This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Thursley Parish Magazine, August 2024 If you haven’t yet checked out the Wedding Belles exhibition on our website, it’s really worth a look. It was put on over the course of a weekend in 2007 and was a collection of photographs and stories of couples married in our beautiful church of St Michaels and All Angels. If you or anyone you know has been married in the church since 2007, and would like to have a photograph included, please send all the information to: davidjohnyoung51@hotmail.com Of course, there were and are lots of people living in the village who did not get married here and this story is one such example. It is the romantic wedding story of a young couple, Captain Alastair Banks MC RHA and Corporal Ann Crichton WAAF, during World War 2, who then at some time in the future moved to Thursley (Springs in Pitch Place to be exact) and lived out the remainder of their lives here. Both were born in 1920 and Ann died in 1998 and Alastair in 2002. Both were very involved in village life for many, many years and are buried in Thursley churchyard. Their story was given to Sally Scheffers, by them, to be included in the first VE/VJ Day exhibition in 1995, celebrating 50 years. Prudent timing as we have just celebrated the 80th anniversary, plus also, their wedding took place in this month, the 12th August 1944. “By 1944 standards it was no ordinary wedding. The Second World War had been raging for five years. Two months earlier, the Allies had finally opened the Second Front with the invasion of France on D-Day. The 23-year-old Captain Alistair Banks, who had been attached to a Royal Marine Commando unit, had gone ashore at Ouistreham on June 6th – to be welcomed by a German shell. He left France fairly sharpish, with fragments of metal in his legs and head. He was sent to convalesce at Somerley Park, a large house near Ringwood, Hants. By August he was up and about but still on crutches. Meanwhile, Corporal Ann Crichton WAAF, his fiancée of six months – also 23 – was stationed at RAF Rudloe Manor near Box, where she worked in an underground bunker as a plotter. When she heard that Alastair had been wounded, she went AWOL (absent without leave) – but that’s another story. During July, she and her great friend Flight Sergeant Eleanor Higgins hitch-hiked several times to Ringwood to see the wounded soldier. During these visits it became clear that Alastair was going to be sent back to his unit in France within a month, so they decided to get married as soon as possible. Easier said than done in wartime. There were shortages of all kinds. Food was seriously rationed – one egg a month, one ounce of butter a week; clothing could only be obtained with coupons which were hard to come by; and film (for wedding photos) was rare as hens’ teeth. Those weren’t the only problems facing the young couple. There were fatherly objections to the match from both sides. Dr Banks said the marriage would impede Alastair’s regular army career. Officers were not expected to marry before they were thirty – and, if they did, the army wouldn’t give them a marriage allowance. Dr Crichton thought that Alastair’s head wound was likely to send him potty. However, in the spirit of the times, the forced on regardless. The formidable Granny Banks, then living at Burstall near Ipswich, moved into action. She decided that Bath Abbey possessed the requisite social cachet for her grandson to get married there. She had lived in Bath during the First World War; her sons Ian and Ronald had been born and christened there. She began to telephone the relevant people in Bath – the Archdeacon, for example, and the manager of the Pump Rooms where the reception was to be held. Meanwhile, just as it looked as though Granny Banks was going to hijack the whole affair, Ann ran into her cousin “Rockhouse” Jim and his wife Patricia, who had been living in Bath since they were married a couple of years previously. When the capable Patricia heard that Ann was getting married, she immediately offered to help. For a start, she lent Ann her wedding dress. It had to be taken in a few inches but where else does an impecunious WAAF corporal get a wedding dress in wartime Bath? There was no time for banns to be called, and the couple had no money for a special licence. So, some jiggery-pokery was called for. The only legal way of achieving the desired result was for Ann and Alastair to go through a Registry Office in Chippenham. In those days, Registry Offices were not like today’s more elegant premises. The Chippenham one was dingy and there appeared to be boxes of kippers stacked in one corner. The witnesses were Eleanor and one of Alastair’s Royal Marine comrades. Owing to the emotional nature of the occasion, Alastair and the Marine had fortified the inner man and as a result were running fractionally behind schedule. Ann had her rollers in under her WAAF hat. The mists of history have closed over some of the ensuing events. Suffice to say that A) they were duly – and officially – married, B) there was an altercation over a highly polished Sam Browne belt, and C) a brand-new wedding ring found its way – temporarily – into a gutter in Chippenham. The sun, as Alastair is forever reminding his children, always rises again tomorrow, as it did on this occasion. Chippenham was forgotten, and Bath Abbey awaited. There hadn’t been any time for proper invitations. It was almost impossible to get time off. And, even if you could get leave, it was almost impossible to travel. So, the guest list comprised only very close family, Ann’s WAAF friends, and Alastair’s Royal Marine colleagues who by coincidence were quartered next door to the WAAF camp at Box (the fence between the two camps had a substantial number of person-sized holes in it!). It was the time of Doodlebug raids on London. Some braved the horrors of wartime travel to get to the wedding. Ann’s sister Liz, nobly travelled on a train from Scotland, standing all the way. She couldn’t even stay for the reception as she had to get back to her WAAF unit the same day. Ann’s friend Diana Miller came up from Devon to be Matron of Honour. Alastair’s Best Man was going to be his battery commander (also recovering from wounds received in Normandy) but, almost at the last moment, brother Peter arrived literally out of the blue, having flown over in a Mustang fighter from his forward airfield in Normandy. So, he became Best Man. Peter had arrived in the flying gear he stood up in, so an urgent request went out to the Royal Marines for a pair of boots. The boots – size 13 – duly squeaked fiendishly all the way down the aisle. Granny Banks meanwhile had whisked Peter into Moss Bros or the equivalent and hired a service uniform for the occasion. The wedding in the Abbey, conducted by the Archdeacon himself, was stupendous. On one side were the light blue uniforms of the bride’s WAAF friends, and on the other side were the dark blue uniforms of the bridegroom’s Royal Marines. For the reception, the resourceful Patricia scrounged food supplies from friends, and her husband and Grandpa Banks organised booze from nowhere. Granny Banks talked the local newspaper into sending a photographer to take one or two pictures, and Ann’s WAAF friends contributed one clothing coupon each towards her rather fetching French blue going-away outfit. After the reception in the famous Pump Rooms, Peter beetled off to fetch his Mustang and returned to circle the Abbey at an alarmingly low level, doing a victory roll and weaving round its towers – much to the dismay of Granny Banks and others. He later explained that there were no markings on his plane so he knew he could get away with it. The happy couple caught the train to Cornwall for the honeymoon, standing wedged in the corridor all the way to Plymouth. Alastair had a fortnight’s leave but Ann had only one week. The second week was punctuated by telegrams from the RAF, ordering Corporal Crichton to return to duty immediately. Ann – or Corporal Banks, as she now was – gaily tore them up, knowing that her unit was no longer playing a vital role in the war effort. On return to duty, however, she was put on a charge for going AWOL (again!) but got away with it by weeping copiously when up before the Wing Commander. Her punishment? – the word “Admonished” stamped in her paybook. Almost immediately after the honeymoon, Alastair was posted to 6th RHA in Norfolk, and finally after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing rejoined his own regiment, 4th RHA. Ann and Alastair didn’t meet again until after the German surrender in May 1945 when she was reunited with him in Germany where he was stationed. For 50 years, they shared their lives, the majority of it in Thursley”.

