Holidays In Sturry

A Memory of Sturry.

My mother's family lived in Sturry all their lives. My Mum and her 3 siblings were born at 4 High Street and lived there for years. She even met my Dad there as he lived a short time at 3 High Street.

My grandfather was head gardener at Milner Court and every summer my parents and I spent the school summer holidays there as he and my grandmother acted as caretakers during the Junior Kings School summer break. I have such wonderful memories; the swing in the tree down by the river; playing chopsticks on the piano in the music room and tennis on the tennis court; swimming in the old outside pool; picking apples and crab apples in the orchard; going mushrooming in the playing fields and running past the Chinese geese that used to hiss at us. There used to be doves roosting in the Tythe Barn and I was allowed to feed them. The gravel paths and privet hedges had a smell all their own after a summer shower and to this day I can still remember 'the Milner Court smell.'

It was an ideal place for family get-togethers. I was an only child living in Lincoln so it was a big adventure to come down and meet up with all my uncles and aunts and cousins and we had such fun riding scooters and bikes. We stayed in the house and I remember a huge wooden staircase. Some of the bedrooms were purportedly haunted but I never saw a ghost!

My earliest memory of Sturry is a Christmas when it snowed. I think I was about 2 or 3 and, even though I'm female I had a train set as a present. The snow was much more exciting so while my Dad and uncle played trains, my cousin, Mum and me made snowballs down on the old bomb site where Franklin House now stands.

Summer holidays were always fun, for apart from the glory of Milner Court, we used to catch the bus to Margate by the bomb site; the traffic used to go right through the High Street and cattle used to be driven through there too. I used to play in the cricket field, in fact that's where I learned to ride a bike. My grandfather and uncle were members of the cricket team and we used to go and watch them play.

Not all my memories are wonderful, When I was a small child there was no main drainage and we had to use a privvy in the garden and the cesspit used to overflow!. When I was older, there was an outside loo on main drainage but it wasn't until the 1970's that there was actually a bathroom.

I wonder if anyone remembers my family - the Stewarts?

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