|
More
Memories of Ludham
|
One of the very
important tasks the Ludham Archive undertakes is to
collect and record people's memories. Very often people
say that they have nothing of any great importance in
their lives, but it is the small details of Ludham's
past which make their memories so important.
Sometimes people send their memories in the post, but
often we record them either as audio recordings or as
videos. A DVD of some of the memories is available from
our shop.
Here are some more examples of memories from Ludham
people. They give a fascinating insight into a vanished
Ludham
Mike Fuller -
School Days
I don't remember
much about our early days in Ludham when we lived at
Whitegates,but I know we walked to School to be there at
nine,
and lined up to go in the boys side ,until twelve
o'clock then we went home to dinner and back again at
1-30 until 3-45 when School finished for the day.
If you were not there when the bell went it was a black
mark for you.
Then we moved up to High Mill Cottage and that was our
home for the next 26 years until Dad retired,
So then it was to School down the Hill and across
Latchmore to the opening in the street and to School for
the same times as before, on the way home at night we
would go by Mill Lane to the high and low field,in the
spring or summer it would be bird nesting on the way
home too.
Remember having a top and ,whip and doing that on the
way to School some days.
The first class I was in was Mrs,Mattocks which we
stayed in for the first two years,with our bottle of
milk and straw every day winter or summer. In winter
time it was sometimes frozen up so would be stood by the
fire to thaw out before playtime,and when it was very
cold we would sit round the fire for lessons to keep
warm (no missing School for Ice or snow) in them days.
Then after we were seven years old we moved to
Mrs,Richardson's class which was about the same only we
learnt more. I was picked for the choir until one day
Mrs,Richardson called me out to sing solo, then I got
wrong because I couldn't sing a note in tune,I had been
miming all the time before.
About this time I fractured my left arm above the elbow
so had it in plaster for about six weeks but that didn't
stop me from going to School, and still got up to some
mischief, like chasing girls with nettles ,and having a
ride on a penny farthing when the School Fete was on and
football against the other villages at our age.
The next move was into the top class under Mr Kitchener
the Head Master. There we done all sorts of things as
the war had started by then, one of the first things was
the older boys dug some trenches for us to get into if
we were bombed, next around the out side of the playing
field there was patches of gardens dug for all the older
boys who liked gardening to grow vegetables I had one
the last one nearest Catfield Road (where the swings are
now) Sometimes we did think that the army boys did come
over the hedge and pinch our vegetables, but I thought
that was a bit much. Then trouble started,first I some
how had some peanuts one morning and gave some to
another boy. We ate them while lining up for School and
did throw the shells over the wall onto the path and
somebody complained later. I didn't own up at first so
all the children got kept in at playtime, (silly me)
Later I did own up and was taken in front of the class
and given a hiding just before dinner time,Went home for
dinner and told Mum and Dad and got wrong again, because
I told a lie.
When I got back to School I was given 300 lines to
finish after School,well then I done the afternoon
lessons and sat down to write my three hundred lines,I
had three pencils and the paper so started and was
getting on well,but I got caught and clip round the ear
and all the pencils but one taken away so there is a
moral to this story some where, (never tell lies).
Later I was told to go and dig the Headmaster garden as
I was told that I knew about gardening, and had done
some before.
Next thing I remember was the day a German plane decided
he would machine gun Ludham Street. We were playing in
the play ground just after dinner time had started and
the was a terrible rattling noise in we ran for the door
and the last three of us got jammed in the doorway. I
was sort of trying to get in although facing out wards
and see three places on the brick wall suddenly flying
into pieces and the noise was very loud indeed. This was
in the early summer of 1941 on a very misty day so we
never see the plane only all the noise.
The winter before was a very cold one and we had a lot
of snow and the School water supply all froze up and we
all sat around the great big fires to keep warm and even
make cocoa from snow melted in buckets on the fire.
Those were the days.
