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 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

I was born in Woodford and so were my four siblings. We lived at 1 Leys Cottages until May 1948. We still maintain contact with Mrs. Roberts who still lives at number 3. My oldest brother Ray lives in Wellingborough and my sister, Mavis lives in Finedon. My father and mother, Ernest and Alice Howlett emigrated with me to the United States in 1948. My other sister, Beryl also lives in the United States (Ithaca, NY). She emigrated in 1945 as the wife of a U.S. Army soldier. (Frank Reeves)
I have many memories of Woodford even though I was only 8 when I came to the U.S. The top school, the bottom school, the Baptist Chapel and the Village Green on Mayday when we all danced around the Maypole. Going to the market in Kettering on Saturdays on the bus, taking in a film at the Odeon. Going to Pantomimes and playing football and cricket with my best friend, Trevor Roberts in the field across from Leys Cottages which is no longer there. Walking through the Shrubbery with my father on Sundays after chapel. Taking our gas masks with us when we went to school. These and many other memories fog my mind.
My wife and I have returned to Woodford countless times in the past forty years. We took both our sons when they turned 8 to experience the area in which I spent my early years. We have visited friends and family and always returned to the Leys to see (the late) Flo Roberts. We took my sons and their wives shortly after each of them were married. We have travelled extensively throughout England and Scotland.
My grandparents lived in Woodford also. The Howletts lived in Priory House in Club Lane for many years. The Clipstons lived in a house on the Village Green along the road to Addington. I have many fond memories of going to their homes on holidays and other occasions. I also had an uncle and aunt that lived down Baker's Lane and an uncle and aunt that used to live on the corner of High Street and Mill Road at the "Chevin" my cousin and her husband live there now. I still have many cousins, nieces and nephews in and around Woodford.
I would appreciate anyone that remembers me or my family to contact me at rhowmpsa@rochester.rr.com.

Roger Howlett, Hamlin, NY, USA

I found this site browsing and am so interested and would like to record my own memories of happy years spent there.

My brother and I arrived at Woodford as evacuees in early 1941 from London and we were eventually passed

 into the welcoming arms of Jim and Edith Ballard and under the watch-full eye of "Mother" Gunn with whom we stayed until 1944 .Our new home was a thatched cottage( destroyed by fire in late 40s)opposite a butchers shop and next door to a man named Frank Barringham who always returned home from work at the calli(y) banks at Thrapston covered in a peculiar yellow dust. My happiest times were weekends and holidays when I helped out on Bob Wards Home Farm along with two Italian POWs both named Mario and one had the surname Pittonetti. Bob Ward had two sons David and Michael and two daughters Mary and Monica but only Michael, who was the same age as me helped on the farm. My other memories include sitting in the school room and being fascinated by the workings of the school clock, helping out Carvel Bonsor in his workshop behind the pub by pumping the bellows of the forge, playing down in the Osier beds by the river or up in the "Rec" and the highlight of our week was to climb the windmill pump close to the water tower-no health and safety those days!! I have no real recall of my time at the bottom school but remember going to school in  Thrapston by bus which was usually driven by Bill Waterman, son-in-law of Edith Ballard and who had a daughter Sylvia.

Another memory is of our twice monthly walk to Thrapston (Saturdays) and the pictures, two old pence for the ticket, ditto for a bottle of "Spruce" and two pence for crisps. Walk back to Woodford via Alledge brook and a stop for a drink of spring water.

Sunday. Early morning trek to the bakehouse with the Sunday lunch-always beef - Reg Hawes the owner would sometimes give me a warm bread roll filled with beef or pork dripping. The highlight of the year was Woodford feast held on the green with old fashioned steam driven swing boats and penny arcades and the older men of the village would go to Buckby's pub and the younger ones to the reading room to play cribbage. I remember when the Americans practised bridge building down by the river and the chewing gum and "Cookies" they gave us.

I have so many memories of those years, too many to include in this blog and some of them quite painful but at the age of 77 these memories have never left me and i shall never forget Woodford or the kindness shown to all  we kids moved out from war torn London.

I now live only a couple of miles from Woodford and often drive through the village to relive old memories but one thing puzzles me ,where do people now go to have their radio accumulators recharged now that Reg Essam's shop is closed!

