My Family

A Memory of Charlton All Saints.

My father's family lived in Charlton from the late 1880s to the mid 1900s. My grandfather was a shepherd & after farm foreman for a Mr Charles Reid whose brother Bertie also had a large farm in the Charlton area. The village had a school which I attended in my early years & a village shop & bakery also selling haberdashery, my cousin Dorothy Dorothy West worked there. The baker was a Mr Duffy, the owner of the shop was a Mr Hodges.  I was in the church choir. The vicar was a Mr Winterton & by the vicarage you could cut through to the Trafalgar Estate across beautiful meadows, in the meadow there was a lovely walnut tree where you could gather nuts when in season. There was also a pub & blacksmith. My father, also William Goodridge, left in 1909,serving in the Royal Marines for 22yrs and came back again in 1931. He had a house built called "Medina", named after a ship he served on. It was on the border of Bodenham & Charlton on the Bournemouth road. My memories start from then. I was 5yrs old. I loved the country having come from Portsmouth. I later went to Bishop Wordsworth School in Salisbury & eventually setteled in Havant in 1968 after spending most of life in the Royal Marine & Royal  Military Police. I hope these memories will be shared by others of around my generation I am now 62yrs young & a great-grandad.

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