Memories
This page will be devoted to
personal memories of the village from anyone who would care to e-mail or
write to the Clerk with their thoughts.
Hello Woodford:
My name is Gary Lee Chandler. I lived in the village of Woodford in1953-1955
as the dependent of an American Airman who was stationed at Molesworth Air
Force Base.
I was only 8 yrs. old when I left your village, But my memory of my time.
Woodford has had a major impact on my life. All good! Kind of strange how
a couple of years in ones life makes things happen.
In my time in
Woodford I lived on the east side of the Green. Dairy cows would come by
twice a day for milking Automobile traffic was almost non existant at that
time. So I was quite surprised one day when, as I was crossing the road and
a automobile sounded it's horn and I backed out of his way to sit in one big
pile of cow manure right on the Green. My mother helped me through this
embarrassing moment upon my arrival home. I remember going with the Milk
deliveryman on his rounds. A two wheeled cart with automobile type tyres and
a Welsh Pony pulling it. I had a lot of fun following the Milk Man.
These are some of my
Memories from so many years ago.
G L Chandler,
Pensacola, Florida, USA.
Friends: How wonderful it
is from time to time to access the Woodford site. This is the home town for
my Manning family. Thomas Manning, my gr. gr. grandfather, left there about
1832 for the US. I did visit the village a year or so ago and loved it.
Sincerely, Forrest Manning of Middlebury,
Vermont in the US.
I was born
and raised in Woodford and emigrated to Perth Western Australia in 1982.
I was
"surfing the net" and came across the Woodford Parish site. I must say it
the information and content is great and I enjoyed reliving fond memories of
a time long past and it's not until you move away that you realise what
emotional ties are still present.
I recognise
some names on the council and some of those listed in other business in
the council minutes and perhaps they may also remember me!
I'll revisit
the site on a regular basis to hopefully keep up with developments.
Regards
Paul Dodds
Mundaring Western Australia
I just read with interest the memories of
Gary Chandler. I remember the name as I was also an American dependent
living in Woodford at the same time. I enjoyed reading his memories as mine
are similar. We lived next to the Pub and shared our house with another
American family, the Garricks. I also remember the daily cow passings, the
bread wagon pulled by a horse, and the carnival (I can't remember what you
call it in England) that was held yearly on "the Green". My sister and I
loved our time in the village and talk about it with fond memories. I
remember playing in the fields, climbing over stiles to go on walks to
another village and the lovely old church near the river. I remember the
store where we bought biscuits, crumpets, and candy. I also remember our
weekly cab ride to a Catholic Church in Thrapston. After a few months, we
moved to Kettering to spend the remainder of our "tour in England."
I always wanted to return to England and
finally got to do it, with my husband, in 1997. It was a wonderful
trip..............everything I hoped it would be. We drove from Kettering to
Woodford to Thrapston and all the other little towns I remembered. We walked
all over Woodford; by the river, down side streets, over the style that I
remembered so well. It was still there! Forty years later. Remarkably the
village seemed so unchanged. I loved it. My husband enjoyed seeing me enjoy
it! We even ate lunch in the Pub and chatted with locals who listened with
interest to my story of having lived there. I am not sure they believed me.
In Kettering as we drove by Wicksteed Park
and down familiar streets I marvelled at how unchanged it was. We stopped at
the house where I lived and were lucky enough to be invited in for tea. The
same couple have lived there all these years. We laughed about my mother's
red kitchen walls and I enjoyed a tour of the house where I spent so many
years of my life.
My memories are fond ones and I just wanted
to get on the record saying this. Thank you for this wonderful website.
Mary Anne Eastman, 10413 Stallworth Court, Fairfax, Virginia 22032
Hello
Woodford and Woodfordites, Just been surfing the net and came across your
web site, it has brought back a million memories of my childhood spent in
Woodford as an evacuee during the war years. From what I can tell the
village has not changed too much. Perhaps some of my memories may strike a
cord with some of you.
The first
place I stayed at was with a Mr. and Mrs. Kirton who lived in the first
house down Bakers Lane and whose house ran along the back gardens of those
in Whittlesey Terrace.
