Your Oldton

The Birds Of Owlton

Old Miss Seewood, over 150 years old and lived by the river. She caught me throwing sticks at her horse chestnut tree and invited me in to her cottage. Thinking she was a witch I agreed.

We sat next to a carp pond and she opened up several old shoe boxes. Thus I was introduced to the variety of shape, size and colour of the birds' eggs they contained. Their terrible smell troubled me little mingling as it did with the stench of the old woman herself.She started to talk of buntings and warblers. Soon we whispered of the nightjar and its dusky flight through corridors of willow.

I would visit her four times a week. We ate curly whirlys with our hot tea and I talked more and more of my trips to the riverbank, my ornithology. I saw kingfishers, corncrake,smew.

She grew more respiratory and restrained. She sensed her end and had a plot in the village churchyard. A week before she left I asked her once again for news of the nightjar, a bird I knew I would never see.

"Only in Owlton are the nightjars truly at ease. We would watch them for hours on end, my love and I. They called out for us"

I wonder, Tim, if you remember any of the birds of Oldton. Could I have misheard, with my budding twitcher's ear, the nightjar's favourite home?

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Giles Constable

Post codes

Dear Tim

I have been looking into the possibility of locating Oldton through its postcode. Below is a letter I received this morning from Andrew Callum who is Head of Postal Demographics at the Royal Mail. He sheds some interesting light on stray postcodes and also mentions, in passing, Britain's lost towns, or as he calls them - reserve towns.

"Dear Jonathan,

I am sorry that it has taken so long to reply to your letter. It was forwarded to my office on the understanding that I am best qualified to respond to your enquiry. I am not certain that this is true, but I will try my best.

In answer to your question regarding stray postcodes, I can confirm that they did exist and still do today, although not officially.

These postcodes came into being after the Second World War, when a shortage of building materials meant that houses were often demolished and then rebuilt in different locations, and often in different towns, where sustained bombing had resulted in a scarcity of living accommodation.

The houses were generally derelict properties or were relocated from reserve towns – temporary settlements built before and during the war. The buildings were taken apart brick by brick and then used to plug the gaps in streets where there had been heavy damage to infrastructure. You can still see various extreme examples of this mismatched architecture around London, where small country cottages were inserted into gaps between rows of terraced houses.

When these houses were moved from their original locations, they kept their existing postcodes. Eventually some of them were reclassified according to their new whereabouts, however in a large number of cases this didn’t happen. The result was that you ended up with a street full of houses all with local postcodes and then one or two that had postcodes belonging to other far-flung parts of the UK.

I don’t know if you are familiar with post office protocol circa 1970-1997 but I will assume that you are not. Every postal sorting office in the UK is licensed by Royal charter to deliver letters to only those postcodes listed on their charter. These postcodes are generally those within the general vicinity of the sorting office.

The consequences of this charter was that postal sorting offices were not authorised to deliver mail to those houses who, while being in the local area, possessed none-local postcodes. To all intents and purposes these houses with stray postcodes didn’t exist and in time they faded completely off the map. They didn’t get bills. They weren’t listed on either the electoral or voting registers. If you lived in one of these properties you would find it very difficult to obtain social security benefits and I believe it was nigh impossible to apply for either a bank account or a credit card.

Naturally this kind of dwelling attracted a very particular class of tenant, namely one who had decided to opt out of society and wanted to get on with their life without the bother and interference of the government. In 1990 some attempt was made to clear up this mess after utility companies complained that they were losing money from properties that were proving difficult to locate. As many of these houses came from reserve towns that no longer existed (all of their properties having been relocated to other areas) there was some talk of fraud.

The Royal Mail was tasked with tracking down all properties with stray codes and formally issuing them with local postcodes. This proved more difficult than it sounds. A lot of the residents of these properties kept rather unkempt looking dogs which they used to chase representatives of the post office away. There was a very ugly stand-off fought, both on front doorsteps, and in various local courts, who found themselves having to adjudicate on what was then a very grey legal area.

What also became apparent, during this time, is that a lot of the people who were living in these properties were in contact with each other and had formed a united front. In time, various Heritage groups were drawn into the argument. There was an opinion that since many of these houses originated in English towns that no longer existed, they should be afforded some kind of protected status and this should cover their postcodes, which were a reminders of these lost British settlements.

Eventually it was decided that the houses would be allowed to retain their stray postcodes and that all mail to these properties would be forwarded to a sorting office in Milton Keynes. There were two poor men whose job it was to pick up these letters from the depot and drive around the country delivering them.

