Within Living Memory

an article by Ann Smith

Ann Smith.

The earliest memories came from Mrs Holloway, then aged 91 years. She remembers her husband’s grandfather telling her about the Dame school, which existed in the village before the present school was built in 1872. The Dame school stood on the place now occupied by the War Memorial. It cost a penny a week to go to the school and as old Mrs Holloway’s grandfather who died in 1930, aged 83, said when he was a boy he could remember the gallery and before the organ was installed a minstrel played the bass viola to accompany the hymns. In later years the present organ was pumped by Mr Shepherd who was blind. He used to walk across the field footpath from chapel to church. Mrs Gascoigne, the blacksmith’s wife, played the organ.

Mrs Holloway remembers that the Whit Friday feast day was the highlight of the year. The men paraded through the village, each carrying a stave about 8 feet long. The band played while they walked over the bridge. They all went to church but the children had to stay outside as the church was always full of men.

Miss Barnes seems to be the head teacher remembered by most people. They remembered how red her face went when she used the cane. They remembered George Turnham pulling his hand away so that her cane knocked over the inkwell. Subsequent generations of children remembered the big ink stain on the teacher’s desk.

The Helmdon viaduct.
Helmdon was a village with two railway stations. The bottom LMS station was closed in 1951. The Great central and later LNER station opened in 1899 and closed in 1973. The viaduct on this line, which Is now a great local landmark, was built before the embankment. Alan Watson’s grandfather told him that the local boys used to laugh because they didn’t think a train could possibly get up to it. They didn’t realise that the soil from the cuttings would be used to make an embankment so that the track could go across the valley.

Nurse Walters was the village character remembered by many people. She started as district nurse in 1922 and retired in the 1950s. She was married to Sammy Walters. They lived where Wiggy Smith lives and had a village bus. She used to go round the villages in her pony and trap. When the evacuees came in the war she knew exactly what accommodation was available in each house. She wouldn’t accept the excuse that you had no room.

During the war the sign posts had been taken down in case the Germans invaded. Mrs Holloway had to go with the nurse to show her the way round the villages.

The campion window.

The stone quarry was working in the early years of the C20. One could hear them blasting all over the village. Helmdon stone was very famous and as well as being used locally, was used in such well known places as Stowe and Easton Neston. The medieval stained glass panel in the church shows the stonemason William Campion at work. It is of exceptional interest being one of only three medieval windows depicting an artist with the tools of his trade. The others are in York Minster and St George’s chapel, Windsor. The inscription shows that Campion worked on the fabric of Helmdon Church. The names Campion or Campin remained in the village until Harry Campin died around 1970.

Several older people remembered the Benefit Society. It was registered on July 5th 1884 and was dissolved at the outbreak of the Great War. Mrs White had a complete Rule Book for the year 1894, which belonged to her father, Lewis Ayres. The object of the society was to raise funds by entrance fees, subscriptions, fines, donations and interest on capital for the relief of members in sickness and to provide a sum at the death of a member, and for the funeral expenses of the wife of a member. Once a year a club dinner or feast day was held but no part of the expenses was to come out of the Society’s funds.

Helmdon doesn’t possess a village hall, only the Reading Room. The building was given to the village by the Fairbrother family in 1887. It was for the men to use and this rule was never officially altered. The better off people donated newspapers and weeklies and it was open every day of the year except for Christmas day, Good Friday and unofficially the day of the Banbury Fair. At first the gentry used to sit at one end and the working men at the other end. The room was left under the jurisdiction of the rector and churchwardens and was not endowed.

Helmdon was a self-sufficient village in the first half of the C20. All the villagers had their vegetable gardens or an allotment. Most had a pig sty at the bottom of the garden and a pig which Harry Campin used to kill each year. There was a baker in Church Street and one of the earliest memories remembered was Mr Adams who moved to Northampton in the 1920s and started the famous Adams Bakery. On Sundays the villagers used to take their Yorkshire puddings and joints of meat to be cooked in the bread ovens. There was a butcher’s shop, a polish maker, carrier, blacksmith, bicycle repairer, undertaker, builder, saddler, wheelwright, tailor, bus, village shop, post office, farmers, 4 pubs, and also the mill at Astwell as well as 3 railway stations. Helmdon was the envy of neighbouring villages.

Ann Smith
2020
First published in a WI book Within living Memory in the early 1990s.

Editor’s note: See the full notes from which this article was taken

Historical Document no. 5 shows examples from the Helmdon Benefit Society rule book.