THE MUDDLE FAMILIES

THE LINEAGE & HISTORY OF THE MUDDLE FAMILIES OF THE WORLD

INCLUDING VARIANTS MUDDEL, MUDDELL, MUDLE & MODDLE

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The lives & family of Will & Addie Rofe

An essay by Will’s great-nephew Bernard Rofe, who retains the copyright.

WILL AND ADDIE ROFE

William Rofe, the third of Sam and Sarah’s children, was born on 4 November 1863, and baptised on 31 January 1864. The only story we have of him as a boy is recorded on page 180 of the Goudhurst Coronation Book, where Fred Dungey tells of “an older type of bike, if you can call it a bike, that was known as the dandy cart” (perhaps what we would call a go-kart). “We had a rare bit of fun with one once in a field at Hartley. Jack Burnham, Bill Rofe and several of us took it in turns to ride this old bike down the slope of a field. We tied a rope to it to help it along, and it could go at quite a rate. It finished up at the bottom of the deep pond in that field alongside Swattenden Lane, and for aught I know the remains of that old bike are there still!”

As a young man Will would no doubt have gone for a drink at the Peacock Inn at Iden Green, the nearest pub to the Glassenbury Estate where Will worked in his early days. The landlord at that time (see the 1881 census) was John Muddle, who had three daughters – Adelaide, Alice and Harriett, as well as a son, Alf, who had already left home. Although Addie, the eldest of the daughters, was eight years older than Will, she evidently caught his eye, and in 1889 they got married. Earlier in the 1880s Addie had been running a dressmaking business with a Miss Spice (Coronation Book, page 137), and in the 1891 census, when Will and Addie were living in the High Street with their newly born daughter Ethel, Addie is still described as a dressmaker, Will as an estate labourer. Later in 1891, however, Will and Addie took over The Peacock. Addie’s parents had left in 1887, moving to Hawkhurst, and had been succeeded at The Peacock by Amos Mercer (see Goudhurst Jubilee Book, page 333). He in his turn was succeeded by Will and Addie in the summer of 1891. Their second child, Sidney, was born in 1893. Although now landlord of the Peacock, Will still helped out from time to time with work on the Glassenbury Estate, as can be seen from his inclusion in the team of flayers in 1896.

In April 1898, after seven years at The Peacock, Will obtained the licence of the Castle Inn at Brenchley. After a further seven years at Brenchley, Will was convicted in 1905 of permitting drunkenness on licensed premises (an offence of which most landlords fell foul sooner or later) and lost his licence. Addie’s brother Alf  was by this time a long-established employee of Mr Henry Storr of Matfield Court, for whom he had been working since 1888. It was very possibly Alf who drew Will and Addie’s attention to a smallholding, dairy, bakery and general store called The Ashes at Matfield, just down the road from the village green. At all events, Will and Addie took a lease of The Ashes in 1905.

Shortly afterwards, in 1906, tragedy struck when Ethel, who was only 15, caught scarlet fever and died. She is buried in Matfield churchyard, although there is no gravestone. Although the loss of their daughter must have been a terrible blow, Will and Addie set about building up their business. Will baked the bread and ran the dairy, and may have farmed some of the adjacent fields, though Ron Goad – Matfield postman for many years - thinks that all or most of the milk for the dairy was bought in from neighbouring farms. Addie kept the shop. The house is still there, now in the possession of John and Jill Underdown, and renamed Ash Trees – better than the somewhat ambiguous “Ashes”. In the garden, the foundation of the old baker’s oven, too solid to be demolished, is hidden under the rockery!

Will and Addie were very kind to Will’s younger brother Joe, his wife Alice and their nine children. Joe’s family, living in Catford, South London, was always poor, and several of the children went to Matfield at one time or another, either on holiday (the only holiday most of them ever had) or to recuperate from illnesses. One of the children, May, went to Matfield to live and work after she left school in March 1911 at the age of 13. This was perhaps partly a kindness to Joe and Alice (and May), and partly because Will and Addie needed the help, their own daughter having died.

