Frances Wren came newly-wed to Farmoor in November 1929. Her husband, whom she met while working in North Oxford as a lady's companion, lived near the Paper Mill in Wolvercote and was a brass-moulder at Lucy's.
Coming to look at the bungalows being built for sale in Mayfield Road for £750, Fred and Frances Wren alighted from the bus at the corner of Cumnor Road. Seeing a garage there, 'a tumbledown shack with old cars standing in a rough forecourt', behind a hedge, they went in and asked a bedraggled man with cap where they might find Mr Franklin. 'He said he was Mr Franklin. I've never been so surprised in my life', Mrs Wren says. 'We squeezed into his two-seater car, with his old dog in the back, and went round to see the bungalow. The deposit was £50 and my husband had to sell his motorbike to pay it. We borrowed the rest from the Coventry Building Society and the mortgage was £1 a week. When the family was growing up and times were hard, they reduced it to 10s a week.'
Boycott Franklin sold the bungalows, built on his land by Pimms of Eynsham. Mr & Mrs Johnson were in their bungalow about 3 weeks before us and the second was Mr Westall's. Hill's built the next two, one of which was occupied by Leonard Gardiner's grandparents.
When people come here sometimes and say 'What a nice place to live', I say 'You ought to have seen it when we first came here. There was a gate down the lane where the ducks are now and beyond that was meadow. You could walk right across to Bablockhythe. The meadow was all flat; you could see for miles. It used to flood in winter, sometimes all over. Some years people went skating on it. In summer there were lots of flowers, 'cuckoos', 'milkmaids', cowslips. Children used to go and pick bunches of flowers. There were cows on the meadow.
There were huts at Farmoor then, at 10s a week rent. They had a living room, two bedrooms and outside loo. They were quite nice. The shop was a hut at first, where they sold paraffin for the lamps, and writing materials and so on. Old Mr William and Mrs Sheppard ran the shop. Mrs Sheppard, Harold's mother. wore full black skirts and top and a white apron and bib. They brought round papers on a hand truck, then a bike.
Life was hard. Her husband's weekly wage was £4. When the Beacon Hill reservoir was being built, about 1931, she took four of the workmen as lodgers to help out; they paid £1 a week for full board and washing. The lodgers had the two spare bedrooms and Mr & Mrs Wren had the young children in their own bedroom.
Farmoor was a 'funny old place' then. There was little for the youngsters to do so Mr & Mrs Wren started a social club, arranging a fete on the meadow opposite, with fairy lights, to raise money for a football side. Goal posts and kits were bought and a pitch was made on the meadow. A coach came from Cumnor for away matches, and mothers would go along too. It all fell in later when Mr Hoult accused Mr Wren at a meeting of mis-using funds. They went outside and maybe there was a fight. After it MrWren refused to run the club any more.
Her husband, like most others, cycled into Oxford to work. She would cycle to Wolvercote with one child on the front, the other on the back. Basil and Shirley were her children (Shirley Busby is still in the village; Basil, soon to marry a second time, works in Guernsey.) Her husband later worked in Witney and finally, tired of the brass furnace, as a storeman at Hunt & Broadhursts.
She had to cook in the first years on a 'black range', burning coal and wood. it was nice for cooking but hard to keep clean. Washing was done in a copper, also burning coal and wood. Coal was delivered by Mr Barrett from Eynsham, by horse and cart. Wood was scrounged from the meadow and hedges. Mr Tanner at Farmoor Farm was the milkman and he brought it round in buckets and ladled it out. Water was pumped to the bungalows by Mr Franklin, to whom a water rate was paid. Oil lamps were used till electricity came in about 1933.
During the war prisoners-of-war were used to plant potatoes on the side of Beacon Hill. One day Boycott Franklin asked her if she'd like a sack of potatoes. That was the reward of a day's potato-picking, but she went. On the way down she would stop for a chat with Mrs Drewitt, whose bungalow was the last in Oaklands Lane, and have some of her baked bread pudding with fruit in.
Boycott Franklin was not an easy man to talk to.He gave the land for the Church and she remembers the collections being made for funds. 'It's a nice little church and it's a pity the new folk don't go there more.'
Evacuees came early in the war. They were brought to the corner at Farmoor by coach and then brought round to the houses, where people signed for them'. They included a widow and five children; she had one of the girls; they all lodged fairly near and the mother with one child was at Harry Sheppard's. She still hears from the girl (now 60).
Mr & Mrs Preston used to live in Oxtoby's home next door when it was built first. It's changed hands five times and is now being extended. Keith and Liz are good neighbours.
Mr & Mrs Wren never had a holiday till 1956. They watched the reservoirs being built, 'which spoilt our view across the meadow, where we could walk across and over the bridge to 'Bablockhigh'. Of course, the bridge no longer stands there.' 'I always made the children's clothes, including the coats. My husband kept the garden. What with the roped onions in the shed and the apples, our veg and fruit lasted through the year.'
'Of course, a lot of the old folk have died now. They all gradually seem to
fade away.'
(Mrs Wren, born in Buckingham, talked with John Hanson in February 1990; she was then 83)