Living There

A Memory of Rettendon.

I was born in Rettendon  in 1938.  My father (Ernest James Hazell) and mother ( Ellen Wiseman)  were both born in the village as were my maternal grandmother and great grandmother.
As a child I remember watching aircraft flying home from bombing raids in Germany with holes in and engines smoking. I remember the V2 that fell in the village and the incendiary raids on Rettendon Place farm that caused the haystacks to burn for days.
I remember the Scottish Regiment staying in Rettendon Hall, and marching down the main road with the pipes skirling. The hill beside Rettendon Hall was hollowed out in the early part of the war to facilitate the building of an underground field hospital to accomodate casualties from an invasion or from continental warfare. As far as I know it was never actually used, and lads from the village would go in and out  to play after the war till the entrances were concreted over or were blown up.
I remember dances in the village hall and fights between the soldiers and locals on a regular basis!
I remember the woods being full of military vehicles parked there awaiting the D-day invasion. The day after all those that would not start were left where they were in the woods. Some of these troop carriers were comandeered by the farmers as tractors when no one claimed them.
The village store was owned by "Mrs Manders" who was the centre of all the village gossip and news. Everyone went there and it was there I saw a representation of an ice cream cone. I never actually had one to eat untill after the war when I got one from one of the first Rossis Ice Cream trucks.
We were well trained children and whenever the air raid siren sounded from the Runwell Mental hospital "the cat" we jumped in the ditch and stayed there till the "all clear" was sounded, without any adult supervision.
We lived as a close community in the 12 houses of Crouch View Cottages, the only council houses in the village in those days. Us children spent most of our out of school time together since our mothers were mostly working in the fields. For me the Creswells, the Spearmans, the Andrews, the Wallis's and Jenkins were all more like brothers and sisters than neighbours.
We had the "Tank trap" a deep ditch that ran accross the field where the present council estate is located as well as a road crossing by the school where the road could be blown up. The two pill boxes in the village were where we played and where some of the families slept at night for fear of stray bombs or V1's and V2's.
We also had a "ray" which was a circular building made of corrugated iron and from which a bright light was supposed to be projected to blind night flyers. This was never used and we played in it as a circus.
There was a lively black market in the village. One of the chief customers was the local police sergeant. My own mother was one of the main contacts for this business.
This was the village in my earliest memories.
After the war there were new things that I remember... The village flower show where every family participated and the rivalry was high... The Cricket team always full of people with names like Frost and Jay and Creswell. The Parish school where I went from the time I was 5 till I left to go to the Tech in Chelmsford.
There were dances in the village hall and a youth club for those who lived there and sometimes from Rawreth.
Then there were the unofficial Football Teams made up of young men who rode bikes from village to village to organize their own games in the absence of anybody to officially arrange such things.
Another great occupation was cycle speedway where we rode cycles around shale and mud tracks in a copy of motorcycle speedway we saw at the Rayleigh Stadium with the Rayleigh Rockets. However, in those days there was actually a national Cycle Speedway League.
There were two pubs, The Bell, The Wheatsheaf  in the village and The Hawk and The Barge in Battlesbridge, the hamlet of Rettendon. My dad took me to the Barge when I was about ten and it was there that I first saw what a pub was like.
After spending 2 years in the RAPC as conscript I returned to the village.
In the years before that I had become a born again christian and sought others of the same persuasion in the village. I met Henry Griggs the leader of the little Salvation Army tin chapel close to the Bell pub. I was blessed to know a man who had shared his faith and suffered much for it in the village where he was born and raised.
In additon to Henry I also enjoyed working with the folk at Battlesbridge Free Church and along with the lady who is now my wife, we assisted them to run the Sunday School with an enthusiastic group of young people in those days.
I married Nova Selfe who lived in the "big house" Ravenhurst, close by the Bell and we have had more than 48 years of very happy marriage and we live in  Canada. She was an "outsider" in the village having come from Rainham Essex as a teenager to live in the village with her whole family.
We both worked for the Eastern National Bus company and  I lived in Rettendon till the time of my marriage.
We continue to visit the village which is now much changed since the by pass around it has turned it into a quiet by-way with only local traffic. Recently my last relative in the village died and so my visits will become less.