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    Over the Fields of Clover
    Over the Fields of Clover
    Over the Fields of Clover
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Over the Fields of Clover

    By Hazel Mary Farrell

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    About this ebook

    This book will be of interest to all those who were children during the Second World War. It is mainly autobiographic and incorporates Hazel Farrell’s father’s war diary. He was in the navy at the time as a radio operator on a destroyer.

    The image on the cover is of an oil painting by the author who is also an artist.

    This is the story of Hazel Farrell’s family with tales from the characters who help to make up a rich and varied past. There are many stories, which would be forgotten if not told now from her memories.

    There are the Ryleys, the Nortons, the Slatters and the Warehams to take into account, and even a mention of the Farrells, which Hazel married into. So many people are involved in some way and Hazel has always been a good listener. This is now found to be a great advantage. . So read and enjoy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookPartnership.com
    Release dateOct 8, 2014
    ISBN9781783015061
    Over the Fields of Clover

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      Book preview

      Over the Fields of Clover - Hazel Mary Farrell

      Clover

      Introduction

      This is the story of my family, as much as I know and as much as I have found out. When families had many children, there were plenty of relations to take care of them and the children’s lives were very much enhanced by the uncles, aunts and cousins who came to stay. It’s remembering these very special people that makes the story worth telling. These characters were often eccentric in their individual ways, but would help to form the basis of good family life.

      Our family is made up of various names, which crept in with marriage and so I remember the Slatters, Warehams, Ryleys, Nortons and many more besides.

      I found the Mormon’s CD discs of the 1881 census and births and marriages invaluable, and also the help of family and friends, for which I thank them profusely.

      Chapter 1

      Over the fields of clover,

      Over the fields we go.

      In early spring,

      When sweet birds sing,

      And zephyr breezes blow.

      With hearts as light as air,

      We wander everywhere,

      And all the livelong day,

      We sing our round-de-lay,

      We sing our round-de-lay.

      Our singing would come wafting over the fields, drowning out the hum of the bees. I remember and see myself as the child with the thin golden plaits in a flowery summer dress skipping and singing with my mother, through the faded summer grasses, which were knee high and interspersed with delicately coloured wild flowers.

      The joy, which radiated from us then, fills my memory with tears. For the wild abandonment, which we felt together has long since gone, along with my childhood, and it was me who first sang this song, having learnt it at my convent school. My brothers would have been trailing behind, probably feeling a bit ashamed of my mother behaving like a child. They would have been together, because John and Derek were twins.

      More early memories were of celandines growing on the banks of the hedgerows along the lane to Cowgrove, in the Dorset countryside near where we lived, and walking with Grandma, who we called Bah. I had invented this name for her when I was a mere baby.

      In Cowgrove Lane, celandines flowered in the spring, filling the banks and grass verges with yellow stars. Bah and I used to wander along admiring the colour and looking for the violets and wood anemones hiding under the hedgerows. Catkins hung from the hazel boughs of the laid hedges and we were often lucky enough to hear the cuckoo. It would be warm on such a day as this. And the sky was always blue.

      She would push me in the pushchair for a while and then I would walk pushing the pram myself. It helped to have something to hold on to for my short legs soon became tired. As the years passed by, my own dolly’s pram became the pushchair, and it was no coincidence, that I had named my doll ‘Celandine’ after the lovely starry flowers of spring.

      We would walk up Victoria Road on the pavement to the corner and then turn left at the Cottage Hospital and into Cowgrove Lane, where there was no pavement, so we had to keep in very tight alongside the grassy banks. As we turned the corner the lane became a little wider and straighter, so we felt less vulnerable. On our left was the football field. We passed this and then a field filled with wild flowers and long grass, which would later be cut for hay.

      We always looked over the gates into these fields and remarked, ‘Isn’t the grass long?’ or ‘Look at the buttercups.’ Here once when I was older, I found mushrooms and was able to take them home to Mother to cook for breakfast.

      Beyond the wild flower meadow was a footpath reached through a wicket gate. Not easy with the pushchair. Further ahead behind a hedge of saplings was a marshy wet field where the cuckooflowers or milkmaids flourished, making a sea of mauve. We didn’t go in there. It was wet and boggy. Further along the lane was a tumbledown cottage with yellow cow dung walls, which as soon as the outer plaster had fallen away, rapidly crumbled and melted away. I watched this cottage become less and less as the years passed until one year it had disappeared completely in a tangled mess of brambles.

      This day we turned left through the gate to walk along the narrow gravel path towards the river and then alongside it. We would comment on the mood of the river. ‘The water’s high today’, or ‘Look at the whirlpools.’ I was frightened of the whirlpools, which spun around a middle point of still water. My mother had told me that it was here at this very spot that a young lad William Wareham had drowned. He was a cousin of my father and this had happened many years before. But it was here that the holes and currents could suck you down and drown you. I didn’t recognise the tragedy for what it was, but looked at that grey silver river with a morbid curiosity.

      It was with Bah on these early walks that I learnt to look for the signs of the seasons and to understand the growing and changing countryside. It was these meadows where I first picked flowers and pressed them into an old drawing book, naming each one, and it was in the mushroom meadow that I painted my first landscape of the hedges and thatched cottages of Dorset. This was the Dorset countryside I was able to make my own. This was to be my pastoral symphony.

      In those early days Bah could manage the walks, but sadly, as the years passed, her breathing became very laboured and there came the day, when having turned the corner at Cowgrove Lane, she said ‘We will have to go back. I can’t manage it any more’. I was very sad for Bah.

      Looking up Victoria Road, the road off to the left at the foot of the hill ran along the river valley via Cowgrove and Shapwick.

      This area to the south west of the Almshouses was our environment for many years to come. The Almshouses were opposite the Cottage Hospital where we were born.

      I can remember the sounds of the rooks cawing in the tall elm trees at the north western corner of the allotments, the smell of the ditch from the hospital, which ran along the boundary, and the scrape of spades striking the flint stones which peppered the rich soil of the river valley.

      The allotments ran along behind Victoria Road where we lived. I was fascinated by these allotments, which were activated in particular during the weekends.

      I can still remember the gruff voices of one keen gardener to another in the rich dialect of Dorset. The allotments looked unkempt, as some had become choked with weeds. Here and there were small sheds, which held the tools of the trade. They were well locked up at night. Narrow footpaths divided one allotment from another and the edges had to be clipped regularly. The whine of the trimmer wouldn’t be heard in those days. In those days we would hear the birds singing from the hedgerow, which bordered the allotments. Stunted willows grew in the rough bits, which later were to prove invaluable to me for

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