Growing up in Dunks Green

My dad Henry Burton became Post Master at Dunks Green in the early 1950s. I had a wonderful childhood there. It was so quiet in the evenings that we played skipping with a long rope that was tied to the bus stop and stretched right across the road. We played rounders 'up the land'. My best friend was Doreen Crawley and at harvest time we rode on the back of her brother Bill's tractor up and down the field while he collected the sacks of corn from the combine. When the trailer was full they were taken to the barn. We roamed the woods, the fields and the nut plantations quite freely, nobody minded because we never caused any damage. In the spring we would pick posies of primroses and bluebells for our mothers. We knew, by name, everybody in the village and when I got married everyone came to wave me off. My dad sold the shop and Post Office in the 1970s when he retired.