His work involved electrical installations and he remembers
battery plants and 110v transformers at Cumnor Place and Oaken Holt. He
remembers when Lord Abingdon lived there and he insisted on beech logs for the
fires. Jim, the son of William Webb in Abingdon Road, was gardener at the Place
and lived in the thatched gardener's cottage there. Alice Jervois later moved
into that, with one maid.
He remembers a derelict cottage behind the Stores in Abingdon Road. There was a
very deep well near the road. Next to the Vicarage was a ruined cottage with no
roof. A door in the garden wall led into the Vicarage. There was a broad, deep
well. He thought it might have been a bakery. It was said the top of an elm then
in the churchyard corner crashed down on the two cottages there. George Clack
lived at No 5 (Richard Brown, George Webb's uncle, lived at No 3); it had
cobbled stones outside. George Clack, who served for a period as parish clerk,
enjoyed his drink and his wife sometimes brought him home from the pub.
(In conversation with John Hanson 1990)