Our mother worked hard washing and cooking for
us all. She was a very good cook but at times she was at her wits end finding
enough food for us as money wasn’t easy to come by in those days especially
when my father was ill. I suppose we were lucky in lots of ways because
where we lived, surrounded by beautiful hills of the South Down, the gardens
were big and the soil was good. Our father, in spite of his repeated ill
health managed to grow most of the vegetables that we needed. We used to
live on lots of stew and a big treat some times on a Saturday was when
we managed to get a dozen cracked or soft shelled eggs from the local farm.We
spent a lot of our childhood on those beautiful Sussex hills, and used
to find lots of good things to eat, like wild strawberries, raspberries,
blackberries, hazel nuts, Chestnuts, and sometimes a wild rabbit, that
had been killed by the poor man’s friend, a stoat. Around September, it
was mushroom time and talking of mushrooms, that reminds me of the story
that I wanted to tell you.
| One September day all those years ago, my mother
asked me, and one of my brothers if we could get up early the next morning
and go and get some mushrooms from the farm about a mile away, next to
a big forest. Everyone used to pick wild mushrooms. They were very plentiful
in those days the local farmer was very good and so as long as you shut
the meadow gates and did no damage, he allowed the village people to pick
them on his farm.
Six o’clock on that Saturday morning arrived all too soon for me. I was about twelve years old at the time and my brother and I didn’t take kindly to leave our beds so early in the morning. But we did and with two other boys we set off to the forest farm, little knowing what we were to experience. Something that we would never forget. Firstly let me describe the place we were going to, then you will understand what I will be talking about later on in my story. To get to the mushroom meadows, we had to walk along a dust covered rough road, with high banks and hedges on both sides. Between two hills, the road twisted and turned for about 1½ miles, until we come to a small hill. From here the farm and the meadows rolled away into the distance and ended at a big forest of beautiful beach trees. The forest stretched for three or four miles long. About a mile wide, it was rather a dark and foreboding place and to us young boys there was an air of mystery about the whole place. We had heard lots of stories of the dark deeds that were supposed to have taken place there in the past. Stories of Highway men, and the old Sussex smugglers. Of how they had used the forest to hide the loot and brandy to themselves when the police and excise men were looking for them. With these thoughts in the back of our minds we arrived at the place to pick our mushrooms. Any fears or doubts we did have were soon forgotten as we started to look for the best mushrooms. I remember how peaceful it was. Hardly a sound apart from a noisy Jay who didn’t like us being there, and the shrill cry of a blackbird which we disturbed as it searched for worms and insects for its breakfast. Suddenly we were all strangely overcome by a kind of fear All at once we heard the sound of a horse at full gallop, coning towards us. Nearer and nearer it came then all at once we saw a pure white horse at full gallop and on its back sat a lady dressed in white. The thing I still remember was her beautiful long fair hair, streaming our behind her. She rode straight on, looking straight ahead and never to the left or to the right and in just a few moments the lady and the white horse had disappeared into the forest. To say we were frightened, would be a joke. We were petrified and without a word we all turned and beat it for home as fast as out legs could run. As we reached the village, we seemed to recover our composure and I think we all felt a bit stupid and wondered if we had imagined the whole thing. One thing I do know our mother was disgusted with the few mushrooms that we had got. My brother and I were in the dog hose for quite a while. Looking back I find it strange that we never told her why we came back home so quickly and why we didn’t get many mushrooms. As far as I remember we never talked to the other boys about the incident. The years passed by. We all left school and soon most of us were working at the local sawmills which was almost as big as the rest of the village. About 150 people worked there. I guess we were lucky to have a job, as there was not a lot of work apart from the farm. Most of the timber used at the sawmill from the forest. The trees were felled and brought down to the mill by caterpillar tractors and huge timber wagons down that same old twisting road that we had walked up that September morning years ago.The peace of the quiet countryside was shattered most of the day by the crash of falling tees, buzz saws, and the roar of the tractor engines, on their way to the meal. A team crane unloaded the trees, which were cross cut into lengths and loaded on to band mills which sawed them into planks, some to be stacked to dry and some to be cut into squares and all sized for the furniture trade.The saw mill machines were driven by a steam portable engine and another one was connected to a turbine and that gave the power for lights and some of the saws. It was a full time job for a man to look after the engines and to keep the fires up in the boilers so that the steam pressure was enough to turn the engine’s piston to drive the mill. Sometimes the engine man let the pressure get too low and slowly the power got lower and lower. So when this happened he had to stop the engine for about 10 minutes so that he could put more water into the boiler and get the pressure up again. It was on such an afternoon as this in late summer. The sunshine was beautiful and warm and to our delight the engine had to stop. We quickly went outside the mill, and sat down in the sunshine. Close by old Charlie, who worked on the local farm, was loading a farm cart with sawdust, which they used in the cow pens to help keep the floors clean. They used to scatter it on the fields after it was taken out of the barn. Charlie was a well known character . He had lived in the village most of his life. It was said he was born in a lonely old house on the edge of the forest. The house was no longer there. It had fallen down years before and apart from a few bricks, very little trace of it was left. It was also said that Charlie descended from a family of Sussex smugglers. I believe that this might have been true. Well there we were sitting in the sun this September afternoon, when suddenly the conversation turned to the Lady on the White Horse. We still never understood why we talked about her that afternoon. My brother and the other boys who had been with us that morning by the forest were amazed when old Charlie suddenly said to us |
This was all news to me. Then on reflection I thought if we did really
see her, it would account for the strange apprehension we all felt on that
September morning when we were boys. Shortly after Charlie went off with
his load of sawdust, the Mill engine started up and back to work we went
to our task of sawing up the timber. Once again The Lady on the White Horse
was forgotten.
