A Young Wives Tale

Sue Lidgley, taken in 2019.

I moved to Helmdon in 1965.  My late husband, Pete and I were just married and setting up home was much cheaper here than where we lived in Beaconsfield.  Pete got a job at Automotive Products in Banbury, which was a huge new factory making brakes and clutches for motor vehicles.

We bought a house on Shortlands Close, a new development on what had been allotments.  The locals used to say “Oh, you live in one of them Jerry-built houses do you!”.  The house cost £2,995 but it wasn’t the most expensive one on Shortlands.  Numbers 1, 12 and 13 were built on much bigger plots and so they were £50 more expensive.  When we moved in, the road wasn’t adopted and there were no streetlights.  It took eighteen months to get the streetlights put in, with many trips down to Brackley Rural District Council to gee them up.  Mind you, the rates were only £29 a year then; and that included your water!

We were the fifth family to move into Shortlands.  The Hensleys, the Snows, the Butlers, and Joyce Beech moved over the following years and, with me, have all lived on Shortands Close ever since.  All the original houses were built by the time we moved in, the four at the bottom on Church Street and then Numbers 1 to 14 Shortlands.  Opposite the houses was the land owned by Greg Davis where he used to grow Christmas trees and there was a stream there where we used to go and pick watercress; that’s where Numbers 15, 16 and 17 were built later by Taylors of Buckingham. 18 and 19 were built on land that used to belong to the Old Bakehouse on Church Street.  Our house, No.11, was supposed to be the show house but the only things there was to show was a bath, a basin, a toilet and a single unit of a sink, there was nothing else.  The houses actually went down in price after we moved here because there wasn’t much selling.  I don’t know why, but it was going to be called Nigel Close, but then it was changed to Shortlands.

When we first moved here Rev Richard Rowbury was the rector; he came to visit us the week we moved in.  He was a very traditional and pleasant rector, but he died in 1967 and then we had the much more dynamic Rev Frank Thompson and his wife Eileen would have us doing everything and anything, putting on plays and events and all sorts.  Sadly, they moved on and went to Peterborough Cathedral, so next we got Roger Caldwell whose wife was Athena and children Penny, Peter and Andrew  She wasn’t what you’d call a typical vicar’s wife because she said she didn’t want the church to be her whole life.  She was a primary school teacher.

I remember one Church Fete where I was highly delighted to be told that I had won a meal for four.  I thought we might go to the Thatched House at Sulgrave for a posh meal, and then somebody came knocking on the door with a piece of beef and some vegetables!  It was a bit of a let-down!   The amazing thing is the cardboard box they brought it in is still kept in the Reading Room with the Women’s Club scrapbooks in it.

The Helmdon Post Office closed in 1995. Mrs Betty Davis (left) and Anne Harman (right) received a postman's hat each made into a bouquet.

In 1967 we had our first child, Karl, who was born in Brackley Cottage Hospital delivered by Dr Thomas.  Having children was how we got to know new people in the village.  There used to be a clinic in the Reading Room where you’d go and get your baby weighed.   If you wanted to buy the clinic orange, which I adored, it was one and six a bottle and you got it from where Bloomers Florist is now in Brackley.  It was a wool shop in those days.  You’d get your National Dried Milk for four shillings a tin, your cod liver oil and your orange juice from there.  Mind you, in those days the Roylances owned the village shop and post office in Helmdon next to the old Steam Bakery between Church Street and the Green, and if he hadn’t got it, don’t worry, he’d get it for you the next day.  I happened to mention in the shop that I needed to get some washing-line posts and Cyril Roylance said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get ‘em for you!”.  Those posts are still in use today!  It was a really, really nice shop.  We also had a butcher’s next to the Chapel run by Bob Buckingham, Mrs Bull’s shop at the top of the village, Seckington’s stores and hair dresser’s at the top of Station Road, Adam’s Bakery from Northampton selling bread and cakes from a van, and Bill Duncombe going round with his van.

I met even more people after we had our second child, Katie-Jane, in 1970.  In the October, Douglas Humphrey’s wife Liz called a meeting to see if we wanted to start a mother and toddler group and we got a good group of people that came to the meeting in Liz’s house.  Liz had found out about Young Wives clubs because ones had started up in Brackley and Towcester.  We decided to form the club and it was called Helmdon Young Wives and Mothers.  I first met Judy Cairns when we were both on that first committee fifty years ago.  Our children were of the same age and we got to know each other.  It was through Women’s Club that I met a lot of people I would not have otherwise. 

