http://folk-network.com/ SRFN: Miscellany: Henry Burstow: Reminiscences of Horsham

REMINISCENCES OF HORSHAM RECOLLECTIONS OF HENRY BURSTOW I WAS born on Monday, the 11th Dec., 1826, in the house now known as No. 34, Bishopric, the next door eastwards of the "Jolly Ploughboy" beershop. I was the next youngest of a family of nine children and lived there 42 years. My father, born on Wednesday, the 11th April, 1781, was a clay tobacco-pipe maker and moved into this house, which was his "factory," dwelling house and shop, in 1818: he with my mother and some of the family were constantly employed making pipes, with which he at regular periods would travel in a pony cart round the neighbourhood to sell. My grandfather, also a pipemaker by trade, was born on the 13th Jan., 1721, and lived in a house that is now No. 50, East Street. When quite a young man he joined the Army and fought at the battle of Fontenoy in 1745. His father, my great-grandfather, was also a native of Horsham. He lived somewhere in North Street, and was a saddler and harness maker by trade. I never knew the date of his birth, but it must have been over 200 years ago, back in misty traditional times wherein his father is credited with having been a wealthy and popular burgess of the Town, owning considerable property in East Street. I regret, for the sake of those people whose tastes are offended by any literature not written by or about persons of proved blue-blooded descent, that I cannot either by record or tradition trace my genealogy back farther. Yet thus unable to assert that the Burstows came over with William the Conqueror or had a left-handed origin at the Court of Henry VIII. or Charles

10	Reminiscences of Horsham.
II., we have been descending like the Plantagenet-Smythes for untold generations. In any case I hope I have made good my claim to the nativity of dear old Horsham, and that my position in the estimation of my fellow-townsmen is higher than it could be made by pedigree alone; for after all he is a poor creature that relies for his character upon, and attempts to borrow lustre from the reputations of his progenitors. There has always been a doubt as to the origin of the name of Horsham, but no such doubt attaches to the origin of the popular name of that part of the Town in which I was born, "The Rookery." One tradition credits it to the fact that at one time rooks used to build their nests in an avenue of tall trees there; but candour compells me to refute this pleasing error and replace it with an explanation less creditable. In my young days the Bishopric was the roughest quarter in the Town and many respectable residents disliked going there after dark for fear of being molested. The name "Rookery" sprang from one of the numerous fights and squabbles that used to disgrace the neighbourhood. One day a woman from another part of the Town came down to settle an outstanding score with a Bishopric woman: during the fight several other Bishopric women came to the help of their sister and gave the intruder a lively time of it. "Yah!!" she halloed at them as she was driven off, "you are like a lot of d—d old rooks; if you upset one you upset the lot." In my father's young days The Bishopric was also known as lower West Street and had an open ditch or sewer running down the south side of it with here and there a rough stone bridge over to give access to the old cottages lying back on that side of the road. As long ago as I can remember it was also called the Oxford Road. Springfield Road was called Chapel Lane, Worthing

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Road was also known as The Barracks way, Middle Street was also called Butcher's Row, the Carfax was called Back Lane, and New Street was called Pesthouse Lane, after the isolation house there for infectious diseases, and the entrance to the little cul de sac in the Normandy was known as Hell Corner. Very soon after I was born I began to develop a faculty with which I may say, without boasting, I was endowed in an extraordinary degree. I inherited a tenacious memory, to which from babyhood upwards I committed particulars of numerous events and incidents, tales, and songs: once my observations, mental or visual, were made and committed to memory, nothing has been able to dispossess me of them. The mental pictures I drew of the tales and songs taught me by my father, even before I was as high as the table, and the words of all the songs he taught me (those starred in the list at the end of this book), as well as the whole four hundred and odd songs there named, all these I have in my mind and on my tongue to-day. This faculty has been especially useful to me as a change bell-ringer, an occupation that imposes a severe tax upon the memory, and I am much in hopes that its usefulness in recording the following particulars of Horsham in my younger days may be appreciated by my fellow townsmen. The first thing that I can remember was my lying in my cradle, which was being rocked by my elder sister's foot, immaturely contemplating the ceiling of our little living room. I can remember, too, the time when, too young yet to walk, I was carried in my sister's arms when she went up town shopping. Perambulators or baby carriages were quite unknown, so I am unable to give an infant's appreciation of riding in state; but I can distinctly remember my infant experiences in learning to walk. I can now

12	Reminiscences of Horsham.
almost feel round my waist the sash to which the cord used for leading me was fastened. Sometimes this cord was fixed to a staple in a beam across the ceiling, giving me tethered experiences in pedestrianism I have never forgotten. Our little cottage contained but one common living room, about 11ft. x 11ft. and about 6ft. 6in. high, with the front door opening to the street; the kitchen and scullery on the ground floor; and three small bedrooms upstairs; a small back yard, not large enough to grow anything, and the usual offices, completed the premises, the rent of which was 2s. 6d. per week. In the living room was the down fireplace, upon which my mother would burn nothing but wood, sharing a local prejudice, which was very strong, against coal; "nasty black stuff," as she used to say, "you can't touch it for soot!" Against the west wall stood our chief piece of furniture, a plain square table, with drop leaves. This, at meal times, was brought out to the middle of the room for us all to sit round and eat from. In one corner stood a small round table, over which was a corner cupboard; six chairs placed here and there; a few cheap prints, chief of which was a biblical set illustrating episodes in the life of Joseph, decorated the walls, bare of paper; a few other gimcracks, and the bench upon which my mother used to help make the pipes! these completed the items of furniture in our best room, and became the first objects of my baby stocktaking. The rent of the cottage, small as the latter was, and still is, may seem low to the present generation, but other necessaries were very dear as compared with to-day's prices. Most tradespeople and cottagers made all the bread the family ate, and they, especially the cottagers, frequently found it a hard job to make enough. The price of flour varied very considerably. It used to be reckoned that it should always be the

