Memories

 I was born in Ledbury in the county of Hereford on 17th September 1951 and lived there until I married at the age of twenty so I know something of the changes to the town from the mid fifties to the present. Yes, I do remember a lot about my childhood even back to that time and still have strong memories of how the town was back then.

                       "The Times They Are A Changin'."   (Bob Dylan)

Ledbury has always been a market town, but in recent years, the market has gone and a new, badly needed hospital has been built on the site, impressive it is too from the outside. I don’t know what it’s like on the inside though and have no wish to visit for any reason to find out.

            There was a train service to Gloucester in the fifties and my mother would take my two sisters and me over to buy our new school clothes from the Bon Marche, now Debenhams. But we didn’t have to walk all the way to the railway station, just to the Halt in Bridge street. That site has seen three changes that I know of. It was part of the Hereford to Gloucester canal before it became a railway and now, it’s a little park area with the old line being a nature trail. No, I’m not old enough to remember it being a canal but I remember being told that it was when I was a child. My mother took us to see the last train to Gloucester at the time of the Beeching cuts when a lot of lines were closed down. That little steam train was packed with people wanting to make that last trip. I wonder how they got back.

            Those were the days when my father would take us up to the station to see the new diesel trains and I can still remember how excited I was when I saw one appear out of the tunnel. How things have changed. Now people go all ga-ga over steam engines, which is good I suppose. We all like a bit of nostalgia.

            Just below the station on the Hereford road was the local swimming pool and that is now a housing estate. I’ve spent many happy afternoons in that pool, open air and non-heated. God it was cold! But we had a lot of fun there and it was always busy during the long hot summers we had then. You could have a swim then spread your towel out on the wide concrete area and lie down to dry off under the hot sun. The good thing about that pool for me was that I only had to cross one main road to get to it. From where I lived I could walk across the fields to get to it and not have to worry about getting knocked down by a car or lorry.

            By today’s standards, there wasn’t a lot to do around Ledbury, but as kids we made our own fun. Being a small town, you didn’t have to walk far to be out in the country although, what is a five minute walk today seemed like a days trek when you’re four foot nothing and Ledbury is surrounded by woods. There’s Doghill wood, probably the smallest of them all, the Conigree which is pretty big and stretches almost to Eastnor and the Frith which again, is quite a large wood and one which I never really explored a great deal.

            The Conigree was probably the favorite and as a kid, I had a lot of fun and a lot of adventures playing soldiers or cowboys and Indians with loads of places to hide and to set an ambush. We even made real bows and sort of real-ish arrows. They worked anyway and no one got hurt. Well, not much anyway. Just the occasional cut, scratch or poke in the eye. Nothing serious though. Happy days.

The name Conigree probably comes from the original "Coney Garth" which in turn means "rabbit warren" and takes us back to ancient times.

            The woods are still there and have probably been tidied up. I know Dog hill has. There’s been a lot of thinning of the trees. I know there’s a special word for it but I can’t think of it at the moment. Is it copsing, or something like that? I dunno. Anyway, the last time I was up there, which was a few years ago, there were a lot more paths opened up.

            It was just to the side of dog hill wood that we used to go sledging in the winter when we’d had a good fall of snow. There’s a field which we called the paddock, probably because there was always a horse or two in there, and it had a steep slope. The only problem was that if you strayed too far to the left, there was a hedge at the bottom and beyond the hedge was a big pond. Say no more!  I can’t remember anyone ever ending up in the pond, but maybe they did. If no one did, then we were all extremely lucky because we used to go down that hill on sledge, metal tray or anything that would slide, at a great rate of knots.

           At the other end of the lane that runs to the one side of the wood, you come to the top of Knapp lane, a very steep hill that you can never ride a bike up. That is one steep climb and it goes on forever. I can remember vividly going up there with a load of friends dragging soap box carts with us, all the way to the top which had to be a mile or so. I can’t recall exactly how many of us there were, but I was with my oldest friend, Michael Hodgetts. He had a two seater cart and I was going to ride down on the back of it with him driving.

            Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden a cart down a steep hill doing around thirty miles per hour (at least it seemed like that) but it’s scary and I mean wetting yourself scary. Well, we got to the top of the hill and we all set off with a shout of “Geronimo” or something like that and were soon picking up speed. I think it might have been the wobbling of the steering that did it but I began to panic. I shouted to Mike to slow down, but there weren’t any brakes. So I shouted “I’m getting off” which was a stupid thing to say considering the speed we were travelling at. It must have been a hundred miles an hour (okay so it’s a bit of an exaggeration.) but it really felt like it. Mike shouted back to stay on, but I wouldn’t listen and I rolled off the back.

