Even in a small Country Parish there are moments of indescribable rush and confusion. Take a Sunday when the Vicar is away on holiday. There is a parson to be fetched for the 8 0′ clock and to be taken home afterwards. If he lives 5 miles away that means 20 miles to go. The Vestments and the linen have to be tidied away leaving only time for a hurried breakfast. Sunday School takes place at 10 and I am there to open it and read the prayers. On this occasion a representative from a Missionary Society is coming to take Matins and

I have to be at Wycombe to meet his train at 10.25. I dash over there, only to find he has not arrived. Coming home my radiator boils and I have to beg water from a house. I ring Mr Bacon who agrees to read the service. I am just in time to get back to the Parish Room to close Sunday School and then comes the idea of getting the organist to give a recital instead of the sermon. And so the arrangements go smoothly on.

Another Sunday the visiting Parson sent me word at 2.30pm that he felt ill and would be unable to take the Children’s Service at 3. On rushing down to the Church I found that a large number of parents had come with their children so the only thing to do was to open the Parish Room and invite them all in there for hymns, prayers and intercessions. Being quite unprepared it was something of an ordeal.

Dr. Chennels

Dr Chennells, old and somewhat infirm – occasionally did duty when the Vicar was away. All arrangements had been made for him to officiate at a wedding and I had laid out the Registers in the Vestry. He asked me to be present and I took up my position in a pew at the back of the Church to say the responses. As the happy couple came down the aisle I smiled at them and the bridegroom held out his hand. I gripped his in a congratulatory grasp only to find a 2/6 tip left in my palm!

On putting away the Registers I discovered that Dr Chennells had allowed the couple to sign in the wrong place. Before going away the Vicar had filled in the Certificate for 2 Weddings and today’s couple had put their signatures to the wrong certificate. This had to be dealt with at once.

When the Vicar was away

Things always seemed to go wrong when the Vicar went away.

Tiresome little things such as the organ refusing to function in the middle of the service. On that occasion we sang the hymns unaccompanied, assisted by the queer noises and finger clipping on the part of the organist.

One evening, during a thunderstorm, the lights fused and we were left in almost complete darkness.

My most amazing experience was perhaps the visit of the old blind parson. He only agreed to come and take duty for 4 weeks if I would be there to help him.

He was stone blind, even light shade having no meaning for him. His courage and bravery were quite extraordinary. He scorned to feel his way into Church, but walked up the aisle with marvellous assurance and missed the edges and corners by a hairbreadth. One could hear the sharp intake of breath among the more sympathetic of the congregation as he made straight for the jagged edge of carving and then as miraculously, missed it.

During the whole month he was taking duty I had to attend to him in everything.  Each morning when there was an early Celebration I reached the Vestry at 7.50am and found him there waiting for me. He was standing in his cassock quite still with his hands clasped in front of him – it was almost like dressing a child – and to assure him that all was tidy. He read the Service from memory and his last words to me before he went into Church were “If I by any chance forget where I have got to, please continue with the prayers loudly enough for me to hear so that I can carry on.” The result was I never dared to take my eyes off the printed book.

He asked me to come up last to the Altar Rails and to give his surplice a little pull so that he should know he had come to the end of the Administrations.

He waited for me in the Vestry after Services to arrange matters for the day (I soon got to know which of his Braille books he needed) and one morning I let him go home alone. As I was folding away the linen I suddenly had a hunch that all was not well and I hurried out to look for him. To my horror I found him on the point of falling down the stokehole steps. Quite gently I called to him to stand still till I came and I took his arm and led him to his own gate.

He was anxious to visit Whipsnade and I took him and his boy (aged 7) over there for the afternoon. He and I wandered arm in arm all over the zoo while I described everything in a running commentary. Some days later a friend told me she had met him out at ten and was amazed at his descriptions of Whipsnade and all the animals and wondered if he was not as blind as he pretended to be!

The strain was very great and my nerves were a wreck by the end of the month. He was a miracle in himself. He had completely triumphed over his disability. There was always a smile on his face, although he had been blind since a child he would describe things in his sermons as if he really saw them. I suppose it was his way of making up to himself for the frustration of blindness.

His Church in London was St Judes Thornton Heath and they said he lived a charmed life for he crossed the busy roads by himself choosing a safe moment as if by instinct. He built a new Church and ten days before the Consecration it was burnt to the ground. His boy, the joy of his life, died at school when he was 14 years old.

Oh Heavenly Father, who hast given to these earthly parents the gift of a little child, we pray Thee, if it be Thy will, that she may live and grow up to happy and healthy womanhood. But if it shall please Thee to take her to Thyself again in the beginning of her earthly life, grant that she may live and grow in Thy Heavenly Kingdom, and ever behold the face of Him who is the friend of little children, Jesus Christ our Saviour.

