There had been a murder in Brensham fifty years ago - the house where it had happened was still there, tumbledown and unoccupied, and was called the Murder House; and the family of the murderer and the family of the murdered person still survived and carried on the ancient feud! There was also a hermit, we were reliably informed, who lived in the tower at the top of the hill - Brensham Folly - and caught rabbits with his bare hands, and ate them raw. And fabulous indeed was the Colonel, who had a farm at Brensham and whom we saw almost every day, and usually twice a day, as he passed down Elmbury High Street on his way to the Swan Hotel. He rode, in those days, upon a very old motor-cycle which made a peculiar and distinctive chuffling noise. He sat up very straight, as he had doubtless been taught to do in the Cavalry before the Boer War. He wore a faded green jacket, knee-breeches, and a deerstalker hat: a suit which, with trifling differences in the cut, might have been made for Robin Hood. But his face, as much of it as was visible between his chin-high muffler and the long peak of his deerstalker, was not like Robin Hood’s at all. It was fire-red, save for the nose, which was purple. Below the nose was a badger-grizzled walrus moustache, which in winter became hoar with frost. Between the nose and the peak of his hat one could sometimes see his eyes, which were extraordinarily blue and twinkling. The general effect was curiously elfin or gnome-like. His jacket had big poacher’s pockets which bulged with hares, rabbits, wild ducks and pheasants in season, and at all seasons with bottles of whisky.

For it was whisky, whispered Old Nanny, hinted our parents, declared with a leer lean spidery Pistol - whisky that beckoned the old gentleman twice daily to the Swan, sustained him in winter as he chuffled home in frost or snow, revived him when he came back from wading knee-deep through icy waters in pursuit of wild-fowl. It was the fire from the bottle, they said, that burnt in his glowing cheeks, the bottle was the paint-pot which decorated his purple nose!

But we brats were no moralists. The Colonel was weird and wonderful, he belonged to the greenwood we were sure, he had some obscure affinity with Robin Hood. He was scarcely ever to be seen without some article of sporting impedimenta strapped to his motor-bicycle or slung over his shoulder: fishing-baskets, guns, salmon-rods, otter-poles, cartridge-bags, even rat-traps! In winter when snow lay on the ground he even appeared, on his way to stalk geese, in his sister’s night-shirt, with a white night-cap on his head. It was said that when he failed to borrow a night-shirt he obtained a shroud and wore that. If such beings as he must feed on whisky, that only made them more marvellous in our eyes.

The Way to the Hill

Oddly enough, I do not remember the precise occasion when with Dick, Donald and Ted I first scrambled up the gorsy slopes of Brensham Hill. What I remember is a synthesis of many days we spent there during that first summer holiday from prep school.

The way to the hill from Elmbury took us through Brensham Village, which was long and straggling and ran in a semi-circle more or less coincident with one of the lower contours. The houses were mostly half-timbered, with deep straw thatch, and their gardens were full of old-fashioned flowers, hollyhocks and peonies, sweet-williams and rambler roses, red-hot pokers and love-lies-bleeding. There was a scent of gillyflowers which I remember still; so that whenever I smell it I think of Brensham.

There was a church with a tall spire, beside which three poplars grew, and spaced through the village at decent intervals there were three pubs, the Horse and Harrow, the Trumpet, and the Adam and Eve. The Horse and Harrow, was locally spoken of as the Horse Narrow, which was confusing to strangers and had certainly confused the itinerant artist who had painted its inn-sign; for he had represented with meticulous accuracy a horse and an arrow. Nobody minded; nobody suggested taking the sign down and altering it, or making the artist paint a new one. The thing was a good joke; so much the better. That was the Brensham attitude and, looking back upon it now, I can see that it was typical of Brensham, where the people are humorous and tolerant and crack-brained and wise.

The Adam and Eve also had its painted sign. The artist this time had given full value for money; the tree, the forbidden fruit (undoubtedly a Cox’s Orange Pippin), the serpent, the two naked figures, all were there in careful detail. If you looked closely you perceived that Eve’s face wore a look of mischievous and disingenuous delight, not to say satisfaction; clearly, she had eaten the apple and enjoyed it. But there were some who said that the model for Eve had been the red-headed wanton little puss of a barmaid who served in the pub when the artist was staying there.

In the middle of the village was a turning off the road, called Magpie Lane, which led to the cricket-field and also to the Colonel’s farm. Along this lane were a lot of little cottages which belonged to the Colonel; and I shall never forget my astonishment when I saw a number of small girls, who were the daughters of the cottagers, curtsy to the Colonel as he passed by on his motor-bike. He waved back, and his blue eyes twinkled. I had never seen a curtsy before; it was an enchanting sight, the small girls in their print frocks clutching the hem and bobbing, and the grotesque and wonderful old man waving back, at some peril to his stability, as he chugged by on his fantastical machine. It seemed to me entirely proper that he should receive these marks of respect; and I tugged hard at the peak of my school-cap as he went by.

Immediately opposite Magpie Lane was Mrs Doan’s Post Office and Village Stores, which sold almost everything from fish-hooks to corn-plasters.