A trip down memory lane

The Post Office today. Just the red phone box left!

Hello Everyone,

Well, it's August again. Another year is slowly disappearing down that black hole never to return! I have decided to plunge into the archives for this month and retrieve some of the posts which tell of places I have visited. This one attracted my attention. It's also a year ago since I mad this nostalgic trip although it only seems like five minutes.

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In January 1960 I remember going on a rather long car journey from Nottinghamshire to a little village, Ashford-in-the-Water. My father was being interviewed for the post of Farm Manager at the Hall. My first memory was crossing a beautiful packhorse bridge and riding along a short road to enter the village. The Post Office was on the left as we turned right and passed the cricket field toward a rather impressive entrance. We turned into this drive and after about one hundred and fifty yards we were at the front door of what seemed like a massive building. I stayed in the car but remember looking out on the first snowdrops of the year fighting to survive the remains of the snow.

The Hall drive

The Village Institute 

A month later we moved to this village and stayed there for eleven years. That lovely bridge was strengthened in the early sixties but as the volume and weight of traffic grew the little road was closed and a new road was built cutting across a field, part of the cricket field and causing the beautiful Hall drive to be taken back by about fifteen feet. I remember the owner of the field, when rumours of this first hit the villagers, saying, "over my dead body!" Alas, it was taken under a compulsory purchase order. The cricket field was also moved, as was the bus stop. I drove in along that new road and sighed. A part of the village died the day that bridge was closed. Sadly, it was progress and a sign of the times.

First, I had a drive round the village and then parked on one of the roads without yellow lines. Something else that had not been invented in 1960. I looked at the old school building; a Cof E school and thought back to the days when at 3.25 p.m. the vicar would come into school and we would have a prayer for the end of the day. In the glorious summers we would rush out of school and down Court Lane to the swings and swing high and low watching the time on the church clock. After 4.00 p.m. we would go to our homes. They were perfect days. Well, the school closed in the late eighties. There was a special service where the current headmaster rang the bell for the final time. I attended it with sadness for I had learned so much in that school.

                                               

The School Building

The first cottage on Court Lane had some kind of plaque on the wall. Being nosey, I looked; it was a Tourist Board award for self-catering accommodation. That was where the Davies family used to live. It seemed that there were more tourists than ever and some of the old cottages are now for holiday rental. Unheard of in the swinging sixties. I looked across passed the bungalows which replaced allotments in the mid-sixties and at the new cemetery which started in the sixties when the churchyard became full. It seems to be full now. That is probably where all those people I remember are. No, I'm not that nosey.

I walked passed the church onto the main street. Through the village toward the Hall. Memories floated back but tinged with sadness due to the changing times. I looked at the Village Institute where we had had so many events and enjoyed our school dinners. We walked from the school to the institute regardless of the weather. I remembered all of the houses as I passed and who had lived in them. There was George and Ida Thorpe on Greaves Lane; their garden was so special because every spring she would get her gnomes out, paint them and place them in the front garden. Probably about fifty. Now, today they wouldn't last long would they? John  McCrindle, the photographer lived in the corner cottage opposite what was The Devonshire Arms. It is now The Ashford Hotel, I think.

I walked up the old road to the front drive and took a pic for old time sake. Then went further up the road to the back drive and looked across to where our cottage was. Alas, it is hidden by trees so I was unable to see my bedroom where I used to watch the traffic from Sheffield and Chesterfield at a standstill when people came over to the tourist area on Bank Holidays. That was my entertainment. We never ventured out on Bank Holidays.

I returned back into the village and to the tea rooms. I sat having my panini and wondering why I was having lunch in George Bibby's back room. Yes, that tea room used to be one of the village shops and that room would have been full of orders for delivery back in the sixties.

My next stop was the church where I worshipped regularly and was confirmed there in 1965. I took my first communion at that altar rail. I was pleased to see a new memorial window and wandered over thinking, "That's new." The memorial was for William and Kitty Olivier. The Colonel, as we knew him, was my father's employer. They were both very supportive of all I did and achieved during those years. Such fond memories of lovely people.

The altar rail where I took my first communion in 1965

Holy Trinity Church

There was one last place to visit before leaving. Sheepwash Bridge. The headmaster would take us down there when my father was washing the sheep. I loved that! In the old days you could drive over it. Now, there are bollards preventing such activity. Walk over it, look down and spot the trout. The part at the side which looks like a stone circle is where the sheep were penned and then taken one by one into the water.

Sheepwash Bridge

At the end of my experience I'm thinking of the last line in The Great Gatsby, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

For my part, I think that time moves on and things change. You cannot go back into the past and you cannot relive it. So, all that's left are memories and we should make happy ones each day.


Love Lady M xxx