May’s help was all the more needed when the war came and Will and Addie’s son Sid, now 21, went off to join the army. Sid, who was rather more keen on drinking with his pals than he was on work, was in his element in the army, where he loved the cameraderie. But he spent much of the war as a prisoner in Germany where he was set to work on a farm. Sid had great charm and impeccable manners and soon became a great favourite on the farm, where he was treated as one of the family and spent the war in fine style. When he returned after the war, May left to take other work in Matfield, and eventually returned to London. Sid resumed work for his parents, and in 1919 married Florence Sidney, daughter of the postmistress at Brenchley. They lived in Brenchley with Florrie’s mother, and in 1921 their daughter Fay was born there.

During Will’s time at the Castle Inn and at The Ashes, he was also the local carrier. Kelly’s Directory for 1906, for example, records “Carriers to Maidstone: William Rofe, Wednesday and Saturday.” At one time he had a horse which was very temperamental and would often refuse to budge. On one occasion a bowler-hatted local businessman who had been up to London for the day asked Will to give him a lift part way up the hill from Paddock Wood. Will said he would, but that he daren’t stop on the hill or he’d never get the horse going again. The businessman agreed to jump off while the cart was still moving, but when he did he caught his foot and tumbled through the hedge, bowler hat flying! On another occasion the horse stopped on a hump-back bridge and refused to move. After trying every trick he knew, Will eventually got some discarded bines from a nearby hopfield, put them under the horse and set light to them, before jumping quickly back onto the cart. Still the horse stayed put, so that Will wondered if it would be cooked before it moved. But all of a sudden the horse felt the heat, and was off like a shot from a gun!

In 1924 the lease of The Ashes fell in, and in 1925 Will, Addie, Sid, Florrie and Fay moved to Tidebrook in Sussex, where Sid took the licence of the Fountain Inn. Will may have done some farming nearby, although the electoral register shows that they all lived at the Inn for the brief duration of their stay. On 11 January 1927, however, Sid lost his licence. He returned to Brenchley with Florrie and Fay, and resumed work at The Ashes, where he was employed by Mr Burt, Will’s successor there. When the recession came, however, he lost his job and joined the ranks of the unemployed.

Meanwhile, Will and Addie returned to Will’s old home at Turnden, Cranbrook. Will’s nephew Jack and Jack’s wife Annie, who had been living there, moved to Little Glassenbury to live with Will’s brother Jack and his wife Bell. After an absence of twenty years, Will resumed work for the Glassenbury Estate, where his younger brother, Jack, had succeeded their father as woodreeve. The estate wages book for the period 1935-38 shows Will still working six days a week for 6/- a day, although by then he was well into his seventies. As a sideline, he would buy the timber from a strip of woodland, cut it down, and make it into ladders, hurdles and stakes, a craft at which he excelled. His skills were also much in demand for repairing ladders.

In 1933 Sid at last got a job as a cowman at Pett in Sussex. Florrie and Fay joined him there, and in 1934 a second daughter, Janette, was born. Pett was far too quiet for Florrie, however, and in 1935 she returned to Brenchley with the children, leaving Sid at Pett. She visited her parents-in-law at Turnden, and found that Addie was seriously ill and desperately in need of care. She was very fond of Addie, and took her to Brenchley and nursed her there until she died on Christmas Day 1935. Although Addie’s niece May had found her rather a hard taskmaster in the shop at Matfield (hardly surprising for a teenager away from home and feeling rather hard done by) Addie seems otherwise to have been universally loved as a generous and hospitable person. Her kindness to Joe’s children has already been mentioned. One of them, Jack, recalled with affection and amusement how she would say “AvanothercuppateaJack” – all in one long slow word with the accent on the tea! Fay, who used to visit Turnden with her mother between 1927 and 1933 when she was 6-12 years old, remembers Addie’s warm welcome and her little presents of flowers and fruit. Our only photos of her show her as a dumpy homely figure. Fay remembers her rosy cheeks, twinkling eyes and ready smile, although she looks a little more careworn in her photo taken at Turnden in 1930.

