Visit To Church Grave Yard And Nearby School, And Other Stuff

A Memory of Misterton.

This is the place where in the early 1960s I took my mother to visit and stay with her sister Bertha. During our stay my mother and Bertha (there was another sister called Freda, she moved to Hull with her husband Walt who was a dead ringer for a star of the time Victor Mature - he really was) took me to the graveyard. Out front was the headstone of my great something father. I do not know his first name and to be honest was not that interested, being young at the time, but I found it scary.
On the headstone was written, if my memory serves me well, words to this effect:  'Here lies ???? Spencer, cruelly slain' (I remember no more) - is it still there? Apparently he was murdered by two men after his daily takings, for he was some sort of businessman.
They then took me to a small bridge and brook where the deed was done and showed me newspaper clippings of the event. Then we went back to Bertha's home in, I think, a place called Morton. Bertha's husband was/is also buried at the front against the church wall, his name was Roy Humphries. I am not sure but I think more of my relatives are at the front also. I do know that my grandma Spencer (who was of German origin and who was visited and asked by officials when WW2 was about to begin if she would like to return home, to which she replied "This is my home" - good on her) is at the back with her two sons Balfor and Bill. I don't think the graves are marked but Mum and Bertha knew where they were. We also went into the church, I remember Mum getting a very large key from somewhere to gain entry. Mum's been dead for quite some time now and is buried in Leics with my dad. I'm 65 now, birth date 1943, so I don't think that there are many people left even of my age who actually remember me or my mum's family in person. They also took me to the school they attended not far away, my mum said it was just the same although it was not used anymore, we did go inside. My gran lived at 33 Newels Terrace and I spent some lovely childhood days staying with her when me and Mum visited. I played on the railway sidings (you could always hear them at night shunting the wagons - quite a pleasent sound, I remember the sound to this day, in Newel's patern yard (black sand), made dens in them with the other kids whose names have long deserted me. I know the man who chased us off the Newel's land was Mr Brewster, and I remember a family a few doors down called Christmas because of their name, and the woman next door was Blackburn. I remember the name Walkringham (spelling not sure), the station at the top of the wooden stairs in Misterton (the train never stopped there and we had to travel back from Gainsborough). There was a shop at the bottom across the road. The fire station near to Newel's and when the alarm went off they would let us play in it. There was also a wooden shack at my gran's end that served as a shop, you just knocked the back door and they would open the shop for you. Gas was a penny, gran kept pennies in a salmon paste jar. Milk was dished out in ladles by a man with a horse and cart. The toilet was at the bottom of the garden and yes, there was squares of newspaper on a nail, it was more absorbent then as well, and every now and then Uncle Bal would wheel the pan down the back of the terrace to a place where people would empty them. This was just a hole in the ground, quite open, no fences or anything. There were poes under each bed and a bucket under the sink (in the kitchen), a huge mangle in the kitchen on which I was washed or scraped, it felt as if this was done with mostly cold or very tepid water, and a brick copper with a fire underneath. Green hard soap, ugh, to wash with. A front room which had one of those hard leather chaise longue settees in it (you always slid off it), and a wind up gramophone amongst other things. This room was always cold for it was seldom used. The beds upstairs were always cold (all through the night) and to warm them you had a stone jar which was always too hot to use then too cold during the night and they always rolled towards you in the night.
There were only two buses a day into Gainsborough. There are many more childhood memories of this place and my time there, the canal nearby, a place called the basin, a pub called the White Hart in Gainsbourough, when we passed that mum used to say she was home. The sea wall (white) facing Newall's Terrace, the Trent beyond, my schooldays when school dinners were first introduced - on the first day I was the only one who still took pack up sandwiches and cocoa with sugar and was made to sit at a table on my own whilst I ate it like some sort of leper. This school was in Walkringham and lastly, for I am rambling a bit now, a field with underground petrol strorage tanks and some sort of depot at gran's end. If anyone has any memories to share or wishes to contact me my e-mail is johhny.spracko@ntlworld.com.
I would be most pleased to hear from you.            
P.S I did get school meals in the end!
The reason i am known as John is another story and maybe i will tell you that story another day GOD BLESS  John (Johnny Spracko)