A Happy Time

I was born in 1965 at Cliveden and lived in Grubwood Lane near the entrance to Quarry Woods with my parents for 16 years. I remember walking to Cookham Dean Primary School where the headmaster Mr Turner made my life a misery! I remember scrumping apples in the orchards opposite my house but had to watch out for the 'bangers' - the farmer hung small explosives off ropes in the trees to scare off the birds and they really did go bang! Quarry Woods was a fantastic place in which to play - I found hundreds of old medicine glass bottles buried in there once - all marked 'poison' and dated from about 1900 onwards. It was a beautiful place to be brought up - I've been back since and a lot of the small cottages have either been knocked down and replaced with large 'flash' houses; or the remaining old houses have had huge extentions on them, changing them forever. Winter Hill was a great place to go sledging in the winter as was the tip/old mine area at the back entrance to the Copas brothers farm... I used to think 'Stig of the dump' lived there... great imagination in those days!