This was the year for my 11 plus exams but I am afraid I
didn't pass so it was off to Stalham Secondary Modern
School in the September for a whole new experience. We
would go by Neave's bus most days,but if it broke down
it was a lorry with a cover and seats all round the
sides and up the middle,what an experience.
I think the first two or three months were settling in
time with Assembly every morning at 9 o'clock then into
your class and then after an hour it would be all change
again, and so on during the day and home at 3-45 by bus
again.
We had good sports afternoons and I thought it was a
good School later in the second year the boys had all
the gardens to dig and set with all sort of vegetables
for the School cook house, then there was pigs to look
after, chickens and two goats, also rabbits and ducks.
The 1942 winter was a bad one with plenty of snow and
frost so now and then the school bus didn't run so we
were left to do what we liked. I remember going down to
Womack for skating and such like on the ice. We build a
fire on the island and had a bit of luck as the ice
melted around the island and we were lucky to get off
all right.
It was about this time that the river bank give way up
near the Horsefen Mill and flooded all the marshes right
through to Potter Heigham so we had another good time
skating after it froze, and no worry about getting
drowned.
One day the Teacher in our class asked for anyone who
had milked a cow so up go's my hand and I was told that
from now on I was to milk the goats,this wasn't too bad
after the first day when I learnt that you put your foot
on the goats back hoofs so she can't kick the bucket
over.
As the time got to November there was always a concert
party to be got ready for the Christmas concert so we
all had a go in that because there was always a party
afterwards. That day we would bike to school and arrive
home late that night.
As we got older we were given jobs such as rabbit keeper
and pig keeper. One Friday I had the job of clearing all
the small carrots and tops up for the rabbits while
doing so I ate a lot of them and on the way home in the
lorry this day one girl was being a little bit awkward
so I threw her rubber boots out of the back of the
lorry. Monday Morning I was with 21 others up in front
of Mr,Smith the Headmaster and we all got three hits of
the cane on one hand, (my that hurt).
Life was good really, we had a week end on a wherry
About 20 of us what wherry I do not know but we caught a
very big pike and it got all our lines round it before
we landed it,then it was taken to the cook for Monday's
school dinners, the whole 26lb of it. It was about this
time we had a lot of interest in Ludham Airfield with
all the Spitfires about so as soon as we were off the
bus at nights we would go along Fritton Road and see
what was going on or try to get on the airfield to get
near the planes
One day when we came home from school in the bus and got
of to see smoke and bits laying in the street, so off we
go up to Throwers and find a Lightning crashed between
the shop and the Butchers and an engine and one wheel
lying across the other side still smoking, this was
December 1943.
So ended another year at school and I start my last year
at Stalham School,
This didn't amount to much as I finished in the March.
Being 14 and leaving at Easter to start this came
because we had a letter saying if I didn't have a job
within two weeks of leaving School I would be given a
job.
I went with Mother to Herbert Woods of Potter Heigham
and got a job as a trainee Boatbuilder and started the
Tuesday after Easter at £1/6pence per week for 48 hours.
That is about the end of my School days as I remember
it.
I managed to play football for Stalham School.and was
always had a place in the Christmas plays,
What I liked about it was we learnt to be reasonable
people and respected our elders.
Mike Fuller -
Garages of Ludham
The first memories
of garages in Ludham for me is the garage on the
forecourt of the Kings Arms Public House attached to the
Flower shop of now. Before that in 1922, the United bus
service kept there bus there every night ready to return
to Gt.Yarmouth next morning on service. The garage is on
the postcards of 1910-22.
This garage was owned by H.D.Brooks and Son,for repairs
to motor cars and motor cycles and had petrol pumps
outside also, Mr Brooks also had a small shop and cycle
repairs at the front of Folly House with two petrol
pumps outside the front on the road side. He also lived
in Folly House at that time.
