A Big Pig!

A Memory of Catsfield.

1955 - I was sent to the hotel with my mother to recuperate after a month in Nottingham isolation hospital with measles. We spent 6 blissful weeks here.

My memories are of a very high ceiling in the dining room and the smell of the food cooking for lunch and dinner. My mother and I were on our own all week and father came down from London to Bexhill Station I think on a Friday night and mum would go and pick him up. I was not allowed to do much initially, but eventually I had the energy to walk round the farm and so every morning we would wander down to see Billy the Big Pig. He loved having his back and ears scratched. I think there was a bull in a stall there too.

Mum had a friend, Enid Halliday, who lived near Bexhill and she used to pop over for afternoon tea and play board games with me. I remember sitting in the room on the left with the windows playing and doing school work that was posted to Mum every week so I did not fall behind in my English and Maths plus the spelling.

I was very happy there and Mrs Flood was very kind to us. I think we had a bedroom that was at the front of the hotel because I can remember looking out over the garden. It was early summer, so the weather was really hot and I used to play out on the grass with my dad. I was so miserable when I had to go home.

I have discovered it is now a care home, which is a shame as I would love to have gone back to stay there if it had been a hotel.

Jenny Wiseman nee Gardner