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
Alf Claringbould died at Langdon Abbey Farm in 1944 aged 49 years, and was buried in St Peter’s Churchyard cemetery in Westcliffe.
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. ↩︎
When recorded in the 1970s, the singer George Spicer named Fred Morris of Martin Mill as his source for the song ‘I wish there was no prisons’1. Fred was born on 10th September 1882, and baptised at St Augustine’s church, East Langdon, on 29th October. His father, also Frederick, was an agricultural labourer. He had married Hannah Elizabeth Marsh – like him from the small village of East Langdon – in 1874, and the 1881 census found them living with two young children, and his 67 year old father, Henry. Frederick died at the age of 37, and was buried at St Augustine’s on 25th Jun 1883 – when young Fred was only about 9 months old.
Hannah remarried in 1888. Her new husband was Charles Goodban, again an agricultural labourer from East Langdon. He was the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Goodban, and therefore an uncle to Tom Goodban (another singer whom George Spicer remembered from the pre-war years when he worked in East Kent), and great-uncle to Jack Goodban. Subsequent census records show Charles acting as stepfather to the three children from Hannah’s first marriage, but they do not appear to have had any children of their own.
Fred was still at school at the time of the 1891 census, but Trade Union Membership Registers show that in 1900 he was working as a cleaner on the railways, and became a member of the Amalgamated Society Of Railway Servants. The 1901 census however shows that the family had relocated from East Langdon to Martin Mill (only one mile away). Charles Goodban was now working as a waggoner on a farm, and both 18 year old Fred, and his 25 year old brother Henry, were recorded as “Carter on farm”.
Charles Goodban died in 1905. The 1911 census shows his widow Hannah living with her son Fred, still at Martin. Fred had returned to working on the railway – he was now a Platelayer., and again trades union records show that he joined the National Union of Railwaymen in 1913. Mother and son continued to live at Martin. In 1921 he was working as a labourer for the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. In 1925 his membership of the National Union of Railwaymen showed his occupation as “Tuber” (presumably repairing and maintaining the tubes in locomotive boilers). The 1939 Register listed him as “Lengthman Railway”, which was classified as “Heavy Work” (although at the age of 57 he would in any case have been too old for miliary service). Fred and his mother were living at Fairview, Martin – this is on the East Langdon Road, halfway between Martin and Martin Mill.
Hannah died shortly after the end of the War, on 23rd October 1945, at the age of 92. Fred died at the age of 77, in 1960.
Songs
I wish there was no prisons (Roud 1708)
Liner notes to George Spicer, Blackberry Fold, Topic 12T235 (1974). ↩︎
The singer George Spicer, recorded in Sussex in the 1970s, learned a number of songs when working on farms in East Kent in the 1920s and 1930s. Amongst these were songs which George picked up from singers in The Rose at West Langdon, including ‘The Cunning Cobbler’ (Roud 174), which was sung by the landlord, Ike Harvey1. Ike was also related by marriage to another singer, Jack Goodban.
Ike was born on 28th February 1867 and baptised at Ringwould on 14th April. His parents were William Quested Harvey, and Mary Ann Elizabeth Harvey, née Hopper. Their residence was given as Ringwould, but by the time of the 1871 census they were to be found at Lydden Court, Lydden. William’s occupation in 1871 was given as ‘Farm servant’. In 1861 he had been listed as a carter, and in subsequent censuses he was shown as ‘Farm servant indoor’ (1881), ‘Agricultural labourer’ (1891) and ‘Horsekeeper on farm’ (1901).
By 1881, at the age of 14, Isaac was working as a farm servant for Thomas Richards, “Farmer of 159 acres employing 5 men and 2 boys”, at Church Farm, East Langdon. Ten years later he appears to have been temporarily out of work, living with his father in a cottage at West Langdon. He married Louisa Emily Hopper in 1892, and in 1900 moved into the licensed victualling trade: a report in the Dover Express for 20th April 1900, on the previous Thursday’s County Petty Sessions, noted hat “The licence of the Rose Inn, West Langdon, was transferred from Francis Creswell to Isaac Harvey”. The next census, in 1901, listed Isaac as “Farmer & inn keeper”. He and Louisa were by now the parents of four daughters and three sons, between the ages of 0 and 7 years old. They were still running The Rose at the time of the 1911 census, when Isaac’s occupation was listed as “Farmer beer house keeper”. Louisa died in February 1919. She had given birth to another five daughters and three sons, and it is a distinct possibility that she died giving birth to the youngest of these, John.
Their son William had been killed while serving in The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment) in the First World War. His death was reported in the Dover Express, 14th May 1915, where it also stated that his younger brother was serving in HMS Inflexible. This younger brother was Thomas George Harvey who, happily, survived his time in the Navy, and lived until he was 59, in 1956.
The Harvey family featured in a police court case reported in the Dover Express, 12th September 1919:
SAD CASE AT WEST LANGDON.
ALLEGED THEFT BY DAUGHTER.
At a sitting of the Dover County Police Court on Monday afternoon, before Mr. A. Evanson, Matilda Mary Harvey was charged with feloniously stealing £25, the money of her father, the landlord of the ” Rose,” West Langdon.
Israel James Harvey, Landlord of the ” Rose ” beer house, West Langdon, said: On Saturday, August 31st, my daughter, who lived at my house and acted as my housekeeper, went out at 7 p.m. with a young man named Pilcher. I thought she was going as far as the next, village, but she did not return, and I did not see her again until I met her in the train to-day at Martin Mill Station. When she left on Sunday she took my child, a little baby, and also the perambulator and some baby’s clothes. On Monday, September 1st, my daughter Ruth missed the clothing, and told me. I then made a search and missed £7 from my private drawer. We then looked to see if the brewer’s money was all right, and then found about £11. 14s. gone. She had also taken some money amounting to about £4, the property of her brothers. I made enquiries, and not being able to find out anything I went to Police Constable Potter, who made further enquiries. On Thursday last I obtained a warrant for her arrest. She had had charge of the brewer’s money and of boys’ money, but had no authority to take it away.
Ruth Esther Harvey, daughter of the last witness and sister to the prisoner, said: On Sunday, August 31st, I was staying next door when my sister left. I did not know she was gone until 10 p.m. on the Sunday. I got up next morning at 7 a.m. at father’s request, and went in and helped to get the little girl up. In doing this I found some of my sister’s clothes had gone and also that some of the baby’s clothes were taken. I told my father, who then went to his private drawer and missed £7. Father then asked me to count the brewer’s money and I found only £5 6s. instead of £17.
Police Constable Harry Kingsland, K.C.C., stationed at Deal, said on Sunday, September 7th, at 3.30 p.m., he found the prisoner detained at, Oxted (Surrey) Police Station. He told her he had a warrant for her arrest on a charge of stealing £25 in money, etc. He cautioned her, and she replied. “I am innocent.” He went to her lodgings with a Mrs. Wallace at 11, Station Rd., East Oxted, and asked her to bring the child and pram to the railway station, which she did. He conveyed the prisoner to Deal on Sunday and to Dover the following day.
The prisoner was remanded till the next Petty Sessions, the father standing bail in the sum of £10 and her own bail of £10.
The following week, on 19th September, the same newspaper reported that the case against Matilda had been dismissed:
REMAND CASE, DISCHARGED.—Matilda Mary Harvey surrendered on bail in answer to an adjourned case from the Dover County Court last week, in which she was charged with stealing £25 from her father, Isaac Harvey, Landlord, of “The Rose,” West, Langdon.
Evidence was read over which showed that the girl absconded from home, where she kept house for her father, with a child of her father’s, a perambulator, and the money. The defendant was in charge of the money but had no authority to take it away. She was arrested at Oxted, Surrey.
Prisoner pleaded not guilty, and after the consideration of the case by the Bench they decided that there was insufficient evidence to send it for trial, and they discharged prisoner.
The “young man named Pilcher” with whom Matilda had stepped out was presumably John Pilcher, whom she married in the final quarter of 1919.
