Memories Of The Old Village.

A Memory of Penn.

We Davies` lived at 406 Penn Road. My mother Sarah used to be caretaker at Penn Congregational Church and worked also for Miss Dorothy Tweedie whose house `The Crest ` was on the corner of Pennhouse Avenue and is still there. We lived in the cottages, 2 up 2 down, with an outside lav down the garden. This lay back off the road between the post office, run by Miss Roden, and the second row of shops which contained Hickmans paint wand wallpaper shop, Skiltons the newsagent, Taylors the greengrocer & Wilf Hicks the cobbler. We rented our house for 11 shillings and 4 pence from Mr Ferguson whose shop was on the corner of Manor Road. I was there from my birth in 1948 until 1959 when the cottages were compulsary purchased for the Penn Road widening scheme - but the land was never used and is now Tescos car park. There were many characters in the village we knew well; Mr Careless the chemist, Mr Roden who was the blacksmith/ cofffin maker, Mr Batkin the barber, Mr and Mrs Corbett who lived opposite us, Vivian Correy and plenty more. My sister Elsie was killed on the pedestrian crossing in the village and my brother was also killed at the top of Mount Road by Muchall Hall (Twentymans) by the Mount Road bus as he was riding his bike home with pals from the seven cornfields the back of Penn Cricket Club. I went to Woodfield Avenue infants and Junior school and Penn Secondary Modern schools (Manor Road). My mother, father, brother Michael and sister Elsie are buried in St Barholemews chirchyard. My daughter, Samantha, looks after it for me as she is a parishoner of St Barts. I have lots of wonderful memories of the village - playing in the woods the back of our cottages, racing our home made carts down the slope from the Roebuck and see who could get the furthest. I nearly made it to the field ,where our milkman Mr Reid kept his horse, once. The trolleybuses used to run past our front door. The families in our row were the Beeches, Davies`, Rawlings and Masseys. It was a shame when we had to move to Castlecroft as we were very happy there. Christopher Davies