Stanley Fritter

A Memory of Lower Stoke.

My name is Stanley Fritter and I was born in 1943 at 'Cuckolds Green', during an air raid, so my mother told me, but we lived at 3 Brook Row.  My best and longest friend is Val Mudge, who lived next door, as youngsters we were always together, so much so that we became more like siblings. At the end of the row lived Ron 'Butcha' Mortley who was also a good friend. We used to play cricket with our fathers. Val was very good and could bowl a mean ball. You could play in the road in those days as there were very few cars. Games of hide and seek were very popular. We would go up to the gardening plots and smoke a cigarette or two and make ourselves feel sick, but we carried on and got used to it. We had pet cats, you had to because of the mice that were all over the place. I well remember the summer evenings when the women would stand outside their doors talking, or 'gassing' as they used to call it. I attended the local primary school and well remember Mr Godfrey, a wonderful head master, and all the other teachers. At Christmas time we would have a tree which was a branch that the Mr. Godfrey cut off of one of the trees in the school garden and we children were allowed to decorate it and also we children took the ingredients to school to make a cake that was cooked in the school kitchen. Each of us gave the said cake a stir and were told to make a wish.

I was back in the UK earlier this year when they had an event at the school but unfortunately I did not get the opportunity to go inside the building and see just how much it had changed. Lower Stoke was a small village when I was growing up and in those days everybody knew everybody and it was just a close community. But now it has grown and if you talk to people who have lived there all their lives they say that they feel like strangers. I kind of think that it was better in the old days. I live in Bulgaria now and for a time lived in a small village much like Lower Stoke. But I believe that there will never be anywhere quite like where your roots are. Dear old Lower Stoke, long may you survive.     

---

---