Childhood Re-visited

As we were going to be away for Christmas (for the first time in over 40 years), early in December, my brother and I arranged to meet for lunch in the town where we grew up. In fact he still lives less than five miles  away and I only live about 15 miles away but I must confess I rarely return.

Since my mother died it has made think that I would actually like to take a walk down memory lane and see how things have changed over the years.

When my father returned home after the war, we went to live in his home town, I was just a toddler at the time. One of my earliest memories is walking from the back of my granny's house, with the 1947 snow as high as the wall ( way over my head) to wave to my mother in the hospital opposite. Of course I didn't really know what was happening, but she was in there for the birth of my brother.

The first house we lived in was a very small end of terrace with an outside loo and a pump for water. Even now I can still visulise parts of that house and the garden. It's funny the things that make a lasting impression!

Well this is it, and it has been enlarged by knocking two houses into one. I must say it could still do with a lot of TLC; it was really quite sad looking. I would have loved to take a peep inside!
Things I remember from this house is being bathed in a tin bath by the fire; my brother throwing my mum's jewelry out of the window (she had to buy it back from the person who picked it up); a local farmer brought milk around and we bought it by the jug; he also collected some of the sewage (different cart!!); my mother cooked on an oil stove, which must have been quite difficult with a couple of small children running about.
My granny hired a car and took us for a picnic once a year and one of the times we returned  to find that the cat had produced kittens in brother's pram- I never knew what happened to them!

When I was 8yrs old we moved to a shop; this was to be my mother's venture as my dad had a job. Again it was quite sad seeing the old shop, we left when I was 16yrs old and the person who bought it lived there until a few months ago. The shop (newsagent and confectionery) closed down many years ago, as have most of the shops in the High Street. When we were there if was a very busy street with every shop imaginable, including a fish and chip shop, co-op, two grocery shops, draper, antique butcher another sweet shop, chemist and doctors surgery.

We had a dog who used to regularly jump this back wall, but the garage door is an addition. It certainly doesn't look as though it has been modernised since we moved from there in 1960. It's actually quite deceptive  because it doesn't look that big but it had 4 bedrooms (+attic room), 4 rooms downstairs (plus shop area) a butler's pantry but only a small back yard with an under cover area and large coal shed.

Church Lane runs up the side of the shop and not surprisingly leads to the Church.

 Some restoration work is being undertaken and we didn't have time to go into the Church. My grandfather was the choir master and he played the organ. He was also Headmaster of the Junior school until he retired. (This was a definite disadvantage for me).

In the middle of this picture is The Jester's Tomb which is quite famous.

Jester's Tomb

This is an old part of the Churchyard that used to be gated and overgrown and I'd never been in it. It was quite interesting looking at some of the tombs.


By looking over the wall I managed to take a snap of Jenners Hut. This is in the garden of what used to be the vicarage, (now Jenner Museum), when I was a child. In those days you could freely access the quaint little hut and we often to used to play in it (not sure if the vicar knew!). He also had a tennis court marked out on his lawn that he would allow us to play on. The only problem being, my friends were not tennis mad like me so I could rarely get anyone to practice with me. Instead I had to make do with measuring a net height on the wall of the Co-op (across the lane from our shop) and by hitting the ball against myself (not ideal but better than nothing)!

We had lunch in The Berkeley Arms Hotel, which was originally an old coaching inn. It still has some of the old cobbles at the back and there is even an old apple press (I guess they used to make their own cider). What a pity it's spoiled by these modern kegs and gas bottles!

By the time we had finished lunch it was beginning to get dusky and the sun had disappeared, so I didn't get to wander around anymore. I may well go back because I want to take pictures of my granny's house and my old school, just so there are some records for my children and grandchildren if they are interested. 

It was only towards the end of my mother's life, when she couldn't remember a lot of the detail about her own, or my father's family, that I realised how important it is to have more than spoken memories!

I enjoyed my trip down memory lane and I hope anyone who reads this has enjoyed sharing it with me.

Fun Monday # 70 Childhood Memory

This week Molly is stirring the old grey matter and asking us to think back to our childhood. Our assignment is to....

'tell everyone about a happy memory from your childhood. If you have pictures, please show us your pictures'.

I have a lot of happy memories from my childhood and I wasn't sure which to choose so having left it to the last minute I looked through some old photos and chose a few to highlight memories:

On my 5th birthday I was bought a dog and it's a whole story in itself but this dog was not destined to stay with me and ended up with my granny! Although I accepted the situation several years later I was still craving a dog ~ both my brother and I were bought cats and they were OK but we wanted a dog!
So you can imagine how excited we were when our parents caved in and we went to a dogs home in Cheltenham and chose a Welsh terrior who we called Taffy. We loved him from the word go and he settled into our lives so easily. He let us do anything with him and needed very little encouragement to sit on our father's motorbike. It was often my job to clean that bike. No this is not a happy memory but it was quite funny really. My mother used to get me to clean the bike because she knew my father wouldn't trust me and would then come and help. He was very lazy so she cleverly used tatics that worked!
Do you see that wall in the background...Taffy could scale that wall no trouble and he would do this quite often (he might have been encouraged at first!) and he would then trot around to the entrance to our shop to be let in. I think it drove my mother mad but he thought it was a great game!
Taffy would happily sit in a box....... He also loved sitting on my mother's knee when she settled down for a nap. My mother would sit under this old eiderdown, that my father brought back from India after the war, even when temperatures were really high. We could never understand it, but she has always felt cold! A lot of my childhood memories surround my grandmother and I could write at length about her, but I won't. I will say she was a lovely lady who always had knitting with her, even on a day out.... My grandmother was the person who made sure we had picnics in the summer, even hiring a car to take and collect us. Once booked we had to go and even if it rained we stuck it out. My father had to have onions and sausages cooked on a fire, and we had to play cricket or football. I was less keen on this as I always seemed to be the one doing all the fielding!

I think I'll leave it there for today...the link below includes some other pictures of fun times.

Early Fun Monday Post 'Pictorial view of growing up after the war'

Hop over to Molly to see who else is sharing happy childhood memories.

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