A report on the original hearing in the Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, 13th September 1919, under the headline “GIRL CHARGED WITH ROBBING FATHER”, named the defendant as “Mary Harris”. The daughter in question was definitely Matilda Mary Harvey, born 1895, rather than her younger sister Mary Jane, born 1900. Matilda was still single at the time of this incident, so the surname “Harris” is possibly simply a misprint. Another possibility is that, although unmarried, she had adopted the name of Harris. Her daughter Dorothy Florence Harvey (who would marry Jack Goodban in March 1943) had been born in 1912, when Matilda was 18. In the 1921 census Dorothy’s relationship to John Pilcher is given as “Daughter (father dead)”. Might the unnamed father’s surname have been Harris?
The 1921 census showed Isaac as “Licenced Victualler”, still at The Rose. His daughter Mary – not the one who had stolen money from him – was employed as House Keeper. At 21 years old she was the oldest of his children still at home, and no doubt had her work cut out looking after the eight siblings who also lived at the pub. Of these, the three eldest sons were all out of work. Robert (17) had been working for a farmer by the name of A. Pain, but was currently unemployed; Charles and James (both 15) were both shown as “Pit Lad E Kent Colliery Out Of Work”. The East Kent Colliery was at Tilmanstone, about 31/2 miles away from West Langdon. The Kent coalfields had only been opened up after 1890 and, in the absence of a local workforce with experience of mining, workers were imported from more traditional mining areas including Scotland, Wales and the North of England. The incomers often met with hostility from the local population, and for the most part they remained entirely separate communities. Clearly, however, there were some employment openings for locals lads such as the Harvey brothers – perhaps the mines appeared to present a better opportunity than working on the land, although in the harsh economic climate of the 1920s few industries could guarantee employment.
The Dover Express, 18th October 1929, reported that at a sitting of the Dover Court Sessions the previous day, “The licence of “The Rose,” West Langdon, was transferred from Isaac James Harvey to Frederick George Philpott”. The Rose ceased to be a pub in 1978, and is now a private dwelling. It appears to have been a fairly modest establishment – indeed, up until at least 1889 it had been an off-licence only.2 Ike’s grandson David Harvey recalled that “The bar area was so small that fifteen to twenty customers would fill it comfortably, though I don’t think I ever saw it so full”3.
Ike would have been 62 when he left The Rose and had a bungalow built at Maydensole Farm, about half a mile from West Langdon. Ten years on, in September 1939, he was still living here, at Romany Bungalow, Maydensole. He was now a widower, and described as “Smallholder Retired”. He had managed various plots of land while working as a landlord, and may well have continued to work these following retirement. He died on 27th June 1947, at the age of 80, and was buried in West Langdon churchyard.
George Frampton was in touch with several of Ike’s grandchildren in the 1990s, and they were able to provide details of Ike’s life, including his musical activities – he played a squeezebox as well as being a singer – and could recall the names of some of the songs which he used to sing4. David Harvey said that these were
mainly traditional and folk songs and music hall… Some of his song sheets survived for many years afterwards but, as time went by, they became torn and were disposed of … There were two songs we were able to recall – or at least [his brother] John was – though only pieces of them. One concerned the famous Folkestone Murder… the second is believed to be a Northumbrian song about a butcher who, on his way to market, heard a woman’s cry. After a search, he found the woman, naked, bent over to tend her, whereupon she produced a knife and killed him.
This song would appear to have been a version of the song ‘Three Jolly Butchers’ (Roud 17). David Harvey also remembered
vividly as a boy in the 1930s, listening surreptitiously outside Ike’s door and listening to him talking to himself. The conversation would generally go something like this: “Come on, Ike, give us a song; What would you like? What about …? Right ho.” He would then launch himself with gusto into song and accompany himself on his accordion.
[…]
My grandfather was a complete countryman of Kent. He had a largish moustache which could not escape a pint glass – in my experience, the beer at The Rose… was absolutely awful, but that was not while he was landlord. I have a photo taken in World War I when he grew a beard because his barber went into the army, and he waited for the barber’s return to have it shaved off. Almost until his death, he went ‘home’ to The Rose every Saturday night, and latterly it was my father’s job at 10 p.m. to collect him on one arm, and his bosom pal Jimmy Gregory, a Somerset miner, on the other, and pilot them safely back home, usually the worse for wear. Ironically, my father was a lifelong teetotaller.
Irene Granger, Ike’s granddaughter and sister-in-law to Jack Goodban, described the protocol around singing songs in the pub: “Songs would be sung by the ‘old men’… and nobody else would dare sing another’s song – until one of them died”.
Christopher Whitcomb, another grandson, remembered: “Ike singing his ‘ditties’ to customers and family alike, then lapsing into a mock-Yorkshire accent”. He also recalled, when he was about 6 years old, hearing a song which had the line ‘Jack jumped over the barn with a bundle of sticks’, but this song has not so far been identified.
Liner notes to George Spicer, Blackberry Fold, Topic 12T235 (1974). ↩︎
“George Drew, the landlord of the “Rose” beerhouse, West Langdon, was summoned for allowing beer to be consumed on his premises, he only having an off licence. The defendant, on oath, denied the offence but the Bench fined him 10 shillings and costs” – Dover Express 22nd June 1889, quoted at http://www.dover-kent.com/Rose-Inn-West-Langdon.html↩︎
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↩︎
The following quotations are all taken from George Frampton’s article “I don’t know if this is actually a folk song” cited above. ↩︎
Jack Goodban was born on 9th April 1910. His mother was Alice, née Mockett; his father Thomas was a waggoner on a farm. The family lived at Martin, near East Langdon, about 4 miles from Dover. When the Second World War began, Jack was still living with his parents and his younger brother Thomas, at “Bungalow, Martin Vale, St Margaret’s At Cliffe”. Both he and Thomas were cowmen. Jack’s sister-in-law Irene “recalled [Jack] as being a cowman at Reach Farm, St Margarets-at-Cliffe, working from the War onwards for Gilbert Mitchell”.1
Jack married Dorothy Florence Harvey2 at St. Augustine’s Church, East Langdon on 6th March 1943. She was the granddaughter of Ike Harvey, landlord of The Rose at West Langdon. By 1955 they were living at 2 The Avenue, St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe. We know the address thanks to an article which appeared in the Maidstone Telegraph, 10th June 1955:
Lament of the singing cowman
Many Kent folk songs may be forgotten
Pass by the gardens in front of 2, The Avenue. St. Margaret’s Bay, any evening and the chances are that you will hear someone singing songs that you have never heard before.
For you will hear 45-years-old Mr. Jack Goodban, who works by day as a cowman at Reach Court Farm, singing some of the hundreds of folk songs that he knows. Many of these are hundreds of years old and have never been published.
Jack Goodban learnt them, as a boy, from his father, Mr. Tom Goodban, and many of them have strong local influences, like “Murder at Folkstone,” a narrative song, which recounts the shocking murder, long ago, of two young girls at Folkestone.
But, nowadays, Tom Goodban finds that he cannot remember many of the folksongs he once knew so well.
There is little or no opportunity to sing them to anyone, and, because he has no children, Jack fears that many of the songs handed down through his family will pass into oblivion.
Some time ago, Peter Kennedy, of the B.B.C. folk song unit, was in touch with Mr. Goodban, but nothing has materialised to date.
Peter Kennedy was the presenter of the BBC radio programme As I Roved Out between 1953 and 1958, and it may well be that Jack Goodban or his father listened to this programme, and wrote to Kennedy suggesting that he come to St Margaret’s to record Tom’s songs. Kennedy’s failure to follow up on this lead has to go down as one more lost opportunity to document the stock of songs sung in Kent. In the event, it would be August 1975 before a folk song collector visited Jack. This was Mike Yates, who was following up on names given to him by George Spicer – a singer who had lived in Sussex since the 1940s, but who was born at Little Chart and, as a young man, had worked as a cowman at Abbey Farm, West Langdon from 1928 to 1935, and had learned a significant part of his repertoire in this part of Kent.
