Ospring

hello roy i was born 10 september in ospringe we lived on the corner house in waterlane went to school down the lane the rifle range has gone so has the water and the bakery but dick frier is still around my parents came from westham nr upton park if you need any info now let me know , jeff

When my Grandparents moved from Canterbury into a large house called "The Oaks" in Ospringe, they asked us to live with them as it was much safer to live in Kent.
My Grandfather worked for a Mr. Wheeler, as a Bailiff on a large estate.
I had many aunts and uncles because Mother was the eldest girl in a large family. There was uncle Bert,Sid,Bill,George and Bunsey. Also, there was aunt Alice and Gladys, Jim was adopted up by my Grandparents. We were looked after very well, My cousin Ethel would make us twins lovely clothes and dress us to look alike as we were identical twins.

2. Growing up in Kent.

I remember it was a lovely part of Kent, during Spring the orchard would look a picture when the trees were in blossom. There were some very nice girls who lived nearby us, Daisy and Hilda Clapson and Nelly and Grace Fippys, they would come to play with us. Jim had a friend called Harold Wood. We were in the country and there were not many houses near us, but plenty of space to play in. It was lovely to roam up through the orchards. If it was a wet day very often Jim would entertain us with his Magic Lantern or we would play Snakes and Ladders or Lotto etc.
There were very few cars about and if we went to town it would have to be by horse and trap.

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I always remember looking up at the stars at night when coming home from Faversham when it was dark.
After a time Grandfather had a motor bike, it was a Rudge Malty, they are made very differently today. He used to say it said underneath the tank - 'Use me well and keep me clean then I will carry you to Golders Green' We used to look to see if it was so but soon learnt he was having us on.
Sometimes Mother would take us to London to stay with Aunt Rhoda, Uncle Jim and cousin Ethel and we would meet all the nice friends we knew when we left. Cousin Ethel would take us out a lot, we would go to Hyde Park to see the gentry ride their horses in Rotten Row and go to Regents Park to the zoo. Often we would go to a show, we once went to see the White Horse Inn and many more. It used to be nice to look in the lovely shops in Oxford Street. Aunt Rhoda and cousin Ethel used to buy us some lovely clothes, they were very kind to us. I think it was because our father was killed in the War. After our stay it was nice to get back to Ospringe in the country.

We were growing up now and had got to the age of five so we had to go to school. The Clapson girls would take us as we had quite a long way to go or the Fippys girls would go with us, they were a little older than we were.

We used to run down through the hop gardens and the corn fields, it used to be lovely to listen to the Cuckoo in the Spring and the Skylark. The hedges would be filled with Honeysuckle and wild roses and there were many birds nests in the hedges also. The woods would be filled with wild flowers. We would go for picnics or gather Primroses and Violets when it was a nice Spring day.

We used to have some lovely hot summer days, a lady named
Mrs. Tester made a lot of our dressers.
Our mother was so proud of us twins, and always made sure
we were dressed alike as we were identical, she would curl
our hair and have a bow of ribbons on top, all the aunts
and uncles were good to us.

Then mother went to live in a little house in Faversham,we
lived there for a while and went to school at Davington.
When we were seven Mother met a man named Charles Gamble he had lost his wife and had a daughter named Grace a very pretty girl. Charles was in the Merchant Navy and he asked Mother if she would adopt Grace as she lived with her
Grandmother who was not well. So Mother did and Grace came to live with us, she was about seven years older than we were.
After a time Mother married Charles Gamble, we called him Pop. He left the Merchant Navy and went to work on the Estate for my Grandfather.
We got a house at Ospringe it was next door to a water mill.

