Isle of Wight Edwardian child recalls gypsy and being poor

She was born in Gurnard in 1900 at 67, Church Road, where the water came from a well in the garden and the house was lit by candlelight.

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When she died in 1991 she had seen a man on the moon and the arrival of the computer.

In 1983 I sat her down for two hours and recorded her talking about about her early life.

Gurnard as Gran would have known it as a child. In the foreground is the bridge over the Luck stream, complete with gate across the road and in the distance is an undeveloped Solent View Road. Photo © Alan Stroud/ County Press.

Were you a poor family?

“You’re telling me! Ever so poor! Dad was in the army and his pay was very little. Dad could do anything, knit, needlework, bricklaying, carpentry, anything at all but there was one thing he couldn’t do — he couldn’t read or write ‘cause he never went to school. But you’d never diddle him.

When I was three I went to the Methodist school in Worsley Road. There was a schoolmistress for us little ones. She was very nice. We were ever so happy and then we went to Gurnard School when I was six. There was a governess there, Miss Durham. One day I’d done summat or other and she says to me “You’ll stay in.” I thought, “Yeah, that’s what you think. I gotta get to East Cowes and get that bread.” You see, in my very young days, Dibden’s had a bakery at East Cowes, just off the floating bridge, and they used to deliver in Gurnard. He said that mother could have her bread free if she’d do their washing so she did and we got four large loaves a day.

Every day after I came out of school at 4pm I had to walk from Gurnard to East Cowes to get the bread, and it wasn’t very pleasant wintertime. There were no street lights. Coming from Cowes to Gurnard the last light you saw was the ‘rec’ and then black darkness. You had to feel your way along.

Anyway, when it come time to go out of school that afternoon, I marches off out with the rest of ‘em. She grabbed hold of me and pulled me back but when her back was turned, out I went. I shot up across the allotments with my old bread bag. She come out into Cockleton Lane with a cane in her hand thinking she was gonna get me but I was gone up through those allotments, mate, and over to East Cowes to get me bread. The next morning, my God! As we were marching in she grabbed hold of me and stuck me out the front. I had the cane on both hands.

What did you do for amusement out of school?

Oh, skipping, marbles or get your hoop out to bowl down the road. Sometimes we used to play down on the marsh, it was all pasture land then, you see. There was just a road across and a gate at either end and in the winter you got this great lake of water and when that froze we used to have the time of our life, skating and sliding about and that’s where the old fair used to come. Well, all I ever went on was the roundabouts. I only used to jump on and jump off cause I never had any money to spend, see.

Where the Woodvale is now, there was no Esplanade, it was only fields with cows in and you couldn’t get down there. Princes Esplanade was just a copse. Old ‘Gypsy Lee’ used to live in there and he used to make clothes pegs to sell round Cowes and Gurnard. He used to shout ‘rag-bones, rag-bones.’ The rag and bone man was a common thing. Rags, bones, bottles, any old clothes they used to be bawling out for. ‘Course, you never chucked a bone out from the food you ate because when the rag and bone man come, he used to buy these bones.

Worsley Road where Gran Young would have bowled her hoop along. Photo © Alan Stroud/ County Press.

What was the shop in Cowes with the curiosities in the window?

Oh that was old Bill Cole, opposite what’s Hursts today. He was a chemist and a dentist. He had all sorts of different things in the window - there was this calf’s head with three eyes, that sort of thing. That’s where I had me tooth out for a shilling. No anaesthetic, just a pair of pliers.

Did you go hungry much as a child?

Yeah, ‘course you did. Glad enough to eat a turnip. Most days you felt hungry, not just our family — all us kids did. I was nick-named ‘Boots’ because I didn’t have any boots to wear and the teacher took pity on me and bought me a pair of shoes. She was ever so nice and although I was a little bitch sometimes, she thought the world of me.

So at the age of 13 you left school. What did you do?

I went to work in Moor Green Road for Abell, manager of Brown’s Stores, and his two children, six days a week. I had to do everything, cleaning, polishing, washing for two shillings a week — a pittance. I used to be there from 8.30am until about 6.30pm.

Not quite the ‘good old days’ then, but Gran’s last words were, “It was tough sometimes but we were happy enough.”

Today’s children please note.

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