The Fairways Dilton Marsh 1973

A Memory of Dilton Marsh.

March 1973 – Life at the Fairways Dilton Marsh
Not too long after moving in I found out that the area near where we lived was in fact known locally as ‘The Tanyard’ and now years later there is a new road where the tannery was called Tanyard Way.
The local school which was just a modest walk up the High Street past the small Haberdashery shop (now a hairdressers), the Holy Trinity Church, the Post Office and shop, the petrol pumps & garage, the Kings Arms pub and the Holy Trinity Primary school in centre of the village onwards towards Victorian infant’s school near the other end of the village.
The trains rushed close by our house took a bit of getting used to, especially the heavy stone trains that pulled up the hill with their long heavy loads late at night. Up until shortly before we came to Dilton, tickets for the train were bought from a Mrs. Roberts house just up the hill from the station.
From the kitchen of our new house we could see across the road to the field under the south bound railway platform. On this field we could watch the rabbits running about under the legs of the grazing cows. These were the same cows that we got our bottled milk from. The farmer was Bob Rousell, whose Bridge Farm buildings were opposite his house in old pub once known as ‘The Apple Tree’. Bob also delivered our milk for many years and he would often bring us specially, the printed milk bottles that my son Kevin collected.
In the coming years we enjoyed hearing cows, sheep and donkeys from the house and from the windows I’ve seen squirrels a plenty, badgers and foxes on the Boyer’s Green beside the house.
On Saturdays I would walk with our children and dog, down the nearby path through the tannery over the white painted wooden bridge spanning the Biss Brook to join Black Horse Lane. Then moving on uphill to the Phipps Arms pub at Westbury Leigh where we turned back down towards Bridge Farm stopping at Bailey’s the small local shop there. At the shop the kids would get a lolly-pop and I would buy a freshly baked loaf of bread. The bread was traditionally oven baked on the premises by Mr. Bailey, the old master baker who lived there with his daughter’s family, the Barbers. On leaving the shop we would continue home turning at Bridge Farm into the Charles Case Tannery driveway, then the footpath leading back to join up with the path back home up the steep path through the tannery and past Black Horse Social Club into Fairways through the opening between the backs of house numbers 10 and 11.

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