Childhood

A Memory of East Quantoxhead.

My father came to Townsend Farm as the tenant in Sept 1940. The farmhouse is shown on the left in the picture titled Townsend. At that time I was only 15 months. My earliest memories are of the later war years. We had evacuees from Bristol living in part of the house. I also remember sitting on the garden wall which was alongside the main road and being thrown chewing gum by the American soldiers billeted at the nearby camp at Alfoxden. My brother and the boy in the other half of the house, Vernon, were green with envy when they got home from school.
My father had milking cows, milked by hand in the war years. He supplied milk to the villagers which had to be collected from the farm by the village children and delivered to their neighbours before going to school. I well recollect ladling out a pint or half-pint measure into an enamel jug or can with lid and well schooled by my mother to add that little extra to ensure it was not less than what was paid for.
Something difficult to visualise these days were the old gas buses which travelled the main road from Bridgwater to Minehead.
Life was very parochial in those days, the local school also served the village of Kilve and my contacts were very limited to those two parishes. I also remember being at school in 1947 and sticking newspaper cuttings of the royal tour of South Africa in a scrapbook.
Enough for now, I could go on. I now live near Stonehenge.

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