Growing Up In North Boarhunt

A Memory of North Boarhunt.

My mother and father moved to 1 Birch Hill Cottages when I was in arms.  I went to the tiny school in Newtown by mini bus which was really a Bedford van with seats in the back.  I played in the field with the swings and on some Saturdays watched the football played there.  My Uncle David used to play for Wickham, those were the days when shorts were below the knees!  I played with the other children that lived at the top of Trampers Lane, names like the Crooks, Smith and Parretts come to mind.  My mother used to do "weddings" in the working mens club, known in those days as the hut.  She ran the WI for many years from there, then later the over 60s.  My father was in the Royal Navy, so wasn't at home very often, not like they are to day.  I played in the woods, we all did, but we shouldn't have - playing dens was so much better if it was built in a tree.  Sometimes it would take us the whole summer holidays to build it which meant we never got to play in it, but oh the fun we all had.  Sometimes we went to the sand pit, again it was a place our mothers used to say to stay away from.  My mum told the tale that a car had been buried in there and the bodies were still there.  I think it was to scare me, but I could never work out why they didn't move it if they knew it was there.  By going through the sand pit, you would come out in Hundren Acres where one good friend had her grandparents, and they kept bunnies, all furry and soft.  We used to pick dandylions and hog weed on the way there, then we fed them to the bunnies.  Loved going up there as you can tell.
I can remember one winter when it snowed really bad.  We used to have a paper lady and she couldn't get up the lane on her bike.  The milkman wouldn't even try it, the fish man on Fridays stopped all together.  Mum borrowed an old pram, took the wheels off and set off down to the bottom of the road where a message had been sent to mum via a fit neigbour who had gone to fetch a paper 2 hours earlier, normally only taking 20 mins.  The milkman had left what he could at the garage, and mum piled them into the pram and took these back for the famlies "up the top end".  We were always having snow in those days, so each year was mostly bad.
When I went to secondary school (Portchester) we were picked up by a double decker bus.  It came up the road as far as the big tree, turned, then picked up, stopping at the lower council houses and at the bottom by the garage.  This year which was 1963, was snow up to your arm pits and as the bus turned, the wheels touched ice, all the kids ran, and the bus went over into the ditch.  Why it ever tried to make it to the top of the road I shall never know.  We watched it try the last "hill" for about 1 hour before it made it anyway.  I forget whose garden it went into, but there I stood by myself and watched the bus man try to get out of this bus.  The others had ran and had got home and no way were they coming out again.  Mum didn't know what had happened until I took home this poor guy in desperate need of a cup of tea.  There was only one phone as far as I knew at the time and it was owned by the lady who lived in the first house by the tree, so after having had a good chat and lots of tea the driver made it to the house and made his call.  I couldn't believe my ears when he said that as well as sending a pick up truck for the poor old bus, they were sending another damn bus out for us kids.   Sorry one kid, me.  No one else was going to school that day, but as it turned out it never got as far up the road as us, so I had the day off.  Well half a day by the time I was allowed to take off the school uniform.  Sadly we moved from North Noarhunt when I was 13.  Dad had bought a place in Portchester which was easier for him to get to and from work in Portsmouth as he no longer went to sea.  I really missed Boarhunt and for some years after would ride my bike over the hill to see the "old" place once more.

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