Growing Up In Cold Ash

A Memory of Cold Ash.

I spent the early years of my life in Cold Ash and Thatcham. We lived in a detached house on Cold Ash Hill called Midway. I believe it has since been renamed. The house was built by my grand father Alfred Gadd, the carpenter, for the pricely sum of £460. I still have his book of expenditure on the build somewhere. Next door down the hill was the bungalow owned by Len Durbidge and on the other side, up the hill, Swallows Rest owned by Sudgey Piper. There was a large wooden shed facing the road in Sudgeys garden which, I believe, was originally a shop. In my day it was a snobs or cobblers (shoe menders) run by a young chap called Ken Budden. He was a polio victim and wore leg irons. Quite unusual for a small village, at the top of the hill just before you reached Stroud's shop was a dilapidated shed, also a cobbler's shop run by an elderly Mr Palmer who cycled daily from Upper Bucklebury to work. Each lunchtime he would stand in the middle of the road and share his sandwiches with the local sparrow population.
The village was quite well served in those days, the 1950s. We had the Post Office run by Mr Waldren and next door Pocock's Garage. Up the hill was Stroud's "Bakers and Provision Merchants" and opposite Stroud's the two pubs which remain today. The Castle, landlord Mr Gooch who always wore a rose bud in his lapel, and The Spotted Dog. I can't recall the then landlord but it was subsequently purchased by Harry Hopgood who at that time was our newspaper delivery man. If you walked up the dirt track behind The Castle past the terrace of cottages you came to The Pheasant pub on The Ridge, and walk to the top of Cold Ash Hill and beyond Bucklebury Alley for another grocery store, The Black and White Garage and finally The Fir Trees pub.

As if this wasn't enough Mr Dorling called each week with his fruit and veg delivery van and milk was delivered from the farm at the bottom of the hill by Cyril Collins the farmer. You had to provide your own jug and he measured the milk from his churn. Coal was delivered by Les Attfield who lived at the bottom of the hill beyond Collins' farm. He had a coal yard further up the hill beyond Stroud's and next to Alec McCurdy the wood carver's impressive dwelling. There was no butcher's shop in the village but weekly deliveries were made by Wyatt's from Thatcham.

Stroud's was a thriving business. The shop was run by Jack Stround with two permanent staff employed, Muriel and "Bunt". The bakery was run jointly by Jimmy Stroud the founder of the business whose Saturday Lardy Cakes were legendary, and his other son, Gordon. Deliveries were made each week to the outlying villages of Ashmore Green, Upper Bucklebury and I believe Hermitage and Frilsham.
Jack Stroud, as well as running the shop, was also a smallholder, cultivating a large swath of land behind the shop premises and keeping hundreds of free range chickens and pigs. Gordon, his brother, who lived in a large house off Gladstone Lane also kept pigs.

Sometime during those early years my parents moved, I'm not sure if it was from from Midway where we lived with the grand parents to a small cottage close to The Convent called Spark's Cottage or the other way round. I'm told that Sparks Cottage was very basic., but I have only two memories. One was of looking through the fence and talking to the kindly nuns who at that time worked the Convent farm, and the second was of the cooker in the cottage which was powered by paraffin!

One of my early memories of village life was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It seemed to me that the whole village turned out, I had never seen so many people. All of the children wore fancy dress. I was a pirate with a wooden cutlass, buckled shoes and an eye patch. My friend, Keith, the son of Jack Stroud, went as a baker, naturally. He pushed the baker's barrow made by his father, but became a little overwhelmed by everything. We all walked to the recreation ground where the judging took place and then were treated to tea in The Ackland Hall. Each child was presented with a commemorative coronation mug and, I believe, afterwards there was a softball game courtesy of the American airman from Greenham Common. Although this was possibly a separate event.

I will pause here for today, but will commit further memories to this page at a future date. If I have jogged any memories today, I would love to hear your own stories of Cold Ash. To be continued. Graham Smith