A Happy Home And Care Free Childhood.

A Memory of Maresfield.

I was born and brought up in Maresfield and have wonderful memories of a very happy carefree childhood. Along with my brother and sisters we lived with my mum and dad and my dear old Gran. Gran had lived in the same cottage since she had married my grandad and in that 2 up 2 down cottage she had raised 8 children (it would have been 9 but 1 son passed away after an accident), my mum being the baby of the family. At the age of nearly 94 my mum passed away in 2011 and up until the 4 years prior to her passing she had also raised a family of 3 girls and a boy in the same cottage. It was a happy home for us all. We didn't have all the luxuries that the children in the council houses did, like a bathroom and an inside toilet! Our bath was a tin bath in front of the fire 2 nights a week and our toilet was outside. We had no mod cons until the very early seventies, but we had the best thing in the world that you can give to a child FREEDOM. We would be gone from 9am til 6pm with a packet of foil wrapped Marmite sandwiches and we would play, over The Hilly Field, down by The River, in The Recreation Ground, we would make camps that we could go back to, we would fish in the river with a stick and a piece of string with a bent pin attached (we never caught anything) but we sure had fun trying.
The village is not at all like it used to be, it seems to have lost it's heart, as I drive through it. I sometimes feel it would be lovely to go back to the times when everyone said hello to each other, whether they knew you or not. We had a lovely village bobby then Mr Humphries, he would ride around on his bike but wouldn't be called upon that much for crime. He would know most of the children by name and would help with any questions you might have had about cycling safety.
The school was a lovely friendly school and we had great teachers. Mrs Woodhams taught you when you first started and then you went to Mrs Pearmain, then to the dreaded Mrs Beauchamp (I had many a confrontation with her at school, but met her again when I was an adult and she was lovely) and then the last class was Mr Butcher who was also the Headmaster and lived in the house adjoining the school.
My gran and my father would be mortified to see all the changes that have occurred within the village over the last 30 years but I think my grandfather would find the biggest changes, as he built a lot of the houses in Maresfield and the surrounding areas and set up his own building company, which later was run by his sons (my uncles). Miller Bros was located where the 2 lanes meet, Nursery Lane and Underhill leading to Millwood Lane. His old yard is now The Kitchen Door Workshop, but I am pleased to see they have still called it Millers Yard.

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