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Watlington
Watlington maps
Historic maps of Watlington and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Watlington maps
Watlington photos
We have no photos of Watlington, although we do have photos of these nearby places:
Stow Bridge| Downham Market| Denver| Kings Lynn| Clenchwarton| Gaywood| West Dereham
Watlington area books
Displaying 1 of 13 books about Watlington and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Watlington
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Norfolk memories
Beginning of The Great Wiggenhall Wanderers
How well I remember the forming of our local football team.
It came about after everybody would play outside our local primary school, teams of twenty or more each side with ages ranging from small children to ancient grandparents right through summer months until late at night.
It was decided at one such game that we should form a team. a meeting at one of the local pubs "Checkers" and a team evolved. Two team were formed one playing in Black & White stripes and one in orange and white.
A ground was lierally manufacured on an apple field about a mile out of town with an old shack for changing purposes.
What great times I remember watching the team play, of course I was too young, but that young wag Chenery got a game at an early age.
Great times..Great Community..Sorely missed
Ancestor's Village
Our ancestor Robert Carter was a resident in Shouldham Thorpe when he was arrested in 1850 for poaching and assaulting a gamekeeper. He is my g-g-grandfather. He was given a sentence of transportation for life and after three years in British prisons was shipped to Western Australia in 1854. His wife and 5 children joined him in 1859. Early in the new century family members who were living in Europe joined us for a weekend in the ancestral village. We stayed at a B&B adjacent to the church and leafed through the baptism register which is still in the Parish Chest. It was started in 1813. We were delighted to find many family names in the document. The village seems to be unchanged from the 1841 tithe documents except for some new houses built in the 1880s. The Primitive Methodist Church appears to have been built on Carter land in 1850. As a result of our visit we have updated our family tree and added to the family history. In the early 1800s there appear... Read more
Tilney St. Lawrence
My warm and cosy memories of these formative years of my childhood whereby most if not all of the village children as well as attending the village school under Mr. Joseph Burns and Miss Offley was the uplifting Sunday school mornings in the Methodist Chapel, Herby Walker and his wife Eady, who played the organ to our renderings of 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' etc, and the Chapel Anniversaries when they would take us round the village and beyond to Emneth and back in a tractor driven waggon - organ on board, singing our heart out - Herby running round the houses with his collection box and Dick and Muriel Hayes, Dick was a lay preacher I think, and then! a trip to Hunstanton on a coach with sixpence each to spend - never will I forget it, we had a lovely innocent bringing up and the new dress that my mother Ivy anguished over for the anniversary was always perfect plus white shoes and socks, God bless her.... Read more
Childhood And Teenage Years
Downham Market in my younger days was a happy small market town where everyone knew everyone else, in the days before overspill there were lots of small shops, like the bakers Stannards and Slys where you would queue for ages for your bread while everyone caught up with the town news and scandal, and the Regent cinema was very popular and the queue used to be from the cinema to the Coffee Pot public house which is now closed. I remember the airfield at Bexwell and airmen being in town, Stow Hall which is now demolished was used as a convalescent home for troops who had been injured in action during the Second World War. With my brother and sisters and friends we used to go blackberrying in the Cock Droves which now unfortunately is spoilt by buildings. We used to stop at Mrs Butcher's for a drink of fresh water from her water pump, the Butcher family had a smallholding in Cock Drove. Mrs Butcher would always be leaning... Read more
My Christening
On the 1st August 2006 I went to Kings Lynn for the first time since 1935, to visit St Margaret's Church. I was christened there 5th February 1935. My Grandfather lived at 14 Priory Lane Kings Lynn. Is there anyone who knew the Crook Family from that time? Noel Crook
Majestic Cinema
Wonderful memories of Saturday morning pictures - we would all line up outside the Majestic Picture House as it was called and monitors would walk up and down the line to make sure we were not too noisy and kept us in our place, for sixpence we would see cartoons and a feature film, cowboys or my favourite Flash Gordon, always a cliff hanger ending that brought you back the following week to see if he made it, which he always did, wonderful times, and I'm sure our parents loved Saturday mornings also, got us out of their hair for a few hours, money well spent.
Lynn in The Thirties
My mother, before her marriage, lived with her parents at 2 Whitefriars Terrace, near Kings Lynn docks. Her father, Arthur Henry Drew, was master of a small coaster, the Lizzie and Annie, working along the east coast. She had a long working life, having been built in 1877, and was broken up in 1971.
On our visits to my grandparents in the thirties I spent much time on the dockside and river bank, watching the ships. At that time there was a piece of land there separated from the mainland by a narrow creek, with a swing bridge across it, now gone, I think.
Kings Lynn suffered from the attentions of the Luftwaffe during the war, and I think several houses in Whitefriars Terrace were destroyed.
I always looked forward to having some marsh samphire, an edible plant that grew on the Ouse mud flats, and was delighted to find some again many years later while sailing in Chichester harbour.
