Childhood And Teenage Years

Downham Market in my younger days was a happy small market town where everyone knew everyone else, in the days before overspill there were lots of small shops, like the bakers Stannards and Slys where you would queue for ages for your bread while everyone caught up with the town news and scandal, and the Regent cinema was very popular and the queue used to be from the cinema to the Coffee Pot public house which is now closed. I remember the airfield at Bexwell and airmen being in town, Stow Hall which is now demolished was used as a convalescent home for troops who had been injured in action during the Second World War. With my brother and sisters and friends we used to go blackberrying in the Cock Droves which now unfortunately is spoilt by buildings. We used to stop at Mrs Butcher's for a drink of fresh water from her water pump, the Butcher family had a smallholding in Cock Drove. Mrs Butcher would always be leaning over the gate post to invite us in for a drink, I think it was the fascination of pumping the water from the well which we really wanted.