War Memorial

A Memory of Cippenham.

There are 3 Hills on the memorial, but they're only dad's cousins, his father and 2 uncles came back from the trenches. Grandad (another Bill Hill, like dad) was always in the Legion and Gt Uncle Harry (who lived in Chalvey with his sis, Ethel) carried the flag on Remembrance Day. Funny how different generations used different pubs, my grandparents the Kings Head, uncles The Swan and our generation the Barleycorn. There had been another pub but when they were building these 3 the Quakers bought the old one, the Gardeners Arms which was up round the corner, near the Legion, opposite Neville's Farm. c1900 they let it to (gt) granny Godding who moved up from Dorney where she'd been in service, cos her sons worked on the nearby Great Western Railway. Dad was born there (now called Gardners Cottages) and stayed with his (maternal) gran till he married, he never moved in with his mum and dad when they found a place on Cippenham Lane, they went on to have another 8 kids (I've got 6, so what?). The old pub was very old, 16th century half timbered, on one side another of equal age and overhanging upper storey held it up, on the other side a Queen Anne farmhouse. I know cos when Slough Council put out the tender to demolish it in the late 1950s Uncle Albert got the job and him, bro Pete and me pulled it down! What a lot of Philistines in Slough! The old oak beams we sold to Collins the builders (£5 cwt) and they're probably in some mock tudor house somewhere! It wasn't the oldest house on this corner, we pulled them all down! There was an older 3 storey smithy held up by Victorian terraces either side (local toughs the Bryants lived in one), the stalls for the horses were still there, the family ate from a kitchen table in one! And there was a lovely Victorian semi, red brick with diamond shaped knapped flint panels. Opposite was Neville's Queen Anne farmhouse, we didn't pull that down, someone else did!