When I wrote about the out-of-the-ordinary characters in our village I forgot that we have two men who were very active then and are happily still with us. Mr. Arthur Werrett is so well known that there is little I can say about him which has not already been said. I can remember when he lived with his young family in the house which is 1mw Mrs. Williams's at Puddle Dock. As a boy I was often passing by Mr. Werrett's house with my father. He, my father, used to remark that Arthur was always working and we saw him either in his garden or feeding pigs in the paddock, or working in the Common Garden Allotment. This must have been after he had put in a long day's work in the building business. In Mr. Werrett's case it must have been true that 'hard work doesn't hurt anybody'.
The other villager is Mr. Arthur Carter. He came to work for my father when he left school and at weekends and holidays I spent a great deal of time with him. I suppose he was about fifteen then but he had already read widely in the works of Rider haggard (who was then at the height of his popularity), Fennimore Cooper and, of course, Charles Dickens.
We, as most small farmers did then, made great use of our common rights and it was a red letter day for me when I was sent with Arthur to get cattle off the Common or find some that had wandered. Sometimes Arthur brought his yew bow which he had made from some special Churchyard tree. Then he would be Robin Hood or an Agincourt yeoman. Another day he would bring his throwing spear so that, if he had been reading She', he could be one of the great Chaka's warriors. Best of all were the days when we followed straying cattle into Lower Woods. Then Arthur would be the 'Last of the Mohicans' and glide noiselessly from tree to tree.
There were occasions, generally in the autumn, when my father bought cattle at Berkeley Road market. We travelled up by train from Charfield and after the market Arthur and I would start on the long walk home with whatever cattle my father had bought.
Pickwick Farm on the A38 was, when Arthur and I walked past it, called the Bell Inn. It was the inn at which the great Charles had dined on a journey from Bristol to Birmingham. Dickens afterwards immortalised the hostelry by making it the stopping place for Mr. Pickwick on his journey to Birmingham with Mr. Winkle, Bob Sawyer and Sam Weller.
As soon as we had settled our little drove to walking down the then quiet road, Arthur was free to indulge in all his fancies about Dickens and his Loveable characters. I expect ~his lively talk made our ten mile walk seem shorter. I remember how quiet and tired we were when we got to the long, lonely stretches between Michael wood and Hillesley.
There was another man of individual mind who had left Hillesley before my memories begin but who I and many other village people knew well for many years. This was Ambrose Brown, always known as 'Am'. He was a son of Mrs. Brown the baker and learnt the craft of cabinet-maker. He built the red brick house opposite the old Manor and started business there but he quickly found that the only shop worth keeping in Hillesley was a shop which sold something to eat. He moved his business to Wotton where Mr. Barber Taylor carries on in the same premises. He was an inveterate foot follower of the hounds and made his sport pay by talking to the hunting people, when they checked in a run, of the choice pieces of furniture he had for sale. He started a band while he lived in Hillesley and his musical talent was passed on to his son Maurice who conducted the Kingswood Abbey Band and played the organ at the Church until fairly recent years.
While we lived at peace in the village most of the time, elections split us down the middle. The Liberal Party was in the ascendancy before war broke out, Mr. Lloyd George was setting the foundation of the modern Welfare State with his five shillings old age pension and the Panel Doctor Scheme. The Liberals were for Free Trade, Home Rule for Ireland and a curb on the House of Lords. Tories were for Tariff Reform, a bigger Army and Navy and in general support for King and Empire. It is a fairly general statement but I think it is true to say that most Chapel people were 'yellows' and most Church folk were 'blues'.
I hear the same tunes sung by children today as we shouted for our candidates. A Major Cockerel dared to challenge our Mr. Athelstan Rendall on one occasion. We sang:-

Vote, vote, vote for Mr. Rendall,
Drive old Cockerel out the town,
Mr. Rendall is the man,
We will have him if we can,
If you'll only put your shoulder to the wheel.

Church and Chapel, Liberal and Conservative, Capital and Labour all had their various conflicts, but looking back, how clear cut they now appear!
The Labour Party was but a small cloud, or hope, on the horizon and none of us really thought that the established order as we knew it would ever pass away. The rich man in his castle, was in our case a decent, kindly character; the poor man in his cot, with all his skills of making the most of everything, was not too badly off. In 1912 we never thought that our settled community would ever change very much.