There was obviously once quite a tradition of pub-singing in the villages just inland from Dover and Deal and George was only too happy to give me a list of singers who used to sing there. Sadly, only Jack Goodban was still alive, and his repertoire, though extremely interesting, was small. When we first met, Jack was helping a neighbour put up fence poles in a field that bordered the top of the famous White Cliffs. When I mentioned old songs, Jack asked me if I was from the BBC, adding that they had written to him in the ’50s to say that they would like to record him. Sadly though, they never turned up! To begin with, Jack denied knowing any songs at all and it was only as I turned to leave that he said, “You mean those old historical songs… like The Shannon Frigate?” If anything was guaranteed to stop me dead in my tracks, then it was a comment such as that.
Jack, like George and so many other singers that I have known, was a keen gardener and these recordings were made in the kitchen as his wife sat quietly salting runner beans into large earthenware pots. Jack, it turned out, had also sung in The Wheatsheaf at Martin, where his father sang and taught him The Shannon Frigate and The Aylesbury Girl, a song that was also sung by a couple of brothers called Wood.3
‘The Aylesbury Girl’ and the rarely collected ‘The Shannon Frigate’ were in fact the only songs which Mike Yates was able to record from Jack. Sadly, the rest of his and his father’s repertoire were thus lost. However George Frampton conducted a considerable amount of research into the singers with whom George Spicer had mixed in his West Langdon days, and was able to elicit further information from several of the singers’ surviving relations. The following quotations are taken from George’s article on George Spicer on the Musical Traditions website:
Jack’s sister4 was Irene Granger of Shepherdswell, near Dover. She recalled her brother as being a cowman at Reach Farm, St Margarets-at-Cliffe, working from the War onwards for Gilbert Mitchell. However, although acknowledging his renown as a singer, could only recall him performing Paddy McGinty’s Goat, adding that he ‘would also be in demand at weddings and parties on account of this.’
[…]
Tommy’s son Tom [i.e. Jack’s older brother] was a shepherd on the cliffs between Dover and St Margaret-at-Cliffe, adding that ‘Uncle Jack was a cowman. Jack was always singing the old songs…
[…]
A second letter from Mrs Bushell [Mrs Margaret Bushell, née Goodban, of East Studdal, Jack’s niece] added: ‘My mother can remember Uncle Jack singing Don’t Let your braces dingle dangle. Poor old sports, he got caught and dragged through the mangle. I think it is the chorus. And the other one, The Ring my Mother Wore.’5
Jack Goodban died at his home in The Avenue, St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe in April 1988, four years after the his wife Dorothy had passed away.
Thomas Charles Goodban, 1871–1945
Jack’s father Tom was born at East Langdon on 10th November 1871, the son of Edward Goodban, and Eliz, née Pilcher. In the 1871 census their surnames had been recorded as Goodburn rather than Goodban, and their address simply as “East Langdon”. Edward was employed as a Miller’s labourer. At the time of the 1881 census, the family were living at “W Oaks Cottage, Ripple, Eastry” – this was probably Winkland Oaks Cottages, which is actually closer to the village of Sutton. Edward’s occupation was now Farm labourer.
While Edward, Eliza and family were still living at “W’Oaks Cottage” in 1891, 19 year old Thomas is not listed at that residence, and I’ve been unable to trace him elsewhere. However, the following year he got married, on 15th October 1892, at St Margaret’s, St Margaret At Cliffe. His bride – like Thomas, 21 years old – was Alice Louisa Mockett.
In both the 1901 and 1911 censuses, Thomas, Alice and their growing family were living at Martin, near East Langdon, about 4 miles from Dover. Thomas worked as a carter, or waggoner, on a farm. They were still living at Martin in 1921, with Thomas’ occupation now shown as Agricultural Worker, working for the Mitchell family, at Martin Lodge Farm. The 1939 Register listed him as “Farm Waggoner Retired”, living with Alice, and two of his five sons, Jack and Thomas, at “Bungalow, Martin Vale, St Margaret’s At Cliffe”. The next entry on the Register was for Martin Vale farm in Station Road, and it seems likely that this had been the farm where he had ended his working life. He died on 26th March 1945, and was buried in St Augustine’s Churchyard, East Langdon.
The website of the St Margaret’s History Society records that Thomas was one of 13 children, although only ten of these survived to adulthood. Two of his younger brothers, Edward and Charles, ran a boot and shoe shop in Chapel Lane, which also acted as the premises for Goodban Bros. Cycle Agents, offering new bicycles to purchase, plus repairs of cycles and prams.6
In the 1970s, when Mike Yates recorded the singer George Spicer – by then a long time Sussex resident, but who had worked at West Langdon before the Second World War – George recalled the names of other singers from whom he had learned songs while living and working in the area. One of these was “Tommy Goodburn, a regular at The Wheatsheaf Inn, Martin, who used to sing Henry, My Son”7. Actually, this must have been Tom Goodban – as we’ve seen, the Goodban surname was sometimes recorded as ‘Goodburn’.
According to the 1955 newspaper article quoted above, Jack Goodban learned many songs from his father, but no songs were collected directly from Tom.
Alice Louisa Goodban, née Mockett, 1872–1958
In a letter to George Frampton from Jack Goodban’s sister Irene Granger, she mentions that her mother used to sing ‘The Faithful Sailor Boy’ (Roud 376) with the chorus “Farewell, farewell, my own true love, such parting brings me pain”. This is the only known reference to Alice as a singer.8
Alice was born on 1st November 1871, and baptised at St Margaret-at-Cliffe on 31st December; her mother’s name was given as Elizabeth Mockett. No name was recorded for her father, and subsequent records do not really clarify the situation. The log books of the Church of England School in St Margaret-at-Cliffe for 1879 and 1884 have “George Mockett” as the only parental name to be recorded – but might this actually have been her grandfather, agricultural labourer George Finnis? The 1881 census shows Alice living with her grandparents George and Mary Finnis in a cottage in St Margaret-at-Cliffe. These were most likely Alice’s father’s parents, as they do not appear to have had any daughters.
When Alice married Thomas Goodban in 1892 the marriage records give her father’s name as “Charles Mockett”, but census records cast no light on who this might have been. As Alice Goodban she lived with her husband at Martin until at least 1921, subsequently returning to St Margaret-at-Cliffe. Alice died on 9th February 1958, and was buried in the Churchyard of St Augustine, East Langdon.
Songs
Recorded by Mike Yates, 27th August 1975:
The Aylesbury Girl (Roud 364)
The Shannon Frigate (Roud 963)
Both songs appear on Green Grow the Laurels, Topic LP 12TS 285 (1976), and on Up in the North and Down in the South, Musical Traditions MT CD 311-2 (2001).
Other songs known to have been in Jack Goodban’s repertoire:
Don’t let your braces dingle dangle (Roud 27923)
Murder at Folkstone (Roud 897)
Paddy McGinty’s Goat (Roud 18235)
The Ring my Mother Wore (Roud 7372)
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↩︎
A wedding notice in the Dover Express, 26th March 1943 is headed GOODBAN—HARVEY but Dorothy is listed as “eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Pilcher, of Langdon Abbey”. The 1921 census shows John and Matilda Pilcher residing in East Langdon with their 1 year old son, Albert, and 9 year old daughter, Dorothy Florence Harvey. She is recorded as “Daughter (father dead)”. She had presumably been born out of wedlock. ↩︎
Actually Jack’s sister-in-law. Born Irene Pilcher in 1924, Jack’s wife Dorothy was her half-sister. ↩︎
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↩︎
Mike Yates, booklet notes for Up in the North, Down in the South: songs and tunes from the Mike Yates collection 1964-2000, Musical Traditions, 2001, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/yates.htm↩︎
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 ↩︎
Charlie Bridger learned at least three songs from a singer he referred to as ‘Nip’ Bailey. One of these was ‘The Birds upon the tree’, which was also mentioned by Woodchurch resident Reg Pellet (1893–1986) as a song he remembered having been sung in the village in his youth. Reg said it used to be sung by a man called George Bailey, aka ‘Old Nip’, and “they did pull his leg over it”1. ‘Nip’ was described by Reg Pellett as a “good all-round farm-hand, hop dryer, hedger and ditcher”, who once claimed that if he “could put his foot on two daisies, he could get a job”.2
‘Nip’ must have been Edward George Bayley, who also appears in census records as George Edward Bayley, or simply George Bayley. He was baptised at Tenterden, St Michael & All Angels, on 5th September 1869, the son of George Bayley, a farm labourer, and Esther, née George. In 1871 the family lived at 1871 Old House Farm, Tenterden, but by 1881 had moved to Stone Bridge, Woodchurch, and they remained in the village. The 1891 census shows them living at Upper Road, Woodchurch, with 21 year old George working as an agricultural labourer. In 1901 they were at Front Road, with George, and his brothers Albert and Harry described as “Ord farm labourer”. In 1911 and 1921 George, still living with his parents, was at Lower Green, Woodchurch; his occupation in 1921 was given as “Farm Work Casual Labourer – Own Account”.
