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The current aim of the EHRG is to obtain all the information that we can about Eydon in the 19th century, but in the course of our research we often come across other interesting material relating to this century. One such item is a conversation with Mrs. Annie Bricknell.
Anyone who has lived in Eydon for any length of time cannot have failed to have heard of Mrs. Bricknell. She died in April 1996 at the age of 97, and she lived in Eydon for 72 years and ran the Royal Oak for fifty of them. Despite her advanced years, her memory was excellent.
Her husband, Clarence Bricknell, was born in Eydon, as his father was Head Gardener at Eydon Hall. Annie and Clarrie met when they were both serving with the Flying Corps during the First World War and Annie's first sight of Eydon was in 1917 when they came home on leave.
They married in 1923 and Annie's father bought them a house in Coventry because Clarence was chief tester at the Rover Car Company. Annie hated Coventry, so when the Royal Oak became vacant in 1924, she took it over. It was like a barn, Annie said, but she loved bricklaying, and took a pickaxe to it! There was only one room with an oven grate and Annie recalls how, when she first came to the pub, she used to bake a pie in the oven and then as soon as her back was turned, the men would take it out and eat it. They thought it was great fun, but it took Annie a while to get used to their country sense of humour.
The only lighting in the pub at that time was candles and paraffin oil lamps, so when Annie heard that electricity was being brought to Woodford, she asked the Northampton Electric Light Company if they would bring it up to Eydon. Their agent said that if she could persuade fifteen households to have electric cookers, they would consider it, so Annie went straight to Eydon Hall and describes in amusing detail how she persuaded Mr. Brand to convert to electricity, which duly arrived in Eydon in 1930.
The pub's water supply came from a well. Originally the men's urinal was located directly over it but "my Father soon had that moved across the yard". There was Company water in the village but Annie preferred her well water - it made a better cup of tea. One day the Sanitary Inspector was in the pub and said he was there to take samples of the Company's water. 'I said, "Oh, it's all right, Mr. Caley, you won't get a sample of the Company water because we haven't got the Company water". I wish I hadn't told him really, because he took a sample of this water. A day afterwards, I had a telephone call. "Mrs. Bricknell, you mustn't on any account drink that water. You mustn't even wash or boil your vegetables in it and you mustn't wash the glasses belonging to the pub in it. It's grossly polluted." So that's when we had the Company water.'
The Second World War brought changes to the Royal Oak, as it did to the entire village. Evacuees arrived from London and the Royal Oak was more or less full for the duration of the War. They had no beer to sell and because of rationing, Annie couldn't even offer a cup of tea to passing cyclists. She recalls that on the night that Coventry was bombed in November 1940, you could read a newspaper in the Royal Oak yard, it was so lit up. And then as the bombers returned to Germany, a stick of bombs fell on Culworth but they landed in the gardens and no one was hurt. An attempt to bomb the marshalling yard at Woodford also failed when the bombs fell harmlessly in the fields.
Annie also recalled that there was a prisoner of war camp on the Byfield road. The inmates were mostly Italians and were let out to work on the farms, and quite a few ended up marrying local girls.
The evacuee families living with Annie did rather well for food under the circumstances. Eggs were always available as she kept chickens, rabbit was often on the menu, and there was pork. They were allowed to kill one pig a year but had to sell half to the Ministry - "but of course there were ways and means of doing things". Annie had bought a farm in 1934 so she had her own milk, and sugar too as her brother had the foresight to get her two or three hundredweight of it while it was still available.
One problem she did have, though, was keeping the peace between the various families staying with her. They had time on their hands and were no doubt worried about their homes and families in London, so they got irritable and "they used to, sort of, snap at each other".
After the War, as things got back to normal, Smoking Concerts were held at the Royal Oak. Annie recalls that there was a lot of talent amongst the local people. Some played the piano, the violin, and the concertina; and there was singing too. Each of the old boys had a song that he would sing - always the same song - and "someone would shout out 'You're bloody flat'. You know, perhaps they'd had a drop of beer and they couldn't keep in tune. They used to slur it a bit."
Some of these old boys had their regular seats and anyone who dared to sit in them would promptly move when its regular occupant arrived. Some of the younger ones would sit there for defiance, but the old boys would go and stand in front of them, and stare at them!
Annie had a very eventful life at a time when women were usually confined to the home. When World War I broke out in 1914, Annie could already drive a car and so at the age of sixteen, she joined the Flying Corps as a driver and drove cars, trucks and ambulances. She was brought up in Leicester but always longed for the country, green fields and trees. Her one ambition was to own a farm, which in due course she did and so when, in her nineties, she was asked if she had enjoyed her life she replied, "yes, very much indeed. 'Cos I got what I wanted. That was the country, I wanted the green fields, and I've had the green fields all the way through".
Leila Leeson
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