Hawthorn

A Memory of Hawthorn.

I had a very happy childhood growing up in Hawthorn until I left at the age of fifteen to join the Royal Navy in 1960. Hawthorn consisted of two distinct halves separated by a 'main road'. The top site had flat roofs while the bottom half had sloping roofs. It made life easy when making teams. The "estate" was purpose built during the war for the workers of the Bristol Aircraft factory who also had a "fall back" factory underground should they get bombed out at Bristol. This never happened so at the end of the war the accommodation was rented to all the new families that had sprung up as a result of the war. For us children Hawthorn was a great playground. We had fields, woods, quarries, and a brooke at the bottom of the valley in which to play. There were very few fences or restrictions and we could come and go as we pleased. We would make camps in the woods in the summer, explore the quarries and man made caves (and get lost in them) fish or swim in the brooke, play hide and seek, kick the can and football in the street (when we were surrounded by fields) and many more forgotten games. The local RAF airfields at Colerne usually put on a good airshow in September for Battle of Britain week although we were constantly plagued by wobbly TVs every 10 minutes when the Brigands and Hastings aircraft flew over on their circuits.
The City of Bath was a half hour bus ride away for swimming pools, cinemas and theatres and we also had a cinema a 30 minute walk away.
Life for our parents was hard as they were never sure how long their jobs would last or where the next penny was coming from but the community spirit on the estate worked well and we enjoyed fetes and carnivals with dear old Arthur Larkin doing his best to keep us entertained in the community centre. Saturday morning cinema with Flash Gordon was a favourite.
The primary school at the bottom of the estate catered for our education with Mr Brewer the Headmaster, Mrs Geldart and Mrs Williams the long standing year one and two teachers. All in all it was a idyllic childhood although we didn't appreciate it at the time. I would loved to have bought my own children up in the same surroundings but the estate was demolished in the late 60s

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