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NAILSWORTH REMEMBERED

Dennis Day

One of the visitors, the late Dennis Day, proved to be an entertaining storyteller when he came to visit us on Friday, 11 January 1991.  After telling us about his pigeons, he launched into a fascinating tour of his memories.

Here are some extracts from his conversation with Highwood pupils and staff (based on transcripts prepared by Alice Day).

School

"The school that is there now was called the British Boys' School when I was five and that was all boys.  The girls were down at Nailsworth and every year, at the end of term, they used to have a partition in the school down there, a glass partition, that they could pull back and make one big room. And the girls came up from the girls' school, they would be in one side and we would be in the other side, and the master, by the name of Wallis, the headmaster, he could play a violin.  There were a couple of other boys who could play violins, and they played recordings and there was a singsong with everybody before we broke up."

"We had a master down at this school, by the name of Lewis, he was a Welsh man, and when he came there the first day I had the cane twice.  The second time I had the cane I thought, 'Dennis, it's time you didn't go to school until that bloke has gone,' so the next day I got up with a violent headache and I didn't go to school, and the next day, I thought, 'I shall have to keep this headache up or else they'll make me go to school,' so I had another violent headache, and in the end I ended up being taken to the doctor.  The doctor turned round and couldn't find anything wrong with me, so mother had to take me to Stroud to the hospital. And they turned round and said, 'Well to find out what's really wrong with him, it is best to give him white meat, fish and chicken, not to give him anything else.'  There was nothing wrong with me. I was just glad to see the back of the master.  Anyway, he went, and I was glad to go back to school then."

Audience: "Did they cane you on your bottom?"

"You did get the cane for practically anything then.  You had the cane, and some of them got quite good at the cane.  This one bloke would say,' Hold  your hand out,' and you did try to keep getting your hand back, and he would say ' get your hand back' and had the cane like this.  And, all of a sudden, the cane would come up and nearly hit your hand and up would go your hand and the cane would come up underneath your hand. Bump up would go your hand and the same cane would meet your hand going down.  Urggggh!

There was a boiler down at that school, down in the playground, and they coked it up with coke in the winter to warm the school up.  The master did come down in breaktime, playtime, and shovel this coke in, and do the boiler while we were playing in the yard.  One day it has been snowing, but [there] weren't a lot of snow, and we were down in the yard playing and the master came down to coke up.  I grabbed hold of this snow, and I reckon I must have got some grit and that in with the snow, in this snowball, and I said, 'What's the betting as I couldn't hit him?'  And, as he turned to go back up to the school, I threw right into his face. He swung round and seen us two stood looking at him and he come across and said to the kiddie as was stood by me 'come with me' and off to the school the kid went and when I got up there ha had had the cane. [laughter] I was the one what done it.

I was kept in once.  I was walking out through the headmaster's class and he said, 'Go back to your classroom and wait until I let you out,' so he went on with his own class and he forgot me.  The headmaster went and he locked all the school up and I suddenly realised I was in the school all on my own.  I started yelling and kids from round the school they shouted because the windows were high up there and you couldn't see out. And they said, 'Break all the canes up and we will go and get the master and let you out.'  I didn't do that 'cause I would have got the cane again.  Anyway, they fetched the master and it was 7 o'clock at night when he came up and let me out, and there was about twenty children outside gave me a big cheer as I came out of the door.  I run down into the Stroud Road and run down that way and got into trouble for being late."

School Punishment and School Attendance

"Don't do what I used to do at school, you aren't so bad off nowadays cause they don't let you have the cane now do they?

Well, when I was a boy around your age, I went to the boys' school down the bottom here, which is the infants' school.  You went up there, I suppose, about nine to the infants school, and the girls stayed down at Nailsworth at the girls' school, and you left at fourteen then, look, unless you went to Marling, Tech or High School in them days.   There were a lot of poor people around in them days, poor families, and you had to buy your own school uniform, your parents had to buy the school uniforms, and so a lot of children didn't get the chance to go.  My sister passed for the High School and I passed for the Technical School, but couldn't go because there was 10 of us in the family and my parents couldn't afford to let us go.  But it was a good school, we had a good headmaster, Mr Wallis, he didn't use the cane too much. But he did use the cane, 'cause my hands are a bit bigger than they should be where they was caned when I was small, and across my backside. I had six of them across my backside once, and the master said, 'You needn't sit down, Day, if you don't want to,' and I didn't want to. I had to stand up for quite a while.  That was because, going home at dinner time I met a kiddie who lived right up Chestnut Hill.  We took the top off his bike and threw that over the hedge; we took the bolts out of his tyres and threw them up to the top of the hill and his spokes went the same way; and then we went home.  When we got back to school the first person we seen was this kiddie with his mother, so we knew trouble was coming.  Anyway, when we all sat down at school, in walked this kiddie with his mother and the headmaster, and the other boy and me had to go out.  Five of us had to go out to the headmaster's desk and he went to the cupboard and got the best cane he could and then, I was the first, he laid me across the desk and gave me six of the best, when the boy's mother had gone.  It didn't half hurt, it really hurt. "