The death of his father was reported in the Kentish Express, 9th July 1927:
The funeral took place on Tuesday of Mr. George Bayley aged eighty-six years, who for over forty years was waggoner at Stonebridge Farm. He leaves a widow, five sons and one daughter. His body was conveyed from his home, at Lower Green, to the church, in the farm waggon he so often had had charge of, and by his special request two horseshoes were nailed on the coffin lid.
His mother Esther died the following year. Edward George ‘Nip’ Bayley died at the age of 67, in the first quarter of 1937.
As a young man Charlie Bridger would help ‘Nip’, who was working as a hop-drier at High House Farm, in the centre of Kenardington.
He couldn’t see very well; I used to go and level his hops for him, ’cause he couldn’t …the old driers they had a chalk mark – red charcoal mark – round the roundel, you know, so if they had so many bags of hops, or so many pokes of hops, they knew that should come up to that certain mark, see, and he couldn’t see that old mark [?] was dark, I remember an old storm lantern hanging up for a light in there. And I used to help the old boy with his hop-drying, of a night. …that was Kenardington …on the corner; not the square ones, the single one right on the corner. High House Farm.3
Charlie was born in 1913 and started work at the age of fourteen, so this would most likely have been in the late 1920s.
When asked if ‘Nip’ Bailey was well known locally as a singer, Charlie replied
No, he was known for singing ‘The Birds upon the trees’, that was all. He used to like a sing-song though, you know. Oh no, he was only known in Woodchurch really for his song ‘The Birds upon the trees’, that’s what they always used to associate him with, for his singing. My old grandfather used to say “Come on Nip”; he used to get his cornet out, my old grandfather; old Nip used to sing, and he used to play. In the pub, this was.
He may have been most closely associated with this one song, but clearly he knew others: Charlie also learned ‘The Ship that never returned’ and ‘The Zulu War’ from ‘Nip’, and he remembered another one called ‘Stick to your mother, Tom’ – “that was a nice one. But I never got that off him”.
Arthur Richard Bayley, 1889–1976
Charlie Bridger was recorded singing a patriotic song ‘Three cheers for the red, white and blue’ and said “Old Nip’s brother used to sing that. Arthur Bayley.”
Arthur was born on 3rd March 1889 and baptised at All Saints, Woodchurch on 18th April. He lived in the family home until at least 1911, and most likely until his marriage to Fanny Hyder in 1919. He would have been of an age to have fought in the First World War, but as a horseman was exempted from military service in the summer of 1916.4
Like his parents and brother George, Arthur’s address in the 1921 census was given as Lower Green, Woodchurch, but he and Fanny, with their one year old son (also Arthur), were listed as a separate household. Fanny died in 1934, and in September 1939 Arthur and his son were living at 1870 Cottages, West End, Woodchurch. His occupation was given as “Horseman & Ploughman”.
Arthur’s death was recorded in the Shepway district 1in 1976. His surname was given, as it had been in the 1939 Register, as “Bailey” rather than “Bayley”.
Songs
‘Nip’ Bayley
The Birds Upon the Tree (Roud 1863)
The Ship that never returned (Roud 775)
Stick to your mother, Tom (Roud 7380)
The Zulu War (Roud 5362)
Arthur Bayley
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue (Roud 23522)
Adrian Russell, letter to George Frampton, 31st August 1992, referring to correspondence with Reg Pellett 1979-1981. ↩︎
Quoted in George Frampton, Charlie Bridger – Musician and Singer, Bygone Kent, Vol 15 No 1, 1993. ↩︎
Charlie Bridger, recorded at his home in Stone-in-Oxney by Andy Turner, 15th April 1983. ↩︎
Charlie Bridger, photographed in the front garden of his home in The Street, Stone-in-Oxney, circa 1984.
Charlie was born on 9th July 1913, and baptised at St Mary’s church, Kenardington, on 10th August 1913. His parents were Charles Bridger, a farm labourer, and his wife Gertrude Mabel Bridger, née Bailey (or Bayley); their residence at the time was given as Spring Cottages, Kenardington.
Charles senior had been born in 1882 at Selling. Possibly his father had got employment on a farm at Selling that year: the family were shown living at Kenardington in the 1881 and 1891 censuses, and all of Charles’ siblings were born at Warehorne or Kenardington – indeed Charles was baptised (as “Charley Bridger”) at St Matthew’s church, Warehorne on 24th December 1882. Going right back to the 1841 census, this branch of the Bridger family had consistently been recorded as living at Kenardington. Their roots before that were in Woodchurch, about 3 miles away, and a village with which the Bridgers retained close links into the twentieth century. The menfolk seem to have been, without exception, agricultural labourers, although Charlie’s grandfather Thomas was listed as “Roadman Ord Agric Labourer” in 1901, and ten years later he was working as a Road Foreman for the District Council. Charlie’s employment history followed a similar path.
At the time of the 1921 census Charlie, his sister Mabel (two years his senior), and his parents, were living at 4 Spring Cottage, Kenardington.. His father was working as a “Farm Tractor Driver”, employed by Thomas Henry Pearson at Place Farm, Kenardington. Charlie attended Warehorne Primary School, leaving at the age of fourteen to start work on the same Kenardington farm where his father worked.
I’ve done all sorts of jobs. Went to work on a farm, in 1927, I was lucky to have a job at 10 shillings a week. That was the year after the General Strike and there was hardly any work about. It was worse than what it is now. There was… a bloke [from Woodchurch] named Harry Dorman? Well he was a master bricklayer, and he was out of work and he was getting 11 shillings a week on the dole, and he’d got a family of four to feed. Lived in a council house at six and sixpence a week rent. And I got a job – he used to cut hair, at threepence a time – he said “You’re better off than I am”, he said – and I was too. I had a shilling a week pocket money and… she fed me and clothed me… I worked at Place Farm, Kenardington, for a bloke named Tom Pearson, I was there for eight years [i.e. until around 1933] and then I left and I went stone-breaking on the road. I broke the last lot of stone that came out the quarry for two shillings a cubic yard – that’s a bit of stone, a cube of stone like that. A yard wide, a yard wide, and a yard high that way, for two shillings. Break it up into little bits like that – two inches. That’s what they used to put on the roads.
Just a little stone-hammer, a sledgehammer or a stone-hammer; proper stone-hammer, I still got ‘em out in the lodge there now. Goggles – you had to wear goggles. No glass in ‘em, ‘cos no compensation if you had glass in ‘em, they’d splinter you see. Just gauze. You had a little four pound sledgehammer to break bloody great lumps of rock up into that square and perhaps that thick. You wouldn’t think a little hammer would break stone like that, but it did. That’s the jar that done it. I broke one yard the first day I went – after that I got the hang of it then. I earnt more at that than I did – I averaged out forty-two shillings a week at that, and farm wages were thirty shillings a week. And I averaged out to forty-two shillings. That’s how I first saw her [indicating Lily]. She used to go biking up by, and [you] never used to see many people. I used to think: Cocky little bugger, don’t say… and I used to say “Good afternoon, miss”, and she never used to answer!1
Interviewed by George Frampton after Charlie’s death, his widow Lily confirmed that, although she would see Charlie stone-breaking, she didn’t speak to him at that point.2 They first met properly at a musical event in the village hall. In a letter to George she wrote
Funnily enough it was through him playing Hand bells and singing Country songs that I met him. My Mother organised a social evening and asked a man from Appledore to bring his team of Hand Bell ringers. Charlie was one of them. He also sang some of his songs.3
One of those songs must have been ‘Buttercup Joe’. After singing it for me in 1983 Charlie said “That’s for her benefit! [indicating Lily] That’s how I met her through singing that”.
