A Thursley History Society outing, 5th October 2019. See also Jackie Rickenberg's article: https://www.thursleyhistorysociety.org/post/hammer-pond Advertisement for the walk Report on the Hammer Pond Walk On Saturday 5th October, 2019, the Thursley History Society led a walk on Thursley Common to look at the Hammer Ponds and talk about the history of the iron industry on the Commons. More than 30 people (and lots of well-behaved dogs) took part and everyone had a very interesting and happy afternoon, culminating in a delicious tea. Thanks go to Sarah Grillo for the cakes and Lisa Berezovsky for lending her field for parking. Paper produced to support the walk:

This article by Rosemary Stockdale was published in the Parish Magazine When war broke out on 1st September 1939 life changed overnight for Poland and all her people. One such person was Janina Macsimowich (later Kot). The first 2 ½ years were spend avoiding working for the Germans but in March 1942 she was called up and sent to work in a fish processing factory in Cuxhaven where conditions were extremely hard. In summer of 1943 she was snet to work on a farm outside Cuxhaven due to shortage of fish. After the Summer she returned to the fish factory a cycle repeated in 1944 and was there in May 1945 when Cusxhaven was relieved by the British. Her husband to be J Kot was 20 when the Germans invaded Poland on 1st September 1939 which was followed, 2 weeks later, by Russian Red Army invading from the East. A few months later 13th April 1940 the family was forced out of their home and boarded a Kattle wagon, classified as a ‘Dangerous Element’ on a journey east that took nearly a month, part on the transsiberian railway, to reach their destination of Kustanay from where lorries took 25 families including children and elderly to state farms, in isolated villages on Russian steppes, about 50 miles away called Worobiowka. The local villagers, deported from Ukraine in 1935 welcomed them and they started in their new hard rural life. In summer of 1941 the Germans invaded the Soviet Republic and all young and not so young men were conscripted into the Soviet Republic army to work for victory. In winter of 1941 the , US entered the war, alarming Stalin and negotiations started to via Polish diplomats to release Polish people from prisons and camps to create a polish army. However Russians did not have arms, tenrs or food so after the amnesty Brisitsh and Americans agreed with Russia to take Polish people from Russia to Middle East. In January 1942 they were conscripted by Russia to join the Polish army and eventually arrived in Pah-Levi in Persia (Iran) in April 1942 and then Tehran and then onto a training camp near Bagdad and onto Palestine in May ’42 and Suez Canal. With situation improving in North Africa the army decided to send some 15,000 soldiers to South Africa to recuperate. The ’Mauretania’ transported Kot, in great comfort, to Durban and by train to Natal where they were pampered with food and drink for 3 months. Then the US and British armies started to prepare for the invasion of Europe and after months at sea Kot arrived in Grenock, Scotland. From there he was sent to Berwick and joined the newly created 1st Polish Armed Division in Light Anti Aircraft Artillery. After a brief holiday touring the Highlands, he was sent with his division and their guns to defend Tilbury Docks. After successful Normandy landings he then went by boat to Normandy and fought his way through France, Belgium and Holland where they spend the winter of 1944 – 45 waiting for the US armies to successfully cross the Rhine and start their push across Germany. In March 45 Kot entered Germany with no passport and successfully occupied the Nestfollen Zone for 2 full years until 1947. The Geneva Convention prevented them from repaying their enemies for the atrocities Kot and his country men had suffered under them. In April 1947 Kot sailed to the Uk and joined Polish Resettlement Corps (P.R.C.) and was snet to Tweedsmuir camp in May 1947. He had met his future wife Janina previously in a Displaced Persons Camp who after the war was then sent to work in the Cotton Mills. In 1948 they were married in Bury Lancs and then returned to Tweedsmuir Camp, Thursley to start their married life. When their children were born Kot went to London to find work and for next 30 years worked night shifts at Heinz. On retirement, following a partial stroke, he came back to live in Thursley, the village he had fallen in love with, to enjoy life with his wife, children and grandchildren.