Both these places carried on until the 1950s
when,Russell Brooks his Son had the garage built in the
Street where it is now,I don't know when he sold it to
Mr.Littleworth who lived in Aubruy House, or when the
the shop and pumps were taken down from the front of
Folly House,
|
|
The other garage was started just after the war, was on
the Norwich Road at the corner of Lovers Lane,this was
either a small stable or cattle sheds before being used
by Mr.Jack Roll as a cycle and motor car repair shop,and
later petrol pumps and went on to enlarge to a garage
and selling cars for over fifty years before it was
closed and is now to have three houses built on it. For
more about Rolls Garage, click here.
The forecourt of Ludham Garage had two petrol pumps at
the front at first and then the wooden house next door
was bought and taken down for the forcourt as it is
today.
The site of the present Ludham Garage was the site of
W.England's Millwrights and wheel wrights business for
many years before the garage was built.
NITA TOWNSEND
AND RHONA BROWN.
Interviewed in
1994 by Ralph Thomson
You can find out more about Nita and see photographs
by following this link.
Ralph: Nita Townsend and Rhona Brown who are
sisters. When did you move to Ludham?
Rhona: In 1918
Ralph: Why did you come here?
Rhona: Father came and bought the practice up
here. He was the doctor of Ludham for some time.
Nita: When I came up, I was nine years old and we
came on the first of July and I remember coming and
looking at the garden and looking at the river which was
in the garden – our own private river – it was so
exciting to me, I thought I’d never lived before.
Rhona: I was disgusted because I had left my
lovely school, that I liked so much, Bournemouth High
School – all my friends and everything! We had to
come up because of the war and they were afraid of an
invasion or anything if I were left down there so they
brought me up here – against my will!
Ralph: It must have been quite a contrast – you two
coming up from Cranborne in Dorset to Ludham, which was
a far more remote sort of village in those days.
Rhona: It is exactly the same now as it was then.
Nita: Oh it isn’t really! It was lovely then
because I was only nine and I had been rather an
unhealthy child and so my father who was a doctor said,
‘she should go wild for a whole year!’ and I thought
going wild on that lovely river and in that gorgeous
garden. Ooh, it was heaven!
Ralph: The social set-up in Ludham would have been
very different to what it was in Cranborne where there
were so many of the aristocracy living.
Rhona: Yes, it was! We had lots of tennis
parties and so on which we enjoyed and, of course, the
river! That was a great treat for us in various
old boats that we acquired gradually and I went on the
water a lot myself. We had a lot of visitors
staying with us; friends and relations. We used to
take them on the water too. Not frightfully
exciting but just nice.
Ralph: Who was your circle of friends in the
Ludham area in those days?
Rhona: Not many!
Nita: No, we didn’t have many, did we?
Rhona: There were the young Boardmans – they were
about our age group.
Nita: Of course, our father was a doctor and in
those days a doctor was very, very different from a
doctor today. He had to do it entirely by himself
– he made up his medicines himself and he had a radius
of about six miles all the way round and very little
money and that was the operative word.
Rhona: Money didn’t bother us.
Nita: No, money didn’t bother us a hoot but it
would have been nice to have had a little bit
more. We had the most terrible old boats because
we couldn’t afford more. I know we had a
motor-boat which, when you wound it up with a handle, it
used to back-fire and it nearly killed me once – nearly
broke my wrist when I was going for a music exam the
next day. But it was just all right. I
remember that very well. It was very
painful! You see my father, being a doctor, if we
went on holiday, in those days you had to pay for the
Locum and you had to pay for his board and lodging which
made it damned expensive and so, what we used to do,
having a house on the river, we used to let the house
because we could get quite a good price for it as it was
on the river, and one day, while it was let, we had some
great friends – Stuart Boardman who lived in the big
house up on the hill – and he was very matey with us and
he would just walk in the front door – the door was
always open in those days – no-one had a key for
anything and he came in apparently and, in the hall, we
had a gong which we used to ring before a meal. So
he came in and banged this gong, walked into the
sitting-room and found some strange people sitting
there. Very odd! Must have been quite a
shock for him. However, he and these people were
mates for ever more.
