A Romp With The Band Of Hope (21 February 1975)

Sunday evenings at Fenny Stratford during the early part of this century were regularly enlivened by the baa-baaing of two or three hundred sheep who passed through the town on their way to Bletchley railway station.

The sheep belonged to Mr Janes, of Mount Farm, Simpson.  Besides being a farmer, he was a sheep trader or dealer, receiving sheep from other farmers and taking them all to the station in time for the Monday morning market in London.

It was a regular occurrence and it provided us boys with a bit of excitement,” says 85-year-old Mr Frank Howard.  “There was only one drover – a Mr Yates – for the whole lot.  Behind him plodded a horse drawing a cart in which he placed any sheep that went lame on the way.

“We boys waited around until we heard the distant bleating.  Then the cry went up.  We ran to meet the sheep, then right willingly helped conduct them to station, chasing and collaring any that were inclined to go astray.”

It amuses me to speculate on what would happen were a similar passage attempted today.   Sheep could hardly be expected to observe the rules of the roundabouts!

Another memory of Mr Howard and his sister, Mrs Mabel Smith, is of the Band of Hope meetings that used to be held at the old Wesleyan Sunday School in the High Street, and more particularly of the romps that preceded them.  Mrs Smith recalls how on one occasion in the chapel, boys went up into the balcony and let down a thick woollen scarf to haul girls up from the chapel floor.  The story gave me a strange at-home feeling.

When I was a child my parents, too, sent me once a week to a Band of Hope meeting at the Methodist Sunday School.  There we children were supposed to be indoctrinated with the principle of total abstinence from strong drink, culminating in the signing of the “pledge.”

My parents were abstainers at a time when drunkenness was rife and it was only natural that they should bring me up in the way I should go – that is to say, in the way they had gone.

The meetings were conducted by a sturdy old man, who gave us little homilies on the dangers of doing something we were not aware of and on the advantages of not doing it, one of them being that he was now able to wear the gold half-Albert watch-chain across his waistcoat.

Contrary to what you might expect, those meetings were anything but dour.  There was much romping and sky-larking before and after them and sometimes in between as well, when we sang songs from a special Band of Hope songbook.

In due course I became the pianist.   At the beginning of the meetings the old man called us to order and took us by the ear if we didn’t obey, then he said “Now all stand up excepting thee (pointing at me) and thee sit down.”  Thereupon I sat down at the piano and all piped up the Band of Hope anthem, which went something like this:

Merry Dick you soon would know, if you lived in Jackson’s Row

He is singing in his place

My drink is water bright, water bright, water bright

My drink is water bright from the crystal spring

We children could understand this.  There were three springs in the hillside from which we drew water whenever the household tap ran dry, which it frequently did – and it tasted better, too.

In due course I signed the “pledge.”  Alas, in later years I frequently backslid, with the excuse that an oath taken in childhood is like one taken under duress in that you cannot be held to it.

I was relieved a few months ago when my sole surviving uncle threw a party for his 90^th birthday which included the usual range of drinks.  Said my wife teasingly:  “Why, I am surprised at you, Uncle Jim.  Didn’t you sign the pledge like all the other old Hepworths?”  And he answered:  “Aye, mony a time, lass.”