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I remember that first weekend in April ‘68 as if it were yesterday.
You see, I found myself boarded for the week in a very strange sort of ‘run-down’ riverside hotel, which had obviously seen better days.
Old lace curtains, musty carpets and limp faded pot-plants: you know the sort of thing.
The personnel dept. had sent me all the details so I had no good reason not to follow it up.
Brother Colin said he didn’t like the ‘feel’ of the place and I agreed. He took a load of my belongings like the tape-recorder, back home in the car as we didn’t like the idea of leaving stuff in my room during the day, whilst I was at work. Not a promising start.
It’s funny now looking back how you can remember certain things and not others. I remember waking up the following Sunday morning to the sound of collared doves outside the window and a rather unpleasant smell from an old inefficient oil-fired heating system.
A sort of paraffin stove smell. This place was not for me I though!
I decided there and then, that I would find another lodging as soon as I could.
Half an hour later found me in Maidenhead High Street, washed, dressed and outside W.H.Smith’s scanning through the local paper in the columns marked ‘accommodation‘.
I rang this lady advertising ‘room for single gent‘ (as you would), called round to see her (as you would), liked the room (B&B) and made arrangements to take it (like you should).
That was a bit of luck - let’s hope this new place is OK, I thought.
I’d already paid a weeks rent in advance at the ‘riverside relic’ so I wasn’t going to loose that, and on return gave the required weeks ‘notice’ and saw the week out.
I remember going out that Sunday evening for an ‘Indian‘ to cheer myself up, but do you know, this was not to be. For the first time in my life, I was in a restaurant, eating alone.
Back home trips to the Curry House in Selly Oak were usually ’a table for six’ or sometimes eight. Young lads daring each other to try the Chicken Vindaloo!
I remember, even in those days, we always used to order ‘Chicken on the bone’ - the reason being you see, at least we knew what a chicken quarter should look like!
And then there were poppadoms, lots of poppadoms, hot lime-pickle, chapattis like leather and spicy stuffed paratas.
Ah! Great days.
Well, Monday came and it was springtime in Buckinghamshire
and I was due to start my first day in R&D (Research and Development) at 9 o‘clock.
“The naked earth is warm with spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;”
On my way up to Taplow Court by the narrow ’back path’ from Mill Lane,
I hurried passed just three of Taplow’s many, later to be uncovered, secrets.
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The first was the Bapsey Pond which is just visible at the centre top of the above picture; the second was the beautiful Old Dairy (picture further down) tucked away in the trees and the third was the memorial to Julian and ‘Billy’ Grenfell who were both killed in the First World War in 1915.
Those lines above come from a poem ‘Into Battle’ by Julian Grenfell and are just four lines from the inscription on the back of the stone plinth.
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The monument itself is a statue of Phaeton by Sir Bertram Mackennal, mounted on a grey stone plinth and set among the flower beds on the south side of the old churchyard.
Over the years I was to discover that there was so much history here in Taplow, going right back to Saxon times and maybe further. This of course is all well documented elsewhere on the web and there is no point in going into too much detail here, but you have to remember that I arrived at Taplow (1968) before the days of the internet and history in those days had to be ‘researched’.
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| Just a few of the hundreds of 'cuttings'. |
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First of all I discovered that the last family to own Taplow Court, were the Grenfells.
It was in 1852 that the previous owner, the 5th Earl of Orkney was driven by bankruptcy to sell the estate to Charles Pascoe Grenfell who at the time was the MP for Marlow.
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| A page from the 1852 Estate Agent's 'Particulars'. |
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The last of the Grenfells living here was Charles’s grandson William,
later to become Lord Desborough.
Lord and Lady Desborough had five children, two daughters and three sons.
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| Ethel Grenfell William Grenfell |
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Of their three sons, not one survived to inherit the title.
In the spring of 1915, Julian and William, both infantry officers, were killed in action in Flanders.
Julian, like Robert Brook was a great Englishman and a talented war poet and a few weeks before he died, looking across the April Flemish plain, he wrote one of his greatest lyrical poems ’Into Battle’.
His third son, Ivo, was killed in a road accident in the early 1920’s and after this Lord Desborough gradually withdrew from public life.
He now had no heir.
Some days before the outbreak of the Second World War he moved away to his estate in Hertfordshire. He died there in 1945 but was buried here in the old churchyard back in Taplow. His wife Lady Desborough, together with their children, Ivo and Monica, are also buried in the Grenfell family vault, over on the west side. When Monica died in 1973 the vault was opened up for the last time and those interested, including myself, were able to descend underground to take a peek.
I have been unable to find out where Julian, William and Alexandra are laid to rest,
but will update this page when I know.
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| Grenfell Family vault - Taplow 'Old Churchyard'. |
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At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939,
the house here was home to children of nursery-school age, evacuated from London.
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| Picture from Mary Evans Picture Library |
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Then later during the War, around 1940 Taplow Court housed St. Stephens College Girls’ School, which had been evacuated from Folkestone.
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Shortly before 1946 it was leased by British Telecommunication Research Ltd.
When I joined in 1968, BTR was part of the Plessey ‘empire‘.
This is just a brief introduction to the house and its history. A full account would fill a book so I will slip little interesting bits into the blog every now and again.
I arrived most mornings at work ‘on foot’ from Maidenhead at the back gate or tradesman‘s entrance, but had I arrived by car via the front drive this would have been the 1968 view.
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I used a whole roll of 120-film that first week, (12 exposures in those days) as I remember being so impressed by everything there.
I was using Agfa 2¼” square transparencies in those days, as the colour on positive prints was, in my opinion, not particularly good.
After all these years I still have these old slides in my archives and last year managed to convert them to positives and finally jpegs for use on the computer. However, after 45 years the colour is now sadly beginning to fade a bit.
Of course on that first day I knew none of the history of the ‘Court’ and it was only after years of working there that I was to learn more about the place. New discoveries and facts were literally being unearthed there before our very eyes.
As I’ve already mentioned the Bapsey Pond - here’s a wee bit of background.
Bapsey Pond
Another feature of the Taplow Court Estate is a once-sacred pool, called Bapsey Pond. Legend has it that about 642 St Birinus converted to local pagan Anglo-Saxons by baptising them in the waters of Bapsey Pond. The name ‘Bapsey’ appears on the oldest maps of the area and is a contraction of the word ‘baptism’ but it is likely that the pond itself has been revered since the earliest of times.
Today Bapsey Pond lies a couple of hundred yards down Berry Hill from Taeppa’s mound and is a pond, not very large, surrounded by small trees and foliage. It is set in a layer of clay and the depression which forms the shape of the pond is continually filled from a spring situated in the gravel layer above. Originally the spring would have been seen to flow out of the ground near the site of the old church at the top of the hill, but it was culverted in the early nineteenth century and now runs underground.
And to complete the trio, here’s a picture of the Old Dairy;
now I’m pleased to say, a Grade II listed building.
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And as I only posted above, the first four lines of ‘Into Battle’,
here in respect to the two fallen brothers, is the full poem.
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"Into Battle"
by Julian Grenfell
The naked earth is warm with spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And life is colour and warmth and light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fullness after dearth.
All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's Belt and sworded hip.
The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridge's end.
The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.
The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing."
In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!
And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only joy of battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.
The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
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