Miscellaneous

My father, Gerald Charles Martin, was born at Whiteway in 1916. His Dorchester born father, Alma Victor Martin, was killed on 18 November 1916 in the Battle of Ancre, the last day of the Battle of the Somme. His mother Edith Ellen Martin (neé Balson), Susan's sister, contracted TB and was sent to the Sanatorium at Poole. As she was unable to look after her little boy he was sent to Hollow Ditch; a rather lonely boy as there were no other children, though the Cake family were at the nearby Whitehall Farm. He seems not to have been formally adopted.

There was a small primary school at Creech and for his secondary education my father cycled daily to Wareham. I sometimes think how different his life might have been if he had been able to go to the new Grammar School at Swanage, he was certainly bright enough, but the money would not have been there.

My father and mother met when she was 'in service' at Grange House, then just about the only opportunity for a working class girl. When they married in 1936 Mat and Sue bought them a small bungalow at Wool, being a prudent couple they charged the young Martins rent of ten shillings a week - so that the young couple would 'learn the value of money'. From there Dad could motor cycle to work at Bovington Camp. I was born there later that year.

             

Hollow Ditch and a Hollow Promise    by Roy Martin

Hollow Ditch Farm was at West Creech; about one kilometre, five furlongs, north-west of Creech Grange, which we knew as Grange House. The farmhouse and outbuildings seem to be built mainly of sandstone, with brick corners. The farmers who lived there were tenants of the Bond family.

Matthew Langrish Charles (1866-1939) and his wife Susan Priscilla Charles (1877-1947) (pictured right) were the tenants in the 1920s and probably earlier. Aunt Sue was a Balson from the hamlet of Whiteway. She had married Uncle Mat at Tyneham in July 1913, when she was 26, over twenty years younger than him. In the 1891 census Matthew was living at Egglestone (Egliston) with his parents William & Emma Charles. Matthew was recorded as an Agricultural Labourer and his father as a Shepherd; in 1901 Matthew was still there but described as a Carter.  By 1911 he was living at Hollow Ditch with his father, and was recorded as an ‘Estate Labourer’.

My memories of Hollow Ditch must be from 1943, by this time Aunt Sue was a widow.

I remember making butter in a small glass churn; now I see the photograph of Sue's solitary cow I can see why we only made enough for ourselves. Other memories include sorting the stored apples to throw out any that had 'gone off' and eating wild strawberries on the banks of Pike's clay pit railway to their Povington mine. I suffered bad stomach ache after those strawberries!

In 2009 I contacted the military at Lulworth Camp and they were kind enough to arrange for a Ranger, with a 4x4, to take us where ever we wanted to go. We first headed to Hollow Ditch;  I wished that my parents could have seen it once more, but it is now a sad sight. There were no strawberries to be seen, but there was still fruit in the orchard. We then went to Whiteway, but there is even less there. What came to mind at both sites were the 'then and now' photographs of Normandy, with the buildings all rebuilt: and the similar devastation at the South Georgian whaling stations, where I also took many photographs.

Uncle Mat died in 1939; so when the eviction notice arrived in November 1943 Aunt Sue was living alone. By that time my father was in Italy with the Royal Engineers and most of the male Balsons and her mother were dead, so she must have felt rather alone. She moved to Kimmeridge, where she lived together with a refugee called Eva (pronounced Ava).

Like the other evacuees Sue was never allowed to return to her home. She died at 22 Kimmeridge in 1947 and Eva moved to a small bungalow at the junction of Holme Lane and Grange Road. The old house now looks as if it will be swallowed up by the West Creech Clay pit, a giant white hole.

It would seem that the military is able to sell the land it requisitioned, but will not allow the families to return to their homes. A Hollow Promise indeed.    

Hollow Ditch 10 December 1943, photographs by Bert Hardy for US Army IWM 4700-51

Rodney Legg quotes Mrs S P White:

One of the younger girls, Edith, worked at Tyneham house. She married but her husband was also killed in the war and she was left with a little boy.  Later she died and was always discussed in grim whispers (galloping consumption and a broken heart) but Gerald was brought up by another aunt at Hollow Ditch, a smallholding north-west of Creech Grange. I spent many happy holidays with them and the more familiar with that part.

This was a sturdy little house with little windows and thick walls. Large cupboards by the fireplace house hams and smoked bacon. Breakfast there were marvellous meals - my aunt and uncle having done hours of work fetching the cows and milking by hand, had by this time developed large appetites. Hence we had masses of eggs, thick slices of bacon and chitterlings and soft potato cakes. Sometimes they cooked eels which cousin Gerald had teased me with early in the morning.

Mother's name was Beatrice Bessie Balson, and you can imagine how she was teased about that. Her sister, Susan, who lived at Hollow Ditch, married Matthew Charles.  

At Hollow Ditch there was a large russet apple tree, large wooden butter pats with intricate patterns, and rows of lovely golden butter laid on a tray ready to go to Wareham market. Once a lady named Elsie Cake called, on a straight-up, no-nonsense bicycle with a fancy chain-guard. She hopped off in a most graceful manner, in spite of long skirts and button boots.  I later tried to do the same but came a cropper.

In the evenings I would go across the heath to the Marepool and watch the deer drinking at dusk. It was also from this spot that I watched Lulworth Castle burning (in 1929). My grandparents are buried at Tyneham churchyard and Aunt Susan was buried at Steeple. She ended her days in a cottage at Kimmeridge, having been moved there at the time of the evacuation.  But she always hoped to return to Hollow Ditch…

Hollow Ditch Farm 1943

Hollow Ditch Farm 2009

Roy & June Martin, Hollow Ditch Farm 2009

Aunt Sue & Uncle Mat

at Hollow Ditch in the 1930s