WALLOP, WHERE LIFE IS CHEERFUL

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1934, Page 19

WALLOP, WHERE LIFE IS CHEERFUL

Those who live in the Wallops are never in the dumps.

I had often wondered if the inhabitants of villages with curious or amusing names saw anything funny in them, but I had no need to wonder hero (says a writer in the "Daily Express," London, in a dispatch from The Wallops, Hants.).

"Is this Wallop?" I asked, and was greeted by a shout of laughter 'from a group of old men. "Ec, zur," one called, "that it be; all the Wallops, Nether, Middle, and Over Wallop." The "Wallopers can well afford 'to laugh at the name, for they live in a place of great beauty. Their noisiest industry is water-cress. growing. •

, A faint bluish mist hung over the thickly-thatched roofs when I woke and looked out of the window.

Tall pillars of smoke rose straight into the-air, and the silence was broken only by the'occasional crow of a cock, the chirp-of-a finch,; or the gentle plash of a -waterhen plunging into the crystal stream which flows through Wallop and spreads out over the wido cress beds. Portsmouth, is the name of Wallop's cress king, and, curiously enough, Wallop is the family name of the Earls,of Portsmouth, -who have estates here.

Mr. .John. Portsmouth, showed mo .the little stoiie dahis. a few inches: high \yhieh." make the water spread over, a wide expanse of flat land. It is this slowly-running water which makes the cress so green and succulent 3nd so attractive to the. waterhens.

*, There, was = one, shameless waterhen haying. ;he£/breakfast when I .looked out "of my bedroom window this mornings The feathers of her speckled breast qui.yer.ed.. in .little.■wav,es;,pf orgy.as she gobbled.' ,\'.. '~. ..■ , ~ • Overhead a few; finches twittered in. the-, thatch-'-ida -the-, wall. For here- in

Wallop they thatch tho walls as well as i the roofs. Chalk is tho principal building material, and uuthatched walls would, absorb rain and burst. One wall! I saw had done so, and was little more! than a heap of white powder. . AVallop traces its existence back for many years before the Saxons invaded England. The oldest-known form of the name is Guoloppum, which was used by tho Romans. Queen Guinevere, wife of King Arthur of the- Bound Table, passed through Wallop on her flight from Winchester to sanctuary in the Abbey of Amesbury. • So I was told by Mr. Fred Shadwell, ■who must surely be the merriest of all the merry men of Wallop. "Wait till I be dressed right, zur," he said, making a sudden dive for his house. ■ ■ ' '

A moment later he cam© out wearing a smock and a bandless, almost shapeless felt hat, which rose on:the top of his poll like a sugarloaf and drooped round his ears like faded rhubarb leaves.

"Hundred an' thirty years old this zmoek be," he explained. "Best Irish linen, it be, and look at the zmocking. Women today can't do that zo well." •Mr. Shadwell completed his dress with a white-spotted red kerchief. "Eight varmer I be now," he said. "Always ready for a laugh here, people be," he went on. "They laughs easy. There was old George that used to live up the road. One.day he says to me: 'Fred, I b© seyenty-vour today.' "'Are you, George?' I zed.. . " 'Yes,' he zed, 'an''your father's eldest zister were zoventy-vour last month.' ■"■" . .

" 'Well,-' I zed,, 'she's zix weeks older than you, George.' • " *Yes,' he zed, laughin', 'she always were.^.'' , , ~...,... ....... ~• . : .-,.., :