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Heybridge Basin
Heybridge Basin photos
Displaying the first of 2 old photos of Heybridge Basin. View all Heybridge Basin photos
Heybridge Basin maps
Historic maps of Heybridge Basin and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Heybridge Basin maps
Heybridge Basin area books
Displaying 1 of 18 books about Heybridge Basin and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Heybridge Basin
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Essex memories
Sailing With my Dad
The best memories of sailing with my dad most weekends and baleing water out of the dingy. It leaked.
Happy Childhood Days
Many happy childhood weekends were spent on the River Blackwater at the Mill Beach Camp Site with my parents and brother. We often visited Maldon for provisions and I can remember a large "cake shop" on the corner by the bus station? As we came up the hill (what a hill!) a lady on the left always had a different flower arrangement in her window. Needless to say I went on to become a keen flower arranger. I visited Maldon a few years back and I am happy to say that the town hadn't changed much at all. We even walked along the sea wall to the plot where my parents had their last caravan before my father died in 1976. Lovely memories. Lovely place - would like to retire in Maldon if only I could afford it!
Happy Times in Maldon
My family and I moved from London in 1955 to Maldon, following a visit the year before with our Sunday School outing, and we moved near to the Prom. We had such happy times living there and as children my friends and I used to roam the Prom, the nearby sea-wall, fields, woods, and country lanes, in fact everywhere, in safety. What freedom we had then. We spent many hours in the cinema watching the latest films. In August a large fair would come to the Prom for two weeks, ending with a spectacular carnival on the last Saturday followed in the evening by a brilliant firework display around the marine lake. On Boxing Day we would walk up the High Street to the Blue Boar to watch the hunt leave and what a great sight it was. My family and I moved from Maldon in 1966 but I was allowed to get married the following year in All Saints Church. I haven't been back... Read more
Freddie Holmes' Garage
I attended the primary school, just down the Maldon Road from the garage in the photo, which was run by Mr Holmes. The sweet-shop behind the pumps was popular with us kids! Headmaster of the primary school was Mr Herbert Lewis, a Welshman known to us as "Pop". He maintained discipline - and our attention! - with a bundle of rulers held together with elastic-bands; when applied to the backside they made you sit up in both ways! But he was a good teacher, joined in with our games and was liked and respected. His wife, Hilda, a formidable lady from Yorkshire, was his deputy.
Then, Arthur Green ran the village post-office from the front room of his house on Staplers Heath, and he delivered on an old, smoky motor-bike. Great Totham Hall farm was owned by Tom Martin, a shrewd man if ever there was one. We actually lived in Great Totham north, in Mountains Cottage, Mountains Road, next to Lt Mountains farm which is still in the ownership... Read more
A Real English Village
My parents moved to Wickham Bishops in 1948 to help friends run the village Post Office Stores which sold everything - stamps, paraffin (you brought your own can and it was filled from a barrel at the back), vinegar (as for the parafin, it came from a barrel out back), cheese portions cut from huge cheeses wrapped in linen, and loose flour and pulses which even as a five year old I was allowed to put into blue sugar-paper bags to be weighed. Sweets where still rationed and broken biscuits were popular. My mother and her friend went once a year to order skirts, blouses, frocks and underwear from the London warehouses. Toys that came in for Christmas were not in plastic so I got the first go with them! There was a village pantomime every year in which all the local characters took part, glamorous in fish-net tights as Dandini or hideous in wigs and false chests as the ugly sisters. There was also a Christmas party for everyone... Read more
Wickham Bishops Born And Bred
In 1950 I was born on a cold winter's night to my mother Rosemary Jesse, at 'The Black Houses', Kelvedon Road, Wickham Bishops, built by architect, designer and socio-economic theorist Arthur Heygate Macmurdo. I had an older brother Neil and a sister, Christine. My mother had lived her childhood at Goldhanger, another delightfully unique part of Essex, bringing forth many joyful memories of childhood. My father Chris like me was born in Wickham Bishops, his father Joe walked into the village at the tender age of 11 with another lad from who knows where and were taken in and raised by a couple of families in the village, hence no record of our ancestry on that that side of the family.
My mother worked at the local primary school for endless years, firstly as the dinner lady then the dinner and lunchtime playground lady. Luckily for us kids my mum had a wonderful sense of play, the only downfall for me was that from the moment I could sit... Read more
The Bell Inn
Does anyone know what became of the family named CASTON who ran the Bell Inn in the early 60's ? JANE CASTON was my friend back then and I remember the fun we had and sleeping over at the Bell Inn with a ghost or two. She had a sister SALLY CASTON. Jane and I lost touch when I came to Canada. Please email me if this rings a bell (no pun). lasreed@shaw.ca Lynda (nee Service)
