Ivy's brother Harold Watkins and sister Esme Watkins with baby Beryl

I remember when we used to get the hay in we would have a “Harvest Supper” in the field for which Mother would boil a big ham with home made bread which Mother baked herself and lots of buttered scones and lardy cakes, I used to help her get ready dozens of spring onions and cut up big cheeses that Dad had got from Gloucester Market. Then we had gallons of home made cider. Dad had the mill just outside of the house, and he used to make his own. When we came home for dinner sometimes the cider would just be ready out of the mill, we had to run in and out as fast as we could filling up the big barrels and then my Dad sent us all round the neighbours with a bucket of cider as a gift, also the same with the pigs liver for their breakfasts and big plates of mushrooms. My brothers would have to get up early before school and go out and fetch pillow cases full of mushrooms, I was about 13 then and I have never seen pillow cases full of mushrooms since. Coming back to the Harvest Supper we would lay out the tablecloth's in the field and everyone, that is the haymakers, neighbours and children would gather round and we would eat and drink until we could eat and drink no more then we would dance and sing together and the sheep and chicken would come and eat up the bits left over, we would have a wonderful time.

What a wonderful father and mother we had but never realised it until it was too late. I remember Dad buying a piano from Dale and Forty and putting us all to learn how to play, my brother Charlie got on well with it and so did Elsie but the rest of us just did not practice enough.
My brother Charlie wanted to go to America with Aunt Annie and Uncle Joe but Dad and Mother did not want him to go Charlie was only 17 and he kept following Dad everywhere and asking him to let him go just for 2 years, in the end they let him go. He loved it there, he used to play in the theatre and work in the office of the gold mines, he was very clever at painting and sketching Aunt Annie said he did lovely paintings for his bosses dining hall, but sadly after he had been there only 10 months he wrote a long letter home to us all one Sunday morning, in the evening he became ill, in the night he was worse and when the doctor came he said he had appendicitis and peritonitis, Charlie died a few days later. He died of the same thing as King Edward died of and the strange thing was that in his last letter which arrived the same day as the cable to say he had died was a sketch that he had copied from the News of the World of the King lying in state, Whoever had Mother's writing box also had Charlie's last letter and a sketch of the King. Charlie had been dead one month when he arrived back home and he was buried in St James Church, Bream. He looked beautiful, dressed and embalmed in a navy blue suit, Mother picked & pink rose off his tree and put it in his coat, the tree that he had planted himself in Mother's garden. Dad, Uncle Charlie and uncle Edwin went to Southampton to fetch him off the "Mauritania" It was a sad day in Bream hundreds of people and neighbours and friends turned out to his funeral and burial, not everyone could get inside the church.| Previous Page | Next Page |

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