One of the blessings was we had a lot of Americans in the village because of the airbases at Croughton and Upper Heyford and one, Suzannah Sigman, lived next to Liz and Doug.  She brought lots of new ideas that we didn’t do in England in those days, like the Easter Egg hunt and potluck suppers.  She was a very vibrant, get-up-and-go type lady; we owe quite a lot to Suzannah.  We've had quite a lot of American wives join our club over the years and serve on the committee.  It’s been a real asset to the club, definitely.  In those days the rules were that you had to be a wife or mother, and when you were forty you were supposed to go your own way, but we never did!  At seventy-five and older we're still going; we don’t throw in the towel easily!!  At our first club meeting we had a Health Worker, Mrs Williams, visit and she brought us a cheque for £25 from the county council for our start-up costs.  It came as a big disappointment at the end of the year when our treasurer wrote and to ask for another £25 thinking it was an annual thing to be told no, you only get it once!

An Over 60s Christmas Party in the Reading Room.

We raised money with coffee mornings and jumble sales and things like that, and one of the things Suzannah got us doing was an Over 60's Christmas party... we would dress up like wenches with long black skirts and white blouses and mob caps.    We had all sorts of entertainment over the years from really good musicians and magicians to mini plays and everyone had a great time.  In 2000 we decided WE were the old people, so we knocked it on the head.

We did several trips.  One of the most memorable was when we went to the Houses of Parliament and had lunch in one of the dining rooms.  At the time there was a great controversy because they had ordered new china from Germany, and we were all a bit disgusted about that!  We used to go to the Royal Theatre in Northampton quite regularly, prior to the Derngate being built.  In those days we used to have coaches, but they’re too expensive now so we just use our cars if we do a trip anywhere.  It seems funny that we could afford a coach in those days and not now.

We used to take the children to the Royal to the Pantomime; they always put on an excellent Panto.  This was before the Bridge Players started their Panto in the village.   Another thing the children liked doing was going to the little Chandos Cinema in Buckingham - we used to take the children there.  I remember going to see Swiss Family Robinson once.  One time I got the manager to put on Tarka the Otter and he agreed on condition that I sold some Lenny Henry tickets who was just starting up then.  I think we were some of the first people to ever see Lenny Henry.  There was also a little theatre called the Grange Theatre in Little Tew in Oxfordshire and we went there a couple of times.  We had quite a lot of nice outings.

The potluck suppers, which Suzannah brought into our lives, were great fun; some of them we did as fancy dress.  I remember Judy Cairns as a bunny girl once and myself as Little Bo Peep.  I've still got the crook, which was made by John Reardon!  They were good fun.

The Chequers stood opposite the school.

We had a big street party for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.  It was really good because our children were at that age when it was a big deal for them.  We raised money to buy all the school children a commemorative mug.  People put up decorations and we made afternoon tea for the over 60s in the school hall and had fancy dress and games for the children with a disco in the evening.  In July 1981 we put on great on celebrations in the village for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.   We started at noon with a barbeque at The Chequers, then fun and sports on the school field at 2:30, a headdress parade and competition to create a regal hat, and then in the evening for the grown-ups there was a wonderful barn dance at Lukes Farm with a ploughman’s supper and bar, all for the extortionate price of £1.50!

The following year, 1982, was when the Sports Club and Reading Room ran the first Helmdon Carnival.  The Young Wives and Mothers, or Women’s Club as it is called now, always used to do a float and there was a different theme each year.  I remember one particular year, 1988 I think, the theme was sports, so we dressed up as a football team with Judy Cairns as the referee but the cheeky devils from the Sports Club said we looked more like a rugby club!  The carnival was very successful, and the money raised used to go to Brackley Cottage Hospital, the Reading Room and the Sports Club.

One of the best fund-raisers we ever did for the church was the first weekend in July 1983 to commemorate seven hundred years since Helmdon had its first vicar, Walter de Kancia.   We spent all day on the Friday arranging flowers in the church, and in the evening we had a demonstration by Brian Halliday, a flower arranger from Yorkshire, with a fork supper with Coronation Chicken and salad.  On the Saturday we had the usual church fete and a dog show and pony rides at the Rectory, then a concert on the Saturday night by the Brackley Jubilee Choir.  On the Sunday I organised a craft fair.  It was a full weekend for us to organise with all the catering and so on.  Mary Gidman, Jenny Saunders, the two Liz Humphreys, Ann Humphrey and I did a lot of the work.  Mary Gidman and Joan Morris created an amazing replica of the Campiun Window in front of the church altar out of flowers arranged in seed boxes with many Young Wives contributing sections.  I remember on the Sunday getting tables out for the craft fair and Athena Caldwell came storming through the gate from the church absolutely furious. She said “Those stupid people.  I filled up that water butt last night from our hose and they went and used it for washing up!  Now it’s all got to be filled again for afternoon teas!”  I put my arm around her and said “Now, now Athena, you should be grateful, we’re keeping your husband in a job!”  She was always getting her knickers in a twist was Athena.

