Lewis Edwards, Coppicer
If anyone epitomises the face of Old England, it must be Lew Edwards. His weather-beaten countenance and knowing eyes are just the features that tales are made of. They reflect the strong character of someone who has spent his entire life in one small area, learning both to harness and harvest nature in due season, working with the elements but never trying to beat them. Still working at 80 years old, he is literally the old man of the woods, affectionately known to local children as ‘Uncle Lew’. He is that countryman who used to work up every leafy lane. Now, however, his way of life seems remarkable when it is compared with that of most of us who rush about in stern competition for ever-diminishing resources, and who never quite learn to live in harmony with nature, as Lew has done so successfully.
Lew was born on 7 August 1912, in an estate cottage at Boundless Brickyard, about halfway between Godalming and Haslemere, in the Surrey hills. As a labourer for Lord Pirrie, Lew’s father was helping at that time to build the fine wall which still stands around Witley Park. Clay was brought by horse and cart from lakes at nearby Grayswood village. ‘Lord Pirrie bought everythin’ inside the wall and gradually acquired other bits of land to make 4,400 acres’, Lew told me. ‘Some say ‘e did good, and some say bad, but ‘e did make a lot of employment.’
Nowadays, Lew cannot recall what his grandfather did, but he clearly remembers the first day that he met his grandmother. ‘I was ten years old. We walked to Witley Station and caught the train to Godalming. From there we walked to Farncombe and on to Blackheath. When we got there she gave the old father a glass of home-made orange wine and me just a little thimbleful. By golly, it was good after all that walkin’. You never saw no bought wines in those days.’
Another rare commodity in the early twentieth century was the motor vehicle. Lew did not see a car until he was 4 years old, ‘and that was in a ditch. It belonged to some doctor. The first Rdlls Royce I ever saw was in a ditch, too, in the 1920s. It was a posh taxi effort and the driver ‘ad taken a short-cut to see his parents. Trouble is, it was all soft verges in those days and they soon anchored you up.
‘A lengthman looked after each stretch of road, and there was no lights except in towns. Most of the roads when I was a boy was no more than slugged-in stone, which was stone and fine gravel watered and watered until it settled down in a pulp. Up ‘ere there was just a track. We didn’t ‘ave no tarred roads till the late Twenties.
‘Everyone ‘ad a pushbike in my young days: lots of ‘em was the old 28in wheels – sort of puts you up in the air like. But it weren’t too bumpy; the roads was reasonably looked after: the cars went quite slow and didn’t tear up the stones. But you didn’t know what rough was then because you ‘ad never ‘ad it smooth.
‘We ‘ad to walk 3 mile each way to Thursley school – up to the toll-gate on the A3, where we’d shout out “What’s the time mister!”, and then we knew whether to run to school or not. Any vehicle had to pay the toll.
‘In those days it was crowded with little birds of all sorts. Once we ‘ad an ol’ butcher bird (red-backed shrike) in our ‘edge at Boundless; she ‘ad young birds an’ insects stuck on the ol’ thorn spikes. That was the only one I ever saw.
‘’Course, in those days there was so much more wildlife ‘cos the vermin was all controlled. There was 28 keepers on the estate and it was nothin’ for the Guns to get five or six hundred pheasants first day through on each beat. All the jays and magpies was killed – you hardly ever saw one, not like now, so there was plenty of small birds.
‘There was also ‘eaps of rabbits – it was our basic meal twice a week at least, and we often got a stoated one. Would ‘ave been a pretty poor ol’ livin’ without that. No one ever ‘ad much bought meat. Even if you kep’ chickens you only ever ‘ad one if you ‘ad a spare ol’ cockerel at Christmas.’
At the age of 12, Lew worked on summer evenings after school, at nearby Highfield Farm – ‘choppin’ up wood and generally ‘elpin’ out. They paid me 5s a week, but I think the main attraction was the nice tea they used to give me.
‘When I was 14 I left school and went on for ‘em regular, at 12s a week in the first year and 15s after that. They ‘ad a dairy herd an’ a few ol’ Kent sheep up for the winter. There was wheat, oats, barley, turnips for the sheep in winter, mangels for the cows, and a strip of trefoil was grown for cattle-feed – we used to get three cuts off that.
‘My hours was eight to five Monday to Friday and eight to twelve Saturdays. Never ‘ad no holidays either. I never stuck it all that long – ran away from farmin’ at 16¾: I couldn’t see no advancement to it. I heard of a job copse cuttin’ – pea and bean sticks and tyin’ up faggots, so I ‘ad a go at that. This was workin’ for Staffey Snelling at Heathflex Copse, which was part of Witley Park and now comes under the Forestry Commission.
