My cousin Margaret Sawbridge has asked me if I will quickly put down anything I remember of our dear home East Haddon Hall – for alas I am very nearly the last of the family who remember my father and mother living there. It all seems to me like yesterday! – with the help of a dozen or so photographs, – though I was five and then eight at the time, and now I am in my eightieth year!
I think our children nowadays would think of it as a big house with of course a lot more servants than people have now. I think our dear old nurse Ninny stuffed me up with ideas of our own importance! We quite thought we were “little personages” there (though Mother and Dad alas always thought things were done badly of course!)
We had the top of the wing of the house as our nurseries, and the parents had taken a lot of trouble to make them bright and pretty – big dolls’ house, gat pictures, all white paint, and cheerful chintses. Unfortunately the parents never stayed there many months on end. My mother left to have a baby once or twice to warmer places. She always left the house and county cold and bleak, and they were always nervous that her lungs might give trouble (like her mother’s had!) though I’m glad to say she lived till nearly eighty. My father enjoyed most of all the hunting with the Pytchley; he “went hard” and had lovely weight carrying hunters, and enjoyed meeting all the neighbourhood out hunting. All the winter everyone spoke of nothing else – my mother said if you went out to lunch you hurried the meal as much as possible so as to get out to the stables and feel their legs. When my poor mother “wasted” to almost 7 stone they only said: “What a wasted weight – how fine you’d be across country”.
My mother said of the place “I have thirty bedrooms and they all face due north!”
Henry Barne Sawbridge (the owner before Grandpa) was killed out hunting. He was High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant. My father was pricked for High Sheriff but somehow got out of it.
My father had several aggravations. One was the clergyman whom he had put in himself, and the other was a Mr. Cooper who had bought a little piece of land very near our house an had put up a hideous red villa just to annoy Dad! Dad was furious and planted a shrubbery of Wellingtonia firs – if only he would have had patience – the firs nearly hid the villa before we left!
The other grievance was very trying – we had no heir and the house was entailed! Every baby girl my mother had was such a disappointment! Lovely fat jolly babies – and my mother was a capital mother and adored her babies and fed them all herself – though it wasn’t at all fashionable just then (and she gave them her strength, growing so thin herself).
Bells – church bells – annoyed my Dad tremendously. He made the garden so fine – with huge tennis lawns all beautifully kept, rare roses round the outside of the kitchen garden and marvellous fruit inside! How well I remember the half hour we were given to eat as hard as we could (clay soil so good for strawberries).
Our grandchildren would be amused to see the great gulf fixed between the cottage children and us – they made little curtsies and we were taught how to make bows and say good morning to every child we met (our grandchildren and the school children rush about shouting Christian names at one another – and I must say ours are much beloved!) But we were simple little souls – and our greatest joy was Sunday afternoon, going forth with Dad to “paddle in the bubbling brook” – really to get filthily dirty and wet – which the nurses never let us do! Our great friends were the Hichens, a clergyman’s family at Quilsborough (sic) – we drove over to see them in a little basket pony-cart (shaped more like a bath-chair!)
There were I think about 500 people in the village of East Haddon, and people have since told me my father was a very good land-lord. Unfortunately it was just the very worst time to own land – and the farmers were often coming to him saying they had been there two or three hundred years, but if they paid their rent that year they’d be bankrupt and must go – and my father who had a very tender heart would let them off – but all this was anxious work as to finance – and my mother has told me that her Morrison money had to pay her sister-in-law’s allowances on the property. Land was considered a terrible burden just then.
The leaving of East Haddon was so sad I will not dwell on it. Diptheria (sic) broke out in the village and in those days the doctors had not mastered it as they have now – and out of sixty children twenty-five died. We had been mixing with them in some village fete the day before it broke out. My mother was distracted and rushed us off to a beloved aunt who took the risk of us having it. We passed through the village with handkerchiefs drenched in disinfectant – and never saw it again! (or only as a visit to Mr. King, Dad’s dear old agent, years later.)
But I should like to end more cheerfully – a dear little scene always comes back to my mind that will picture it all to you. After tea in the drawing room – a cold room by day facing north, but when lit up very big and nicely arranged – a huge fire blazing, a big white skin rug – my mother as pretty as can be in a green tea-gown and hair plaited into a little crown – each of we three in washing white silk frocks and big sashes with beads to match. Mother getting more and more restless and not settling down to games with us and keeping on looking at the clock! At last a voice outside “Hullo my golliwogs!” and in burst our Dad in “pink”, looking such a fine fellow but covered in mud, his lovely white corduroy breeches smeared with cakes of mud, and we all dancing round him – “How many times have you come off?”, and someone corrects “Daddy never comes off – but how many jumps did you horse fall?” I think it was three that evening! Then I think he had to be given tea and an egg – and after that wild games of being thumped down on the sofa and buried in cushions, roars of laughter – and (children are so funny, with noses like little animals) Daddy’s leg smelling terrifically of field mud! What a happy scene – and him calling my mother “B”, which was his little pet name.
I ccould tell cousin Margaret a great deal more – but I fancy this is all she needs?
East Haddon Hall is now a girls’ school for sixty girls – and I’m told a very good school.
29th April 1961 Mary G Le Breton
(Daughter of Edward Henry Bridgman Sawbridge and wife of Sir Edward Le Breton)
Note added by hand: The fourth sister, Sylvia (Sally), was unborn at this time