The Hough

A Memory of Hough.

when I was about a year old I moved to the Hough from Englesea Brook, where my parents lived for a couple of years.
I went to school at Shavington and was good friends with John Addison, Alan Giller (the latter living next door for a while until his folks moved to Wistaston. They returned to Shavington years later.
The local lads' playground was Hough Common, building dens, climbing trees and cooking baked potatoes in the wood on campfires we made. Also scrumping pears off Lizzie Brookshaw's orchard.
Now Lizzie reckoned she owned the common and there was a bit of good-natured cheek on our part as we would scrump the pears or knock on her door and one day she cornered some of us up a tree, wielding a big stick at us. We didn't think anything of it then but today seems to be a lot more paranoid and neurotic.
She used to have a chap who came to a small caravan in her orchard at weekends and he told us she actually enjoyed the chases.
She was born in 1900 I believe and worked as a cleaner at a doctors house in Weston.
Had my first drink at The White Hart on my 17th birthday with John Addison.
It was a good place to live and at that time people in Crewe had either never heard of it or probably reckoned you needed a passport to get there.
Actually getting on the bus to meet up with Alan on a Saturday morning seemed like quite a trip.
Also going into Crewe to watch a horror film (in the 1970s invariably a Hammer one) and catching the K44 which dropped me off at Goodalls Corner late a night was quite nerve-wracking after watching some nonsense with Dracula bearing his fangs!
Bill Case had the shop and post office, followed I think by the Sadlers and then the Whites.
Ken Smith was the landlord for many years during a time when they would organise coach trips to the seaside for the day. We would all get in there at New Year's Eve and then our house would be packed for midnight when some would go out and hear the Crewe Work's siren sound dead on the stroke of 12.
At some time when the Cold War was on their were rumours of a missile silo being built up Casey Lane, it was actually a Royal Observers Corp site, just on the bend before the road goes to Weston Lane. Ther's a little copse there now.
Happy days - I lived there until the mid-1970s until I got married and went to live in Crewe. We can never go back but I wish I could relive those days sometime. When there was less worry, the summers seemed to stretch out forever and the world seemed a much bigger place.

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