David Beard's Somewhat Strangely Varied Website
The
Then and now.....
Page Six- A lost cottage……
My oldest friend and Best Man at my
wedding (we met in Chilton when we were about three years old) lived in this
thatched cottage just up the road from Town Hill, on the inside of a left hand
bend. Nothing remains of it today…
Photo by Brian Edwards
The left hand cottage was boarded up when
this was taken, I think in the early sixties. Our teacher
at Chilton school, Miss Marshall, lived there for a
while a little earlier.
Before the war a Norris family lived in
the same left hand cottage. One of them, the late James P. Norris, wrote a book
of verse telling tales of Chilton entitled “The
This is a piece from the book describing
the cottage…
Where we
lived.
Two
cottages sat upon a hill
Joined,
and with flaxen hair
When
the thatch was newly on,
Dark
and grey when old;
My
mother’s house faced the south
And
our neighbour with the well to the north:
The
road came up sharp from Chilton
And
wound round to Dorton Hill
Yet
always in our eyes
The
light of the blue Chilterns,
Mile
after mile on the fond horizon
With
the magic cross of old Whiteleaf
Signalling
to us across the land
Always
familiar, always beckoning
Whispering
of the mysteries
To
be found within those ancient hills….