Okeford Fitzpaine, the Village from the Church Tower c1960

Coronation Day in Shillingstone plus other memories

I can remember Coronation Day in Shillingstone, the weather was not settled and there were showers, I can remember watching the crowning of the Queen on a TV which was in Mrs Fudge's house at the lower end of the village. In the afternoon we had a parade of fancy dress and walked to the recreation field where a fete was held, with skittles and side shows. During the evening some of the villagers went to Okeford Fitzpaine hill to look at beacons that had been lit across the Blackmore Vale.
Shillingstone folk were always ready to celebrate in style.
The parade started from the village cross, this is where as boys we would on some days buy a loaf of bread and a bottle of fizzy drink from England's the baker and sit on the cross and eat the loaf. A Mr and Mrs Mowlem lived in the cottage near the cross, it was called Maypole Cottage. Mr Mowlem's son Bob worked at Sloper's garage in the  village, and when I left school I worked there as an apprentice, also working there was Peter Antel, Harry Starkes, Mike Henstridge and Joe Robbins.
It was a great time serving an appreticeship.

Shillingstone Station

I have always been interested in trains, and Shillingstone Station gives me some great memories.
I did not enjoy the best of health when I was young so spent a lot of my childhood down at the station, even on days when my asthma was bad, in the summer months when the line was busy I would take an old camp bed down and sleep in the signal box. When the last down train to Bournemouth had gone at 9.30 the signalmen would make a drink and then it was heads down untill 3.00am when bells started to ring, which was the first excursion from the north of England on its way to Bournemouth. I would stay there untill the last train up at 11.05 Sat evening.
They were great days of steam. The signalmen who gave me the privilege were Mr Harry Scammel and George Ainsworth.
My father Jack Newman was a lengthsman at Shillingstone and I would go fogging with him in the winter time. The porters at the station in those days were Bert Sherlock, Reg Eaton, Wilf Savoury.
I moved from Shillingstone to Bournemouth after being an motor apprentice for Mr Sloper's garage in the village and had to catch the train to Poole once a week to go to college, which I did not mind. I have many memos of Shillingstone so must stop now or I never will. Brian Newman  {01202749743}

The Central Stores.

My parents ran the Central Stores from 1951 to 1955, their names were Tony and Eunice Jeanes. The date of c1955 is about right as this was the year that my father and mother sold the business to Mr Dean, whose sign appears in the photograph. I was two years old when my parents took over the business and my earliest childhood memories are of life in this Dorset village. It was from these premises that at the age of four years old I was taken to the isolation hospital suffering with poliomyelitis in the outbreak of 1953. I was one of the lucky ones having no long term disability as a result of contracting the disease. Central Stores was a veritable Aladdin's Cave to a young boy, full of delights...sweets, colouring books, comics, fizzy lemonade and joy of joys, ice cream in a huge chest freezer. I well remember being rescued from the cavernous interior by my father after falling in while attempting to reach my choice of ice lolly. My younger brother was born in Shillingstone in 1953 in the nursing home/cottage hospital which was opposite Central Stores.

Small but pretty

I grew up here, a tiny hamlet underneath Bulbarrow Hill. My grandfather and father are buried in the churchyard. My mother still lives here and is a great stalwart of this tiny community.