NEWSLETTER NO. 12 - Oct 2006

Friday, 15th October 1943
The wretched National Trust car would not start again. The battery was dead. So I took a train to Tunbridge Wells, and a bus to Wadhurst. Was not feeling very grand because last night Pierre gave me my last whopping injection. Hot and cold by turns I walked, wearing my black overcoat down the long, straggly, dull village street to The Gatehouse. For some reason I expected the owner to be a man, having addressed it as such. It was on the contrary an old woman in a mackintosh. I have never been more astonished by such squalid living. The house is a genuine early Tudor - say late fifteenth century - yeoman's dwelling, typical of this region. It is of half-timber, with sloping roof; overhanging eaves and a central brick chimney stack. There is nothing fake about it. But the condition! It has no services, no water, no drains, no light. The old creature has no domestic help, and obviously no money. For these deprivations I am indeed sorry for her. But the dust, dirt and junk littering every square inch of space inside were indescribable. Filthy saucepans, opened and half-emptied tins of sardines, jam and baked beans, and worse still, piles of snotty grey handkerchiefs and other unmentionable rags littered the tables and chairs of the living-room. The garden shrubs have got so out of control that they obliterate the little light which lattice panes allow at the best of times. None of the windows open. The stench was asphyxiating. The old dame gave me a cold luncheon of salmon, lettuce and cheese, not off plates, but out of tins. I hardly dared swallow a mouthful, and when her back was turned, shoved what I could out of my tin into a handkerchief, which I stuffed into my trouser pocket. Had I seen the kitchen before luncheon I would not even have eaten one mouthful. After this terrible meal she insisted upon my looking at the kingpost upstairs. Now if there is one thing which bores me it is a kingpost. However, obediently I trudged the creaking staircase. But when I reached the top landing I dared not proceed for fear of putting a foot through the crazy floor boards and the ceiling of the downstairs sitting-room. When I turned back she knew that I hadn't seen the dammed kingpost, and was very hoity-toity. She then told me that she wished the Trust after her death to allow the Women Farmers and Gardeners Association to have the use of the house as their rest home. By which time the whole rickety old dump will have collapsed in a heap. I could not be encouraging, and suppose I showed my boredom with her ceaseless rattle about the importance and antiquity and rarity of the house. I was not well, and did not respond as dutifully and enthusiastically as is my wont to offers which I know from the first glance are unacceptable.

When I left her on the high road, she said, ‘I don't think much of the National Trust.’ ‘You mean’, I replied, ‘that you don't think much me, I am afraid.’ ‘You have done nothing but sniff and crab the place’, she said, giving me a stiff handshake, holding her arm high up in that injured manner peculiar to the very sensitive poor. I felt a little abashed, a little ashamed and sorry that I had not been more forthcoming. But I did not feel guilty of her accusation. It was just not true that I had crabbed. I may have sniffed, for I am beginning a cold. I had merely tried, possibly a little too forcefully, to check her extravagant enthusiasms with which she relentlessly bombarded me. With the exception of that odious old gentleman, Colonel Pemberton Pyrland Hall, she is, I think, the first owner with whom I have failed to make friends.

Ancestral Voices - Diaries 1942 - 1943 James Lees Milne

James Lees Milne
The extract on the cover, recording James Lees Milne’s depressing - but fascinating - visit to Wadhurst in the winter of 1943 raises all sorts of interesting thoughts. First, we might have had a National Trust property in Wadhurst - even if it was also the rest home for the Women Farmers and Gardeners Association. 

But where, having trudged ‘down the long, straggly, dull village street’, was The Gatehouse? Given its description as a detached, or semi-detached, early Tudor half-timbered house with central chimney and lattice windows, there are not many candidates in the Lower High Street.

Any thoughts - or knowledge of an existing house with an earlier name of The Gatehouse?
And who was ‘the old woman in a mackintosh’ or ‘old creature’ as Lees Milne unkindly describes her? Given the date, someone may recall her.