The garage was situated on the old A3 opposite the The Red Lion. It was owned for many years by Reg Cottle who recorded many of the tragic accidents that not only occurred along the A3, especially alongside the Devil's Punch Bowl, but also literally impacted his garage and the pub opposite as can be seen from the articles and photographs below. NB: All of these documents and also the ones referred to in Reg Cottle and the Red Lion Garage are in the physical archive in a box marked "Red Lion Papers". And here are two of Reg Cottle's photographs of the vehicle above being recovered: On the rear of the second photograph, Kay Gunner has written, "Before they built a bank round the Punch Bowl bend, cars used to go over and down into the bowl. The breakdown is parked on the footpath and the rear view is of Don Keen". 1950s. Reg kept an album recording many of the tragic accidents and the wrecks that he recovered over the years. Here are some examples and the entire album is in the pdf below: The press reported on these tragic accidents as can be viewed in the pdfs below: Unfortunately, many of the cuttings do not include either the source or date but the pdf below featuring the death of a husband and wife was from the Farnham Herald, May 5th, 1967: And this was from the Surrey Daily Advertiser, September 6th, 1974 Reg liked all sorts of mechanical tool, instruments and engines and this extended to short wave radio which helped to catch a thief!: April 27, 1954 More details are in the attached pdf:

Published by The History of Thursley Society in October 2008 and written by Edmund Haviland and many others, see contents list below. Read here...

