Childhood 1952 Onwards

A Memory of Stonehouse.

I think Stonehouse had something for every age growing up. Brownies, cubs, scouts, and guides. A youth club and a coffee bar. Always somewhere to explore, the canal, Doverow for sledging, the brickworks and always scrogging apples and pears from the Wycliffe college orchard. We went to the Methodist church and youth club where we were always encouraged to join in, with Junior church in the morning and sunday school in the afternoon and the best for us teenagers was the evening service when we would go afterwards for coffee to the manse, I think half the fun was meeting with the boys from Wycliffe.
Growing up in Stonehouse meant that you knew so many people and if my Mother was shopping in the town, I could ask in the butchers or the newsagents etc and they would know where she was. We moved to the Park estate when I was six and I think that nearly every house had a child of my age in the family and so playing in the street and going to the local school you made lifelong friends. I now live in France but when I come back, I meet with friends and we still talk about the old days and the fun we had. I don't think that Stonehouse has change all that much, it still has a village feel to it and it still pulls me back and I feel like a teenager again when I walk along the canal bank, past the church, through the farm, over the main road and over the railway bridge to go past the school and remember doing handstands up against the wall in the playground with dresses tucked into knickers and watching Mr Wright the caretaker with his old spaniel dog, also rollerskating down the new tarmac from Quietways to the park estate, ahhhhh memories, I could go on for ever.