Fundraising was a big part of what we did.    In 1985 there was a dreadful famine in Ethiopia, and I organised a tabletop sale and an auction.  We were able to send £1,000 to Save the Children, which in those days was quite a lot of money to raise.  In 1991 we did a big sale and auction for the Gulf War Appeal and sent £1,500 to the Red Cross.  Norman Richardson and Tony Smith were the auctioneers and Betty Acton took notes of who bought what.

A rounders evening on the school field.

Another event I remember that was always good fun was the Pancake Races from the Bell up to just past the Reading Room.  We had children's races and adult races.  I remember Hazel Bullen winning the Ladies Race.  We used to play rounders on the school field once a year and the Chequers would do us a pub supper afterwards, which always proved to be a very enjoyable evening.  We were all sad when the Chequers closed its doors in 1991.

The first ever Safari Supper held in the village was a surprise 40th birthday party for me organised by Judy Upstone.  We started at Mike & Sue Lovett’s at Petifer's Barn for drinks, then went to Judy Cairns’ at Wilton Cottage for starters, then Sylvia & Norman Richardson’s at 17 Shortlands for lasagne and salad, then up to Cross Cottage at Glan(ville) & Mary Davis’s for dessert and coffee.  From that night being such a great success, we then started to do them as a fund raiser, which still goes on today.

We raised the money to do the extension and new kitchen at Reading Room in 1972.  The previous kitchen was horrendous; it was just a lean-to.  When we built the new kitchen, we also built the extension on the back and we raised the money in the usual ways having fetes and so on.  At that time, the porch was open and on a Saturday in the summer we would have a vegetable and cake sale there.  Ann Wilson did a lot of baking for the sales.

In September 1994 we sadly saw Upper Heyford shut down, which meant that we lost many of our American friends when they moved away.  1995 was the year that Women’s Club had been running for 25 years and we had a great dinner in the Reading Room with old and new members to celebrate and we also bought the first lot of bulbs that had ever been planted in mass in the village.  We planted Tête-à-tête all the way around the War Memorial and some pink tulips, more than twenty of which are still flowering today.  Also, we paid the Forge at Culworth to restore the church gates which cost £247.   Margaret Reardon sewed a kneeler for the church with pink tulips and purple crocuses on it to commemorate Women’s Club running for 25 years.

I went on Helmdon Parish Council in 1973 when I was just 28, and in those days being a young female councillor was a big deal.   Eric Humphrey was the chairman and some of the other councillors I remember at the start were Jim Jessett, Alan Watson, Geoff Ipgrave and Colin Wain.  Mrs Sheil was the clerk before Jean Spendlove took over the year after I joined.  I stayed on the parish council for 13 years and in all that time my best achievement was insisting on purchasing extra land for the churchyard from Mrs Lees.  When I first proposed it Colin Wain said "Don’t worry about it gal, there’ll be plenty of room for you", but I kept on about it and that bit of the churchyard is being used for burials today.  It didn't get consecrated for many years after it was purchased, but on 30 May 2000 the Bishop of Brixworth came and held the consecration service.  I was also a school governor at this time and helped Edith Shellard run the Helmdon cub pack.

Frank Branson (left) and Reg Batchelor (right).

Looking after the church and the churchyard has always been very important to me.  In the eighties and nineties Reg Batchelor and Frank Branson used to tend the churchyard.  Reg always used to use a scythe for grass cutting, he was brilliant at scything, he used to scythe his way up from his house on Wappenham Road to the church keeping the footpaths clear.  Those two tended the churchyard for many years at their own expense; they would never take money for petrol or anything.  When they were very elderly they had to retire and the churchyard started getting in a bit of a mess, so in 1999 that's when Judy Cairns, Conrad Woolley, Jean Spendlove and I set up the Friends of Helmdon Churchyard and went about fundraising to buy new mowers and strimmers and hand tools.  We organised working groups and tried to keep the churchyard in good order.  In about 2008 Rex Jessett retired from work and started looking after the churchyard.  He became a very important member of our working group, rebuilding a lot of the stone walls and he did most of the mowing for eight or nine years before he had to give up due to ill health.  I remember buying Rex a nice new plastic rake and he melted it raking up the fire!  We were always indebted to Rex.  In recent years we've had Community Payback workers helping out, but because we’ve had such cold and wet weather, they did a lot of work inside the church such as restaining the pedestals and pews and cleaning the church. 

