Electricity
As well as providing our village with the Jubilee Hall, a recreation ground, and Working Mens Club, Mrs. Rees-Mogg also had the oak trees planted along the south of the village and may trees along the main village street. She did not commission many repairs to her tenants’ cottages. Some of the holes in walls and ceilings had to be blocked up with rags. However, once she realised the full effect of electric light in the Manor, the Manor Cottages, the Rectory and the Church, she arranged for electricity to be brought to her tenants' cottages. This was switched on publicly by Mrs. Rees-Mogg on Friday 27th October 1933. 80 tenants had electricity. They also had lessons in “cooking with electricity” given in The Square by someone from the Electricity Board who arrived in a van with an electric stove.
All the tenants’ wives were summoned to appear at this lesson. One housewife I know, refused to have anything to do with electric cookers. Her family, at last, had their way by purchasing an electric cooker themselves and installing it in their kitchen “in time to cook the Christmas turkey Mother” – or so they thought! When they attempted to put the turkey in the electric cooker, the bird was far too big. So, the housewife had her way, and the turkey was cooked in the good old fashioned way – in her kitchen range!
On the day the electricity for the village was switched on, the outside of the Church was lit up by 4 floodlights and 3 spotlights. It was so impressive that Mrs. Rees-Mogg decided to keep the floodlights there for two more nights.