‘Then we got a job makin’ a grass tennis court at Pook’s Farm, Grayshott, and another at Headley. This was 1929, and I remember it well because that year we ‘ad a severe gale which blew down ‘undreds of elm trees all round ‘ere: there was 27 down from Bowlhead Green up to the A3 alone. We ‘ad an 8ft cross-cut saw and the trees was 7ft across. You couldn’t give elm trees away then, there was so many about.
‘Snelling paid me about 17 or 18s a week an’ I worked about the same hours as on the farm. But it was a change. You can’t say it was better – it was all ‘ard work. It was gettin’ that change in that counts – you felt you was gettin’ somewhere.’
After that, it was back to where Lew was born, into Boundless Brickyard, where he worked at the sawmill. ‘They ‘ad this portable steam-engine which burnt all wood, an’ I ‘ad to stoke it up. The ol’ thing leaked so much it didn’t keep much steam up. Man called Jones owned it and I ‘ad just two months there. He only went round tidying up all the dead wood – clearin’ up the rubbish all the time.’
Next Lew went to work at Hydon’s Ball, ‘drivin’ another steam-engine for a genuine sawmill supplyin’ fencin’ and buildin’. It took me three-quarters of an hour to get over there on me pushbike. I ‘ad twelve months there, then the ol’ gov’ner bought a big estate at Ifold, near Plaistow in Sussex, an’ we went an’ cut up all the ol’ timber there. I still went by bike, but it took me between one and one-and-a-quarter hours. It weren’t too bad goin’ as the majority was downhill. I ‘ad nine months there.
‘We used to rely on stream water for the boiler, but one March it froze and froze and dried everythin’ up into dust and it thawed out into dust, so we ‘ad problems. That was about 1932 an’ I’ve never seen anythin’ like it since.
‘Then the gov’ner got a contract to build a council-house estate and I was transferred to buildin’ – knockin’ up mortar for about ten bricklayers. But it was good pay I got there – 7d an hour. We was there a twelve month or more – see the job finished.
‘Then it was over to Ardmore Estate, Guildford, to build private ‘ouses. I was on general ‘work – mostly hod carryin’. Then we went to Farncombe, and after that to Godalming, where we built ‘ouses for £450 each in the mid-1930s. I suppose I stuck with the buildin’ then because it was more entertaining. You was there with people and the time went quicker. On the farm you got stuck on a job on your own all day long.
‘Then there was a job – all ‘eard of by word-of-mouth in them days – where I thought I’d do better, for Milton’s, convertin’ a big ol’ house into a school – the Naval. It took 18 months, then I went with Milton’s to Greenhill’s Farm, Fernhurst, where we pulled down the ol’ house bar the chimney-stack and built a new place around it. It took six months and this was the first time I’d stayed away from home. I lived in a lodge with Laurie Coombs, retired keeper on the Blackdown Estate. Very nice, too, as it was next door to the pub and they treated me as though I were their son. I’d just asked for lodgin’s in the pub – people was more interested to take you in then – everythin’ was more genuine in them days.
‘Mum died when I was 12, my two brothers went in the Army, I went away in lodgin’s. One sister came back and tried to keep home for dad and me but couldn’t manage and went away, and I’ve never seen her since. My other sister went in a home. In 1942 I thought I’d found my sister and answered a murder charge because the person ‘ad a cut down the little finger and I’d given her one years ago. I said somethin’ she didn’t like, she went to box me ears and I put my knife and fork up to defend myself. But it wasn’t her. After that the police did find her, but she didn’t want to be known where she was.
‘So it was just me and dad livin’ together from about 1926 to 1943, till I got married and we came up ‘ere to live with me in-laws. My wife died in 1969 and there’s only my younger sister left as well as my daughter and son. See that ol’ horse-chestnut there? My son brought it in as a conker from Redhill.
‘When we moved out of the brickyard house at Boundless, Lord Pirrie knocked it down straightaway. He also owned Roundles Cottage, which we moved into; that was down in the bottom ‘ere – was Cree Hole Farm – and we paid three bob a week rent.
