Edith Oliver wasn’t a native of Sussex at all. The daughter of a prison officer working at the county prison in Chelmsford, Essex, Edith had been born in the nearby village of Springfield in 1882.  At the time of the 1901 census however, she had moved further east and was engaged as a nurse in the employ of Francis Symmons, a 37 year old solicitor living on Lexden Road, Colchester.  Francis and his wife had a six year old daughter, Dorothy, and Francis’ 70 year old father was also living with them.  Edith was one of four servants employed by the family.

 

It is not known for how long she was employed by the Symmons family or when she left them.  However, perhaps tiring of the duties she was undertaking and in need of a move, she had replied to an advertisement for a ‘Lady’s Companion’ and been interviewed by Miss Margaret Cotesworth of Roeheath, Chailey, the Lady in question.  Although one of a family of six, Edith had no ties binding her to Essex and so it was without hesitation that she readily accepted the position when it was offered to her and packed her belongings for Sussex.  A birthday postcard in her album, addressed to her at Roeheath indicates that she was certainly providing companionable services to Miss Cotesworth as early as September 1910.

 

Roeheath was a sprawling country house and estate situated just off Cinder Hill, and Margaret Cotesworth an indefatigable spirit and tireless worker within the greater Chailey community. With Edith’s professional nursing expertise and the enthusiasm of her employer for the British Red Cross Society and in particular the local voluntary aid detachment, it was inevitable that Edith would also become a much valued VAD nurse.  Over six feet tall and with her hair piled on top of her head adding another couple of inches, Edith is easily identifiable in photographs taken of the detachment during this time. 

 

Now, taking the album that had just been returned to her by Private Sabourin, Nurse Oliver looked at the other comments written next to the photos she’d pasted in.  Private Richardson had left two entries:

 

8030 Pte H Richardson

1st Batt Dorset Regt

 

Was caught napping by

the famous General (one) o’clock’s

Artillery at Missy stopping

three shrapnell bullets and his only

regret is that he couldn’t get his own back.

 

Further on in the album, he’d elaborated:

 

Wounded at Missy by shrapnel securing

three bullets, Hand Shoulder and head.

 

Oh if ever I get the Chance

To see some more of those Alamand

I will just make some of them Dance

For their injury to my Hand

 

Then, as if suddenly remembering that he was writing in a young lady’s album, he’d added:

 

Whatever I may do

Or wherever I may be

I shall remember all of you

For your kindnesses to me.

 

Like Sabourin, Henry Walter Richardson was an old hand at the soldiering game.  He’d joined the army in August 1906 and had also sailed from Ireland, landing in France with the 1st Dorset Regiment on 16th August 1914, the day after Sabourin.  The 1st Dorsets were also part of the 5th Division but assigned to the 15th Infantry Brigade which was to be Divisional reserve.  

 

While Sabourin and the 1st East Surreys were clinging on to their positions at Les Herbieres on August 23rd, two companies of the 1st Dorsets were digging in further south around the bridge at Wasmes.  By the late afternoon and evening, during which time the remaining two companies of the Dorsets were brought up in support, Richardson too was in action and firing shots in anger on the advancing enemy for the first time since his arrival in Belgium.

 

Then the retreat had begun in earnest.  After inflicting heavy casualties on the German infantrymen advancing out of Hornu, the next village south from Mons, they’d fallen back on the 24th and had kept going until they reached the Marne, pausing at Le Cateau on route.  The battle there had virtually passed them by.  It had started at around 6am but they hadn’t even seen any Germans until around midday, at which point they soon beat them off. 

 

That last week of August had been a Cook’s tour of obscure villages and hamlets as the German army had relentlessly pursued the exhausted BEF through Belgium and France towards Paris but Richardson and the Dorsets had finally got their own back on the Marne.  They’d crossed the river on the 9th September and led the 15th Brigade’s attack on the Pisseloupe Ridge.  For an army of regular soldiers not accustomed to flight, it was a good feeling to finally be on the offensive.  But the attack had foundered, as so many attacks would founder in the coming months and years.  Lack of artillery support had forced companies to first dig-in and then retreat at a cost of 45 officers and men killed, wounded and missing.   Richardson had come through unscathed but just when it seemed as though the men could strike a blow on The Aisne, he’d been ‘caught napping’ by von Kluck’s (or “one o’clock’s) artillery.

 

Now he was at Hickwells and like Sabourin, cursing his misfortune.  For both men, with a combined soldiering life of over 22 years, the fact that they had departed the action so early was little less than a personal affront and both bitterly regretted that they had been unable, in Richardson’s words, to get their own back.  So the regular army of the BEF - those that were not left on the battlefields of France and Belgium - limped back to the hospitals and convalescent homes of Britain and into the care of a growing army of nurses and VADs.

 

Set away from the main living accommodation in a self-contained area was a long, narrow butler’s pantry, a kitchen (with door to the tradesman’s entrance), a larder, scullery, servants’ room and a back staircase hall.  A door from the scullery led down to extensive cellarage beneath the house.

