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Cholsey
Cholsey maps
Historic maps of Cholsey and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Cholsey maps
Cholsey area books
Displaying 1 of 7 books about Cholsey and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Cholsey
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Cholsey.
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Hawkins Bakers, Honey Lane
We moved from Chelsea, London in 1959 to the baker's shop in Honey Lane. My dad was the baker's man and my mum worked in the shop. Brett's garage was next to us and Pete and Fiorella lived opposite. My friends were Jane Sadler and Colin Edwards. There was a sweet shop down the road, Johnnie Preece's, and then Tynan's before you reached the Forty. I went to Cholsey School with my brother Paul and my sister Trish. I have fond memories of Cholsey, Miss Hearmon, Maggie Davies, and Archie Campbell etc and try to get to the flower show each year. It's good, but not what it was back in the 1960s.
My Childhood in Cholsey
I was born in Cholsey in 1946 and spent probabably the best childhood I could have in a wonderful country village. I attended the village school, I was in the Church Choir and also the Brownies. A wonderful Vicar came to the village in approx 1956 (can't remember the exact year) Mr Bontoft he was called and I became very friendly with his daughter Lisa together with my next door neighbour, Beryl Hobbs, we had so much fun. My mother (Bessie Smith) also took in an evacuee during the war, he was called Brian Barham. He loved the village so much he demanded he had his first year at the village school and he also came back to visit us every year for his school summer holidays and when he grew up and married he still returned to Cholsey with his wife and family.
Unfortunately in 1968 I married a young man from London and moved away from the village and would say it was one of the worst decisions... Read more
Dad Evacuated to Cholsey WW2
I recently found your site and was excited to show it to Dad. He was evacuated out of central London during WW2. He was sent to live with the Bumpass Family from Cholsey. Andrew and Mary were their names and they had two children Eileen and Dennis. Dad told us lots of happy memories that he had of his time in Cholsey. He remembers the old school and Bunkers hill, tha old pavillion in the centre of the village where tramps slept. He went to Sunday School and speaks very fondly of a Mrs Kelson who ran the mission .
He never returned to visit the Bumpass family, because even though he was happy with them he had memories of a much harder time with a lady who first took him in,who lived in the same area.
I have shown the photos to Dad to jog his memory and he says it would be lovely to see his old school again .He tells me there was a brook that... Read more
Oxfordshire memories
In Memory of My Grandparents
Mr Gran and Grandad had their home in North Stoke, a Mr and Mrs Sallis (Elizabeth and Arthur). They lived in Calendula Cottage, as it was called then. My mother had three sons, Ray the oldest, Tony, and me, Nick, the youngest. For some reason our mother decided to have us live there; our grandparents were in their seventies and still working. As you can imagine, it must have been traumatic for them and the worry and more hardship to cope with. From what I have gathered they couldn't have tried any more than they did and found it too much to cope with. Eventually we were taken into care; I was only two years old then, Tony was four and Ray was six.
It was only a two-bedroom cottage, leading down the stairs straight into a very small kitchen and into the front room and that's all. The toilet was at the back down the garden.
Gran and Grandad over the years never forgot us and used... Read more
Haywards From Loders Dorset
John Hayward (1813) came from Loders in Dorset and settled in this area of Wallingford, of Benson, Bradfield, Englefield and married local girl Mary Anne Kitchen. His son Robert James eventually farmed Uxmore Farm at Ipsden, near Stoke Row in Berks/Oxon. I am collecting a photographic record of the Hayward family in these areas for a family tree.
Ingrid Wilson
Hi Ingrid Wilson,
Apologise reply to your query - windows - Francis Frith site got problems connecting, my reply cancelled several times. If I can contact you direct I can give you info about the Hayward family tree free, so far as I have got. You are welcome to assist with further research.
yoga-prakash saraswati
lunarorange20022@yahoo.com.au--new email
sfrancesten@gmail.com---new email
aussieworldpolitics.blogspot.com
Wallingford During The Second World War
I arrived in Wallingford as a 10 year old boy with my sister and mother on a cold winter February night. We had been bombed out from our house in Dagenham just a few days before and my brother, who was stationed at Benson with the army, had arranged for us to take a room in The Lamb, I believe it was, to get us out of London and away from the bombs. It did not take mother long to get us some rooms in a house in St Mary's Street, number 18, where we stayed with a lovely old lady named Mrs Naish. Her son was the local signwriter. Next door to her little cottage was the chemist shop and a garage car showroom where I used to peer in the window at the lovely old cars.
I started at St John's School and vividly remember walking to school down the lane by the post office, and at the end was a large recreation area like a small... Read more
