Crier Profile - On your Doorstep
In 1983 a local radio programme "On Your Doorstep" was made about the village of Swaffham Prior. Some of the memories recounted include people who may well have been born a hundred and fifty years ago or more. And do the views from over twenty years ago match those today? Decide for yourselves. An alert reader may also spot the origin of the exclamation "streuth!" in the retelling of events below.
SEVERAL LOCAL VOICES are heard: the first is Canon John Byrom, questioned by the interviewer, explaining the origin of the two churches:
The reason is that in the year 1086 the village was divided between the Prior of Ely; a man called Hardwyn or Hardwyr, of Scalere in France; and three knights of Count Alan of Brittany. Well, Hardwyn seems to have dropped out of the picture leaving the parish divided between the two, and that's how we got the two churches. Nothing to do with two sisters who quarrelled, as people seem to think.
They both have a square tower at the base, octagonal in the case of St Mary's in the middle, with sixteen sides at the top. St Cyriac's is simply octagonal above the square base to the top.
I've come a bit further down into the village now, says the interviewer, (afterplaying Canon Byrom's musical request - Bach's Magnificat) to Ivy Farm. With menow is Ida Clark.
I was born here, born in the Red Lion. My father was the landlord.
The village must have changed over the years. What do you think of the changes?
Sometimes I don't think they're for the better. I think people were more content and happier than they are. They didn't have all the things they've got now, and they were far happier with a simpler life.
What was life like when you were a child?
Well, we made our own amusements, and everybody was neighbourly. Women would help one another and do things. We had lots of entertainment. There was always something on - whist drives, dances, we had a good cricket club, we had a band - a beautiful band, once. Drum and fife. I think the war finished that. Most of the young men went in the army.
It must have been around the time of the first world war that the first planes must have come over?
I did see a Zeppelin. It was one night, and we could hear this thing roaring - they made a terrible noise - and course, everybody went out. We were children, we were in bed, and we were got out of bed and everyone went in the street in their night clothes. The old grocer next door, he was out; and there was a baker just beyond us and he'd got a boy worked for him, and all of a sudden this boy, he was looking up in the sky, he shouted out "For God's truth, there the devil be!" And there was this Zeppelin, sailing away over our chimney stacks. Of course, it was up in the sky a good way, but it did made a terrible noise. The little old grocer he kept bending up and down saying, where is it, boy, where is it boy? We says, just above your head! It was a real exciting night. And then there was an old lady farther down the village, they said she came out with a candle in her hand like this, looking for it!
Of course, in those days, there wouldn't have been electric lights, perhaps noteven gas?
No, we were on candles and oil lights. There were a lot more shops in the village. The old chap next door, he was a grocer and draper; the baker, next door to him; then there was another shop, they sold everything, Asbey's, in front of the church; butchers, two or three butchers - and then there were the tradespeople in from Cambridge, you could get everything. I never went out of the house for anything - hardware, anything. They all came to the door.
Your father ran the pub, but I understand he used to run a kind of pony and trap taxi service for the railway line that used to come up here?
Yes, and then my sister did it. No cars. I remember the old horse buses they had. I do remember I was a little tot travelling in one of them from the station down into the city - it wasn't a city, just Cambridge town then. Everything was horsedrawn then, wasn't it? I remember the first motor car that came in the village, and we all went out to look. It came up my father's yard, one election. There was only Liberals and Tories in those days. It was a Mr Verrall, he was the MP. I don't know quite when this was. A long while before the first war.
Have you noticed a real change, with a lot of newcomers?
Too many. It's all newcomers. I don't think there's a dozen old families left.
I suppose people have got to have somewhere to live, and they tend to like to come in the country.
I think they're running away from themselves. I think they're frightened. That's why they come out into the country. I think they think there might be a war or something.
Do you have a favourite song we could play for you?
Yes. Land of Hope and Glory, because it's all disappearing fast. I saw Princess Margaret pull the flag down on the Caribbean the other day, which I thought was sad. It would be better for us to have it as a National Anthem, I think.
John Clark, says the interviewer next, you are one of those people that everyone seems to know around Swaffham Prior and they say you know everything about it, from the very beginning. So what was it from the very beginning?
Well there's lots of evidence of very early occupation in Swaffham Prior. Mesolithic man was here; I have Neolithic flints in my collection; I have a bronze axe that Bronze Age man left behind, Iron Age pottery, and I have a Roman villa in one of my fields. I have fragments of wall plaster from the villa, just like you'd see in Italy. The whole area east of Cambridge at the foot of the chalk escarpment was a good site for ancient man to live because there's a spring line. Water wasn't carried far in ancient times and you lived on the spot where the water was. There's a string of villages all the way running from Mildenhall to Cambridge along that spring line. We have a whole series of Roman settlements along the 20-foot contour along the edge of the Fen.
