Happy Days at Kirkham Abbey

I lived at Kirkham Abbey in a little bungalow called Sunny Side. It is no longer there now as it was pulled down. It was situated where the carpark now is for The Stone Trough. My mother and father in law lived in The Bungalows. He, Ernest James Cook, was the butler for Mrs Brotherton at Kirkham Hall. Mr Robert Hall and his wife lived and farmed there and Mr Eric Batty was station master and lived in the railway cottages. The Stone Trough wasn't a pubin those days, it was the home of Ernest Hepton. He had a garage at Whitwell on the hill. Long before I was married I used to spend a lot of time with Anne Cook who was to be come my sister in law. As children we used to play in the grounds of the abbey ruins (after the man had gone home) We swam in the river and fished in the cut and walked in the fields and woods finding birds eggs. My two daughters were born whilst we lived there, at Westow Croft Maternity Home about two miles away. We left in April 1963 to live in Whitwell after I'd done all my pram pushing up the steep hill to get the bus to either Malton or York. Happy days........