Tag Archives: 1950s

Susan Hayles, Mary Hayles: Harbour Sports 1940s, 1950s

My father, Harold Hayles was on the Carnival Committee for many years, so my sisters Mary, Chris and Sally and I were always very involved.
We really looked forward to Carnival Week, as we still do now. Squeak and I practised the pair oared rowing for weeks and we entered all the events. All the money we won was spent at the Fair. Sue Russell nee Hayles b 1940

Harbour sports with RASC boats

Harbour sports with RASC boats :photo Effie pitman

 

For passing the 11+ I was bought a dinghy, a proper clinker one. We desperately practised rowing for weeks ready for the harbour sports. The ladies’ race went right out round the buoy off the pier. It was our chance to earn money for when the funfair came. I don’t think I ever tried the greasy pole – it was stuck out from one of the army boats in the harbour and dipped right down at the end. Mary Lord nee Hayles b 1936

Hayles girls

Harold Hayles’ daughters :from left Susan ( Sue) , Mary, Christine, in front Sally. Photo: Mary Lord

Sue Langford: Thorley holidays 1950s, 1960s

Thorley and Upper Lee
Thorley from above

Thorley from across the fields

Every holiday, the family would be sent to Granny Haigh’s at Bundys, until she got fed up with so many of us and my father bought Upper Lee. I have Granny’s notebooks, full of details of butterflies and insects, some of them you don’t see here now.  She made a point of teaching us about them – we’d only listen for so long – but I can still identify any that come our way.

We could run around the fields, between here and Retreat ( now ‘Molehills’), with no one supervising us. There was one rule – you did have to wear your Wellingtons in the fields because of the adders. I’d see maybe two or so a year. I remember once, on my way to look for orchids, coming across an adder curled up in a spiral, rearing up with its head pulled back. I ran!

Going through the fields to Retreat was always a bit of a nightmare because of the young stock. The grownups always used to say, just keep going and if they run towards you, just make yourself as big as you can, and shout at them. They’ll go away. I wasn’t confident about that!

We spent a lot of time in Thorley Brook, paddling about, making up games.
Sue Langford nee Haigh b 1946

Eileen Smith, Mary Henderson: Upper Lee, Thorley

Thorley houses with Upper Lee and Thorley Brook

Thorley houses with Upper Lee and Thorley Brook


Mum said they loved going over to the Coopers at Upper Lee to Sunday School and then go in to the hall in Newport.  It was a treat for them.  They used to go and collect the milk in a jug from them at the farm. Mary Henderson b 1954

May Cooper used to do the dairy work for her brother. She made butter pats in the shape of swans, and cooled them in Thorley Brook, just where a little spring rises. When she made jellies and jams she’d cool them by floating them in the stream. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Henry Cooper: Upper Lee, Thorley, 1900s – 1960s

Upper Lee

Henry (Harry) Martin Cooper (1877-1969) was born at Upper Lee Farm, Thorley, and lived there most of his life.  He had no formal education, but was self-taught having learned the basics from his mother. In 1902 his diary first mentions his bee-keeping activities, which provided additional income to supplement the income from the small family dairy farm.

Postcard of Upper lee

Postcard of Upper Lee

I remember my dad telling me the field names – Long Meadow, Goose Acres, Pyle Field.  I have a feeling that Grampy rented Vicarage Butts, but I couldn’t be sure.  He strongly objected to having to pay tithes for some land he had.  I wonder if that was for Vicarage Butts? Rosemary Cooper granddaughter of Henry



When it comes to fruit trees I can remember damsons, greengages and Victoria plums at Thorley, but I have no idea what the apples were, except plentiful. (There was a thorn apple that I was told by Mum to keep quiet about!)

I’ve a feeling there were apricots too? Grandma and Aunt May used to bottle lots of fruit but apart from plums I think it must have been mainly soft fruit. When they moved to Parkside my first memory was of the larder there with the shelves of jewel-like colours, the light shining through their store of bottled fruit brought from Thorley I think. At Upper Lee it must have been kept in the Dairy where there wasn’t so much light.  Stella Ridley, Grand daughter


Mum said they loved going over to the Coopers at Upper Lee to Sunday School and then go in to the hall in Newport.  It was a treat for them.  They used to go and collect the milk in a jug from them at the farm. Mary Henderson b 1954


May Cooper used to do the dairy work for her brother. She made butter pats in the shape of swans, and cooled them in Thorley Brook, just where a little spring rises. When she made jellies and jams she’d cool them by floating them in the stream. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921


 


 


 


 

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Sue Langford : Thorley holidays 1950s
			

								


				

			
Every holiday, the family would be sent to Granny Haigh’s at Bundys, until she got fed up with so many of us and my father bought Upper Lee. I have Granny’s notebooks, full of details of butterflies and insects, some of them you don’t see here now.  She made a point of teaching us about them – we’d only listen for so long – but I can still identify any that come our way.


