'Of all situations for a constant residence, that which appears to me most delightful is a little village far in the country; a small neighbourhood, not of fine mansions but of cottages and cottage-like houses, with inhabitants whose faces are as familiar as the flowers in our garden; a little world of our own, close-packed and insulated like ants in an ant-hill, or bees in a hive, or sheep in a fold ....... where we know everyone, are known to everyone, interested in everyone and authorised to hope that everyone feels an interest in us.'
Mary Russell Mitford (‘Our Village’, Dent)
Mary Russell Mitford wrote in the early years of Victoria’s reign, confident of her place in her village community in the south of England where little seemed to change. Cumnor at the beginning of the 20th century still possessed much of that rural character: a small community, no fine mansions, a web of kinship, but it was not 'far in the country', being within walking distance of Oxford. Many older residents, looking back to the early years of the twentieth century, could still identify with that close-knit community in which everyone knew everyone else and speak lightly of the 'good old days'. It was, of course, a neighbourhood in which everyone knew their place and, if not content, were generally resigned to the fact that God had deemed it so.
In the last years of Victoria's reign, Cumnor was a rural parish hung between expectation and apathy. The declining population in 1901 stood at 870, of whom about half lived in Cumnor itself. Its economy was depressed by an agricultural recession and lack of investment by the lord of the manor and chief landowner, the Earl of Abingdon. He and his ancestors had never resided in the parish and he had let his Wytham 'seat' to Henry Oppenheimer, a retired banker and naturalised citizen, whose family was tended by 17 servants. Cumnor was a parish of labourers. Many male householders had been empowered by a widened franchise. As in many other rural parishes, however, the labourers did not use their majority to vote any of their own number onto the new Parish Council in 1894, thus nullifying the fear of landowners that they might seek their own ends. They voted for their masters (five of the seven seats went to farmers), seeming to enjoy the exercise of their right without changing the old order. Custom had bred a deep conservatism. Whether villagers in that same year, gazing down on Sir William Harcourt's manor house at Stanton Harcourt across the Thames, agreed with his comment that 'We are all socialists now' is doubtful, for the power of the State to influence family life was not so apparent as it became with the social reforms of the Liberal government more than a decade later.
Compulsory education, although still basic compared to modern day teaching, had widened the horizons of a generation that might be less willing to fulfil themselves through a life of hard and ill-rewarded labour. Schooling however placed an emphasis on doing one's duty rather than questioning the existing order. One's duty was underlined in the sermons of church and chapel, for religious faith still retained a strong hold on the community, and was reflected in the deference demanded in the class structure which at least one hymn writer saw as an intrinsic feature of God's creation.
Schooling also drew attention to the large British Empire that extended over a quarter of the earth and was coloured red on world maps. It is ironic that Cumnor, at the geographical heart of that empire, should exhibit such poverty, neglect and isolation. There were however young men who became aware of the Empire as an opportunity for self-advancement and certainly a few sought their fortune in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.
Perhaps the most profound impact of compulsory schooling in the last decades of Victoria's reign was to foster a spirit of self-improvement that motivated a wider community. It was manifest in the Reading Club and a reading room established in Church House. The founding of a parish branch of the Oddfellows Society not only provided its members with insurance against sickness but, through its meetings, involved them in the rituals of business meetings and formal social occasions, hitherto the preserve of 'posh folk'. The Society played an important role in social welfare until the creation of a national insurance scheme and an old age pension. The latter virtually removed the threat of Abingdon workhouse and relieved the burden on extended families.
Visiting Cumnor in 1906, Vincent (‘Highways and Byways of Berkshire’) was dismayed. 'There are few places in Berkshire more dispiriting than Cumnor. Emphatically it is not 'residential'. Almost indeed does it seem like a hamlet on which a curse has rested, and our little trip to it has been undertaken simply because it was unavoidable. The wise man will read, and believe. The sceptic will go, as I did, and depart believing, and 'sick and sorry that he came', as the Psalmist has it.'
A visiting cleric's wife vowed she ‘would not wish to be buried in Cumnor'. The poet Hilaire Belloc later suggested that since the death (in 1540) of the last Abbot of Abingdon at Cumnor Place, 'Cumnor has borne an air of desolation and of murder.' In referring to 'murder', Belloc was no doubt mindful of Amy Dudley's mysterious death at Cumnor Place in 1560. But the physical neglect he observed was chiefly the result of the agricultural recession that had demoralised farmers, damaged the rural economy, and compounded the financial difficulties of Lord Abingdon, chief landlord and owner of the land. A newspaper report on a fire at Chawley Farm in 1900 noted that the roof of one outbuilding had been repaired with thorn branches, which burnt fiercely.
Local roads were in poor condition, and Cumnor Hill in so bad a state as to be considered unsuitable for carriages. In Edwardian times the village streets were normally silent. For villagers needing to visit Oxford four miles away the only options were the carriers cart, bicycle or walking. Boycott Franklin at Swinford recalled: ‘I remember one lady carrying 17 loaves from Oxford. Her husband met her halfway to help carry them home.' 'Nin' Jeffs remembered: 'My father walked to Oxford every day to work at the Gas Works.' Many recollections testify to the difficulty of such journeys.