"We used to walk from Harley Wood, do you know where Harley Wood is?  It's a little village where you look across from the Fisheries there and do you know Barton End?  Up the Bath Road, right up to the top till you get almost to the top of the hill, there is a big house there. And I used to go to Hilliers, to the dinner time, go home, mother would say your father wants a cooked meal and she would put the plate, and another plate on top of that and the top of a cottage loaf.  A cottage loaf is a loaf with a small round top, and she would the whole top of that on the top of a plate and I would carry that, then up the Barton End to the big house. And if it was a nice day, he would say, 'You aren't going back to school,' -  I used to like that.  He would cut the top of the cottage loaf in half and he would go into the greenhouse and bring out tomatoes, whatever 'twas they growed in the greenhouse, and he brought them to the corner of the house and they would bring a big jug of tea and we did have our dinner there then look. And then I would go out on the garden and we would work then until five o'clock.  You got an attendance officer comes round now to see if you don't come to school, well we had an attendance officer then called Ben Weager and he had a little Austin 7 car. And we was outside the gate at the British Boys' School one afternoon and Ben Weager pulled up there in this Austin 7 car and he caught both these boys and he had them in the back of the car.  The master came out and looked around and he didn't have them any more. They'd opened the car door and they shot down the lane, both of them, he'd lost them again.  They couldn't get them to school, just couldn't.  The plantation there just below the school, there was some trees there, and they used to get up them trees, and, one day, they was right up the top of these trees when the bell went, and the master came out 'cause he had already rung the bell.  And we all went to school, bar the boys who was up the tree, three of them, and one of them was out of class, and the master turned round.  ............... They left them, and they came down on their own.

There was a woman by the name of Mrs Britton, the master caned her boy and she came up with an umbrella, and when the master went to see her in the cloakroom, she fetched him across the top of the head with her umbrella.  They was rough then.

The master turned round and said he had this for [him], and he gave him the cane, and the boy went back, and the desks used to slope, like that in them days, and there was little ink pots in the top and the boy went back to his desk.  The master turned round to the blackboard, and the boy stuck his finger in the pot and he threw it and he just missed the master's head.  Smack against the blackboard, the ink all came out, the master turned round, and he said, 'I'll tell your father about you tonight.'  The kid turned round, walked out of the school and he never came back."

Hilliers and Animals

"The pigs used to come in to Hilliers, you know, up the Newmarket Road. Hilliers, they used to do all their own killings in those days; they used to kill up to 1,000 pigs a week; they used to bring these pigs in on the rail.  We could hear these pigs squealing from the school when they did come in about three o'clock in the afternoon, shunting about.  They did drive them up the little alley by what used to be a garage, (it isn't a garage now, as you go towards Stroud, and there is a lane come up by the school there,) come up by the infants' school where they did drive the pigs across the road there and up that lane and along the private road down into Newmarket Road and up to the Hilliers, 'cause there wasn't the lorries about in them days.  Well, in the summer, a lot of these pigs did drop down with exhaustion and they did leave them in the side of the road.  We come out of school and pigs would be led in the side of the road, they did come back with some sort of transport and get the pigs on and take 'um on up to the train.  I have seen younger boys if the pig got O.K. while they was away, they would have a ride on the pig's back."

Audience: "Did you ever do that, did you ride on the pig's back?"

