Charles Albert Bridger, 1913–1988

Charlie was born on 9^th July 1913, and baptised at St Mary’s church, Kenardington, on 10^th 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 24^th 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 22^nd 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.

In its edition of 27^th 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.

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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 15^th 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:

1. Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go
2. The Zulu War
3. That’s how you get served when you’re old
4. Little by little, and bit by bit
5. The Ship that never returned
6. The Birds Upon the Tree
7. The Folkestone Murder 
8. The Veteran
9. A Boy’s best friend is his mother
10. Where is my wandering boy tonight?
    
    
11. The Farmer’s Boy
12. The Jolly Waggoner
13. In the springtime
14. Buttercup Joe
15. Old Farmer Giles
16. Silver Moon
17. The Brave Ploughboy
18. One bitter night in winter (The Faithful Sailor Boy)
19. When you and I were young, Maggie
20. The Death of Nelson
21. Wait till the clouds roll by (verses 1 and 2)
    
    
22. The Gipsy’s Warning
23. Wait till the clouds roll by (verse 3)
24. Jenny Lind (on clarinet)
25. The Mistletoe Bough
26. Won’t you buy my pretty Flowers
27. Old fashioned Mother of mine
28. Playing on the old banjo
29. O who will o’er the Downs so free?
30. Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue
31. I’ll take you home again, Kathleen
32. 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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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, 2^nd 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.

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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 10^th 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, 8^th 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 15^th 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”.

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 2^nd 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

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

Down in the Fields, Veteran, VTC4CD (2001).
Includes Mike Yates’ recording of ‘Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go’.
https://veterantapes.bandcamp.com/album/down-in-the-fields

It was on a market day – One, Veteran, VTC6CD (2005).
Includes Mike Yates’ recording of ‘The Folkestone Murder’.
https://veterantapes.bandcamp.com/album/it-was-on-market-day-one

It was on a market day – Two, Veteran, VTC7CD (2006).
Includes Mike Yates’ recording of ‘The Zulu War’.
https://veterantapes.bandcamp.com/album/it-was-on-a-market-day-two

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1. All direct quotations from Charlie are taken from recordings made at his home on 15^th April 1983, and 2^nd July 1988, by Andy Turner. ↩︎
2. George Frampton, notes from interview with Lily Bridger, Stone-in-Oxney, 14^th July 1993. ↩︎
3. Lily Bridger, letter to George Frampton, 30^th June 1993. ↩︎
4. George Frampton, notes from interview with Lily Bridger, Stone-in-Oxney, 14^th July 1993. ↩︎
5. George Frampton, Charlie Bridger musician and singer, Bygone Kent, January 1994 ↩︎
6. Gavin Holman, Brass Bands of the British Isles 1800-2018 – a historical directory, 2018 https://doi.org/10.17613/33N1-GM20 ↩︎
7. 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. ↩︎
8. Quoted in George Frampton, Charlie Bridger – Musician and Singer, Bygone Kent, Vol 15 No 1, 1993. ↩︎
9. Kentish Express, 15 January 1954 ↩︎
10. Kentish Express, 21 January 1955 ↩︎
11. George Frampton interview with Harry Bush and Len Hamilton, The Crown, Stone-in-Oxney, July 1993. ↩︎
12. George Frampton interview with Lily Bridger, Stone-in-Oxney, July 1993. ↩︎
13. George Frampton interview with Lily Bridger, Stone-in-Oxney, July 1993. ↩︎