from an old talk on Bicknoller....
We go on down Chilcombe Hill and come to a cottage now known as Old Forge. In 1910 it was a working forge. There lived there Edwin and Ann Dibble and the forge was worked by their son Billy. Edwin Dibble had been a carter at Warres Farm when it was farmed by the Lethbridges but later he worked as a stonecracker. Now if you look at exhibits 2 and 3 I will explain exactly what he did. There would be a pile of stones deposited by the roadside in what was known as a stone depot and Edwin and such similar workers would sit on a piece of sacking by it and with their eyes protected by gauze goggles from splinters and armed with a two pronged claw fork and a hammer they would break the stones which came from Bicknoller quarry into the size required for road making and those would be very neatly stacked with almost military precision and an official from the road authority would come along a measure the pile which they had done for cubic feet and they were paid accordingly. Of course the roads were never tarmacked then and the method of making them was to put down the small stone, water it profusely with a water cart and then roll it in with a heavy steam roller. The result was deep mud in winter and clouds of dust in summer. You may get some idea of the typical surface of our country lanes looking at exhibit number 2, but there were compensations. The verges then stood thick with buttercups and ragged robin, celandines and other wild flowers, cow parsley and so forth. Sometimes in the banks there were lovely rows of stately foxgloves and the hedges were interlaced with roses and honeysuckle. Ann took in laundry work for 20 years to my knowledge; she always did my father’s surpluses and washed and starched collars for us both. This cottage bears a sad distinction in that it was the only home in the parish from which each of the two world wars took a life, Walter Dibble in the first and Dennis Barber in the second.
