Reg Stones: Working at Beauchief Hall in the 1950s
Reg Stones
Totley History Group has recently been contacted by Reg Stones who was an under gardener at Beauchief Hall in the early 1950’s, although for the last 50 years has lived in Dorset. Reg has been recounting his memories of the house and work at that time.
The Hall was occupied by Arthur Kingsford Wilson, Chairman and joint Managing Director of Spear & Jackson Ltd, and who had been Master Cutler in 1929/30.
The gardeners saw nothing of him but Mrs Wilson, his 2nd wife, would enthusiastically discuss plans she had for the grounds with the Head Gardener, although a nod of the head as she passed was all Reg remembers of his own contact with her.
She had a lucky escape from serious injury when she failed to notice an open trap door in the darkness of the boiler room and fell down a shoot into the coke store! Heating was needed for the 80ft glasshouse where peaches, grapes and tender flowering plants were cultivated. Geraniums grew all year round and reached the roof some 10-12ft high.
Sadly this no longer exists. Fred Allen [head gardener] and his wife lived in the old Pegge House with clock and bell turret. Daughters Isobel and Freda lived there too, Freda working as a hairdresser in Sheffield. There were three gardeners, Fred Allen, 2nd gardener Eric Pashley from Woodseats, and Reg.
Eric Pashley was later replaced by Trevor Gibbs who came from Middlewood. A number of other staff worked the estate including Brian Kirby from Greenhill who was the cow man, and a Mr. Vaughan who managed the trees. Bill Roach, an Irishman, was handyman at both the house and the firm. Staff for the Hall included a butler whose wife was the cook.
There were two ‘tweenies’, housemaids who had rooms in the attic. Reg thinks they came from Bolsover and were probably daughters of a miner. Staff amounted to around eight in all, but as Reg says ‘A lot fewer than the twenty or so employed in the earlier years of the century’, which reflected the social changes taking place across Britain.
Beauchief Hall
A plan to restore the gardens had begun just prior to Reg being employed and borders, ponds and paths were cleared, with seating added for people to use when watching the newly acquired fish in the carp pond. The garden was opened to the public in the spring of 1951 during the daffodil season, raising funds for the RSPCA.
The Hall’s two drives had been heavily gated and a Mr Watson lived in the gatehouse on Hemper Lane. Bent with age and always wearing a long mac, Reg remembers him trudging up and down the drive to do odd jobs for another landowner at the bottom of the hill.
Fifty acres of land were attached to the hall at that time, all of it grazed or producing hay. Basic powder slag was used as a fertilizer, a waste product from the steel-making industry.
Beauchief Hall, deer park
The deer park had originally been to the left of the house surrounded by a stone wall some 7 ft high, although no deer were kept at that time.
Cattle were held prior to going for slaughter, having been raised on land owned by the family in Lincolnshire. The breed they favoured was the Lincolnshire Red Poll a cross between the Lincolnshire Red and Aberdeen Angus. The animals went to Sheffield Abattoir via a Mr Lee [butcher] the agent of a very elderly Mr Swindon of Crooksmoor Rd who rented land from Mr Wilson. Mr Swindon was taken to the farm in Lincolnshire in a large Humber Snipe driven by his son-in-law, Mr Lee, and the farmer from there also visited the hall. They were having a problem with the bull that was proving to be aggressive! One stormy night the cattle were alarmed by thunder and broke through fencing, eventually ending up in the gardens of houses on Twentywell Lane. Mr Swindon was far from happy the following morning, but neither, I imagine, were the homeowners!
Cattle over-wintering at the Hall were kept indoors in the buildings originally erected by Pegge in the mid seventeenth century. They had deep beds of straw, which produced warmth as it decomposed when mixed with their dung.
Hay and grain were stored in a loft, its little windows glazed with ‘bubble glass’. They kept a grey Shire horse that went to Holmesfield for shoeing, a couple of Sussex saddleback pigs that went for slaughter once they reached 20 stone, and a small flock of bantams getting too close to the cockerel would result in him having a go at you with the spurs on the back of his legs! Also some Rhode Island Red hens were kept near to the back door, probably handy for the kitchen scraps.
Reg noticed the wild life too… tawny owls nesting in the woods, a colony of rooks, redstart in the walls, and red squirrels in the yew tree in the veg. garden. A feral cat helped keep the rat population down and foxes roamed the grounds in daylight as well as under cover of darkness. The Wilson’s gamekeeper from Horsleygate would visit to try to rid the Hall of the foxes and wood pigeon. In the spring a mass of marching toads were to be seen heading for their spawning pond behind the Abbey, although they had none at the Hall. Even then, when traffic was so much lighter, some failed to cross the lane safely. Rabbits were snared against the south wall of the rookery wood, Reg taking them home for his mother’s cooking pot. A cat that had her litter away from the house was seen catching rabbits to feed them and the order went out to drown the kittens.
There were two wells, one in the yard and another on the drive. The latter was said to have had a gas driven motor at one time which pumped the water to tanks at the top of the house. Reg wonders if these could be the origin of the St Quentin’s Well legend that gave Twentywell Lane its name. A spring feeds the ponds and the river flows through Gulley Wood, all making it the ideal place to establish the Abbey nearly 1000 years ago.
There was a bothy dug behind the 2nd pond to retreat to for refreshments in bad weather, a low, flat-roofed space just 8ft by 5ft but thankfully above the water table…just!
Alongside the house a reinforced bunker had been dug, presumably in WW2, for the protection of family and staff and there was an old domed roofed and stone lined icehouse some 15 ft deep, accessed by a long iron ladder.
There were stories of previous residents…the stockman in the 1930’s who died after being crushed by a cow in a stall and the suicide at the house in 1927 of William Wilson who had rented the Hall for over thirty years before buying it in 1923. He was the father in law of Marjorie Elsie Milner who had grown up in Totley Hall and had married his son, another William, in 1909. They were the branch of the Wilson family who owned the Snuff Mill at Sharrow and lived at Horsleygate. It was said that Arthur Kingsford Wilson had owned a Rolls Royce before WW2, too big for the garage it was kept in one of the barns. Reg found a few remnants hidden away under the steps to the hayloft. He wonders if German POW’s from Norton Camp at Meadowhead had once laboured there…if all the Frau’s lived over the sea, what a good swimmer Fritz would be…. a note he found.
Reg’s time at the Hall was more than 60 years ago, his wage was £1-10-0 per week of which £1 was given straight to his Mum. He also worked for Mr Swindon when Brian Kirby left, taking on extra responsibilities and learning skills such as stone-walling, thatching haystacks etc. but this period of Reg’s life ended when he was called up to do his National Service in 1953.
Arthur Kingsford Wilson died the same year and the Hall was eventually sold to De La Salle Catholic School in 1958.
Pauline Burnett
December 2014