Westleton memories
Here are memories of Westleton and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Westleton or a Westleton photo.
Wartime Westleton
Hi, My father Alfred Bell was in the Royal Artillery 136 Field Regiment and was stationed in Westleton in 1940 but did training in Dunwich as well. I have got a photograph taken on the green of a few of his comrades in uniform, he is sitting in the middle. The seat was round a tree (which was just a sapling then, I think he said the cookhouse was on the green as well with various huts as well for supplies. I wonder whether there is anybody from Westleton that still can remember those days? Not many, I would have thought. My father died in 1994, he went overseas not long after being at Westleton to fight in the Burma campaign.
Edward Charles Friend
Edward Charles Friend was my father. His first wife died in 1930, he married my mother in February 1933 and I was born in December that year. Dad died in 1957, aged 88, and active until about three weeks before he died. He was a wonderful man, everyone loved him, I would love to know more of your side of the family please.
Eddie Friend, Miller And Millwright at Westleton
My great great uncle, Edward Charles Friend, was listed on the 1901 Census as miller and wheelwright at Westleton. He was born at Wenhaston 10 April 1869, the ninth child and fifth son of Samuel and Sarah Friend (nee Driver) who married at Easton on 1 October 1849.
My British Friends
My name is Alan Trageser and I was an American Airman living in Westleton from 1981 to 1985. My son was born at Ipswich hospital.
My greatest memories are of the wonderful people I met there like the older couple that befriended me, I called him Gramps and his wife Jess, and my friends like Adam (Gramps's grandson) and the wonderful family down the street from me and their son Vince, who would show me the best pubs in England. I was a wild 18-year-old boy living away from home for the first time with a wife and daughter named Brittaney. Many of the people not only put up with this wild American but learned to even love me! The street parties in front of the White Horse Pub were the best.
Thank you and may GOD bless England and the good people of Westleton!
Memories of Suffolk
The Ghost at The Ship
My parents owned and ran The Ship Inn from 1960 to 1975. My father a retired soldier and wartime paratrooper had taken early retirement to buy the business, then called The Barne Arms Hotel after the estate. The new Inn sign was based on the Blue Peter logo from the BBC Children's programme (from whom he'd got permission to use a similar but not identical design). As boys, my brother and I shared an attic room. Shortly after I had left to go to the Army in about 1969/70 my brother had experienced a ghost in the attic room. Waking, he'd found what he described as a woman sitting beside his bed, grey in colour. As he woke, she'd risen, turned and seemed to walk through the wall beside him. Of course no-one believed him. Years later, in about 1998, my wife and I stayed with the owner, Annie Marshlain, at The Ship. She'd been a friend of my parents, having come over several years with friends to work... Read more
The Rubble on The Beach
I spent my teenage years in Dunwich, and in retrospect they were wonderful. Freedom, long walks, the beach and sea, cliffs, marshes and the old tank defences from WWII. My best friend Justin North, who lived at 'Marshside' opposite me at The Ship, and I spent hours during those years, roaming, swimming, canoeing, making carts to career down the hill from the monastery, and resurrecting a storm damaged painter's punt washed ashore to row to Walberswick on the irrigation rivers behind the dunes. Although All Saints had fallen off the cliff long before we were born, some of the cemetery remained on the cliff top, including numerous unmarked pauper's graves. Pieces of masonry and rubble still lay at the foot of the cliff, now covered frequently by the tides and the pebbles, but occasionally washed clean for brief periods allowing us to scramble over them. Our most interesting times however were after the neap tides in the Spring when high seas would wash away more of the... Read more
Dunwich Monastery Gateway
My earliest memory of Greyfriars in Dunwich was probably driving down the hill in my grandfather's old car in 1960 as he brought me to my new home at The Barne Arms Hotel. I had been at boarding school at Dollar in Scotland, and my grandfather had met me off the train in London and driven me along the tortuous roads (including the old A12) to Dunwich. Descending the hill, just before St James' Street opened out, the ruins on the right hand side seemed portentious, as I loved anything old and historic, and this was certainly both. Glimpses of the ruined buildings could be seen through the gate, and later I was to frequently circumnavigate the whole monastery, it's seaward wall being the final outer wall of the ancient city, and the gap between wall and clifftop getting shorter every year.
The first year I lived in Dunwich, there was I think, the last of the pilgrimages to the Monastery, with a religious procession led up the street,... Read more
The Seat That Ezra Built
This shelter/seat was built by my grandfather, Ezra Dowsing Cotton, in I believe the 1930s to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of George V. At least I think so. As a child I thought it was in memory of those who fell in the First World War . Ezra Cotton was a carpenter, builder, and importantly the village undertaker, in the early years of the 20th century, and possibly the late 19th century. His daughters Cicely, Violet and Winifred were given the task of embroidering the pillows on which the heads of the deceased lay. He originally lived in Verandah House in the High Street, now an antiques shop (?), and subsequently in a cottage in Brook Street, not far from The King's Head. My cousin Jean and I were sent there on occasions, in his retirement, to bring him home at lunchtime. His son Ezra was also an undertaker in St Albans. His other son Douglas, a schoolmaster, died in Japanese captivity on the Burma Railway, and is commemorated on the... Read more
The Hut
The village club, always known in my family (the Colletts and the Cottons) as 'The Hut', was where all the young people of that time, and probably earlier, met, since that particularly was the venue for village dances. Inevitably permanent relationships were made there. My mother Violet Cotton and her sister Winifred, daughters of Ezra Cotton, village carpenter and undertaker, met my father William Collett and his brother Charles, sons of William Collett, at one time Head Gardener at Cockfield Hall, at such dances. Their marriages in 1929 and 1928 respectively were at the village church. Charles had a haulage business on the site now covered by Cullcott Close, called that in memory of the firm 'Cullingford and Collett'.
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