Lilian May Gill was born at Brookland on Romney Marsh on 22nd October 1912 but, along with her parents and two sisters, she moved to Stone-in-Oxney in 1920. She and Charlie were married in October 1938, and lived in the village for the rest of their life together.
When the Second World War broke out Charlie tried to enlist with the Royal Air Force, but – according to Lily4 – was rejected for want of a Grammar School education. Besides, as an agricultural worker he was valuable on the Home Front. During the war years Charlie worked at a market garden, Asparagus Estates.
Despite its name, Lily Bridger recalled that one of Charlie’s more back-breaking jobs was to dig up parsnips in the grip of midwinter using a pick axe to break up the frozen ground. When not working, he served with the Home Guard, and only managed to see Lily at weekends. Their house was hit by a flying bomb whilst she was pregnant with their only child Christopher [born 1945]. Lily’s sister at Appledore also had a bomb land ten yards from her front door.
After the war, Charlie did odd jobs, such as cutting out hay to build haystacks for Clarks of Lenham. In one stack, he found a nest of bees, which he smoked out at night-time ‘whilst the bees were asleep’. He started work as a part-time gardener at Stone-in-Oxney in 1950, and when a new owner of the house concerned moved in, he extended Charlie’s duties to include full-time work on his farm on Romney Marsh, from harvesting to sheep-shearing. During the last eleven years of his working life, he was employed with the Southern Water Authority, maintaining the banks of the Royal Military Canal.5
In its edition of 27th October 1988 the Kentish Express reported on a meeting of Stone-cum-Ebony Women’s Institute where “Members congratulated Mrs Bridger, one of the founder members, who had just celebrated her golden wedding”. Charlie died just a few weeks later, early in November 1988. Lily lived to be 94, dying in the final quarter of 2006.
Charlie was mentioned as someone who still sang the old songs when I interviewed Albert Beale’s son Charles at Kenardington in 1983. Charlie and Charles Beale had been contemporaries at Warehorne school. I wrote to Charlie and very soon received a phone call in return – from a call box, as the Bridgers didn’t have a house phone – inviting me to pay them a visit.
My first visit to Stone-in-Oxney must have been one evening in early April 1983 and, as on many subsequent occasions, I was made very welcome by Charlie and his wife Lily. Not wishing to seem too pushy, I didn’t take my bulky tape recorder with me, but I needn’t have worried – Charlie was only too keen to have his songs recorded for posterity, and in fact had written out the words of eight songs in neat copperplate handwriting, on sheets of foolscap. These were
Three Maidens a-Milking did go
The Zulu War
That’s how you get served when you’re old
Little by little, and bit by bit
The Birds upon the Tree
The Folkestone Murder
The Veteran
A Boy’s best friend is his mother
I arranged to make a return visit, this time with a tape recorder. I went back on 15th April 1983, accompanied by my friend Adrian Russell, who shared my enthusiasm for traditional singing and who, like Charlie, had family connections with the village of Woodchurch.
Over the course of the evening I recorded just over 2 hours of singing and conversation. I knew that I should keep the tape rolling the whole time, but Charlie insisted I was “wasting tape”, and as he was more assertive than my 22 year-old self, I felt obliged to press the Pause button from time to time – unfortunately being slightly late on occasion in starting the recording again.
Charlie began by singing the eight songs which he had previously written out for me – with one other inserted in the sequence, namely ‘The Ship that never returned’ (“That’s one of my favourites that one”). Over the course of about 3 hours, and a few bottles of Guinness, Charlie sang 30 songs, and played the dance tune ‘Jenny Lind’ on his clarinet. Although he kept his handwritten lyric sheets to hand, for the most part these were an unnecessary prompt and he sang from memory. However about a third of the total – and certainly the last nine songs on my tape – were sung reading the words from various printed song books and song sheets.
The full list, in order, was as follows:
Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go
The Zulu War
That’s how you get served when you’re old
Little by little, and bit by bit
The Ship that never returned
The Birds Upon the Tree
The Folkestone Murder
The Veteran
A Boy’s best friend is his mother
Where is my wandering boy tonight?
The Farmer’s Boy
The Jolly Waggoner
In the springtime
Buttercup Joe
Old Farmer Giles
Silver Moon
The Brave Ploughboy
One bitter night in winter (The Faithful Sailor Boy)
When you and I were young, Maggie
The Death of Nelson
Wait till the clouds roll by (verses 1 and 2)
The Gipsy’s Warning
Wait till the clouds roll by (verse 3)
Jenny Lind (on clarinet)
The Mistletoe Bough
Won’t you buy my pretty Flowers
Old fashioned Mother of mine
Playing on the old banjo
O who will o’er the Downs so free?
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue
I’ll take you home again, Kathleen
Good Old Jeff
I made many more visits down to Stone-in-Oxney, but never recorded Charlie singing again. However, about a year later, on another trip to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, the Librarian Malcolm Taylor introduced me to Mike Yates. I was very aware that my recording kit was well below par, so suggested that, if Charlie were agreeable, Mike should come down to Kent and make some decent recordings. A visit was quickly arranged, and in a fairly short recording session in April 1984, Mike recorded half a dozen of Charlie’s songs. These appeared subsequently on releases by Musical Traditions and Veteran (see the Discography below).
Charlie and Lily were both regulars at The Crown, a pub which was, in more than one sense, at the centre of the village. Between 1983 and 1987 I organised the occasional session in the pub, with Canterbury-based Oyster Morris dancing at the pub on at least one occasion. Charlie very much enjoyed hearing others sing and play tunes, and when he sang, he absolutely revelled in being the centre of attention.
Charlie Bridger at the bar of The Crown, Stone-in-Oxney, circa 1985.
I was keen for Charlie to be heard by others with an interest in traditional song, and John Heydon invited Charlie to perform at the 1985 National Folk Music Festival at Sutton Bonington. Charlie’s name was in fact on the advance publicity, but in the event ill health after an angina attack meant that he was unable to make the journey. He did, however, make an appearance at the English Country Music Weekend, which was held at Frittenden in Kent in the summer of 1986, and sang in a concert in the village hall on the Sunday afternoon.
I moved away from Kent in 1987, and saw Charlie just once after that. On a visit in July 1988, with my wife-to-be Carol, I recorded 45 minutes of conversation about his life and involvement with music. Charlie’s health had been in decline for some years, and I was sad, but not surprised, to hear of his death later that year. I was rather touched to be left Charlie’s collection of song books and sheet music (the News-Chronicle Song Book, Francis & Day’s Community Song Albums and others of a similar nature) in his will.
I stayed in touch with Lily Bridger after Charlie’s death via Christmas cards and the odd letter, but did not see her again. However, not long after I moved away from Kent, George Frampton moved into the county and set about researching its customs and vernacular music-making practices. I put him in touch with Lily, and in July 1993 George interviewed her, plus Harry Bush the landlord of The Crown, and another regular in the pub, Len Hamilton. George also corresponded by letter with Charles Beale, and was assiduous in his researches in the County Council’s Centre for Kentish Studies at Maidstone. Some of the fruits of George’s research appeared at the time as articles in the local history magazine Bygone Kent. George has generously shared all of his notes with me, for which I am extremely grateful, as he was able to uncover a great deal of information which had passed me by while Charlie was alive.
For pretty much the whole of his life Charlie played in wind and brass bands and, as we shall see, some of his song repertoire came from older band members.
A photograph taken in the early 1920s shows Charlie aged about 9, sitting cross-legged in uniform, holding his clarinet, at the front of the Tenterden Town Band. His father and grandfather were members of the same band, and are also in the photograph.
Tenterden Town Band at Badlesmere, circa 1924. A young Charlie Bridger is sitting in the centre, at the front, holding a clarinet. Photograph supplied to George Frampton by Lily Bridger.
