Game-keeping and Shooting in Leigh 1920s/1930s
Game-keeping and Shooting in Leigh 1920s/1930s – from Douglas Pankhurst Memories – see main document
Lord de Lisle, whose Penshurst Castle estate came partly into Leigh parish, had no taste for game preservation or shooting parties and, in the twenties and thirties, let his shooting to Lord Hollenden so that his Lordship had the choice of the Hall Place shoot or the rather wilder domain of Penshurst Park.
The keeper of the Penshurst Park shoot, in my time, was Fred Maddox, who had various junior keepers over the years. Charlie and Victor Brown, brothers of my friend Jess, occupied the position in turn. Fred lived in a large old cottage, midway between Paul’s Hill and Cinder Hill. Whichever way you approached it, whether along the footpath, which struck west along the ridge of Paul’s Hill or by the cart track which ran from Cinder Hill farm down into the valley behind the house from whence a path climbed up to the back door, you were involved in a walk of about three quarters of a mile from the hard road. Where the path from Cinder Hill left the cart track, there was a slightly chalybeate spring, bricked in and covered with a wooden lid, which provided the sole drinking and culinary supply of these two cottages. All water used for drinking or cooking had to be carried up the path in buckets. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the soft water barrels were valued possessions. Set with a piece of coarse sack tied over the top to keep out debris and mosquitoes, under the spouts of the rainwater pipes, they provided – so long as supplies lasted – water for washing and cleaning. Hot water supply was a big black kettle always on the hob. The tea kettle was smaller and kept filled with spring water. Washing days or bathing meant lighting the copper in the outhouse.
The house had large, low rooms, mostly brick floored downstairs and was devoid of any main services. Lighting was by oil lamps or candles, waste water was thrown into the garden, the lavatory was a pail under a wooden seat, involved what most people called “burying the dead” – not a popular task but one which at least improved the crops. My late friend, Bill Pelling, always averred that “cottage gardening had never been the same since they abolished the privy”.
Fred was a biggish man who seemed always to be dressed in the breeches, boots and leggings, Lovatt coloured jacket which were, more or less, the keeper’s uniform. I suppose I must have seen him in other attire but the only variations I can remember are for him to have worn long stockings in place of leggings or to have varied what he wore under the jacket, according to the seasons – sometimes a cardigan, sometimes a waistcoat, sometimes but rarely, neither. I never saw him in any other mood than good tempered though, I suppose, he must have had his bad moments, but he was said to be severe with poachers and trespassers. Mrs Maddox, nicknamed for what reason I know not “micker” was short of stature, short-sighted, peering through steel rimmed glasses, and when in company, was an incorrigible and general chatterbox. She spent plenty of time by herself and probably had a lot of arrears to make up.
At one time, the Browns lived next door and even after they moved down in the village, she never failed to drop in on her friend whenever she visited the village; about twice during the week and, as a rule, once on Sundays for evensong at the Church, at least in summer. Jess was always welcome, in turn, at her house and, if I was with him, so was I. The water they drank, coming as it did from an unprotected surface source, must, I suppose have been fairly heavily contaminated, but a glass of it from the jug under the candle filter always seemed cool, clear and refreshing after a hot walk from Paul’s Hill and, indeed, despite its drawbacks and the fact that little, if anything, was spent upon maintaining it, the old house was a comforting and welcoming place, the contents of which, since heedlessly discarded, would have made a contemporary antique dealer squirm with avarice.
We always thought of it as old without defining its age in our minds in terms of the passage of years. The style was the Wealden vernacular with a salt box roof, partly brick and partly tile hung and obviously altered and added to at different times. Probably, on reflection, the oldest parts were three hundred years old and I often wondered if, in the days when it had been all one, it had been an ironworker’s house as the name “Cinder Hill” is said to have denoted an iron-working and the ground beneath it was iron bearing. The chance of going back to look has vanished, however, as it was demolished, as far as I know without a second thought in the 1960s.