‘When I was a boy, there was no electricity, no toilets and no wash facilities. For washin’ you ‘ad to get water in a bucket from a well about 20yd outside the garden. Lightin’ was all paraffin lamps an’ candles, an’ you ‘ad to go easy with ‘em: you ‘ad to save anythin’ in them days. Nothin’ was plentiful. The only good thing was you could always get a bit of food of some sort. The grocer came round once a week, on a Friday from Milford Supply Store, and he’d take your order for next time. Summers the baker came out three times a week, on his horse and cart from Grayswood. My favourite was the ol’ cottage loaf – no doubt about it. And on Good Friday they’d be up that much earlier so’s the buns was still warm. The postman came on a bike from Godalming – all up through Brook. It was Tom Keen, who was born at Punchbowl Farm – was Pitt Farm. ‘Course, there was quite a few letters then as there was more writin’. It only cost a penny a letter in those days.
‘Heatin’ was all wood, but you can’t say it was free – it was all sweat money! You couldn’t run about in the copses in those days and get a bit of wood just as you liked, especially as the keepers was so concerned for their pheasants. But on an estate they’d always cut a copse for firewood every winter. Whether the workers got it any cheaper I don’t know. We needed quite a bit to heat the ol’ copper.
‘In my young days the place was lousy with gypsies – they used to camp on the common ground by Boundless Brickyard. They was forever comin’ round and wantin’ to buy a few eggs, but they kept their nose clean when they was settled.
‘I remember once when I was playin’ with one gyppo lad an’ ‘e pushed me over onto a broken jam-jar and the wound wouldn’t heal. So father shaved off some Sunlight soap, mixed it with sugar and bound it on the cut for three days. When ‘e took it off it looked an awful mess, but we ‘ad a big ol’ black dog and ‘e came up and started lickin’ it clean till it was red raw again. Then dad made a ring bandage so it never touched the wound and from then on it started healin’.
‘When I was 7 some gyppos came round for eggs when I ‘ad’oopin’ cough bad. An ol’ gyp told mum to get an ol’ bread bun, wrap it up an’ bury it for four days till it was mouldy and then give it to me to eat. I did just that and it worked – that’s your penicillin. German measles – that was serious then – chicken pox – I’ve had the lot. But you was brought up bloody tough and came through it all right.
‘When my son was seven ‘e ‘ad chicken pox an’ it got inside is mouth. So I went to the pub an’ took ‘im back some cider an’ next mornin’ you could ‘ardly see a spot in ‘is mouth – it’s the acid.’
After the job for Milton’s at Fernhurst, Lew continued with the same builder as a general labourer. ‘After a while, I asked Dick Milton if there was any chance of gettin’ on with a trowel – bricklayin’, an’ I did. That was about 1934, and I continued with different builders till 1939, one of the big jobs I worked on being the Queen Elizabeth Barracks at Bordon.’
In 1939, Lew was out of work for three months, having decided to wait for a copse job with Hoptroff – ‘the same firm I worked for at Hydon’s Ball. The war began before I started, but I never signed on the dole because if you did it was straight in the Army, and I’ve never had a medical in me life.
So I started on the timber when I was 27, in charge of a gang, an’ the ol’ boy put in for my exemption, timber cuttin’ bein’ a reserved occupation. The wood was mostly put into railway sleepers and truck bottoms. All the material was ordered by the Ministry of Supply and most of our cuttin’ was on the Witley Park estate. I had nearly five years there; there was masses of trees, some really fine timber, mostly oak. One man paid over a quarter of a million pounds for a load.
‘There was three or four of us in a gang and it was all piece-work – so much a cube and we shared it all out. We worked about 8-5, Monday to Saturday, with axe and cross-cut saws, and I suppose I earned about £4 a week depending on the weather. Even in those days there still wasn’t much meat to go round; the only blessing was if you kept a pig.’
At this time, Lew acquired some of his many scars and discovered just how dangerous timber-felling can be. Pointing to a scar on his wrist, he remembers: ‘I ‘ad the axe in there when I first started copse cuttin’, an’ I ‘ad to walk all the way into Haslemere for stitches. Another time I was standin’ on the top of a big ol’ spruce tree we’d felled, strippin’ the branches which slant back. I was chip-choppin’ about and the axe touched a bough up above an’ came down across my foot, cuttin’ the top off one of me toes. Anyhow, I ‘ad an ‘oliday then. They took me home an’ the district nurse came out. In the evening I went by taxi to the doctor’s and ‘e asked who done me up. I said the district nurse an’ ‘e said right, that’s good enough for me, so I could ‘ave saved the price of the taxi!
