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Old Basing memories

Here are memories of Old Basing and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Old Basing or a Old Basing photo.

School 1950's

Those of us who grew up in the very rural villages around Old Basing in 1950's, had to travel to school in Old Basing, by school buses.The school on Milkingpen Lane was the only school for miles. In the late 1950's the school still did not have flush toilets.This did present some serious health issues and some of us became very ill with scarlet fever. The school was very badly provided for, with few facilities. The school did not have any school kitchens, so each day the whole school would walk through the village, via the village churchyard, to the village hall for school dinners and then back to school for afternoon classes.The system worked just fine, until the day the wooden village hall burned down. This was as a result of sparks from a train on the nearby steam railway, alighting straw on the thatched roof of a cottage next door to the village hall. Soon a school kitchen was built and school dinners used to take place in... Read more

Memories of Hampshire

Fairfields School

Board School, Council Road 1898
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Is this caption right? 42064 seems right - this is the Board School established under Act of Parliament. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Leducation70.htm.
I believe that John Arlott went there, and Ruth Ellis. My children went there, both as Infants (nearest building) and Juniors (up to age 11) between 1973 and 1981. This was the last of the "old schools" in the town, where children were expected to learn, not play. It seems to have served the children well, judging by exam results in later life. This changed when the Headmaster Mr Thomas retired.

Farfields School

Board School, Council Road 1898
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I suspect either caption "Basingstoke Boarding School" or "Fairfields School" is correct, depending on your time period. I attended this school in the 1960s & 70s when it was aan ordinary (non-boarding) Infants & Junior school called Fairfields, and yes I remember Mr. Thomas, the headmaster, as an authority to be feared.

But the building was much older than that, and I remember seeing a keystone with "1898" written on it. Quite likely it was a boarding school in its early days.

Secondary Modern

Board School, Council Road 1898
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I went to Fairfields in 1956 until 1961 and it was a Secondary Modern school then, and the infants were at the bottom end. I believe it was turned into a junior/infants school after that as most went to Charles Chute School which was brand new.

I Was Married Here

St Michael's Church c1960
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I was married there in 1964, long before it was swamped by the town centre. My daughter was christened there. I then went to work at Van Moppes, can anyone remember it? I was living at Viables Farm, a working farm then, I believe it's a craft centre now. They were good days.

T.Tyrrell And Sons

To the right of the Town Hall is Wote Street and my father Ronald was one of the sons that worked in Tyrrells fishmongers all of his life, he can remember delivering fish from a horse and cart, the fish shop has now gone, that was a sad day

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