So Many Happy Hours

I spent so many happy summer holidays in Great Barton, and in particular Conyers Green where my Aunt Norah Lovelace lived in a cottage next to the old chapel building.  I cycled often to the village store/post office, and to my friend's parent's farm up the lane at the side of the cottage, their name was Rolfe and we had many lovely Sunday lunches there, going to Sunday school afterward.  There was no great television to watch in those days, my aunt only watched the news on her black and white, but it didn't matter as there always seemed to be something to do and living most of the year round in a city the countryside was great, I loved it so much.  My last visit there was in 1980 and although most of the village appeared just the same I was sad to see my aunt's cottage with a fence around it, it had always been open plan with a very pretty garden. I didn't get to see too much but I have nothing but wonderful memories of this beautiful place and its people, I just wish I could have spent the rest of my life there, but I have found something similar living in a very small town, smaller than Bury St Edmunds, in South Africa. Living next door to my aunt in the little thatched cottage lived Dorothy and Bert Hitchcock, but they moved to a farm, but I know they still had family living in Great Barton, Ralph Hitchcock and his family.  I remember the Mason family very well also.  It was a very close knit community in the old days, we were always at someone's house for tea or lunch, I don't know today if that close bond still exists, but it was part and parcel of the making of the village then,
I am going back some 50 to 55 years and obviously my friends there would now be my age, 65 or thereabout, obviously many of the old residents of Conyers Green have either left or passed away, but I sincerely hope that it has retained its old world charm and hasn't fallen prey to the modern buildings of today, it would be so sad if another of England's beautiful spots was spoiled because of urban sprawl.