What do think has changed in the village most since you were a child?
Well, the village has gone from being a cultural community to, shall I say, a commuting community. When I was a child everyone was employed in agriculture or its ancillary things, like the blacksmith, the village carpenter, the builder and so on, the harness-maker; now, most of the village goes out of the village to work, and that has happened in my lifetime.
Is that, as your mother said, because there's no shops left in the village to speak of, or because there's nowhere to work in the village? Even farming employs a lot less than it did.
Farming only employs a handful of people compared to what it did in the past - no, there's nowhere to work for people in the village, this is true, and not likely to be. The village is getting bigger, but that's because we're so close to Cambridge, and everyone works there.
Changes in farming methods - you must have seen quite a few.
Yes, I've seen a complete changeover from the horse-orientated agriculture - and steam-orientated agriculture - to completely mechanised internal combustion engine agriculture,
And almost the one-man farm too?
We had a number of men on this farm: now we have just myself, my son, and one other man.
What's special about Swaffham Prior?
Well the fact that I was brought up here! But it has a wealth of trees, old houses, and the old inhabitants I like. And the churches - they were of two distinct parishes. St Cyriac's - all the land belonged to the Prior of Ely, which gave the village its name, and St Mary's belonged to Anglesey Abbey. "Swaffham Prior" the name dates from post-Norman Conquest days. The Anglo-Saxon name was Great Swaffham, and I can remember people that still called it that. Older people still talk of Swaffham Bulbeck as Little Swaffham. "Bulbeck" is a Norman name introduced after the Conquest, by the family that founded the nunnery at Swaffham Bulbeck.*
(John chooses Roses of Picardy here as his favourite piece of music)
Presenter: I've come to see the Cub Scout leader, Sandra Houston, who also used to edit the Swaffham Crier. You've started a new Cubs section here.
Yes, there hasn't been any Cubs or anything to do with scouting here since about 1916, till we started our new pack in April. No Brownie pack, but we have a junior youth club which started about the same time as the Cub pack. We chose for our group a black scarf with a white border to represent the black Fen soil and the white chalk. We have an active WI with ages range from fourteen to...well, however old Mrs Clark is! She's one of our most senior members. And a keep fit class which is quite well attended.
You used to edit the Swaffham Crier. I've noticed a lot of villages do thesemagazines, and they are not like the old parish magazines, are they?
Obviously the church has its slot...I think it is the way everyone has an opportunity to know what's going on, and we have a village poet, and a village gardening expert and the various organisations that always keep you up to date...it takes a lot of work and, as my successor I'm sure knows now, it's a lot of fun, but certainly, it's very time consuming.
(Sandra Houston here chooses part of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony as her piece of music and this writer struggles to recall what advertisement this was inextricably associated with in the 70s or 80s - was it something to do with bread?)
Phil Sheldrick speaks next:
Buses - it's left to the Eastern Counties now. There used to be a railway - we always called it the Mildenhall Flyer. Excursions out to the coast - when I was a young lad everybody used to get together from Mildenhall to Cambridge and a big excursion train used to be organised for the Sunday School and the choir. We used to go to Clacton and Lowestoft, the two chief ones. It was only about six bob return (30p). Us choir boys, we used to get paid to be in the choir in those days - we used to get a ha'penny a service, and a farthing choir practice. If you were very keen, and you went to all the services - you got paid once a year - it used to work out to about six shillings.
There was a lot more shops and pubs as well - once upon a time it used to take you three or four hours to walk down the village, you'd meet so many people, but now unfortunately everybody goes out to work and they just use the village more for sleeping. You can walk up and down the village now and not meet a soul during the day - or night.
(He chooses a marching band to be played to finish the programme - Entry of the Gladiators)
(with thanks to Shirley Wilkins for the copy of the tape, and apologies for any inaccuracies in spelling of any proper names – audio tapes can’t be questioned about such niceties!)
* Etymologocal note: Place names in England usually originate either from a person’s name, or a feature of the land. "Cambridge" is obviously the bridge over the Cam (We thought it meant fort on the River Cam— Eds), from a time when bridges were rare things; "Swaffham" would once have been "Swaffa's Ham" or similar - meaning Swaff's village or settlement. The "ham" is the stem of "hamlet" - ie a very small settlement. "Bulbeck" as a family name would nowadays probably be spelled in French "Bulbecque". For those interested in such things, Nottingham was founded by a man called Snot - its Old English name being Snotingas-ham. - ML