My Childhood In Meopham Green

A Memory of Meopham.

I came to live in Meopham in May 1953 when I was 5 months old.
I lived in a house called Kesteven right on the bend in the road at Meopham Green.
Derham's the bakers was opposite, where Ken Derham used to bake all his own bread. On Good Friday you could always smell the hot cross buns. My mother, Sylvia Harper, always marvelled at the fact that she could see the windmill from her bedroom window. Before I started school I used to travel with her to Ightham where she had a cleaning job, on the Maidstone and District 122 bus. My father, Ronald Harper always had banking jobs in London and would travel down to Meopham station on the bus. I was friends with Lynda Greeves, Janet Povey and Diane Cutting, the local policeman's daughter. Her parents, Beryl and Ernie, lived in the police house next to the Mount Zion Baptist Church. I used to go to Sunday School and attend the Fellowship of Youth meetings there on Monday evenings.
There was a woolshop next to the church.
Us girls used to spend many happy hours playing down the Valley and in the woods.
We used to pick primroses from Primrose Wood for Mother's day. My memories of Sundays always seem sunny, with cricket being played on the green and going along to Fletchers the post office to buy cornish wafers.They also ran a tea room there. There was another tearoom by the windmill run by a Mr and Mrs Good, who used to turn up every weekend in their Morris Traveller. There were two grocery shops, Povey's next to the Cricketers pub and Parsons next to the King's Arms pub.
King's the butchers was further down at the bottom of the green.
We could always hear Brand's Hatch fom the bottom of the garden. I attended Culverstone Green primary school because I lived that side of the green, if you lived the other side you went to Meopham primary school. Our teacher, Mr Russell Perks, used to always be sitting on the top of the 122 bus when we got on. He was only about 22 then but I thought he was old! Miss Randall was the headmistress. When I was 11 I started at Northfleet Secondary School for Girl's. I met Geoff Everett on Meopham Green when I was 12 and we later married. We all had our hair cut by Claude Fox the hairdresser at Meopham Parade who used to sing "There was an old Woman who swallowed a Fly".
My mother had a great interest in local history and writing and wrote about her happy years at Meopham Green in Bygone Kent.
Of Course, Meopham has changed a lot since those days but looking at old pictures brings all the memories back. I still live in Meopham, it is home!