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✵Christmas in Dartmouth C
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MEMORIES AND MODERN CELEBRATIONS WITH THREE DARTMOUTH SISTERS
hristmas has well and truly come to Dartmouth – paraded in with willow lanterns and candles. There are lights around the Boat Float, shop windows bursting with decorations, a huge tree, and festive menus in every restaurant and pub. It’s a time for fun, family and friendship, and three
Dartmouth sisters have been reliving Christmas memories from a lifetime of living by the Dart.
The Olver sisters – Sheila, Brenda and Pauline – grew up in Clarence Street, and remember nothing was as exciting as going to bed on Christmas Eve. “We girls all shared a room and we could never get to sleep! We were too excited!” said Pauline. “We would always swear we had stayed awake all night – but in the morning the pillow cases we hung on our beds were full of presents, and we never saw anyone come in!” Presents then were the source of huge excitement – although children today might have different ideas. Sheila remembered: “We would have an apple, an orange, nuts, a lump of coal, and one small gift, but we were so excited. We didn’t have anything all year so a Christmas present was very special. Mum and Dad didn’t have a lot, and with our brother Edwin there were four of us to feed and clothe – plus Mum, Dad and Auntie Ruby who lived with us. But we never felt like we went without.”
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“We would have an apple, an orange, nuts, a lump of coal, and one small gift, but we were so excited.”
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The girls would always clamour to put up the decorations weeks before Christmas Day, and their mother, Olive, would relent with a week or so to go. “We always had a holly tree for our Christmas tree and would stand it in the sitting room. We couldn’t wait to decorate it, but when the time came it would make our fingers bleed because the prickles were so sharp. I don’t know why we didn’t have a fir tree,” said Pauline. Brenda laughed: “Every year it was the same – all of us getting scratched and sucking our fingers. But the room would look lovely.” And Sheila agreed: “We made paper chains to go all around the room and then we had other decorations, baubles for the tree, that would come out year after year like old favourites. It was great fun. The decorations always stayed up until January 6th especially for me – because that’s my birthday.” Christmas morning dawned with the smell of cooking underway in the kitchen. “We always had goose then, nearly everyone did, because it was the cheapest option – turkey was dear in those days,” Pauline recalled, Sheila adding: “We always, always had Brussels! Dad grew a lot of veg in the garden so we always had lovely carrots, parsnips, cabbages, potatoes and so on. It felt like a feast.” With no television in the house, the soundtrack to
Christmas Day for the Olvers and most other families was the radio. Brenda said: “We played with our new toys and Mum, Dad and Auntie Ruby had a drink and listened to the radio. In the morning it was Children’s Hospital and in the afternoon we all made sure we heard the Queen.” The three girls enjoyed the festive atmosphere in the town, the sense of a community preparing for a shared celebration, and the fun of school at Christmas time. Sheila remembered learning to bake a Christmas cake and being so delighted with her success she went on to make one every year. Brenda was in the school choir and there were special robes to be worn for a Christmas concert in St Saviour’s Church. “I’m sure we did a Nativity play when we were very small – everyone at school couldn’t wait for Christmas to come!” Christmas Day was a rare day off for Harold Olver, the sisters’ father. He worked in the pump house, engaged in a constant battle to keep the market and the town clear of water in the days before the Embankment was redeveloped. He worked shifts that corresponded with the tides, but was always at home on Christmas Day. Today the four Olver children live in Townstal, a stone’s throw from one another, and the idea of a family Christmas is still important to them. They get together with their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in each others’ houses, and all have a drink together on Christmas morning. Now Sheila Ivey, Brenda Pound and Pauline Alltree, the women have carved out a new Christmas tradition to share once the hubbub of shopping, wrapping, cooking, baking and entertaining has calmed down.
“On Boxing Day we go to the Royal Castle Hotel for lunch, we three sisters and our friends,” said Brenda. “We have a good old laugh about Christmas Day - its good points and its dramas. “We all love Christmas and the chance to celebrate at
parties and dinners with family and friends. It’s lovely to go and see all the lights and decorations in the bigger cities and towns, but we’ve had an awful lot of Christmases in Dartmouth, and this is where we like to be at this lovely time of year.”•
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