"I never rode on the pig's back. There is a donkey there owned by old Tom Brain.  He had this donkey and trap and he used to go round selling bootlaces and black (boot polish) and things like that, and dishcloths, and he kept the donkey in a field up the back of Harley Wood.... we took some bread up there one day and give this donkey this bread over the five-bar gate, and somebody said, 'Who'll ride him?' and I said I would.  So I got on the five-bar gate, and I jumped across his back and galloped about here to that door and then his back end came up and I went sailing. I was a-flying.  That's a bray donkey, and I didn't half get out of that, I hit me head, and I chased that donkey round the field afterwards for throwing me off."

Audience: "Was that the same donkey that got in the grain that time?"

"Yes that donkey.  After this fellow died, my father bought the donkey, and he kept it up in the loft, but he used to raise pigeons, keep pigeons, and did have the pigeon grub in the dustbin, and that donkey did knock the lid off the dustbin and eat the food.  He did roll the dustbin right down.  I thought, 'I'll stop that,' and I tied the two animals together with some rope, and then I kept it in the shed, and I went over one day, and the donkey was on the floor, and he rolled the floor like this, and I said to my father, 'That donkey ain't well, he won't get up.'  I said, ' Where you got your pigeons too......' He could have died -  he ate all my pigeon food.  That went on for a long time, we had to take turns walking him."

Poverty

Audience: "Were people very poor in those days?"

"They was very, very poor, and another things was the butchers didn't have fridges as they are called now so they did their own killing, the butchers, and at the end of the week, what meat they had left was no good.  They had to get rid of it, so a lot of people didn't go shopping till 7.30 ' cause shops kept open till 8 at night and they would go shopping at 7.30 because they could get bargains then because they knowed the butcher couldn't get rid of it and you could get a hunk of beef that big round for next to nothing then .....

As a boy I used to go down Butcher's Hill with a truck with perambulator wheels on and there wasn't the traffic on the roads then and my father used to say, 'Stop at the top of Butchers Hill,' and he would come up with a sack bag full of meat where he'd been to the butchers and he put this on the truck and I would have to pull that home while he did go back to the pub. And there would be the Sunday joint in there, there'd be sheep heads, cows' heads and the people in the village used to come up and mother used to cut the meat off in a big basin and she would make broth. (They used to boil up the heads.)  It was nice if you had sauce with it to camouflage it, make it taste alright.  It was good for you, and you had bread pudding, all the stale bread was soaked and made into bread pudding - that was good... there was a lot of fat people about in them days.  Dripping on the bread, put pepper on top to make it taste better.

There was a cattle market at Nailsworth in them days, on a Tuesday I think it was. And where you go into the bus park, all along there was rails and fencing and they did sell the cattle there, on the top side where the garage is and the cafe, that was pens for pigs for sheep.  We used to run down there after school and watch them being sold.  There wasn't the cars about and that in them days and the pub did keep open all day long and there was a lot of unemployment and they used to go to the pub and get the drovers out and they would get them to drive whatever they bought back to where they belonged and you would see people in the gutter blind drunk, drunk as anything.  Everybody used to drink then,............my father and two others ......... had stone jars and I used to have to keep going down to price' and getting the jars filled up with cider."

Nailsworth Butchers

"They [Nailsworth butchers] used to do their own killing.  There was Saunders's, Taylor's, Price's, Neal's. They all done their own killing, bought their own cattle, sheep and that and done their own killing at the back of their place.  And, in the car park, as you came in from where the buses come in on the side, the bottom side, where the cars are parked all along there to the fountain, that was the cattle place, railed off, and the cattle was kept in there, and the top side where the cafe is and garage, that was pens for sheep and pigs and we used to come out of school, go down there and watch the stuff being sold.  And the pub did keep open all day then on that particular day and there wasn't the lorries that you drove the cattle up in around in them days. They used to drive what they did buy, drive them home and they did go into the pub, and get these blokes out of the pub (there was a lot of unemployment about as drovers, and the butchers used to buy their cattle there and where Gateway [supermarket] was, that block of shops there, that used to be a paddock, two paddocks, Taylor's and Saunders', and up the back of Brewery Lane, where the social club is, up the back of there, there is a little paddock there where Neal did keep his stock.  We would run from school down to Neal's, and they had a tin door, and we would push that door open and we did watch them do the killing.  They did grab the sheep, bring them up, turn them upside down, on this, like, bench, wooden bench job, and they would cut their throats.  Oh, they was cruel."

