Ramsey memories
Here are memories of Ramsey and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Ramsey or a Ramsey photo.
New Girl 1955 at The Abbey
I passed the dreaded 11 plus in 1955 to Ramsey Abbey and still remember how awesome it was. I remember Mr Barnes was headmaster and Miss Oddy was headmisteress and very particular about pupils wearing the correct uniform. I did not appreciate the beauty of the place at the time but still visit Ramsey from time to time and consider it a privilege to have gone to school at the Abbey.
The Rose And Crown
Mum and Dad (Roy and Joan) were the landlords of the Rose and Crown which is the white building in the middle of this picture. I was 14 at the time and Sarah my sister was 6. The pub also had a birthday while we were there 300 years (built 1661). The living accommodation was basic and the toilet was an outside shed and bucket but there was a flush job for the customers across the yard, I used that! We didn't have a sitting room so our TV was in the pub lounge, I would sit watching it doing homework with customers around me. I remember Jack Longland, the coalman I think, and his pal Bruce would sit behind me and pull my leg a little. Vic Pepper the green grocers just started helping out one busy Saturday night and did so unpaid regularly after that! Sadly the pub was pulled down in the 1970s, it would be listed nowadays. Fond memories.
My School
Lots of memories came back to me when I saw this picture of Ramsey Secondary Modern School, of lots of friends and lots of teachers and the headmaster, Mr Fluff Burton. I played a lot of sports in teams with friends as well, tennis, netball, swimming, didn't do very well though in athletics. Looking back other pictures of Ramsey brought back a lot more memories. My mum and dad had the Floral Restaurant and then they moved next door and took over Marriot's jewellery shop and a gift shop as well. They also started Ramsey Outide Catering Co and my dad had Cope and Kilby's baker's shop. Down the bottom from that place was the Gaiety Club, I used to go roller skating on Saturday mornings then when I got a bit older I went on a Friday night. Lots of famous groups appeared there as well. Time goes so quick doesn't it. Great to see Ramsey in those days, it certainly is different now.
Going to School in The Abbey
I was lucky enough to pass the 11+ and attend the Ramsey Abbey Grammar School,
What a picturesque place to be educated, although 11 year old children did not necessarily appreciate it. Going into the main building always seemed to make one stand up straighter and keep voices quieter (oh for such an atmosphere in modern schools!!). All teachers wore their black gowns and on speech days and other special days most wore their graduation gowns, often trimmed with fur.
Memories of Cambridgeshire
Memories of Plough-Witching
As part of a Heritage Lottery funded project running with Ramsey Junior School and the Ashbeach School we are looking for people who went "Plough-witching" on Plough Monday in the Ramsey area to share their memories with us. If you can help, please contact nicky@ourworldfestivals.com.
A Child of The Fens Remembers
I was child of Ramsey St Mary's in the period 1939 to 1960. My family lived in the last 'grey pebble-dashed' council house going north out of village (3/4 of a mile from Ponders Bridge). My father's name was Harry Stafford Jacobs and my mother's Francis Ellen Jacobs. As well as myself, there were four other children, George, Bernard, Claude and Pearl. Anything about this area, particularly so Whittlesea Mere, interests me greatly. As a youngster, I fished all the waters around the northern end of where Whittlesea Mere was in the nineteenth century: Blackham Bridge, Tibbitts Bridge, PondersBridge, and Glassmore Bank. IT REALLY WAS A MAGICAL PLACE The reflections of a boy from the late 1940s and early 1950s who lived on Herne Road, Ramsey St Mary’s “I learnt about Whittlesea Mere from my father when I was very young. He told me if I looked across ‘the Herne’ towards the trees of Holme Fen from my front bedroom window, I would see the very tall chimney... Read more
David And Julie Smith Lived in Abbots Ripton 1987-1999.
walky talkys enabling the posse to catch him hidding in a storm drain very wet and cold and very frightend.
Hopefully this ended his career as a burgler
... Read more
Evacuation to Abbots Ripton 1939
My father, Gerald Blockley, originally from Derby, had just completed a degree in History from Unversity College, London and was appointed to teach at Bruce Grove School in Tottenham in 1939. He was evacuated with a lot of the children to Abbots Ripton in the autumn of 1939. He managed to find lodgings for all the children but none for himself, so the owner of the Manor House took pity on him and took him in to stay with him. It was a particularly bad winter with a lot of snow and they all used to meet up at the village pub. He had very happy memories of his time there. He volunteered to join the army from there.
Happy Days
I was 5 and my dad was sent to Abbots Ripton to be the local policeman. We lived in the policehouse down Moat Lane next door to Mrs Bielby and I was friendly with Julie Stewart who had 4 sisters and 1 brother. We had great times climbing trees and going on picnics. We were also the first pupils in the new school!
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