An earlier photograph again shows both Thomas and Charles Bridger senior, this time rather less formally attired, with fellow members of the Woodchurch Brass Band (all of the musicians in the photograph were manual labourers, and as Charlie put it “Old hobnailed boots, and bowler ‘ats. Well they couldn’t afford any other clothes”). The Bridgers did not live in Woodchurch, and on practice night walked the 3 miles or more over the fields from Kenardington, and then home again at the end of the evening.
Woodchurch Brass Band, possibly early 1900s. Left to right: Charlie Bridger (Charlie’s father), Tom Sampson, Alfred “Absolom” Ditton, Francis “Stump” King, Thomas Bridger (Charlie’s grandfather), bandmaster William “Bucky” Ditton. From a copy of the photo provided to me by Charlie Bridger.
The Woodchurch Brass Band had been active since 18616, and there was a long tradition of music-making in the Bridger family.
My great grandfather… I never did know my great grandfather Bridger, he was a flute player, used to play in the old church orchestra [presumably St Mary’s Church, Kenardington]. They reckoned if he heard a piece of music once, he knew it. How true it was I don’t know. I can’t vouch for it ‘cos, I say, I never knew him. That’s what other people…
My grandfather he bought a clarinet when he was 15 years old. And that was in 1879. And it cost him five pounds. And that was a lot of money. That was more than five weeks’ wages – he never had a pound a week wages then. He had about twelve and six a week then… lucky if he got that. And yet, they used to pay for these things. Course they used to smoke as well, most of ‘em. I know my father said, when they was kids he lived at Warehorne and the old parson there, they used to send him down all their used tea. To make tea with, after they’d finished with it. Yeah that’s right.
While his grandfather learned to play by ear first, only later learning to read music, Charlie’s father learned from a printed tutor or gamut.
He taught himself to play the clarinet ‘cos he had that gamut…. Well it was a picture of a clarinet with all the keys on it and all the holes and all the different notes you can play, see. Called a gamut.
My father taught me. He actually wrote me out a C scale for a start, then a G scale. I had to learn all that and then… I had an old flute tutor… and I had to learn the rest off that. Myself.
My father started learning her [Charlie’s sister] to play on the clarinet… I started learning on the flute. But she never got on very well with it so my father put me on the clarinet and took me off the flute. One of the first bits of music I actually played was the William Tell Galopede.
Charlie remembered that the band would always go out busking on Boxing Day. Woodchurch man Reg Pellett (1893-1986) in his ‘Some Old Memories of Woodchurch’ wrote that
For about two weeks around Christmas, they (the band) used to play at the outlying farms, and then on Boxing Day play in the village … The bandsmen got plenty of drinks given them, and they would let us (boys) have a sip out of their glasses. The band used to play on the Green on goal running nights and there were always quite a lot of people there.
He also tells of the reaction of a landlord at the Bonny Cravat in Woodchurch who, in his first Christmas season, found himself expected to provide largesse to the glee singers, bell ringers, and then the band: “First, there was the ringers, and then there was the singers, and then there was the bloody Band! How many more?”7
A great deal of alcohol could be consumed by the bandsmen over the Christmas period. One of Charlie’s stories concerned a particularly boozy Boxing Day engagement at Hengherst, one of the big houses in the area.
Went up Old Tommy Webb’s. He promised us a pound, if we went up there. So we went up there and we was up there I don’t know how many hours. And we had all the beer we wanted – I got four quart bottles in my pocket! When I come away they was pouring it on the flower beds and everything else. We never did have the pound…
One of the guests staying at the house – no doubt also somewhat the worse for drink – offered to take the drummer and his bass drum in his motor car. However they ended up in the ditch.
The Woodchurch Band never went out any more after that!
That would have been around 1934. Certainly, according to Lily Bridger, both the Tenterden and Woodchurch bands had finished by the time she met Charlie in the late 1930s. After the War, however, he played with the Rye and Peasmarsh brass bands; then some time later joined the Cranbrook Band. He played with them until ill health forced him to retire in 1984. Having stopped playing, Charlie gave away all of his instruments.
Charlie’s early involvement with the Woodchurch Band introduced him to some of the songs which would later feature in his repertoire. Band members would retire to the pub after rehearsals and, although Charlie was officially too young to go in the pub, a quiet corner was found for him to sit in, and thus he heard any songs sung by the older men. In particular, Frank Samson (1870-1956) sang ‘Won’t You Buy my Pretty Flowers?’ and would play it on his tenor horn as he walked home through the cornfields. Or he’d play ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ – a piece which is remembered as having been in the band’s repertoire – on his way home. “Oh dear, he’s drunk again!” was apparently his wife’s reaction on hearing Frank’s approach.
The sources of Charlie’s other songs also tended to be a lot older than him. When I asked him if there were any other singers he knew of from his own generation, he replied “No – there’s no singing much at all”.
Lily commented “Actually, you mixed with older people”.
Charlie: I did? Well, I used to go drinking with my uncle Harold and old Jesse Goodsall and old Jack Goodsall.
Lily: Well, that’s the thing you see, people ten years older than you… mostly gone. I mean, a lot of ‘em you mixed with, got those old songs from, they were a lot older than you.
Which Charlie couldn’t really argue with, although – always liking to have the last word – he countered with “You didn’t know who I mixed with!”
Over in Sussex, Bob and Ron Copper – roughly the same age as Charlie – found that their contemporaries were at best indifferent to the old family songs. It’s quite likely that the same applied in rural Kent. Or it could simply be that Charlie felt at home with the older generation, and found that she shared their musical taste.
He learned several songs including ‘The Birds upon the Tree’, ‘The Ship that never returned’ and ‘The Zulu War’ from an older man he referred to as ‘Nip’ Bayley. ‘Nip’ worked in an oast, and Charlie would help him out at night.
That’s right, he was the old hop-drier. He couldn’t see very well; I used to go and level his hops for him, ’cause he couldn’t …the old driers they had a chalk mark – red charcoal mark – round the roundel, you know, so if they had so many bags of hops, or so many pokes of hops, they knew that should come up to that certain mark, see, and he couldn’t see that old mark [?] was dark, I remember an old storm lantern hanging up for a light in there. And I used to help the old boy with his hop-drying, of a night. …that was Kenardington …on the corner; not the square ones, the single one right on the corner. High House Farm.
When asked if he was well known locally as a singer, Charlie replied
No, he was known for singing ‘The Birds upon the trees’, that was all. He used to like a sing-song though, you know. Oh no, he was only known in Woodchurch really for his song ‘The Birds upon the trees’, that’s what they always used to associate him with, for his singing. My old grandfather used to say “Come on Nip”; he used to get his cornet out, my old grandfather; old Nip used to sing, and he used to play. In the pub, this was.
Adrian Russell, whose parents hailed from Woodchurch, had exchanged a number of letters with the previously mentioned Reg Pellett between 1979 and 1981. Reg wrote out the words of a small number of songs which he remembered having been sung in Woodchurch in his youth. These included ‘The Dying Soldier’, ‘The Faithful Sailor Boy’ and ‘The Birds upon the tree’. Of the latter, Reg said it used to be sung by a man called George Bailey, aka ‘Old Nip’, and “they did pull his leg over it”. ‘Nip’ was described by Reg Pellett as a “good all-round farm-hand, hop dryer, hedger and ditcher”, who once claimed that if he “could put his foot on two daisies, he could get a job”.8
Charlie’s statement that ‘Nip’ was only known for singing ‘The Birds upon the tree’ is somewhat contradicted by the fact that he learned at least two other songs from him. Also
There was another one he used to sing, but I never got that one off him. I only remember the chorus, and that was “Stick to your mother, Tom”, and that was a nice one. But I never got that off him.
Having been recorded singing the song ‘Three cheers for the red, white and blue’ Charlie said “Old Nip’s brother used to sing that. Arthur Bayley.”
‘Nip’ was most likely Edward George Bayley (1870-1937), whose brother was Arthur Richard Bayley (1889-1976). Despite sharing the same surname, they do not appear to have been closely related to Charlie’s mother, Gertrude Bayley.
