Dartmouth & South Hams Chronicle Oct 1st 1937

TALKS   WITH   VETERANS

 

AT WORK AT SEVEN YEARS OF AGE

 

When Dartmouth Craftsmen Earned A Guinea A Week

            

No 30…..Mr. W. CRANCH

Readers will have noticed that throughout this series, some of the most remarkable facts about the old days have concerned the wages paid to workmen, skilled and otherwise. Mr. William Gill Cranch, aged 40 of Clarence Street,

Dart­mouth, however, was able to sur­pass most of the other contributors.
He told a Chronicle reporter that in his very early days in Dart­mouth as a starter he himself earned 19s a week, while the
craftsmen, who would in these days be receiving between three and four pounds a week, were considered adequately paid with a pound or guinea.

Mr. Cranch started life on a farm when he was- seven years old, easily the earliest age men­tioned -in this series. He did the usual work'--looking after the live­stock, fetching food for it. "scuff­ling'' mangolds, and generally making himself useful. He never attended school, another unusual thing, for although they started their education late and finished it early

Cranch's generation did not usually escape altogether, though no doubt some of them wished they had! In fact when they wished hard enough they did escape. and "mitched" from school, or, in other words, played truant, with considerable frequency.

Mud Cottage Walls

Although he is not actually a Dartmothian, Mr. Cranch was born in the South Hams, near West Alvington. The little hamlet in which he lived all those years ago was a typical product of rural Devon in olden times. Presumably finding themselves without a supply of stone, the builders had solved their problem by giving the cottages ' "cobbed" walls, a term indicating that they were built with a substitute for modern ce­ment which consisted chiefly of earth or mud. Practically the only stone used was for framing the doors and windows, and the walls were about four and sometimes six feet thick. The roofs were generally thatched.

As has already been mentioned Mr. Cranch went to work at seven. He earned 6d. a week, and says he thought he was "made," even with that minute sum. He stayed on the farm for nine arid a half years, and was then considered capable of doing a man's work— at the age of 16 1/2  He was at that time receiving 2s. 3d. a week, com­pared with the 8s. of the older hands.'

 

To help counterbalance the effect of these small wages and the big­ger families of those days, how­ ever, such luxuries as tobacco and beer were much cheaper. The former could be obtained for 3d. an ounce. and the latter was 2d. a pint.

During his early days in Dart­mouth Mr Cranch worked as a carter on buildings. The town was then in what he describes as a very "rough" state. He found that while he was driving through Lower Street the axles of his cart touched the walls of the buildings on eithcr side, which no doubt made the operation of getting through safely a some what difficult one,  Mr. Cranch did not say what happened if he met something coming the other way in a particularly narrow stretch. In later years he helped to pull a lot of the old property down.

Mr.  Cranch   also worked  in  Mr. Nicholl’s shipyard which years ago was situated where Silver Street now is. His job, with another man, was the operation of a pit-saw. It  was  ******* use, and the timber to be sawn was laid across a pit in  which one of the men worked. The other stood on a platform above the baulk of timber.

When he first "lived" in Dartmouth Mr. Crunch was very interested in the old hand-operated; hand-drawn fire engine, which now reposes in St. Saviour's Church. Clumsy and inefficient as it seems now, he has seen it used at many fires, and suc­cessfully too, although the firemen found it necessary to call in the help of outsiders. A fire in those days seems to have been a sort of community affair in which anybody could  join.

I here was once a very serious fire at a Sandquay timber yard owned by a Mr. Redway. It broke out on a Saturday, and the firemen were still operating the big, double- handled pump on Monday. It was nearly a week before the blaze was really subdued. Several trawlers were burned out and a lot of timber was destroyed.             

 

Dartmouth Changes

 

Mr. Cranch has seen Dartmouth change greatly during his long residence here— the filling'-in of the old mill-pond which once existed  on the site of the Market Square, the passing of the shipyards along Mayor's Avenue and at Coombe, the building of the Police Station at the foot of what used to be a slip where coal was unloaded, and the disappearance of the sailing ships, which once made Dartmouth harbour such a picturesque sight.