         

Mike and Corinne

This is Mike and his lovely wife, Corrinne. She is lovely in all senses of the word and he is a very lucky guy. I hope they will let me know if I've mis-spelt her name.

Anyway, it was a big mistake to abandon ship, I should have listened to him and stayed with it. I ended up with grazed knees, elbows, face and almost every other part of my body. There was skin missing everywhere. The best of it was that about half way down the hill, it levels out and has a slight rise and everyone got there safely, except for me. The one thing no one ever thought about was traffic. I mean, it’s a public highway and cars use it all the time. Talk about stupid stunts. But we were kids having fun and the only one getting hurt was muggins here. Besides, there weren’t so many cars on the road in those days.

              That was one way we enjoyed ourselves. Nowadays, kids enjoy themselves by beating up old ladies to steal a couple of quid. In our fun, no one got hurt except us. We didn’t even go around destroying other peoples’ property for kicks either. If you did, you got a belt off your dad or mum. We respected our elders in those days and we certainly respected our parents. Well, I did anyway.

This is Mike and me pictured after just returning from swimming. He was a lot shorter then me back then but I think he's now probably taller than I am. We had a lot of fun at that old open air swimming pool and the summers always seemed to hot and to go on forever.

The river Leadon, or the “brook” as we knew it was another great place to go. There was nothing there only water but we had some great times there. Not exactly "Swallows and Amazons" but it was wonderful.

            There was one particular part of it which we knew as “Sandy bay” and only because there was a small earthy outcrop where one could stand and look for minnows. That’s what we used to catch down there with a jam jar on a piece of string. Some of the braver amongst us would dispense with shoes and socks and paddle at the risk of cutting your feet on broken glass. It was only a short walk across the fields to that particular spot and on reflection, it was great when the weather was warm. It makes me think of the famous five in the Enid Blyton books, having an adventure. Each day of the Summer holidays was an adventure for me and my friends but at the time, you don’t realize it. It’s only when you reach the age of fifty or so that you start to think about all the fun you had doing the things that kids do and the things that you read about other kids doing in children’s adventure stories. It was great to be so carefree and know that the only thing you had to worry about was if it rained the next day, what would you do for fun when you’d planned to go up the woods to play.

                      "With a little help from my friends." (The Beatles)

My early school years were memorable only because I hated them. I hated every minute of school life and I think it was because I wasn’t very good at it. I was absolutely atrocious at arithmetic but luckily, I was seated next to someone who was a master at it. His name was David Windmill and he was actually excellent at everything he did. My only forte was music, I was pretty good at it even at an early age. By the age of seven, I could pick out a tune on a piano just after hearing it on the radio once. I couldn’t read music and although my parents tried to encourage me and even fixed up some lessons for me, I just found it totally boring and stopped going after five. I was just content to play by ear, listen to a piece of music then try to play it. I was okay as long as I stuck to the key of C because it didn’t have any sharps and flats.

            The fact that the schools I attended as an infant and junior weren’t the most welcoming places being built in Victorian times I believe but on the whole, the teachers were quite pleasant. I just hated being there and would have preferred to do a lot of more interesting things.

            But then, having failed my 11-plus to go to grammar school, I started my secondary education at Ledbury Secondary school which was a turning point in my life mainly because of all the new friends I made there. On the first day, whilst standing in the assembly hall in our form lines, a stranger came to stand next to me. We started talking and chatting. I found out he was from Colwall and his name was Paul Hyde. We remained friends all through school and still do. The last time I saw him was at a barbecue at a mutual friends home but I didn’t recognize him until I was told who he was. I was so thrilled to see him after so many years, about thirty six or so. It was an amazing experience.

            Of course, he was just one of many new friends, but the most memorable because we were both new to that school and both just eleven years old. My other close friends, people I grew up with and went all through school with are many, and I can honestly say, they are true friends. People I could always rely on. The one person who I have always been close to is Mike Hodgetts who now lives in Canada with his family. He emigrated there around 1970 but his parents still live in the house next door to where I grew up. I don’t think I ever fell out with Mike or at least, we never had a scrap over anything. We did do some stupid things as kids though.

