Lane End memories
Here are memories of Lane End and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Lane End or a Lane End photo.
Lane End Born & Bred From 1956
I grew up in Park Lane, this is the eastern side of Lane End, and then consisted of mostly 1940s- & 1950s-built council houses. I grew up in Coronation Crescent, a semi, 3 bed council house. These were not so much pebble dashed, as gravel dashed houses, sharp to the touch and the stones a mix of white, pink & red. Our back garden backed onto the farm of Mrs Archer, who kept pigs, and apparently had a pet fox she would take for a walk, but I never saw this. I went to school in Wheeler end, then later Bartholomew Tipping in Stokenchurch. I attended ballett class for a while in Lane End Village Hall. I was not so much shy as a nervous wreck, so hated any group activity. My mother always entered the Horticultural Show each year with home-made wine, jam, cakes & handicraft, also eggs from our own hens; while I did jam tarts, dinner plate garden, flowers in a jam jar & flowers in a... Read more
Memories of Buckinghamshire
The Best Roast Lunches Ever
I worked in High Wycombe as a young man in my 20's and discovered the Swan pub, see the sign? Every weekday lunchtime they did a roast dinner and pudding and a coffee for a set price. No menu. I remember the dining room having some big and some small tables and the same people went there for lunch every day. Because I had only been going there 2 days a week for 2 years no-one actually spoke to me yet. The most fantastic roast lunches would be served up by two old ladies and a daughter I think. I would guess the daughter to be forty and the other ladies to be ancient. It was like school dinners on steroids. Sometimes tourists would call in and you would see them looking for a menu, "perhaps a little salad, darling, or some tuna on brown bread?". Suddenly roast lamb and three veg would clatter onto the table in front of them and they would always be too scared of the... Read more
1949 Onwards at West Wycombe
I will always consider myself fortunate to have been born in West Wycombe as it presented the ideal place for people growing up in the 50's and 60's. The village was a dream location and the school even better with a super set of friends and teachers well managed by Mr. Holdbrook the Head. We enjoyed one of the best playgrounds on The Hill that anyone could have wished for.
The Summers seemed long in those days with wall to wall football and cricket at The Pedestal Stadium accompanied by our main passion of Trainspotting. West Wycombe Station was open until 1958 and well manged by Percy the Porter who kept our gang in check whilst watching the passing trains. When it closed we built a purpose-made Camp at the north end of the down platform and watched the world go by with many friends.
Revisits are today infrequent but I am delighted to see how little things have changed due to excellent stewardship of the National Trust. The station... Read more
Bleckberry Picking at West Wycombe
Dear Readers, This is a brief extract from a book I have written called 'The Old Time' about West Wycombe and High Wycombe between 1947 and 1961 describing a day when we went over to Hell Bottom woods picking blackberries. I was in West Wycombe primary school then, in my last year or thereabouts. It was the best school day I ever had.
Mrs Robertson had brought some huge aluminium cooking pans from the canteen and set them up in the middle of the picking area. As soon as we had filled our bowls, we ran back and tipped the blackberries in. The mound of blackberries seemed to get bigger and bigger by magic.
The brambles stretched into the distance across the common with a few spindly elderberry bushes poking through here and there. We were all over it, picking with the fury of animals, and the shouts and the screams of triumph reached us from... Read more
School Days
Autunm term 1958, my first term Disraeli house, stayed until summer1961. Teacher in charge of our house dad Cooper another Woody from Marlow, smoked like a factory chimney. Everyone remembers Chalkey who batted for the other side and loved watching the boys in the showers.
High Wycombe, 1956 On.
I was born in the Shrubbery Nursing home in 1956. I grew up in Lane End, about 5 miles away. I have photos of me looking awful in baggy knickers on the Rye (the park in Wycombe town) as a toddler. There was a play area on the Rye that is still there, but in my day there was a little waterway for kids to play in, long since closed as deemed dangerous by present standards. My mother always used to enter the Wycombe show with home-made wine, handicrafts & cooking. I was made to enter the 'garden on a dinner plate'. In Lane End I also had to do the jam jar & paste jar flower displays, jam tarts and I think again garden on a dinner plate. I remember when I was young the river ran through the town, and our bus stop was near it at the start of the Oxford Road. I remember the awful Woolworths, long and thin turning back on itself, lots of dark... Read more
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