96 Chitterne

This photo of 96 under 3 inches of snow was taken on 14th April 1966

96 appears to have been built on the site of two older 19th century cottages, on a holding once called Clear Spring. The new house existed in 1911 when it housed the bailiff who ran Clump Farm.

Ernie George wrote the following story about the house when Edward Polden lived there, which may ring true with some villagers after the rising of the springs earlier this year 2023.

Clear Spring Clear Off

Old Eddie Polden tried year after year to tame the spring water that flooded around his house since he’d lived there. One year, in summer, he sank a well out the back near his stable, and topped it with a stand-pump and horse trough, saying to himself:
“That’ll put a stop to it.”
But, the following year in early March, spring water bubbled up again between his back door and the White Hart, and was soon laying all around his house and trickling from his front garden into the road gutter.
“Well, I bain’t finished yet” he said, “and I will git rid unnit next yer!”
So, the following summer, he dug a trench for land drains from his back yard between his house and the White Hart, under his downstairs rooms and out into the front garden, under the road and into the Cut.
“Thur I reckon I’ll be clear uv thic-ayer spring, frim now awn,” he said.
Come the next Spring, returning from his land near the Bourne, Eddie noticed that spring water was running across the road from under the wall between the Grange and the Gate House, as it did every year. Eddie couldn’t wait to get home. He jumped off his horse and cart and went round to his back door. Sure enough, he could hear water trickling into the land drains, so he went over the road and, yes, water was trickling from his drain into the Cut. Hooray!
“Well mother” he said as he entered the back door, “we gawt it beat!”
But, next morning, Eddie stepped outside his back door straight into a boot full of cold water.
“Blast an’ dam!” He yelped, or words to that effect, and those were the only things it seems that would control the spring, for within a fortnight, water was lapping around the front of his house again. And so it has been every year since when the springs rise.
So Eddie gave it his best, and so did all succeeding occupants of Clear Springs, at least up to the mid 1920s. As Eddie said just before the Great War, “the old-uns allus called it Clear Spring, I only wished it would Clear-Awf, an bovver White Hart or Clump Farm!”