Ralph: Your father had quite an interesting old
car to travel round his practice in.
Nita: Oh yes! He came up in an old Swift
which was born in 1906 and it hadn’t got any doors and
it was a two-seater – no dicky or anything like that –
and if a passenger went out with him, the other person
sat where the door would be in a modern car and I often
used to sit there and about two years after we came, he
went out one day and when he got near Potter Heigham
Bridge, I think it was, suddenly the steering absolutely
went! He was left practically falling into the
river – not quite, though, luckily and he always said
that if I’d been sitting there on the little side bit,
it would have gone over. So it was lucky!
Ralph: Your father had quite an interesting start
to his career as a doctor because he didn’t set off with
that in mind.
Rhona: Yes, he went into an office but that didn’t
last very long because he played about a bit but
eventually he trained as a doctor.
Nita: Yes, but while he was there for a very short
time, he was in an office of Shipbrokers and he had to
do bills of lady with diamonds on and he got a bit tired
of these diamonds so he said, ‘Oh, we’ll have a few
hearts or spades or something for a change,’ and ...
Rhona: ... boss had him into the office and said – the
boss was actually a friend of the family - that was how
he had got into the office – ‘I’m afraid, my boy, we
haven’t enough scope here for you.’ So, of course,
he went and eventually he got what he wanted and was
allowed to train at the London Hospital as a doctor.
Nita: He trained on about 12/6d in those days a
week and he hadn’t got any money for anything except
just living and he had a landlady who – he always kept a
bottle of whiskey just for medicinal purposes – and the
lady of the house apparently thought, this is rather
nice so when he was out, she used to drink it. So
one day he put a little bit of powder in it – something
that made her ‘go quickly’ and she was rather disgusted
next day. She said, ‘What have you done?’
She’d got up early to go to the loo and had stayed there
all day. Anyway, that was the end of her drinking
his whiskey.
Ralph: So from there, he moved on to a practice in
Dorset?
Nita : Well, not quite! He went to another
hospital – they had to ‘walk the wards’ or something
they used to do in those days. We are talking
about the turn of the century and he went to Yarmouth
Hospital to ‘walk the wards’
Rhona: One day he wanted to go over to Catfield so
he cycled but when he got as far as the First and Last
pub, he came off his bike and scraped his knee very
badly and so they went in there and there was an old
girl in there who said, ‘Oh yes, you must have that
washed up!’ and she did it for him and said, ‘I think
you’d better go back to the hospital and have that seen
to properly. You go and ask for Doctor
Brown! I hear he’s a very good doctor. My
daughter’s a nurse there.’ So he said, ‘All right,
I will!’
Nita: I hope he did.
Ralph: After his work in the Yarmouth Hospital he
then found his next practice in Dorset?
Rhona: Yes, someone told him they wanted a doctor
down there very badly – they wanted, you know, a decent
doctor very badly. He had two promises of the loan
of a practice – he had no money, he had to borrow – one
was his brother-in-law but when he decided to marry – my
mother and father were going to wait for a bit but then
they decided that as he was coming out of nowhere, it
would be a good thing to come as a married man and not
just a bachelor. That was the idea and this put
the old boy off and he said, ‘Well, if you’re going to
get married, I’m not going to... r...
Nita: ‘... you shouldn’t marry at all at your
age... ‘
Rhona: ...and then someone else said they would
and then when they met – I don’t know how they met – my
father found that he was a bit batty, he didn’t know
what he was doing at all. So all that fell through
and he went down and...
Nita: They had just one hundred pounds in the
bank! Of course, one hundred pounds in 1902 was
quite a lot of money.
