Molly Gray's Memories Of Weston Green, Thames Ditton, Surrey.

A Memory of Weston Green.

When we were children during WWII, my brothers Rob and Wilf and myself often visited Weston Green. At Weston Green there were two churches and two ponds called Marneys and Milburns. My brothers Rob, Wilf and I used to catch newts and skate on Marneys pond when it was frozen. There were also four pubs: The Albion, The Lamb and Star, The Cricketers and the Greyhound. The Hampton Court bypass now runs through the middle of it. My father Oscar Gray, was born in the Greyhound Pub as were his brothers and sister as their parents ran the pub.
The old house opposite was lived in by the Dobson family. My mum was friends with Jannie Dobson. She and her husband had a bakery on Weston Green. I can remember going to see Mr Dobson making his bread dough with my dad.
The Lawrence family lived in one of the tiny cottages, laying sideways near the big red house opposite Marneys pond. Marneys had a wood yard on the corner where now stands the Albion play corner. You could hear the old big saw cutting up wood and logs for sale.
My mum used to do her shopping at Davises. She would send a box with an order which the baker used to take for her and one of my brothers or I would collect it on Saturday mornings on our bike. She got her coal from Calverts the coal merchants.
The old house opposite the Greyhound is very old. Mr Lawrence lived there after the Dobson family left. Mr Lawrence had the shooting rights of the common in those days. He took us to Tytherley, during World War II, in his lorry as we had to take a bed with us. We had an awful job to find it as there were no road signs. We stayed one night with a Mrs Rose, why I don’t know. Her garden had a lot of little pigs in it as her Sow had just given birth. The next day we moved into a thatched cottage. We only stayed about a year in Tytherley. Mr Lawrence then came and bought us home.
Aunty Mary and Wilfred Gray lived at Weston Green with their children, Hilda, Bobby and Peter. Wilfred Gray was my dad’s brother. During the war a doodle bug fell on their house and they had to be moved while their house was being repaired.
My mother told me that when he was a little boy my father bibbled like a duck in a ditch and swallowed a worm. He also cut his foot on some glass and was frightened to tell his mother and it went septic. My mother didn’t like my Grandma Gray, she was very hard and I think the feeling was mutual. When I was young and asked to be allowed to pick a bunch of wild flowers Grandma Gray said, ‘Let her pick those thorny ones and she won’t want to do it again.’
Grandma Gray lived in a house called ‘Belmont’ in a road, behind the Greyhound pub. The common at the back of the house is called Black Common. Rob, Wilf and I used to climb the trees and go blackberrying there. When I visit Weston Green now, I think fondly of these past times.

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