Delivering Milk

Deliveries were made to Eton College twice a day by Walter Slaymaker

 from farmer James Tarrant.

Milk rounds were a major feature of Eton Wick farmers and smallholders. Up to the 1930s there were some 20 milk producers, ranging from owners of one or two cows to pedigree herds in Eton Wick and in the villages around its borders, and 7 or 8 delivery rounds, many of them to Eton College Houses.

In this photograph Harry Bunce sits in his milk float at the bottom of Brocas Street,
probably pre-1939/40 war. Note the old fashioned churns.

Roundsmen had to be particularly quick when stepping onto their floats, as their horses, knowing the rounds so well, proceeded on their way immediately they felt a change in the balance of the float shafts. It was not unknown for College boys to hold their smaller colleagues under the delivery horse's nose in the hope the horse would bite. Some of Harry Bunce's farm is part of what is now known as Bunces Close housing estate.

Harry's home was 'Rosedale', a detached house next to the old parsonage. It was said that Harry had no right of way from his farm to the Eton Wick Road, and used to drive his horse 'Kitty' and trap along the Common to Eton Wick. In times of flood, George Tarrant allowed him to drive through Crown Farm (Harry's sister Charlotte was married to George's son Alf, which presumably helped). Harry served on the Eton Wick Parish Council and several other committees.
 

Pam Jaycock and Joan Cooley (of Little Common Farm) with their electric milk float,
pictured on their final round in 1993. They were the last local operators.

 

Cyril Tarrant on the Saddocks Farm milk round c1930-32.

The milk was ladled from the churns to the customers' jugs. Cousins Bob and Reg Tarrant also ran milk rounds from Manor Farm and Crown Farm, respectively. When it became compulsory to retail only milk that had been pasteurised, the milk was collected in tankers from the farms and processed by specialist dairies such as Neville & Griffin of Slough. Some farms initially brought the processed and bottled milk back to their farms and continued their own rounds. In the main it was left with the processors to retail the product. These were the post-war days of the Milk and Egg Marketing Boards. Cyril took over Saddocks Farm from his father Arthur. Besides growing feed crops for dairy and beef cattle, the farm grew cereals; pigs were kept by Arthur and chickens by Cyril.

T.A. BRYANT - ROYAL BERKS

T.A. BRYANT - ROYAL BERKS 

 

Thomas Arthur Bryant (Private No. 9813)

2nd Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment - 25th Brigade - 8th Division

Thomas was born in 1894 and lived at the family home at 15, Castle View Terrace, Victoria Road, Boveney. The Bryant family was one of the largest village families, and despite several very early deaths still raised nine or ten children. Five were boys, and it is believed that they were all educated locally and probably attended the Methodist Chapel in Alma Road. Thomas's brother Albert joined the navy when he first left school, and early in the war was listed as a Petty Officer 1st Class. He is believed to have served on H.M.S. Queen Mary, a modern battle cruiser. The Queen Mary was sunk by the enemy in the Battle of Jutland on May 31st 1916 along with 1266 officers and men. There were only about 20 survivors, so if Albert was still serving on the ship he was a very lucky man, as he survived the war.

Another brother, Fred Bryant, served as a driver in the Royal Engineers, attached to the Lancashire Fusiliers. Fred was seriously wounded on February 22nd 1917 but he too survived the war. Ernie also saw extensive service abroad with the army at that time. Lastly there was C.A. Bryant, known as Archie, born in 1899, who served with the Signal Section of the Berkshire Yeomanry in France.

Thomas enlisted in Reading and served with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment for what appears to be a very short time. At the outbreak of the Great War the Battalion was in Shansi, India. It sailed from India on the 16th day of the war and landed in England on October 22nd where it joined the 25th Brigade, 8th Division at Winchester. On November 5th 1914 they landed at Havre.

No evidence has been found to suggest that Thomas was a regular peacetime soldier and therefore he probably joined the Battalion when it arrived in England in October. The change of climate affected many of the troops returning from service in the East and Tom was very probably one of the soldiers used to maintain the Battalion strength. Whether or not he joined the Battalion in Winchester, Havre, or some other place we cannot be sure, but we do know that 11 days after the units arrival on the continent, he was dead. He is buried in Fauquissart Military Cemetery in France, situated 23/4 miles S.E. of Levant and seven miles S.W. of Armentieres.

