Early Years

A Memory of Bashall Eaves.

I was born 1945 at Mason Green Farm and attended the little school from 1950 until 1954 when my father moved on to other employment away from the area to Furness in north Lancs. My sister Barbara who is 4 years younger than me only briefly attended the school. My memories are of a small happy group of kids in 2 separate classes with a very loud but firm Headmistress, Miss Arms, followed by a Miss or Mrs? Leeming and another teacher, Miss Doris Stanley. When I visit the old place now I notice the Reading Room and Assembly Room are now private houses and the shop/post office has gone, the school also, as did the chapel, the filling station came and went too. I remember "Pop" Chew on a chair in the reading room and Mr and Mrs Wilson who ran the shop/post office. On certain Sundays the school doubled as the church and the minister from Mitton, Canon Calderbank, officiated. I recall the trips by the bus on rare Saturday nights to Clitheroe to the pictures, and on the journey home I can recall the driver waiting to get the men folk out of the pub as this would be the last bus - this would never happen nowadays.
I can remember going around the village on Shrove Tuesday, knocking at the doors and saying we had come "pancaking" and would be given an orange or other bit of a treat, say a few coppers or piece of cake - I wonder if this tradition still survives today?
I recall going on a pantomime trip to Liverpool to see 'Mother Goose' with Vic Oliver around 1952 on a school trip which seemed to take an eternity, this was before the advent of television and was something special for us.
The torchlight procession in Clithroe was another spectacle which stayed in my memory.
On Coronation Day in 1953 the village had an event in the field behind the Assembly Room, I can remember sports for the kids, and adults too if I am not mistaken.
As I am now in my middle 60s I often wonder what became of all the other "kids" and whether they ever return with their memories to that happy little hamlet.