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Mr Harry Smith He
was the owner of what is now known as "Corner Farm". He has
been dead for over ten years but when nearly 80 years of age he was
still driving his own lorry. He was quite deaf and never sat immediately
behind his steering wheel but always in the centre of the driving cabin
and kept to the middle of the road, yet he was never involved in any
kind of accident. He taught himself to drive at the age of 63. Up to
that time he had been content to jog along on a pony and cart. He had
one pony for 14 years and another for 18. In those days he contracted
for the 45 miles of road in Ash Parish, while he worked on roads in many
other places. The stones to make up the roads were collected from the
farms, the farmers employed people to gather the stones, this would be
about 50 years ago. When Harry Smith was running his lorry he was
occupied with cartage. His vehicle was probably almost unique in that it
had no lights whatever and no brakes. He never drove after dark, if on
the road at lighting up time he parked his vehicle at the nearest
garage, or field, if no garage was available and went home by bus or
train. He was nearly always in bed by 7 o’clock.
Mrs Elizabeth Dix always known as "Old Liz" was a well
known character up to the early days of the 1939-45 war. She lived in a
small wooden cottage at the bottom of Billet Hill, which has since been
demolished. She frequently worked in the fields, and was quite sought
after when there was hoeing to do, although she was well into her
seventies. Daily she made the pilgrimage to the "White Swan"
for refreshment, where she could be seen smoking her pipe, or
occasionally a cigar, in the Public Bar. She always wore men’s lace up
boots several sizes too large, and at the village fetes, which she never
missed, was frequently seen
in the midst of an audience doing a
"jig". There was rarely a wedding or a funeral that she did
not attend. But every Sunday without fail she walked a mile to Church
and the mile home again. She used to say "I wouldn’t miss the
services for worlds, and I love to see the children there, and to hear
them singing". She had one married daughter
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and another daughter
was burned to death as a child many years before. It was a very sad day
for her when she was taken to hospital, where she died soon after.
None of them seeing me red
Think I be frozen half-dead
As I trudge with my bottle
To moisten my throttle
At George the Third’s Head.
Ay, seventy six in a week
(As true as the Bible, I speak)
Me old father at eighty
Was red as beef-steak
Though starved for a tatie
The furrow, the fallow, the hoe
The harvest the thrashing, I know:
In fog and in chit and in sleet
In perishing winter or heat
For me drop and me crumb
To field-work I go
Till dathered and numb.
Black then along of no poor
It blows cold at many a door:
The mucks not so sour
As charity's floor
Nor damps so a shower.
Yet there's my dear Lord overhead
Who guards me at toil or in bed
To him do I turn
When he rise in the west
And I offers my praise with best.
This poem was dedicated to her
by Thomas Hennell. It is not included in his published book of poems,
but copied from the original manuscript.
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