Reminiscences

If I had my life over again, I’d do the same thing over again.

In Christchurch there was a row of cottages near, what is now, the Thomas Tripp and on the other side of the road was….. On the Fiarmile Road there was only one cottage all together, the Kings Arms used be called the Humbry Hotel and also the perfume shop used to be the Butcher and before that it was a court house. At the bottom wick lane was where I lived with my wife, there was about 6 cottages down there and the cottage next to us is where the old ladies would sit in the windows and make the Pusey Chains. You can see the windowsill in the Red House Museum.

It was lovely down here back then. During the Dog Fights we would go down into the shelter and have a singsong with my friend who had a banjo, we had a great time. Germans used to drop strips of paper down that was black on one side and silver on the other to mess up the radar. At the back of garden the field was full of Canadians camping out on the field. They bombed the Metropol where 200 American Airmen were killed, and then Beales and Woolworth’s were bombed and 2 days later they were open, everyone pitched in and set up huts and they opened.

Sometimes when the Dog Fights were going on, someone would bale out so we would run and gather up the parachutes because the women would like to make dresses and things from them. A German glider landed on St Catherine’s Hill and once the pilot has been captured we celebrated on Victory V day by burning the glider.

There were a lot of Romanies living around Christchurch. I knew a chap called Billy Smith who was a boxer who went around the carnivals and he went round with Freddie Mills and I got to know him too and there in now a plaque in Bournemouth Gardens of him. I knew the Smith’s because I used work for them a lot and then next door to us were the Penfolds who were travelling people who had a pony in the field opposite, so when I was young with my mate we dug a hole and covered it over with grass and dirt and the horse fell in the hole. This horse would go over to the house when it wanted a drink and pop its head through the window of the kitchen and have a drink from the sink!!

Some Romanies went to war; Kalif went to war and was in the Marines in the same regiment as me. When I was a boy I got went on a training ship for 2 years on the Arthusa (?) I was 13 years, after that I did my apprenticeship and after that I went into the Marines. I went to Malta on the Ark Royal most of the time; it was the one Rod Stewart sung ‘We are sailing’ about. My dad came back from Dunkirk, and I remember when he was coming back I saw him walking down the road with his kit and his rifle, tears welling up in my eyes. I was so excited to see him come back. The Penfolds we great people, we could always get most things so rationing was not a problem. We had our own chickens that we kept at the Buddens house so we were ok for chicken and eggs, it was difficult to get the corn to feed them, but we were allocated an amount for them. One day Budden asked me to help him clean the raspberries, the grass had grown up in there, and I used to keep Khaki Campbell ducks and he asked me if he could borrow them to clean the raspberries and said yes but he didn’t know how I would get them to the allotments. I said they’ve got 2 legs they can walk! So they followed me all the way over the allotments. There weren’t the cars like today, if you saw more than 2 cars a day you were lucky.

There was a pub called the 3 Bells where the smugglers would come and she would sit of the barrels of Brandy with her big skirts and hide it! The barracks were built in 1777 and Waterloo Bridge was built in the same year.

Tyneham was taken over by the MOD and used for target practice. And now once a year the relatives of the villagers are allowed back for a service in the church that is still there.

There was a plane that came down in Burton, and I think there was another one that came down near Hurn Airport, which was very small then. There was a small chapel near the airport that all the men would go to and pray before they went off to war. It’s now a house and some of the making and drawings that the men put on the chapel are still there today. Holmsley and Ibsley and Hurn all played their part in the war. They had Spitfires mainly at Hurn and Lancaster Bombers and may be Wellingtons. Sopley Camp was a radar camp, which all very hush hush. When the Vietnamese came over 15-20 years ago they used Sopley Camp to house them.

We used to live in a flat in Albion Road, and the chap that lived in the top flat used to repair the radios. He bought a nissan hut and put it up in the garden to do the radios. When he sold the house, the chap that bought it was a Judo expert and he used the hut as a Judo club.

When the Priory was going to be built, it was supposed be up on St Catherine’s Hill, and still today there is an area up there that is like a bowling green and it’s never changed. But when they started building up there one night it all mysteriously moved to its current position. It is said that there was a mystery carpenter that worked on the priory, people said it was Christ. One day they were trying to put up a beam, but it was too short. But the following day they tried again and it was long enough, and if you visit the Priory now it will be pointed out to you.

In Christchurch itself you can still see, at the top of Wick Lane, the roundabout where they used to turn the Trolley Buses round. There used to be a pub by there called the Dolphin and opposite was a waiting room and then further down there was White Hall and opposite that was the Priory School.

We had a bomb at Iford come down which completely flattened the house, but luckily the people who lived there weren’t at home,

When you go down onto Mudeford Quay you go over the causeway and it used to be called Spider Island, not sure why, may be something to do with the crabs! There’s a chap called Mike Parker who lives there and his brother Peter was killed in a plane that he owned. But Mike Parker’s old cottage doesn’t look like it’s changed for 100 years.

On the end of every 10 houses there was a row of 10 water buckets and we used to tie a string to one and put it through the others and give it a bang and watch them all fall over, and whoever lived in the end house would come out and try to catch us but we were in the farmer’s fields by then!
We used to go swimming in the Cowers Marsh and the water bailiff would come after us and he had a flat bottomed punt, so what we would do is swim out to the punt and push it to the other side so he would have to walk all the way round to Place Mill to get it!

Half way down Convent Walk we used to catch eels.

We had a metal air raid shelter in the house, a Morrison, and my brother cut his eye on it. They were awful.

Where the recreation ground in Christchurch is there’s a road that runs alongside it, Sopers Lane, there used to be an air raid shelter that used to run about 100 feet along there and the people from Christchurch could use it. It ran right the way to where the swings are now. Where the posh houses are near Wick ferry that area used to belong to a chap named McArdal and he used to have a few caravans on there and one bad winter some of the vans floated off down the river. They sold that area to Pontins and has since been sold to the posh house developers.

In Wick Lane there was Chokes Dairy, and John Choke and his 2 sisters are still alive, and John used to come round with a pony and trap selling the milk, ladling it out of the churns.

Christchurch used to be called Twyneham because it means between 2 Rivers, the Stour and the Avon.

Where we are now used to be called the Coddgers Homes, and it was a home for orphaned children, and my mother and my aunt were here as orphans. And where we are now was the matron’s house, and all round was where the children lived.

We got a few refugees in Christchurch in the war, but we had an American Airman staying with us, so I had to sleep under the stairs and he had my bed!

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