Childhood Memories

A Memory of Freshford.

I moved to Freshford with my family when I was 12 years old and lived at The Inn for 5 years before moving away. We did not have the wall on the end of the building that you see in the foreground. By then a large car park had been built and that was the way through. The tree opposite was still there but the farmhouse next to it was empty. We were flooded some time after moving there when the river overflowed. This was before the changes were made to the river flow at Bath. We used to swim in the river on hot days. You can see the bridge nearby in one of the other photos. There used to be guinea fowl which lived alone in the old farm. I can remember scrumping apples in the orchard behind the farmhouse. We also had a large orchard at the pub and I used to pick the apples and store them laid out up in the barn loft. The barn was the one attched to the front of the main building. We also had 3 other barns round the back and I can remember the police searching them one day when a local woman had gone missing. Fortunately she was not found in any of them. We had hot summers and cold winters at this time and I remember being snowed in for several days. We were more or less cut off. Freshford was a lovely place to live in those days and was a living village community. We knew all the people who lived up the hill and at Christmas many of us would go 'carol singing' around the village. None of the houses were empty or second homes like today.