About the Project Stories
Donkey Lane Dwellers - Recollections of Local Residents
According to a history of Chinnor compiled by members of the WI in the late 1940s Keanes (sic) Lane was named after the Keane family who for 300 years occupied Hill Farm beside the lane. There were cottages with mud walls on the lane close to the railway crossing. These were inhabited by men who carted flints, for road making down from the hills using donkeys. The carters' donkeys grazed in the grassy lane and so Keane's Lane became Donkey Lane. They also carried wood for chairmaking. 'Donkey Jimmy' is remembered as the last and proud owner of four donkeys.
Recollections of the late Mabel Howlett
“Chinnor has always been my home and I have never wanted to live anywhere else. In 1952 I married my second husband who worked for the Eggleston’s at Hill Farm and we went to live in a cottage in Keens Lane dating back to the 1600s. The cottages were on the left when walking up the lane [before the railway crossing and is now a field]. We always knew Keens Lane as Donkey Lane. There were two cottages, the other was occupied by Syd Heybourne, his wife Doris and daughters Jean and Joan. Syd looked after the pigs and farm gardens and tennis courts.
Rent for the cottage was one shilling a week and the rates ninepence [together roughly 10p in today’s money]. There were no drains of any kind, just an earth lavatory at the top of the garden and a tin bath kept hanging on the shed wall and fetched in for bath nights. We washed our dishes and prepared vegetables etc at the kitchen table and drew water from the well in buckets. Someone asked me how many buckets I drew on a wash day (Monday). I wasn't sure so the next week I counted them and it was thirty.
People tried to keep the houses nice on the inside, but decorating a room was a major operation. First, we had to borrow the book of wallpaper patterns from Mr. Johnson’s shop in the High Street (today a private house: ‘Dillamores’), then once the whole family had agreed on a paper, it had to be ordered. By the time it had arrived we had whitewashed the ceiling with chalk and water with a blue bag added to make it white. The painting had been done (usually dark brown) with paint from Mr Arnold. Mabel then goes into great detail about the hanging of the wallpaper with paste made from flour and hot water that needed endless stirring to remove the lumps. Quite an undertaking. (Ed)
One day when I went to draw water from the well, I heard a cat meowing. My neighbour then drew a bucket but she couldn’t hear it. Mr Keen, who was a cowman at the farm, came up the lane so I called him over but he couldn’t hear the cat either. He said he would sit by the well while I drew a bucket. I always gave the handle a pull and then let it go by itself. Everyone heard the cat then. Syd came up from the farm and attached a basket to the rope. He let it down carefully and the kitten clung on to it. The kitten was nearly at the top when it fell off again and landed back in the same crevice. Eventually someone had to make a trip to Potters in Thame to borrow a long rope ladder which they attached to a wooden ladder. Syd then went down and brought the kitten up. Joan, Syd’s daughter put a hot water bottle in her doll’s pram, tucked the kitten up in it and within half an hour it was running around none the worse for its adventures.
Mr Eggleton did all he could to get the cottages modernised but in the end he built two new cottages for us on the opposite side of the lane. Piped water had come to the village so there was a smart bathroom and a copper for boiling water and washing. After we had moved into the new cottages my husband was asked to tie a rope to the chimney of the old cottages and pull them down with the tractor, which he sadly did.”
More Recollections
Lillian Morby remembers coming from London to live in Chinnor in the late 1950s where her ancestors the Howlett and Rogers families lived in the Orchard in the 1800s. One day she was walking up Keens Lane and noticed some nice net curtains in the window of a derelict cottage on the left hand side of the lane. She presumed they had been abandoned and thought they could be useful. As she went to get them a fierce woman appeared and told her to put them back because it was her cottage and her curtains. The woman was Doris Heybourne, wife of Syd who had recently moved into the new cottages. Lillian did as asked.
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| Back row L-R Syd and Doris Heybourne |
Val Wells, who lived in the cottage with her mother Mabel Howlett, had lots of family including cousins living in the High Street and remembers being part of a large group of children who called themselves the Top of Chinnor gang. They roamed freely in the High Street, running and riding their bikes up and down. They also hung out in the meadow opposite the Orchard. During the second world war they were joined by evacuees. Val remembers games of cricket in Donkey Lane with neighbours, the Heybournes and family. Her stepfather Derek Howlett kept chickens in the Orchard and used to sell eggs which Val had to wash. He was very kind to her but as a stroppy teenager, if he had grounded her for some misdemeanor, an occasional egg would 'slip' out of her fingers.
Until the end of the last war, there were three Tudor houses near the present Post Office. According to Norah Neighbour they were in a close called The Avenue but known to all Chinnor people as The Workhouse Yard. The workhouse was well constructed and may have been used at some time to house the poor. Norah remembers the gardens being let out as allotments. Her father found remnants of many clay pipes on his which may have belonged to workhouse inhabitants. Val remembers playing with the Harmsworth children from the house which by the 1940s had become a private house.
In Mabel and Val's time Donkey Lane was the main village route to the hills. Val remembers Sunday family walks, maybe stopping at the Pheasant pub for refreshments. In the winter, the lane was a great place for sledging. Michael Morby remembers sledging from top to bottom and that on a good run you could reach the Orchard, providing you were careful to avoid the shrubby obstacles at the bottom of the horseshoe. The lane remains a popular route to the Ridgeway for walkers (with or without dogs) horse-riders and cyclists and a great spot to see the trains. Also a good place to remember the past.
Thanks to Mabel Howlett, Val Wells, Norah Neighbour, Julie Slaymaker (daughter of Lillian Morby), Lillian and Michael Morby for sharing their recollections.
Pam Coull - Orchard Story Group July 2022
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| Explanation Map |
If you would like to know more about the Donkey Lane Community Orchard project or get involved, please contact Linda on 07973 788993 or email greeningchinnor@gmail.com.
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