Woodside

Aged eight to eleven, I was often taken by my mother & stepfather to Woodside, on the Isle of Wight, in the summer holidays.

We reach the end of the country road. A sign says Woodside House Private and we go through the white gate, down a long winding drive to a red-brick residence, from the same era as my grandparents’ house – about 1905, but three times the size. The gravel path outside the entrance is shaded by a huge cedar tree full of cooing doves. We go to the back where a well-tended lawn slopes down giving way to rough scrub and a view of the Solent, the channel dividing the Isle of Wight, on which we stand, from the mainland of England.

Afternoon tea is being served to about forty guests dressed smart-casual. A butler in short summer jacket supervises the distribution of thin-sliced bread-and-butter, tea, scones with cream and jam, cakes.

Darting amongst the guests is Vivian, a middle-aged Sea Scout, gesturing, looking into people’s faces and croaking in quite clear English considering he’s been deaf from birth. He invites us to view the Mauretania through his telescope and explains it’s not the original one which had four funnels. Almost every day one of these liners passes majestically across the seascape, leaving for New York or returning to Southampton, just beyond the flare of the Fawley oil refineries on our misty horizon.

Woodside was a naturist holiday camp established in 1933 by the Rev A. L. Critchard on his retirement as an Anglican priest. He was in his eighties when I first visited Woodside in 1950. He mingled with the guests occasionally and spent much time in his book-lined study. Through its French windows he could observe human dramas and spectacular views.

By “spectacular views” I’m not referring to guests disporting themselves in the nude. Woodside was not a place of ogling and licentiousness. You could stay weeks and not see a bare breast or crotch. All was discreet. Accommodation was in wooden chalets of simple construction at the edge of the woods. Cold showers were dotted amongst these chalets, alfresco and unscreened, but these hardly breached the general rule of no indiscriminate nudity.

The designated place to mingle “naked as Nature intended” and soak up the sun’s rays, or rain’s drops, was the Paddock, a one-acre clearing within dense thickets and woodland. You entered through an improvised wooden gatehouse where you could leave your clothes: nudity was compulsory in the Paddock . On the other hand, obedience to rules was seldom compulsory.

The Paddock was little more than a wilderness, terraced into various plots and levels of rough lawn. For entertainment there was a swimming pool with sloped decking on one side, and some Miniten courts.

I looked up Miniten on the Web. What a boon is the Web! I’d forgotten about Miniten and now know why. It’s a sport played world-wide but only by nudists. It’s just like tennis but the court is one-third the size and you use a special bat called a thug, instead of a racquet. It was invented in the Thirties—perhaps at Woodside, this very place. Before I learned Miniten, I had to persuade an adult or other children to play quoits, which involved throwing a rubber ring over the net and catching it. But the pool was the greatest attraction, even though it might fill with algae and be declared out of bounds, till it was drained and treated with chlorine. There was only a hosepipe to fill it.. Sometimes it had apples and leaves floating, for it was beside an old orchard. Cleaning the pool was often a job for the holiday-makers.

Woodside was happy-go-lucky and understaffed. And this meant that different parts of it had different vibes. It wasn’t all shaped by the benign wraith of the legendary Rev. Critchard, who had reached an age to withdraw from the scene.

Between the huge cedar tree and the path to the Paddock was the bath-house block, constructed by an imaginative carpenter and painted deep blue and pale turquoise with murals of Romans in togas and towels, and inscriptions like “He who baths last baths longest” – Seneca. Then in a distant corner was the Parish Hall. It wasn’t used for any religious purpose, it was just called that. It could be used for dances but usually had ping-pong tables. I recall when it rained all day and I played the bamboo pipe I’d made at school: it was a regular project. I played “John Brown’s Body”, “The British Grenadiers”, “The Londonderry Air”, “Men of Harlech”, “Camptown Races”; every folk tune and hymn I’d ever heard. I got applause and it seemed I was the day’s entertainer. Then they asked me if I knew any jokes. I remembered one I had heard from my stepfather Kenneth, which had to be told in different voices. A young woman goes for a picnic in the park with a group of friends, but fails to keep up with them. Getting upset, she goes to ask an elderly park-keeper: “Have you seen my picknickers? They should be round here somewhere.” He looks solemn. “Serve you right young lady for takin’ ’em off!” They laughed delightedly. I was too innocent to grasp why.

Which brings me to the onset of puberty, when the ethos of naturism no longer appealed. I wanted to hide my body, not show it. Fewer kids of my age came along each summer. Those who did formed into a gang. We’d go through the woods to the Beach Café, and hung out with ginger beer and potato crisps and even cigarettes. The proprietor of this remote place was pretty much an outlaw and happily sold them to us. Suitably clothed, we could lounge about like teenagers, ogling and gossiping and being as sinister as possible. I learned from the grapevine tales (true or false) of what some of the adults got up to: sloping off to the Sloop pub in the evenings, giving the lie to the sexual innocence implied in the naturist ethos . . .

Woodside was to change my life, at least my mother’s and as ever, her fortunes governed mine. So we have lingered here a little and indeed could stay longer. So many fragments of memory, but they don’t all help the flowing narrative along. You cannot be strictly chronological in a memoir: too many parallel things are going on. I’m glad I chose to write in little chapters, one story each. Though I tell the truth as I recall it, the fact is, memory is so much more interesting than verified facts. This is how myths are born!

The next instalment will be The Wooing of Blackett.