In 1981, as part of the pipeline Esso built to carry products from Fawley to Purfleet via Gatwick airport, a trench was dug across Thursley Common. The article below describes the project. From Esso Magazine Number 188 Summer 1981

These walks were created in 2008 and may not now be accurate!

This pamphlet was published by the Nature Conservancy Council: And this by English Nature: PDF of contents below: reference to fires at Thursley SSSI on pages 10 and 11 From Nature Conservation Review Volume 2, 19 77 From Nature Line, Spring 1992

With thanks to Sean Edwards and Jill Fry. Also includes Excavation of Two Mounds on Thursley Common in 1959 Hydon's Ball section and simplified list of strata: 5 Sandstone 6 Large Paludina 7 Sandstone h1e Weald Clay h2a Atherfield Clay h2b Hythe Beds h2c Sandgate Beds These 3D models were made by Sean Edwards in the 1960's and built on a 2' x 1' plywood base, with polystyrene contour layers cut with a craft knife, the steps filled with plaster of Paris, smoothed by hand and painted with acrylic paint. Unfortunately only black and white photographs now exist and the models, borrowed by the 'Fight the Red Route' A3 group, have never re-appeard. The circular pin-head on the Puttenham (Sandgate) beds marks the position of the Three Horseshoes. This article was written in July 1981 by Jill Fry, BSc, as a result of the Esso Pipeline installation across Thursley Common: Soil Profiles Exposed in pipeline Trench July 1981 The article is reproduced in full in the PDF below. Unfortunately the annotated slides no longer exist. PDF of contents is below:

Only photographs of this event plus Mr Lowe, Thursley Taxi Driver

Heath View, now known as "Acorns", in the early 1900s. The stamp on the postcard is dated 1905 or 1908. It is situated on the Old Portsmouth Road. The Edwards family lived there. Jim Edwards was the local rate collector for the parish and collected the rates on his bicycle. The parish extended right over to Haslemere so he pedalled quite far! Jim's brother, Freddy, was quite a local character. He lived at Cosford Mill with his sister and before the first World War worked in the City for a German bank. During the war he didn't have a job because of the hostilities and he never worked again. Cosford Mill was condemned and he moved into a shed at Heath View but went to the mill during the day. He then bought a piece of woodland near Horn Cottage and it was alsways known as Freddy's property. Another lodger at Heath View was Louis Pecskai who was by origin and birth, a Hungarian. He had been born in Fiume when it was part of Austro-Hungary but he looked more like an Italian. Mary Bennett remembers him as a much jollier Napoleon. By nationality he was passionately British and insisted on serving in the Home Guard. Louis Pecskai had been a child prodigy as a youth, Court Violinist to Queen Margarite of Italy, and he remained a violinsit of very high standing, with honorary fellowships of both Trinity College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music, at each of which he had taught and had some reputation in London Chamber Music. He suddenly married a pupil called Bertha who was young enough to be his daughter and they built themselves, first Truxford and then Racks Close (now Cotton House). When pupils fell off during the Second World War, and his own health started to fail, the Pecskais left Racks Close and moved to Smallbrook Farm, lent to him by Sir Bruce Thomas, and there he died in 1944. Two postcards published in the 1920s From Wikipedia: Luigi Pecskai ( Fiume Veneto , July 21 , 1880 - Thursley , February 24 , 1944 ), also known as Louis Pécskai , was an Italian violinist of Hungarian origin. In the Royal Academy of Budapest, he studied with teachers Baldini and Jenő Hubay . He made his debut in Fiume as an infant in 1886, and then appeared successively in London, Rome, Florence, Ancona, Turin, Budapest, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Venice, Milan, Padua, Graz, and in the principal towns of Italy, Hungary , Switzerland and England, the country in which he was going to die.

