Nettlebed

The Godwin Family During the Second World War The Godwin’s can be traced back to the 1600s in Nettlebed Church records. During the war years (1939-45) my family lived in the property next to Stable Cottage at Joyce Grove. My father Tim had worked for the Fleming family and stayed on as Caretaker when the Grove was passed on to St Marys Hospital Paddington around the end of the 1930s. My Sister Betty worked there for a time too. They originally lived in one of the houses at the bottom of the lane but then moved nearer to the House. Tim was not deemed fit enough to be a fighting man because of an injury he sustained as a young man in an accident, so he joined the Home Guard but as the war progressed he joined up and served as a batman for an Officer in the Army. My eldest brother Leslie lied about his age, he was not quite 16 when he...

Kellys Directory Of Oxfordshire 1871 NETTLEBED is a parish and village and a polling place for the county, pleasantly situated on an eminence, 5 miles north-west of Henley and 6 from Watlington, on the high road from London to Oxford, in the hundred of Ewelme, union and county court district of Henley, rural deanery of Nettlebed, archdeaconry and Dioces of Oxford. The houses are well built, and the principal street has a remarkably clean and neat appearance. The church of St.Bartholomew was rebuilt 1846: the expenses were defrayed by subscriptions towards which the Incorporated Society for Building Churches and Chapels granted £200. The register dates from the year 1653. The living is a vicarage, yearly value £212, in the gift of the representatives of the late incumbent the Rev.Thomas Leigh Bennett, and held by the Hon. and Rev.Henry Bligh of Christ Church, Oxford. Here is a parochial school. The Independents have a chapel here. A fair is held here on the...

Interesting Snippets From Nettlebed Parish Council  Minutes March 1911 – 1956 1911 –March. Plans made for celebrating the coronation of George V and Queen Mary. 1912 –Revd Armitage complains about dumping of rubbish outside Crocker End House            Complaints about motor vehicles speeding through the village – a hazard to horses, reported to A.A. and Motor Union“Danger” signs erected on roads entering the village.           Street lights damaged by youths throwing stones.           Query about trees planted on Crocker End Common. Lord of the Manor,MrMcKenzie states he gave permission and that the land is a green and not common land. It was part of Soundess Farm, dating back 200 years. 1914 –Complaints about nightsoil being carried through the street to the dump in daytime.            Call for Special Constables aged 19 to 35 - 18 men volunteered. 1916 –Government’s Wartime Agricultural Committee request to parish councils to destroy sparrows which are eating...

Nettlebed Congregational Church – early services were held in a tent on The Common. The Rev. Robert Bolton, an American born in Savannah, Georgia, in the United States of America, became pastor of Henley Congregational Church in 1824. He came from a long family line of non-conformists who, originally from the cotton trade in Bolton, Lancashire, had emigrated to the American Colonies in the early eighteenth century. Clearly an energetic man, when he came to Henley Robert set about spreading non-conformist beliefs in the outlying villages. When the Rev. Bolton received Mr Joseph Fletcher into Henley Church membership on 1st June, 1831, he encouraged him to lead the Christian work in the neighbourhood. One Sunday afternoon in 1832 Fletcher was delivering tracts on Nettlebed Common. A number of youths were then playing cricket. He invited them to come into a nearby cottage and hear a book read. Two young men followed him, with the result that they became Christians. Regular meetings were then held in the cottage until...

Nettlebed And South Oxfordshire Government History 1873 – 1974 A Royal Sanitary Commission of 1869 suggested a system of local government incorporating rural areas. This led to an Act of 1872 which, amongst various recommendations, created ‘Rural Sanitary Districts’. These authorities had to appoint a ‘sanitary inspector’ and a ‘medical officer of health’. The existing Henley Board of Guardians created a new authority under the name ‘The Henley Rural Sanitary Authority’. In 1873 it appointed George Shadrach Daniel Mattick as Sanitary Inspector; he was 37 and had worked as a builder and a ‘Scripture Reader’ in the very poorest parts of Southwark in South London and Reading. It was the beginning of modern local government in Oxfordshire. On his arrival he immediately reported on his visits to the surrounding villages. About Nettlebed he wrote: - “The village presents about as bad a collection of sanitary conditions as it is possible to conceive existing in a situation in many respects naturally very healthy....

Old Camp Road, Nettlebed, Oxfordshire  A Tribute To Our Local Men Who Served In The Oxfordshire And Buckinghamshire Light Infantry RegimentThe regimental badge of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry Walking through the beautiful woods on Nettlebed Commons today it is difficult to visualise how this countryside looked some seventy years ago. In 1943-44 the whole of southern England was involved in the military preparations for the Second Front and the invasion of continental Europe which took place in June 1944. For months the residents of Nettlebed had seen camps being rapidly constructed to accommodate the troops of many allied nations preparing for the assault on the beaches of Normandy. Some quarter of a million men and women arrived with tanks, trucks and ambulances which were kept hidden under the dense canopy of the beech woods. Camp sites were built between Nettlebed and Peppard which included dormitory blocks, officers’ messes, kitchens, mess halls, engineering workshops, a medical centre and cinemas to entertain the troops....

On the 70th Anniversary of the ending of World War Two we remember those who served and those who gave their lives in the defence of our nation. The men from Nettlebed who died are recorded on the village war memorial at St Bartholomew’s Church lych-gate and their names are read at Nettlebed’s Royal British Legion Annual Remembrance Service every November. Where the service records of particular individuals are known it is important that these are recorded on the Nettlebed website’s history page. We would be pleased to add the wartime careers of others if the details could be sent to the editor@nettlebed.org **************************** Captain John (Jack) Egerton Broome DSC RN 23.02.1901 – 19.04.1985 A destroyer captain who defended convoys with vital supplies for Britain and Russia during the long Battle of the Atlantic and later commanded an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Jack Broome served in the Royal Navy in both World Wars. He entered the Royal Naval College at Osborne. Isle of Wight,...