 

On the first floor there were five large bedrooms (the smallest being 14 feet, six inches by nine feet) each complete with a fire or stove.  There was also a dressing room fitted with a wash hand basin.  The back staircase landing gave access to a housemaid’s closet with a range of linen cupboards, two further servants’ bedrooms and a box room.

 

If that were not enough, in addition to the main accommodation afforded by Hickwells, there was also a two-bedroomed Tudor cottage situated a short distance from the house which could also be used.  Outside, a well-sheltered vegetable garden and glass house could provide the owners with home grown produce and the remainder of the grounds were well established and attractively laid out with ornamental and flowering shrubs, beech trees, yew hedges and evergreens.  For the sports minded there were tennis and croquet lawns.  Two small paddocks adjoined the garden with stabling for three horses.

 

For Sussex 54 VAD, the gift of Hickwells as a temporary base from which to operate was a godsend.  In Margaret Cotesworth, they had a competent and confident commandant and in Mabel Blencowe, an active and able quartermaster.  Dr William Orton was their well respected medical officer and Sister Osmund, a trained nurse with many years’ experience under her belt.  The detachment could easily muster a further seventeen nursing staff some, like Edith Oliver, with many years’ nursing experience, and they also boasted a complement of four cooks.  All of them, were enthusiastic and ready to do their bit.  What they had lacked was a base from which to put their well practised nursing and organisational skills into action but now, thanks to the generosity of its new owner, nothing could hold them back.

Hickwells formed part of the Ades estate, a mansion located almost opposite it along Cinder Hill.  Purchased in 1839 by James Ingram from distant relatives, Ades and the properties centred around it had remained in the Ingram family until some unwise investments by a business partner in the late 1890s had led to the then owner, James Crofts Ingram being declared bankrupt.  Everything the Ingram family owned had to go and in 1899, the Pownall family had bought the estate. Walter Ingram, younger brother of James, had thrown his energies into Chailey’s men’s VAD detachment, Sussex 37, which he headed and perhaps it was Walter’s involvement and influence which spurred Margaret Cotesworth to form her own women’s detachment.  Living a short walk away from Ades, Margaret would certainly have known Walter Ingram and she could also count on some influential friends of her own to assist her.  Chief amongst these was Frances Blencowe of nearby Bineham Mansion, whose older brother John had married Walter Ingram’s younger sister Mabel.

 

In June 1914, whilst Sussex 54 VAD were preparing for every conceivable eventuality at their annual Stanmer Park Field Day, the Pownall family sold Ades House and the properties centred on it (which included Hickwells) to Joseph Wright.  One of the Pownall daughters was a member of Sussex 54 and perhaps it was her influence that persuaded the new owner to loan them Hickwells for their purposes.  Whatever form the negotiations took, by the end of 1914, the compilers of The British Red Cross Society’s annual report and accounts for the Mid Sussex Division in 1914 could note that as far as Sussex 54 was concerned, a ‘Convalescent Home can be provided’ and so it happened that in March of the following year, Hickwells opened for business.

 

In addition to the wealthy Chailey families who were influential in the community, Reverend Jellicoe, Rector of St Peter’s Church for the last twenty years played a key role in buoying up the parishioners as well as keeping them informed on the local contribution to the war effort.

 

In September 1914, in his monthly Parish Notes, he had made his position on contributing to the war effort very clear.  Referring to Lord Kitchener’s maiden speech in the House of Lords in which he had informed the House that the equivalent of 70 battalions of men had already volunteered for service abroad, The Reverend Jellicoe continued, “We must have a continuous stream of men coming on…there are two directions in which the necessary supply can be sought, one is a large reserve of men who are eager to serve, but are debarred by the age limit of 30 years.  The other source is of a different character.  It is the vast herds of young men who might go, but prefer to loaf at home, attending cricket matches or going to the cinema – in short the great army of shirkers.  It is a national scandal that the selfish should get off scot free, while all the burden falls on the most public spirited section of our available manhood.”

 

The following month, he published “A PROVISIONAL LIST of Officers and Men connected with this Parish now serving their King and Country.” The list occupied one sixth of the page and contained the names of three officers and 68 men.  For the next five years, Chailey’s parish magazine would publish the names every month and by the time the final roll call was published in July 1919 it would run to two pages, the second page taken up with the Roll of Honour and distinctions.

 

Sick and wounded soldiers arrived at Hickwells from the 1st London General Hospital in Camberwell, from the Soldiers and Sailors Family Association, The Soldiers and Sailors Help Association and West Hall VAD hospital in Tunbridge Wells.  After the squalor of the trenches, they must have thought they had arrived in Paradise.  Regular, old army men were the first to leave their mark in Nurse Oliver’s album, followed later by the Territorials and the men of Kitchener’s New Armies.

 

Reg Pimble and John Thomas fell into the former category.  Pimble, born in Ross-on-Wye in 1888, had already been a soldier for ten years by the time war was declared and had sailed for France leaving a wife and two young children at home in Gloucester.  John Thomas, Pimble’s senior by seven years, also left a wife and daughter at home in Birmingham.  Neither had met before the war and they would go their own separate ways afterwards, but one thing besides career soldiering would unite them at Hickwells: the First Battle of Ypres.