‘After the war I went back on the buildin’, on a council pre-fab estate, at the top of Woolmer Hill, in Haslemere. We ‘ad some bad weather then, about a dozen of us, but we was on piece-work and earned good money.
‘Then I sort of chucked the buildin’ in. I was gonna run a smallholding and rented a couple of fields the other side of Boundless. But then the Forestry Commission came in an’ bought all the fields around, including mine behind my back. In fact, mine was the first they tore up. But they met with me to try and sort it out. At that time I could see the future in chestnut, so I said I’d let things be if I can have the chestnut as it comes up. So we went down the Dog and Pheasant, had a glass of beer and shook hands on it; an’ it’s been the same ever since. All my coppice has come from the Forestry Commission, but I did go outside once when I did walkin’ stick stuff and needed three-year-old, which was ‘arder to get. I supplied the Chalford Stick Company in Gloucestershire.
‘I don’t own or rent the copse, but pay a price for it when it’s fit for cuttin’, agreements bein’ made with the local forester. There are people who’d come in an’ cut your throat for it if they had the chance. As long as you pay a fair price you’re all right. I suppose over the years I’ve paid between £30 and £300 an acre.
‘All mine’s used for post and pale fencing. Posts go to anyone, but all the pales go to Homewoods, chestnut fencin’ manufacturers of Haslemere. I’ve always dealt with them; they started when I did and you could say we helped each other.
‘A copse is cut any time from 12 years on. The piece I’m workin’ on now is 19 year old and I’ve bought it three times over, spanning some 40 years. Nothin’ much has changed in that time, except that the Forestry Commission’s put respectable roads in. But all that land over there was just a field once. Most of the land round ‘ere was first planted for the ‘oop business and pheasant cover. I saw this bit cut for ‘oops for barrels when I was 10 year old. My father-in-law planted a lot – ‘e ‘ad a long line with goose feathers on it to say where the trees was wanted. He worked for Lord Derby, who ‘ad the estate before Lord Pirrie.’
BEYOND LIVING MEMORY
Roses and elder-flowers find employment for the still; although our country ladies do not indulge themselves in the amusements of the still-room with the gusto of their grandmothers; their cordials of ‘sovrain virtue’ are almost forgotten; the present generation has almost lost its faith in five-leaved-grass water; and as for 1’Esprit des Millefleurs, it is better from Delcroix 2 Paris. Peppermint is ready too for the still; — the camomile harvest, in Kent and Derbyshire, employs many children. Heath-berries of various kinds, as bilberries, cranberries, etc and mushrooms are gathered by the poor and carried for sale into the towns.
WILLIAM HOWITT
Book of the Seasons, 1830
Nowadays, Lew works from about eight until four, ‘when I feels fit and the weather’s right. I never try to beat the weather’. But he has some assistance, with one man helping with cutting and another part-timer who helps with wiring-up the fencing. In fact, the workplace in the woods is like a little factory, with bark-stripping machine and wood-splitting apparatus set up under a large blue plastic sheet, and piles of posts and finished fencing stacked neatly all around.
The copse is cut from November to March, when the sap is not rising. ‘And the thicker it is the straighter and cleaner the stams [stems] are. Nowadays we take the lot down an’ burn all the rubbish but in the old days the tops went for faggots. Most of the makin’ up’s done in the summer when there’s no cuttin’ and it’s seasoned a bit, but we also make up straightaway, peelin’, splittin’, pointin’ and wirin’.’
I asked Lew what he thinks about all day long and how he manages to cope with such hard physical work at his age. He replied: ‘I likes work an’ that’s it an’ all about it. To me it seems an achievement to do something worthwhile an’ produce something. It’s a challenge. I believe in livin’ with nature and controllin’ it, not like some of these idiots. Do you know, we’ve even had Jehovah’s Witnesses up here; I pretty soon told ‘em what my religion is – God is nature.’
But Lew has never been a recluse. Far from it; he still zips about the lanes in his Jetta car and is proud of the fact that he has ‘a 62 year drivin’ licence without a blemish on it.’ ‘ad me first motorbike when I was 17 years old, a Royal Enfield two-speed. And my first car was in 1940, a secondhand, two-seater Austin 7. When old [Sir] John Lee [then owner of Witley Park] saw my father ‘e said, “Your son must be makin’ some money, what with his car”. But my dad soon put ‘im right – ‘e said, “It’s only like bein’ kicked by a donkey – pure ignorance”.