This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in February 2023. See also Vicars of Thursley. Revd Mathews with a parishioner It is with a heavy heart I heard this week of the untimely passing of Peter Muir, until recently, the vicar of St Michael’s and All Angels, Thursley. Peter had been an enthusiastic supporter of Thursley History Society and even in this last year or so since retiring to Cyprus, with his indomitable wife Angela, he maintained close links with us. On a personal note, Peter married my husband and me, some years back and I have very fond memories of his wisdom and guidance during this time. Rest in Peace Peter. I’m sure Peter’s almost four decades of living in Yew Cottage in the village, will be chronicled for posterity, but until then it reminded me of the memoir of Ken Mathews, a previous vicar of Thursley, which was compiled by John Fforde in 1996. “The Rev. Arthur Kenneth Mathews OBE, DSC, was of the generation that had only just completed its preparations for a career and taken up its first appointments when the Second World War intervened. Then came the naval life, best described by extracts from the obituary in the Daily Telegraph of 4th January 1993. Rev Kenneth Mathews was one of the Royal Navy’s most distinguished wartime chaplains. He joined the RNVR in 1939 and spent the rest of the war on the County Class cruiser Norfolk, a busy ship on the Northern patrol and then in the South Atlantic. “It would be impossible”, the captain of Norfolk later wrote, “to exaggerate Ken Mathew’s influence on Norfolk. His value in the ship was certainly greater than that of any other officer. He made her the happiest ship I have ever known. He was loved by every man on board, and it is largely his influence that has kept the Norfolk spirit alive ever since”. “ He had an admirable naval record, resulting in him being appointed OBE in 1942 and then DSC soon after, so becoming one of the few service chaplains to be twice decorated. After an influential career in the Church, he chose to return to the work of parish priest in which his pastoral gifts had free rein. And so, Ken and his wife, Betsy, came to Thursley in 1968. In the Parish Magazine for February 1993, thirty years ago exactly, Michael O’Brien and Robert Crawfurd record the following memories: “We remember him as Vicar of Thursley from 1968 until his retirement in 1976. For Thursley they were eight splendid years. Ken quickly made his mark on our community as a man of outstanding personality. He loved and understood people: understood their eccentricities, their joys, their sorrows. Just as in the Navy, he had won the hearts and minds of the men in his care as Chaplain on board HMS Norfolk so, in the less hazardous days of his peacetime ministries, the same magic was quickly evident to his parishioners. His desire to draw a community together, in the same way as earlier he had drawn his ship’s company together, resulted in the foundation in 1972 of our annual Harvest Supper in the Village Hall – an event that quickly proved popular with everyone and had continued, until recent events, without a break ever since. A series of winter lectures in the hall started under his direction and he also encouraged the formation of the Thursley Over 60’s club. He came to us from Peebles, in the Scottish Borders, where walking in the country is a popular recreation. He immediately reinstituted the Rogation Walk around the entire parish, including Bowl Head Green, blessing the farms along the way. He outwalked most of his new parishioners by completing the whole seventeen miles himself, and then presiding at Rogation Evensong in the Church. He always encouraged the young to come on their ponies if they wished, and always had a large following. Walking his dog in the village he was a popular friend to meet. Ken’s ministry in Thursley was marked by his untiring efforts to help all in need, to which end he would go to almost any lengths and be quite unsparing himself. Both he and Betsy were lovers of classical music and supported enthusiastically any musical events in the parish. When he left us, we all felt the loss of a truly Godly priest and valued friend. In 1976 they retired to a house in a valley near Burford, to the restoration of which they had given much thought. The Tallat, Westwell, became a place of pilgrimage for their many friends. Betsy died in 1981. In 1987 Ken married Diana Goschen and they lived happily at The Tallat until Ken’s peaceful death in his 87th year in December 1992”. The Institution of The Reverend Arthur Kenneth Mathews: The pdf of the Order of Service shows a heavily annotated version: Undated obituary from The Times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Mathews

This delightfully named cottage was probably built between 1730-50. It was known as Pit Dairy before being renamed as Gnome Cottage by the National Trust. © Copyright Colin Smith It is a two-storey stone cottage with a half-hipped roof. It is thought to have been a farm and we have seen an old photo showing it as "Punchbowl Dairy Farm". The outlying farm buildings were demolished many years ago. The cottage has a large hearth and it has several early Georgian features, such as the brick in the quoins and in the jambs of the windows. It is a wonderful place to live. We moved into Gnome Cottage in 1991. Andrew works for the National Trust as Head Warden for Hindhead commons and I am an Infant Teacher. Andrew moved to the area in 1988 from Whitley Bay in Northumberland and I am originally from Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire. We were married in Thursley Church on the 31st July 1993. Jilly Storey, 1996 Jilly and Andrew Storey, 1996

