Getting Old(er)..........

I suppose it's inevitable as we age to return to the past more frequently. Well there is more back there than is ahead that's for sure.
I am so lucky to still remain in contact with old friends who still live in England. Facebook has been wonderful for me. I don't care what people say against it, for me it's a lifeline to family and friends I no longer see. I don't like the phone and letters, well, I just can't do that anymore. I remember sitting and writing to my parents,like 50 pages. What was I thinking? and how boring that must have been.
Margaret and Poppett

Me at BlueWaters with Poppett


I just PM'd my friend Margaret who I spent most of my childhood with. She lived on a farm, Grove Farm that was down Bidwell at the bottom of Lord's Hill. That's the other thing I am grateful for. I started a page on Facebook for the people who grew up in the village I grew up in. I not only met old friends through that, and neighbours too but learned a lot as well. People come up with great old pictures of the village as it once was. It's certainly not a village now. Officially a town.

My cousin was the Mayor one time. He also served on the council.
A lot of things happened there to change that tiny village into what it is now. For us old folks not for the good. The people who moved there from London have a different perspective. They moved in during the late 50s to 60s. London took awhile to recover after the war. In retrospect I can rethink the things I saw as a child from the distance of adulthood. I of course knew nothing of the war, born in 1946 just after it ended. When we went up to London, on the train, seeing what I thought were building sites were in fact bomb sites. The people who came from London left behind the horrors of the Blitz, they had lived with relatives or rooms or what they described as damp and dingy dwellings into brand new homes. With a garden no less. To us in the village this wonderland was build upon our allotments, and farms and fields. The worse thing was the destruction of the Tithe barn that had existed in the village since the late 1300s.....it was torn down, demolished and burned. Sacrilege to us in the village. The old tithe Farm was also demolished. Behind that farm were the "trenches" where soldiers from WW1 practiced their trench warfare. So much history has been lost. Gone are the village ponds where we could catch newts and tadpoles.


The thing is, it's still being destroyed by progress. New roads and roundabouts have taken our Bluebell woods. There is so much history there that people will forget. The Washbrook where we would collect watercress and fish for Sticklebacks, where my Dad and his brothers also played. So many stories there.

Anyway I digress. I asked Margaret if she had any old pictures that I could share with the Houghton Regis group.
She sent a picture we took one day on our way to Blue waters. I really don't know why it was called that. Someone just joined the group and was asking about a stream, long forgotten and probably buried again. When Blue Waters was a chalk pit, they hit an underground river. It flooded leaving an old train that we got to see in the summer when the water levels went down. Anyway, we were talking about what stream it was he remembered. If it was the one there at Blue Waters it is now back underground because they filled it in. Not sure who "they" are but it was a rubbish tip for awhile and now is a park from what I understand.

We also discussed the Baulk..........a Baulk is a piece of land where the horses would turn while ploughing. An ancient term no longer used as far as I know.

Drydens Farm, that is Grove Farm has been there an awful long time too. Beyond it is an ancient pathway and not many remember that either. It amazes me how much history is entwined in everyday life in England. We are more conscious of walking pathways used for centuries. That is what binds me to my country more than anything else. The link to the past and feeling that I am a link in a chain. I probably know more about the place I lived and grew up now than when I lived there. I do know I appreciate it more now. Finding things in the garden that can be centuries old. Friend Roger found a Roman coin, I found a crystal tray that once held either a salt and pepper or else an ink well. I remember collecting pieces of broken china and I kept those under a gooseberry bush at the back of the garden. I wish I could go collect it all because I bet its all still there.


The fields we roamed freely are mostly built on now. I have pictures of how they used to be. The flowers we found were rare and had the right people known maybe would have been protected. The place where the Chalk pits were is now a nature preserve and I hope will remain so. Fossils are found there and it was once a village called Puddle Hill, a skirmish happened when the Romans went through building their road, the Watling Street.

There were Highwaymen in the day too.The Robber Dunn supposedly gave Dunstable its name and good old Dick Turpin may have roamed that road too on Black Bess.
The Chalk cutting was made so that the stage coaches could get up the hill in the Winter so would have been a great place to raid them.

Puddle Hill settlement would have been at the top of that hill where the chalk pits now are. A small Saxon settlement. Bodies, well skeletons were found when a skull fell down the side of the pit. Maiden Bower was another earth settlement that was found and excavated. Then Ivinghoe Beacon where the beacons would be lit across Britain to send messages of births and deaths of Kings and Queens of invasions and even today are lit in celebration.

Pascombe pit a Roman Ampitheatre

I feel it all a part of who I am. I can not feel that connection here in Michigan,no matter how beautiful it is here.

Houghton Regis, where I lived my life before I came here. Where my parents and grandparents are buried. I want to be there. Even as it is now it's where I belong. Alas, it is not to be but I dream and that is probably what all old people do. Dream of those who went before of old friends and of family long gone.
My family lie in both Church yards in Houghton Regis. Some at the church and some at chapel in the old cemetary and the new. I love the old cemetary best, I remember it as a peaceful place covered in ivy and birds singing and nesting there. Unfortunately they cleaned it up.It sort of lost it's charm.Ah well I am sure nature will soon take it back again.

My families stones now lay against that wall, at least they were easy to find. Thanks to Alan Winter for some of the pictures I placed in this page.