Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Luxton’s Memories

Sixty years ago next Wednesday, the last day of June, Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Luxton, of 2, Woodland Terrace, Bideford, stepped out of Bridge Street Methodist Church, Bideford, to begin life as husband and wife on a wage of £1 a week.

Now, within a few days of their diamond wedding anniversary, they look back on a marriage that they have made happy by pulling together through the hard times and the better ones.

Mr. and Mrs. Luxton are very well-known and respected in Bideford and district where all their married life has been spent. Mrs. Luxton, who was Miss Lily Copp before her marriage, is a Bidefordian born and bred and her husband only just escapes that distinction for he came here from Crediton at the age of five and even now, eighty one years later, he still remembers the first house in which he lived in Meddon Street.

They have two sons – Mr. Sidney Alfred Luxton, who is in business as a tobacconist in High Street, Bideford, and Mr. Arthur William Luxton, a motor engineer, who lives in Pitt Lane, Bideford. There are two grandchildren, Mrs. Kathleen Born of Hereford, and Mr. Gerald Luxton, of Ealing, London; and one great-grandchild, Susan Mary Born.

SIXTY YEARS A GARDENER

With sixty years as a gardener behind him, Mr. Luxton has acquired that steadying philosophy of life that comes to all who are associated with and love the living soil and its plants, demanding long hours and hard work but giving in return a busy life and a happy one.

Mr. Luxton was between fourteen and fifteen years of age when he started gardening at Heale House, Littleham, and there was not much time left for youthful zest out of a day that began at 6 a.m. ending with his return home at 7 in the evening. It meant walking five and a half miles a day, seven days a week. On one occasion, in order to see the launching of a wooden ship from Johnson’s Yard below the Bridge at East-the-Water, he ran from Heale House to Geneva Place where he was then living, had his tea and changed his clothes and was down at the scene of the launching by five minutes to seven.

His wages at this time were 9s. a week and, after covering his living expenses, he was left with 1s. a week at the most.

“I think he had a neck to start courting on that,” laughed Mrs Luxton.

After four years at Heale House, he went to Moreton House, Bideford, then the seat of Sir George Stucley – the grandfather of the present Mayor of Bideford (Mr. D.F.B. Stucley) – as second gardener in a staff of twelve gardeners. While at Moreton, Mr. Luxton spent most of his time in the greenhouses at Winsford. In those days grapes, oranges, melons and pineapples were grown there as well as a wide variety of hot-house plants.

SHOW SUCCESSES

There was a touch of pride in his voice as Mr. Luxton recalled the occasion when Moreton entered 33 classes at the horticultural show which, in those days was held in the open air and moved around the different big houses in the district year by year, and won 31 first, two second and one third prize.

After a few years at Moreton House, he left to go as head gardener to Mr. W.L. Pike at Richmond House (now The Holt), Appledore, where he remained eight years. A year after going to Appledore he got married and he and his wife set up home in Pitt Hill. During this time Mr. Luxton took a prominent part in the activities of the Appledore Wesleyan Church. He was a Sunday School teacher, a member of the choir and organised and conducted Band of Hope meetings which were frequently attended by the then Vicar of the Parish (Rev. H.C.A.S. Muller).

He continued his Wesleyan Church work at Alwington when he became head gardener to Mr. H.J. Mason, at Portledge, and was later joined by his son, Sidney, who became organist.

Mr. Luxton had been nearly twenty years at Portledge – “there wasn’t a place in the district kept so well,” he said – when he decided to go into business on his own account as a market gardener. With the establishment of his nurseries at Beverley Gardens at Abbotsham Road, Bideford, began the hardest period of his life for often he was working sixteen hours a day and, in any case, seven days a week. But he had the help of his wife who joined him at their stall in Bideford Pannier Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays and helped with the picking and weighing of produce in the nurseries.

Mr. Luxton was a founder member and a former chairman of Bideford and District Horticultural Society which was founded nearly fifty years ago. He has won quite a number of awards at the Society’s shows and while he was at Appledore he won two silver tea and coffee sets which had been presented for competition by his employer, Mr. W.L. Pike, who was then President of the revived Society. Present day shows, he thought, had declined from what they were in those days when the whole market, including that area now taken up by the restaurant, was crammed with flowers, fruit and vegetables; and there had always been a band playing during the show.

Up until a few years ago Mr. Luxton was able to keep himself happily occupied in his retirement in the garden of his house and with bowls which he only took up when he retired in 1939. He is a member of Bideford Liberal Club, where he was fond of having a game of skittles, and he is one of the three oldest members of the Rechabite Friendly Society which he joined when he was 16.

NARROW ESCAPE

Mr. Luxton very nearly did not live to see his diamond wedding day for back in 1947 he was overcome while getting his wife an early morning cup of tea, by gas fumes which had seeped into the house from a broken main in the street outside. He was unconscious for over twelve hours but from his as from one or two other illnesses recently, he came up smiling.

His one real love is a game of football. Now it is the association game he follows, but in bygone days he was a supporter of the rugby football team that played at Port Hill, Northam.

When Mr. Luxton was at Appledore, he confesses, he used to walk down to the end of the drive with a broom in his hands as if engaged on some task; then, quickly hiding the broom in the shrubbery, he was off to Port Hill. But his difficulties were not over. As he went along the road, he had to listen for the carriage and pair which always took his employer Mr. Pike, into town on Saturday afternoons and more often or not, Mr. Luxton had to slip over the hedge and well out of sight until the carriage had gone by and frequently had to repeat the performance on the way home!

That he can still recapture and relish with the best such youthful memories and escapades shows that he is still young at heart; certainly his sprightly manner belies his 86 years.

Gazette Article 26 May 1954