Letters
from Lavender Cottage
A collection of recently discovered letters, posted from
Hastings to Canada between 1942 and 1955, inspired Victoria Seymour to compile a
part-biography of their writer, Emilie Crane.
In her retirement, Emilie shared a house in Hastings with
her two friends, Clare and Edith and their much-loved cat, James. The almost one
hundred letters Emilie sent to her Canadian cousins were initially of thanks for
the food parcels they had supplied to the Lavender Cottage household in WWII and
throughout the following years of harsh austerity. The letters also detail the
lively and kind-hearted Emilie Crane’s domestic and personal life and follow the
joint fortunes of the three ageing women.
Victoria Seymour has rounded the story by adding
contemporary national, local and autobiographical material. “Letters from
Lavender Cottage” is a touching, human story with an informative narrative.
Letters to Hannah
This book
visits the lives of ordinary people, who endured extraordinary times. Among many
others is the account of a Battle lad, born in a cottage beside the famous 1066
battlefield. Aged fifteen he enlisted as a Home Guard, the youngest member in
the country at that time, a Hastings, wartime milk delivery girl details her
working and family life under fire and a young first aid volunteer highlights
the horrors of bomb and machine gun attacks on civilians. The living
memories are linked via a series of autobiographical letters to the future,
describing the author's war-troubled childhood to her newborn, 21st century
granddaughter, Hannah. Extracts from Letters to Hannah were included in the BBC
Radio 4 history series, The Archive Hour, in July 2003.This social history is
rich in anecdotes and information on food rationing and shortages, the blackout,
air raids, population evacuation and civil defence. Letters to Hannah provides a
moving and factual account of wartime Hastings, the town which features in the
ITV detective fiction series, Foyle’s War.
Court in the
Act
This book
concentrates on the work of the police force, the magistrates’ and other courts
in WWII Hastings. As the war took hold, there was hardly any aspect of home
front life that was not controlled by some Government Act, Regulation or Order,
putting even more pressure on police officers already under pressure from the
effects of conflict.
During
the war, there passed before the courts a parade of ‘spies’, aliens, pacifists,
looters, racketeers and small-time criminals. Added to these were thousands of
usually law-abiding people, who found themselves in court for flouting often not
properly understood laws. Sentences were handed down that sounded like something
out of early 19th century history: A fine for stealing one onion from
an allotment, a few apples from a tree or vegetable peelings from a dustbin, a
month in prison for allowing light to escape from behind a curtain.
Meanwhile, the formidable Government Enforcers stalked the land incognito,
seeking to entrap unwary traders and citizens and bring them to justice.
Hastings Magistrates’ Court reports of the period 1939 to 1945 give an insight
into a little discussed aspect of local history. ‘Vigilant’, the wartime
Hastings and St Leonards Observer’s column writer, provides a background to the
period, with personal comments on the foibles and morals of his home town.
Fact
met fiction, when in June 2004 Victoria Seymour was asked by Greenlit
Productions, who film Foyle’s War; the WWII detective television drama set in
Hastings, to assist in re-creating a 1940s Hastings’ magistrates’ court, for
series three.
The Long Road to
Lavender Cottage
The now famous occupant of Lavender Cottage, Emilie Crane, returns to let us
back into her life and the daily doings of her neighbours on the Ridge. What was
the truth about the supposed nudist colony opposite Lavender Cottage? Was the
guest house close by really a haven for left wing agitators and a bolt hole for
a scandalous occultist?
Victoria Seymour has meticulously researched the background and history of a
period and place that was peopled not just by locals leading ordinary lives but
by notable figures from the worlds of literature, religion, the arts, healing,
politics and entertainment - the famous and infamous.
We are given glimpses into
the Ridge’s former large Victorian houses, cottages, farms, institutions and
businesses and the lives of their occupants in peace time and war. The Long Road
to Lavender Cottage also reveals dramatic events in Emilie Crane’s daily life
that she was not able to write about in her wartime letters, for fear of the
government censor
Audio Book
Letters from Lavender Cottage is also
available as a CD. Emilie Crane's letters are read by Maxine Roach,
well known in Hastings for her appearances at the Stables Theatre, and the
author reads her own
narrative. The running time of the CD is 3 hours 40
mins.
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