Romey Jameson, nee Maples was born 9th February 1924, she married Denny Jameson on the 26th July 1947 and together they moved to Warborough later that year.
She wrote her memoirs during the coronavirus lockdown in Spring 2020.
These are some extracts that give an insight to her life in Warborough.
Warborough in those days was a completely rural village largely dependent on farming for employment. There was the church of St Laurence, a church primary school, the village shop and no less than 5 pubs. Little Thatchings was tucked away down a small lane behind the post office. It had a sitting room and dining room, a small kitchen and a bathroom on the ground floor and two bedrooms up a narrow staircase. There was also a pleasant small garden and a garage. Denny went off to Oxford every day and I did a bit of exploring on my bike and soon grew to know and love the village and its surrounding fields and the nearby Chilterns. The first friends we made in Warborough were Pat and John Harcourt Williams, who became life-long friends.
Back in the 1940s there was, I believe, more of a division between the gentry and the village people than can be imagined today. Among the latter were many real old countrymen such as Ned Bond, who lived up near the top of the village and with many other odd jobs used to cut the hair of half of the village. Whenever we were given pheasants, we used to take them to him to pluck, leaving one with him in payment.
St Laurence Church became a regular and important part of our lives. We always wanted a family, and I used to pray for children, particularly sons. In due course, and to our great joy, Crispin was born in 1950 and Rodney was born in 1953.
While the boys were still quite small a church organisation called ‘Young Wives’ was started in the village, with Pat Harcourt Williams in the Chair, and some dozen young married women with young children use to go regularly to the Old Vicarage for meetings and tea, where we were welcomed by Mrs Barker, helped by Betty Cooney, the mother of my present invaluable helper/carer, Lyn. I was also a member of the W.I and was for many years on their committee and served as secretary and vice president. I remember in 1953, when representatives from W.I’s were invited to a party at Buckingham Palace, we held a draw to pick the lucky member. Helen Goldie and I decided that it would be very unfair for a new member, and someone who had contributed little to the W.I to go, and so we cheated a bit to find a very deserving member.
While the boys occupied one bedroom, we had no spare room at the cottage and began to think about finding somewhere a bit larger to live. We had no intention to leave Warborough, already much loved, and looked at the pretty house on the Green next to ‘The Six Bells’. Finally, we decided against it, largely because it was planned the wrong way round, with the drawing room on the north and only a small study on the south side of the house. We then began to think about finding a plot of land and building our own house. Eventually, with help and support from Provost and Mrs Conybeare, we managed to persuade St John’s College to sell us some land at the south east corner of the Green, backing onto fields, and they kindly agreed to design a house for us. At that time, it was impossible to get decent bricks, so we went along with May’s suggestion of tile-hanging, more typical of Surrey than Oxfordshire, but it worked out well. The college would sell us only the western half of the one-acre plot, and for many years we used to rent the eastern half for a nominal rental – 1 shilling a year as far as I can remember. Anyway in 1954 Wallingford builders Wetherall and Cummings start work, and Crispin had great fun climbing up and down ladders seeing the house progress.
We moved in in the Autumn of 1954 and started to create a garden from a bare field, with a large old apple tree in the centre and tall elm trees along the northern boundary, with ashes further east. Our garden here has always meant a lot to both of us, and we have spent many happy hours working in it. We used to do all the work ourselves: but for well over 20 years now we have had the loyal and devoted help of Michael North, who used to live at Crowmarsh until, after the death of his wife, he moved into a caravan.
While our boys were young there was a County Council Home for Children at Shillingford, and the children from the home went to the village school. This meant that classes at the school were large and included many who lacked parental help and support in their education. I was, incidentally, a member of the house committee of the homes from the time when Crispin was a baby until they closed some years later. Thinking that it would be difficult to learn to read at school, I taught both boys myself and they went to school as fluent readers. It is quite easy to teach an interested child sitting on one’s lap, and I used the good old phonics system – c-a-t makes cat etc. The village school in those days was in what is now St Laurence Hall. It was fairly primitive with just 1 large classroom and outside loos. But the two teachers, though very different characters, were both excellent, and Crispin settled down and did well. Rodney joined at 4 and a half and also thrived. They both made many friends amongst the village children.