Since 2002, a new computer system has done away with the Milton Keynes depot. While the relocated houses retain their original stray postcodes, officially they have been re-classified with local codes. When the system encounters a letter to an address with a stray postcode, the computer matches the stray code with the official code and then sends the letter on its way.

I hope this is of help to you.

Yours truly,

Andrew Callum.

Head of Postal Demographics

Royal Mail."

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Jonathan Kepple

The blacksmith

Dear Tim,

I’m not sure if this relates to the Oldton where you grew up, but there is a 1967 BBC radio programme about traditional English crafts, which contains an interview with the Oldton blacksmith – Mark Clyde. I’m afraid that I haven’t been able to track down a recording of the documentary but I have managed to obtain a transcript.

We’re lucky to have this Oldton reference at all, as it belongs to a collection of recordings that were rescued from being erased: When it was BBC policy to record over old programmes, so as to get multiple use out of one spool of tape, there was a underground network of archivists, working within the organisation, who used to smuggle the tapes out of the studios and store them at their homes for prosperity.

In the mid eighties, a lot of these recordings resurfaced through illicit channels. I recall the Lost Radio stall in Camden market, where you could purchase copies of old BBC broadcasts, that had been dubbed onto cassette. It was a fantastic resource for me during my student days, offering a fascinating glimpse into a vanished way of English life.

The stall has long since gone. (I remember it being raided by police on a number of occasions, although I don’t know if this is the reason for it’s eventual closure. The last time I visited was in 1994 or 1995).

Since then a lot of the salvaged material has re-emerged, in a piecemeal fashion, on the internet. At one point, the BBC we’re quite keen on recovering the archived recordings with the intention of editing them into a radio programme. Unfortunately they could never establish the location of the original tapes.

Anyway, here is the transcript relating to Oldton: An interview conducted by Nathan Immel who went on to host the Talk of the Town national talent show on Radio 2.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

Nathan Immel: “I’m here with Mark Clyde, the Oldton blacksmith, and he’s actually in the middle of making something at the moment so I’ll just stand back a bit. What is it that you’re making?”

(sound of planing in the background.)

Mark Clyde: “It’s the bottom balustrade for the new banisters that will go in the town hall.”

Nathan Immel: “Now some people might wonder what a blacksmith is doing making wooden banisters.”

Mark Clyde: “Well, I’m also the town carpenter which means that I supervise all the woodwork in the civic buildings around Oldton.”

Nathan Immel: “And I understand that you’ve just taken delivery of some trees that have come all the way from China.”

Mark Clyde: “That’s right. Six Cherry Birches, which will be turned into park benches. They’re going to be put out along the rise at Braiken Spur. I have a budget to buy wood every year. This year I’ve ordered trees from China. The Christmas tree, which we’ll be getting in another month or so, is coming from Russia. This piece of timber here is from Brazil. Mainly I import from Europe…”

Nathan Immel: “But nothing from England?”

Mark Clyde: “Sadly I don’t buy a great deal of timber from England because the Barkworm epidemic means that the wood isn’t suitable for carpentry.”

Nathan Immel: “I’ve just noticed. These little things over here on your workbench. What are they?”

Mark Clyde: “These are Oldton peg dolls.”

Nathan Immel: “If I can just explain to our listeners, they’re dolls… made from wooden clothes pegs.”

Mark Clyde: “Yes that’s correct.”

Nathan Immel: “And I’m told that they all have names.”

Mark Clyde: “That’s right. They’re all likenesses of historical characters from Oldton – mostly villains it has to be said. That one that you’ve just picked up is Bloody Daniel Jackson.”

Nathan Immel: “Goodness gracious. He is covered in rather a large quantity of blood. What did he do?”

Mark Clyde:”He was a tailor in Oldton, in the early 18oos, who murdered his wife and his ten children. Traditionally when you make him, you’re supposed to get eleven different people to bleed onto his garments to represent the blood of his eleven victims, but this one’s been decorated using red clothing dye.”

Nathan Immel: “I’ll put him back down because he seems to be bleeding all over my fingers.”

Mark Clyde: “This is Grey Anna our resident Ghost in Oldton; Sage Jack the village idiot, who lived to be 110. This is John Ballard the pirate, who was born in Oldton. What a lot of people don’t know is that he penned the hymn: Lord, guide me to thy blessed shore which is often sung at the funerals of sailors and fishermen.”

Nathan Immel: “Who are these two. Are they…? Yes they are actually bound together.”

