1984 Newspaper Clipping

1984 Article in The Times Newspaper...

The following is an interesting excerpt from The Times newspaper in Downton that was circulated back in February of 1983. It is a two part story that ran over two consecutive weeks. My grandmother, Dorothy Alice Eastman, was fortunate enough to have actual copies of the articles clipped and personally posted to her by Bertha and Grave Eastman, her cousins.

I have re-written the excerpts, word for word (including all typos!) and the following text remains the copyright of it's rightful owners.

Sisters Recall Family History Beside The Avon

300 Years of Basket Making at Downton

Story by Camilla Kerr

No more ideal situation for a basket-making factory could be found than one chosen by an Eastman ancestor long ago in Downton.

"It must have been two or three hundred years ago that one of our family chose this spot," think Miss Bertha and Miss Grace Eastman, the last of the Downton branch of Eastmans, with a history that anyone would be proud of.

The earliest times they remember are when their grandfather Henry Eastman and his wife, who was from a local family named Prince, owned the business. Henry's family consisted of five boys and three girls, one of whom, William, inherited. William married Ethel Mary from Morgan's Vale and they produced five girls, two of whom were Bertha and Grace.

"Had we had brothers, the business might have been going still - but women's fingers are not strong enough for the work, apart from the rod-stripping".

Situated between two water ways in a band of the River Avon, the Eastmans' cottage is perfectly placed: a channel was dug between the water ways, a pipe running under the road and kept filled with water in which to put the withies - the willow rods, after they were cut.

"I can remember my father clearing the pipe from time to time by running rods through it." says Grace.

At the bottom of the garden is an inlet where the punts were moored. Grace and Bertha's father William, his father Henry and his father and grandfather before him rented withy beds up and down-river between Charlton and Braemore. In January and February men would be hired, and the punts would set out for the cutting of the withies.

The next work was the sorting into lengths, trimming and tying into bundles, to be placed in the water in the channel until needed. Then began the stripping of the willow rods, a seasonal job in which many villagers joined, using local metal brakes. The withies were pulled through the machine and the rind stripped off.

"Children earned their Saturday pennies at Eastman's, helping to strip the small fine rods" recalls Grace, 65, " while the grown ups dealt with the rest."

"Our grandmother would hand out little counters worth a half penny or two pence, and when we had earned several of these she would exchange them for the proper wages." adds Bertha, who is 77 and whose twin sister still lives in Surrey.

Trimming the odd ends was called "picking" and a special little picking knife was used with which the worker pushed rather than pulled.

The rind strippings would be into a vast hayrick-sized mound known as the "bavin pile" (bavin is an Elizabethan word meaning rubbish) which was burned, according to custom, on November 5th.

Built on at the end of the house was an extension called the Copper Shed. It housed a vast brick copper, long enough to take the longest rods of six or seven feet.

The copper was filled by pump. Those rods to be used in making fine furniture and good baskets were boiled and were then known as buff rods, while the bushel baskets for apple-picking were made of rods stripped plain.

Steam rising from the copper emerged from the specially perforated ridge tiles - still there today. The memory of the smell of the rods boiling brings back the whole scene to Bertha and Grace Eastman - "it had it's own fresh, bitter-sweet smell - pungent."

"And people used to stop outside our house (missing text) and ask if we knew our shed was on fire? - with the glow and the steam pouring out!"

After boiling the rods were stored in a big three-storey barn - now pulled down - beside the shed. When they were needed for use, they were soaked again in the ditch, where the water had been retained, to make them pliable and supple; they would keep a long time.

The Eastman sisters still posses copies of the old advertising posters showing basketwork furniture of intricate and charming pattern and design, immensely varied. There was no set pattern - the basket-makers pleased themselves as they wove their designs.

There were orders from Longford Castle for laundry baskets, wine hampers and garden furniture; babies' cradles were made, cake stands, pot stands and chaise longues, tables, sofas and sieves, and watercress hampers for the workers on the bes at Wimborne.

During the First World War, William Eastman left the business for war work, defending London with barrage baloons.

Next Week: The American Eastmans, and the Kodak (text missing)

A Letter From America

... Concluding CAMILLA KERR'S story

of the Basket Making Eastman Family

A more distant chapter of the history and antecedents of the basket-making Eastman family of Downton came to light in 1934 with the arrival of a most unusual latter.

It was written by Fred Eastman, for his Law Office in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, and sent to Rev. John Robinson, vicar of St. Lawrence Church at Downton.

Fred Eastman's "good friend Mr Broad" had visited England that summer, and at Mr Eastman's request had called to have a look at the church and meet the vicar.

He returned to Nebraska with a copy of the June 1934 issue of the Downton Parish Magazine and a "pamphlet descriptive and historical' of the church.

Fred Eastman enclosed with his letter to the vicar, five pages from an ancestral record of his family which he had compiled.

The first Eastman of whom there is record is referred to in the will of his son John, who died in 1564 or 1565, John was a husbandman, a native of Charlton.

His will is on file with the Archdeaconry Court of Sarum, and ends: "my body to be buryed within the churche of Saynt Lawrence in Downton, where my father doth lye".

The record continues through John's son Roger (died 1604), who also lived in Charlton and left nine children. The eldest of these, Nicholas, continued in the same village, and also, as was the custom, produced a large family of ten children.

It is Nicholas' fourth child, Roger, born in 1610 - his baptism being recorded in St. Lawrence parish register - who provided the Eastman family with their American connection.

He married Sarah Smith, also fathered ten children, and tradition has it that he died on December 16, 1694, at Salisbury, Massachusetts.

Roger went to America in April, 1638, sailing from Southampton on the ship Confidence bound for Massachusett's Bay.

Mr George Eastman - the Kodak man - of Rochester, New York, is a descendant of the family.

One of Roger's grandsons, Peter, married in 1708 a lady with the felicitous name of Mehitable Root: their daughters were Mary, Hezekiah, Azariah and Mehitable!

Mr Charles R. Eastman of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, visited England in 1910 and discovered Roger's baptismal records in Downton.

The Rev. John Robinson handed the documents to the Eastman family, in whose possession they have remained ever since.

Grace and Bertha Eastman still live in the house their father and grandfather carried on the 200 - 300-year-old family basket making business - the Downton Basket Making Factory.

They enjoy visits, Christmas cards and mementos from American Eastmans enthusiastically looking up their family history. Paul and Bette came from the Potomac River; Harold and Ruth from Iowa.

They turn up on the door step, with or without notice, and are all made welcome.

"We love to see them." say the Eastman sisters.

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