Peartree Estate

A Memory of Rugeley.

My dad took us to Rugeley to live in 1954, he had recently trained in Nottinghamshire and we were one of the first to live there, well that's what it seemed like to me as a seven year old. We were always going into new buildings and looking at how they were being built. I loved the smell of new wood.
I attended St Joseph's Catholic school and hated the place. We were regularly beaten with leather straps by the nuns, even my 5 year old sister, and we were terrified of them. Some of the children were from families of prisoners of war or displaced persons so their English was poor and they would get worse treatment. I attended church 3 o r4 times a week, praying not to get the strap, one poor lad who sat next to me used to wet himself with fear.
I remember the miners' gala days, long summer holidays, walking for miles on Cannock Chase eating blackberries and bilberries, seeing deer and other wildlife. We had a cat that would hunt for snakes and lizards, it would bring them home and leave them on the doorstep.
There was a van that came around the estate on a Friday night, selling wonderful things like salami and peanut butter, huge red apples and other delights. We rarely got any because my dad drank most of his wages, we lived on sugerbeet and cabbage, I hated it and if I did not eat it, it would be there for the next meal. I got thinner and thinner and my mother would send me back to Leicester to get built up by my gran on bread and milk pudding.
I remember Dr Kelly the Irish doctor, he gave me my first taste of a cigerette to knock me out trying to remove a hairgrip that had been knocked into my ear, being deaf for a long time.
A great treat was to go to the Plaza cinima, I remember seeing 'Calamity Jane', boy, was I going to be Doris Day when I grew up.
We left Rugeley in 1958 but I never forgot the place. I go back there camping, on Cannock Chase, picking blackberries brings it all back. The woods are different now, no silver birch, all beech now, bracken where there were fields, the town is not the same, no Woolworths. I planned to grow up and work there in the sweet counter.
I wish someone had some photos of the galas, I might be on one, I never had any other taken of me when I was a kid.

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