Wartime In Ferndown

A Memory of Ferndown.

I have so many memories of growing up in Ferndown during the Second World War, when it was just a village. Collecting pigswill and old papers to aid the war effort. Scouting adventures with scoutmaster Doug Gabe. Playing games on the common and collecting tadpoles and newts in jamjars. The bomb that fell in Victoria Road, and the night when incendiaries rained down - a neighbour beat "ours" out with the hydrangea he pulled up from the front garden! Carol singing. Being told off for throwing stones at the church bell. Ajax, the lion at Ferndown zoo that made national headlines because its roar was too loud. Those were the days. We lived at Delkeith in Dudsbury Avenue, niow the site of Delkeith Court. I left Ferndown in 1954 to do National Service, and didn't return for years, by which time it had exploded into a town that I hardly recognised. It was so different that I wrote a book about what it used to be like (Ferndown, the Back of Beyond) so the newcomers could see what they had missed! Sorry, Ferndown town, you are not MY Ferndown. But at least I still have my memories.

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