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Your Village Web site www.eppinggreen.com Spring 2004 |
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"Before our Time" Having recently purchased a copy of ‘Before Our Time’ (the book on Epping Green) and read it from cover to cover. I do feel somebody in the village should acknowledge the wonderful job done by Ann Jones and Valarie Slade. They spent a lot of their time over many months selecting and collating the great variety of information and photographs depicted in this very interesting book, and should be congratulated on achieving such a high standard for anyone interested in Epping Green to now be able to read about most of the contents, I am sure the majority of those who have had the good fortune to read knew very little about. Recently I took the book with me on a trip to Shropshire to read on my journey whilst en-route to visit long standing friends originally from Chingford. My friend Brenda happens to be a professional writer and was telling me of the definition of her cottage they call ‘Mog Cottage’ so called due to the many cats they adopted when taking over the farm’s cottage. She read out also the definition of ‘Old Moggy’ which Ann and Valarie happen to have written a story on — pages 19/20. For those who may be interested, but haven’t a clue why this old villager ‘Old Moggy’, was so called by other villagers, I was able to ask my friend as I felt other readers would be interested. For the villagers who have not read this fascinating book, ‘Old Moggy’ lived in a cottage (now extended known as ‘Mellis’) at the turn of the century, there is a photograph of her sitting on her cart being pulled along by a donkey to sell her eggs around the village. She apparently found it quite acceptable to have her chickens living with her in the cottage plus other animals, so with chickens roosting under the bed etc., you can imagine the state of her living abode. Which links in with the definition — the information following is taken from ‘Penguin’s Dictionary of Historical Slang’ — ‘Moggy’ "An untidily dressed woman" (probably very ragged) born around 1880 and would have had a dialect". Our villagers born here all have a wonderful dialect, so we can imagine how she spoke. Brenda also mentioned the section on the school children being taught in a house where the Headmistress lived well over a hundred years ago. Brenda also lived in such a house before moving to Shropshire. These school houses were known as a DAME SCHOOL where little children were educated, in the most basic way, in return for small domestic duties. The following is a small section from one of Brenda’s published poems titled — DAME SCHOOL — 'Sitting at the top of the stairs looking down to hail, its darkness glow-wormed by a fan lighted door, I watch a sullen space, listen, as old boards stretch, crack, chain-react in a furtive pit-a-patter; a scamper of sound to remind me that this house was once a school.' June Crockford PS: Since starting this letter of the book I was recently speaking to a friend who had been reading the book and she told me that she had been sitting in a waiting room in one the North London Hospitals with a friend, and as often happens, got chatting to a lady sitting next to them. In general chit chat, the lady well into her 80s, asked them how far they had traveled to the hospital, they told her Epping Green, thinking the lady would not know where Epping Green was, she immediately turned round and said "I know Epping Green, I used to work there with my sister. We worked at the Big House (Walton) for a Miss Marter" who is mentioned in ‘Before our Time’. She told my friends that at the time she lived in Harlow, she and her sister would go from Harlow to The Big House every day getting off the bus at the top of Thornwood and walk through the fields to work for an early start at 7 in the morning, they were "In Service and were only about 13/14 years of age". They say it’s a very small world. I found this unexpected meeting between my friends and Miss Marter’s ex staff just incredible — I thought it might just add a bit more interest to the world of Epping Green Village. June Crockford Many thanks to June for this contribution. |