Soldiers on the Western Front often had little time to adjust to the front line battle conditions, and Tom was certainly no exception. The Flanders town of Ypres stands about 2-300 feet above the miles of flat country that surrounds it. Because of its strategic position it was destined to be the scene of three long battles which came to be known as First, Second and Third Ypres. The First Ypres was an attempt by the defending British to "turn" the German Army flank. This commenced on October 19th 1914 and lasted nearly four weeks. The battle front extended many miles from south of Armentieres, south of Ypres, to beyond Langemarck, north of the city. It was nearly three weeks after the opening shots of the battle before the 2nd Royal Berkshires took up positions south of the line.

Opposing them were units of the German 6th Army. As a final strike in this Ypres battle, the enemy had planned a massive assault to take place on November 10th 1914 against the centre of the line, and simultaneously intended to apply strong pressure in the north and south. In the event the attack was postponed for one day as preparations in the south were not satisfactory.

The night of November 10/11th passed quietly with no indication of the assault to come. At daybreak a hurricane of shells struck the British trenches, forcing the defenders to crouch low and to wait. The attack itself was not a success, but this was to be Thomas Bryant's last day. We do not know whether he was killed in the early morning pre-assault barrage, or whether he died during the attack that day. The next three days were fierce with the German attackers sustaining 12,000 killed. The fighting exhausted both sides, and three days later, on November 15th, the assault ended.

Fauquissart, where Tom is buried, is a small cemetery containing 105 graves, all of United Kingdom soldiers who were killed in the area between November 1914 and the following year. Most of the men had belonged to the 2nd Royal Berkshires or 2nd Rifle Brigade. Tom's grave is number 11 in row A. He was Eton Wick's second war fatality; he was a single man and aged 20. He is commemorated on the Eton Wick War Memorial and on the tablets at the Eton Church Gates.

Thomas Bryant's stone 

in Fauquissart Cemetery

(Photos: CWGC and Helen Renshaw )

From the Commonwealth War Grave Commission

Graves Registration Report Book

 

 

Thomas Bryant's page on Lives of the First World War

This is an extract from Their Names Shall Be Carved in Stone 

and published here with grateful thanks to the author Frank Bond.

Local history websites - Windsor

The Royal Windsor website

This website is a collection of links to the websites about Windsor, past and present. The website includes a forum covering a wide range of topics.

Windsor, Berkshire - History

Windsor has a long and colourful history. Thanks to the royal connection there are lots of first hand documentary sources available for those interested in the history of the town of Windsor, Berkshire.

Windsor Local History Group

WLHG was founded in 1976 as Windsor Local History Publications Group. It was started by a small group of WEA students and tutors with the aim of fostering research in the field of local history and publishing the results. The name was changed in 2004.

A brief history of Windsor

Windsor began as a Saxon village. The name Windsor is believed to be a corruption of the Saxon words 'windlass Oran' meaning a bank with a windlass. After the Saxons founded the settlement it grew into a town because of its position by a river. In those days it was expensive to transport goods by land. It was cheaper to transport them by river. The Thames was an important artery between London and the heart of England. It was inevitable that a town would grow up on the site of Windsor.

History of Windsor in the Royal County of Berkshire

Windsor is, of course, best known for its castle, home of the British Monarchy for almost a thousand years, and the largest inhabited castle in the World. It has been suggested that it was built on the site of a Celtic camp where King Arthur or one of his subordinates lived as the town is mentioned a couple of times in Arthurian literature.

Windsor, Berkshire on Wikipedia

The early history of the site is unknown, although it was almost certainly settled some years before 1070 when William the Conqueror had a timber motte and bailey castle constructed.^[2] The focus of royal interest at that time was not the castle, however, but a small riverside settlement about 3 miles (5 km)downstream, possibly established from the seventh century.

Website of the British Monarchy

Windsor Castle is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. Over a period of nearly 1,000 years it has been inhabited continuously, and altered and refurbished by successive monarchs. Some were great builders, strengthening the Castle against uprising and rebellion; others, living in more peaceful times, created a palatial Royal residence.

Windsor on British History Online

The authentic history of Windsor Castle cannot be carried back beyond the 11th century. The romantic legends told by Froissart of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table at Windsor lack the foundation of prosaic record, but are interesting as representing the traditions as to the early history of Windsor which were current in the 14th and 15th centuries

Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead website.