Another of Charlie’s sources was Billy King, who taught him ‘Three Maidens a-Milking did go’.
I learnt that off an old man, old Billy King. I gave him a pint of beer. And you got it for nothing – 4d, that was a lot of money then. He taught me The Folkestone Murder too.
Where did he live? Well, he originally came from Woodchurch. A Woodchurch man. Don’t think there’s any Kings there now. He was only a little old short bloke.
In 1983, Adrian Russell had asked Charlie if there was a particular pub in the area that was known as a singing pub. Charlie’s response didn’t answer that directly, but perhaps implied that people were pretty much restricted to the pubs in their village:
Well, people never went very far in those days, you see, ‘cos they hadn’t got much transport, only pushbikes and walking. There weren’t many people that had got a bike even, not then. And, a pony and trap. No, it was something pretty wonderful to have a pushbike then.
When I interviewed Charlie in 1988 I revisited the question of where he would go to sing, and that led on to discussion of his involvement in other musical activities.
They used to have these smoking concerts at the old pub every so often, and you had to sing a song, say a recitation or stand a gallon of beer… yeah, if you didn’t sing a song or say a recitation, you had to buy a gallon of beer. Well, you used to have a beery evening, you know, they called it a smoking concert, and, I know one old man, he only knew one song, well if you can call it a song, he used to sing:
I had a wheelbarrow and the front wheel went round I had a wheelbarrow and the front wheel went round I had a wheelbarrow and the front wheel was narrow I had a wheelbarrow and the front wheel went round
And that used to get him out of buying a gallon of beer you see. That’s all it was, that’s all there was to it. It used to save him buying a gallon of beer though. And I mean, all these old boys, they had their own song, you know, and they didn’t half use to get wild if somebody got up and sang their blinking song, ‘cos they hadn’t got another one, a lot of ‘em. They used to say, well that’s old so-and-so’s song you know. I mean, they used to get really wild if you sang their song, ‘cos they hadn’t got another one.
The following is reproduced verbatim from an interview with Charlie (CB) and Lily (LB) at their home, 2nd July 1988.
AT: So was that in the pubs in Woodchurch?
CB: In the pubs. Anywhere round the country, round about here, they used to have ‘em. That was a regular old thing in the pub. Same sort of thing as a dart match really. ‘Cos there wasn’t the dart matches about, not that time like there is now. It was just a way of getting a few customers.
AT: Was it all men?
CB: Oh, all men in the smoking concerts. Women didn’t use to go in the pubs, not in them days, only in private really.
AT: In smoking concerts, were there people of your age? Or were they older?
CB: A lot of ‘em was older – old men, 70, 80, something like that some of ‘em, real old men. Weren’t no age limit.
AT: I wondered whether they were mainly older people, or people of your generation who were learning the songs?
CB: They didn’t used to go to learn the songs, they used to go to sing and get some free beer if somebody couldn’t sing one.
AT: When did that die out?
CB: Oh in the twenties, late twenties. I never known a smoking concert since the war. They gradually died out when people started going dancing, and playing darts, then more.
LB: They got more of these village halls – billiards and things like that.
CB: The wireless came too, and that stopped them going to the pub a lot of ‘em when they had the radio. You see, never had the radio much until after the First World War, hardly anybody did until the twenties. I know old Beaney at Appledore, the old banker, he had a wireless set, and he was inviting everybody to go and listen to it. You had to have earphones, you know. I know we walked all the way from Kenardington over to Appledore just to listen to this bloody radio set! You had to have whatever there was on; you had about five minutes listening to it and then somebody else had a listen. Only got two sets of earphones. But people was happier then than what they are now. Made your own entertainment. Used to have village concerts, and everybody used to do some – well, I say everybody – most people, anybody that had got a bit of talent used to do something. I know my old father and me, we played – I got a little old Eb clarinet then and he’d got a Bb – and we played couple of tunes out of one of the old Woodchurch Band books, at one of them concerts.
AT: What about dances?
CB: Used to have what we called a tanner hop – sixpence. You had about couple of hours’ dancing, 8 till 10. And you paid your sixpence, and that’s where you sort of learnt your dances.
AT: Who played for those?
CB: Oh, you’d have a local band, local orchestra mixed up. I used to play in one. I used to know a lot, nearly all the old dance tunes at one time, ‘cos you could buy what they called an album. You paid so much a year, well we used to have Campbell Nellie’s [Campbell Connelly’s], Lawrence Wright’s, Keith Prowse and one other – we used to pay for albums every year, and they used to send you all the hits they had. Mind you, you had to chuck half of it out ‘cos it weren’t no good. You usually got one good one amongst it, see, and that was all the rage then. You used to get all the old things, all the latest things then – oh, Francis Day and Hunter, that’s one we used to – that was one of the most popular ones. I don’t know what you used to pay, about 5 or 6 bob a year, something like that, and they used to send you all this music for a complete band, like. Course then you’d get a piano, couple or three violins, Eb saxophone, drums. You’d get five or six different parts, you know, the complete lot.
AT: Would there be someone who would be the band leader, and ask other people to play in his band?
CB: Oh yeah, he’d ask you, if he knew anybody who could play the fiddle, or anything like that, flute – we got up a little orchestra, we used to play classical stuff for a start, with a couple of flutes, and my father and me on clarinets, and about three or four fiddles, and he was on the piano. Alex Stutchbury he was on the drums. That’s, well he’s dead now, that’s Stutchbury’s the coal people. He was a good flautist and drummer too.
Old Sid Harry from Hamstreet he used to play flute, and old Billy Knowle he was a fiddle player. Used to practise Sunday afternoons. Then it gradually got – used to pay – well I never paid sixpence a week ‘cos I hadn’t left school when I started – but they paid sixpence a week, and it gradually fell through, you know, someone dropped out. It got down so that we just had the dance band in the end, five of us.
AT: How often did you go out playing for dances?
CB: Once a fortnight. Then they thought they’d do better have it once a week and charge a shilling. It dropped off then.
LB: That Warehorne?
CB: Yeah. Dropped off when you put the price up and that, and tried to get it every week. They lost money actually, putting the price up. Used to get hell of a lot of people there, tanner hops, sixpence a week. About two, two and a half hours. Used to go to the pub, down the Woolpack and get half a bucket of coal. Old Wally ‘Orton from Hamstreet he got up on the billiard table and started taking his clothes off… They were playing billiards and all at the old tanner hops, all at the same time. They didn’t stop playing ‘cos, see, it was the Red Triangle Club, you paid so much a year, to belong to it. It was open every night except Sunday nights. I forget what the subscription was – wasn’t a lot really.
AT: Were there many people had squeezeboxes?
CB: Well a lot of the old people used to have an old accordion, old melodeon. Used to go round Good Friday, some of ‘em, busking for money. A fiddle, old Bob Swift from Brenzett, old Bill Ferris from Warehorne and old Fred ‘Amer was playing a triangle. And old Bob Swift he was a good fiddler, Old Bill Bruce was good on the accordion too. A lot of these old boys had a melodeon. Never seen many concertinas. I had three German concertinas, one of ‘em was a good one, Hohner think it was. My concertinas, I got ‘em out of the World Wide Club for a pound, that’s all they were. Old Williams’, pay a shilling a week for twenty weeks, you had to get twenty people, you had something every week, see. I had three concertinas out of it, and two pairs of shoes once I had. I used to wait till I’d paid all of my – I used to have mine last, so I’d paid for it ‘fore I’d got it. I had three good old concertinas; I had a Lachenal too.
It seems that the concertinas were just thrown away once they went out of tune or were beyond a simple repair – “I chucked the old Lachenal in the dustbin in the end”. I recall hearing a similar story from Charles Beale, whose father Albert sometimes used to play a concertina to accompany his singing.
Most of these reminiscences date back to well before the start of the Second World War. But while smoking concerts and village hops might have died out, Charlie was still active in whatever was going on in Stone and the neighbouring villages – as was Lily.
