From Elizabeth Lloyd, "The Story of a Community"
CHAPTER II
THE HOUSE AND THE COUNTRY
Hyde House, where we were to spend the next six years, was not in itself unattractive: it had no air of decaying splendour but just one of shabby poverty, but if money could have been spent on it it could have been attractive, for the rooms were a good size, light, and well proportioned, with large windows.
It was a long, stone three-storied house built probably round about the turn of the century; its setting was beautiful, rough grass which had once been well-mown lawns ran down to a river, shallow and peaty-brown with a weir over which salmon leaped in the spawning season; there were trout and deep pools. It was a lovely stretch of water with woods on its further banks and the water-meadows were lush and thick with wild flowers in summer.
There was a broad gravel sweep of drive in front of the house which looked over to rough paddock-ground, rather euphemistically known as the deer-park although wild deer were to be seen occasionally; there were also adders on the heath. A walled kitchen-garden had been kept in cultivation and there were vegetables and soft-fruit.
The country on the north side of the estate was sparsely populated, but farmed, it was again extraordinarily beautiful and unspoilt. A small road ran to the nearest village of Bere Regis, which was about four miles away. The hedges in summer were thick with the brightest crimson and coral coloured sweet-scented honeysuckle that I had ever seen or smelt. The whole countryside always gave the feeling of remoteness and something absolutely primeval; nightingales sang day and night in the woods and there were badger's setts.
Egdon Heath itself was so exactly like Thomas Hardy's descriptions that one almost expected to see Eustacia Vye coming across the heather or the reddleman's van down by the “Silent Woman" pub on the main Wareham road.
Although in winter the heath was dark and sombre, sometimes on a stormy evening it could be lit by so magnificent a sunset that the whole landscape seemed on fire: it might have been a painting by Turner.
The war went on and we were aware of it at night when the sky over Poole harbour and Hanworth, where there was a large munitions factory, was lit with search-lights: we could also hear distant air-raid sirens. Occasionally the Wareham siren went. Later, when incendiary bombs fell on the heath we evolved a rota-system of "fire-watching" among the staff: this entailed dossing-down on the staff-room sofa if you happened to sleep outside the house and being up and about during the night if the Wareham siren warned of a possible air-raid. It was very peaceful compared with Kent though and the children never had to leave their beds.
After some weeks of that first term things somehow settled down and a recognisable pattern emerged. Rooms had been satisfactorily allocated with two dining-rooms and two large play-rooms on the ground floor and pantry, kitchen and the boiler-room or stoke-hole down the stone passage which led to the back door and back-yard. Here a shower room and latrine were put in for the boys, next a small building which was used as a Chapel. A great deal of life went on in this yard, only rivalled by life in the "stoke-hole". It was always warm and cosy in the latter and anyone who was missing was very often to be found there. It had drying-racks at head-level and these swung about and you could have a fine slap round the face from drying garments, wet sheets and dangling socks, but no one was ever deterred by this. The stoking was done in the daytime by a wonderful handy-man who came every morning and did his best to put right the hundred and one things that were always going wrong. At night the cook somehow managed the stoking; it was a Herculean task and one that no woman should ever have been asked to do: Miss Leila and Miss Dave turned a blind eye to this: some of the senior boys assisted but they were not always there when needed.
The boys lived on the top floor where there were also dormitories for the small boys and girls, and two staff bedrooms. There was also a recessed cupboard on this floor in front of which would sit anyone who had put children to bed up there. A very awful smell used to come from this cupboard, which was locked and no key could be found for it. Eventually two men came on behalf of the family who owned the house and the cupboard was opened. It contained a great many pots of home-made jam, also a great many mice who, according to witnesses "trooped out and rushed down the stairs." The jars were broken and most of the jam had been eaten - what remained was mouldy. It must have been a sad blow for the family, as jam was so precious then.
The senior girls occupied the middle floor together with a day and night nursery for the smallest children. There was only one bath and one bathroom and one lavatory for the twenty-five girls.
Miss Leila had a sitting-room with her bed in one corner of it, not disguised in any way but suitably covered; a bathroom led out of this room which was often used to sit refractory children in until they had recovered their equilibrium. The staff-room next door was, I always thought, a very pleasant room: all these rooms had windows facing south and looked across to the river and distant fields and woods.
Miss Dave had a smallish room in the middle of the girls' passage.
I, rather gladly, went some hundreds of yards up the drive to the cottage where I had a room. Here too was my aunt, who, although retired now, accompanied the Community. Miss Syer had the other room and a series of young women slept on the landing. The cottage had no water, no light and no inside sanitation. There was a small kitchen, though, we had oil-lamps and candles and managed to make it comfortable and quite attractive and we got used to fetching water from the well outside and losing footwear in the mud during the winter. The only heating was from oil-stoves, but anything, Kathleen and I thought, was better than going to Wareham every night.
There were open fires in the main living rooms of the house but the dining-rooms' were never used; a few radiators attempted to warm the first arctic-like winter we spent there but we were, on the whole I think, pretty spartan and the lack of heating was not felt as much as the inevitable shortage of food, as, by then, the rationing was severe. We had iced milk with the breakfast cereal as it froze in the larder during the night and lumps of ice clanked in the jugs on reaching the breakfast tables.
The stable-block outside was used as "school" by the Juniors and Miss Syer set up her weaving looms in various sheds out there: the hens were suitably housed and the one and only pony, old "Puff" who had come with us from Kent, had a stable. Miss Syer ran the kitchen-garden with the help of an old Hyde House family retainer who lived with his two daughters at one of the Lodges at the end of the drive: they were all like characters out of Stella Gibbon's "Cold Comfort Farm" down to the small illegitimate grand-daughter of the old man who always referred to her as "Little Maid".
The Dower House of Hyde, not far off on the little Bere Regis road, was also used by the Community: it was let to tenants but various staff had rooms there as it was a good-sized house. One of the tenants was thought to be an opera singer; she had a very powerful voice and practised nightly in the kitchen until the early hours of the morning. A Polish refugee also had a room there at one time; she, probably desperate from the isolation, the mud and the wet of Dorset, took to drink sometimes and would fall about the stairs. She appeared to have only one pair of shoes so was unable to go for walks with the children, refusing all offers of Wellington boots; even a pair of galoshes was found and indoor slippers were proffered: it was felt then that she just did not like walking. She asked at one point, "Where was the Administration?" Someone told her it was "traditional" which seemed as good an answer as any. I think she expected something more formal than Miss Leila and Miss Dave just discussing anything and everything at any hour and in any place and although there was an office with a highly efficient and knowledgeable secretary, it was not enough.