          

Phil Hodges

Phil Hodges (left)and Richard Hamblin are two other close friends. Phil and I both have the same silly sense of humour, we both laugh at the same things. I still think about the fun we had as kids and how we would be creased up with laughter just by looking at a Beano annual together. I think perhaps our sense of humour was a bit too advanced actually. We could read those cartoon stories about the Bash street kids and find them so stupid with the written sound effects (aargh! Ooya! Crunch!) really stupid yet highly amusing. It was because they were so stupid that we found them so funny I suppose.

 Richard was always the more sensible one and would look at Phil and me quite strangely when we started laughing hysterically over a kids comic. He always seemed more mature than the rest of us. I knew him before Phil actually because our parents were good friends and we would go to play at each others homes. He was always one for the girls too. He was never short of a girl who wanted to go out with him. Richard always was and still is a soul music fan but to me, he is a great friend.

Duncan (Duggie) Isaacs

Duncan Isaacs (pictured right) whom you will find mentioned on another page is someone else I went through school with and we had a hell of a lot of laughs amongst all the learning. Duncan was a bit of a rebel like me but I reckon he could sell fridges to eskimos. I've known him for as long as I've known Phil and Richard but maybe not as long as Mike Hodgetts. He was with us on that excursion up to the top of Knapp lane with our soap box carts. We thought it would be a great idea to ride them down from the top. Now if you know Knapp Lane, then you'll know what a stupid idea it was. Or at least it would be today with the amount of traffic on the roads today. I was the only one who got hurt that day because I was riding on the back of Mikes cart and decided to jump off because I thought we were going to die in a terrible accident. They all got down safely except for me. But we did have some fun too. Cowboys and indians up the woods making bows and arrows. We even had a path called "Arrow Path" because it had the best trees with the best branches for making arrows for our home made bows. Ahhhh, happy days.

Of course, it wasn't only lads in my circle of friends. We were a a mixture of both sexes and the great thing was that there was nothing at all sexual between us; it was just plain and ordinary friendship. We were all just a part of a friendly circle. Some of the names of girls that come to mind are Yvonne Meredith, she was quite a character, pretty damned tough too and very capable of looking after herself, but a really nice person underneath a hard exterior. I hope she doesn't mind me saying that.

            Another was a girl called Pauline Bradley who had a really bubbly personality and a mop of curly hair to go with it. I'm sure she'll be in touch with me if I've got it all wrong. I've been in touch with Pauline through friends reunited and was so pleased to get a reply from her. I get the feeling that a lot of people just want to see their names on the net and can't be bothered to pay the fee so that they can e-mail people. They would rather have them getting in touch with them instead. Anyway thanks for the reply and subsequent messages Pauline. I'm not going to mention your nickname.

            Christine Brown lived just around the corner from me so I knew her pretty well all my life. She was and still is a good friend although I don't see much of her. I won't say that I never had a crush on her, because I did when I was younger, but then, so did a lot of other lads. But it never came to anything and in a way I'm glad because it might have spoilt a great friendship.

            Christine had a friend called Pamela Hamilton and she was a bit more special to me. She was one I did have a brief romantic liaison with. She was a very pretty girl with short brown hair and one day, I asked her out. Well our first and only date was a walk up Knapp lane and along the bottom of the Frith wood. We walked and chatted whilst I tried to pluck up the courage to hold her hand. Maybe she was doing the same. I was desperate to kiss her too but I just couldn't pluck up the courage. I was a bit nervous of girls in those days. I was afraid of rejection I suppose. But with Pamela, I was afraid she might think I was pushing things a bit if I tried to kiss her. Plus I wasn't sure if she felt the same about me as I did about her. Pam and her family moved away from Ledbury to live in Gloucester and I never heard from her again. So, Pam, if you're reading this please get in touch.

 The Lucas twins, John and Jim I count among my friends although I didn't hang around with them after leaving school. But we did spend some time playing together as kids, along with the rest of the gang. They were always interested in railways and trains which I suppose came from their father who worked on the railway. But they weren't what you would call "anoraks" because what they had was a genuine interest in the workings of the railway and the trains that ran on them. I seem to remember they had an incredible model railway layout in the shed in the back garden of their house and I was very. very envious. Anyway, John himself went to work for the railway and still does whilst Jim took up a career in the police force. I believe he's a detective in Leominster now but I'm sure John will correct me if I'm wrong.

                                        Lizard Mountain.

