No 4 Waterpery

A Memory of Waterperry.

My memories of Waterperry are all happy ones, my granmother Mrs Sparkes lived at no 4, the house was built in 1921, and my mother lived there as well, so some of the memories are from what she told me and some are from myself. As for what my mother told me, she as a child did not have it all easy in the school summer holidays, she once told me that she used to dread the school holidays as she had to go stone picking in the fields along with the other children, which literally means picking up all the large stones up for the farmer, I think they got paid for it but I don't know how much. But one thing they did like was going blackberrying, there was a book written that said Edy Sprakes (my grandmother) could pick quicker than anyone, then they would take them home and wait until a man came to the village to buy them, apparently they were used for dye. She also told me that a man from the village used to every week go into a nearby town on his horse and cart with all of the requests from the people in Waterperry to get things from the shops, mum said he used to then go to the pub and being the worst for wear his old horse always found his own way back to Waterperry with the old man fast asleep on his cart, and said they often heard the cart coming up the street in the early hours, but he always got what the people of Waterperry had asked for.

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