During a visit to Lascaux, we had a picnic in a nearby pine wood, and the boys picked up some of the large pine cones which were lying around and put them in the boot of the car. Back home, seeds from these cones were planted in pots, several germinated and we had the pleasure of seeing one of them grow into the big tree which we call the Lascaux pine in the North East corner of the garden.
Spin and Roo, to give them their family nicknames were both keen tennis players. We built a hard court at the far end of the garden, and used to enjoy family games, as well as having tennis parties all through the summer, for which we made the traditional cucumber sandwiches. We also used to lend the court to the local tennis club, who used it regularly in the evenings. Many years later, when the boys had left home and we were getting too old for tennis, we had the netting taken down but left the surface. Gradually nature took over completely. We planted one or two things, notably a liquidambar and a second generation of our Lascaux pine, but all the other trees that are there today are self-seeded. For a long time, one could see the remains of white lines in a few places, but these have all disappeared now, and it is hard to believe it was ever a hard tennis court.
When we came to Warborough in 1947, it was very much smaller than it is today. A great deal of building has gone on in the last 72 & half years, but fortunately without too much change to The Green, the heart of the village. Ours is said to be the largest village green in Oxfordshire and has the great advantage that the lanes on both the north and south sides are dead ends, turning into footpaths that cross the fields towards Berrick Salome and Benson. When we built this house the lane on our side was not made up and used to have enormous puddles, so we got together with some other residents and St John’s College, then still our major landowners, and had the lane tarmacked.
The only council houses in Warborough in 1947 were those in Henfield View, but in the 50’s Sinodun View (originally known as Henfield View, which it adjoined) was built in two stages. The two houses, Ashurst and Wise, comprising the children’s home in Shillingford, were knocked down and were replaced by the present Caldicott and Plough Closes; and at around the same time, in the 60’s as far as I can remember, Cherry and Orchard Close were also built, considerably enlarging the population of Shillingford, which has always been a part of our joint villages and the Parish.
At many times over the years Warborough has been threatened with inappropriate development when, like most villages what we really need is half a dozen affordable house for young couples. There was one occasion when a proposal to build on a large cafe in the fields at the north end of the village led to an enquiry in the Greet Hall. It was finally turned down. There has been a small amount of in-filling, but in the main there was not much building until Hartley Close, which had never seemed to me a proper part of the village, coming along not very long ago. And now we are seeing major building on the Six Acres which had long been vulnerable, but mercifully another application from Steve Cook to build a large number of houses on his farmland had been turned down.
The other threat to the village, which has arisen and then died down many times over the years, has been gravel extraction. This could have involved terrible disruption and could have taken place just the other side of my southern hedge. But thank goodness it is at present in abeyance. At one time a good many of us walked over the fields looking for Roman remains in order to convince the powers that be our land should not be selected. An excellent organisation was set up by John Howell, first as councillor and then our M.P. to fight the threat. It was called PAGE (Parishes against Gravel Extraction)
One major development in the village with which I was closely concerned was the building of the new school. I was a manager, and later governor, of St Laurence C. of E. Primary School for very many years. In 1962 it was decided to replace the old school in the middle of the village, now St Laurence Hall, our church hall, with a more spacious and up-to-date building. A very pleasant, open site, just south of the six acres, with views to the Chilterns was chosen, and an architect commissioned. I remember we managers had to convince the architect that we didn’t want flat roofs or too much glass, and a good building finally emerged. There have been some fairly minor additions later, but the new school has served Warborough and Shillingford well for many years. The only problem has been insufficient car parking, causing traffic jams morning and afternoon as many of the children are brought by car, some of them coming from other villages. We hope this problem will be solved, or at any rate eased soon, since we have managed to persuade the developer of the six acres to include a car park for the school on the land.