We could run around the fields, between here and Retreat ( now ‘Molehills’), with no one supervising us. There was one rule – you did have to wear your Wellingtons in the fields because of the adders. I’d see maybe two or so a year. I remember once, on my way to look for orchids, coming across an adder curled up in a spiral, rearing up with its head pulled back. I ran!


Thorley from above
Thorley from fields above Upper Lee


Going through the fields to Retreat was always a bit of a nightmare because of the young stock. The grownups always used to say, just keep going and if they run towards you, just make yourself as big as you can, and shout at them. They’ll go away. I wasn’t confident about that!


We spent a lot of time in Thorley Brook, paddling about, making up games.

Sue Langford nee Haigh b 1946

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Ron Wallis: Thorley 1940s, 1950s
			

								


				

			
Wellow Institute Darts Champions 1971 - 72
Wellow Institute Darts Champions 1971 – 72 From left: Geoff Bishop, Charlie Courtney, Mike Smith, Ralph Smith – all Thorley men with Archie Pocock, Glad and Vic Whittingham from Wellow


We used to go up to the Wellow Institute playing billiards or cards or whatever, the lads and myself, and I came down one night back with my bike, I must have been fifteen, and it was a dark night, just gone ten o’clock, just a little bit of light. I had my head down looking at the ground, and all of a sudden, there was this shape in front of me and ‘bang’. The front wheel went straight between Charlie Bryne’s legs, Ron Hillier was helping him home.  Yes, they’d had a couple, or several, and I went over the top of Charlie Bryne – didn’t do the bike a lot of good, but it did me a lot more harm, it really hurt.  Charlie got up, the air was somewhat blue.  Apart from bruises up his back he had nothing wrong with him.  I got home and put my bike away and I’d taken the top off one of my ankle bones.

And I thought: ‘I’ve hurt my head’.  There was all blood and went to see Dad, who was listening to the radio and he come and had a look.  He said, ‘Mother, I think you’d better come and have a look at this.’ So mum came out in the kitchen – ‘ Oh, I don’t like the look of that’.

Poor old Gran, who was staying with us at the time, she came out and she put it right. She got the scissors out and then cut my hair away and put a plaster on it.    The damage to my ankle made me limp for a while.  Charlie Bryne, he was fine.

Ron Wallis b 1935

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Pam Bone: Thorley Services,  1950s, 1960s
			

								


				

			
Library van 1960s
Library van 1960s


The Library van, with Mr Satherley at the wheel, used to come each week. It was a focal point for women to meet and probably exchange gossip.


The coalman used to deliver our coal and coke. The Corona lorry used to come and sometimes we would buy bottles of Lemonade or Cherryade from him. You would get 3d for taking back the empty pop bottles.


Our groceries were delivered each week by Mr Burt and my mum would write out her order for the following week in a little red book that she would give to him.


Sometimes our milk that was delivered had round cardboard tops on the bottles which I used to make pom-poms by wrapping wool round them through the hole in the middle.


Our GP was Dr Drummond in Yarmouth and I only remember going to see him twice. Once was to have 3 stitches put in my chin after I fell off the school rocking horse and the other time was to have immunisation when there was an outbreak of Polio.

Pam Bone nee Cotton b 1948

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Pam Bone nee Cotton: Thorley 1950s
			

								


				

			
The Cotton family


I moved from Yarmouth to Thorley in 1952 when I was 4yrs old and back to Yarmouth when I was 13yrs old. I moved with parents and my younger brother Peter to 3 North View Thorley, one of a row of 8 brand new council houses.


Thorley houses EAST
Thorley houses EAST


In No 1 were Jean and Norman Crismass with their daughters Roberta, Karen and Vanessa. I used to love to look after Vanessa when she was a baby and toddler and often carried the poor child around with me. When I was about 10 or 11 years old they had measles and I remember my mum sending me round to play with them to make sure I caught it while I was still young. Sure enough, I caught the measles, and missed a school outing to see the Royal Tournament in London!


