Gillingham memories
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Memories of Dorset
Childhood
I was brought up in the village from the age of two years until I left at the age of 16 years, we lived at 16 Quarry Close. I went to school at Woodville. I came from a large family we was poor, didn't have much and lived in a three bed house where Mum and Dad slept in the sitting room, as we were after all a family of ten. My dad worked as a labourer but worked his garden in his spare time growing veg, rearing chickens, rabbits etc. He even had an allotment which is now the 'rec. In the summer we used to ride on the back of the silage tractor and trailor, hide behind the hay bales ect. There was a gang of us, the Hunt boys, Christine Weadon, my family. The village fete was held at the vicarage where we did morris dancing, regular events included fox meeting in the village with the hounds and having a drink before setting off. Our gang... Read more
Stour Row
My family were friends of the Vowles who lived in Green Lane. We stayed with them in 1935, I have a photo of them and me as a baby. My memory is of staying with them in the war years and going to school in the village, I seem to remember carrying a plate to school each day for my dinner.
Hovis Hill
This is the hill that appeared in the Hovis television adverts - supposedly in a northern town, but in reality in deepest Dorset! At the top it is about 700 feet above sea level. It is now the scene of the once a year Gold Hill Festival in July.
Shaftesbury's Bad Reputation!
Shaftesbury's position high on a hilltop with only a meagre water supply meant that water had to be brought up to the town from wells at the bottom of the steep slopes, usually by horses and donkeys carrying barrels. Water sellers then went round the town's houses selling water by the bucketful. However, Shaftesbury's position at the crossroads of several main coaching routes meant that it was abundantly supplied with inns and beer houses. This scarcity of water and preponderance of inns, together with the fact that the churchyard for the now vanished St John’s Church (on St John’s Hill) was set on a steep slope high above the church itself, prompted Thomas Hardy's famous description of the town in his novel 'Jude the Obscure' as a town 'remarkable for three consolations to man ... It was a place where the churchyard lay nearer heaven than the church steeple, where beer was more plentiful than water, and where there were more wanton women than honest wives and maids'.
My Childhood Memories
My memories of Silton are that I was a young boy of 4 years old when I moved there with my parents, my dad was a dairy man, making cheese and my mum twice a week would make butter with another lady. I loved living in Silton. I loved the school's summer holidays because most of my time when not helping my mum was spent on the farm where my dad worked or going to the other farms in the area. Silton was and could be very close when it came to helping those in need, such as when the weather was so bad that roads were not accessible because of the snow in the 1960 approx. I used to go to Zeals with my dad every six weeks to have my hair cut, not in a barber shop but in a big works building which was right next door to the pub. I liked to go exploring across the fields in the area where I lived. I saw and... Read more
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I Remember When...
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