Poaching and Ferrets

"There was a lot of rabbits around, pheasants, that sort of thing, and we used to go, when we was at school we had our ferrets and these went ferreting.  You get a net, what they call first nets, and they were about that long pulled tight, and they was on a cord and they just dropped over the top of the hole and down on the ground at the side, and they netted all the holes round and you put the ferrets in and you could hear the ferrets groaning away, and all of a sudden, chunk, and out would come the rabbit into the net, and you killed him. Yeah, everyone ate rabbits in them days, that was how they lived.

We went ferreting this day, and there was a tree down.  It was winter and this tree was down up the Hazel Wood, a fir tree, and there was these rabbit holes there and we put ferrets into the nets and we had six rabbits and the boy I was with said,' There's a fellow coming along, get down and he won't see us.' So we got down there and the next thing we knew we heard a crunch and he was looking down at us, and we was poaching see, so he turned round and he had to grab the ferrets and put them in bags and take the nets off and he walked us down to the Weighbridge.  And he marched us along them houses there up to the big house and the gardener there was the gamekeeper at this place and he turned round and he said, 'I've brought you two young poachers here, Joss,' and he turned round.  He knew my father, this gamekeeper, and he said, 'Peter Day's your father,' and I said, 'Yes,' and he said, 'Don't go up there again.  I better take some meat for my trouble,' and he took a rabbit off the end of the stick and he let us have the other five rabbits, and we was back in the wood half an hour later and picked up two rabbits we hid in the burrow -  we wasn't going to lose them."

Audience: "Did the ferrets ever kill the rabbit down the hole?"

"Yes, that's what we call 'kill-in'.  They killed the rabbits down the hole.  They will eat so much of the rabbit and they will curl up and sleep there and you've got to go back the next day, you know.  What we used to do, we used to always keep a dead rabbit.  If somebody got a rabbit, we used to always keep one dead, look.  If we wanted the third out, we would bang the hole and he would come through as far as you could see and we would put the rabbit down and he would bite hold of him and we would drag him out and get him over the top.  We lost two ferrets one day when we was ferreting down the wood.  My uncle was bailiff of Williams' farm out at Chavenage and he didn't care who it was, you know, he was a strict bloke.  We had the two ferrets down in the net and we heard a rattle from the top of the wood, and we was gone.  We didn't stop then, we run, and he was in the pub that night in the Black Horse, saying he chased two poachers.  But he didn't chase us 'cause we'd gone, and he had two ferrets and all our nets.  My father went down there and he heard him, and he came back and said, 'We'll get that bloke back for them ferrets.'... they used to go rabbiting in them days with a long net - we had a 60 yard net - there was a 100 yard and 60 yard net and you just put the pin in the ground and run the net right out in the dark and you would have what we called peg sticks, about that long, and you would wrap them around the bottom of the line ands then wrap it round the top line so that the net is pitched up in the air and you go right back to the end. And if you had a good dog, a good dog was worth his weight in gold.  We had a collie, and she was really good, and she would stop there until you got back.  One would be at one end of the net and one at the other end, you couldn't see 'cause it was dark, and you would be at the top of the net and the dog would go straight out and you could hear the dog going down and he would come near to you, the rabbit would be in front of him, the rabbit would hit the net and the dog would jump straight on the net, turn round and fetch another rabbit in.  A good dog was trained never to hit the net.  We went out, and my father said, 'We'll make him pay for that, and we went down in them same fields where we lost the ferrets and the nets and we had fifteen to twenty rabbits that night and that was a long walk home for a boy 'cause rabbits is heavy and you can carry so many, and you can't carry them all, but we did carry so many rabbits, drop them down at the end of the field agin' the wall, go back for the rest, go over the wall, and go back, but we got our money's worth, we got our money back, yeah."

Licence

"We would get a couple of cartridges after I done the gardening at night, and go shooting, but I got caught on a Boxing Day - a policeman caught me -  but that was on my own ground, and I had a garden gun and it had been snowing and I had a shot at these birds.  I shouldn't have done, and I heard the gate go, looked down, and there was the policeman.  He said, 'Where's that gun?' He said, 'I want that gun.'  I showed him the gun and he said I didn't need a licence for a garden gun. A garden gun is like  4 -10 but smaller.  The cartridge, when you put it in and fire it, there is only the brass end left, the paper all went with the shot.  And I had a letter from the taxation people at Gloucester to pay 10 shillings and no more would be heard of it, and my father said, 'If you pay that 10shillings or I hear of anyone paying that 10shillings in this house, there will be one hell of a row here.'

