Calmore My Childhood

A Memory of Calmore.

I grew up in Old Calmore at Croft Farm. My parents, Cyril and Winifred Pass, bought the property when they returned from India in 1947, and we lived in the 'pump house' until the bungalow was built in 1949. My earliest clear memory was moving in on my third birthday, carrying the pots and pans up through the field on that freezing day in February.
The old pre-Tudor barn on the smallholding was built from solid oak timbers from the old sailing ships and held together by wooden cogs. My three brothers and I would spend hours making dens in the straw and hay or climbing on the roof to see the 'Queen Mary' and 'Queen Elizabeth' ships in dock at Southampton, with their majestic funnels hinting of faraway places. Later, I would watch the migrant ships take turn in port as I would dream of the day when I too would be on my way to adventure in Australia. (That happened in 1966).
Croft Farm had a good sized natural pond that was fed from a spring in a nearby field, and as kids in summer we would take the old tin bath of pre-bungalow days and float on the muddy water. In winter, we would slide the bath on the sometimes thin ice, invariably ending up in the brink! My parents would return from a Sunday drive to find an array of soaked clothing hanging before the fire. We never saw danger!
My mother ran boarding kennels at the farm and was well known for her work with the RSPCA in finding good homes for thousands of stray animals.
My father was an organiser for many years, for the Eling Fair at Totton. This was a four day event each July and we were all expected to do 'our bit' and sell programmes around the neighbourhood.
Calmore Hall was our village social venue. I can remember celebrating the Queen's Coronation there and all of us children receiving mugs to commemorate the event. It was the venue for local wedding receptions, dances and children's playgroups. It really hasn't changed that much. Gone though is the riding school and the many gymkhanas in the field next door. The ditches and fields are overgrown, and the road has become a racing circuit instead of the quiet lane where we would play hopscotch or hula hoop.
I loved when the 5th November was approaching, all the neighbourhood kids could be seen dragging garden and household rubbish to the green at the top of the road to build a huge bonfire for Guy Fawkes night. We would count the fireworks we had bought from parading our 'penny for the guy' and marvel at our hoard of chestnuts and potatoes for roasting on the fire as our guy burnt ceremoniously on the night.
Next door to us in The Blue House, lived the Barnes family. Each day, no matter the weather, Mr George Barnes snr. would sit outside and watch the world. Later, his son George jnr. was to do the same. George later moved to a bungalow on Cooks Lane just up from St Anne's Church and continued observing the comings and goings of the village. Each year, when I returned to Calmore, George would be there to give me an update in his broad Hampshire country accent. His memory was brilliant, and although I have been in Australia 43 years, he has never forgotten my name. George moved into a nursing home near Cadnam roundabout a couple of years ago and is still the same old lovable character.
As I travelled, it was comforting to know that Calmore was still there, with many of the same families from my childhood days, the Bicks, Masons, Wetrens, Stride, Kemish, Ballentyne, Dibden, Taylor and Pearce. Sadly, many of the older ones have passed on including my parents but I still love to 'go home' to Calmore and my brother's at Croft Farm.