Newspaper Article 2005 – The fun times at France House

HENRY DANVERS remembers his childhood at a boarding house in Eskdale as tough, yet enjoyable.

The fun times at France House

The day would begin with Hazel Shaw calling out “good morning, rise and shine”. In an instant, we would rise out of bed, grab all our sheets and blankets, toss them over the open window sill to air, turn our mattress, grab our towel, which hung above our beds, and head for the bathroom.

In summer we would first wash our faces, then plunge into a full bath of cold water, but in winter we would be allowed to have a shower – I mean a cold one. We would first wash our faces then if you were quick enough, and the matron wasn’t looking, you could poke your backside under the shower and get out again before you got too wet.

Then back to your bedroom and make your bed, and wo-betide you if it was not just right.

Mrs Shaw would inspect every bed before you were allowed to go to your chores and if it was not right the quince stick, which was often in her hand, would make contact with the back of your legs. You soon learnt how to make a bed properly.

Every boy had his allotted job, jobs like sweeping, mopping, polishing, dusting all the various rooms in the house before breakfast each day.

The gong would ring for breakfast around 7am. Each boy had to again wash his face and hands, be inspected before going to the tables. The quince stick was always at the ready.

Breakfast consisted of a plate of porridge, a mug of cocoa and a slice of thick baked bread called crunch.

After breakfast there was always cleaning up and dishes to be done, before we could get ready for school.

Before heading off to school we would queue up for our lunches which consisted of four slices of bread spread with butter and usually plum jam. During the war it would be dripping.

Now and then we were given a piece of Andy’s (the cook) sticky fruit cake which would stick nicely to the classroom ceiling when tossed upwards.

We all attended the old Eskdale School (built about 1860). I recall the time when Claude Holyoake [Hollyoake] came to be the new headmaster. As a treat he said we could have our lunch anywhere in the school grounds. Thinking we were a bit smart, a friend and I climbed onto the apex of the very steep roof and ate our lunch there. When Claude came back to the school after having his lunch and saw us up there he nearly had a haemorrhage – he was not at all amused.

France House was a home for boys, mainly from broken homes, some orphaned and some that needed a little straightening out. Discipline was very strong but fair, you soon knew the boundaries of tolerance.

We really had a lot of spare time to fill in, like after school and after tea, when all the chores were done and a pretty fair run at the weekends.

Just before lunch on Saturday morning we were given a potato, piece of meat, an egg, a cup of flour and we headed down to the Eskdale River bank where we had huts and fireplaces of all shapes and sizes and had to cook our own meal. You soon learnt to cook properly or you went hungry.

When lunch was over and things were cleaned up, we would head down or up the riverbank to look for rabbits.

After the 1938 flood the riverbanks were covered in silt and the whole place was covered with rabbits. They would dig their burrows in the soft sand and we would have a great time digging them out.

We spent a lot of our time swimming and frolicking in the river. Dropping our clothes on the side of the river, we would tear across, naked, to the deep pool on the other side.

We noticed one day while swimming that some town girls were walking along, close to where our clothes were. They picked them up and made off. Well, we thought this wasn’t cricket so we took off after them. When they saw us coming after them, they dropped our clothes – and could they run! I don’t know whether they thought the devil was after them or it was Christmas time.

We spent a lot of our leisure time chasing goats, tramping, sledging, mushrooming, picking blackberries on the big hill behind the house (called Magog). Some of the boys would spend weeks hollowing out old poplar logs which had come down in the 1938 flood and jammed on the bank in the river. They would carve them in the shape of a canoe only to find when the launching day arrived they floated upside down. Not to be discouraged they would straddle the log and paddle down the river to the sea several kilometres away, finally leaving all their hard work at the mouth of the river – all good clean fun.

I recall one time when two boys ventured up the river to fill in a Sunday afternoon. The railway line ran parallel to the river for a short stretch so the boys thought they would pop up and walk along the railway line. A short way up the line they discovered, lying in the grass, a hand-operated jigger. Boys being boys, they manhandled it into place on the line, climbed aboard and started pushing and pulling until it gathered up a little speed.

They kept this up for 10 minutes until one of the boys said, “Hey, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” the other said.

“A bloody railcar is coming.”

