Downsizing
By the 1920ʼs Charles Jones Camm owned the whole of Priding with the exception of the two Wick Court Cottages which as their name implies belonged to Wick Court. His estate included two hotels one temperance and one alcoholic so you had the best of all possible trades. I think by the mid 1930ʼs the Severn View Hotel had been sold and became Priding House and its artefacts such as the Prince Victor figurehead and the cannon moved closer to home. The tea rooms lasted until the early 1940ʼs although the farm (Priding Farm) was still being rented until the early 1950ʼs. Always willing to sell a bit of property Charlie sold a plot for the tin Bungalow which became “The Burrow” although he refused to sell the well outside the property. No problem..it said nothing about the water…so the purchaser still benefitted from the contents of the well. Priding Villa was sold less the front room to which Charlie would exercise his right and go and sit there when the mood took him. In the mid 1930ʼs he sold a plot of land in his orchard to enable “Rosemead” to be built by the Greenway Brothers of Arlingham although the deeds and the plot were ninety degrees about which caused a lot of trouble later on. Year on year Charlie sold more and more properties although in my time he would still walk by with a purple velvet bag on a Saturday morning going to collect the rent. It would be only a few shillings..but it all added up. In the end he lived with his brother Clifton in the first house at Priding..”The Homestead”
This was a house like no other, musty and dark, ceilings darkened by oil lamps and tobacco smoke. But…BUT it was a showroom for his trade as an antique dealer Cabinets filled with fine china, Bristol Glass, decorated Meerschaum pipes, furniture by very famous names and a cannon.
As den builders extraordinary, once you built such a structure on the river bank one needed to defend it and a real cannon would be just the job! Charlie let us have this device and many homes had 12 bore shotgun cartridges lying about so we acquired a couple, opened them up and filled the cannon with the contents. Pointing it towards Rodley someone lit the firing hole…fizzle, fizzle, phut! It took us several years to know you were supposed to ram the charge to make it explode.
