Okay, and – what – did you have to pass the barn?
G.O: Oh, yes. When – also, when I was still primary school age, I used to go to – when I had younger brothers and sisters – used to have to go to the, what was the Clinic down Holland Road, to get the baby powder. You know, for the – when babies were fed with bottles. And they sold – the free orange juice and the free, you know, it was National Health you could get it on. And I used to go, walk up there. And I remember, especially in the wintertime going up there and there was, um, Birch’s Mill, but I think it was shut – I think it was closed, then, but then there was Ploughman’s Mill, which was still being used. And also, then walking back, the black, um, old black… warehouse, yeah, it was the opposite side when walking back, and especially when I could bike, I knew as it was getting darker, I used to bike past or run past that quickly, because it was pretty scary and it was reputed to be rat infested. It was, it wasn’t used then, but it was still a bit creepy and, er, then the blacksmith’s were still operating then, on the left hand side, and it was a fish and chip shop that was next door to it. And then Chain Bridge, which was used quite a lot, but yeah, thatsticks in my mind, the black, the black barn.
Yeah. Did you saythat the Chain Bridge had gaps in it?
G.O: Yeah, the, the planks across the floor, there, yes there were some gaps, which you know, you used to step across, ‘cause you thought you’d probably, you know, fall in, but it did used to move. And the boys deliberately used to jump up and down to make it move.Sounds like fun. Can you remember any of the shops and buildings that were there?G.O: Well, opposite the blacksmiths, there was the co op, which was there in the 1930s apparently, according to my Spalding books, and my great uncle Arthur Lane was the manager there for quite a while, but I can’t – Oh, I can remember Godfrey’s shop, but that was on the, the corner, but I think it’s classed as being in Commercial Road as opposed to being in the High Street, it’s just, as you look out of the blacksmith’s on your left, on the corner, and he was a gentleman that used to – he got about in what we called a bath chair, because he’d um, suffered some injuries I think in the war or – I don’t know whether it was the First World War, but he’d only got one arm, but his shop used to sell ice cream and sweets, etc.
Yeah. And you were telling me about Teapot Lane?
G.O: Oh, yes. Yeah. So, where Springfields, one of the car parks is now, as you go down Roman Bank across the bridge, on the right hand side it used to be very tall trees. And as you went around the corner, it was called Teapot Lane, because there was a gentleman called Stan Day, who grew, er, salad crops, vegetables, and flowers, and I used to go there for my mother to get fresh flowers for her to take down the cemetery. And he had this old caravan like a gypsy caravan, which he used to have his cup of tea in and smoke and etc. But I think it was called Teapot Lane because I think he had a teapot painted on the side of this van. But it was nice, it was like a little allotment garden, which is now a great big car park, unfortunately. And then, um, when we first went to live down there, it was all fields, and I used to play in the field opposite my house, which was a wheat field, we used to make dens in it, etc. Then, I think it became a tulip field just in front of Fulney Church.
And then, years later it became Crown Drive and then, ironically, when I got married that’s where we first went to live – in the fields that I used to play in!
G.O:And then in this field, also, there were these big trees between um, what is now – let me just think – the new Lidl is there now. Yeah.
G.O: Which was formerly the Welland Hospital, but before that, it was another field belonging to Christopher Sly. When I was younger, I used to go bean-pulling there. Well, between Crown Drive and that field, there were these big trees, and a dike. But we used to, we made this swing out of these ropes and old boards, so we could swing in between these trees. So I said we did – we made a lot of our own entertainment in those days.
Very nice talking to you. Thank you