Remembering Russell Place

The Inn Far Away

This is the story of a house called Russell Place, which was part of my life from aged seven, until, in 1965, with my husband and three young children, I said farewell to England and set off for Southampton and to a new life in Australia as a £10 Pom. The address of the house was, and still is, Russell Place, Trampers Lane, North Boarhunt, Hampshire, a small village north of Portsmouth.

The house was occupied by Thomas and Sarah Russell, my greatgrandparents, when my father, who was born in 1895, was a boy. I have a photograph of him (above) in front of the house with other family members when he was about 15. He lived a few doors down at Yewtree Cottage with his parents and siblings but spent a lot of time at Russell Place.

We think the house may have been built in the 1850s but have no record of who lived in it prior to Thomas and Sarah but we assume it was a member of the Russell family. There was a small market garden as part of the property which was run by my father when he returned from the First World War.

My parents married in 1930 and lived about a mile away where my sister and I were born. In 1937 we moved in to Russell Place which had been empty for several years and was in a sadly neglected state. The house was set well back from the road and had a lawn each side of the path with beds of brilliant red salvias in the summer. During the war this had to be turned into a vegetable patch.

The grocer called once a week to collect an order which was delivered later as were bread and cakes as well as the meat. I remember taking the can up the road to the farm to collect the milk. The laundry van called once a fortnight. Nobody had cars then so these services were essential; they certainly meant a peaceful life for the housewife.

From this time on the house has many stories to tell as the Second World War was about to begin. There was no electricity or running water in the house so it couldn’t have been easy to run. It was a classic four rooms up four rooms down house with a passage from the front to back, upstairs and down. A door in the kitchen opened to reveal a little flight of steps with a bend at the top and a thick rope to serve as a bannister. The two front rooms were sitting rooms and at the back there was a kitchen with a black range and opposite was a stone-flagged larder, from the days when I think there must have been a dairy there.

Behind the house was a two-storey building which housed two coppers and a stone sink with a pump which always had to be primed before any water came rushing out. Here was done the weekly wash and in the summer we had our bath in a large galvanized tub; in winter this was taken into the kitchen and put in front of the fire. Imagine all that filling up and emptying! No wonder it was a once-a-week affair.

In 1939 the government started a programme of evacuating children from danger areas and as we lived near Portsmouth and Gosport, which were likely targets for bombing, we had to accept whoever was billeted with us. In the early days there were about four to five children and two mothers and they brought many problems with them as they had come from the poor areas of the city. After a few months when all was peaceful these children went home.

When the bombing really did start the government commandeered the four rooms at the top of the house and our family had to live in the two front rooms where we all slept in one room and lived in the other.

Over the next few years various families were billeted with us; one family of five stayed until the war was over. How they all managed I can’t imagine as all the water for cooking etc. had to be carried up

the tiny flight of stairs. As a child these things passed me by, but my mother must have found it very difficult as there was even an old man and his crippled son in the room over the wash house.

At this time we went to school in Southwick, about two miles away and part of a medieval estate where Operation Overlord was planned in the “Big House” and which was featured in This England in the summer 2014 edition. On Saturday mornings we used to visit the quaint old village shop, which had a loud bell to alert the owner who lived at the back, to spend our pocket money on our chocolate ration.

During the war our house was often the centre of activity as Mum was in the W. I. and there were gatherings in the summer when members came to use the canning machine to preserve their fruit; they must have saved their sugar ration for these occasions.

My mother encouraged us and other children to join the NSPCC. Evenings were spent in front of the fire doing craft of some sort and every August during the war a large tent was erected on the lawn and a big fête was held to raise funds for the society selling produce and articles made by the locals.

After the war when building materials became available again my parents installed a bathroom in one of the upstairs bedrooms: what a luxury that was! Friends who were renovating gave us a beautiful staircase and that was installed to descend into the old larder which became an entrance hall. By this time water and electricity had arrived in the village and so we were finally into the 20th century.

After leaving school I worked with Dad on the market garden for a few years before spreading my wings for a couple of years before my marriage.

Russell Place was the hub of all the activities for my wedding which was held in the old Saxon church of St. Nicholas in South Boarhunt. The porch, which was the scene of many games while we were growing up, became the location for wedding photos before setting off for the church.

Over the next 10 years we visited frequently from our home in Rustington, Sussex, so our children became as familiar with the house as I was. Our last photos before emigrating were taken at Russell Place, and I was not to see it again for nearly 40 years.

By that stage my parents, who had joined us in Western Australia when the property was sold, had died. My sister and I visited in 1999 with her son who was living in London and we saw many changes to the outside of the house and the market garden was no longer being My father didn’t tell me a lot about the war, Or, more specifically, his part in it. I learned from others about friends of his Who became absent from their stools at the inn.

One stool was left vacant for years, I was told, No one would forget, or take the place of, this fallen comrade. My father had his own special chair at home too. In that chair he would quietly remember his friends.

Now he’s gone, I sit in his special chair, Moved from his leafy Warwickshire to my moored Devon. In that chair I quietly remember my father And picture him, reunited with friends, At some inn far away.