I, as a 4 year old became very homesick and begged the lady who had taken my
two brothers in, to let me stay with her, which she did, dear lady. This
angel of a woman was Mrs. Hewitt of number 4 Whittlesey Terrace, she
already had two adopted sons of her own, Jack and Bill Charlton, an elderly
though very fit lodger, Jepther Green, and a rather sick husband Bert. So to
take on three little brats from London ranging from four to seven was some
feat. It says something of the fondness we felt for this good soul when I
tell you that we stayed in contact and visited her right up until her death
and beyond when Bill and his wife Glad made us welcome.
But to get
to what Woodford was like in those times. I remember the Alledge Brook which
ran across the road just before the junction with the Thrapston/ Kettering
road and the Americans washing their trucks in it on the way to the pubs.
And then there was the iron works which was just past the corner of that
junction on the Thrapston Road and how we used to play on the (hot steps)
where the warm cooling water from the furnace used to run down to the
brook, ah!! such fun. The memories come flooding back. There were the
Italian prisoners of war who worked on Southam's Farm who used to manage to
slip away from their duties to chat up the girls from the clothing factory
which was right across the road from Whittlesey Terrace, known as bottom
factory in those days as there was another in the top end of the village
which was called top factory and was in the Newtown area.
The
Shrubbery was home turf to us kids, it was where we built our camps and
huts, collected fire wood chased rabbits and got stomach ache from eating
too many damsons, crab apples and filbert nuts from the many old fruit trees
that abounded there. When we got fed up with that we would try our hand at
fishing in the brook with a bent pin and a piece of cotton. I must admit we
did deplete the stickle back community a little. Riding the filter arms on
the sewage works as they rotated there way across the filter beds was
another pass time as we went on our way to the mill to see if the wheel was
turning and there was always a chance of seeing a few pigs and piglets in
the sties down there.
I, like some
of the previous writers, also remember riding on the milk cart with churns
of fresh milk on board and the people coming out with jugs to be filled. And
the cows coming down the high street twice daily to be milked, in Ward's
farm, if I remember correctly right on the corner at the bottom of the
green. And what about the bakery just along from there, the delicious hot
crispy bread he made in a proper brick oven and on Sundays the smell of the
Sunday roasts cooking in that baker's oven, done to a turn and ready right
on time. A much more appetizing smell I must say than that which emanated
from the Smithy on the west side of the green when he was doing a shoeing
job. I used to love watching and admired the skill shown. That smell could
only be matched by the squealing and smell of unmentionable stuff when
Walter the butcher was killing pigs behind his butchery just down from the
Co-op. There are many more things that I could relate but it would take a
book to lay them all down.
I would like
to list a few of the people of the day however, people like my old pal
Jepther Green who was the best haystack builder, mushroom collector, wood
whittler and skittles player in the whole of the county if not the
midlands. Then there was constable PC Dewing, the local bobby, he must have
had the sweetest job of all time. All he had to do was give us little
cockney kids a boot up the bum on occasion and point the odd happy fellow
the way home from the pub.
Another
person who had, what shall I say, an effect on my life was old Bonser the
local engineer, I suppose one would call him, He had a workshop in a field
behind Clipstone's House on Whittlesey Terrace, opposite Perrit's sweet and
tobacco shop and encompassed by Rose Terrace. He used to build farm carts
from wood and old truck axels. He had a man who worked for him who had a
crooked back and old Bonser would call out instructions to him such as “make
me a bolt 13 inches long, make me a bracket right angle 8 by 8 etc.’ and
slowly over the week this cart would take shape. I spent hours in that shop
just watching, he didn’t seem to mind this little kid hanging around. It
must have sunk in because I to became an engineer and ended up teaching
engineering in the local tech institute where I live in New Zealand. There
is much more to remember, like the land army girls who taught me how to
milk, the traction engine which drove the threshing machine at harvest time,
scrumping apples from the orchard down by the river for the soldiers when
the were on manoeuvres building bailey bridges, but enough is enough. So
thanks for the memories Woodford.
Brian Dawson
Te Awamutu
New Zealand
For more of
Brian's memories of Woodford visit
http://woodfordonline.org/default.aspx
