Nostalgia

A Memory of Pott Shrigley.

Our family lived at Jackson Brow in Pott Shrigley. We were living in No. 2 when the war was declared in 1939 and we listened to this on an old Lissen radio which required two dry batteries and one wet accumulator to run. A year later we moved to No. 1 which was the house at the front. (It has been modernized from our days when it was a 2up/2down with no running water, no electricity and the 'petty', a good old northern word, was at the end of the garden.) My Dad at that time worked down the pit at Hammond's brick works. In 1940 I won a scholarship to go to Kings School, Macclesfield where this village lad mixed with the more fortunate.

Being wartime we had to work and my younger brother and I worked at Pott Hall Farm where we picked potatoes, thinned and fashed turnips, milked cows and went hay making. The farmer was a fiery tempered, red haired man of Irish descent by the name of Bill Boond - but he taught me how to work - 9 pence (old money) an hour, and this has never left me and sixty five years later I am still working.

The picture is taken from the field leading to the Nab Woods, looking towards the church. In 1955 I had long left the village but my brother, I am sure, would have still been milking some of the cows that are peacefully grazing in the fields.

An idyllic life for two youngsters and one could write a book about it all, maybe I will some day.

I joined the Army in 1946 and in 1947 the village lad again rubbed shoulders with his betters when he was commissioned into the RAOC in August 1947. The army then made the mistake of sending me overseas to East Africa and after the very harsh winter of 1947 to land in Mombasa, Kenya to the sight of blue seas and skies, waving palm trees and white sands fixed me for good. I have lived in England for only two years since then, the last 37 years have been spent in Seychelles.

Approaching 80 I still am nostalgic when I see photos of the English countryside and want once again to walk on the moors in summer ( if you ever have one) and listen to the larks, curlews and peewits and just lie in the grass and remember.

My email is southernregistrars@gmail.com if anyone should read this memory and wish to say a few words to me.

Bill Jackson