How Eton Wick got it's name

The origins of Eton Wick's name by Judith Hunter

The origins of Eton Wick are unrecorded, but a clue may be found in its name.  The words themselves are old English and the name Eton was given to that village by the Saxons who, together with the Angles and Jutes, colonized this country in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.  The first part of the name the 'E' - has the same meaning as the suffix 'ey' of Dorney, Boveney and Chalvey and it would seem that all four 

villages were built on eyots or islands, small areas of drier land a few feet higher than the marshier land that surrounded them.  The damp oak woods of this part of the Thames valley were not particularly attractive to the Saxon farmers and it is more than likely that these sites were not used until the more favourable areas were fully settled.

From the suffix 'ton' we get our modern word, town, but in Saxon times this merely meant a village and the first Eton, situated somewhere in the area of the modern town, would have consisted only of a small collection of homesteads and a chief 'shall surrounded by a palisade.  Beyond the 'ton' the Saxons cleared the land for their large arable fields which they worked as a community.  By the streams, the land too wet for ploughing was left as meadow for hay, and beyond the fields and meadows was the common or waste where the animals were pastured in the summer.  Here too were the woods not yet cleared, a very important part of the economy of the settlement - as a source of building material, fuel and food in the autumn for the swine.

Sometime after the establishment of this first 'island village', perhaps only a generation or so or maybe a few hundred years, a fresh part of the woods or waste was cleared, and a group of   buildings put up where the dairy animals could be sheltered and probably butter, and cheese made.  In modern terms it might be described as the village dairy farm, though in those days the animals were likely to have been both sheep and cows, for sheep provided both wool and milk and could live on poorer pasture.  In the words of the Saxons this was the village 'wick' - Eton Wick had been born.

This is an extract from The Story of a Village: Eton Wick 1217 to 1977 by Judith Hunter

Mr and Mrs Cyril Tarrant

Mr Cyril Tarrant and his wife Vera

Mr Tarrant bred show poultry, specialising in rare and exotic breeds. He became a well-known poultry judge. This picture was taken around 1970 and shows Mr Tarrant's prize silver laced wyandottes.

Bob Tarrant's memories of farming in Eton Wick can be read here.

Albert J. Caesar: a soldier remembered on the Eton Wick War Memorial

With the information about Albert Caesar on the RBWM For King and Country website we have been able to find some further information about Albert Caesar to add to the research that Frank Bond undertook in the writing of Their Names Shall be Carved in Stone.

His birth is in the register for the January to March quarter of 1884.

He was baptised at Holy Trinity, Brompton on 11th May of that year and his parents were Albert and Jane. His father is recorded as being a Corporal of Horse in the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards and at the time was stationed at the Knightsbridge barracks (also known as Hyde Park barracks).

The 1891 Census shows that the 7 year old Albert is living with his parents at the Hyde Park Barracks, Knightsbridge. His father is recorded as still being a Corporal of Horse in the 2nd Regiment of the Life Guards. He is recorded as having two sisters, Constance and Dorothy.

The 1901 census records him at the London and North Western Hotel in Lime Street, Liverpool and is an employee of the hotel. His father is recorded as working as an attendant at the Wallace Collection. He, his wife and daughters are living in Battersea.

By the time of the 1911 census Albert was a Lance Sargent in the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards. He had been married to his wife Edith for 3 years and with their two sons, John, 2 and Albert, 1 were living in South Farnborough, Hampshire.

Albert's widow, Edith remarried in 1919 to Charles Pocock and emigrated to Australia in October 1922. She died aged 36 on 9th March 1923.

Our  original article telling the story of Albert Caesar can be read here.

For King and Country

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead are remembering The Great War with their For King and Country project. The website says

Thousands left the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead during the Great War, never to return. One of the enduring legacies we have of their sacrifice is the names on 200 war memorials in Windsor, Maidenhead and the surrounding villages.

As part of the project their team will be holding workshops around the Borough including one in Eton Wick. We will post details of this event when they are announced.

The site already has details of the servicemen whose names appear on the Eton Wick War Memorial including the first Eton Wick man who died during the early weeks of the war.

Albert Caesar's page on For King & Country project website

The Their names shall be carved in stone page for Albert Caesar.