A Wander down Hoe Lane - Flansham

It's time to celebrate the work of Gerard Young, the author of Down Hoe Lane. He was a well-known resident of the tiny hamlet of Flansham, near Felpham.  His beautifully observed pieces from the 1940s and '50s make him something of a Laurie Lee for this small corner of West Sussex.  He captures the spirit of the place perfectly with his descriptions of lambing, scything and the arrival of a threshing machine.  He wages a ceaseless war against the rampaging weeds in his garden.  He introduces us to local personalities, to a benign ghost and helps a child build a snowman. He describes adventures into amateur dramatics, records braving winter storms as well as cycling to the local beach for a swim on a balmy summer night.  Here's a taste of his writing, topical after the recent spell of freezing weather:

The Giant in the Snow - Extract from Down Hoe Lane by Gerard Young

I could not break my promise to him.  Two or three days before, when the snow had begun to drift quietly down on to the village, he had come up to my cottage.  “Please will you help me to make a snowman?” he had said, and I, who was too busy then to attend to this seven year old boy, had muttered, “Wait till there’s more snow.”

Now there was more snow, acres of it. The whole village had been silently enveloped, trapped like some sleeping Gulliver by tiny flakes, helpless and cut off from the town.

He had come once more up to the cottage, trudging up the deep cutting that I had dug through the snow to the porch. His small face beamed as I opened the door and looked down at him. “There’s enough now, isn’t there?” he asked anxiously.

Somehow, I could not share with him the anticipatory thrill of making a snowman. Snow now was just something that was pretty for an hour and a nuisance for a day. However, I had promised, and one should keep faith with children.

The reader is now drawn in and he goes on to describe the building of a 7' 6" snow-policeman complete with belt and tunic, buttons, trousers and boots.  The boy proclaims that he was the "biggestest snowman in the whole world," and the previously grumpy Young concludes that he was certainly the "proudestest man in the whole world."

Once my brother and I had graduated from small bike rides up and down our road in Middleton to going off on longer expeditions, we enjoyed cycling over to nearby Flansham.  We had family friends in the hamlet; the Penfolds whose daughters Pam and Judy were excellent riders on their ponies Blackboy and Skylark, the Langmeads and the Adames. At one time our family seriously considered a move to Flansham. In the 1950s, the hamlet was isolated from the heavily built-up areas along the coast and lay almost in a time warp.  The bumpy, pot-holed lane was so thickly lined with elm trees that in summer when they arched over, they formed a beautifully deep, shady tunnel.  The lane then petered out into fields on the edge of the golf course and I went blackberrying there in the autumn.  

I ache with nostalgia for this tiny, tranquil hamlet but realise that's a selfishly romantic view.  I'm sure the current residents are very glad to have central heating, snugly fitting windows, views unencumbered by the thick elms, a properly surfaced lane and a roof that doesn't leak.  However, perhaps there's room for a little nostalgia with a reprint of Young's Down Hoe Lane?

Old postcard of Flansham

OS Map of 1958

On Jack Adames’ farm in summer time - sketch by Grimes

Floodwater, Sketch by Grimes from Down Hoe Lane

  

Famer Jack Adames, 1942