Early Childhood

I was born on the 2nd April, 1928, in the hunting-lodge on Lord Bessborough’s estate in Piltown, Co Kilkenny, Ireland. My father, William George Hartford, was the carpenter working on the rebuilding of Bessborough House. The IRA had burnt it down in retaliation for Lord Bessborough’s condemnation of them in the House of Lords.

my father, Ted, my mother me outside Bessborough hunting lodge

My earliest memory is of taking my first few faltering steps. I was standing unsteadily on the cobblestones in the farmyard outside the hunting-lodge. My father was a short distance away with his arms outstretched to encourage me and draw me towards him. Wobbling, and in danger of plopping down on to the hard stones, I saw those hands as my anchor, my safe haven. I made a supreme effort to reach their sanctuary. I pushed myself to the limits and I was almost there when, as I reached out for the protective hands, they withdrew. I shall never forget the feelings of terror, despair and disappointment, and the sense of frustration at failure that left me in distress.

The photo below, of Ted and me with my father, was taken on Bessborough Terrace in 1929. The header image was taken in the same spot, many years later.

As I wobbled and was about to fall, my father caught me in time. I can remember no more, but the terror and despair remain vivid in my memory to this day. I guess I was about 14 months old. I could estimate accurately the spot where it happened.

Another early memory is of sitting on our rector’s knee and of his suddenly standing up and dumping me back into my mother’s arms. I can see in my mind’s eye, his black clerical suit and his horrified expression as he brushed down his trouser leg. My mother was giggling nervously with the embarrassed, apologetic expression I came to recognise so well in later years. I felt, somehow, that I had done something wrong.

Do I really remember that far back? Yes. I can see it all as if it were yesterday. Obviously, the adults had made a big issue of it, thus impressing the incident on my mind. Possibly, the story was repeated over and over in my hearing. It took place in the small, dark, living room to the left of the door as you entered the lodge. The rector (Canon Kellett) was seated with his back to the window and he was dandling me on his knee till, I assume, he felt the wetness penetrate. My mother sat behind the door facing the window. She obviously was overcome with embarrassment and her way of showing it was by giggling. There were no plastic pants about in those days.

Most of my memories from those early days are happy ones. The demesne was ours to roam in at will. We could pick masses of flowers whenever we wished. Firstly, there were the snowdrops that suddenly appeared in clusters under a tree. I loved their delicate appearance and the whiteness of their drooping heads. To this day I “ooh” and “aah” on discovering the first snowdrops in our garden. They signify not only new hope and new life, but also a continuity, a sense of eternity, a blending of past, present and future.

I recall the masses of narcissi and the sweet-smelling roses on the terrace. There was a sweetbriar among the roses and its scent hung in the air. Foxgloves grew along the stone wall. The water lilies on the pond intrigued me. I was tempted to walk on them to the middle of the pond but some restraining hand kept me from stepping into the water.

When I was five years old there was a special flower service in church. We children picked flowers and processed up the aisle to hand over the flowers to be sent for Easter Sunday to the Protestant Adelaide Hospital in Dublin for the sick poor. My father borrowed a flower basket from the Big House and we gathered masses of primroses from the green areas in front of the house. There were red and blue varieties as well as the common yellow. I knew exactly where to find them. I was so happy, all dressed up in my party dress and so proud as I handed my basket over. I was already striving for perfection in everything I did and suffering frustration when things didn’t go as planned.

My love of nature stems from those early blissful years. The demesne had a variety of trees - monkey puzzle, cork, walnut, sweet chestnut, horse chestnut. We loved to gather the fallen walnuts and crack the shells to reach the kernels and eat them. In autumn we gathered both varieties of chestnuts, stamping on the hairy or spiky outer layers to reveal the shell inside. The sweet chestnuts we popped into the fire and enjoyed them roasted. From the horse chestnuts we made conkers and my brother and I enjoyed competing but he usually won.

In spring there were birds’ nests to find. I remember our taking two eggs from a nest in a hawthorn tree and running to where the little kitchen window looked out on to the big drive in front of the house. We excitedly called to our mother and when she opened the window we showed her what we had found. Jokingly, she said we could have scrambled eggs for tea and I believed her! Her reaction was, as ever, to start giggling at my innocence and gullibility. Looking back, I wonder why she didn’t explain to us that we shouldn’t have touched those eggs. Was she too timid, too nervous, to attempt any form of correction?