A vision arises of a grey face with watery blue eyes – the cheeks flabby and ingrained with dirt – a husky breathless voice, deep toned and grey hair thin and ill kept. She was often to be met with on the road in her very old and shabby grey clothes. She always had a kindly smile and her body was emaciated – I should imagine with semi-­starvation.

The story has it that she and Jack Piggott were sweethearts. He was tall, good looking and a soldier. She waited years for him amd when he returned from India suffering from the effects of sunstroke, he had no need of her. She poor soul, remained faithful and devoted, but her sorrow affected her brain. She lived alone in one of the cottages in Victoria Road. (Cabbage Row, one of the slums of Tylers Green) and took in quantities of religious tracts which she would give to the children on the road and she cared nothing for their ribald laughter of her.

Some years ago, she fell very ill. Her landlady, Mrs H Wheeler, wanted to help her but for excellent reasons of her own she did not wish to be seen taking her provisions. In response to her request, I agreed to take them, and for a little while I visited Miss Kearsey almost daily.

The filth of herself and her home were unspeakable. The Doctor told me he had met nothing to equal it during all his time in the slums of London. It was necessary to sprinkle myself with Keating’s powder before each visit.

She lay or sat by day and by night on a couch covered in rags. Every now and then she would reach for a basket underneath this bed and take from it a dirty cup. She told me that this was her “food”. It looked like a little bread and milk mixed up with scraps of other things and I think she just added to it without removing the remains or washing the cup. This then, was her food during her entire illness. Starvation probably brought down her temperature but it also made her lightheaded and I have sat and listened while she told me that God was speaking to her through the wall. His voice ran round the fireplace

and told her strange things if she listened. It was so secret that I had to bend over her while she put her face closely touching mine and whispered gibberish in my ear. Every time the neighbours poked their fire in the next house it was to her the voice of the Almighty full of dread warnings.

Her story is bound up with that of Jack Pigott and when he lived alone she used to bring him dishes of food and give him the only attention he ever had.

Piggott lived with his mother and a widowed sister in a cottage across the Common which has now been demolished to make room for the red brick buildings belonging to Barclay’s Bank. The old mother with her keen eyes and a masterful spirit was bedridden for a long time before she died and the sister married again most unwisely, and when Pigott was left alone, his mind, never very strong, gave way more and more. On moonlight nights he would stand on the Common shouting the most absence language. I think he was quite harmless but the children were a little afraid of him as they met him in the woods and commons. He once told my small daughter that she was the prettiest little girl in Tylers Green.

Finally he neglected himself so much that he ceased to be even decently clothed and when it was cold and he had no wood, he tore down the woodwork of the cottages to kindle a fire, – doors, cupboards and even the staircase.

When it became necessary to certify him and to remove him to the workhouse, his going was stormy and he fought them on the Common. In the end it was the Vicar who was able to persuade him to go and the familiar, slovenly figure, known to most of us as “Piggotty” unkempt and unclean was no longer seen in the village.

There comes vividly to my memory the efforts we made to collect money and how thrilled we were to respond to suggestions for improving the amenities of Tylers Green.

There was the first village fete in the Vicarage meadow with the butter-slide as a novelty. What hard work it was laying down the mats and pushing the children off- sending three on a mat – and the success of it all.

Another year there was a fete in Captain Soames’ Meadow when I was doing the teas. There was a large marquee in the depression at the bottom of the field and it started to rain about 11.00 am and by lunch time the mud was inches deep and gum boots were necessary to reach the tent at all. We had insured against rain by paying a premium of about £20. The required amount of rain – 3 inches, fell before 12 o’clock owing to a terrific thunderstorm, and we were paid the full £100. It had cleared up by the opening so that the Fete proceeded with good success.

I have another vision of a Sports Day on the Common on a Whit Monday long ago, when the rain never ceased the whole afternoon. Many of us took cover, for at least part of the time, but the Vicar had the job of starter and stood at his post. I can see him now standing hour after hour with an expression of reconciled patience on his face giving out the races in a voice of utter despondency – his coat collar buttoned up tight round his neck, his hat rammed on his head and the’ water pouring off it in a continual stream down his back.

There was a day when the school children were to perform plays and dances in Mrs Roses’ garden. A day or two before, a case of diphtheria occurred and this so frightened the lady that she refused to open her garden to the public. The deferred performance was unlucky and rain marred the proceedings.

The summer of 1919 was exceptionally wet and prospects for the Fete arranged to take place in Sir Robert Evans’ field looked bad. We carried on courageously and tents and marquees were pitched on Friday and Saturday in readiness for the Monday. It was our practice to hold these Fetes on Bank Holidays and to have no entrance fee and we found that this custom paid over and over again.

