Thorney And The Rose And Crown

The Rose And Crown Hotel c1955
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The Rose and Crown at Thorney was managed, I believe from the early 1930s by my Great-Aunt Ellen and her husband Joe. My mother, Daisy Steele (nee Camp), and other members of her family spent pre-Second World War summer holidays there, and during the war, presumably during the heavy bombing of London and the later V1 and V2 rocket attacks, my mother and I, along with other members of the family spent time at the Rose. I remember soldiers being billeted there and how I made off one day, aged about four, with the rifle of one of them, and dragged it into one of the bars. I remember how heavy it was and how disappointed I was when it was taken off me. I went to a school somewhere in Thorney and vividly remember being in class in the mornings and then being taken to the fields in the afternoon. This was not a good preparation for 'proper' school in Fulham after the war, where we lived, as I fully expected to be taken to fields in the afternoon, not realising that not only was this not on the curriculum but that the nearest fields to Fulham were a long way away. I remember the cellars at the Rose and Crown, with that lovely smell of beer coming from the huge beer barrels, and the smell of the pub in the mornings - a mixture of cigarette smoke and beer - wonderful. My Great-Aunt and Uncle left the pub after the war and moved to a small house across the Wisbech Road, and lived there with their daughter Kit and her husband Alan Palfreman who worked at Perkin's in Peterborough. From about 1953 onwards I would visit them every summer and thought I was in paradise to be away from the grey, gritty streets of Fulham into this bucolic wonderland - especially as I loved fishing.