My memories of Norfolk, by Mrs Short.

I was born in a cottage in Hulver Street in 1940, which was the home of my parents Amos and Rosa Parker and lived there for seven years. During this time at the age of 5 I started at Wendling School. The teachers were Miss Eagle who taught the younger children in the small room at the front of the school and Miss Rowel who taught the older children in the bigger room at the back of the school. One thing that stand out in my mind is the big pot belly stove in the big room which had big back iron railings round it, in the winter time they would stand the milk bottles inside these railings for it to thaw out. I can still picture it now, it would be brought in with the milk top standing about 3inches above the top of the bottle supported by a column of frozen milk, this would then melt down and run over the floor and the milk left in the bottle would taste very watery. On the back of the school was the coalhouse and a kitchen where the lunches were cooked. The school at this time stood on its own on the side of a little lane and beyond the school there was a little ford and then beyond that Abby Farm where Miss Rowel lived, of course this was before the council houses were built opposite the school.

My mother used to work at the village shop and post office which was at the top of station road, one thing that always seemed strange was although the post office was in the shop the parcels had to be picked up by the bus from a cottage next to Mill Farm. I could never understand even at this young age why the parcels were not delivered and collected from the post office. My mother also use to breed angora rabbits, as in those days angora was made into wool and every now and again a rabbit would die or be killed. This rabbit would be skinned and cooked, the skin would be pinned onto a board and put out in the sun to dry, then every so often an old gentleman would come round on his bike to collect the fur and the skins. This gentleman used to wear a Bowler type hat and always wore a black waistcoat with a key fob on a beautiful gold chain and a watch in his pocket, you had to have money in those days to have something like that. Another thing I can remember about him was that he wore boots and tight things round his legs made of leather, I think they were called buskins.
My father used to work at the bakery near the village shop. I use to love going to the bake house with my dad on a Friday as he use to give me a job which I loved to do which was to put the cream in the sponges which were cooked every Friday ready to take round to the people for the week end. Thinking back these sponges must have been a real luxury, as you would have to save up your coupons in order to be allowed to buy a sponge in those days. ”I still love the smell of freshly baked bread from a bakery”. I also use to love watching my father kneading the dough by hand, of course the ovens in the bakery were fired by coal.

I also remember the Rose cottage public house between the chapel and the cottage where Mr and Mrs Bennet lived with their daughter Pamela, another public house in Wendling I can remember is the Spring Cottage opposite the end of Hulver Street.
I remember my parents always telling us children to stay away from Wendling Hall because it was haunted and then one night my father coming home and telling my mother that he had heard chains rattling, the story was and I don’t know if it is true is that a lady was kept in chains in the hall and then thrown into the well.

My cousin Sheila Moore lived at the end of Hulver Street and we used to walk down Hulver towards Bradenham and look at all the wild flowers growing in the ditches and on the banks beside the road. The farm near where I lived was Fern Farm which belonged to the Rix family who later moved to Vine Cottage, which was next to the bakery in Wendling. I also remember Morris Barber who lived in the house just over the rail line, another man I can remember was a friend of my father called Reggie Meen who lived up near Mill farm on Swaffham Road,
My grand parents lived in the first cottage in Station Road next door to Miss Eagle and Mr and Mrs Meen. When I was visiting my grandparents I used to go down station road to a pond near the railway to pick Flag Iris’s to take back to my grandmother. Other times I would go across the road from my grandparents house to pick primroses which grow in the garden of a house which had been bombed out in the war. I remember my grand parents having a pull down oil lamp made out of brass and glass. My grandmother used to do all her cooking in an oven, which was built into the wall next to the fire, this oven had a big black door with a brass handle and was heated by a fire, which was underneath. Out side there was a shed with a big copper in it which was where you done your washing and at Christmas my grandmother would cook Christmas puddings in the copper for family and friends. My grand mother by trade was a dressmaker, I think she originated from Scarning, her parents name was Spurn.