Mark Clyde “That’s Jack and Jill. They were a brother and sister who conceived a child. When it was discovered, they were bound together, with their baby in between them, and thrown into the river.”

Nathan Immel: “Can you explain to our listeners a little about the history and the purpose of these dolls?”

Mark Clyde: “The dolls are likenesses of people who actually lived in Oldton and so, in that sense, they’re a visual record of the town’s local history. If you visit the Oldton museum and look at the displays of peg dolls there, you’ll see that they weren’t always made with clothes pegs. They used to be made with small pieces of kindling. This goes back to when effigies of murderers and witches were placed in the middle of a bonfires on Halloween, or on Guy Fawkes night.”

Nathan Immel: “What happened to the dolls who weren’t modelled on murderers or witches? I assume they weren’t all put in the fire.”

Mark Clyde: “No. The good dolls – like Mother Steps here - you’re supposed to keep around the house in drawers or above door frames. To bring good fortune into the home and to keep away evil spirits.”

Nathan Immel: “I suppose no one ever uses them to hang up their laundry.”

Mark Clyde: “Well actually, I can remember my Great Aunt using them to peg up clothes on her washing line. Another thing that is quite common at weddings is for peg doll likenesses of the bride and groom to decorate the cake.”

Nathan Immel: “So would it be fair to say that many residents here in Oldton have at one time or another been the subject of a peg doll?”

Mark Clyde: “Yes, I think it probably would.”

Nathan Immel: “Now I understand that Oldton has a famous doll maker…”

Mark Clyde: “Yes. Well she never lived in Oldton but, a few weeks before she died, Marilyn Monroe sent the local vicar a model of Mary Beer. His wife had sent her the doll, which does look a lot like her - If you look at the one we have here, there is a strong resemblance. Marilyn wrote back asking for instructions on how to make it and, as I said, a few weeks before she died, the doll she had made arrived at the church.”

Nathan Immel: “And that’s in the display at the museum as well?”

Mark Clyde: “Yes. It’s one of the most popular exhibits. We get a lot of American visitors because of it.”

Nathan Immel: “Is this kind of doll making an Oldton pastime or does it take place elsewhere in the country?”

Mark Clyde: “To the best of my knowledge it’s predominantly an Oldton tradition and it’s still very popular today. There’s a book of designs on sale in the church and you can buy bags of materials to make the dolls.”

Nathan Immel: “And how many different designs are there?”

Mark Clyde: “In total there are 74 different designs, but people do come up with their own. The last officially recognised peg doll was this gentleman on the end here: Tommy Lucas, who was awarded the Victoria Cross, but most of them date back at least 100 years.”

The hymn ‘Lord, guide me to thy blessed shore’ plays

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Jonathan Kepple

More about red cars

I’ve dug up another interesting piece of information, concerning those red cars.

The renowned urban planner, Daniel Roddick has always been a bit of a hero of mine. I read in a biography that when he headed The Department of Urban Planning’s Strategic Committee for Expansion, he insisted that all departmental cars and vehicles be painted red.

The reasons behind this eccentricity are actually quite sad. Roddick had a younger brother – Sam - who died aged five, from a heart complaint. Sam collected toy cars and particularly enjoyed playing with the red ones.

While we are speculating on the fate of Oldton – the town that disappeared – it is important to note that what would have been Roddick’s greatest achievement – Highlute Newtown - never made it off the drawing board. It is a town that never existed.

The designs for the municipal buildings and some of the innovative street layouts were auctioned off to local authorities around the UK, and so it is possible to see them individually. I believe there was a book published in the mid 1990s called The Highlute trail which acted as a guide to the physical remnants of what would have collectively formed Highlute Newtown, had it been built.

For many years The Museum of Modern England, in Newark, displayed a scale model of Highlute in its lobby, however the last time I visited, the building had been substantially renovated, with the aid of a sizeable lottery grant, and the model had been removed.

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Jonathan Kepple

Owlstone bowls

I think the bowling angle may be a bit of a red herring but there are interesting parallels between bowling greens, village greens and one of the possible fates of Oldton.

Viewers of Championship Bowls on the BBC may have heard commentator, Geoffrey Mantle, referring to the ‘Awlstone line’. This is the flattest, smoothest part of the green, but, in bowling spiel, it applies less to the topography of the playing field and is more an admission that a player has found their form and is pitching consistently accurate bowls.

The expression is derived from the Owlstone Estate – a legacy of the colonial occupation of India by the British – whose history is inextricably linked with the sport.

