Alfred James Claringbould, 1894–1944
Alf Claringbould was born on 20th August 1894. His mother was Emily, née Mockett. His father Frederick, who had previously worked for the Dover coal merchants Hawksfield and Sons, had been the licensee of the Swingate Inn – on the Deal Road, a couple of miles out of Dover – since 1888, and would remain there until 1911, when his eldest son William took over the licence. On leaving the Swingate, Frederick appears to have set up as a farmer nearby, at Westcliffe Farm. The 1911 census shows Frederick and Emily living here with five sons and two servants. The sons were all employed on the farm, 16 year old Alf as “General labourer”.
In 1914 Alf married Nellie Crockett. A report on the proceedings of the Dover Rural District Tribunal in the Dover Express, 31st March 1916 stated that
Exemption was applied for by his father for Alfred James Claringbould, aged 22, married of Home Farm, Oxney, stockman, and said to be the only man on the farm.—The man himself said that he acted as stockman and also collected the refuse at the Shaft Barracks.—
It was pointed out that three single brothers were already exempted.—lt was decided to allow two months’ exemption, and the applicant was told that if more time was wanted after that one of the single brothers would have to go.
It would appear that Alf was able to remain working on the land and did not join the armed forces. However his younger brother Walter served in the Royal Navy in the final year of the war.
In 1921 Alf and Nellie were living at West Cliffe Cottages, West Cliffe, with two young sons. Alf’s occupation was shown as “Assisting Father In General Farm Work”. In September 1939 their address was Mangaton Cottage, Well Lane, St Margaret’s At Cliffe. Alf was “Farm Labourer Cable Worker”. He worked at Langdon Abbey Farm, and a 1941 newspaper report refers to him as the bailiff.1
Their daughter Kathleen, later Mrs Godwin, was one of the people from whom George Frampton was able to elicit information when researching pre-war singing practices in this area, in the 1990s. She told him that her father used to accompany himself on an accordion, and was also able to recall the names of some of the songs in his repertoire. He performed at The Rose Inn, West Langdon (where the landlord was Ike Harvey), and at local whist drives, dances and concerts. Sometimes he joined Jack Goodban at singing engagements.2 Apparently he would also dance a broom dance to the tune ‘The Cat’s Got the Measles’ (‘The Keel Row’).
The songs associated with Alf include ‘The Highwayman’, which could be any one of a number of traditional songs, the ubiquitous ‘Farmer’s Boy’, and others of comparatively recent origin, such as ‘If I was a Blackbird’ and ‘The Old Battalion Drum’. Early twentieth century folk song collectors would almost certainly have turned their noises up at the very popular ‘Grandfather’s Clock’, and would have had no time for music hall pieces like ‘Two Little Girls in Blue’. The last two songs on the list, meanwhile, were both associated with Second World War forces’ sweetheart Vera Lynn.
Alf Claringbould died at Langdon Abbey Farm in 1944 aged 49 years, and was buried in St Peter’s Churchyard cemetery in Westcliffe.
Songs
- The Highwayman
- If I was a Blackbird (Roud 387)
- My Grandfather’s Clock (Roud 4326)
- The Old Battalion Drum (probably Roud 163)
- Shall I Be an Angel, Daddy? (Roud V13923)
- To Be a Farmer’s Boy (Roud 408)
- Two Little Girls in Blue (Roud 2793)
- When the Poppies Bloom Again
- When They Sound the Last All Clear
- Court report, “Sheep worrying at Langdon”, Dover Express, 24 January 1941 ↩︎
- George Frampton, “I don’t know if this is actually a folk song”: The Life and Music of George Spicer (1906-1981), Part 2: The West Langdon Years, 1928-35, Musical Traditions, 2012, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/g_spice2.htm
George Frampton reports that one of Jack Goodban’s nieces, Mrs Margaret Bushell, née Goodban, “says that her mother was also a Claringbould before she married George Goodban, so it seems that Alf and Jack were brothers-in-law”. In fact Mrs Bushell’s mother Hilda came from a different branch of the Claringbould family. Her father William farmed at Oxney Court Farm, while one of her bothers, Alfred William Claringbould was licensee of the Wheatsheaf at Martin from 1947 to 1952 – another singing pub frequented by Jack Goodban and his father Tom. ↩︎
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