This house remained just as it was built until 1983, when we decided to add a two-storey extension on the north side to incorporate a larger kitchen with room for a decent table (what is now known as a kitchen/diner), and a second bathroom above.
Perhaps this is the moment to write a little about friends in Warborough & Shillingford. There have obviously been so many over the years that I can only mention a few. The first were Pat and John Harcourt Williams. Pat was the nicest, kindest person and we were together a lot for many years, but tragically she was killed in a car accident. John and Margaret Allen were close friends for a very long time, Margaret joining us on holiday to Prague and John for skiing in Kitzbuhel and doing things together in the village.
No-one could write about Warborough without mentioning Theo King. For many years he was our post-master, a church warden, scout master and very much the centre of all that happened in the village, and he was the nicest person.
For many years Denny and I together with Muriel and Peter Potter, also very dear friends, and several other ‘regulars’ used to help preparing and serving the Harvest Festival supper under Theo’s most efficient organisation.
Cloud Cottage, the only home beyond us on the south side of the Green, has had a least five different owners since we built this house, but the most interesting were Douglas Hodge and Tessa Peake-Jones, both distinguished actors.
Denny was President of our local branch of the British Legion, and the committee meetings were always held in this house. As Legion President he had the idea of marking our joining the European Union by inviting some Germans to join us for our Remembrance Day service in November. Accordingly, he got in touch with the German equivalent of the R.B.S. and had a letter back from the head of the large organisation for German service widows, accepting the invitation. So Rosel Schmidt and a German man, whose name I cannot remember, came over to this country for the weekend. They took a full part in our remembrance service, bringing enormous wreaths, a good 3 to 4 feet across.
In 1997 we had been married for 50 years and spent a long time arranging our golden wedding celebrations. We decided to have two parties, one for family and one for the village generally. For the Sunday village party we put a notice in the parish magazine saying we were celebrating 50 years in Warborough as well as our golden wedding and should be happy to welcome everyone who would like to come to a buffet lunch, and asking them to put their name on a list being kept by Ken and Pat Arnold, so we should have an idea of numbers. I am astonished to see that we were no less than 116 people that day, mostly from Warborough and Shillingford and a few from nearby villages.
After Denny died, in 2004, I carried on with my various jobs in the village for a good many years. In fact, at my great age I am still on the committee of the Disabled Club, and it was only five or six years ago that I finally handed over the running of the Surgery Car Service. If you have always been the sort of person who jumped up and did things, it is not easy to become the sort of person who sits back and has things done for them.
I have driven my own car ever since I was eighteen, so it was not at all easy when the time came for me to give it up but Crispin took me over to Didcot where we found a mobility scooter which had been and still is serving me well to get to church, to the shop and to see friends in the village. I also use it to get to the village Lunch Club, which has been one of the pleasures of my old age. We meet every Wednesday for lunch in St Laurence Hall and I have the chance to meet and chat to quite a few of my elderly friends. An excellent lunch is provided by a team of volunteers, and the guiding spirit is Myles Godfrey.
I have been lucky enough to remain reasonably fit and active well into my nineties but eighteen months or so ago, osteoporosis caused the breakage of some vertebrae in my spine, and since then I have been, to some extent handicapped. But I have been fortunate that Lyn Wise, who lives in Sinodun View, has come into my life as an excellent helper and carer. For many months Lyn came and cooked for me an evening meal and has done the things which I can now no longer manage, such as hanging out washing and putting out the bins. More recently she has changed to getting me lunch, but mercifully I am still able to cope with my other meals and generally looking after myself. Lyn and I have become good friends, with a shared interest in nature. Now we have this dreadful coronavirus pandemic, which means that I am confined to the house and garden. I just wish I was able to do more in the garden than I can now manage. But I keep busy, reading books and ‘The Times’ doing the quick cryptic crossword, number puzzles and writing these memoirs.