Ashdown Forest memories
Here are memories of Ashdown Forest and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Ashdown Forest or a Ashdown Forest photo.
Camping at Broadstone Warren With The 3rd Sevenoaks
I was a Cub and Scout Leader with the 3rd Sevenoaks Scout Group in the 1970's and remember a hot summer camp in 1975 at Broadstone Warren. It was at the end of July and we took the younger Scouts off to Summer Camp at this National Scout Activity Centre in the Ashdown Forest while the older ones went on a more adventurous (and expensive!) trip to Switzerland!
We had a great time but even after nearly 40 years I can still remember the trouble we had with so many ants' nests that very hot summer. I wonder if any of the boys who might be reading this will remember?
Memories of East Sussex
Life on The Forest, 1940s on
We moved to Yew Tree Cottage, out on the Forest, in December 1940, when I was 20 months old, and my father finally sold up in the early 1980s. I loved the Forest, and was allowed to roam free from an early age. I have many memories of the wide open spaces [yes, they were then, when the smallholders cut and gathered the vegetation for their animals' food and betting, and cut birch for firewood]. Once, when I'd wandered off [aged about 4] to meet the postman, who came from the Forest Row direction, when he didn't come apparently I just kept on walking. I remember feeling sleepy and lying down by a bridge to sleep, and being woken by the search party, probably Dad [Tom Townsend], Mr Card and Mr Everest. I wasn't at all bothered, just loved the attention. Everybody knew everyone in those days, and houses weren't generally locked up. If you went to see anyone and they weren't in, you just went in... Read more
Sweet Memories
Living at Forest House - just up the road from the post office. The school coach would drop us off at the bus stop, and on our way home we would stop in to what our family called "the little shop" to stash up on sweets. The shop was run by Barbara and Len Waghorn.
Wrens Warren Camp School
In 1949 I was a pupil at Wrens Warren Camp School near Colemans Hatch. The school was housed in long huts which I believe to have been used in the war. It was a school for children who had been ill and needed some form of convalescence whilst still able to attend lessons.
The headmaster was a Mr Punch, and the head for the girls was a Miss Hoad. We slept in long dormitories and the whole place was quite austere.
I would love to hear from any other member who was there.
The School Journey
I was a pupil at Michael Faraday at Westmorland Road, London SE17, at about 1953 when we went on the 'school journey'. I will add to this my first holiday away from home. One evening at just before bedtime after a few nights there in the dormitary one of the boys was very irritable and kicked another, which resulted in him crying followed by most of the rest of us because boy, were we suddenly homesick. The teachers must have been used to it I suppose... more to come.
Happy Holidays
I attended Southfield School in Gravesend, Kent and we had a week's summer camp at the Isle of Thorns, what an adventure, we were away from home for the first time, it was a holiday never to be forgotten even after all these years. I remember walking through the woods to the local shop to spend our money on Cydrax and sweets, kids today do not realise what delight can be got from simple pleasures.
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Places this week
Here are some of the places you've shared memories of this week:
- Penruddock, Cumbria
- Woodbridge, Suffolk
- Kempsey, Worcestershire
- Draycott-In-The-Clay, Derbyshire
- Maesgeirchen, Gwynedd
- Forest Row, East Sussex
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
- Blundellsands, Merseyside
- Chertsey, Surrey
- Bowness-On-Solway, Cumbria
- Burghfield, Berkshire
- Hawley, Hampshire
- Nant Ffrancon, Gwynedd
- Helsby, Cheshire
- Rhydyfelin, Mid Glamorgan
- Dagenham, Essex
- Oldham, Lancashire
- Raby, Merseyside
- Bracklesham Bay, West Sussex
- Finchley, Greater London
- ... and lots more - Browse this week's memories now.
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