We often gathered food from the wild. We were particularly fond of the wild mushrooms that we picked in the fields around the estate. Fried in butter, they were simply delicious. A small stream ran through the estate and my father sometimes went fishing for trout in it. On one occasion my mother had the butter melted in the pan but my father and Ted were out for a long time. I went off to meet them and tell them to hurry up. They had caught two tiny fish and did we have a laugh! Another evening my brother and my sister, Helen, and I were walking in the woods when Helen wanted to go to the toilet so she and I slid down the bank to the stream and Helen fell in. When we fished her out she was soaking wet and screaming her head off. The gamekeeper passed by and on meeting my father he told him that Ted had pushed his sister into the stream. I remember my father rapping Ted on the knuckles with a set of keys although I told him Ted had been nowhere near his sister when she slipped. Looking back now, I realise that moments like that were out of character for my father. He was very much part of our lives at that time and spent as much time as possible with us.

We went blackberry- picking in early autumn and the smell of blackberry jam in the making was heavenly. My mother was a wonderful cook and she seemed forever to be baking cakes and making jam. She had her own way of doing it. You had to stir continuously and always in the one direction. Then the jars had to be washed and warmed so that the hot jam didn’t crack them. A metal spoon placed in the jar was said to draw the heat away from the glass.

Towards the end of cooking time our mother would spoon a small portion of jam on a saucer and, if it crinkled within a minute or so, it was ready. Throughout cooking, she skimmed the froth from the top and it was served on bread later on. Lastly, there followed the ceremony of covering the pots. A waxed circle was laid directly on top of the jam. Then a larger circle of cellophane was dipped in water and placed on the pot. This was secured with an elastic band. As the wet cellophane dried out, it contracted and thus gave a tight fit. A small label showing type of jam and date it was made completed the operation. We hung around waiting for the preserving pan to be given to us to ‘lick’.

Sometimes my mother donned a pair of gloves and, armed with a pair of scissors, she would cut young nettles to boil as a vegetable. They didn’t sting once they were boiled and you could scarcely distinguish them from spinach. Dandelion leaves were used in salads.

Crab apples were abundant, too. My mother made delicious jelly from them. She would up-end two kitchen chairs and tie a muslin bag between them. She poured the apple pulp into the bag and let it drip through the muslin into the preserving-pan. The resulting liquid was the basis for the jelly. A few added cloves gave a delicious flavour.

My father was fun to be with at that time. We used to play cricket in the yard outside the lodge. I might field while Ted batted and our father bowled. I remember one day our father let Ted play with a rifle that he had brought back from the front in World War 1. It wasn’t loaded and Ted lifted it and pointed it at me. My father’s reaction was swift and positive. He knocked the rifle from Ted’s hand and shouted at him that he must never again point a gun at anyone. I’m sure I didn’t understand that it was a real weapon and not a toy. We often wondered what happened to those guns in later years. They were always hidden under the floorboards and, for all we know, may still be there today.

Helen, Ted with WW1 rifle, me, Muriel Besborough estate

My father’s workshop was across the far side of the Big House and we often went there to watch him work. My mother always seemed to be tied to the kitchen and busy with a younger child. I used to ride on the crossbar of my father’s bicycle and I would think that the hedges were moving back the other way. One day I cried out that he was riding over the daisies and hurting them! He began to wobble and pretend he was avoiding the daisies. I trusted him completely.

One evening he asked me to go outside and help him fill a bucket of coal and whatever he said I was angry with him and I screamed and thumped him over and over with my little fists. Then I ran to my mother and tried to hide in her voluminous skirt but she pushed me away and refused to speak to me. It was a terrible feeling to have nobody to comfort me or make me feel better. My own anger frightened and puzzled me and my mother’s rejection of me shocked me so much that I have never forgotten the incident. Neither of my parents had much understanding of child psychology. I was a particularly sensitive child and I was deeply affected by incidents such as that.

It must have been the week before my sixth birthday in 1934. It was a Saturday and my mother took Ted, Helen and me with her to the shops. Muriel was in the pram. My mother bought six marshmallow Easter eggs for 3p (3 old pennies). The eggs were wrapped in coloured foil paper and the shopkeeper packed them in a box. They were supposed to be for my birthday the following week, Easter weekend. I remember being really excited as we walked home through the laurel walk. At home my mother placed the box of eggs high up on top of a cupboard in the kitchen. During the week she took the eggs down and started to share them out. Someone, and I don’t know who, could no longer resist the eggs. There were six of them and six people in the family at that time. I cried and said those were for my birthday. I was promised replacement eggs but that wasn’t the same. I refused my egg, and it was left by itself on top of the cupboard and all the thrill of looking forward to my birthday treat was gone. I felt let down and betrayed.

