How long have there been Beatons in Hempstead?
My grandfather was a crofter in Perthshire. He came south in 1926 and bought some land in Earls Colne. When he went back, he took my father out of Perth Academy and sent him down here on his own, at the age of 16, to farm it. Eventually the farm was sold at a profit and my grandfather bought and moved into a farm in White Roding, as well as Church Farm. My father looked after the Hempstead end, moving into Church Farm Cottage, where I was born in 1939.
What can you tell me about your education?
I attended the village school until it closed in 1947, so I never made it out of the infant class that was held in the small room. The head teacher was a Mrs Funston: there were only two teachers. It was a really cold place – there were two stoves but they hardly ever lit them – it never did us any harm, we just kept our coats on. I remember that the toilet block was against the hedge, opposite where the door of the Village Hall now stands: as far as I know everything ran straight into the ditch. They never smelt very nice.
Boys normally went on to the Boys’ British School in Saffron Walden. I don’t know where the girls went – there must have been a girls’ school somewhere. I went to two other schools and ended up at Dame Bradbury’s, which in those days was all in Nissen huts. Anyway, after two years I was sent away to Bishops Stortford, where I boarded for seven years and hated it. I was in the prep school for three years and then the main school for four. I don’t believe I ever learnt very much, but I did enjoy sport – we played rugby, hockey and cricket. After school I went on to Writtle and then spent a year in Michigan, where I learnt more about farming than I ever thought possible: I’ve been back a time or two since. After I came back, I worked here on the farm. My father had bought Hophouse Farm in the late 960s, together with 80 acres alongside the wood. We farmed all the land together as part of Church Farm but the house was let to some Americans from Wethersfield. When Pat and I married in 1971, we moved straight in to Hophouse. In 1987, I sold Church Farm to Mark and Jenny Landor, but kept the Hophouse farmhouse and a single field. This house is Victorian but I’m pretty sure that the foundations are the rubble of a previous building that was demolished, which was probably the old hop house.
What can you remember about the village, growing up?
There were two shops. The one next to the pub (Drapers) was kept by a Mr and Mrs Wilsher: I remember a woman in the village, called Diddie Wright, who worked for my mother; she always used to call them the ‘Wiltshaws’. The other shop was a few doors along (Old Post Office). I remember going there as a child with my mother: you had to go up steps to get into the shop and then, when you got up there, if she asked you for a cup of tea you had to go back down again. Those are all the shops I remember – before my time there was also a butcher’s shop in the snug of the Bluebell. There was a forge near the pub, where Anvil Rise now stands: the blacksmith was called Hardy. I remember sitting on carthorses with Herbert Matthews, the fellow who looked after our horses, to get them shod. There were also two mills – one behind the church and another in the spinney behind Boytons: the field is still known as Mill Field.
The only pub in the village was the Rose and Crown (now the Bluebell). The Oak was called a ‘halfway house’ (because it was halfway between here and somewhere else! ) I don’t know anything about a third pub.
There was a cricket team in the village – I played in it but I wasn’t much more than a schoolboy. We played in the meadow below Hill Harm where they have the horse show. I played there a time or two – the team really was made up of farm workers: the Andrews family was pretty large and some of them played. And one or two people who had moved into the village – there was a fellow called Dick Elliot who lived at the Firs: he worked for what was then the Coal Board and must have been fairly high up if he could afford to live in Hempstead and go up to London every day. There was also a football team but I never had anything to do with it – they had various fields that they played in but finished up at Radwinter, although still calling the team Hempstead.
I remember Florence Desmond, the actress who lived at Pollards Cross during the war. Her husband was Charles Hughesdon, the test pilot and they had a son Michael. I used to like riding on his rocking horse – he was the only boy I knew who had one. I played golf with Michael about 10 years ago in the Sunningdale foursomes.
I was brought up a Baptist so we went to Sampford Baptist Church but on Sunday afternoons we went to Sunday School at the Methodist Chapel. I can’t remember too much about it so I probably didn’t pay much attention.
The farm colony at Hempstead Hall was a bit before my time. I do remember that during the war it was a remand home, where the naughty boys were. I don’t think they had much to do with the village although I do remember one farmer during the war who used to sell my father cigarettes every week: they probably came from the Hall, I don’t know. All I can tell you is that they were Players and certainly didn’t have any tips. After the war, the Hall was farmed by a man named Smith – it can only have been a very small farm but it did have the wood, and he made a very stupid contract where he let it to the Forestry Commission on a 999 year lease for £25 a year. The people who lived there later tried to challenge this in court but got nowhere. There was a story that at one time the Hall was owned by a man with a reputation for buying up and insuring houses that subsequently burned down. I heard that he was friendly with the Kray brothers, who filled up a barn with gin, whisky and all kinds of contraband: they say that it all had to be moved out in a hurry one day.
I remember two planes that came down – a Supermarine Swift that crashed in the wood in the 1950s which was in the news, and another one in 1947 that wasn’t. It came down in the field further down the lane from here and I’ve picked up things like live cartridges there. They wouldn’t let anybody near it and then about twenty years ago, possibly more, they came to dig it up. They found clean overalls and everything else – even found gloves with bones in – not very nice. The bits and pieces are now in the museum at Duxford.