It rained a good deal on the Saturday and the carts ploughed up the passageway leading from the road to the field. On Sunday the heavens seemed to open and there was torrential rain the whole day. After evensong it had cleared a little and I put on gum boots and went up to see what the place looked like. The mud was deep and the long grass was sopping. I found tents half down with the weight of the water and there were pools quite a foot deep in the depression of the roofs and I had to get several men to help me lift them sufficiently to let the water run away. I went to bed feeling quite hopeless – in fact the situation could not be worse. I remember waking early and looking out of my window to see a cloudless sky and the promise of a perfect Summer’s Day. This promise was maintained and by 2.00pm we were in thin cotton frocks basking in the sun and sitting on the dry grass during a very successful afternoon. Truly a miracle. The only fly in the ointment was Mr Eric PeIIy’s Cinema show, one of the first travelling talkies which he generously provided for the fete. He did not like the site high up on the drier ground and preferred to drive the heavy engine right across the field.

As they were turning the wheels stuck in the mud and it was only after borrowing a team of plough horses that it was possible to drag it out of the mire and place it in position. I think it was these heart burning situations and the agonies of apprehension which we, who undertook the organisation of these fetes, went through that inspired me to inaugurate in their place the Christmas Fair. If it is not possible to make quite such a lot of money, one at least cuts down one’s expenses. Hire of tents and chairs and the cartage of necessities runs away with £20 or £30, while the expenses for a Christmas Fair do not exceed £5 altogether.

Small nervous and an artist, Stanley Bridges has been organist at Tylers Green Church since 1929, coming up from Wycombe Sunday by Sunday and bringing with him a following of young men who would do anything for him. First they came by bus, and many a time I have driven them back to Wycombe when the buses did not fit in with the times of services.

Bridges was efficient and, as a rule, got what he wanted. His notices were models of neatness and his Choir was completely under his control. His touch on the organ was delicate, whimsical and entirely delightful and he never forgot that he was accompanying his choir. An artist to his finger tips, it was difficult for him always to subdue the musical to the necessity for congregational singing, for music was to him worship. He would quite frankly omit to practise a hymn that he had been particularly asked for if he thought his Choir could not render it satisfactorily. He had a wonderful way with his men and they would turn up regularly on Sundays and come on many an extra night to practise a new anthem or the oratories which he so successfully produced as a special service in Holy Week.

And now as I read in today’s Bucks Free Press of his tragic death by suicide the memory of Stanley Bridges comes vividly before me. A slight figure with the slender and nervous hands of a musician and artist. His age of 52 must have come as a surprise to many of us who saw only the spare form and the keen eyes surmounted with the youthful brown hair so carefully arranged and yet the strange stilted walk, the lined but humorous face and the quick nervous movements suggested an older man than he appeared to be.

Certainly the Church owes a great deal to Stanley Bridges, for his own personal music (of which he gave so unstintingly) and his training of our Choir gave an uplift to the Services and brought pleasure to very many who came to worship.

And now the restless little figure has gone to his long home and many of us will go on wondering at the strange personal magnetism which drew to him men of such diverse personalities. To women he was aloof and it is said that he was a woman hater, but whether it was shyness or antipathy who shall say?

There has passed to her eternal rest Alice Tiffin aged 71 and her place in Tylers Green will be hard to fill. She was a lass of the North Country with a rugged face, pale and deeply lined – blue eyes deep set and a chin full of determination. The sternness in the face was softened by a look of patient resignation and a quick spontaneous smile. She had worked hard to the very end. A cook by profession she had seen excellent service with titled families and her humble and deferential manner were, one imagines, the outcome of those days. Pride in the best sense of the word seemed part of Mrs Tiffin, for she took an intense pride in all she did and in her immediate family. Her home was spotless and nothing was allowed to interfere with the daily work in it. In all she undertook to do in the affairs of the village she was punctual, efficient and responsible. A very high sense of honour was hers and an integrity of purpose. Her religion was a very real thing and her willing work for the Church was the direct outcome of her love of God and her uprightness of life, for Alice Tiffin was a very good woman.

I fancy she resented the barrier of class and to her only child, Ethel, she tried to give a better education that she or her husband had enjoyed. Ethel lived at home and gave typing and music lessons. Tiffin was a gardener and it can only have been by the most amazing thrift and economy that they gained the position in the village that was theirs.

Music was the family’s recreation. They all sang but perhaps Mrs Tiffin enjoyed it more than they all. I can see her now at Social evenings with her head slightly raised following the singer with eyes alight and then bursting forth with the refrain with a seraphic expression on her face. They were the most devoted family I ever knew and when Ethel married they all lived together in perfect harmony.

For a time everyone in the village went to sleep at night in dread of peeping Tom. He was a young man who crept about after dark with a ladder which he would place against the walls of a house so that he could reach to the level of the lighted bedroom windows. Not a few have been terrified to find a face looking into their windows as they were undressing for bed.