Owlstone manor is located in Northwest India, a short distance from the village of Tarapith. The estate occupies what is officially recognised as one of the flattest areas of the world. I don’t think you can really understand the concept of flatness until you’ve stood on the extensive grounds and looked towards the distant horizon.

Lord George Monroe moved the manor, brick by brick, from it’s original setting in Somerset to its new location, over the course of a decade. Even the outbuildings were dismantled and reassembled.

Originally bowling greens were provided for the entertainment of colonists. The region soon became famous for its competitive bowling league to the point where English newspapers would give it coverage in their sports pages. In London, bookies took bets on the outcome of matches, although it was often weeks before news of the final result reached England. Upon his death, The Times credited Lord Monroe with “carrying the pluck of Sir Francis Drake to the most distant shores of our mighty empire.”

While the popularity of bowls may have diminished, the Owlstone legacy remains: Traditionally, natural outdoor bowling greens incorporate a square foot of grass taken from the grounds of Owlstone manor. Other more exclusive clubs will pay for an entire green which will be grown to order and then transported in sections to the desired location.

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Jonathan Kepple

Another disappeared town

Following your presentation at Incubation, and the idea that your village may have been bulldozed to make way for a new town - there used to be a hamlet close to Nottingham called 'Sutton Passeys'. It was destroyed when Wollaton Hall was built so that the owners did not have to look out of their home and see other people in their grounds. Nice attitude!

The only evidence of this hamlet that is left is a street name 'Sutton Passeys Cresent' close to the park grounds. Maybe in a new town somewhere there is a street name referring to your Oldton...

"In later centuries, when secular landowners wished to extend the bounds of their private parks and gardens, villages which stood in their way could be similarly displaced. Sutton Passeys which once stood in the grounds of Wollaton Hall in Nottingham falls into this category. " taken from this webpage.
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Simon Widdowson

Digital Teacher in Residence
Writers for the Future

Bowling green

Ah! Bowling Greens - i was wondering about Crown and Flat green bowling - is the Oulton Green Crowned or Flat?

Where I come from - Sheffield - I spent many happy hours on or around the bowling greens in Firth Park Longley Park and Concorde Park.

These were all Crown Green Bowling Greens - it was only when I moved away from Sheffield that I actually realised that there was another kind of bowls - one played on flat greens and up and down in straight lanes wearing white trousers shirts and hats - in Crown Green Bowls the green is 'crowned' not flat and you bowl in whatever direction you like... I think that there was some snobbishness about the games like Rugby League to Union - Crown to Flat - a North-South thing perhaps...

Here in Leicestershire where I now live all the greens are flat greens - well all the ones I've seen - everyone bowling up and down the straight lane or 'peg' allocted to them... I like the Crown version better... especially when there are several games going on at the same time - all criss-crossing the green - sometimes even collisions with bowls from other matches...

The greens in the parks in Sheffield that I remember were usually surrounded by privet hedges with benches against the hedges that you could sit down on and watch the games or just daydream on... I daresay that they are still there... hope so...

Here's a site that helps explain the differences:

Differences between Crown and Flat Green Bowls
And from the same site here are some examples of Crown Green speak:

All but
A stage in a game where a player needs only one point to win. Usually in the form of "Fred(a) is lying all but 19" which, if the game is to 21 points, means that the score at the moment is 20 to Fred(a) and 19 to the other player.

Bobby (Blocker)
A bowl deliberately played short of the jack so that the normal path to the jack is blocked from an opponent's point of view. The idea being to force the opponent to play with the other bias so as to find another way in to the jack or to guard against a 'firing' shot.

Blobbing
This term may be heard in South Yorkshire/North Derbyshire to describe the beating of an opponent to a nil score. See also 'Whitewash'.

Block (Jack)
A Crown Green jack has a bias which, for 'Standard Jacks', is now carefully controlled, and measured on a standard testing table.

Ditch
Gutter, channel, box. This marks the boundary of the playing surface. Any bowl or jack going into the channel is 'dead'.

Firing
Driving, striking. A bowl played at great speed so that the bias has little effect. The intention being to remove an opponent's bowl from counting, or to force the jack into the ditch so killing the end.

Knob
'Playing up to the knob'. Usually, but not necessarily, the crown of a green. It could be any high point on the green, and is used to good advantage by some players who specialise in short marks where delicate and accurate delivery is required.

