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Reproduced by permission of the
Hereford Times.
Taken from the Hereford Evening News,
Friday, 6 July 1962
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Mr
A. Lea lives at the School House, a Jarvis Trust
house.
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Letton School was built by the Jarvis Charity Trustees.
Living at the school house are Mr and Mrs Alfred Lea,
two Lancastrians who came to Herefordshire in 1926.
Mrs Lea was head teacher of the village school at nearby
Bredwardine for 30 years. Both Bredwardine and Letton
Schools were founded by the Jarvis Educational Charity.
Along with the Staunton-on-Wye, the two villages share
in the generosity of George Jarvis, who was born at
Bredwardine in 1701.
Half-a-mile from the village, the school was built
there so that it would be central to the hamlets of
Kinley, Waterloo and Hurstley, which make up the parish
of Letton. Closed in 1955, the school building is now
Letton's social centre - though some villagers we spoke
to felt that there was very little social life in Letton.
One of them, in fact, went so far as to suggest that
it is "a declining community."
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Bull
Farm was once the village inn at Letton.
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But this is not the view of the Rector, though he agreed
that Letton does reflect the current decline in rural
de-population which is now such a sad feature of country
life. There are no modern council houses in Letton,
and Mr Williams explained that some villagers have left
to live in council houses in other villages. The water
meadows of the parish are very fertile, and make some
of the best agricultural land in the district, which
may explain why officialdom is against any new houses
being built.
But if some parishioners leave Letton, other come to
the village and make it their home for many years -
in spite of threats of floods. Mr and Mrs William T.
Morgan, for instance, came to the Home Farm, once Bull
Farm, because it was the village pub in years gone by,
has known disastrous floods.
Taking us into the sitting-room, Mrs Morgan showed
us the brass plate on the wall, just a foot beneath
the ceiling, which shows the level reached by the great
flood of February 10, 1795.
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The
church at Letton is rich in local history.
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An identical plate in the nearby parish church of St
John the Baptist tells a similar story. Placed on the
internal arch of the North transept, the plate is more
than two feet above floor level. Now the story has been
brought up-to-date with a second brass plate, dated
December 4, 1960, which is just over a foot above floor
level.
Near the church is one of the most interesting houses
in the village - Gardener's Cottage. Once the Rectory,
it is now the home of Mr and Mrs H. Jones, who have
lived in the district for 16 years. An unusual feature
of the house it its large two-storeyed porch with its
double-width front door, nearly 400 years old. It was
suggested to us that the reason for the wide door was
so that the Yule log could be carried in with due ceremony.
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The
Swan Inn at Letton probably the best-known place
in the district.
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Mrs Jones, like many other villagers, would like to
see a village shop in Letton - the nearest shop is at
Bredwardine, nearly two miles away. But some of the
villagers' needs are supplied by the only public house,
the Swan Inn, where we met Mr and Mrs Don Eastman.
It was from them that we learned that both the inn
and the post office, almost next door, are actually
in the parish of Staunton-on-Wye, though for the purposes
of the Best-kept village Competition they are included
in the area to be judged at Letton.
Mr Eastman, who served with the RAF for 21 years, came
to the Swan Inn with his wife two-and-a-half years ago.
Their inn is a familiar landmark on the Hereford to
Hay main road, but one gathers that Sunday evenings
at the Swan are not quite so boisterous as they were
before Sunday opening came to Wales last winter.
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Mrs
L. Cadman, the Postmistress at Letton looks out
for late customers before closing the Post Office
for the day.
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As I said, the post office at Letton is actually in
Staunton-on-Wye, strange as it may seem to the casual
passer-by, who sees it as part of the village of Letton.
There we met Mrs L. Cadman, the postmistress for seven
years. We were sorry not to have been able to meet her
daughter, Diana, who works at Hereford Post Office,
and has made a name for herself in local beauty competitions.
I wondered if the Jarvis Charity was responsible for
keeping many Letton villagers from moving away to places
that are less liable to flooding.
Letton has one-fifth on the dividends on the Charity,
which is divided into two parts - the Educational Foundation
and the Eleemosynary Charity.
Their combined total assets, according to the annual
accounts displayed in the post office, amount to almost
£100,000, and dividends from this hug sum are distributed
in cash or in kind to old, and young alike, and to the
infirm and the not so well off.
Basking in this kind of generosity, the villagers of
Letton can hardly be blamed for staying put - floods
or no floods.
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Hay
Making in Letton
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When you live in a quiet village like Letton you can
do little on a hot summer day except take the baby for
a walk to see how the hay-making is progressing.
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