Bell’s sister, Maud Eaton, whose husband Tom had died in 1934, now moved into Turnden to keep house for Will. When the war broke out in 1939, they were joined by Will’s brother Joe, now retired from his work as a railway guard, and keen to get away from the bombing around his south-east London home and spend his last years at his old home in the country. Will, now in his late seventies, was still hard at work. Dr Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith of Sissinghurst remembers working with him in Angley Woods during his (Geoffrey’s) school holidays in 1940 and 1941. Geoffrey was 16 or 17 at the time and Will 77 or 78. Despite this wide disparity in age, they became firm friends. Will was still doing a full working day – up at 6, starting work at 7, “lunch”at 10, “dinner” at 12, then working on till 5pm. The work was hard, with two-handed cross-cut saws, 7lb felling or scoring axes and 4-5lb trimming or top axes, so Will must have been extremely fit. All the work was done by hand, with horses and chains to drag out the fallen trunks. Some of the felling was of large trees, but some was cutting pit props from coppiced alder, which grew well in the wet ground. The branches of the felled trees were cut into 3’6” lengths to make cordwood – a cord was a measured quantity of such timber, which was used primarily as firewood, although in earlier times it had also been used for charcoal burning. Then there were rides to be cut through the wood to stop the spread of fire.

Geoffrey says that it was with Will in 1940 that he first came under fire, when spent machine-gun bullets from a dog-fight overhead were spattering the pine trees. “We took cover in a dyke. Walking back afterwards to the work of cross-cutting a fallen pine tree (no chain saws in those days) Will stopped at a large ant hill and said, “Do you know what I’d like to do with old Hitler? Tie him down on that amit heap.” Then he paused and said, “No, that would be too horrible a death even for old Hitler.”

Will survived the war, but died at Turnden on 23 February 1946 at the age of 82. In his will, made in 1940, he left all his estate to his housekeeper, Maud Eaton, and nothing whatever to Sid or Florrie or his grandchildren. The reason for this seems to have been that, although Will remained on perfectly good terms with Sid, he felt that he was something of a wastrel who would only drink away any money that was left to him. This was probably a fair judgement! Will almost certainly also disapproved of Florrie, who was much too flighty and trivial for his liking. Maud, on the other hand, was a thoroughly practical woman, who had cared for him faithfully during his final years.

Will himself was upright, conscientious, kindly, and immensely hard working. He was always welcoming to Joe’s children, and shared Turnden with Joe during the early years of the war until Joe’s death in 1943. He had a wide variety of skills and used them to good effect in a long and varied life. His friendship with Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith was a remarkable one in view of the huge age gap between them, and Geoffrey provides Will with a fitting epitaph – “a splendid chap in every way”.

SID AND FLORRIE ROFE

Up to Addie’s death in 1935, the story of Sid and Florrie is briefly included above. In 1937 Sid returned from Pett and resumed work at The Ashes, where Cecil Burt was now the proprietor. On the outbreak of war in 1939, now 46, he re-enlisted in the army and served in France. He missed the evacuation from Dunkirk but, quite unperturbed, was picked up a few weeks later from Le Havre. He was then posted to Iceland, but broke his leg en route, returned home to convalesce and was then (much to his disgust!) posted to Sheffield.

During the early part of the war, Fay had been living at Middleton on Sea, near Bognor Regis, and in 1943 she was joined there by her mother, maternal grandmother and sister. Her grandmother died there in 1945. Florrie and Janette then returned to the old house at Brenchley, where Fay joined them later that year. Sid, who was still in uniform at his father’s funeral in February 1946, was demobbed soon afterwards and also returned to Brenchley, where he worked making chestnut fencing, and later canning peas for Smedley’s at Paddock Wood.

In 1960 Fay was living in Eastbourne, and Florrie and Sid joined her there for a holiday. Florrie returned to Brenchley at the end of the season, but Sid stayed on, working at the Grand Hotel until 1968. He then got cancer and returned to Brenchley, where Florrie was now living in a part of what had been the Duke of St Albans’ Palace, the old house having been demolished. Sid died there in May 1969. Florrie lived on in Brenchley until 1981, though she died at Goring on Thames where Fay was then working.

Fay, after an eventful life which it is beyond the scope of this essay to recount, now lives in a delightful cottage at Colemans Hatch in the Ashdown Forest, and has provided much of the material for this essay. Her sister Janette still lives in Brenchley, not far from Castle Hill in one direction and Matfield in the other, right in the heart of the history of her family.

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