"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." This sentence of L.P. (Lesley Pool) Hartley deservedly won him a place in the hall of fame. During our prefab years Hartley was living in a house in Bathford which had once been the residence of the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce and the inventor of the Bath biscuit, Dr Oliver.
Hartley moved to Bathford from London after having been given a hard time by some stand-offish members of the Bloomsbury Group. He made one strategic intervention in local affairs. His novel 'The Boat' had been published in 1949 and he took a special pleasure in boating. What prompted his strategic intervention was an incident on the River Avon. A group of boys started throwing stones at him and his boat. Hartley was so inflamed by the incident that he wrote a letter to his go-between, the editor of the Bath & Wilting. His indignant missive about the boys' behaviour struck a chord with the mood of the time.
When drinkers in Smith's Wine Vaults heard of Hartley's letter they felt that their (never yet exercised) right to take a leisurely and unmolested row down the river had been snatched away. The remark made by one of their party was subsequently quoted in an untypically fierce Bath & Wilting editorial. It said "Those tenth rate punks are at it again!"
The stretch of the river on which L.P. Hartley got stoned is six miles to the east of our estate in Twiverton. This made it impossible for any canards to be hurled at the kids from the prefabs. We do things differently on our estate.