When the American air men were based at Wendling, families in the local villages were asked to allow some of the air men to stay in their homes at weekends to give them a family life while in the UK. The air man who use to stay with us was a belly gunner from the 8th Air Force, called Stanley Piecarz, from Illenois, Chicago and we kept in contact with him for many years. We also had polish prisoners of war who used to come past our house to work on Rix’s farm. During this time we used to watch the German bombers fly over Wendling and then use the main Dereham/Norwich road as a marker, they would literally turn above the cottage where I lived then they would turn right for Coventry and left for Norwich. I can remember being in my dad’s arms watching as the planes came over. The night they bombed Coventry the sky lit up. When they Bombed Norwich in the May I was in the Jenny Lynn hospital and they took us out of the hospital to where the nurses houses now all are as this was where all the air raid shelters were and the thing that I remember most was the bombs, the bombs were dropping on Norwich and we’d been taken down into the air raid shelters and there was just this very low bulb and as the bombs were dropping on Norwich the bulb was swaying and you actually heard the vibrations of the bombs and the whole thing would judder, there was a load of us kids in there and we were in there for 3 days and 4 nights, it was quite frightening really. The reason I was in hospital was that I had had my finger chopped off in what used to be Garlings. This shop is now River Islands. I was only 2 at the time, this lady came along (I can still see her to this day), and she was a very robust lady wearing a hat and a thick coat and was carrying a big wicker basket on her arm. As she went through Garlings swing door she took my arm with her, then as the doors came back they chopped the top off my finger and it then fell on the floor. I was screaming blue murder and they had to get an ambulance which took me to the Jenny Lynn hospital, about this time a elderly lady had died in the West Norwich hospital, they took her little finger nail off and grafted it onto my finger. I was a Guinea pig really because it had never been done before. They just plonked the thing on and tried to knit it together but of course it went wrong so it all had to be taken off. I lost all the flesh and every thing off there, but they found a live nail nerve down in my knuckle. Well my parents had signed a paper to have it totally off because that is what they thought they’d got to do. But they decided to try and experiment and they took this nail off the lady and grafted it on. Because my finger was only a little tiny thing they had to stretch the nerves and then sew it all back together again. This saved my finger though I can’t straighten it unless I push it. But at least I have got a finger. When I came out of hospital I remember seeing a massive hole in the ground where Debenhams now is, it stayed like that for a long time and at Christmas time they would sell Christmas trees from the bottom of the hole actually the whole of the hole would be full of trees. I suppose it’s like where the bottom storey of Debenhams is now.

My father was in the home guard along with Ted Langley, Denis Neil, Morris Barber and Reggie Meen. My father told me one night that him and Ted Langley were lying in a field over near the station one night and suddenly heard all this heavy breathing behind them and they didn’t know what to do, they waited until this breathing got ever so loud, then swung round with their rifles to say hands up or what ever, to see this big cow standing there. He said we weren’t about to get shot but trampled to death by the local cow. I know my father liked doing the home guard. I think that he and the rest of them thought it was a really important thing to be doing. Looking after the homeland and the people around it. There were a lot of Germans shot down around East Anglia so anything could have happened really. My father did once say to me that there was a bomb store somewhere near the pub at the end of Hulver Street.
We used to go to flower shows and watch the cricket on the common, which was next to the village hall and my father use to go to the back of the spring pub playing green bowls on a fantastic lawn.

When I was 7 we moved to a building on Beeston air field and started at Beeston school. The teachers at this school were Mrs Tann who lived in the school house and Mrs Websdale who lived in the first cottages on the left as you turned out of Wendling to go to Beeston, just near the railway line there, there used to be a family by the name of Wright living in a cottage painted black, there is a bungalow there now.

After taking my 11plus I went to crown road school in Dereham and then I went to Kings Lynn collage. Some of the people I can remember from my time in Beeston the Littleprouds, the Cross’s who kept lots of goats on their farm, Mr and Mrs Wadeson who moved to the vicarage in Beeston and the Cowells who had a son called Raymond they later on moved to the new council houses built near the school in Wendling and I also used to play with a girl from a pub in the village which I think may have been the Plough. On the water tower site I can remember the Everett family, I can remember this family because they had three daughters who made my life hell, that’s really why I remember them quite honestly.

My father use to deliver bread round Beeston first by horse and cart and then he progressed to a van, one of the families we would deliver to was the Skipper family who lived at what I think was Pond Farm, I think it was called this as it had a huge pond.
When we moved to Dunham I can remember there was a little shop, a Mrs Bainbridge had it. She was a lovely lady, she had biscuits loose in tins and they all had to be put into blue bags. The parson who lived in the Vicarage there was Mr Henderson. We use to have to bike into Litcham to go to the doctors there, his name was Dr Knapper. I can remember they use to have all chemical stuff and everything at the big house. Dr Knapper was the oldest one and lived in the house. You walked up the steps and you had the piece with the drugs in and then you walked in the little door to the waiting room. Going back to Dunham another family I can remember is Mr & Mrs Thompson who live in Dunham, I use to spend such a lot of time with him because he was the shoe maker and the house he lived, well as you go into Dunham there’s a cottage that stands endways, Mr & Mrs Thompson use to live there. You use to go down a little driveway to the bottom of the garden to an outhouse that he used to have all his cobbling equipment and everything in there and I use to love going there, he was a lovely gentleman. The thing that I liked best was because he’d got all these beautiful wild fuchsias all around and I love fuchsias. I use to spend all day with him. He’d be sitting there sewing with a big leather thong on his hand and I can still see him now with all these shoes he was mending. He was a lovely old gentleman, he really was. I also remember the people who had the garage in Dunham had a little shop in their house and going to watch movies at the village hall once a week one particular film I remember watching was Mario Lanza in the Student Prince “in colour”.