I remember when BBC Radio Northampton began broadcasting on 16 June 1982.  It has always been a great source of information on what goes on in the county and I have become a lot more knowledgeable about Northamptonshire because of it.  Before that I knew very little about the county further north; its been brilliant for information.  I get loads of information from there and people say, “Well, wherever did you find that out?” and it is usually from the radio.

I was very pleased when Helmdon won the Northamptonshire Village of the Year competition in 1996 and the village has gone on to win it in 1999, 2002, 2011, 2014 and 2016 too.

The Lidgley Family.

I’ve seen a lot change in Helmdon over the years.  A thing that amazes the children today is when I tell them that we didn’t go out a lot or have takeaways; we had no money for that sort of thing.  We used to save fifty pence a week, myself and Pete, Joe and Judy Cairns, and Doreen and Brian Hemming, and when we'd saved ten pounds per couple we could then go to a dinner dance somewhere for a fiver each.  We would go to Weston Manor at Weston on the Green, the Blisworth Hotel or the Cornhill Hotel.  People wouldn't save today to go out for a meal!  When our children, Karl and Katie-Jane, were teenagers there was a really good youth club in Helmdon run by John Woodhams.  They used to take them to Northampton playing five-a-side football or roller skating, or go on boat trips on the canal - there was always something going on with the youth club.  Our children didn't have computers and all this, they were quite happy to play football in the road and go down the school field.  Children’s expectations now are much greater, and they aren’t happy unless they've got a machine in their hands, which I think is actually a shame because I think they’re missing out a lot on sociability.

We had a lot of laughs in the village over the years, joking and having fun times and taking the mickey out of each other.  That’s one of the sad things these days – you’re not allowed to take the mickey; you have to be all “politically correct”.  I think that it’s spoiling the country that people can’t learn to take a joke, and even innocent things get misinterpreted.

The British Legion Standard being paraded up to the church to be laid up after the Helmdon branch disbanded.

There’s been quite a few new houses built in Helmdon over the past fifty years, especially where the old farmhouses were.   I haven't really objected to development in the village because my attitude is that we spoilt someone’s view when they built Shortlands Close so we can’t object to other building.  We haven't had that much development really and what there’s been has been mostly been infill.  I remember Bell Close before the houses were built when David Brookhouse had the chicken farm there.  When they cleaned the chickens out it didn’t half stink, but it was only every few weeks.  What I get annoyed at is when people move to the country and then they start moaning about the smells.  There’s things you have to put up with living in a village – you have the bonuses and you the drawbacks.  The only development I ever objected to and raised a petition against was when the old cottage at Ambleside was knocked down where Greg Davis had lived before he built the bungalow the other side of Church Street.  The owners two after the Davis’s received a lot of grants to save the old cottage and I was so annoyed that they had all these grants and then sold it for development.  They should have been made to pay the grants back when they sold it.  They must have made a lot of money out of knocking it down and building the three houses there.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing so many good people in Helmdon over the years.  I had great admiration for Miss Nora Nichols who lived at Bridge House near Jeffs.  We called her “Aunt Nora” and she was very forthright.  She ran the Brownies for years, latterly with help from Joan Morris, Athena Caldwell and Mrs Wheeler.  A lot of people found her a bit sharp and domineering but I got on with her fine.  Mrs Holloway, who lived at 49 Church Street, was a lovely gentle lady.  She was very upright and went to church but was a very kind and gentle person.  She brought me a lovely bunch of roses from her garden when Katie-Jane was born.  More recently we had Lyndsey Glassett who has moved away now.  Give her her due, she put her whole heart into things.  She started up the first lunch club in the old Chapel.  She was always very generous and would be hale and hearty with it all.  She painted the signpost at the bottom of Church Street and the sign over the Reading Room door.  Her husband, Terry, was chairman of the parish council in the nineties.

It’s been interesting to be asked for my memories and it’s been something to do whilst we have been told not to leave our houses because of the Coronavirus lockdown.  I wasn’t expecting to spend my 75th birthday in lockdown; I was supposed to be in Poland visiting Auschwitz!  Having said that, I’ve had a very enjoyable birthday because everyone’s been so nice to me.

Sue Lidgley
2020

A leaflet from Northamptonshire County Council, deleivered to every door in the county.

A flag bought by Helmdon Parish Council to say thank you to the NHS and all key workers.

Sue Lidgley's reminiscences were taken in interview on 29 & 30 April 2020 by Danny Moody.