Rhona: My mother got her trousseau out of it,
which was probably only her wedding dress or suit and
they bought the linen for the house too and all that
came out of it and then they sat down and waited until
somebody came to see him as a patient. One day, a
Daimler car came into the village – there were no cars
about at all then – it was chauffeur-driven and it had a
collision with a local bicycle and so they brought the
man into the surgery to see my father and apparently he
wasn’t very badly hurt but the owner of the car was the
Lord of the Manor – he owned most of the village too,
the houses and everything like that – and that’s how he
met up with Lord Salisbury and after that, he became a
patient which was very good for his prestige starting in
life.
Ralph: As a result of that, he obviously met lots
more well-connected people in Cranborne
Rhona: There were an awful lot around there.
Nita: It was full of nobility, wasn’t it?
Very snobby!
Ralph: Why did he move from Cranborne to Ludham?
Rhona: Well, it was a better practice. He
had a family that he was educating then, you know what I
mean, and his sisters and his brother lived up here.
Nita: His father had been the Vicar of Catfield
which was only a few miles away, for years and years and
years. He was coming back to where he knew.
Rhona: He was born in Dilham, anyway.
Ralph: So he would have taken over the practice
from Doctor Gordon, whom you probably knew quite well.
Rhona: I didn’t take to Doctor Gordon very much.
Ralph: He lived at Ludham Manor?
Rhona: Yes, I haven’t get anything bad to say
about him but I wouldn’t have liked him for my doctor –
he took something out of someone’s eye with a penknife,
I’ve been told. He had this old boy who had
something in his eye and he went to the doctor about it
and he got out his pen-knife and said, ‘Oh we’ll soon
put that right,’ – he was a bombastic person – and he
used his penknife without any disinfectant or anything.
Ralph: So he must have travelled about the village
in a pony and trap?
Rhona: I think he must have. He didn’t have
a car that I know of. He couldn’t drive a car,
That I do know.
Ralph: I suppose in those days, being in a
country-practice would have been very
unlike today with an up-to-date modern surgery and
numerous doctors and assistants.
Rhona: Oh Lord, yes!
Nita: And he made up all his own medicines – all
in bottles and things like that.
Rhona: And he was frequently called out of Church.
Nita: And at night, a terrible lot! In those
days, the doctor brought practically all the little
babies into the world. Now they go to hospital but
he brought the whole of Ludham into the world in those
days and they all came in the middle of the night.
Don’t ask me why but they did!
Ralph: But then, I suppose, he travelled to other
villages like Catfield and Hickling.
Nita: Oh yes! At Hickling he had a surgery
room where he would go regularly once a week and then he
went as far a Horstead – he had a patient at Horstead
that he visited every day by request and eventually –
she was dying of cancer – she died and he had to send
the bill to the executors and he sent a bill for every
day, five shillings a visit and he had to go quite a lot
of miles to get there and they complained. I’m
glad to say he won. Can you believe it?
Ralph: Of course, in those days, there was no such
thing as a surgery at your house?
Rhona: No, people complain about it nowadays but
they didn’t have the money we had or anybody else
had. I don’t know what other doctors did round
about. Much the same thing! You see, they
didn’t use the surgery an awful lot because my father
went round seeing people. There’s much more
surgery now than the other way round, I think.
Ralph: In those days, people hadn’t got the
transport to get to the doctor’s if they weren’t well.
Rhona: No, exactly! I’ve often thought they
could have made one of the garages into a surgery – put
a window in and made one – I really think they could
have done so, perhaps.
Nita: Well, not in those days!
Rhona: Well, things were so different then.
Nita: He went on working – then the war came and
he couldn’t give up then and he was getting rather old
by then but he had to stay on and he eventually gave up
practice in 1948, just before the National Health came
in. He was very pleased to do it. He said,
‘National Health! I’m not going to be looked after
by the government! I’m going to do it
myself! He was like that. He wasn’t going to
be bombarded by the National Insurance and all that
tomfoolery.
Rhona: I don’t think he’d have liked to be told
what to do.
Nita: No, he wouldn’t! He wasn’t made that
way!
Rhona: Things are completely different now – I
mean, they just are different.