Considering the total absence in their lives of most of the amenities commonly taken for granted, Fred and Micker rarely grumbled and compared with their agricultural neighbours, they enjoyed a number of advantages. Fred spent many hours a day at work, patrolling is territory, but except in the anxious weeks in the bird field in spring, setting pheasant eggs under domestic hens and watching over and guarding the chicks, when one or other of the keepers was constantly in the hut day or night, he was largely his own man, taking his own decisions and acting on his own initiative, walking, observing the seasons, shooting the odd rat, weasel, stoat or jay bird, all of which he deemed vermin.
His Lordship’s shooting parties[1] on winter Saturdays, however, meant noting where the birds were, working out routes and positions for the guns and deploying the beaters. Beaters were drawn from the workmen on the Estate, from boys of the village and from trusted outsiders. Several used to come on the morning train from Tonbridge. Provided a shoot was conducted properly – and mostly the Hall Place shoots were – there was no danger to any one present and, it must be conceded in the case of some of his Lordship’s guests, not much peril to the birds either. I never heard of any serious incident at a Hall Place shoot thought Alf Faircloth, who farmed at Great Barnetts and, later, Charcott, shot his foot off climbing over a stile carrying a cocked 12 bore. The only incident on Fred’s beat, and I heard this second-hand, not being present at the time, happened to an old beater named, I think, Ashby, from Tonbridge, who on a very cold morning was wearing a sheepskin jacket. Trouble with one of his boots caused him to straggle from the line of beaters and whilst he bent down to attend to his footwear, one of the sportsmen, who had rather lost his bearings, caught sight of a small piece of white bobbing about in the undergrowth and, as he explained, thought it to be a rabbit, whereupon he committed the unforgiveable sin in that context, of loosing off at it, fortunately at extreme range. The distance, the spread of the shot and stout clothes saved the recipient from serious injury but some pellets lodged under the skin. Declining all aid, it is reported, in not over-gracious terms, he tramped off purposefully and uncomfortably to the Halt, took the train to Tonbridge and had his wife extract the shot with a needle.
Rabbits were trapped or shot fairly systematically and were sold as part of the Estate revenues. Nothing was said if one or two found their way into the domestic pot and, as far as I can remember, one or two found their way to other recipients. Pigeons were also taken and at the end of a good day’s shoot, the keepers were sometimes, but not invariably, given game. There was some minor income to be made from pelts and, of course, there was plenty of wood to be picked up. Coal for the range was left by the coalman at the first gate up the path from Paul’s Hill. Milk was fetched from Alf Jenner at Cinder Hill farm. Meat, bread and groceries were mostly fetched either from the village or from Tonbridge though the path was navigable on a trade bike and tradesmen’s boys did from time-to-time delivery there.
About mid-day, the sportsmen used to be provided with refreshment. If access was good enough, it was taken to them in the motor brake driven by the chauffeur, but if the going was too rough or too constricted for the motor, the horse-drawn game van, driven by George Hand, was used instead. What was contained in the hampers sent out for the guns, I do not know, but the beaters were provided with bread, cheese and beer and with ham or beef sandwiches. Guests varied from the prodigal to the stingy in their tippings of the keepers. The keepers, in their turn, took great care neither by expression nor gesture, nor, it goes without saying, by overt comment, to give any indication of what their feelings were about the merit of any gun’s skill, secure in the knowledge that using guns and cartridges inferior to those of the guests, they could have put up a performance equal to the best and very much better than the worst.
Though Fred (Maddox) was a first-class shot with a sporting gun, he never made much of a shot with the rifle. When the Home Guard was formed in 1940, after Dunkirk, he was a volunteer and during practice shooting on the rifle range at Castle Hill, distinguished himself by putting a bullet through a corrugated iron range-warden’s hut at about 3 o’clock to the target, at which he was supposed to be shooting. There was a moment’s pause, then the door of the hut was hurled open and the range warden, who had been pasting up targets inside, emerged at high speed and took to the woods.
Fred’s counterpart on the Hall Place home shoot was a man named North, whom I never knew nearly so well. He lived in a Victorian red-brick bungalow with brick dog-houses and corn sheds built in the best manner of nineteenth century estate improvement, all approached by a long straight and relatively well paved track which ran from the Home Farm along the west flank of the Turbine Field (so called because a building in the corner of it at the Bid Brook once housed a small turbine used for pumping) in the shadow of the wood.
[1] Lord Hollenden