Memories of Yattendon
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 Yattendon, the Royal Oak and Old Well c1965 (ref: Y32026) |
fear of wells
The well incident at yattendon scared my father. We had heard about it through relatives and we lived in east tytherley at the time. I remember my father spending a weekend tapping floors and trying to lift flag stones in our kitchen because he was convinced that there was a well under our home- there wasnt. Posted: 13/11/2007 21:11 by Joy Milligan |
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Yattendon, the Royal Oak and Old Well c1965 (ref: Y32026) |
The Royal Oak
'The Oak' is the only pub and hotel in the village and in the fifties our next door neighbour was the cleaner there. She would cycle to the village from the farm on a heavy green bicycle in a slow and ponderous manner that has stayed with me to this day. I must have been about nine when the awful event happened that haunted me for years. Police came to the village school one day to ask our neighbour's daughter where her mum was going that morning as she was not at work. The doors in the porch of the pub had been sticking for some months and the cleaner had complained and asked for something to be done, to no avail. While cleaning that day, the floor had opened up beneath her and she fell into a well that had been unused for decades and not properly capped. Our friend was not found for several days. She had died more or less instantly, crushed by falling cookers, fridges, masonry etc. Her family and the whole village went into shock. It fell to my father and some of the other farm workers to spend much of the next six months locating and filling in every well on the land around the village. The village is high and the wells deep, reaching down to the seam of sand that forms an underground riverbed. The seam is thought to run all the way under London, presumably roughly following the route of the Thames. Deep water has always terrified me. Last edited: 04/06/2008 12:31 by Maggi Stamp-Loshak |
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 Yattendon, Old Cottages and Well, the Square c1965 (ref: Y32021) |
The Well House
This was where everyone waited for the buses that took us east to Pangbourne and Reading or west to Newbury, our main shopping town. Newbury had a thriving market twice a week and buses were frequent, eight per day. The Well House did indeed have a well beneath it and following a tragedy at the Royal Oak pub in which our next door neighbour was killed, the building was renovated. Originally it was an open wooden structure supported on a low brick wall but after the deep well had been filled it had the sides bricked in. Whilst this is less drafty when waiting for a bus it meant that we couldn't see it coming nor see who else was in The Square - important for villagers, who always want to know who is about. It has recently (2006) been rebuilt following an accident but happily is basically unchanged. Just obscured by the Well House is the cottage we first lived in on arrival in the village in 1951, on my 7th birthday. One of my brothesr took me to see the bathroom, we had bathed in a tin bath in our previous home. Unfortunately it was filthy and full of the largest spiders I'd ever seen. The floors downstairs took my poor mother days to scrub clean of chicken droppings. The previous incumbents had shared their home with their fowl friends. On the far right of the photograph is the fence of the Reading Room, once home to poet Robert Bridges. He is buried in the churchyard. As a child chorister I sang Christmas Carols there to Mr and Mrs Waterhouse who moved into the Reading Room after vacating the Manor House behind the village square. Last edited: 27/02/2007 19:51 by Maggi Stamp-Loshak |
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 Yattendon, the Square and Old Elm Tree c1965 (ref: Y32003) |
Year: 1956
The hiding place
When I was ten years old this old tree was a delight. Ancient and hollow inside, we children were able to crawl inside while mother did her shopping. We watched people pass on their way to and from the blacksmith, the grocer or the butcher, firmly believing they had no idea we were there. If we were lucky we would have been bought an ice lolly or a sweet to eat in the tree. It was often thought by visitors that it was an oak because of the eponymous pub in the Square. It was, I think, an elm. Now the tree is long gone, replaced by something small but with nice seats around on a paved area where villagers can rest in the shade. Last edited: 13/03/2007 17:08 by Maggi Stamp-Loshak |
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