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Gaywood memories

Here are memories of Gaywood and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Gaywood or a Gaywood photo.

I Was Born at Gaywood Nusing Home in June 1940

Nursing Home c1955
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On the night I was born at Gaywood Nursing Home, Lord Hawhaw had given a message on the radio that the Germans would be bombing Gaywood Clock, and I was put under a table in the cellar. My father was in the special branch of the Home Guard having been invalided out of the RAF where he had been a fighter pilot.

Gaywood Hall And The Old Estate

I have lived in Gaywood for 74 years attented school ín Gaywood and attented st Faiths Church Gaywood, and known many of the old families of Gaywood, I have so many memories growing up in Gaywood both in the war and peace time, we lived in Hulton Road at one time part of the large Bagge estate we played in the large field in front of the hall, the Bagge family owned most of Gaywood and the last member of the Bagge Family was very strict I can not remember him he was not in my time, but after Gaywood was developed into a large housing estate, cemetery in the field close to the gardens of the hall and crematorium errected in the woodlands, my late mother had a saying that Teddy Bagge must be turning in his grave the way his estate is now looking and he must be haunting the area,

Grandmother Lived at Gaywood Hall

My late grandmother, Sheila Clifford (Bagge) Evans, grew up at Gaywood Hall. I was very close to her and she shared many stories of growing up in this area with me. I live in the U.S., specifically Arizona, but hope to someday travel to Norfolk.

posted May 27, 2007 by: Cristi (Barraza) Watson

Memories of Norfolk

My Christening

St John's Church 1898
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On the 1st August 2006 I went to Kings Lynn for the first time since 1935, to visit St Margaret's Church. I was christened there 5th February 1935. My Grandfather lived at 14 Priory Lane Kings Lynn. Is there anyone who knew the Crook Family from that time? Noel Crook

Majestic Cinema

Wonderful memories of Saturday morning pictures - we would all line up outside the Majestic Picture House as it was called and monitors would walk up and down the line to make sure we were not too noisy and kept us in our place, for sixpence  we would see cartoons and a feature film, cowboys or my favourite Flash Gordon, always a cliff hanger ending that brought you back the following week to see if he made it, which he always did, wonderful times, and I'm sure our parents loved Saturday mornings also, got us out of their hair for a few hours, money well spent.

Lynn in The Thirties

My mother, before her marriage, lived with her parents at 2 Whitefriars Terrace, near Kings Lynn docks. Her father, Arthur Henry Drew, was master of a small coaster, the Lizzie and Annie, working along the east coast. She had a long working life, having been built in 1877, and was broken up in 1971.
On our visits to my grandparents in the thirties I spent much time on the dockside and river bank, watching the ships. At that time there was a piece of land there separated from the mainland by a narrow creek, with a swing bridge across it, now gone, I think.
Kings Lynn suffered from the attentions of the Luftwaffe during the war, and I think several houses in Whitefriars Terrace were destroyed.
I always looked forward to having some marsh samphire, an edible plant that grew on the Ouse mud flats, and was delighted to find some again many years later while sailing in Chichester harbour.

Tiny Post Office.

The Post Office 1908
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Mr and Mrs Raines ran a postal service from this tiny shed at the bottom of their garden in 1908. The village was of course much smaller then: there were only four large families and no more than a dozen cottages. In the late 1940s the post office moved to a building in the main street. Later, the shed was used to house chickens before finally rotting away.

Greatgrandfather - Jesse Bartle

I live in Canada but knew that my grandfather came from King's Lynn and settled in Brantford, Ontario Canada. On a trip to the UK in 1995 I drove from London to Clenchwarton since my aunt had told me that's where he had lived. When I saw the first church I drove into the laneway and when I got out of the car I noticed a headstone that read Jesse Bartle - my great grandfather!!! What a great surprise.

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