Growing up in Burnham

In this year I was 5 years old, and just starting school in the church hall in Gore Road, which is the road in which I also grew up.
I remember Burnham as a small, close-knit community, we went to church every Sunday, it was friendly and safe.
My Mother's family were one of the first to inhabit Burnham, and are recorded in the doomsday book, the family name was Brookling.
I have many happy memories of playing in the meadows, before the sprawling estates were built in Minniecroft and Lent Green Lane.
We all knew Cleares, Hearns the butcher, the local Doctors, in the High Street, Dr Summers, Dr Daily and Dr Mitchell-Fox.
Clonmel had not been built either, and it seemed all of us kids knew each other in the village.
How it has changed! Now you can walk down the village and not see a soul you know, sad, but that is progress, the pace of life, and community has been lost in the many years since the 50s, and probably before that for the people who lived there in the 1900s and before.
It used to be such a lovely village, but alas no more.