Rochford Fair

I remember Rochford very dearly. As a young child I often stayed with my great-grandmother, Sara Ann Simpson. I'd walk around the churchyard, the empty farm, climb the stile, visit the newsagent's shop, see the men at lunch standing outside the pub. I recall there was a vicarage, too. And every time I walked with my grandmother down the main road to the bus stop my legs would be stung by stinging nettles. My great-grandmother's home was called Ash Lea. It was a mud road with a grassy median lined on both sides by ditches. There was a similar mud road a bit closer to the pub. And my friends and I would play in the woods at the end of these two roads. And they held a fair, close to or at the farm in the summertime. I still hear "You are my sunshine" over a loudspeaker being sung there. It must have been around the time of the end of the war. There was a nurse, Miss Tracy, who lived next to my great-grandmother and rode a bicycle to work. Last time I was there must have been in '78 when I was on a trip back to England. I was flabbergasted. Nothing but houses after houses, streetlights everywhere, all built up. But....my great-grandmother's home was still there at that time as well as the ones on either side. My grandmother and I used to go to the market most weeks - I think on Thursdays. I loved to look at the animals. And one day we bought the very best greengages we had ever eaten - they were so good we went back for more because we would have gobbled them all up before getting home. I am 68 now and in the US. But all those memories of Rochford are so clear. I remember going there, too, with my grandmother when I was seven and my great-grandmother died. I think she is buried in Hawkwell Church.