12a The Camp, Hanney Road, Steventon.

A Memory of Steventon.

My memory of Steventon started in 1947. For those who don't know about Steventon Camp, it was a disused army camp about 1 to 2 miles from Steventon village, on the Hanney road. (I see the storage depot is still there, which when I was a lad was full of army lorries.) My family (Victor and Kathleen Davis, my sister Kathleen and myself) lived at no 12a, it was at the far side, away from the road, second one in from the corner of the camp facing open fields and Steventon. To be honest, itwas a bit basic, but clean, for us children it was a great place to live. The reason we came to live there was because of overcrowding at my gran's in Marcham and her ill health. We moved out, and with nowhere to go, squatted on the camp like so many people in our situation. 12a consisted of half an old barrack block (all made of wood) with two bedrooms and one big room for a lounge, the kichen consisted of part of the big room with a curtain across it, and an old cooking range, bath night was in front of the range on Saturday night in a big tin bath, my sister first then me. All the children used to like Mondays, that meant sweets, becaurse in the late 1940s sweets were still on ration, we had to walk to East Hanney (about 2 miles) and there used to be a shop in a house. All the children on the camp used to go to Steventon school, which meant we had to walk there, I always had wet feet because most of the lads would be in and out of the ditches. One day the weather was so bad that none of the mums sent their children to school, and by that time the local council had taken over reponsibility for the camp, so after that day they laid on taxis for the under eights and a coach for the over eights (and that put paid to my wet feet). In the summer Mr Prior used to give my sister and I a glass of orange on the way home, which was always welcome (he was a friend of my dad's). I can remember one tragedy, and that was when a little boy of about 3 had an accident at home and he died, his surname was Jordon. They used to have film shows on the camp for the children (I can remember one, it was 'Jesse James'). A couple of us lads had a little gang, and to join it you had to go to this old boiler house and put your finger in an old light switch( no cover on it) to join it. One Christmas,1946-7( a very bad winter), in the morning we all went outside to see Father Christmas's sledge and reindeer marks in the snow, and there they were, he came to our door and then went off into the distance (not very straight- perhaps Father Christmas had had one too many), years later I said to my dad, "How did you make those marks in the snow?", and he said he had two broom handles, and walked backwards on his heels dragging the broom handles(I did not ask him if he had had one too many, ha ha) and as plain as day, I can remember what I had that Christmas, it was a two shilling bit (10p) and a toy tin plane, and my sister had a doll and two shillings, and do you know I will never forget that, my sister and I were as happy as sand boys. I have no doubt that there were other children on the camp that had even less than us, if anyone said to me to go back and alter what I had for Christmas in 1947 I would say "No ,leave it as it was", because that Christmas memory is very endearing to me. At that time my father had a very old Austin Seven and it was always going wrong, he was a bus driver in Oxford then, so if he had no car he used to cycle to Oxford and we knew what time he would get home, so my sister and I used to go up to the Hanney Road and meet him, we used to wait under a tree where there was gravel and loads of flint which I used to collect, then you would hear someone whistling, our dad, so I used to go on the cross bar and my sister on the handle bars of the bike and off we used to go home, and yes, Dad was still whistling. In the back garden we had this swing, it was well into the ground but you could not in those days just go down the road for a bag of cement so it was held upright with gravel and bits of brick,that old swing posts used to move as much as the swing itself, but we did not care and spent many a happy hour on it. Down the bottom of the camp is the railway (I think the Reading/Swindon line), I have a vague memory of a bad train crash somewhere down there, near the railway are some ponds or part of a river, Dad and I used to go fishing there. So that's some of my memories of 12a The Camp, Steventon, looking back, you could say that it was like a community on its own, very friendly, an abundance of comradeship and humour, whether it was a family of 11 children (which there were) or just one, we were all in the same boat, we might not have been rich in the money sense, but my God we were very rich being families and helping one another. I have been back and seen the field where the camp used to be, and looking back on these memories has left me feeling very humble.
Graham Davis. 12a The Camp 1947-50