranger had come upon us they would’ve thought we’d been touched by the moon, so pleased was everyone to meet up with one another at last.
It was a grand week we all had. To us, they seemed very rich people. They had far more than we ever had but were kind and lovely people. I have forgotten many of their names but never the Travellers themselves.
- After so much sadness, it was a wonderful time for us. Me mother told them all of Little Jess and the grief we were suffering and though she didn’t sing with them, she drank and chattered to the early hours.
Before they left, the women took me mam and Aunt Ellen out and bought them a lovely piece of china each. They treasured these keepsakes, for soon these new members of our family were gone and we were left to get on with our lives again. After all the parties on the common, it seemed a bit lonely, but we made the best of our road.
We were enjoying living on the moor, where the world was wild and wonderful, full of endless colour and wildlife, but all the bustle of meeting new people had given me dad itchy feet. He wanted to shift back up country where his own family were, for me mam’s family had never taken well to him.
Me and our Robert would miss that little school in Bickington that had welcomed us so fully and all the old tales that Aunt Ellen told us round the fire at night.
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My favourite story was of a gal called Kitty Jay. She had been taken out of the workhouse to be a skivvy on a local farm many years ago. The farmer’s son soon fell for her and decided to take her as a lover. Soon she was ‘expected to go to bed’. The villagers turned against her and the farmer’s son blamed her for their situation and, not knowing what else to do, Jay hanged herself.
Jay had been buried by a crossroads out on the moor and Ellen had taken us to put wild flowers on her grave, as she had often done as a child. Many Travellers have kept this tradition for decades, going to the secluded little spot to place fresh flowers on her lonely grave. More recently the grave has been built up and many visitors to the moor stop and leave flowers at the girl’s resting place.
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Another strange tale that Ellen told was of an old gal and her man who lived years ago in a rod tent. Late one evening, the man of the family was putting up his rod tent in a farmer’s gateway in the outskirts of Newton Abbot. He went to fetch wood and water, leaving his family safe and sound with the tent.
While he was gone, the mam fed her two small children and put them to bed in the tent. She sat round the fire, waiting for her man to come back. Suddenly, she heard a grunting noise. She looked up and down the dark lane, but could see nothing suspicious.
Still, it worried her and she built up the fire to make flames, in case it was some nasty mumper* looking to make trouble.
≡ Tramp; hedge-crawler.
Soon she heard the noise again and once more left the fire to look up and down the lane. There in front of her, trotting up the lane, she saw a spotted pig! That made her laugh. Fancy letting a pig put the wind up her. The pig stopped and tried to turn into the gateway where her tent was blocking him off. The mam shooed the pig away, trying to keep it out of the tent in case it scared her children.
The pig was determined to get through that gate, so she picked up a stick off the fire that was well alight and hit the pig to shoo it away. She realised that the more she beat the pig, the bigger it got.
Soon the pig got past her and ran right through the tent, ripping the back out. She was relieved to find that her children had slept right through it, unhurt, and soon her man came back and she told him all that had happened.
The next morning the farmer came up the lane and the young mam stopped him to explain. “I’m very sorry, sir, but I had to beat one of your pigs last night. I’m sorry to say he must be black and blue, for he runned right through me tent!”
The farmer looked hard at her and said, “Miss, you never beat my pig. That was the Devil.”
“The Devil?” cried the Traveller woman.
“That pig’s been seen and beat afore in this lane and no one is safe who stops here – you’re very lucky to still be in one piece!”
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Dartmoor had a hundred of these old tales, or so it seemed, and how we would miss them if we had to move on now!
Me mam tried to talk me dad out of shifting. “Let me baby get a bit older?”
Baby Holly was only a few months old, already a dark-haired beauty and good as gold. After school I would put her on me hip and take her for walks, showing her the mice in the quarry. (Our Alfie had let a load of white mice loose in the quarry and they had bred with the wild ones – they were everywhere.)
“I’ve been in this country long enough,” said me dad, “so make your mind up. We’s shifting back next week.”
He was resolute. We would soon be moving on.