My father had a motor bike that he kept in a building across the courtyard from the lodge, and it was probably about 1930 when one night he was on his way home and he fell asleep and a herd of cattle ran into him and trampled over him. He was deeply concussed and was taken to hospital in Waterford where he remained unconscious for some time. Ted and I were taken to see him when he regained consciousness and I remember entering a dark room and seeing him in a bed by the far wall. His head was swathed in bandages and bright-red blood was seeping through. I ran away and pulled Ted to the door, crying, “Teddy and I go get a new Daddy. Old Daddy’s ears dirty.”

Then my father began to cry, so I ran back and hugged and kissed him. That must have been a terrible time for my mother. If you didn’t work, you received no pay. Long after my parents died my Uncle Charlie told me that there was no such thing as car or motor bike insurance in those days but that the Daily Mail paid my mother £1 a week while my father was out of work. It was a fund that they administered to help people in need. For some reason the Daly Mail was the newspaper that my parents bought. I know that my Uncle Charlie worked for a while with the Daily Mail in London after he left the Royal Air Force in 1919. My brother was a member of their Teddy Tail Club and he wore a Teddy Tail badge. In later years my parents switched to the Irish Times, at that time a newspaper catering for the Anglo-Irish.

My father was rather accident-prone. One evening, as he sat with his feet up by the range, he knocked a pot of boiling water over his leg. My mother helped him to bed and she and Ted went for the doctor. My father was in terrible pain and I slipped into the bed beside him to try to make him feel better and I remember the heat emanating from his fevered body. After his motor bike accident blood dripped continually inside his head and for the rest of his life he could still feel it.

Five of us six children were born in the hunting-lodge of the Bessborough estate. In February 1933 my Uncle Charlie came to stay with us. My mother was upstairs in bed and I don’t remember wondering why he was looking after us. I had put my father’s shoes on, having dressed up in my silk party dress. Outside, the snow was deep and Ted dragged me out to run knee-deep in it. Uncle chased us but he didn’t want to go far in the snow so he called after us that when our father came home we’d be in trouble. We were afraid to go in for some time and, as Ted dragged me along, I lost one shoe in the snow. That night I woke up and called my father to say there was a cat meowing in the house. He brought me in to my mother and introduced me to my new baby sister. She was later christened Muriel Gertrude. I accepted her without questioning how she came to be there. Strange to think that today Muriel is an ailurophobe!

friend of Uncle Henry's, my father, Ted and Uncle Henry

I never noticed when my mother was pregnant. I was probably six years old when I started going to Saturday school, more commonly, Sunday school. Around Easter time 1935 we were learning about the Crucifixion. Each week our attendance was rewarded by the receipt of a little picture to stick in an album. Our picture for Easter was of the Crucifixion. I ran home to my mother and said, “Look what they did to Jesus.” She burst out crying and I couldn’t understand but I was sorry I had told her such sad news. Looking back, I realise that she was pregnant with my younger brother who was born that May. It is possible that she and my father had been quarrelling, as I grew used to hearing them do so often.

On Saturdays, the Head Gardener’s son, Mervyn Turner, used to call for me. My mother would joke when she saw us leaving hand in hand. I remember feeling really happy and jumping up to touch the branches of a hawthorn tree as we crossed the showground. In the early 1970s I was listening to a programme on radio when I heard the name ‘Mervyn Turner’ mentioned. The man being interviewed was a social worker in Manchester and he had made a study of murderers and had written a book on the subject. He spoke with a Northern Irish accent and he was the same age as I was. I excitedly rang my brother and he confirmed that the Turners were from Northern Ireland and that they had returned there after Bessborough House was sold in 1935. I wish I had investigated further, but my life was so busy that I had forgotten about it next day.

Piltown was an apple-growing area and we often bought apples from the gardens. There was also an Isaac and Mrs Tector who lived in the town and who had a large orchard. My father often called there. In the autumn of 1941, during my second year in boarding-school, a tea-chest of apples arrived for me from the Tectors. I remember one of the teachers suggesting I take a bag of apples down to the hospital for the sick poor. This service to the needy was a lesson that was constantly drilled into us.