Mistley

I was born in Mistley at Ye Olde Mill House in 1930. My father Rupert Edwards was a family butcher and my grandparents lived at Shanghai Villa, Mistley. I attended Mistley Norman School and won a scholarship to Colchester High School. My early memories were of the swimming pool and the start of the Second World War. It was fascinating at first to hear accents from the north, see searchlights, and I really enjoyed watching the solders marching up the hill, and playing in the band after church, often the Coldstream Guards. I knew all the names of the planes and remember Brookes getting an incendary bomb, the smell lingered for ages.