Quickly our teen years passed away, and the clouds of war were gathering, all around the countries of Europe. Most of us were married by now and still working hard at the sawmill. Then on a beautiful day in September 1939 all hell was let loose for the next six years. It was war. Everyone’s lives soon changed and at the sawmill we were all working for the war effort. The logs were now cut into rifle parts and ammunition boxes and many other things needed to help to win the war. When the call came for a local defense force, most of us joined at once and soon we were working all day and being a soldier at nights and weekends. Night after night we heard the whistling scream of bombs. One weekend in September 1941, we were warned to keep a strict watch out for German Parachutists who were believed to have been or to be dropped in our area. By this time the surrounding hills and most of the forest had been taken over by the army and the mushroom meadows and the farm was a range for Bren guns and morter bombs and the country side was swarming with soldiers day and night on exercise. One Sunday afternoon a lady who lived in the village decided to try and get some mushrooms and made her way up to the forest meadows. She was in great danger as she might have been blown up or shot. No one was allowed here any more but on she went. Suddenly she dashed back to the village and reported that she had seen parachutists in the forest. This set the alarm off and we were all called out and with loaded tommy guns and rifles with a platoon of regular soldiers we searched all around the spot, where years a go us boys had seen The Lady on a White Horse. At the time it crossed my mind about her and thought what a coincident it was. Here I was where as a kid I had looked for mushrooms, but this time I had a Tommy gun in my hands with 50 rounds in its magazine looking for Germans. We searched the area in vain. We found no one, so we were dismissed and back home we went. I must say I felt sorry for the lady who called us out , because at the following weekend our local newspaper really went to town on her. They suggested that she had got a basket of mushrooms and had fallen down. The mushrooms shot into the air then as the had fallen down, she must have thought they were parachutists. For a while she was the laughing stock of the village. I often wished since that I had asked her about what she saw. I’m sure she must have seen something. Alas she is now dead, so I’ll never know for sure what she did see. I still wonder if she saw The Lady on the White Horse. I did make a mental note at the time that this was the third time in my lifetime the lady appeared always around mushroom time. After six long years the war ended. Many changes had come about since September 1939. Most people felt relieved and felt restless in their jobs. I felt like this so I left the firm where I had worked for about 19 years. I got a job as a charge hand for the Duke of Richmond in a much smaller saw mill just a few miles away. I enjoyed the change very much. My new boss was an ex army captain. He was about my age and we got on very well. He didn’t know a lot about saw milling but he enjoyed Fox Hunting. I didn’t look on this as a sport. I felt it was a bit cruel but was his choice. On Saturday morning when he came over to the sawmill on horse to tell me he would not be staying as he was off to the hunt. He said the meet was on the Downs near the forest, not far from the mushroom meadows. So off he went. I finished my morning’s work and as I cycled home it started to rain. Just my luck, I thought. Work hard all week and at weekends it has to rain. In spite of the weather, my wife our two children and I enjoyed our weekend together. On the following Monday morning my boss came into the office looking rather fed up and not very happy. We said good morning and I asked him if he had enjoyed the hunt on Saturday. No, he said it wasn’t very good. It was such a wet afternoon, that the dogs could not get the scent of a fox. They called it off early in the afternoon, then out of the blue he said, Ernie do you know the track down through the forest that leads to the village where you used to live? I replied that knew it well. I had a feeling what he was going to tell me next. The captain then said, Well that’s the end of my story so far. Do you believe it? Did we really see the beautiful Lady on the White Horse when we were kids? Was old Charlie pulling our legs when he said she was a ghost? I still wonder what the lady saw when she called the army out that Sunday in September when she was looking for mushrooms, and my Boss - he was over 6 feet tall and was over 15 stone in weight. I wonder what made him feel so uneasy when he rode through the forest, and the horses why did they behave strangely. We have never been back since that day in the war. That’s along time ago now. I don’t know if the Lady still rides through the Forest. If you are down that way in September keep a look out and let me know if you see anything or feel anything uncanny, I’d like to know if she’s still there. Do I believe it well if I don’t then it’s a good story - but I do. Good bye now, enjoy your next meal of mushrooms think of me and my story whilst you eat them Ernie 1985 |