This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was in the Parish Magazine in April 2024. See also 'Wedding Belles'. April 28, 2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the death of a Thursley war hero. Robert (Bob) George Sharland DFC was one of 55,573 men who died serving in Bomber Command during World War 2. His niece, Miriam Sharland, tells his story: Bob was born on Back Lane (now The Lane) in 1922, and moved with his family into the new council houses at Homefields in 1937. When war came, Bob served in the home guard with his father. Perhaps inspired by the pioneering aviators who occasionally flew over the village, Bob enlisted in the RAF in 1940, despite being underage. Bob dreamt of being a pilot, but like many working-class recruits, he became a rear gunner even though, at 5’10”, he was tall for the tiny gun turret. After graduating from gunnery school, Bob joined 51 Squadron in Yorkshire, flying night-time bombing operations on Whitleys. His first ‘op’ was to Bonn in December 1941. On op nights, his mother stood in the garden at Homefields, counting the bombers out, not sleeping until she’d counted them back in and knew if it had been a bad night. In January 1942, Bob was selected for a daring mission led by Wing Commander Percy Pickard, star of the Oscar-winning Target for Tonight. The aircrews carried paratroops to Bruneval, France, to capture a German radar station that made Allied bombers vulnerable to nightfighters. This was the first mission of what became the British Paratroop Regiment. 51 Squadron was briefly transferred to Coastal Command, where Bob flew air-sea rescues and anti-submarine patrols before returning to bombing duties, now on the new heavy bomber Halifaxes. Shortly before his 20th birthday, Bob was promoted to Pilot Officer and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, becoming the first Thursley man to be decorated. 1943, Bob completed his tour of 30 bombing ops, became an instructor, and was promoted to Flying Officer. Back in Thursley on leave, at a dance in the village hall, Lieutenant Colonel Rushbrooke presented him with an inscribed silver cigarette case. The Surrey Advertiser reported that Rushbrooke “expressed the village's pride in the heroic young air-man.” Perhaps this was when Bob met Beryl Jones from Elstead. Now a Flight Gunnery Leader, Bob taught fledgling gunners before being recruited into the elite Pathfinder Force, created to improve bombing accuracy. His new squadron, 156, flew Lancasters from Warboys, Huntingdonshire. Bob wrote home that he’d lunched with the King and Queen – “the Queen looked swell” – when they visited the base. Bob had 48 hours’ leave in April 1944 to marry Beryl at Elstead Church. Eighteen days later he flew to Friedrichshafen, an extremely successful op, with minimal casualties. Perhaps his mother counted the planes back in with relief. But the next day, a telegram arrived at Homefield: Bob’s plane had not returned. His death was later confirmed, and he now lies with his crew in Durnbach Military Cemetery, Bavaria. Bob was 21 years old. In 2022 Miriam cycled to Bob’s airbases. She’s writing a book about her, and Bob’s, journey. https://wartimememoriesproject.com/ww2/view.php?uid=240315 The wedding of Bob Sharland and Beryl Jones April 1944 at Elstead ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the years, Thursley’s history has been recorded in many ways. Family trees and stories have been passed from generation to generation, the previous occupants of and physical changes made to village houses are tales passed from seller to buyer etc. However, sometimes there is no obvious place for the information to be stored or it can get lost in the mists of times. This is how Thursley History Society has acquired a lot of the archives it stores in a locked room, somewhere in the parish (no names, no pack drill!). The majority of it, though, comes from villagers’ recollections - written, recorded and photographed, then carefully collated and stored over the years by members past and present of the Thursley History Society. Occasionally, in times of celebrations or anniversaries, exhibitions have been curated and these precious memories are shared for everyone to enjoy; the last one being Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee. And then it all gets loaded back into the bunker, never to be seen again! One such exhibition was the Wedding Belles exhibition of 2007, which is definitely worth revisiting. Originally, the brief was to examine the register of births, marriages and deaths in the church, from its conception in 1613, and explore, exhibit and display some pertinent and interesting case studies. It was very quickly realised that this was too monumental a task and a team, led by Sally Scheffers, narrowed it down to Thursley weddings 1613-2007. It was held in the village hall over a weekend in 2007 and was hailed as a fantastic success. Looking back, the collection of photographs and stories from it was just the most comprehensive and wonderful array of wedding ceremonies and parties through the centuries. Once the timeline reached the 1960’s though, the one thing that hits home is the number of people married in the church who still live in the village – up to sixty odd years later! Richard and Anne Timberlake, Robert and Sue Ranson, Peter and Teresa Goble, Michael and Debbie Spencer, Philip and Angela Traill and Stephen and Julie Langley to name but a few. Not all of them are celebrating their diamond weddings just yet, but our past chairman, Michael O’Brien and his wife, Marian, although not married in the parish, are indeed doing so this month! Very shortly afterwards, they moved to Thursley and so imminently celebrate sixty years in the village but more on this next month. Congratulations to them both! Below are photographs of the first and last weddings that were featured in the exhibition. The wedding of George Warner to Edith Keen 5th June 1909 In the barn field at Pit Farm (now Punch Bowl Farm) The wedding of Joe and Melissa (Wakeley) 23rd September 2006. This is just one example of the fascinating insight to the past that these archives can give. And now they are available for all to see, whether for genealogy purposes, to find out how things were celebrated and marked or just to browse past village life. The History Society will launch this new website, full of archives like this, in the village hall on Saturday 1st June. We hope as many of you as possible will pop in between 6-8pm to see examples of some sensational tales and plots as well as familiar faces in hilarious and joyful photos. Look for yourself; find out what you can about houses, events and people, listen to past residents talking about their life in Thursley. It promises to be an exciting evening with a few surprises thrown in! Refreshments will be served and all are welcome – villagers past and present, children and friends. The importance of community and a shared understanding of our past is so precious, especially in these turbulent times. The current committee have taken on the monumental task of making these documents available on the website in order that the originals can be stored safely and securely in local museums, therefore safeguarding them for future generations. We hope to see you at the Village Hall on 1st June, 2024, 6-8pm.

