My Wonderful Years In Fernham

A Memory of Fernham.

I was born in Fernham in 1936 in the thatched cottage on the green (now known as Corner Cottage, opposite the church), as was my mother before me. The house was my grandmother's, Mrs Mary Brown. My grandfather Harry Brown was a freelance carpenter and made everything rustic from sheep hurdles to coffins in the small workshop (now derelict) on the opposite side of the road as you are about to climb Hobb's Hill. My memories start some time before I started school at Longcot around the start of the Second World War. What a time for a young boy to live! It was an area full of military action and personnel, lots of aircraft from Shellingford and Watchfield aerodromes and constant air traffic, both German and Allied, as north Berkshire was on the homeward path of RAF returning from raids, and likewise the Luftwaffe going home from bombing Coventry and the like. Then the the Yanks arrived, "any gum chum" . I believe I'm the third oldest village survivor ,my cousin Rosie Richings (now Rosie Tilling) and my lifelong mate Frank Brooks being the oldest, in that order. I still visit now and again but the magic is slowly fading, now I meet only stangers, and they all speak what with what we call "mid Atlantic accents" whereas when I was there the broad Berkshire dialect was the norm. Also the farming community has gone, at one time up to the 1950s most of the village worked the land for one or other of the two farmers: Adams or Gilling, and I knew them all by name, and their children. I went to London just after the war as my father had bought a house there. He waited until I was about to leave Faringdon School then away I went and left a way of life I always yearned for ever since. But I often wonder if I had stayed would I have had the opportunities that I enjoyed in the city? Such as an appreniceship in electronics at EMI and the like. So I just remember my wonderful childhood, the farming year from ploughing till harvest, and the seasons which go by now almost unnoticed. Who remembers Apple Christening, Hay Making, Harvesting. When I hit the London school there was no board to pin the first wild flowers of the year and "get your name up" or the best birds' egg collection. They tell me now that it's against the law to collect birds' eggs, would you say the ban has increased the bird population? How many coveys of partridges do you see now? It's all machines now, ripping hedges to pieces instead of laying, combining instead of horse-drawn binder, with all the local lads with sticks standing round the field ready to clobber the hundreds of rabbits as they came out of the rapidly depleting corn. So there we are. Thank you Fernham for helping me become who I am today, a better start to life no lad could have wished for.

---

---