Happy Childhood Memories

A Memory of Pluckley.

I was born in Pluckley in1954. My family have lived there for four generations. My great Grandmother Bessie Masters came there from Northiam and her daughter Abbigale Annie Manser (her mum married twice) married my grandfather Ernest Walter Perigo who was the village postman and came from Bethersden. I have tracked the Perigo family back to Dorset and Hawkhurst. My dad went to the village school and was a Dunkirk veteran and desert rat. I went to the village school and have many happy memories and remember most of the children there as there were only 48 in the whole school. I sang in the church choir and we scared one another with spooky ghost stories on choir practice nights. It was a lovely place to live and play. There was virtually no traffic and you could walk down the middle of the road. We spent long summer days roaming the lanes, climbing trees and making "camps" with the straw bales in the fields. In winter when it snowed we went up to Mill Bank with our toboggans and had hours of fun. I got married and moved to Ashford but we often visited and my sons would stay with my parents and had a wonderful time in the fields and the village shop. Sadly my parents passed away recently and are buried in Pluckley churchyard overlooking Yew Tree Cottage where my dad lived as a boy, along with my great Grandmother, grandparents and one of my dad's brothers.So that is the end of the Perigo family connection with Pluckley as my dad was the last of the line. I am proud to have been a part of the village and have many memories of a happy childhood spent in a beautiful part of Kent. Although it did not seem very special at the time it's only now it has all gone that I appreciate what I had.

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