The History of Thursley Society (HoTS), the forerunner of Thursley History Society, used the opening of the renovated barn at Wheelers Farm as a focal point for their exhibition in July 1996. Other examples of HoTS's activities are shown below.

Ann Wakeley wrote in December 1996, "We have lived in Little Green ever since we were married in 1967. It started off as a "dolls house" and has subsequently had four extensions, to grow with the family. Oliver is 27 and works in the research department of BT in Ipswich. Fenella is 25 and is a primary school teacher in Huntingdon. Melissa is 18 and in her last year as Downe House taking three A levels. Adam is 18, in his last year at Radley and he is also taking three A levels.

This parade was arranged to celebrate Thursley winning the Best Kept Village Competition Ben Wonham as William Cobbett Other floats celebrate the Farmers; Association (Tom Ranson); the British Legion; the Unknown Sailor; Emergency Ward 10

Introducing Mary Bennett and her parents, H A L Fisher and Lettice Fisher, from these three articles written by Jackie Rickenberg for the Parish Magazine Mary Bennett outside Rock Cottage Her childhood calendar Rock Cottage and some neighbours Thursley in the Twenties

This article was part of The Wedding Belles exhibition held in the Village Hall in 2007 On September 25th 1915 Lt. Colonel Walter Cecil Wright of  the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers married Mrs. Jane Edith Marion Johnstone. Colonel Wright lived and owned Rock Cottage at the top of Highfield Lane. This, in itself, was unusual as all the surrounding property was part of the Cosford Estate. The Colonel was a good friend of a gentleman artist who lived in Helen Allingham’s old house in Sandhills,   Walford Graham Robertson, who affectionately called his friend “Dolly”.  The Colonel’s bride was a widow with two children (Ralph and Lettice). Graham Robertson attended with another local child, Rachel, and described the wedding and marriage in some of his many letters to his friend Kerrison Preston: 7.8.1915 [sic.] “Lettice’s mother has been passing through a time of great sorrow and anxiety, but she is now a widow and is going to marry Dolly, at which I am delighted. They thoroughly deserve great happiness and I trust they will find it if there is any such thing left in these days. I am to be Dolly’s second-best man, and Lettice will appear with her grandfather in the character of the bride’s mother” 20.8.1915 [sic.] “Lettice and I have appeared in our respective roles and the performance is over. It was really very sweet and pretty – just what a wedding should be – absolutely. Rachel and I arrived first at the little old Thursley Church, near Rock Cottage. Then came Colonel Dolly with his best man, Major Campbell, another stray major and Lettice, absorbed in her new shoes and the difficulty of keeping on her first hat. Also big Ralphie, her brother, who had managed to get there unexpectedly. Then the bride came in with her father and though we tried to turn her out again, and make her enter properly at her proper cue, she sat down calmly, remarking that she was always punctual if the padre wasn’t, and she was not going to hang about for him or for anybody else. Then when the clergyman did put in an appearance, we lost the best man and Dolly clung miserably to me, wailing at the top of a naturally powerful voice, ‘What am I to do? Where am I to stand? I’ve never been married before.’ However, Major Campbell reappeared and sorted them and got them comfortable, and they got through very well, the children deeply impressed by the mystic ceremonial. Then we went up the narrow lanes to Rock Cottage, where we had chicken and wedding cake and blackberry gin. During the meal I noticed, through the window behind the bridegroom, strange and unaccustomed presences bouncing about the garden and staring in from the sacred, newly-turfed terrace. ‘What is it?’ he inquired, noting my rapt gaze. ‘P-pigs, Dolly,’ I murmured, loath to disturb the peace of the assembly and feeling sure that the colonel, lately become rather peppery and particular from overwork, would burst from the room like Betsy Trotwood. However- ‘Pigs?’ said he, dreamily. ‘Oh, yes, of course. They are the Baker pigs from over the way. They were specially invited and arrived bright and early this morning. She says they’re lucky. They were all in the dining-room when I started for church.’ I thought that, as a first concession on marrying an Irishwoman, it was charmingly tactful and appropriate. When the happy trio left (Lettice accompanied them), the bride’s father said to her in joke, ‘Well, Edith, you had better come back with me to Ireland now and rest a bit,’ but Lettice, departing with the bridegroom, called patronisingly over her shoulder, ‘No Mummy, you may come with us. We should like it.’” “The Times”, September 28th 1915 The Wrights then enjoyed a simple country life here in Thursley as further letters describe. 20.8.18 “Yesterday was my weekly ‘Rock Cottage’ day, and the walk home in the evening along that wonderful valley was quite exquisite. They have induced a village lady to come in and ‘oblige’, so Dolly and I cook no more. I’m rather sorry, though the interest was almost too painful; we distrust each other’s methods so deeply. However, after my triumph in the regrettable incident of the bouquet garni, which Dolly had so far forgotten himself as to allude to as ‘your damn flowers’ and which proved the making of the boiled salmon, I was able to take high ground. Mrs. Wright has developed extraordinary talents as a bee mistress, very luckily, as no bee master is now within summons. She goes calmly to work with bees in her hair and bees covering her face and hands, veilless and gloveless, and all is well. She took over twenty pounds of honey the other day.” W. Graham Robertson painted Lettice many times and described her head of blond hair as “a dandelion clock”. The little girl Lettice Mary, was born in 1908 whilst her elder brother, Ralph U. Johnstone, was much older having been born in 1894. 15.8.19 “The Wrights of Rock Cottage have been wrenched from me, and they all vanished last week”. The Wrights remained at Rock Cottage until 1919 when it was bought by Mrs. Lettice Fisher, so that her husband H.A.L. Fisher who was then Minister of Education in the post-war Coalition Government could have a place in the country that was still within reasonable reach of London. Colonel Wright died on September 8th 1939. Rock Cottage remained the home of Mary Bennett, nee Fisher, until her death in 2005.

From Thursley Parish Magazine July 2019 Did you know….? Some houses in our area were called ‘hall houses’ because originally the fire was placed in the middle of the large central room and smoke escaped through a hole in the roof. An example is Bowlhead Green Farmhouse. Now, of course, an upper floor has been put in and so the roof beams cannot be seen. This drawing of Bayleaf at the Weald and Downland Museum illustrates how a ‘hall house’ was constructed. The museum has kindly given permission for this picture to be included. More on the museum website

Photographs courtesy Valérie Ferris

Following an appeal for help from Arkadii Kostenko, a number of villagers were able to house Ukrainian refugees beginning in April 2022, with some staying to the current day. In January 2023, they said thank you by hosting a lunch party in the Village Hall.