Lizard Mountain circa 2006

I wonder how many kids living in Ledbury today know where Lizard Mountain is, or if they've even heard of it. Actually, there aren't that many lizards there and it isn't even a mountain but it does exist. If you go up on the Worcester road out of Ledbury, past the police station and under the trees, you come to a turning for Coddington on the left. Turn left there and it's a few hundred yards up that road. It's actually an old quarry where, according to my late father, my grandfather was a foreman when it was working. It's derelict and deserted now and has been for as long as I can remember.

               

        

Anyway, back to what I was talking about. Lizard Mountain was an old quarry with a small pool where we used to catch newts and things. It was like being in another world. You couldn't see anything but cliffs, trees and fields and you couldn't hear any distracting noises either except for the squeals of delight when one of us managed to catch a newt. It was great fun being up there with my friends, playing cowboys and Indians or just exploring. I remember there being an old rusty truck there. I think it was a Bedford actually and we used to play on that too. 

Lizard Mountain digitally changed
to show where the pool was.

The picture above shows my attempt at digitally enhancing the first picture to give an idea of how it looked when I was younger. I know it's not perfect but it was a long time ago and all I can remember is there being a pool there. So, please don't look at it and say, "It was nothing like that, that Morris bloke doesn't know what he's talking about!" cos, as I said, it's just to give an idea of how it was when "we was kids" which was a long, long time ago.

        

Brian (Dago) Davies

I do remember one occasion when I was up there with a couple of friends, one of whom was Brian Davies (Pictured left)who lived in Queensway, just across the way from where I lived. Someone else was with us but I can't remember who it was. Well, Brian and I decided, for some unknown reason that we would make great mountaineers and Lizard mountain offered the ideal place to practice our non-existent mountaineering skills. So, we started to climb up to a ledge which we could see about twenty feet up. At least it looked like twenty feet but was probably less. Well, things look bigger and further when you're a nipper, don't they? Anyway, we reached the ledge and did intend to go on up to try to reach the top, but sensibly, we decided it wasn't worth the risk. We both agreed we should go back down which on reflection was really quite the sensible thing to do. There was one slight problem though. We were both terrified of falling and didn't have the courage to make our way down.  

The ledge where Dago and
got stuck.

Luckily, there was a third person but for the life of me, I can't remember who it was, and he went down the road where there was a small farm to get help. It seemed ages before the farmer came strolling up with a ladder to help us down. That wasn't all he gave us either, there were a few harsh words about doing stupid things and being where we shouldn't be. Anyway, we were very, very grateful to him for saving our lives. It didn't stop us going to Lizard Mountain either we just didn't do anymore mountaineering.

       

                                    The Winter of 1963

I guess that there are a lot of people of my age who will remember the winter of 63 as being a particularly cold one with a heck of a lot of snow. I was twelve years old at the time and can still remember it vividly. I had never seen snow like it and it stayed around until March of that year. Of course as kids we loved it whilst the grown ups hated it. (Funny things, grown ups.) Anyway, when there's snow there is lots of fun including snowball fights and of course, sledging and the place to go sledging was "the paddock". How many young people today know where the paddock is? For those who don't, it's the big field on the East side of Dog Hill wood with a long and fairly steep slope. I seem to remember going up there with Mike Hodgettes (again) and he had a fantastic sledge which his dad made for him. It was mainly of wood construction with steel runners and boy did it go. The problem was that if you ventured too far to the right of the paddock, there was a pond on the other side of the fence. It was frozen over at the time but no one was sure how thick the ice was, so caution was the order of the day. We played out in the snow until our hands and feet were frozen and we could stand the cold no longer. Then, it was inside to warm up in front of the coal fire. No central heating in those days. I believe that was the year my dad, as a lorry driver for H J Chapman, was stuck up on the Yorkshire moors for almost a week because of the bad weather.

If anyone has any photos of that winter and would be happy to e-mail them to me, I would like to post them here for all to see.

Even going to school was fun. That's right, they stayed open all through the bad weather unfortunately for us kids. The secondary school had playing fields on three levels and of course the snow drifted up against them so you couldn't tell where the edge was. You would be walking cautiously toward what you thought was the edge of the bank and then suddenly, you were gone. You just slid down into the drift of snow and had to tunnel out of the bottom. It was great fun to dive head first into it and then dig yourself out. Okay, so it may have been a bit dangerous as well, but as a kid, you didn't think about that sort of thing. Kids today are over protected and are missing out on a lot of fun. But I can understand the concerns of parents these days with so many strange people around.