Labouring wages were low, averaging about 14s a week, and Cumnor was a parish of labourers. Agricultural wages were among the lowest in the country, though dire poverty was reportedly restricted to large families and the elderly. Low wages were made more tolerable by the low food prices resulting from Free Trade, and successive governments were well aware of its importance in damping down urban unrest. The agricultural recession in the face of Free Trade had reduced significantly the spending power of farmers, even the viability of many farms, and farmers sought short leases. Frederick May, however, had taken Merton College's tenancy of Bradley Farm in 1893 and stayed for over fifty years. The demand for farm labour declined. As a result many farmers and labourers tended to move more frequently, both within the parish and district, the farmers seeking profitable leases, the labourers employment. In the last decade of Victoria's reign, 40% of village tenancies changed hands. The parish school admissions register from 1904 provides further evidence of a shifting population. In the first years of Edward VII's reign, half the children admitted to the school moved away before completing their education. By 1928 more than half of the 49 children admitted had come from outside the parish, a few from towns or cities such as London, Bath, Salisbury, Blackpool, Gateshead and Weymouth. While employment was the main spur to migration, family links played an important part. For example, when Peter Pike, living in Leicester, lost his wife in 1904, he moved his children down to Cumnor to live with his brother Joseph and his sister Elizabeth. Some children came to stay only for two or three weeks, for family reasons such as ill health or the birth of a new child; the law required that in term time they enroll at the school.
The agricultural recession contributed to a growing national problem of unemployment and fed the movement of families from countryside to town. In 1901 the population of Cumnor was lower than at any previous point in Victoria's long reign. Unemployment in urban areas fermented the issue of trade unionism and growing industrial strife was ended only by the outbreak of war in 1914. In Cumnor trade unionism only became a force in the Chawley Tile and Brick Works, whose labour force, more secure as Oxford's growth increased the demand for building materials, was second in size only to farming. Most girls leaving school went into domestic service. If, in Cumnor's rural community, wages were low and long hours were worked by women in 'slopwork' or laundrying to increase family incomes, and if the financial problems faced by the Earl of Abingdon led him to neglect the maintenance of his many tenants' homes, there was a resilience bred of custom and an expectation of change that enabled families both to face their hardship with fortitude and look upon it later without rancour. Typical was Lilian Bateman's recollection that 'although money was short, we were a happy and contented family. Food was plain but good and nourishing. We made the most of whatever was available.' Hilda Neale recalled her mother getting up early 'to have time to walk into Oxford, pushing the pram containing the three children, doing the shopping and getting back to Chawley in time to serve father's dinner at 12 o'clock.'
The agricultural recession and an entrenched conservatism led to a reported apathy among farmers. Orr (‘Agriculture in Berkshire’, O.U.P.) wrote on his survey during the First World War that 'In the triangle between Cumnor, Swinford and Oxford, there is some low-standard pasture farming. About the area, an authority on the improvement of grass says it could be made to produce five times as much.' And, 'Between Oxford and Cumnor there is an enormous area under grass of a discreditably inferior kind. Absolutely nothing has been down to improve it.' Surveying land use on Wytham Hill, part of which lies in Cumnor parish, he suggested: 'The Thames has done something to cut off the hill from participation in the growing life of the outer world and no one has done anything to counteract or modify the estrangement and deadness.' On many farms, arable had been virtually abandoned as uneconomic, though market farming was developed on a few farms where the soil was of good quality.
Isolation had other effects. Mildred Hale, who as a child lived at Bablockhythe, remembered: 'I could have gone to Grammar School at Witney, but my parents wouldn't allow it because of the distance so I helped at home after my fourteenth birthday.'
At the end of Victoria's reign, for the first time, middle class residents began to settle in the parish, acquiring freehold land from Lord Abingdon or 'gentrifying' a former farmstead. In varying degrees they offered leadership and example, for which, hitherto, parishioners could only look to the vicar or lay non-conformist minister. At the same time they tended to establish a broader social stratification. They did little for the local economy, offering only menial employment in housework or gardening. Labour, after all, was cheap. At Oaken Holt, near Farmoor, from 1891 to 1900, Sir William Wilson Hunter was the first wealthy newcomer and the only servant of the British Empire, having been a senior colonial administrator in India. He was an author of that country's history and a friend of Kipling. He seems to have sought the role of local squire, accepting leading roles, including that temporarily of first chairman of the Parish Council, and giving Christmas parties at Oaken Holt to the schoolchildren. William Loat, a Londoner of independent means, took New Cumnor Place in 1900 and was followed later by the Jervois sisters, whose father was said to be a diplomat in Australia. Alice Jervois played the leading role in the first years of the parish’s Women's Institute. In 1913 Lily Dougall, a Canadian writer and theologian, built Cutts End House, employing the architectural skills of Clough Williams-Ellis, but does not appear to have been involved in the social life of the village. Between Cumnor village and Botley, the photographer Taunt noted 'villas' being built up Cumnor Hill. Although some of the newcomers were, like Miss Thackeray, of independent means, the majority were successful Oxford tradesmen: market gardener (Mortimer), fishmonger (Duce), dyer and cleaner (Bennett), timber merchant (Johnson), carpenter (Frewin), decorator (Griffiths), fruiterer (White). If they had young children, social status was sought by sending them to private schools rather than the village school. Summer tennis parties were arranged for Thursday afternoons, early closing day.
