MEMORIES FROM MRS BIDNELL  (or Bignell)  around 1976

As told to my mother Betty Owen who lived next door to her opposite the common  

"I lived in Brambles on the common, where Dora Wingrove, my sister, the youngest of 5 girls, lives now.It had only two bedrooms but the upstairs landing had a bed in it and I slept there with one of my sisters. My mother never played with us - I don't remember her doing so anyway, but Dad did. One of his games was to dress up a broomstick to look like a person and gently ease it above the level of the staircase so that I could see it when I was lying in bed. Just going off to sleep I'd be and then I'd be aware of something beside me and I'd open my eyes and it would be the "broomstick man". I would squeal and edge as far away from it as possible. He loved to play this game with us and I still remember the feeling of seeing the old " broomstick man" slowly rising up beside me. 

The piece of land nearby that Dora keeps chickens on was where our cowsheds were. We had Jersey cows several of them. I had to fetch them from the field near Browns Road each day and take them home for milking. I hated the job! Mother used to say " Don't make those cows run now, it's not good for the milk" but I always used to run them along the road as fast as I could, to get it over with. The dairy was the passage running along the right side of the part of the house. It was lovely milk, very creamy and rich. It was collected each day by a milkman. 

The common was all gorse bushes then right from our end down as far as "Shortmead". My mother hated the saplings that would take root and grow there and every so often she would go out with a bill hook and chop them down - "I'll not have them taking over from the gorse" she'd say. 

The New road, now called Straight Mile, was only a rough untarmaced road then and I remember the stone breakers would sit alongside it all day with their dark glasses on to protect them from the chippings as they broke the piles of flints with hammers ready for the road makers.

Funny, but I remember those dark glasses, I suppose because they weren't commonly worn as they are today! One of the stone breakers was a Mr Wright, he lived in the cottage Ann Pettit lives in now (Autumn — Cottage). It was only a small cottage then and belonged to the Fuller Estate. His wife was gypsy like and she took snuff which we thought was a horrible thing to do. She had a sister who lived in your cottage (Wrens Nest). She was nasty too and also took snuff. She also enjoyed her glass of beer and she would waylay us children when we were going to see Granny next door at Flint Cottage(where I live now) and she would creep out of the doorway like a nasty old spider, she always wore a big apron I remember.

She'd beckon us over, "You get me a pint of beer", thrusting a jug into our hands, "Here's tuppence and a penny for getting it". We would hate doing it but didn't like to refuse, so would go rather shamefacedly and unwillingly to the Plough to get it. Mother would say " You,re not to spend all of that penny, save half of it", so we would take our halfpenny up to the village shop to spend.

There were two village shops, the one on the corner, now the Post Office Stores and what is now called Flint Cottage and owned by Jeremy Harford and his (late) wife Sue. This was then only a tiny shop and sold everything, including sweets for our pennies and halfpennies. "