And this copper come up the lane, and my father sat there and I'm sat here, and he come down and he said, 'What did you say that gun was?'  And my father said, 'You get back thur, your turn will come in a minute.'  Anyways my father said that he had me for crossing the road with a gun, on the highway, to get to the allotment, and my father said the gun's always kept up in the allotment.  Course it wasn't, and they dismissed the case, and he looked up at the copper, he was a big copper, and he said, 'That had you!' and he walked out."

Nailsworth Court

"We went to Court, all of us, all the Harley Wood boys.  The Nailsworth sergeant would come up and, as he did come through the door in the British Boys' School, the master would give one look at him coming through the door and he did come into all the different classes and get all the Harley Wood lot out, and nine times out of ten he was right.

Up past Harley Wood in the lane there's some old sheds, they're still there, and we did go in them messing about, but the older men did get in there playing cards.  They did break a bit of wood or timber off and take it home for the fire, and we got the blame, and there was fourteen of us in Court.  Nailsworth had a Court then look, where the doctor's is now, Dr Endacott's.  At the back of there was a red brick building, you went up the steps to the top and there was a Court there and we all had to go in there with our parents.  We got dismissed anyway, pushed the blame on to the gamblers, and I got caught not long after that for being in another shed, and I nearly went to the Reformatory for that because the sergeant said to my father, ' Coming so soon after the last lot if this do get to Court I am afraid your boy will go up to the Reformatory. ' And all I was a-doing was hacking through the ivy on top of this shed because there was a walnut tree and all the nuts had fallen into the ivy, and any rate my father gave me a damn good hiding and we went and seen the governor and had it squashed before it came to court."

Swimming Pool

"Then there was a swimming pool round at Johnson's, they paid £16 2s 6d in those days, you paid to be a member.  It was cold water, but we used to swim there, we had a lot of fun there."

"... does anyone know Johnson's Mill?  Round the back on the way to Ruscombe.  There was a big swimming pool there, all open air, they used to have occasionally there.  We used to sit on the bank on the opposite side, where the road was sliding last year, them houses there on the bank, they wasn't there then, that was just a paddock, with geese and that in the paddock.  But one day they put seats along there to watch the swimming.  I won the 1934, I won the cup there for the best learner for that year.  Little did they know but I was swimming the year before, up on the Ruskin Mill.  I used to swim in there, and we used to go fishing, with little white bags, with bread in them, twist them round a cane and go fishing.  I remember swimming in that Ruscombe Mill and I have seen this bag floating up and I let him go back down, he had a dead cat in him, he went back."

Nailsworth Show

"They put on a show at Nailsworth like Stroud Show - a big show. It was better than Stroud because they used to employ men to build the jumps for 3 days, horse jumps this is, and they would have top horse riders come there on the jumps. The money was good, everything was good, and it was a big occasion.  1930 I was ten year old then, and we were going down to the show from Harley Wood at night.  There was a pigeon on the roof opposite and it was just as if the pigeon knew what was coming because he flew off the roof, bang into the window, out the bedroom window upstairs, and my father said, 'Open that window, he's going to smash that window if he carries on like that,' which I did do.  And the sky turned a dirty horrible colour all over coming up like from Bristol way, so we got down to Nailsworth, down there by the Comrades club, that lane going down there, and we had to run down there into people's houses at the bottom to shelter. That sky opened up, it emptied down, and that went on - thunder, lightning - the show never ever come back again though, that finished the Nailsworth show.  Everybody had had enough of it, and we had the floats, the lake up at Newmarket, the top end of Newmarket, that burst its banks, came down to the next lake, which was Kingsmill, that burst and went down underneath and washed some of the machinery out, on down at the back, took the pigs and fowls away with it, and I don't know whether it is in there.  It lifted up the road outside the Brit[ Britannia], the other side, where the florist's place is, all that was lifted up, where the Club is on the cross that was a draper's shop, it done a lot of damage."

