Picnic at Culverthorpe

 As far as I recall we didn’t have ringworm, we didn’t live on dry bread and we didn’t run barefoot along the cobbled streets. But neither did we go on family holidays. It wasn’t until many years later that this struck me as anything unusual. We weren’t on the poverty line, my parents were both in work but they were careful with their money. We had most of the mod-cons around in the early 1960s: a car, a TV and, even though Mum still kept a hand mangle in the shed,  a washing machine.  But we just didn’t do holidays. However 1964 was the one exception, my parents relented that year and we found ourselves going to Great Yarmouth. We stayed in an old-fashioned, green and beige caravan on what appeared to be an abandoned aerodrome, outside the town. Not a great start, nothing around for miles and it poured with rain for most of the week. I recall being sat at a rickety table most of the time doing jigsaws with my younger brother whilst the raindrops trickled relentlessly down the windows.  There exists a photo of us both on one of those hi-di-hi side-by-side tandems proving that there must have been sunny spells between the showers but it was hardly what you would call a memorable experience.  The caravan wasn’t unusually small but we were just not caravan-sized people and found the cramped conditions difficult to adapt to. So the experience was not a positive one and sadly put paid to the idea of going away on family holidays for good. My parents obviously decided once bitten… so instead what did we do in the school holidays? We went on picnics.

Nothing very grand, no wicker baskets packed with chilled cordial and salmon en-croute for us. No, just simple fare; usually hard-boiled eggs, sausage rolls and a Lincolnshire haslet or pork-pie if we were lucky. Sometimes we had a choice of sandwiches; tomato sandwiches with either salad cream or tomato sandwiches with cottage cheese. If we were really unlucky they were home-grown tomatoes which had come from Dad’s homemade green-house. I say unlucky because Dad was always too eager to pick the tomatoes before they were fully ripened; hence they were often rather small, green and as hard as radishes. I should also explain that Dad was a bit of a bodger. His greenhouse was not the most conducive environments in which to propagate produce. It was constructed from a couple of railway sleepers laid horizontally, surmounted by what I can best describe as a cuboid of old window-frames, most of which he had managed to salvage from some local building site. This in turn was topped with a pyramid of Perspex sheets fastened together with strips of silver gaffer-tape.. Although a thrifty person herself my mother despaired at the D-I-Y efforts of my Dad. He would never buy anything fit for purpose but always came up with hair-brained schemes to “save a bob or two” by making things himself from the various materials he had scrounged from people in the neighbourhood. Consequently our garden resembled a scrap-yard with half-finished projects dotted about like bad exhibits in a sculpture garden. Food apart the picnics were rather hit and miss affairs because of the appalling weather that seemed to coincide with our planned trips. In fact most picnics took place inside the car as we sat in some remote spot with a “nice view” that mother had picked out. In the early ‘60s we were rather conservative with our choice of transport. Mum , a district nurse, used the car for business everyday. The first car I remember was a sky blue, Ford Poplar, succeeded by a couple of Austin A35s and then an A40. Then we went a little bohemian, splashing out on a Renault 4. I remember going off to Well Vale, with its lovely Georgian church in a landscaped park, Hareby Top, Revesby Abbey Park and Langton sheep-walks. Yet by far the two most visited locations were the fields below Marden Hill at East Keal and the Culverthorpe Fish Ponds. My mother’s family had connections with both these places. She had been brought up at East Keal where her parents had farmed at Brickfields (or the 'brickyard') since the 1920s. Even though the house had changed hands over the years we were still able to picnic in the meadow field adjacent to the old brick pit and enjoy the quiet and solitude of the spot. I knew Culverthorpe also had some connection with my mother’s family but it wasn’t until four years ago that I discovered what it was.

  I often wondered where my mother was born and when I started researching my family tree I soon discovered my maternal grandmother’s family, the Longlands and Sharpes, came from a small group of villages between Grantham and Sleaford. Longlands it seems, at one time or another, were scattered among the villages of Oasby, Welby and Heydour as well as the hamlet of Aisby. I discovered my great, grand-father, Edward Longland, made his living as a carrier and cottage farmer at Aisby but his father, Richard, was a carpenter living on and working for the Culverthorpe Hall Estate. With a brother as blacksmith in Oasby they were clearly at the very centre of life. I’m still trying to gather and link in all the names I’ve found (any help, gratefully received) but at least now I know why when we requested a picnic my Mum dragged us back so often to the lovely countryside surrounding the hall and lake at Culverthorpe. Perhaps I’ll find a nice summer’s day this year and persuade my own family that the time has come to return to this old haunt and we too will share a picnic by the fishponds; I’m just not sure whether the idea of resurrecting the tomato and salad cream sandwich will go down too well!