Box Fieds Hawthorn

A Memory of Hawthorn.

My parents met at a place called Thornypits and married during the war years.They were George and Pam Edwards, he was a local barber and came from Killarney, Southern Ireland, she came from Ditcheat, near Shepton Mallet in Somersett. They had three children, Pat, David and Pam. My parents worked at the Moon Aircraft, which produced many parts from Perspex for aeroplanes.
We lived on a purpose-built estate made up of prefab bungalows. The population was mostly young families that had evolved from the war and came from all over the UK and Ireland. The estate had a Fish and Chip shop ran by Mr Poole, a butchers, haberdashery, friut and veg shop. We also had a community centre that had a doctors surgery and a local youth club where I learnt to 'jive'.
During my childhood I saw Polish and Hungarian refugees arrive at Thorneypits, which became a transit camp for people seeking refuge from conflicts within their countries. We never experienced any crimes or troubles from these people. Some became locals within the Corsham and Bath areas.
As a family we had a lovely time living in this part of Wiltshire, we had the freedom of Box Woods and all the wonderful walks and accessable green play areas (humps and dumps). We would have lemonade and crisps at the local public house The Quarry Mans Arms (the crisps had the blue bag of salt inside them). We could get a train to Bath from Box station. We would walk to Blue Bell Woods, we could pick the blue bells then and there were no Private Property signs.
It sounds and feels like a world away but it was only a blink of the eye. The estate was demolished in the 1960s and all the strong community spirit went with it, the tenants were moved to various parts of Rudloe and Corsham, and life was never the same after that.