Betty Mills

Betty Mills also visited Highwood in January 1991 and shared her knowledge of local history with her young audience.  Here are extracts from her talk:

"If you look out of the window here, from the library, you will see the playing fields, and yards and yards of open space.  Well, it wasn't always like that.  In the past this was all forest, for miles and miles around, from here to the edge of Tetbury, and then right up to Woodchester

If we go back to the past..., Nailsworth was covered with forests.  In fact, a long, long time ago it was a royal hunting forest.  Henry VIII didn't like coming all this way from Windsor so he swapped forests here with forests at Windsor, which is why we get the name Windsoredge [and Windsor Ash].  You know what kings do, or used to do: it was called swapping, but you jolly well do what I tell you. So he got lots of land near Windsor, and the Dukes of Windsor got this land.  It was very, very isolated, and at a time when Gloucester had a gorgeous Cathedral and grand houses, Nailsworth was totally unknown and there were just a few little hamlets, a cottage or two, and the people in the cottages got wool from the millers, and spun it and wove it in their own homes.  At one time, when there was a school being run by the Chapel, which I'll tell you about, they could only have them in summer because the children were so poor that they hadn't enough clothes to keep them warm and they also didn't want to spend money on heating. So they were as poor as that and you were self-sufficient, and, in the summer, you fattened the pig and, in the winter, you killed him and salted him and stuck him up on your beams, and so on, and you grazed your pig in beech leaves.  Anyway, the beginning of things happening in modern times, (I count modern times as from about 1600 onwards) was that there was a kind of law in force..."

"it was about 300 years ago, 1662, in fact, when things began to happen..."

...[according to the Act of Uniformity] all the vicars in the churches had to obey every word in the prayer book and often didn't like this and didn't like some of the words in the prayer book, and so they were turned out of their vicarages, about 2,000 of them.   It was a criminal offence to worship anywhere else, and so what they did was they got together in secret and they met in secret, safe places, and one of the secret, safe places they found was just across the road [in a clearing in the forest] called Forest Green........ if they had been discovered they would have been sent to prison, so it was a rather dangerous operation.  People came from all over Gloucestershire, as far away as Tewkesbury, to meet in this area, and the rector at Avening down the road past Gatcombe, he was splendid.  I reckon he probably had a family of small children and he didn't like the idea of leaving his home, and so, to be reasonably safe, although he was still a vicar, he put an old route through Nailsworth up to Gloucester nearby here.  Now that was very important, because of a long story which I can't tell you now, but from that one meeting in the end they built chapels, and the chapels are churches, but they don't follow the same rules as the Anglican church.  And there were several chapels in Nailsworth, one up here and another one over there in Newmarket, and that became one of the most famous Baptist chapels outside London or Bristol, and about 120 years ago, they had 700 people coming there every Sunday.  Of course, it was a bit different in those days. Many of the people worked in their own homes, and so Sunday was their day out, and they went and spent the whole day there and came from 30 miles around.  Some people came on ponies, there were stables, and altogether it was very famous and people come from all over the world to look at the place. 

Most, in fact, almost all of the people in the area wove and spun and ... we didn't have big mills like Dunkirk, which you all see as you go home, until about 1780 or thereabouts, and they arrived because machinery arrived and, instead of doing it all by hand in your own home, you had to go in a factory.... I have got letters to people who ran the mills, and they were always referred to as factories....... the local people didn't like it at all, ... there was a big strike on Selsey Common objecting to the factories... [On a typical working day] everybody went....at 7.30 in the morning, you probably walked from Newmarket all the way down the road to Longfords Mill, and you didn't stop until 7 at night, and it was very noisy, very hot, and you got poorly paid.  Eventually the wool industry failed here...... and a lot of people went up to Yorkshire...and others went to Australia....... "

"When the wool industry failed, other industries started up and one of then was Nailsworth Brewery.  If you live in Nailsworth, you will know where Brewery Lane was, ...... and you must have seen Hilliers Cotswold vans.  ...  I told you that everyone had a pig, and there was also a local pig killer..... he was so efficient, it was as humane as anything we get nowadays ..... a man called Hillier and he died quite early, ..... and his son Isaac, who was very young, about 17, he set up a pig bake store in Newmarket.  Market Street was where they had the market - there were a large number of shops in Market Street and also pubs....  He had a hang-up stall - he would just have somewhere where he hung up the bacons and he sold bacon. (He cured it himself and sold it.)  He lived in a cottage and, at that time, the biggest mill in the area was Longfords Mill, and these people had the best sausages.  They cost quite a lot of money and, in those days, you didn't get your wages all in money, you got it in kind.  They had what they called a tuck shop, and .... Isaac Hillier was asked to provide bacon, and that led to Hillier meeting the daughter of the wealthy Longford people and marrying her...he built a house, it is down where the new factory is, and called it The Mansion..... Isaac had about five children, two sons, one of them who was called Peter was going to take on the business and then..... he got ill and the other son went up to London to see him and he got thrown off his horse in Pall Mall and was killed. [Peter also died.]"

