Percy Wallace had some funny little ways. Dad was always amused by
his superstitions and constant worrying about all sorts, but Dad
loved him, and they became very close. Percy and Dora had a
daughter, Barbara, but they didn’t have a son. The closest that
Percy had to sons, were his nephews Alan Lander who was his brother
in-law Sid’s son, and Mike Lear and Bryan Wallace who both lived in
Bristol. Mike, Percy’s sister’s son had been evacuated from Bristol
to live with Dora and Percy in 1939. He was supposed to have gone to
Langton St George’s, but he recalls that he rarely attended, as
Percy used to take him down to Winspit, where Percy launched his
fishing boat and they’d spend the days fishing there, which didn’t
please Dora, but she put up with it.
Percy’s boat was registered with the ‘WH’ registration, and at one
time there were four boats that were kept down at Winspit. One of
those was Billy Winspit’s of course. Chapmans Pool had some
restrictions during the war, with anti- submarine steel nets around
the bay. Frank and Sid Lander were eventually given permission to
fish at Chapmans Pool, and they had to navigate the anti-submarine
defences with great caution.
St Albans and St Aldhelms
Percy helped his father in-law Frank sometimes, but
he was often on duty at the Coast Guard Lookout at St Albans head,
which incidentally was called that by HMS Navy when they set up the
Nautical Navigation Charts and Maps. It was often confusing for me
as a child, as St Albans, ‘z’orbinz’ and St Aldhelms ‘sin ald’m’z’
were interchangeable and many men would call them either of those
two names at different times.
The Head, or I suppose I should call it a neck, was originally a
Nautical marker, and was not always noticeable to the mariners. It
was just a little bit too short, so the local quarrymen were asked
to sort it out. They plonked the 'head' on top of the pillar/neck,
and it became part of a series of legends as to whose fault it was
that St Aldhelm’s Head, named after a Saint, associated with Wessex,
or St Alban, an earlier Saint, a Roman Catholic Christian Martyr
from the Roman period, who was beheaded on a hill, St Albans,
Hertfordshire.
The Legend was that the Worth Matravers locals were very disgruntled
about the headland being noted as St Alban’s Head, and not St
Aldhelm’s. So much so that they plonked the ‘head’ on top of the
column and said something that inferred that St Alban lost his head
in Hertfordshire, and it “rolled all the way to Purbeck and now,
‘Yer Tiz’, on the Purbeck Headland at Worth Matravers”.
I have come across so much literature that mentions the subject on
why it was known as St Albans by the Naval men. Some state it was
the thick, illiterate locals’ fault, who couldn’t pronounce the
complicated ‘St Aldhelms’. Others say it was the fault of the
Captains, Admirals and ultimately the men who drew up the nautical
charts, who were also a bit thick, as well as the clergy who wrote
in the register, and the Census enumerators who followed suit. The
HMS Coastguard, including the auxiliary teams, were under the title
of ‘St Albans’ and their uniform insignia always had it down as St
Albans. Personally, I prefer ‘Zorbinz’, as ‘Sin Ald’m’zz’ sounds
like someone is cursing and cussing.
The marker at St Aldhelm’s Head was twinned with a very similar one
(a straight up column without a head) at Winspit.
Registration
To continue, regarding Sid Lander eventually having
permission to fish at Chapmans Pool (under supervision). That was
due to the need of the extra food required by the Tre/Radar RAF
personnel stationed at RAF Renscombe and the country in general. The
fishermen’s boats around Winspit and Chapmans Pool were generally
registered under Weymouth back then, and Swanage Boats were
generally registered under Poole.
BY the early 1970s, all of the local boats were beginning to be
registered under the new system of having to be registered to Poole
including all of the former WH registered boats getting their new
replacement P registration numbers sorted. But a lot of the
fishermen were reluctant to get rid of their old and original
Weymouth ‘WH’ registered numbers from the side of their boats. An
inspector came down to Chapmans Pool and explained to them that
they’d be fined and lose their rights to fish and to be legally able
to sell their fish to the merchants, so a few tried keeping their
old number and placing the new number below them. However, the
inspector turned up again and told them off; there were a few new
cursey words that I learned that day, ones that I’d never heard
before. Nothing bad, but they mostly used words that begin with D
and B, including damn and bloody.
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