For villagers, the idea of improving one's social standing was commonly seen as enjoying activities associated with the middle class, keeping a tidy home and voting as their betters did. The cricket club was now managed with a formal constitution, the vicar serving as its President. Musical evenings in the village school drew large audiences. The new Socialist ideas of undermining capitalist hierarchy were generally rejected in favour of achieving advancement within it, if only to be one step above the bottom rung. A meeting held in 1900 under the elm tree in Leys Road by socialists from the university on the subject of land reform drew a fair-sized, curious crowd, observed from the fringes by the vicar, but nothing came of it.
The village trademan was regarded by some as 'little better than the labourer'. Both deferred to the farmer, who in turn raised his hat to the vicar and middle-class resident. The farmer called the teenage worker by his christian name, the adult labourer by his surname. The labourer in turn expected to be called Mr X by the teenager. The farmer was known to his employees as Mr X or Master, but among working men each had his nickname. 'Dad Charlie' Costar was thus distinguished from his cousin 'Big Charlie'.
If the area was relatively isolated from Oxford, it was to a greater degree distanced from national events by the limited access to news. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 was, however, marked by services of due solemnity, attended by those who had earlier celebrated her Diamond Jubilee with a party in the field behind New Cumnor Place. The accession of Edward VII, whose behaviour had long been the despair of his mother the Queen, was no doubt welcomed, though only two boys were christened Edward in Cumnor during his reign. The gloss of Edward's national pageantry was lost on the rural community.
The complacency that imbued the end of Victoria's reign had been shaken by the military incompetence and the heavy cost in lives and money of the Boer War. No nation enjoyed a higher standard of living, though the security of the middle class and relative well-being of skilled workers masked poverty in the growing industrial towns and in the countryside. The population drift from countryside to urban areas continued. Cumnor's population in 1901, at 870, was at its lowest ebb for eighty years.
Free trade was maintained, despite many other countries imposing import tarriffs that put British traders at a disadvantage. Complacency also led to a decline in technological investment, so that whereas Britain in 1900 was still regarded as the 'workshop of the world', America and Germany had already overtaken her in vital areas such as steel production. If this rural community shared a certain complacency with regard to the world at large, it was modified by the irony of its own neglect. The better-informed and more politically aware would certainly have had, and shared, views on the major national issues of the day : Home Rule for Ireland, votes for women, the power of the Lords to reject social reform bills, a fair burden of taxation, and the justification of ally with France, the old enemy, against the rising power of Germany. But the policies that made an impact on the rural community were the social reforms wrought by the Liberal Government to provide a national insurance scheme and an old age pension. Henry Webb's father had never bothered to learn to read and write until, at the age of 70, he had to sign for his pension.
The second and third decades of the 20th century brought significant changes to Cumnor. The Great War, with its tragic toll, did not bring a lasting revival to the farming economy but in its wake there was an expectation of greater social justice. Yet Cumnor's parish council, with its disproportionate number of farmers, was slow to respond to opportunities for local authority housing and mains water, being suspicious of the cost implications. Women began to take a more active role in parish life, particularly through the Cumnor branch of the Women's Institute founded in 1924. Martha Franklin thought the W.I. 'was the start of the emancipation of women’. A women's cricket team was formed. It was Miss Earp, companion to Lily Dougall at Cutts End House, who organised in 1919 a W.E.A. lecture by a Balliol speaker in the school infants’ room on the subject of ‘The League of Nations.’ Domestic economies improved: invoices from Didcock’s village shop suggests a greater variety in diet as higher wages raised the standard of living.
Two developments however had a profound influence on the life of inhabitants and the growth of residential areas. One was the introduction of public transport with bus routes along the Eynsham Road and up Cumnor Hill to Faringdon allowed people to commute easily to work in Oxford, though Cumnor village itself was ill-served as few buses travelled through to Appleton. It could be argued that private transport played a greater part in liberating the younger generation from parochialism and encouraging commuting to work: the motor-cycle and the bicycle. The young man’s motor-cycle was often sold to meet the expense of a new married home. The other development was that Lord Abingdon's financial problems moved him to sell off the freehold of his Cumnor lands and properties.This gave security to the tenant farmers who seized the opportunity to purchase their farms and the chance for other buyers to exploit land for housing. Some cottagers found they had new landlords. By 1930 Cumnor village had begun to grow, while residential development was engulfing large areas of Botley and North Hinksey, reaching further up Cumnor Hill and along the Eynsham Road, and had created a new community at Farmoor.
It is within this context that the following recollections testify as to how
people lived in Cumnor and what they made of their changing world.