My Mother's Memories Of Ospringe

A Memory of Ospringe.

After a time Mother married Charles Gamble, we called him Pop.  He left the Merchant Navy and went to work on the Estate for my Grandfather. We got a house at Ospringe it was next door to a water mill. The water used to run down through the street, very unusual it was. There was a pond at the back, I did not like it as there were so many creepy things in it. But we liked living at Ospringe, it was a lovely place, and we made many friends. Among them there was Nellie Ward, the Speed family - Molly, Queenie, Dorothy and Sonny. There were lovely meadows to play in, when it was a hot summer's day we would take a picnic. We would play at weddings and share our food to make a reception. Mother would give us an old curtain to make a veil, a long dress and high heeled shoes. We used to enjoy ourselves in that kind of way as there was no television or radio.
I had one special friend called Eva Pritchard, she had one sister Edith. At Christmas time always, on Boxing Day, Mrs Pritchard would put on a lovely party for us. Mother would dress us up in our lovely party dresses, curl our hair and put in a big bow of ribbon and off we would go. We would have our tea in a lovely cosy kitchen and on each plate there would be a red rosy apple for us to take home. We would play games in the parlor and would have a little gift off the Christmas tree, to us it was magic. Then cousin Doris would invite us to her party, her mother was Auntie Jessie, Pop Gamble's sister, they were a little better off than us and lived at a big house at a part of Faversham called The Mail.  When the day came for us to go there was a horse and carriage sent down to take us, we used to feel very proud, they used to be lovely parties.  The Courtney girls invited us to their party. The old fashioned house used to fascinate me, we used to go upstairs to the front room, it had a big bay window over looking Water Lane.
On a Sunday morning we would wear our best clothes and would have to go to Sunday School at Ospringe Church it was a beautiful church. I would take Vera and Charles out in the afternoon so Mother could have a rest on Sunday afternoon as she used to work very hard in the week, looking after us all, cooking, housework, and washing, using peggy tubs and boiling the washing in a copper, she had to light a fire under the copper to boil the water. She had to get on her hands and knees to scrub the floors, but everywhere always looked nice and clean.
Sometimes in the summer if it was a nice warm day Mother would take us to Whitstable. Pop Gamble had a sister Phebe who was married and lived there.  They kept a bread and cake shop, we would call and buy a bag of buns to eat with our sandwiches on the beach. We would go in the water and play games on the beach until it was time to go home. We would take our friends there in turns and we had many outings with them.