Summer Holidays

A Memory of Great Haywood.

I was born in Brewery Yard, Great Haywood. After the war my mum moved to Notting Hill, London, so in the summer holidays my sister and I would stay at Nan & Grandads in the village. Mum {Eileen Bailey} played the piano in the Fox & Hounds, Stubbs's were the local butchers. I spent a few months at the local school, during the Notting Hill riots. We would come on our own by train, { it was safe in the 50s} then a bus to Shugborough Park, and would walk across the park lugging a rather large suitcase, which my dad had put handles on each end to make it easier for us. I remember going to the pictures in the memorial hall, and a dance now and then. A few of us would play down by the canal, and across the Essex Bridge. Most of the Bailey family are in St Stephen's graveyard. I have very happy memories of Great Haywood, it was then a very pretty place.