The turn of the century found even the quiet villages of England concerned with the last and greatest of its colonial wars, the Boer War. Rev. G. W. Potter, the vicar, and Colonel Thurlow, the owner of Mathon Court, attended a meeting at Cradley to set up a recruiting drive for Rifle volunteers from Cradley Mathon and Storridge, and at the end of the meeting, 24 recruits enrolled. In Malvern, there were frequent ‘patriotic concerts’, which almost always contained Rudyard Kipling’s verses, ‘The Absent-minded Beggar’, intended to raise funds for the families of reservists called to the colours for service in South Africa.
Mathon was not greatly altered from earlier years, and the discovery of the internal combustion engine had not yet had the effects on farming and village life which were to come later. The roads were by modern standards, primitive, dusty in summer and muddy in winter, and of such a surface that the early motorists and their passengers wore white overall coats and goggles. The population was much the same as today. a little over 300, but the village had a school, with a Schoolmaster, Mr. Capewell who played the organ for church services, a resident policeman, and a well-developed and organised community which did much of its shopping in Mathon itself. There was a baker, a grocer, two inns and a Post Office at the present Brook House. There was a tailor, Alfred Alford, whose family still live in the village, and James Brant shod the many horses still found in the district and no doubt repaired many farm and garden tools at his smithy at Ham Green.
Steam engines had made some impact on farming practice, and in 1884, Thomas Clarke, followed in 1889 by John Bullock owned a threshing machine at Lane End Farm. Church Farm, South Hyde, and Moorend Farms were growing hops, and the early Ordnance Survey maps show that hundreds of acres of fruit were grown. However momentous events and discoveries were afoot, and the folk who were born at this time were to see more change in their lifetime than had happened in the previous hundreds of years. This quiet village had lived through them all, and we who live in Mathon hope and trust that it may survive for hundreds of years to come.
The will of William Cliffe, 1684
Entry from Kelly’s Directory, 1892