Sampford In The 1960 S

A Memory of Sampford Peverell.

Lived in Sampford 1952 - 1977 and went to Sampford Primary School 1957-63. The school had three classes, Mr Vickery, the headmaster, taught the oldest pupils, Miss Michelmore, a middle-aged lady (in 1960) the middle class and a young teacher the youngest pupils. Can never remember her name, it was a foreign unpronounceable name if I recall, probably Polish or suchlike. Sampford had if I remember five shops in the 1960s, the post office opposite the school in Higher Town, a clothes shop and a confectioner opposite one another a little further down towards the church, and in Lower Town Mr Thomas's at the bottom of the hill leading up to the canal bridge and at the Taunton end of the village on the other side was Mr Upham's, another confectioner/newspaper shop.According to my late Uncle Clifford at one time Sampford also had three or four pubs but by the 1960's only the Globe and the Merrimeade remained, as today.Also at the Taunton end of Lower Town on the north side of the road was Vickery's garage, which also operated a taxi service.The local GP was Dr Graves-Morris, whose surgery was in his semi-detached house on the edge of the village-a long walk if you were unwell- up Turnpike past the cemetery and almost to Batten's Cross.Most people didn't have telephones back in the 60's; there were public call boxes in Boobery opposite the council houses near the turn-off to Beaufort Close and in Lower Town just down from the Globe Inn.Also in Lower Town was what had been St Boniface's Home (Dr Barnardo's?) which by the late 1960's was used as a warehouse for goods from Heathcoat's factory in Tiverton if my memory serves me correctly. It was later demolished.There was a bus service to Tiverton and Exeter (Devon General No 3). Going to Exeter (the big city, as it was then) was a long drag as the bus would turn off the Exe Valley road first to Silverton and then to Thorverton. Didn't go to Exeter very often anyway, more usually it was just to Tiverton; my late mum used to go shopping there every Tuesday.Tuesday was Tiverton market day so there was a good chance of meeting one of my aunties (her sisters) most of whose husbands were farmers. Until 1964 there was also a train service from Sampford Peverell Halt (now resurrected as Tiverton Parkway) after that date it was a three mile trek to Tiverton Junction station, which only had a handful of trains stopping at it, e.g. nothing up from Exeter after 4 p.m. On the other hand there was no North Devon link road or M5 and the A373 through the village was much busier than it is today, especially on summer Saturdays in the late 60's when it was marked as a holiday route (HR) to Cornwall via Tiverton and Crediton. From the age of about 14 my main method of transport was hitchhiking, especially to Tiverton and Exeter via the A373 and A396 and to Taunton and beyond, up the A38 from Waterloo Cross, where the A373 joined the A38.
Went back to Sampford last week (17th May 2019) en route to a funeral in Halberton. It is much changed now with lots of streets which were not there in my time and my old house in Boobery was hard to recognise, though its laurel hedge alongside the road was, I saw, still there, Francis Voisey