The Kentish Express for 10th March 1939 reported on the performance of two plays written by Warehorne man Clarence Garner, and put on by local performers. Charlie and Lily both took part in one of these plays, ‘The Oldest Inhabitant’, described as “a short comedy sparkling with rustic humour”. The newspaper reported that “Charles Bridger gave an excellent study of the rheumaticy Mr. Giles, but the width of his whiskers–which nearly covered his face–rather spoiled his make-up”;Lily played “the domineering Mrs. Sarah Giles”. I never heard Lily sing, but she was mentioned in the Kentish Express, 8th March 1957, as having taken part in a fund-raising variety concert organised by the WI.
Charlie would play his clarinet each year in November with the Bonfire Band. And he “played the clarinet throughout the performances” in January 1954 when the children of Stone school put on performances of a nativity play, ‘The Pageant of Christmas’, written by the vicar in a conscious attempt to revive the pageants staged by the Oxney Players in the 15th century9. This appears to have been repeated in January 1955. Again Charlie is listed as having played his clarinet, while Lily was amongst the adult singers. Their son Christopher took the part of a shepherd10. The poet John Betjeman was in the audience for one of the performances in 1954, while a year later Sir George Barnes, BBC Director of Television praised the pageant as “a great imaginative conception”.
Charlie Bridger playing the clarinet as part of the Stone Bonfire Band. Copy of a photograph provided to George Frampton by Lily Bridger.
As previously noted, Lily first got to know Charlie after he appeared in Stone village hall as part of a handbell ringing group based at Appledore. It would seem that Charlie kept up this interest: the Kentish Express 2nd May 1975 reported on a society wedding at Waldron, near Heathfield in Sussex, where the Wittersham bell ringers performed, and were “grateful to Stone ringers Mr Charles Bridger and Mr Frank Wenham for standing in at short notice owing to illness”.
At The Crown – literally just down the road from their home in The Street – Charlie played darts and dominoes, and would sometimes sing a song, such as ‘I’ll take you home Kathleen’, ‘The Farmer’s Boy’, ‘Buttercup Joe’, and one which I never heard him sing, ‘Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green’.11 As Lily said, Charlie never really discriminated between different types of songs – “if he took a fancy to it, he’d learn it”.12 Indeed, he learned ‘The Village Pump’ specifically so that he could sing it at a Women’s Institute social, having heard Bob Arnold sing it, in the character of Tom Forrest, on ‘The Archers’. He wrote off to the BBC to get the words, and for the event itself built his own pump, with silver paper cascading out of the tap when he pumped away at the handle.13
Charlie Bridger, front right with pipe, playing dominoes in The Crown. Photograph by Douglas Glass – copy provided to George Frampton by Lily Bridger.
An earlier version of this article appeared in the booklet to the Musical Traditions CD Won’t you Buy my Pretty Flowers?, https://mtrecords.co.uk/pdf/377.pdf
Relevant articles by George Frampton include ‘Charlie Bridger musician and singer’, Bygone Kent, Vol 15 No 1, January 1994, and ‘Players of no mean ability: the Woodchurch Brass Band 1868-1934’, Bygone Kent, Vol 19 No 3, March 1998.
Songs
Recorded by Andy Turner, April 1983:
The Birds Upon the Tree (Roud 1863)
A Boy’s best friend is his mother (Roud 1756)
The Brave Ploughboy (Roud 1205)
Buttercup Joe (Roud 1744)
The Death of Nelson (Roud 3549)
The Farmer’s Boy (Roud 408)
The Folkestone Murder (Roud 897)
The Gipsy’s Warning (Roud 1764)
Good Old Jeff (Roud 1740)
I’ll take you home again, Kathleen (Roud 12907)
In the Spring Time (Roud 31144)
The Jolly Waggoner (Roud 1088)
Little by little, and bit by bit (Roud 10674)
The Mistletoe Bough (Roud 2336)Old Farmer Giles
O who will o’er the Downs so free? (Roud 406)
Old fashioned Mother of mine (Roud 23549)
One bitter night in winter (The Faithful Sailor Boy) (Roud 376)
Playing on the old banjo (Roud 31136)
The Ship that never returned (Roud 775)
Silver Moon
That’s how you get served when you’re old (Roud 12893)
Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue (Roud 23522)
Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go (Roud 290)
The Veteran (Roud 24926)
Wait till the clouds roll by (Roud 9088)
When you and I were young, Maggie (Roud 3782)
Where is my wandering boy tonight? (Roud 9823)
Won’t you buy my pretty Flowers? (Roud 12906)
The Zulu War (Roud 5362)
Recorded by Mike Yates, April 1984:
The Birds Upon the Tree (Roud 1863)
The Folkestone Murder (Roud 897)
Little by little, and bit by bit (Roud 10674)
That’s how you get served when you’re old
Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go (Roud 290)
The Zulu War (Roud 5362)
Discography
Won’t you Buy my Pretty Flowers?, Musical Traditions, MTCD377 (2019). Includes all the songs recorded by Andy Turner, with the exception of ‘Buttercup Joe’, ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ and ‘Silver Moon’. Available as a download from https://www.mustrad.org.uk/download/covers.htm Booklet (includes lyrics and notes for all of the songs) https://mtrecords.co.uk/pdf/377.pdf
The Birds Upon the Tree, Musical Traditions, MTCD333 (2004). Includes Mike Yates’ recordings of ‘The Birds Upon the Tree’, ‘Little by little, and bit by bit’. Available as a download from https://www.mustrad.org.uk/download/covers.htm
Reg Pellett, Some Old Memories of Woodchurch, 1976 (typed manuscript held at the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone) quoted in George Frampton, Players of no mean ability: the Woodchurch Brass Band 1868-1934, Bygone Kent, Vol 19 No 3, March 1998. ↩︎
Quoted in George Frampton, Charlie Bridger – Musician and Singer, Bygone Kent, Vol 15 No 1, 1993. ↩︎
When collecting shanties and sea songs at the Royal Alfred home for merchant seamen at Belvedere, in the summer of 1928, James Madison Carpenter recorded ‘Blow the man down’ being sung by Harry Johnson. In Carpenter’s transcription of the tune, the singer is given as “Bos’n Johnson”. Carpenter also has a transcription of the words of ‘Blow the man down’ ascribed simply to “The Bo’sn”. It seems quite likely that these actually refer to the same person.
In the summer of 1928 James Madison Carpenter collected four shanties and two other sea songs from Harry Johnson, a resident at the Royal Alfred home for merchant seamen at Belvedere. Carpenter’s Dictaphone recordings survive for four of Mr Johnson’s songs, and can be heard on the VWML website.
On his transcription of one of these, ‘Blow the man down’, Carpenter noted the song as having been collected from “Bos’n Johnson”. It could be that Harry Johnson the same singer identified elsewhere in Carpenter’s notes simply as “The Bo’sn”.
We have no further information about the singer. The England & Wales Merchant Navy Crew Lists 1861-1913 show that in 1891 a seaman by the name of Harry Johnson, born 1853 in Bristol, served as boatswain on board the ‘Blazer’, owned by the Liverpool Steam Tug Co. Ltd. It is possible – but by no means certain – that this was the same man who sang for Carpenter almost 40 years later.
In the summer of 1928 James Madison Carpenter, collecting from residents at the Royal Alfred home for merchant seamen at Belvedere, noted a single song from a Mr Hill. No further information was recorded about the singer.
In the summer of 1928 James Madison Carpenter collected eight shanties and other songs from William ‘Paddy’ Gaul, a resident at the Royal Alfred home for merchant seamen at Belvedere.
Carpenter’s notes for ‘Be Handy, Boys’ record that William Gaul was born in Waterford, Ireland, and spent forty five years at sea. The singer may well be the William Gaul whose death was registered in the Dartford district in the third quarter of 1928 (i.e. shortly after his songs were collected by Carpenter). His age was given as 70.
In which case, he is almost certainly the William Gaul, born Waterford, 1859, who was the recipient of the Mercantile Marine Ribbon and British Medal Ribbon in 1921, for service at sea during the First World War. And, possibly, the William Gaul from Waterford, birth year given as 1863, who served as a fireman on board the Antelope, registered at Milford, from January to June 1891.