In No 2 lived the Roberts family, and on the other side of us lived Ralph and Eileen Smith with sons Michael and Peter ( Jean came along later).


 


Next to them lived Mr and Mrs Jackman with daughters Ann and Sheila. Ann was older than me and had a piano accordian which she played very well. They later moved to Dog Kennel cottage up Broad Lane where the electricity was supplied by a generator and they had a stream running through their garden. They also had two geese called Jack and Jill that I was scared of.


The last house was No 8 where Sue and Cyril Henderson lived with their son Michael and daughter Mary. Sue’s parents, Fred and Amy Hillier and their son Ron lived in Newclose Cottage, a farm cottage opposite them, and this family became great friends with my family.

I always knew Mrs Hillier as ‘Hilly’. If I was off school ill and my mum was at work she would always pop in to make sure I was all right. She kept pet budgies and I remember we once had two of them ourselves as pets, a green one called Joey and a yellow sort of multi coloured one called Beauty. Hilly had one who could talk, but ours never did.


Ours was a 3 bedroom house, no central heating and a storage room for coal and coke in the back porch. We had a front room but that was only ever used on special occasions such as Easter and Christmas.




North View, Thorley
North View, Thorley


 


My dad was a volunteer Fireman at Yarmouth and we had a big bell in the wall in our house which clanged loudly when the fire siren went off to alert him that he was needed. He would then get on his bike and pedal as fast as he could to Yarmouth.


I remember my mum getting the boiler out every Monday morning to do the washing and then putting it through the wringer before it went out on the washing line. There was great excitement, many years later, when she acquired her first washing machine and spin drier! We had a large garden where my dad grew vegetables and gooseberries and blackcurrants. Peter and I each had our own little patch of garden.  Mine had various flowers in it, such as marigolds and cornflowers; Peter’s usually had a big hole because he was digging to Australia.


There was a sloping path up to our front gate where Peter Smith (next door) and I used to race snails!


(The barn opposite our house was used to store hay and as children we sometimes played in there and I remember taking some of our cat’s food over there to “secretly” feed the stray cats who often occupied the barn although they were probably well fed on mice! Our own cat was called Sooty and at night he often slept in my bed right at the bottom and kept my feet warm. We didn’t have a cat flap and Sooty used to come in and out of the house via the front porch roof and Peter’s bedroom window.

He did this one night when my Gran came to stay and she was sleeping in that room. I will never forget all the screams and shouts when he frightened her one night by climbing in the window and jumping on her bed!  Vertically next to photo of Jean)


Pam Cotton b 1948

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Peter Smith: Thorley 1950s smokers
			

								


				

			
When we moved into our council houses at Thorley there were only eight houses. There was space further up the road, past number 8 for some more houses to be built, but for a number of years it was just an overgrown plot with long grass. It was here in the long grass that several of us council house children had our first introduction to smoking. Fortunately I can’t recall where the cigarettes came from, but many a ciggy was shared in the secrecy of the long grass!


Andrew Budden and I were exploring the Marsh at the bottom of Tattels Lane, when our co explorer Johnnie Holtom, who was a year or two older than us, pulled out a pipe and amid much coughing and retching, lit it up. Eventually he offered us a go, with the same result. Cigarettes, I had found were much easier to get on with.


Eventually the council started work on new houses so we lost the use of our secret place. Peter Smith b 1946

					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Peter Smith: Thorley 1950s, North View
			

								


				

			
Jean Storie, North View gate
Jean Storie, sitting on the North View gate of her Hillier grandparents’ house.Barn behind .


Snail racing was popular, the snails could always be found behind the grass at the base of the barn wall opposite our house. To avoid argument about whose snail was whose we got round to marking them with a dab of paint, red, blue and white.  Some weeks later when we were looking in the usual place for some snails for another race we found that the ones with paint on had somehow made it back to their home completely unaided. After this I made a point of letting my snail go after the racing was finished in our garden and then over a period of days going out and looking for it to see where it was. Sure enough after a couple of weeks or so it reappeared in the usual place by the barn. Having done this a number of times it became clear to me that the snails saw the barn wall as their home, and did not want to live anywhere else, which was interesting, at the time!