Growing Up In Burton

A Memory of Burton in Lonsdale.

Growing up in burton was fantastic, all the children of the village would play together and spend their days wandering freely, only going home to eat. Just the way it should be. The local vicar at the time was the Reverend Charles Trevor who had a large family, Susan, Chris, Clare, Andrew who was my age, Catherine and Peter. I have very fond memories of us all playing together in the vicarage, which is now the old vicarage, and staying for tea there. Mrs Trevor put on a great spread on the big kitchen table with a variety of home baked pies and cakes, they were a lovely family and Rev Trev, as we called him, ran the youth club, choir practice, bell ringing and took the village children on camping trips to Kettlewell and other trips too. He directed many productions in which I was lucky enough to take part. He was an absolute saint I think and was a great friend to all in the village. When he and the family left to take another post, the village never felt quite the same. I'm sure he did the same for his new parish as he did for ours. We spent summers at the cart track, building fires and cooking sausages, playing on the rope swing above the river, going down the woods to shoot air rifles at targets in the trees, feeding the donkey that lived at Greta House, and in the winter we sledged in the fields around the village. It was an idyllic childhood and we seemed to manage without computers and game stations and we felt lucky if we had our own radio. We made our own fun and I'm sure it benefited us. I still live in Burton and it is beautiful, but it will never be the Burton I grew up in.....

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