Memories Of Beckhampton

A Memory of Beckhampton.

My grand parents, Jack and Betty Orchard, actually managed the Waggon and Horses from the early 1950s to the 1980s having moved to Beckhampton from Bulkington near Devizes. My parents, Ken and June Vickers, also spent the early years of their marriage living at the pub which at the time had a self-contained flat at one end. I believe this is now a dining room or games room. My father also ran the village petrol station from the early 1950s until the early 1970s when the M4 motorway opened and drastically cut the volume of traffic using the A4, which used to be the main route between London, Bath and Bristol and passes through Beckhampton. The petrol station is long since gone and now forms part of the pub car park. But it is featured in the photograph beside the A4, and you can clearly see a car parked on the forecourt. If you look even closer you can just see a head poking up behind the car, and that is my father Ken refilling it. As a child growing up in the village during the 1960s I have many fond memories of playing at the pub and petrol station (health and safety hadn't been invented in those days!). I particularly recall a local artist, Herbert Whatley, used to regularly exhibit his paintings on a rose covered fence adjoining the car park in order to catch passing trade using the A4, as well as customers frequenting the pub. They were happy, innocent days.

Richard Vickers, Leamington Spa