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Pete Smith :School, Maypole 1950s

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Maypole at Yarmouth School 1950s

Maypole at Yarmouth School 1950s

For several years when I was at Yarmouth school in the 1950’s we had a Maypole dancing team that used to practise in the boys’ play ground during school time. There were many combinations of weaving in and out of each other round the Maypole which gave nice patterns to the ribbons. Whilst you were dancing you weren’t  really aware of the pattern forming above you as you were concentrating on the actual dancing in and out, around each other to avoid getting the ribbons tangled up or falling over each other…. all hazards of Maypole dancing! It was only when you stopped dancing that you could see the pattern that you had made. That was the easy bit.

We then had a short break of a few minutes to catch our breath then we had to dance round in the opposite direction to unwind the pattern and eventually end up as we had started, with no pattern and straight ribbons. I’m not entirely sure why we spent so many hours practising as the only public performance that I can recall was either up The Mount in the years when they held a summer garden fete, or over the bridge at a house called, I believe, ‘Cracknells’ when they took over the summer fete after the Mount. In both cases there were dignitaries present such as May O’ Connor who I think was the head of IWCC Education, and the IW Lord Lieutenant, so the dancing had to be spot on or else!

Peter Smith b 1946

Eileen and Peter Smith: Thorley foraging 1950s, 1960s

Living off the land

Joy Cotton used to come out from Yarmouth with me. There was a sort of a pond at the edge of Thorley Brook where we picked watercress.
One day when we’d just moved in here, I found some wild gooseberries in the hedge at the end of the houses. They weren’t very big but they tasted lovely. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

With a bit of effort it was possible to scramble up to pigeons’ nests and get their eggs, which were good to eat when boiled up in a tin can with potatoes on a campfire.
Near the old Wellow Brickyard (if you were lucky you could find some bricks with Wellow stamped on them) were some ponds where moorhens nested. They laid lots of eggs and were also good to eat. The secret was not to take all of the eggs, but take less than half, so that the moorhen would lay some more, and you could come back again in a few days time for a few more!

There were other good things to eat around Thorley if you knew where to look. Plenty of mushrooms in the autumn, masses of blackberries there for the picking, and delicious apples from Charlie Bryne’s garden just across the road from our house. It was always tricky getting these, as the tree was in full view of his house. You had to try and work out if he was in or not before you sneaked in. If he was in he’d come hollering and shouting at you, and he had a very loud voice so it was all a bit scary! Peter Smith b 1946

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, 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!

Peter Smith: Thorley North View, 1950s

Thorley houses EAST

Thorley houses  with North View


We moved from my Gran’s in South Street, Yarmouth into a new council house at North View, Thorley in 1952. It had two inside flush toilets and a bathroom…. very impressive for me as I’d been used to using a cold, dark outside toilet and no bathroom in my 6 previous years of childhood.

Moving to the new council houses also meant new neighbours with children and new friends to play and argue with. Mostly we got on well with each other and invented our own entertainment in the open air.

Eileen and Peter Smith: Thorley, Blacksmith’s cottages

When Ralph came back from the war, he didn’t want an indoor job so he went to work at Wellow Farm, and we lived in one half of Blacksmith’s Cottages. That didn’t last long. Ralph had arranged to play cricket one Saturday when they’d been told they would have the afternoon off. The foreman changed his mind and told him he’d have to stay on, haymaking. Ralph told him the hay wasn’t fit, and he’d committed to play in the team. The foreman told him to collect his cards, and we had to move out of the tied cottage. We moved back to stay with my parents in Yarmouth, and applied for a Council House. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Ralph Smith as a boy, with Mr. Kingswell of Wellow Farm in the rickyard with lurchers

Ralph Smith as a boy, with Mr. Kingswell of Wellow Farm in the rickyard with lurchers ready for hare coursing, 1920s

My earliest memory of Thorley is from when we lived at Blacksmiths Cottages, the one nearest the church. We didn’t have an inside toilet there, only an Elsan chemical toilet in the shed. As I write this I can smell it even though 63 years have gone by since I last used it!

Blacksmith's cottages 2013

Blacksmith’s cottages 2013

Peter Smith b 1946   

Peter Smith: Thorley 1950s

Thorley from above

Thorley from above

Thorley in the 1950’s had many things of interest for me. The small stream at the end of our houses contained hundreds of sand shrimps under the stones, and caddis fly larvae were quite often found. The bigger stream over the fields, Thorley Brook, held other delights such as sticklebacks, minnows, tadpoles and water beetles, all of which we used to catch and bring home in jam jars. One day I brought home a jar with some tadpoles and a water beetle, hoping eventually to see the tadpoles turn into frogs. The next morning I found, to my amazement, all the tadpoles had disappeared. Had they changed into frogs already and jumped out?  The water beetle, which was about 2” long, had made the most of a ready meal and eaten the tadpoles. Peter Smith b 1946

Peter Smith: Thorley, Newclose Farm horses 1950s

Horse drawn binder 1913

Horse drawn binder 1913


Heal’s Farm (Newclose) cart horses Cornel and Warwick used to be kept in the field behind the Church. They were huge shire horses and would often come and look over the hedge at us as we went down Blacksmith’s Lane. The field there was several feet higher than the Lane so it made the horses seem even bigger. The horses were used for pulling carts around the farm and could often be seen with a two wheeled cart full of mangels that were being dropped in the fields for the cattle to eat. Peter Smith b 1946

Mary Henderson: Thorley, Newclose Farm horses, 1950s, 1940s

Picking up sheaves with working horses

Picking up sheaves with working horses

They had horses down at Newclose – Ernest Heal was the last one to have working horses.

They kept them next to the church and you’d walk up by, and they’d come thundering up. My Gran Hillier said when she lived at Newclose Cottages, she used to go with a bucket and dig up the old mole hill earth for the garden. She was down across by the stream, before the bungalows were built.

You never rattled the bucket, but this time she tripped and the bucket rattled, and these two cart horses came charging up because they thought she had the feed bucket. Instead of leaving the bucket, she just managed to dive over the stile into her garden and these two great heads appeared looking for food. Mary Henderson b 1954

Pete Smith: Funeral 1951

Funeral in snow from Dog Kennel Cottage 1950

Funeral in snow from Dog Kennel Cottage 1950

I remember waiting with my Mum in the snow at the bus stop by Heal’s cart shed (on the corner of Broad Lane opposite Newclose Farm) and being very cold. No bus came along, but while we were waiting, a strange sight came into view; a tractor pulling a trailer with a coffin upon it preceded by my great grandfather Robert (Bob) May the undertaker, with his black funeral great coat and top hat. It was so cold that the tractor, from Tapnell Farm, had an old army coat thrown over the radiator to stop it freezing; a very strange sight indeed for a four year old lad to take in. The bus never did arrive due to the snow.

This was the funeral of Mrs Reader who lived at Dog Kennel Cottage up Broad Lane, on December 16th 1950. Peter Smith b 1946