Memories Of Little And Great Bookham From The Late 50's To Late 60's

A Memory of Little Bookham.

My parents bought the then new property of 14 little Bookham street sometime in the mid 1950's when I was a very young child. I went to school in East Horsley and one of my memories was being brought home on a Saturday lunchtime by a friends father a Mr Crabb who would go into the Windsor Castle and leave his son John and I outside next to the off sales window where we would drink pop from old screw top bottles. Little Bookham street was a smashing place to grow up, I used to cycle my bike up and down the road to see what speed I could reach on my new Smiths speedometer, Mrs Stephens who lived opposite our house in the old timber framed building, she used to sell National Savings stamps and had a smile for everybody. In the spring we would visit a pond on the common and come back with bottles of tadpoles which, of course, all became frogs in a tin bath in the garden, giving my dad, who was a keen gardener, a lot of extra work. In Great Bookham a shop called Clackworthys (I think that is how it was spelt) supplied my friends and I with L.P. and single records as well as 'vital' electrical components to me when I started to build electrical things, he had a cupboard behind the counter with dozens of small drawers where he could always find the transistor or resistor I needed. The first shop on the left in the high street, next to the Beech Nut chewing gum machine 'one free every third turn' sold Airfix models for a couple of bob or, if I had just had a birthday, for a lot more, Frog models like the B29 Superfortress that I hung from the ceiling in my bedroom.

Good times

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