Hawthorn memories
Here are memories of Hawthorn and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Hawthorn or a Hawthorn photo.
Box Fields, Hawthorn
My parents met at a place called Thornypits and married during the war years.They were George and Pam Edwards, he was a local barber and came from Killarney, Southern Ireland, she came from Ditcheat, near Shepton Mallet in Somersett. They had three children, Pat, David and Pam. My parents worked at the Moon Aircraft, which produced many parts from Perspex for aeroplanes. We lived on a purpose-built estate made up of prefab bungalows. The population was mostly young families that had evolved from the war and came from all over the UK and Ireland. The estate had a Fish and Chip shop ran by Mr Poole, a butchers, haberdashery, friut and veg shop. We also had a community centre that had a doctors surgery and a local youth club where I learnt to 'jive'. During my childhood I saw Polish and Hungarian refugees arrive at Thorneypits, which became a transit camp for people seeking refuge from conflicts within their countries. We never experienced any crimes or troubles from these people. Some... Read more
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... Read more
Hawthorn, Box Fields
Pat - it's lovely to read about Hawthorn as my grandmother Mrs Berrett and my Uncle Peter and Aunt Hilda Evans also lived there. School holidays were spent picking blackberries at the old D.P camp and playing in the fields and riding a bike around the estate. I remember the shops and the stone wall we used to walk on going to Five Ways to catch the bus to Bath or Chippenham. My aunt and uncle moved and ran a pub, the Royal Arthur I think it was called, in Corsham. I live in Ireland and went to see Hawthorn and was sad to see it was no longer there.
Memories of Wiltshire
Family Connections.
This is a picture of myself with my sister and brother and my sister's friend. I was 13 years old. My sister Theo is the girl with the handbag, she was 9 years old and my brother John was 3 years old. We had been to the local store Bences and are standing outside the smallest pub in the county, The Chequers Inn. Our family home was at the top of Glovers Lane. The garden with dad's apple and cherry trees can be seen in the photograph running the full length of the lane.
Boy in Photo
I think the boy in the picture is my cousin Michael (Jake). He moved into 39 Bargates with his parents my aunt and uncle in 1955 one of the first residents. My aunt and uncle still live there.
Browning's Garage
This looks like it was taken from Browning's Garage. Up until the 1980s there were two motorcoach companies in Box, George Browning's at the corner of Devizes Road and Chapel Lane, and Millers on the High Street at the bottom of Chapel Lane. Browning's provided the school bus for Corsham comp when I was an 'inmate'. Now I see the garage site is a housing development called 'The Brownings'.
Mrs Haines And Mr Bawtree
Here we're looking towards Margaret Haines' shop which sold sweets, greeting cards and all sorts of sundries - and in the 1970s it was, I think, the only shop open in Box on a Sunday afternoon! Further down (past the - was it? - VG store) is Mr Bawtree's the barber, who had a handlebar moustache and used to sell 'something for the weekend' ...
The Slip
When I was growing up in Box, Glovers Lane was nicknamed 'The Slip'. Some witty person always painted out the 'G' on the street sign.
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Places this week
Here are some of the places you've shared memories of this week:
- Sway, Hampshire
- Pant, Shropshire
- Aveley, Essex
- Salford, Lancashire
- Cononley, West Yorkshire
- Oswestry, Shropshire
- Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire
- Croydon, Surrey
- Greystoke, Cumbria
- Finchley, Greater London
- North Coates, Lincolnshire
- Smallthorne, Staffordshire
- Greasbrough, South Yorkshire
- Kings Sutton, Oxfordshire
- Patshull Park, West Midlands
- Woodbridge, Suffolk
- Winchmore Hill, Greater London
- Shelsley Walsh, Worcestershire
- Oban, Argyll
- Kirkandrews-On-Eden, Cumbria
- ... and lots more - Browse this week's memories now.
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