| buckets. When the plug was pulled the water emptied straight into the drain. The electricity was supplied from the engine room at Garage Cottage. The engine room looked like a sweet little cottage, with leaded windows and a turret. It had the Battery Room upstairs, where the batteries were stored in three to four rows of glass containers. The engine room was underneath. Inside there was the switch board. About six o'clock every night my father would go in to put a switch down to improve the power for the evening. This was known as 'switching up'. Besides the Hall, power was also supplied to my father's house, the Lodge and the Coachman's cottage. It was at least 1925 before power came to Codsall from the main electricity supply. A few years later the pow-er generator was scrapped and the district power was used. In 1918 Mr Gaskell decided to have an improved engine for power. I remember the day they changed it over. They ran the engine out and there were men in the kitchen watching the light. As soon as it went out they rushed to change over to the new system. A man called O'Brian was in charge and he had to stay at our house whilst all this was going on. Pendrell Hall and the three cottages had their own sewer system. There's a sewer bed at the back of Wheatstone. It had probably taken in Wheatstone too. The Carr family lived at Wheatstone. Mr Carr ran the Wolverhampton Steam Laundry and they were connected with the biscuit people of Carlisle. Mrs Carr was related to Shackleton, the explorer. I think she was his sister. Roger Carr lived in Codsall House later. When the deep sewer came to Codsall they put it along Wood Road and then detoured across the fields to this old sewer bed, to join the private sewer. During the 1914-18 War my father drove a tractor at Langley Lawn Farm, where they were ploughing up land for crops to help the war effort. This work had to be done at night, at the end of his normal day's work. For a short time before the end of the war my father worked at the Villiers factory in Wolverhampton, making munitions. He cycled there each morning and back in the evening. At intervals during the war his call-up papers would arrive, and each time Mr Gaskell put in an appeal for my father to stay at Pendrell, but in the end he was unable to stop my father from being required to work in the factory. OUTDOOR STAFF AT PENDRELL HALL Pendrell Hall employed a large staff in those days. There was my father who was the chauffeur, as well as doing odd jobs and looking after the electric generator. The stockman was Henry Roberts. Smith, the head gardener, lived in the lodge at the entrance to the drive. He had at least three or four assistant gardeners. Mr Worskett was the groom, when they had the horses. He used to go into Codsall every day in the luggage cart to pick up the fish from the train. The fish arrived in a soft wicker bag and he would also pick up the papers. Mr Gaskell always had the Liverpool Post, as I think he was on the Board of that paper. Later on when the horse was pensioned off Mr Worskett walked to Codsall every day. It was a good walk there and back. At Harvest Festival time he always made a sort of garland. He sat in his cellar and made long fringes of straw. They were used to decorate the Chapel at Codsall. Nobody else ever made them like him. On the ends of the pews there were little metal boxes and a hinged frame was fitted into these to make an arch and then they were decorated with flowers and the fringes of straw. INDOOR SERVANTS Indoors at Pendrell Hall they also needed several staff. They had a cook, a lady's maid, a parlour maid, a chief house-maid, an under house-maid, a scullery maid, a nanny and a governess |
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