‘Father used to get over to the Red Lion at Thursley, and there weren’t many nights he’d miss when we was at Boundless. He used to play cricket for Thursley and was the last man to bowl underarm for the team. I used to play cricket for Brook from when I was 16 till the war. And I played football for Brook and Grayswood United about the same time, nearly every Saturday and Sunday. I was in the second 11, but I haven’t taken hold of a cricket-bat since the war.
‘I only went for the social side really – a good ol’ sing-song in the pub after. It was good in the pub then; if they were local people, you knew ‘em. I remember goin’ down the Dog and Pheasant on my 18th birthday and got chucked out the same night. And it weren’t my fault either. They were good ol’ days. If you ‘ad half-a-crown in yer pocket you could face the evenin’ comfortable. But many a time I went with a shilling. You’d buy the first brown for 4½d (we’d buy a pint and split it if we could, as it was cheaper at 7d), get on the ol’ dartboard and if you won a couple of games you was all right as your beer was paid for. But if you lost, you ‘ad to sit in the corner quiet like.’
SUPERSTITIONS AND CURES
The people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would do well to remember, that no longer ago than the year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a suspicion of witchcraft; and by trying experiments, drowned them in a horse-pond.
In a farm-yard near the middle of this village stands, at this day, a row of pollard-ashes, which by the seams and long cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show that, in former times, they have been cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked, were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that, by such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the operation was over, the tree, in the suffering part, was plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out, where the feat was performed with any adroitness at all, the party was cured; but, where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed, would prove ineffectual.
We have several persons now living in the village, who, in their childhood, were supposed to be healed by this superstitious ceremony, derived down perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who practised it before their conversion to Christianity.
GILBERT WHITE
Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, 1789
Having lived and worked in the same small area all his life, Lew has met some great characters, and even now, many years after they have gone, their voices still ring in this old countryman’s ears. ‘This bit we’re on now was cut by George Madgwick and Squeaker West when I was 10. He was known as Squeaker because ‘e ‘ad a squeaky ol’ voice an’ you could ‘ear ‘im all over the woods, but he lived till gone 90. His son was the same age as me an’ we used to go up there playin’ about an’ gettin’ into mischief.’
And as well as the characters, the woods are full of incidents in Lew’s life. ‘In the war a string of bombs unloaded right down through ‘ere. An ol’ keeper found one 500-pounder just up there, while ‘e was out settin’ rabbit wires. They came an’ took that away. But another one – I heard the thud – which was unexploded was never found. Neither has the one which fell in runnin’ sand. For all I know they’re out there now, an’ there’s people come up ‘ere walkin’ their dogs and enjoyin’ the scenery.’
Almost every bush holds memories of wildlife, too, though in many places there are only ghosts where birds and animals once thronged. ‘I ‘aven’t seen a nightjar for years, but when we was kids it was nothin’ to ‘ave five or six dodgin’ you when you was cyclin’ down Park Lane of an evenin’. An’ I ‘aven’t ‘eard a nightingale for God knows how long. These nature reserve people ‘ave got it all wrong with their copse cuttin’ and so on for wildlife. That’s not the real problem. See, nowhere’s keepered properly today. If a nightingale wants to be there, he’ll be there, and a bloody ol’ bramble patch is as good as anythin’.
‘I got up to the first buzzard nest round here, you know. It was in a larch tree. In 1936 John Lee had ‘em brought down from Scotland to control the rabbits on Witley Park, and they was all caged in to get ‘em acclimatised. But when the war came there was no labour to do anythin’ an’ they was all turned loose, and they done well what with no keeperin’ much durin’ the war. There’s still a few about. They’re pretty quiet things down low – only time you ‘ears ‘em squakin’ is up in the sky.
‘Another thing you ‘ardly ever see now is redstarts – you always used to see one round a farm buildin’. But there’ still lots of adders around, and this year I’ve never seen slugs like it on these poles – they eat the algae. I remember one of the ol’ charcoal-burners got bit up ‘ere by an adder. They used to contract for whole woods up to the Fifties. But I only ever saw ‘em with kilns. Even when I was a boy I never saw ‘em earthin’ up in the old way, though the marks was still in the woods where they’d been.