This article written by Jackie Rickenberg was published in the Parish Magazine in August 2022 This is the final story of the Fisher family. Herbert and Lettice have been featured over the last couple of months and now it’s the turn of their daughter Mary. Mary Letitia Somerville Fisher (1913-2005) was an only child, born in London to Herbert and Lettice, but brought up in Oxford where her father was Warden of New College. She was best known as an academic, historian and for her tenure as Principle of St Hilda’s College between 1965 and 1980. Mary had lived (part-time) in our village ever since she was a small child and moved here permanently when she retired. She lived in her parents’ house, Rock Cottage at the top of Highfield Lane. And we were so very fortuitous to have had her, as being an historian, not only did Mary research her own family history, but she documented so much of life as it was in Thursley throughout her time here. The History Society’s archives would be a lot less interesting and poorer, were it not for Mary’s records of the times, the occupants and village life throughout her lifetime. It is amazing that those recollections will be with us for generations to come and will inform and enhance the lives of many families and villagers alike. After Mary obtained her degree from Somerville College, Oxford, she was living at home, researching Roman history and picking up a little undergraduate teaching from friends in other colleges. When war broke out, she felt that she should be doing something more immediately useful to the war effort and so, with the help of one of her mother’s friends, Hilda Matheson, who had been a spy in the First World War, she landed a position in an organisation run by Hilda, (known to the Intelligent Services!) that sent broadcasting material to various countries, with the ostensible purpose of replacing it with covert recordings which were to be smuggled into or dropped over Germany. Very mysterious and curious! In Mary’s own words, the story continues: “I was living in London, on Chelsea Embankment, after Hilda’s premature death. Her company was taken over by the BBC and we moved first to Bedford College in Regent’s Park and then to an ex-convent in Maida Vale. We worked very hard and did a lot of recording, including a good deal of actuality recording, for special recorded programmes. We corresponded with overseas radio stations but, I think rightly, very few people took us very seriously and I doubt we did anything very useful. By this point, my mother had retired from Oxford to Thursley, and I would return at weekends, taking the train to Milford station, where she would sometimes collect me in her small car with her even smaller petrol ration! But I think more often, I took the bus from Guildford and walked up from the Red Lion. To return, I would walk across Upper Highfield Farm to the A3 and take the bus to Godalming station. I was based in London, commissioning and supervising the recording of programmes. The French, were the main point of contact, and we had a liaison officer called Mademoiselle Moulun, whose home was in the Argentine but who had worked as a finishing school teacher in Paris. We would mainly send out pressed 78rpm recordings in brown paper parcels and because they would go by sea mail to consuls to pass on to the local radio stations, they were not very prompt. We would send out light programmes of dance music. The purpose of these recordings was to show the rest of the world that we were still in the field, that things were still happening, that life was going on and above all that the French were still in the field. We were showing that the French had not been forgotten and that was the one undoubtedly useful thing we did because we did convince the Free French that we were batting on their side. By Christmas of 1944 it was clear that the war was coming to an end and so my job became far less interesting and there was really very little point in going on with it. So, I let it be known that I was in the market as I didn’t want to stay with the BBC, but rather do something different. Then there was one of those accidents that happen and change your life. My mother had yet another friend, who had a farm in Hampshire and she used to throw great parties, one of which I was invited to. At the party I found myself talking to a man from the Colonial Office (the Foreign, India, Home and Colonial Offices have now become the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) and during our conversation I said that I was at the BBC but was trying to get out of it. The next day he telephoned to say that he thought there was a vacancy coming up in the Colonial Office and would I be interested? I thought it would be worth trying anything and I got the job! Originally, he thought the vacancy was on the Palestine desk but the job I was posted to was in the Mediterranean department, which was responsible for Malta, Gibraltar and Cyprus. As the war ended our job was to try to cope with the political ferment that it had produced in the colonies, both by economic and social development and by devising new constitutional arrangements, most of which proved shorter lived than we expected”. In 1955, Mary Fisher married senior civil servant John Bennett and from 1965 until 1980, she was Principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. They commissioned Jean Cooke to paint this portrait of her: Mary retired from Oxford, as her mother had done before her, to Rock Cottage and from there she filled her days, until her death in 2005, writing her memoirs and her recollections of a bygone Thursley. We shall be regularly featuring Mary’s amusing and incisive musings in months to come.