Peg (Bias)
When a jack or bowl is played with the bias on the thumb side, this is known as thumb peg. Finger peg is, funnily enough, a jack or bowl played with the bias on the little finger side of the hand. This can be confusing when left and right handed players meet in a game. 'Sky bias' usually occurs when jack or bowl slips out of the player's hand during delivery, and travels on its side rather than its running surface thus causing it to bobble along the playing surface.

Playing through
An expression used to describe the delivery of a bowl played with enough pace to take the bowl a couple of yards past the end unless it makes contact with the intended target. This type of delivery is used to try and 'rest out' an opponents bowl, or take the jack through to the player's back bowl.

Rest out
To play a bowl so that it moves an opponent's bowl from adjacent the jack and rests in its place to count.

Toucher
A bowl played so that when it comes to rest it is actually in contact with the jack. Apart from being a bowl well played, it has no other significance in Crown Green bowling.

Whitewash
A player is whitewashed if beaten without scoring a point.

Who's on
A fairly standard query from a player who, when about to play a bowl, is wanting to know whose bowl is nearest the jack. Also 'which bowl is on', the equivalent of 'shot bowl' in Flat Green.

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Paul T Conneally
Education & Regional Director World Haiku Club

Director Haikumania Project
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/haikumania/

decoy airfields, decoy towns

I'm remembering Biggles - I loved Biggles - here's something from a synopsis of The Black Peril by Capt W.E. Johns....

"Whilst flying in England, Biggles and Algy are forced to land by fog and find a mysterious hidden landing ground. When an unknown plane lands, Biggles climbs aboard to investigate and is accidentally trapped on board when the plane takes off. The plane lands near Newcastle and Biggles escapes only to be pursued. He meets a young lad who is travelling to London. This lad is 'Ginger' Habblethwaite who is to share many of Biggles' adventures in the future. Ginger is sent to seek help, as Biggles has injured an ankle but when he returns Biggles has gone. Ginger gets in contact with Algy and puts him on the trail. Meanwhile, Biggles is being held captive in a nearby house and it doesn't take Algy and Ginger long to find him. Ginger sets fire to an outhouse as a diversion and Algy enters the house to rescue Biggles. Reporting things to the Intelligence Branch of the Air Ministry, they are surprised to be informed that there is no trace of any secret airfields. Everything has been cleaned away."

and then I picked this up from a BBC webpage:

"In the first month of the Second World War a secret department was set up in the Air Ministry to work on a number of projects to do with deception. They appointed a charismatic figure, Colonel John Fisher Turner, who worked with a unit of technicians from the film industry – Sound City Films at Shepperton Studio which was owned by Norman Loudon. Together they designed decoy airfields, towns and military bases which were then built throughout the UK."

So not just airfields - towns too... decoy towns...

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Paul T Conneally
Education & Regional Director World Haiku Club

Director Haikumania Project
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/haikumania/

Strange lights over RAF Oldton

Whilst picking through my old friend Edward's collection of war memorabilia I asked him if he'd ever heard of an RAF Oldton - "Oh Yes!" says he and disappears into the loft only to reappear with a dusty old map of RAF Oldton....

"Many secret things happened here - all manor of strange inventions designed to thwart the enemy were made and tested on the airfield ... the airfield huts were said to house a top group of MOD scientists way into the 80's .... all the papers pertaining to their work are still classified but locals reported seeing strange lights and the like over the airfield which by that time had become known exclusively as RAF Oulton rather than Oldton... yes very strange and not the only old airfield said to be used for such activities"

This might account for some of the UFO activity that's been reported....

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Paul T Conneally
Education & Regional Director World Haiku Club

Director Haikumania Project
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/haikumania/

Lost property & red cars

Dear Tim.

I received this email from Thomas Hemp. Thomas is a former colleague of mine. A few years ago I worked as a clerk in the lost property office at London Victoria Railway Station, where he was the supervisor. He has some interesting information concerning red cars – I recall you mentioning red cars in connection with Oldton.

Dear Jonathan

It’s great to hear from you after all this time. You will be pleased to learn that the National Umbrella Database is now up and running and includes all known British and American makes of umbrellas as well as many European models.

I recall when I worked at the lost property department at Victoria station, we were occasionally required to bundle up the property that we did not think would be reclaimed. I remember the man who came to pick up the boxes of stuff that we had turned out, drove a red car.

That, in itself, is not unusual, however I have since worked in many other lost property offices around the country where we have been required to dispose of unclaimed possessions; the people who come to collect these discarded items all seem to drive red cars. It really is the most extraordinary coincidence.

I do not know the fate of the things we throw out, after they leave the care of the lost property office, but one would hope that they are given away to charity.