Nita: When we first came up on the 1st of July
1918, the First World War was still on and there was
practically no cars or anything on the roads – I was
only nine and my sister was coming up fifteen and we
were allowed to go on bicycles all over the place which
I don’t suppose you would be allowed now with all the
traffic around.
Ralph: No, it was an entirely different
world. You could roam freely without the concerns
of being run over.
Nita: Absolutely! We used to go out in the
boat together or separately sometimes, without anybody
else. Nobody bothered. At the age of nine,
you could sail a boat. It was lovely on the Broads
then because there were practically no boats except
sailing boats – not an awful lot of them but quite a few
– and you could sail with impunity.
Rhona: We’re talking about after the war now.
Nita: Well, just after! Between the wars,
we’re talking about - from the First World War towards
the Second World War.
Ralph: Did you know Florence Boardman well?
Rhona: What, the old girl? Yes, we knew them
very well. We used to go up there. All the
young people were about my age and we saw quite a lot of
them.
Ralph: What about village people? Did you
get to know village people quite well?
Rhona: Oh yes! I knew quite a lot of village
people. If I go up the road now, I think, they’re
all in the churchyard. I don’t know many in Ludham
now – I know a lot to talk to but I don’t know who they
are.
Ralph: You knew old Sam Knights, the harness-man?
Rhona: Oh yes, I remember him quite well.
Ralph: And his son, Albert?
Rhona: Certainly! It was old Albert who
apparently said to Leila
Goldsmith
of Potter Heigham, ‘In Doctor Brown’s time, you could
have a doctor, you could have him any time but now you
can’t be ill at the weekends and you can’t be ill on
Sundays. No, no, you could be ill any time in his
time!’ It’s semi-true but I thought it was
amusing. I mean, you do get a doctor – they’re on
duty but...
Ralph: He was very much a character of Ludham, was
Albert. Anyone else you remember from those days?
Rhona: I remember the Powells from the shop where
the butcher is now. Mrs Powell got shot by the
German bullet in the war. She was killed.
They were having lunch, I think. Someone said she
was passing the mashed potatoes round and this plane
came over and the bullet came in the window and got her
right in the heart, so they say. It nearly got her
daughter as well. The daughter had turned round to
see what the noise was and so it just scraped across
here, didn’t really do her much harm – just a
superficial wound.
Ralph: Did your father have to attend the pilot
who crashed here during the war?
Rhona: No, he didn’t.
Ralph: I suppose they had a military doctor?
Rhona: I should think so. He was called out
sometimes when the RAF doctor was off for the day or
something. Every now and again they would call him
up and a WAAF would come and take him down there.
He loved that and he was taken down to the Airfield in
case anything happened and one day, he had one of these
Fortresses come down – a forced landing – and the poor
man had both his hands blown off. Of course, my
father did them up and sent him to hospital at once but
that was a terrible thing. I don’t know if that
was the pilot but it was one of the crew, anyway.
Ralph: Do you remember the wartime in Ludham very
well?
Rhona: The Second World War? Well, we were
out of the village but we had a lot of the RAF or the
army come and have a bath at our place when they liked –
which they loved because they could come and go as they
liked and leave their things if they wanted to, and I
had a WAAF who literally made it her, you might say,
home from home. She’d leave her MUFTI there and
come and go as she liked. She had a key and I’m
still friendly with her. That was very nice and we
enjoyed that.
Ralph: That was when you were at Red-Roof
Farm? What year did you have that built?
Rhona: Yes! Just before the war! We
reckoned if we hadn’t had Taylor’s from Wroxham, they
would have put a tarpaulin over it until after the war
and wouldn’t have got it done. So we got it done just in
time and it was very nice.
Ralph: You ran a fruit-farm there for many years?
Nita: Yes! About twenty years I think.
There was a lovely story about my mother during the war
at Riverside – she used to take in the wives and the
mothers of the people in the Air force and other things
on the Airfield and she had one man – he was the Padre
and he used to come in and he was so used to it that
he’d just walk up the back stairs and have a bath.