Well, the two boys dived into the long grass on either side of the line, just as a big red railcar called Takitimu came thundering around the bend. There was an almighty crash as the railcar struck the jigger sending splintered wood and steel in all directions.

Luckily there was no damage done other than being one jigger less. The two boys slunk home feeling very subdued.

We were a very, very fit bunch of boys. We ran everywhere. When our older boys went to Napier Boys’ High School they always cleaned up the running competitions. We also had a very fit rugby team and competed against schools such as Tutira, Kawaka [Kaiwaka] and Mangateretere with great success.

France House was very much self-supporting. We had about 100 laying fowls and the same amount of ducks, all free range. We ran a wonderful vege garden, reared pigs on the various scraps and milked by hand 15 to 20 cows, separated the milk and sent the cream to the Hastings factory. We had a good supply of citrus and a large orchard of fruit trees, such as apricots, nectarines, apples  and plums.

The cooking was done on a large double-ovened coal range so there was always boys collecting logs from the river bank, cutting and splitting and filling the woodbox each day.

The house was run by Les Shaw, a firm army man and boxer. Mrs Shaw was a trained nurse, a very fine pair. Miss Anderson was our cook named Andy. She would stoke the fire with her big black poker and if no one was looking she would give the porridge a quick stir with it.

There was also another woman that looked after the washing and mending. The boys had turns [had] at doing the ironing with the old quince stick coming into action if there was any creases or scorch marks on the clothes.

We were all taught how to darn our own socks and also (yes!) to knit. During the war we knitted many garments such as Cramwell fling [Cranwell flying] jerseys, balaclavas, scarves, mittens and socks for the Air Force. We became very good at it.

As I said before, the discipline was very strict (it had to be) and if anyone was really caught misbehaving Mr Shaw would say “right you boys, deal with him”, so he had to, what we called, run the gauntlet. All the boys would stand in a line a metre apart with their legs wide apart while the offending boy had to crawl on his hands and knees between each boy, while the boy above got as many whacks in as he could.

During the Christmas holidays we would pack up an awful lot of gear, including half a dozen tents and head up to Tutira where we our pitched our tents below where the church now stands. We would make bed frames, tables, forms, pot stands and open fires, brooms out of manuka. It was a real model set up as we were all taught this at our Scout training.

One morning we all set off early to climb the big hill behind the lake. Mrs Shaw was with us and when we finally reached the top we got a great view of the sea, miles away.

Some bright spark said “let’s go down to the sea for a swim”, so we all took off. It was an awful lot further away than it looked, but we all kept going and finally got there. We had our swim, a lay on the beach to get our breath back, and then up and away on our return journey.

Amazingly Mrs Shaw handled it all pretty well. We all plodded on up hill and down dale thinking we would never make it back. Finally the sight of that lake was a real picture, a very welcome sight.

After staggering back to our tents, we all collapsed onto our bunks and laid there till morning, too tired to eat. Poor Mrs Shaw was a wreck for about three days. We bloody near killed her! But she was one gutsy lady.

Each morning and night we would strip off our clothes, grab our towel and tear down the hill across the main Wairoa road, around the hill and into the lake. It was so amusing to watch the expressions of the driving public as they came around the corner to be confronted by about 25 boys all naked and waving their towels in the air.

We all had wonderful times at Tutira and came away with many happy memories.

Although I didn’t think that at the time, I believe France House was a great place to be brought up and made many like-long friends. Some hated it and wanted nothing more to do with it, but nearly all the boys from my era (1940-47) feel as I do. That’s why we have a reunion every second year.

Photo captions –

WELL-ADJUSTED: Henry Danvers says discipline at France House made you remember your tasks soon enough.

OLD FRIENDS: The boys at France House. Back row: Roger Smyth, Snow Codlin, Athol Beale, Ivan Stewart, Don Simmers and Peter Moore. Next row: Sid Kaimoana, Bob Simpson, Eric Smith, Alan Lownes [Lowndes] and Henry Danvers. Middle row: Miss “Andy” Anderson, Mr and Mrs Les and Hazel Shaw, Miss Baker and John Danvers. Front row: Arthur Boyd, Peter Springfield, an unnamed boy and Flett Black.

MASTER AND MATRON: Les and Hazel Shaw.