This article, written by Mary Bennett, first appeared in the Parish Magazine in July 1978 and was published by the History of Thursley Society in a loose-leaf book. THURSLEY IN THE 'TWENTIES When I was a child in the ‘twenties, Miss Aileen Lutyens, Sir Edwin Lutyens’ youngest sister, dominated the Thursley scene. She lived in the large house by the Clump, now Charringtons (the present vicarage stands in what was then her meadow) and looked exactly like her photograph in the village hall - brisk, capable and benevolent. There were close links between her and the Rapleys at Hill Farm, since Mrs.Rapley - already an old lady in my memory - had taught the little Lutyenses before her marriage. Both families were musical and, in retrospect, I think it was rather bold of my mother, as a newcomer, to start a choral society in the face of this entrenched interest. But she did, and all was well; Miss Lutyens’ penetrating alto was safely absorbed into the new choir, which proceeded to do well in a couple of Dorking festivals but did not survive our partial migration to Oxford in 1925. Miss Lutyens was one of those who got Thursley its first Village Hall, the large army hut that stood on the crest of the hill by the ‘Shoes and was to be the scene of all major social events for some forty years; she was also a founder member of the local W.I. I suspect that she had a hand in most of the local events of the time. The School was a real school then, presided over by Mr. Swallow, and beyond the playground where the Thorfield flats now are, was the Vicarage, now Thorcroft. This was then a much larger house (the upper storey was later destroyed by fire) and the garden seemed to me infinitely romantic, with winding paths leading through the belts of trees and shrubs that encircled the two lawns. On one occasion there was a fairy play, in which we dressed up with butter-muslin wings and flitted in and out of the laurels - this must really have been rather awful, but remains magical in my memory. Angela Smith, the Vicar’s daughter, also ran a pack of Brownies, whose meetings were the high spot of my week. We met in the Vicarage stable loft, which meant climbing up one of those ladders that are no more than hand-and-foot-holes against the wall, and stepping sideways off it through the loft door, an adventurous exercise when one’s legs were short. One of the things Brownies had to learn was (oddly enough) how to make a rice pudding. This was impossible for one of us, since her home had no oven, a fact that made a deep impression on me at the time and is a fair measure of the change in standards of living since. Angela Smith must have had a considerable gift with children since she kept a dozen or so little girls from a variety of homes happy and out of mischief on Saturday mornings for some years. Beyond the Vicarage, at Foldsdown, (which they had themselves built) lived the Parkers. Mrs. Parker was very pretty and very fragile - everyone liked and respected her, but she was not strong enough to play as active a part in village affairs as Mr. Parker, to whose drive and devotion Thursley owed the installation of its first district nurse, Nurse Collins. It is hard nowadays to realise that there was a time when the nurse’s salary and expenses were wholly provided from private subscriptions, but so it was, and a very great deal of work was needed to keep the nursing fund solvent and in good order. Of course I did not realise this until much later: I thought of Mr. Parker as a kindly grown-up, with whom my father used to go for walks, and Foldsdown as the scene of very splendid children’s parties at Christmas. My mother’s chief friend in those days was Miss Stevenson, who lived at The Lodge, now the O’Briens. She was a retired headmistress, a formidable and rather fascinating Scot, who still gave violin lessons and was very occasionally persuaded to play at village concerts. Among her pupils was Bob Goble from across the road, soon to join the Dolmetsches at Haslemere and eventually to become the leading English maker of harpsichords. A musician of a very different sort was Mr. Pecskai, who taught at the Royal Academy and played in a well-known London quartet. Hungarian by birth and breeding, though passionately English in sentiment, he looked like a rather stouter Napoleon: my father enjoyed the verve of his conversation and we saw a good deal of him. He and his elderly rather cross-grained accompanist, Miss Lebel, lodged at Heathview, the house now owned by Wendy and Graham Jones, until he suddenly married one of his pupils, when Miss Lebel went off and took lodgings with Mrs. Harbutt in Vine Cottage. Poor Mrs. Harbutt must have had a time of it with my old cousin, Mrs. Woods* in her front room and Miss Lebel in her back - neither old lady at all easy, and the two of them on far from friendly terms. Louis and Bertha Pecskai eventually built themselves Rack Close and they lived in Thursley until his death in the 40’s. But that takes us far beyond the days of these childhood memories of a Thursley that now seems very remote indeed. MARY BENNETT * Margaret L. Woods, a well-known poet and popular novelist at the turn of the century.