‘Those ol’ charcoal-burners was a rough lot – always gettin’ a girl knocked up, an’ there was one incident I always thought could ‘ave led to a murder charge. One day there was three charcoal-burners workin’ up ‘ere reported another man missin’ an’ where he’d been workin’ was blood on the ground. Well, when I saw the local policeman he said, “I hear there’s a man missin’ up your way”. Later on, I thought, “I wonder if he’s fallen down that well away over the back?”, so I went to look. But I couldn’t see anythin’ because someone had jammed it tight with some thick ol’ stams. After that the police found the missin’ man some miles away walkin’ along the road and claimin’ he’d lost his memory. Well, I always wondered if he’d had a girl up demandin’ money if he’d got her knocked up, done ‘er in, dropped ‘er down the shaft an’ blocked it up. Far’s I know, nobody ever did look.’
Nowadays, Lew’s woods never ring to the crack of charcoal-burners, and only the occasional bark of a dog being exercised breaks the silence on Sundays. There was a time when just the gentle thud of Lew’s light axe echoed about the coppice and birdsong filled the air. But now, on workdays the wild songsters are far fewer, and in any case you would often be hard-pressed to hear them because since the 1950s the chainsaw has dominated woodland work. And sometimes the sylvan silence is broken when Lew sparks up his 1951 Fordson Major tractor – ‘one of the first’.
In all Lew’s activities it is noticeable that he moves with a measured ease which enables him to work a full day into old age. Both mentally and physically, he works with nature and never against it. Even now he leaves younger, rush-and-tear men standing.
But for all the years and seasons he has seen and enjoyed, Lew’s mark on the landscape will soon disappear as the woods close in after his inevitable passing and the disappearance of his way of life. The familiar figure from the woods of High Button will be but a memory and the cottage where he has lived alone for over 20 years will probably be modernised so that some nouveau countryman can move in without ever understanding the way rural life really was – tough and promising little in the way of material rewards, yet tremendously fulfilling in simple ways. And where geese and chickens now honk and cluck about the little garden, no doubt space will be made for the latest shiny company car.
COPPICING TODAY
Modern coppicing is an important means of retaining links with ancient wild woodlands. In addition to traditional hazel, birch, ash, willow, oak, field maple and hawthorn are all still actively coppiced in many parts of the country. And as well as providing a renewable, fast-growing source of wood in a sustainable environment, whilst extending the life of trees, a coppice is also a habitat in which wildlife can thrive. The sight of spring flowers covering the floor of a coppice is one of the most superb natural events, and coppices are home to some of Britain’s rarer species, including dormice, nightingales and early purple orchids. As Oliver Rackham, acknowledged authority on woodlands says, ‘woodmanship is an ecological factor in its own right’.
Today there are some 400 qualified craftsmen working as coppicers and The National Coppice Apprenticeship Scheme (www.greenwoodcentre.org.uk) encourages the continuation of the practice of coppicing. Its ‘Week in the Woods’ courses, held in a variety of locations, provide the opportunity to learn what coppicing involves, including ‘tester’ workshops. It also offers a three-year apprenticeship programme; at centres such as the Coppicewood College in Pembrokeshire (www.coppicewoodcollege.co.uk) it is possible to participate in shorter, six-month courses.
Yet one memorial to Lew is likely to last into the forseeable future. Down in Hampshire, at a pub called the Black Fox, on the A3 near Milland, is a stuffed black fox with a plaque bearing testimony to the man who trapped it – Lew Edwards. ‘I caught it in 1965, on the same day Churchill died, and I hadn’t seen it around the place before. I caught three foxes that morning and when my wife saw the black one she came out and said: “You bugger, you’ve caught someone’s dog”.
‘Anyway, I ‘ad it about the place here for a couple of days and then decided to ‘ave it stuffed as a Churchill memorial. So I skinned it, put it in a box, took it to Hindhead Post Office and sent it to Mr Hare – that really was ‘is name – at Golders Green. With the cabinet an’ all, it cost £36, which was a lot in 1965. I drove up with a friend to collect it as ‘e knew his way about up there.
‘But when we got it, it was in the way a bit, and I used to pass the Black Fox when goin’ down to visit my daughter in Hampshire. So I let the pub ‘ave it on condition they gave me a letter statin’ it was only on loan, which they did.’
Since then, Lew has not seen another black fox, ‘but there’s a white badger down here now, and in my time I’ve seen a white squirrel, white swallow and white blackbird’. And I believe every word Lew says because, by good luck, some months before we spoke, I too had seen that white badger while I was driving along the quiet lanes by Lew’s house, on my way home late one night.
The black fox might be a rarity, but in these modern times it is less so than the man who caught it. Visitors to the Black Fox should realise that the name on the plaque is more remarkable than the creature displayed above it.
Lew Edwards died in October 2008, aged 96.