Mr Leon Bradford

Dear Woodford,

After surfing through various sites over many years trying to fill in the gaps of my life, side effects of the traumas of WW2, probably due to 2 evacuations in UK ( Woodford, and Bidston Birkenhead). the 2^nd one being to escape the deadly accuracy of the doodlebugs(V1 & V2 ) over South London. I read through Brian Dawson’s account and found many similarities of our own very, very happy memories of Woodford.

Please excuse any errors in order etc, like Brian I am almost 77, in remission for two cancers, and recently a slipped disc, so hopefully memory is not playing me any tricks.

Announcement of war on radio came to us whilst playing in road near our home in SE London, my mother called to us to come in straightaway, as did many mothers around us, my immediate reaction was to flatten myself to the ground, and try to hide in the road surface. Don’t know what good it would have done ?

Next thing we were on a bus to St. Pancras station and all singing “London Bridge is falling Down”, ( just as we were crossing London Bridge), can’t remember much of the train ride to Kettering, then it was dark and we were mustered in what must have been the town hall ?, surrounded by lots of other kids crying their eyes out, so were we, my twin brother Charles and I.

Early next day woke up to find ourselves in a nice modern house at the corner of Vicarage lane and Addington road ?, billeted with foster parents Mr & Mrs Joseph Bunning, he was the local village Carpenter and Undertaker, they were a childless couple, but they gave us all their love and affection for the next year or two ?,don’t know exactly when we left, but I can recall 2 winters ( plenty of snow to enjoy),

I visited them once, totally unannounced at age of 26 (upon on leave from sailing on oil tankers, as the navigator.)

They also paid for my electrolysis treatment at Kettering hospital to remove warts from back of my hands.

The Bunnings remembered us and apparently they also had fostered later some more evacuees from Sheffield?

Next door was local milkman with a milk float, named Peter, and he let us ride ‘shotgun’ during his deliveries., I recall that his horse bolted one day in the lane that passes the church ?.(but we weren’t riding shotgun that day).

Opposite the Bunning’s house, was a duck pond, and farmhouses bordering the street, where we used to watch the cows being milked and played with the farmers daughters, but names escape me..

Helping with herding of the cows at milking time to and from the field on the left hand side of Addington road was good fun, and being mischievous kids we played in the field and rolled into ‘cow pats’ by accident, resulting in a good scolding and immediate baths when we got back home.

The farmer asked me to get inside a threshing machine, or was it a combine harvester ?, because I was small and skinny and push a bolt back through a hole, so they could a nut back on it. Reward with a sixpence, wow I was rich.

Once there were men, dressed in brown boiler suits, with large yellow circles painted on their backs, sitting outside the duck pond smoking and drinking tea or coffee, they were being guarded by a couple of soldiers with rifles, I think they may have been Italian POW’s, but I am just guessing about their nationality,

On Sunday mornings there was a lovely cooking or baking smell coming from the local bakery just up the road, near to the village green, and local housewives could be seen carrying the Sunday joint of roast beef & Yorkshire pudding to and from the bakery, that was fantastic to smell and see.

 I used to like visiting the local Smithie (his furnace was opposite the village school) and watching the bashing of steel parts into shape, that I was collecting for Mr Bunning’s new farm carts under construction.

Schooling was like most schools anywhere, but again touches of kindness by the teachers was very noticeable, I was asked to spell the word salmon, by a lady teacher, other local kids having spelt it correctly, she obviously favoured my version because I was an evacuee, and rewarded me with a small diary. I was “Teachers pet” that day.

The views of the River Nene, particularly its oxbow visible from the Addington road, and the lovely spring waters and nice paths alongside the river meanderings its way to Thrapston.

Gathering “Hips and Haws” with other school kids from the hedgerows to aid the nations war effort in jam making.

Attending chapel and church with the Bunning’s every Sunday, and generally assisting?, or getting in the way of Mr Bunning’s work in his carpenters shop. In the grounds of his house, were all pleasant memories of a lovely village during wartime.

These are just a few examples that I can remember, I am sure there are lots more.

Thank you Mr & Mrs Bunning for being wonderful and loving foster parents and for Woodford being such a wonderful village, our memories of you are fond ones..

It. would be helpful to know if they are still alive, or if not the dates they passed away and where they are buried?.

George and Charles Hoyle

If you have any memories (any period of time) you would like to share on this page then email memories@woodfordpc.co.uk and I'll include them on this page. Likewise any photographs - either scan them or post them to me for scanning (They will be returned to you, by return).

This page last amended on 26-03-2011