Great Easton

I lived the first 22 years of my life in Great Easton amd it is a place that will remain with me forever. My family are recorded as being in the parish for 400 years and my late father was the last one to remain, until his passing in 2001, in a very much changed village to the one I remember as a boy and most certainly how he would have remembered it having lived there all his life. We all went to school at the nearby Bringhurst School and were taught as Infants by Miss Love and as Juniors by the headmistress Mrs Cartwright. We played football in the streets without fear of being run over, we cycled far and wide without fear of being molested or abducted and the surrounding fields were our playground. Most of the people who lived in the village had ancestry that had ties to village for years and by and large everyone knew everyone. We earned pocket money by going 'spud' picking at half term, we worked on the farm for a pay packet of half a dozen eggs, how many would do that now I wonder. I played both football and cricket for the village team, even after moving out to Market Harborough and now further afield I will always be a 'Great Eastonite', my sons were all christened in St Andrew's church and I eventually celebrated my 40th birthday in the village hall. The connection with the village remains however with my brother and his sons continuing the association through the Cricket Club, now known as the Old Eastonians, playing at Rockingham. Just sitting here writing this brings masses of memories flooding back, of truly great days in a lovely village.