History Trail 6 - Village Green memories

Chris Harrison remembers:

A big memory is probably as a 10 year old.

From school I would go back down to Mum’s for lunch. I used to run everywhere, so as I ran back to school big Arthur (Mac) Reverely, the village bobby, a lovely man, stopped me and said, "You can’t go any further we’re about to blow the fish and chip shop up!"

The fish and chip shop was a very odd folly; it was a gable end and a bit at the end of a row of houses and it wasn’t required anymore so it had to be blown up. So they had to take it down and only a handful of people saw it happen.

There were a few buildings then at the point of being knocked down – the Orchard, which was decided to destroy and build some old age pensioners’ bungalows on, which was sad but probably practical. There were a number of hovels - you couldn’t call them more than that; also early Victorian properties including a well in the middle of the village, and they all went - about six of them in all. They were interesting, of an unusual design I remember.

A man called Sonner Holland lived in one of them. It was a general tidying up of the villages that happened then.

So when I got back to school I said, “You won’t believe it, you won’t believe it, they’ve blown the fish and chip shop up!”

No-one would believe me!