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same number of pence per gallon as wheat was pounds per load. Horsham maintained a splendid reputation as a wheat growing centre, but prices were very unsteady, fluctuating sometimes violently between £12 and £45 per load in the Horsham Market. Farmers would refuse good prices in the hopes of shortly getting better, whilst labourers would frequently find the whole of their wages did not suffice to provide themselves, wives, and families with bread. I have known of farmers refusing £40 per load, expecting the price to rise by the following week; and I have heard of labourers' wives who, expecting to increase their family, have been reduced to the necessity of stealing turnips from the fields, at night times, to sustain life. Moist sugar was 6d. to 8d. per lb.; other groceries and provisions were equally high in price. Butchers meat we rarely tasted, whilst the prohibitive price of tea, 6s. and 8s. to 10s. per lb., made us feel very grateful when we could get the tea leaves second-hand, as my mother sometimes did from Mrs. Marriott, a kind old lady who then lived at Tanfield. The brilliant lighting powers of paraffin and gas were not in use in my infant days. In the larger houses, lamps burning spern oil at 5s. or 6s. per gallon, or whale oil at 3s. 6d. per gallon, spluttered and emitted bad smells; even cotton tallow candles were luxuries we could not afford. Common rushes got from ponds, dried and dipped in course grease, held in a pair of pincers mounted on a block of wood, were our only means of light; as faggots and cordwood were our only means of heat; and the tinder-box, with its tedious flick, flick, flick, our only means of ignition. My first sight of the old Town of Horsham, in most of its features and buildings, presented me with a very different picture to that of to-day, and many of the old customs and manners of that time, as well

14	Reminiscences of Horsham.
as ninety-nine out of every hundred of the 2,700 people then living in the Town, have disappeared entirely. The ground plan of the old Borough and Town still exists, almost unaltered, within the present Urban District area, and the Causeway, the Bishopric, and here and there in other parts a single house, or perhaps two or three houses together, remain much as they were, but the Streets now hardly seem to be the same. All the shops were low pitched, very little attempt at display of goods was made in the small windows, all fitted with small panes of glass. Some few tradesmen "illuminated" at night, but only with tallow dips or rushlights. The doors were mostly divided laterally in halves. Some, the more modern, were divided vertically, a few, later, had glass in the upper portions, but as yet there was not bit of plate glass in the town. Tradesmen did not keep a large amount of ready-made goods on sale in their shops. Most of them were master craftsmen actually at work with their men upon goods ordered, or substantial necessities; proud of their work, at which they put in many hours, and content to remain active at it till they reached a ripe old age, instead of being mere distributors of other people's productions, as most shopkeepers are to-day. Many trades were flourishing then that are extinct, or nearly so, now. Hats, as well as clothes, chairs and tables, and other household furniture, pattens, baskets, brooms, ropes, spun yarns and twines, leather (as I write I hear the last Horsham Tannery, famous for genuine oak bark tanned sole leather, is just about to close; there used to be four tanyards at Horsham), carriages and harness, saddles and collars, tobacco pipes, baskets, mats, tinware, and other household requisites, all the boots and shoes, leggings and gloves, besides clothes and underwear, were actually manufactured, of course,

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by hand; stocks consisting chiefly of raw material and partly-made goods. Two shop fronts only, Nos. 50 and 51, West Street, are the same now as they were 80 years ago, and nearly every name in the street has changed or vanished, only one remains the same, on the same spot. West Street was then, as now, the principal thoroughfare. I give a list of every tradesman and resident in it about 1830, the houses were then unnumbered, but I commence at the top and go down the names on their respective sides:— NORTH SIDE. Medwin, lawyer Ireland, Miss, fancy shop Aldridge, W., painter Cox, tailor Unwins, harness maker Millward, Mrs., independent Pickett, ironmonger Putland, "Castle Inn" Muzzell, clocksmith Hunt, printer Sadler, "Swan Inn" Goldsmith, upholsterer Henley, corn dealer Albery, harness maker Sharp, G., corn dealer Wood, china shop Millward Bros., grocers Pollard, draper and tinman Richardson, upholsterer Griffiths, Mrs., private Tanner, barber Pickett, wood-turner Sayers, baker Boyne, draper Sharp, W., gentleman Smallwood, carpenter Lucas, corn dealer Potter, stonemason   SOUTH SIDE. Knight, tailor Stanford, draper Lintott, butcher Lintott, private house Humphrey, bootmaker Warner, hatter Thorpe, draper Brown, Mrs., independent Knight, grocer Gilburd, Miss, confectioner Laker, Jos., bootmaker Spratley, fellmonger Whitham, stationer &c. Laker, bootmaker Dower, Mrs., general shop Browne, Draper Bromley, clocksmith Higgins, currier Chatfield, confectioner Wood, china shop Goodbarn, chemist Lintott, Misses, private Turner, wood-turner Chambers, butcher Etherton, ironmonger Cottington, fruit shop Dendy, corn merchant Burstow, carpenter Harms & Aldridge, painters Murrell, horse dealer Robinson, Mrs., "Black Horse" I give a Map of the Borough and Town of 1831; also a photograph of West Street about 1855, and of East Street about the same date.
Map of Horsham, 1831   East Street, about 1860   West Street, about 1855 Previous:   Introduction   Next:   Pages 16 - 25 Contents Copyright © 2003 All Rights Reserved. Built for SRFN by Malcolm Douglas