Wartime Memories
The following feature is the text of a short talk given to Tonbridge Civic Society in 2007 by Miss Nancy Ashwell - (born in the mid-thirties, the house she lived in was number 20 Coldharbour Lane, which her mother had built. The adjacent house, number 22 "The Croft" was built as the Gardener's house).
"I'm going to talk for a few minutes about Coldharbour Lane, Hildenborough, 55 to 65 years ago.
We had a wonderful countryman to help my mother, who was a professionally trained gardener and he'd stop work and say “Listen” and then say “That's a robin”, or a wren, or “Look, there's a flycatcher”. Nightingales sang by day and night.
If one found the front and back gates shut, this could mean there were cattle or sheep going down or back from the Tonbridge market.
Then the War came, things did change, not that I realised it too much, one just thought it was normal.
The family in the big house behind us - Marchants Barn- had gone to Canada(?) and in their place the Newfoundlanders came - soldiers - I have no idea how many.
In the summer of 1940 it was suggested by an uncle (Mother's eldest brother) that we moved from Kent and stayed with relatives or friends, or in rented properties. A total of thirteen in ten months.
Whilst we were away, for x number of months our empty 4 bedroomed house was used by some nine Irish Nuns and their Reverend Mother who had been bombed out of London. Our gardener managed to get them out just half an hour before our return that certain afternoon, from the County of Rutland.
I went to school at Hilden Oaks - and how, you will ask, did one do the journey twice daily from Hildenborough to Tonbridge when there was petrol rationing? Quite simply and very luckily - with the boy from up the top of the lane whose family had a pony and trap that passed my gate. The journey I remember very clearly - the day a shaft broke. The poor farm-hand had to tie the pony to the trap and leave us two children alone to go and get help! We arrived at school at around lunchtime. Sometimes I could help drive us home.
Pat, after a few years went off to Prep School, and I and a girl friend who had come to live next door - we went by bus. In those days there were four buses an hour between Tonbridge and Hildenborough, and the Star and Garter stop was just by the end of the Tonbridge School wall.
We had some very interesting people living in the big house opposite our gates in those days known as Hollanden Park (now the Raphael Centre). The Rachel McMillan Training College had got bombed out of their premises in Deptford. My mother got to know the housekeeper, so we visited.
When they returned to London the property was put up for sale. It was a beautiful house and in excellent condition. So when a lampshade factory (who had been at Orchard Mains further down the Lane) wanted to buy, the householders of the Lane employed counsel to block their purchase. This was because the house interior would be taken apart - the Lane won. In those days it was a private road and a gate shut across to enforce the privilege once a year. Lampshades were subsequently made where Fidelity now is.
So who bought that house and land? Tom Rees and his wife Jean - do you remember his picture? On Charing Cross Station 'GET RIGHT WITH GOD'. Their visitors came to stay and wander up and down the lane listening to those nightingales. (Later, the property was renamed Hildenborough Hall).
I made friends with the Rees' Norland nanny but that's another story".
We had a wonderful countryman to help my mother, who was a professionally trained gardener and he'd stop work and say “Listen” and then say “That's a robin”, or a wren, or “Look, there's a flycatcher”. Nightingales sang by day and night.
If one found the front and back gates shut, this could mean there were cattle or sheep going down or back from the Tonbridge market.
Then the War came, things did change, not that I realised it too much, one just thought it was normal.
The family in the big house behind us - Marchants Barn- had gone to Canada(?) and in their place the Newfoundlanders came - soldiers - I have no idea how many.
In the summer of 1940 it was suggested by an uncle (Mother's eldest brother) that we moved from Kent and stayed with relatives or friends, or in rented properties. A total of thirteen in ten months.
Whilst we were away, for x number of months our empty 4 bedroomed house was used by some nine Irish Nuns and their Reverend Mother who had been bombed out of London. Our gardener managed to get them out just half an hour before our return that certain afternoon, from the County of Rutland.
I went to school at Hilden Oaks - and how, you will ask, did one do the journey twice daily from Hildenborough to Tonbridge when there was petrol rationing? Quite simply and very luckily - with the boy from up the top of the lane whose family had a pony and trap that passed my gate. The journey I remember very clearly - the day a shaft broke. The poor farm-hand had to tie the pony to the trap and leave us two children alone to go and get help! We arrived at school at around lunchtime. Sometimes I could help drive us home.
Pat, after a few years went off to Prep School, and I and a girl friend who had come to live next door - we went by bus. In those days there were four buses an hour between Tonbridge and Hildenborough, and the Star and Garter stop was just by the end of the Tonbridge School wall.
We had some very interesting people living in the big house opposite our gates in those days known as Hollanden Park (now the Raphael Centre). The Rachel McMillan Training College had got bombed out of their premises in Deptford. My mother got to know the housekeeper, so we visited.
When they returned to London the property was put up for sale. It was a beautiful house and in excellent condition. So when a lampshade factory (who had been at Orchard Mains further down the Lane) wanted to buy, the householders of the Lane employed counsel to block their purchase. This was because the house interior would be taken apart - the Lane won. In those days it was a private road and a gate shut across to enforce the privilege once a year. Lampshades were subsequently made where Fidelity now is.
So who bought that house and land? Tom Rees and his wife Jean - do you remember his picture? On Charing Cross Station 'GET RIGHT WITH GOD'. Their visitors came to stay and wander up and down the lane listening to those nightingales. (Later, the property was renamed Hildenborough Hall).
I made friends with the Rees' Norland nanny but that's another story".