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From a Boughton Monchelsea History Book.
THE WHITE HORSE.
My maiden name was Minnie Wallis. As a child I lived at the "White Horse,"
which is now called the "Red House." My father was the licensee and my
mother lived there for twenty two years. In the hop-picking time, there
the "White Horse," which is now called the "Red House"
was always people fighting outside - gipsies who used to trot their
ponies along the way selling them. London people used to come down and
there used to be fights over the prices.
My mother used to say the women would take out their hat pins and shed
blood with their pins - that was the origin of the "White Horse" starting
to be called the "Red House," and more people now know it as the
"Red House"
than as the "White Horse." It was a very old house and there was only one
room in it that looked anything like a public house and that was the one
bar where people had their drinks and took their snuff - to see them
taking out their little snuff boxes used to amuse us children. Mother
said many times they would knock on the door at five o'clock in the
morning, farm labourers would on their way to the farms, and call up
"Come on Alice, we want a pint of beer to take to work with us".
My father was an invalid and she had him to look after and us four
children to get off to school - and we walked there. The snow in winter
was very thick and she used to worry about us going up East Hall Hill.
She used to make us put my dad's old woollen socks over the tops of our
shoes to get up the hill. And when we got to the top, we thought that
the children at school would make fun of us, so we used to take the
socks off our shoes and put them in the hedge - marking the spot with a
stone or piece of stick and then put them back on, on the way home. We
were never late for school and it was at least a three mile walk. We
used to collect about six other children on the way, the Thirkells,
Gilbert and Phyllis Simmons.
We took sandwiches at first and then, when school dinners started, we
took ten pence for them.
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