A Childs Memories Of Thaxted

A Memory of Thaxted.

I was only six years old when I was taken to Thaxted by my father, in 1941. We moved from Start Hill near Bishop's Stortford, reasons were the war and the Yanks which we will not enter into. The first thing that struck me and still lingers in my memories was the church and its very pointed and high steeple. When we arrived by bus we turned right at the school up the hill to Bardfield End Green to my Nan's cottage, where I was to live untill 1947. During those years I built up some very fond memories. I was in the church choir and also did junior bell ringing when Father Putterell was then the vicar of Thaxted church.
I remember playing around the old windmill which back then was a lot more worse for wear than it is now. My dad bought me my first bike from the old garage halfway up the main street, this was shear pleasure to be able to ride into Thaxted instead of walking from Gran's. I can still see the old hall just past the church where films were shown once a week, where the kids used to sit on forms and the adults sat on chairs. Then once every so often there would be a dance laid on for everyone in the old hall which is still there today just up the hill from the new car.
The sweet factory with its chimney always sticks in the back of my mind, perhaps because one of my uncles used to work there and brought home sweets once a week, this during the war years was a real treat I can tell you. Uncle Fuller used to be the landlord of the Butchers Arms pub at Bardfield End Green. Every Sunday afternoon we would watch the cricket on the green, all the adults with their beer, us kids with crisps and lemonade. People from Thaxted used to spend a lot of time there just lazing in the sun, which back then we used to get plenty of. Everything seemed so slow and peaceful back then, untill one day a Spitfire shot a Doodle Bug down which landed three minutes walk from my Gran's house, it exploded right into a cottage, luckily no one was hurt. The pilot of the Spitfire even came round after he landed at Debden aerodrome to apologise to the people of the house for what had happened. But everyone thought he was a big hero.
I can remember watching the harvesting, the thrashing with the old traction engines on Mr Prior's farm. Then when I was twelve it all ended, my dad was demobbed from the Army and after a few months took me to a new life in Cornwall. But I still find time in my life to visit Thaxted every couple of years, even though I am now in my seventies. Looking back it makes you think that nothing like that will never happen again on the scale that it did back then. All the memories still come flooding back when I go to Thaxted. It's like going into a time warp when you are driving from Dunmow and all of a sudden you see the church spire looming up in front of you. Alas all of this is in the past and will never be repeated, not in this life time. But the memories of Thaxted seen through a child's eyes will stay with me for ever. So Thaxted, always stay there as you have always done, as a wonderful place to build memories on.

From Ron Barker, a member of the parish  from 1941 to 1947. Many thanks, Thaxted.