"It is really rather sad because Isaac Hilliers is cutting back at the moment, and it will be a very sad day if that ever does go out of business.  It used to be really a pretty place and then there was a fire ..... and now they have that nasty iron place, and all that is going to be taken down now and turned into houses.  It will be nice, but they are going to put all the factory into new buildings, and we are all a bit worried because a lot of people are losing their jobs....."

"I will tell you something which will bring us up to modern times. Right up to 1931 we will go.  In 1931, there was rain, rather like we are having now.  It rained solidly for about five weeks until the ground was so soggy it couldn't accept any more water at all, and it was on the August bank holiday and we used to have a wonderful horse show here.  It really was a good horse show, not as big as Badminton, but people came from a long way around, and there were very good prizes, in King George's Field, which was called Enoch's Field.  A great big wooden stand went up and everybody attended.  it was a great occasion, and, on this day, there were some of the most ghastly thunderstorms, and there was a mill down here called the Node's Mill, and it hadn't really been in use much.  It was a bit derelict, but it still had its dam, and the force of the water coming down swept away this dam, and everything ran right down the Newmarket Valley, right down into Cossack Square and Market Street, and of course a lot of streams meet in Cossack Square, and then they go on and meet the stream from Avening.  And there was just a terrible flood, I mean I don't think anybody was killed, but quite a lot of animals were killed and shops were completely flooded and, in fact, I have actually got photographs... They are not very clear, they are photocopies, but it really was so serious that they had collection boxes for the disaster fund.  It was a shock and there are still people alive who can tell you how frightening it was, this water coming down, and that is one reason why, in the seventies, they put a in very straight bit of stream and that was put in to help control the water when it rose suddenly."

"Nailsworth was lots of different hamlets, lots of them just working separately, and Nailsworth was actually in three different parishes. Horsley, if you go down across the road, down the hill into Nailsworth, that was the boundary between Horsley and Avening.  We were in Avening here, and then if you went across the stream by the railway, you were in Minchinhampton, so about 100 years ago a gentleman called Mr Clissold got us turned into a parish.  Now we don't have an Anglican church, that is the official church, in Nailsworth, we had an Anglican chapel, but the Bishop didn't like it.  He didn't come to the chapel, so one of the first things they did was decide they must have a parish church, and so the church we have now was built in 1900.So the church is quite young - lots of places have churches much older than that - but the old pepperpot chapel, it had a tower like a pepper pot.  It had a lovely clock, and there was a very famous person who made the clock, and he made bells, and lots of Gloucestershire churches have bells made by Mr Ruddle [Rudhall?], and we had bells, and when they took the pepperpot church down, there was nowhere to put the clock.  They were going to build a great big tower on Nailsworth church, but they found that a great big tower would collapse the bank, so they never built the tower, so what did they do with the clock?  They built the clock on the bank.

If you look, near the pedestrian crossing and look across, there are two iron things stuck on the wall, and Mr Clissold built it.  It was called the clock on stilts, and he built that, just to keep the clock temporarily.  It lasted fifty years, and ,after the Second World war, it was decided to have a special wall built, and so they built it down at the centre.  The only bit of the old clock in that is one of the bells, which chimes the quarter.  The rest of the clock is in Stroud Museum.

We also had a poet.  Recently there was a celebration for this poet, because it is fifty years since he died.  He was an interesting poet because he spent most of his time as a tramp travelling around, and his name was W H Davies, and in one of his poems he refers to that clock as a cross between a lighthouse and a window, so it will go down in history.

There used to be a gorgeous grocer's shop [where William's Kitchen is now].....and a lovely gentleman called Mr Fawkes ran that shop, and he was very very good at talking Gloucestershire.  He used to talk on the radio a lot and tell stories...."

"I haven't lived in Newmarket all my life.  I am an incomer, like everyone else, and I got married to somebody whose family came to Nailsworth in 1750.."

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