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arms found in alms
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| Arthur Woodward with the stray bullets found in the almshouse walls during restoration |
ROCHFORD'S almshouses were built so old people could enjoy a serene retirement. But the buildings were not always peaceful places, to judge by evidence embedded in their walls.
Lethal hardware from two different generations were discovered by builder and local historian Arthur Woodward.
Down the centuries, the West Street building found itself at the receiving both of a musket ball, probably of 18th century vintage, and a Second World War machine-gun bullet.
Arthur was one of a team of craftsmen who rescued the ancient buildings from dereliction in the course of a long summer, 51 years ago.
The discoveries were among the exhibits shown by Arthur when he gave a talk to members of Rochford Parish Council. Trustees from the almshouses board were also in the audience.
Arthur first encountered the 400-year-old almshouses in June 1957, as a 16-year-old trainee builder, working for a carpenter named Ted Parsons.
Restoration work had been commissioned by the rural district council, as it then was, led by councillor Vic Bland, who fought to save the almshouses and eventually obtained a preservation order.
The work started in the nick of time. "They were occupied," Arthur recalls, "but some were in a state of collapse. The walls were nine inches out of plumb."
Apart from his work on the building, Arthur was given one other task - writing up the notes. "You've been to school. You write down what's going on, boy," he was told.
The record, still in Arthur's possession, gives intricate details of the building methods of half a century ago.
Arthur's first job was to cut up floorboards. "I was a green lad and did not know how hard oak could be," he recalls.
"I had broken three chisels trying to cut through when Ted arrived four hours later and promptly clipped my ear for not working hard enough."
Timber for the reconstruction came not by road, but by a more ancient route. The wood was obtained from an old warehouse at Bermondsey, under demolition following war damage.
The wrecked building stood by the Thames, on the site of the London Assembly and the moorings for HMS Belfast.
Arthur watched as the beams were loaded on to a Thames sailing barge, the Ethel Ada (she now lies wrecked in Maldon marshes). He accompanied the load downriver, pausing to pick up supplies of hand-made nails at the General Iron Foundry Company site in Bermondsey.
It took two tides to reach Canewdon, where the timber was unloaded and taken to the site by lorry.
Arthur still has vivid memories of the hardship of the work. "In those days there were no angle-grinders and we had to cut out the bad pieces of roof plate and cut through the hand-made nails with a hacksaw. It was very painful and hard work," he says.
The entire roof was supported independently while the walls were repaired. Where it was out of line, the roof was then pulled into position by a local farmer, using a traction engine.
Conditions in the almshouses were pretty primitive back in 1957. Each pair of cottages shared a washroom and toilet at the bottom of the garden.
Arthur says: "Before 1890 it was considered unhealthy to have a toilet in any building. In fact, there seemed to be no water supply to the almshouses."
Arthur recalls the details vividly. The outside loos were raised two feet above the height of the surrounding gardens. After using the toilets, residents had to scatter ashes on their waste. The contents were collected twice a week.
An inveterate hoarder of historic bric-a-brac, even as a teenager, Arthur kept the musket-ball and machine-gun bullet.
The bullet was the result of a stray shot fired during a wartime raid on Rochford airfield. The musket-ball was found embedded in an old brick.
Whatever their origins, these two objects of war remain as a memento of a task to save one of south Essex's most historic buildings.
The best memorial of all, though, are the almshouses themselves, now firm, stable, mercifully equipped with inside toilets, and no doubt ready to withstand a few more potshots if necessary.
l Arthur Woodward's book The Two Rivers, covering the history of the Roach and Prittle rivers, will be published in autumn 2008
9:46am Thursday 22nd May 2008
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