“In our young days, my sister, Kathleen and I spent a lot of time in our stables with the cart-horses. There were nine of them: I can remember Violet, Daisy, Blossom and Prince. We used to ride them to work in the fields and at the end of the day went with them into the sea at high water. The mud and salt water were good for their legs.


We also had a pony and trap and every Sunday used it to go for picnics. The trouble was that Punch was a very unreliable pony and we could only travel in the trap on the level and had to walk the rest of the time’’.


Besides dealing in corn, Mr. Curtis also farmed more than 200 acres around Murrills, his Portchester residence and grazed sheep up to the brow of Portsdown Hill, where he would go riding and shooting. He was a strict disciplinarian, but did not go with the family to church at St. Mary’s on Sunday mornings. “We always walked, come hail or high water”, said Barbara, “and we had our own pew, No. 17.” The Curtis sisters were a bit too young, though, to remember the arrival one day, about 1914, of a bright-eyed young lady called Beatrice Russell, who had come to join other servants at the imposing house that was painted by many artists, who did not know that it had an enormous cellar that flooded 2ft. deep on occasions.


More than 60 years later, at the age of 86, Beatrice recalled some of those memorable upstairs- downstairs times: “The servants had to wear proper print dresses and white aprons and later fancy aprons. The days were long. I had only one afternoon and one evening off once a fortnight and the most I ever earned in my four years full-time there as kitchen help, then parlour maid and cook, was £20 a year with my keep.


“I used to get up about half-past- six and get the coffee ready for Mr. Curtis for his breakfast at half-past- seven. The cooking was done on a range (it bore the inscription ‘Keep smallest fire possible except when roasting in front’) and the coffee took time to prepare as ground coffee was used in a perculator. On one occasion, the coffee was late and Mr. Curtis made a fuss to his wife, Gertrude, about it.


“There was a large table for cooking, and Mrs. Curtis did a lot of this herself and also taught me how to cook, as well as prepare and make bread. I also made some of the cakes and did the soups. Things were kept cool in the dairy in the backyard and from the milk, butter and cream and ice cream were made. I had to clean the carpets, with Chivers carpet soap, and Mr. Curtis used to say to me, ‘Beatrice, you’re the only one who can clean


the carpets properly and always make them look lovely’.


“My husband, Tom, (Marchant) who worked for Mr. Curtis for 38 years, mainly as a gardener, used to drive a tractor up on the hill and bring home our milk each day in a little can from the farm’s own cows. He used to make his own butter by carrying a bottle of milk round with him on the tractor: the cream got so shook up that it turned into butter.”


Murrills, which is reputed to date back to the 16th Century, was always full of life and activity. Said Barbara Curtis: “We always had three maids, a parlour maid; an odd-jobber called Kate; a Mrs. Jerome, who did the washing and ironing every week; Nanny Raggett, who looked after us, and later we had a governess. My father would not have gas in the house, so the lighting was by paraffin lamp before electricity was installed. There were eight or ten paraffin lamps and every morning they were taken into the scullery and mother trimmed their wicks with her fingers”.


For young Beatrice Russell, the highlight was serving the afternoon tea in the elegant drawing room, gently gliding with the silver tray across the carpets she so meticulously cleaned and loved.


In the immaculately-kept grounds of Murrills, with a fountain playing in front of the thatched, boundary wall summer-house, Thomas Curtis (centre left) relaxes with his wife, Gertrude (left). He is smoking a Portchester- made clay pipe and always kept half-a-dozen at the ready on the fender by the fire as they would get too hot at some stage and he would need to change over, said his family. Also in this picture, is another pipe- smoker, Major Frank Gillson, a village personality of the 1930’s who was a great churchman and lived in Hospital Lane. The major, a much-respected solicitor, would ride on his horse through the village, doffing his hat to the poorer residents, who would raise their caps to him.


44 | The Report • June 2019 • Issue 88


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