16. Betty Hillyer and Audrey Watson
One of my first memories of Caldecott was of being seated at a table, I imagine for High Tea, in a room bewilderingly full of people, young and old. A small woman with a loud squawking voice came round with a large bowl of scrambled egg and a ladle, saying to each in turn, “Ordinary or small?” She then tilted her head on one side (she was a little deaf) to hear the answer. This was Miss Hill, the legendary housekeeper who had ruled the kitchen and the household supplies with an iron rod since wartime days. I could not make out, at that first encounter, whether she was oppressive or comic. It took me quite a few years to discover the proverbial heart of gold beneath the loud scolding voice.
This “ordinary or small” business needs some explanation. Most schools – Ashford Grammar School for example – offered a choice between “large or small”. A cynic might have said that “ordinary” was a recognition that your helping would not be large anyway, but the helpings were adequate, even generous, and a second was usually available. I presume it was an idea of Miss Leila’s that “large” had a vulgar, guzzling ring to it while “ordinary” was more refined. Added refinement came from the fact that you were supposed to pronounce the word with four syllables while we at home, in our common, plebeian way, had always said “ordin’ry”. If you try out a few internet guides to pronunciation, you will find there is still some doubt as to which is correct. An oddity was that, if you asked for a “small”, some staff did not allow you a second helping, which was reserved for those who had had an “ordinary”. The idea was that, by asking for a small, you had already proclaimed that you were not hungry or did not like the food (everything on the plate had to be eaten). It still seems to me reasonable enough that, if you do not know whether you like the food, you try a little then come back for more if you like it, but some staff were immovable.
Back to Miss Hill. She had inexhaustible energy. Not only was she busy in the kitchen, pantry and dining room from morning till evening, between one meal and the next she was scrubbing and cleaning the whole first floor area. She had an ancient, bone-shaker of an electric polisher that made so much noise that her voice, alone of all the staff, could be heard above it. She also deputized in the sickroom on Miss E’s day off and presided over “Stores”. Between breakfast and school, the junior children were detailed to help with the housework – more of this later – and once a week you were sent down with a bag and a list of household items – dusters, swabbers, floor polish, Vim and the like – needed for your department. It was like a shop except that you did not pay. In spite of this, Miss Hill treated “customers” as if they were out to rob the till and fiddle the change. “She had three dusters last week. She’s not having another two this week, does she eat them? She can have one and she’s not having another next week”.
Maybe Miss Hill cultivated deliberately the image of an old battle-axe. There was more to her. On one of her days off, she found a large batch of early 18th century framed prints of Mersham le Hatch in an antique shop in Hythe, bought the lot and distributed them to her friends on the staff. One of them was Betty Rayment – some years ago she gave me her copy and it is this that I described in the Prelude. A person who corresponded to Miss Hill’s chosen image would not have gone into an antiques shop in the first place. I think she was actually a generous person with a good degree of culture.
I first wrote about Miss Audrey Watson in 2014, following the report of her death in the Newsletter of that year. The Newsletter described her as a sort of “early Miss Hill” in the 1930s and 1940s, and I felt it should not be forgotten that she had returned for a few years in the late 1960s as the first “post-Miss Hill”*. This was the time of Miss Leila’s own semi-withdrawal and her death not long after, a period when a whole host of longstanding staff members – Miss E., Miss Travers, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Ruhl, Mr. Gladstone and Miss Hill herself – all felt the time had come to retire.
Most of these longstanding members belonged to that category of person of whom it is darkly said, “the place will fall to pieces without them”. In her own department, Miss Audrey saw to it that the transition to the post-Miss Hill era went smoothly. I think I am right in saying that she had been running a hotel in the meantime, but had never entirely lost touch with the Caldecott. It would be nice to relate some specific, even spicy, anecdote: in truth she was not a “personality” like Miss Hill. Her voice does not still ring in my ears fifty years later as Miss Hill’s tends to, though I do remember her kindly but firm tones. She was extremely efficient, however, and brought about a few quiet improvements. You could no longer tell which day of the week it was just by looking at what was on the breakfast table and Camp Coffee was laid to rest.
In one way, the transition from Miss Hill to Miss Audrey was symptomatic of the times. The older guard were all true to the opening salvo of the Caldecott Charter: “This household is a community”. They were everywhere and knew everything about everyone. In saying that Miss Audrey stuck to her job description I do not mean to belittle her. Rather, Miss Leila’s concept of a community was increasingly at odds with labour relations as conceived in the era of Harold Wilson.
The “early Miss Hill” claim needs clarification. In a note provided to Miss Elizabeth for her history of Caldecott, Miss Hill stated that she was quickly detailed to the kitchen and “managed to keep working in the Community for forty-two years”. She left at the end of 1968 so, according to her own calculations, arrived during 1926. No one has suggested that Miss Audrey arrived so far back and I should have thought she was still a child herself in 1926.
A somewhat confusing feature of Miss Elizabeth’s book is her almost invariable decision not to name names. Writing of Mote House (home of the Community from 1932 to 1940), she says “We were fed, catered for and physically nourished by another indomitable woman who cooked for about twenty years and then, after the war, took on the post of Bursar-House keeper for yet another twenty years.” This is clearly Miss Hill, and carries the implications that, while in the Caldecott I knew, Miss Hill ruled the roost in the kitchen, pantry and housekeeping generally, until the later 1940s the roles of cook and housekeeper had been kept separate. So it is in the latter role that Miss Audrey had been a “pre-Miss Hill”.
Two references in Miss Elizabeth’s book appear to allude to Miss Audrey. Speaking of Hyde House (the Community’s home from 1941 to 1947), she notes that “the young women in charge of the dining rooms and pantry were still there: the cook was always at her post”, confirming the separation of duties and implying that Miss Audrey had previously been at the Mote. Her brief note on the New House experiment mentions that “a stalwart young woman who had been the cook's right hand at Hyde” was transferred there. Barry Northam’s memories of New House name Audrey Watson as one of the staff. Her first period at Caldecott therefore ran from some time before 1940 to 1950, when the New House experiment ended.
Post-Miss Hill, the roles of cook and housekeeper seem to have been separated once more, since it was as Domestic Bursar that Miss Audrey returned in 1969 or thereabouts. It must have been at this time that Miss Mima, whose Caldecott career was otherwise dedicated to caring for girls of various ages, spent a couple of years in the kitchen.
* She was also part of the New House experience (1947-1950), about which very little is currently known.