Childhood Memories

A Memory of Stanton.

Being born in a house opposite the Angel pub in 1952, and having a family history going back over 300 hundred years in the village, I think we were a local family.
Those memories of the school holiday times will last a life time. Our favourite place was the Grundle and to this day you can still see remnants of the tree huts and underground tunnells etc. When it rained hard we used to build a dam in the Grundle and then try and flood the street as there was no drain there then, only the grup as it was called.
Poor old Sid Peck had a fish and chip shop on George Hill, health and safety would have a field day now, flies everywhere, but those chips always tasted good. Bernie Grofer had his shop at the bottom of George Hill, he sold firewoks to anybody but they were bloody dangerous, light them, leave them for about ten minutes then they would go off.
Sid Talbot was landlord of the Stanton Cock and we spent hours playing in the big barn that used to be in the pub yard were Don Miller's garden is now.
There was no Fordham Close, Sturgeons Way, Windmill Green or Chase.
Catchpoles Engineering was on where the Chase is now and that was followed by Shetland Boats. I can remember the base at Shepherds Grove being open and the plane crashing into the prefabs, I watched that from our bedroom window.
I can remember my dad falling from the top of the bell tower on the church whilst doing building repairs for Frank Adams builders.
Those days everybody knew everybody else so if you done something wrong you could never get away with it, I heard those words "Wait till I see your dad" more then once.
I can remember a circus came every year to the field opposite Stanton Cock, now Broooke Close, David Gerald had a little shoe repair shop in where the Shepherds Hall is and I remember Mulleys buses parking up in there.
Before the village hall was built on the 'Rec the old football hut was there, and we used to crawl underneath and catch the rabbits. Something else we often came across in the ditch that ran at the bottom of Smiths field near the old church was the Coypu, which is now extinct in this country, thank God.
When we moved up to live near the Grundle in 1963/64 I would watch my dad and uncle Gordon walking behind Youngman's combine with a shotgun in hand shooting any rabbits or pheasants that came out, I still say my mother made the best rabbit pie ever. The Grundle was good to me until I fell out of a tree and broke my arm in about 4 places, and spent eighteen weeks in plaster. The tree is still there.

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