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The water used to run down through the street, very unusual it was. There was a pond at the back, I did not like it as there were so many creepy things in it.
But we liked living at Ospringe it was a lovely place
and we made many friends. Among them there was Nellie Ward, the Speed family - Molly, Queenie, Dorothy and Sonny.
There were lovely meadows to play in, when it was a hot summers day we would take a picnic. We would play at weddings and share our food to make a reception. Mother would give us an old curtain to make a vail, a long dress and high heeled shoes. We used to enjoy ourselves in that kind of way as there was no television or radio.
I had one special friend called Eva Pritchard, she had one sister Edith. At Christmas time always on Boxing Day Mrs. Pritchard would put on a lovely party for us. Mother would dress us up in our lovely party dresses, curl our hair and put in a big bow of ribbon and off we would go. We would have our tea in a lovely cosy kitchen and on each plate there would be a red rosy apple for us to take home. We would play games in the parlor and would have a little gift off the Christmas tree, to us it was magic. Then cousin Doris would invite us to her party, her Mother was Auntie Jessie, Pop Gamble's sister, they were a little better off than us and lived at a big house at a part of Faversham called The Mail.
When the day came for us to go there was a horse and carriage sent down to take us, we used to feel very proud,
they used to be lovely parties. The Courtney girls invited us to their party. The old fashioned house used to fascinate me, we used to go upstairs to the front room, it had a big bay window over looking Water Lane.

On a Sunday morning we would wear our best clothes and would have to go to Sunday School at Ospringe Church it was a beautiful church.
I would take Vera and Charles out in the afternoon so mother
could have a rest Sunday afternoon as she used to work very
hard in the week looking after us all cooking housework
and washing using peggy tubs and boil in a copper,she had to light a fire under the copper to boil the water.
She had to get on her hands and knees to scrub the floors
but every where always looked nice and clean.

Sometimes in the summer if it was a nice warm day Mother would take us to Whitstable. Pop Gamble had a sister Phebe who was married and lived there. They kept a bread and cake shop, we would call and buy a bag of buns to eat with our sandwiches on the beach. We would go in the water and play games on the beach until it was time to go home. We would take our friends there in turns and we had many outings with them.

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One day the Speed family invited us to their house as they had just got a wireless, it was what was called a Cats Whisker, we thought it was marvelous.

Mother had now started with another family, the first was named Vera, then another little girl named Joan, she was like a lily but became ill at the age of two and died with pneumonia, there were not the drugs in those days. Mother and Vera were also ill at the same time.
Kath and I were twelve years old and used to help all we could, Mother was expecting another baby, a boy, we called him Charles. Times were not so good so Kath and I had to help all we could. Money was scarce and every day I would go to the Ship Inn at Ospringe to do Mrs. Lightfoot's shopping, she would pay me sixpence a week. Kath would shop for Mrs. Potter the school teacher on a Saturday. I would go to help Aunt Jessie for two shillings and sixpence a day. We were only twelve years old and we thought it was a lot of money, 2/6p would buy Mum a bag of coal.

Vera was growing up and we found out that she was hard of hearing, so Mother thought it best to send her to a special
school and got her in at Margate. They did very well for her and she liked the school very much

When we had our summer holidays we used to love to go and stay with my grandparents. There were always plenty of jobs to do to help - butter to make, eggs to gather, milk to take round in little cans to the houses nearby. Grandma always used to make her own wines and jams and apple cider, as there was so much fruit in the orchards. They used to grow their own nuts, Kent cobs walnuts and chestnuts. There were plenty of good fruit cakes made and big joints of meat
on the table. Ham and sides of bacon hung up in the dairy.

Grandfather always had a little barrel of beer in for my Uncles or for whoever wanted a glass, as we lived a long way from the pub, he liked a lot of whisky.
It was a wonderful time to live.

Hop picking time.

At the end of summer it would be hop picking time. All the people would come down from London, they used to live in hop huts for the season, it was more like camping out. They would have a big bag fill it with straw to lie on at night and they would make big bonfires. They would buy all the skimmed milk from my grandparents for a half-penny a pint to make hot drinks and also bought apples and potatoes or what ever was available. They were not paid until the end of the season, which would last about six weeks.