Well, one day – it was one of these old-fashioned baths,
a bit mucky looking and she’d had it re-enamelled and it
wasn’t quite dry and he walked up the back stairs and
had a bath and you can imagine the rest. We won’t
go into details!
Rhona: Well we didn’t see the rest, did we?
I had an evacuee, too – we only had three
bedrooms. My husband was the billeting officer and
he said, ‘We’re going to send you mothers with their
small children.’ I said,’ I’m not having a mother
here with her small children. I’ll have the small
children or I’ll have the mother but I’m not going to
have them together.’ So Ken said, ‘That’s not very
useful to me!’ I said, ‘Well, I’m just not going
to. The dear little things can make marks on your
walls and I’m not going to have them.’ We went
over to Stalham to make the collection and he came out
from the Hall and he said, ‘There’s one young mother
there and she looks a nice girl and she has a babe in
arms. Would you mind that?’ I said, ‘No!’
and he said, ‘She’s got a nice hat, anyway!’ I
always remembered that. He never bothered about
clothes a lot, did he? So I don’t know why he
thought of that but she was a very attractive girl and I
said, ‘All right! I don’t mind that.’ And we
got on fine with her. She was terribly sweet and
we saw her again last year in London. It was very
nice having her – she was very helpful. Then one
day, a Naval Officer - he was very attractive too - came
to the door and asked if we had room to put him up too
and his wife wanted to come down. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I
think we’re full!’ but I thought he’s rather nice!
(LAUGHTER) So, in the end I said, ‘Well, if I can
get my woman to come and help a bit more, we’ll have
you. Otherwise, I don’t think we can manage
it. We’re very full-up.’ Anyway, I asked my
woman – I can’t remember her name now – she always said,
‘That’s right! That’s right!’ I asked her if
she could do extra and she said she could. When
I’d fixed it all up, she came and said, ‘My husband
doesn’t want me to work anymore.’ I said, ‘So
you’re not coming at all?’ She said, ‘No!
Sorry!’ So I’d not only not got extra help, I’d
not got her at all!’ Anyway, Thelma, the evacuee,
said, ‘Well, can’t we manage between us?’ and she said
she’d do a certain amount and we’d do it between
us. So that’s how we managed but sadly he got
killed.
Nita: He walked in his sleep! He walked in
his sleep and he walked to his death in his sleep.
Rhona: We won’t dwell on that!
Memories of
Brian Slater
Above is a
photograph of the wedding of Norah (Molly) Browne and
Frederick Canham taken in front of Mill House, How Hill,
I have confirmed this with the present owner.
The bridesmaid on the centre rear is Cissy Browne who
later married the tall man on her right James Thompson.
It is believed that both girls worked at the Big House
certainly Cissy Thompson, maybe for the major part of
her life.
Robert Platford the gardener was guardian to the two
girls whose parents went to the US prior to WW1.
Bob Platford cutting the grass at How Hill
All my cousins recall wonderful times spent in Ludham
with our Uncle Charlie and Aunty Violet Thompson at
Wembley Cottage. As well as being the Methodist Minister
he had a very successful small holding, he claimed to be
able to provide the finest and earliest tomatoes on the
Broads to boats at Womack Water, his green house like a
tropical forest inside. (Ludham Archive note - He
also gave the walnut trees which line the church path
from Norwich Road and lived to the age of 99).
Once a week we would help him to load up his trailer to
be towed behind his sturdy bicycle to Stalham Market.
Produce, livestock and nephews and nieces all in the
same trailer, once he let me bid for a radio at the
auction, I would be only 14 years old. I was so excited
but sadly my parents less so when we had to fit it in
the a small car for a long drive back to Nottingham.
Only yesterday my cousin, 10 years my junior recalled
the same Uncle Charlie stories as they are in the minds
of his great grandchildren, he was the family hero
Brian Slater
|