Houghton Regis back in the day.............

On Facebook I have a group called "Houghton Regis back in the day"..........I was doing a post today that made me think. I want to do the post here as well, just for the record.
I grew up in a small village and Facebook has been awesome, I have found people I never would have without it and never heard from them again. We have fun talking about what the village used to be like and what we got up to. The people who live there now are amazed at what it once was because they never knew it that way. After the war there were many displaced people and some were moved out of London into the countryside. The powers that be chose our village.
Well that's not what this is about really, did it ruin the village? Yes. No one can say otherwise. Was it necessary? Yes. What we disliked intensely was that in doing this the planners ruined everything. Houses destroyed, history destroyed. The 14th century Tithe barn torn down and timber as old as time burned. There is no village now. It's a town with a Mayor and everything. If there had been good planning they could have kept the integrity and looks of the village and expanded it as well. We could have had it all.............ah well. I don't live there now so I can talk and dream with others who have moved away about the place we grew up in and the people we knew. It will live in our hearts as long as we do.

We grew up knowing the owners of the shops in the village. If only by name. The names have been there generations just like mine has. My family has always lived there as far back as I have got so far on my geneology way into the 1700s and beyond.

There were two Butcher shops Mr Pratt at one end and Mr Tompkins at the other. We seemed to go more to Mr Tompkins because it was closer. The meat would be displayed in the front window. Some times a partridge or two or maybe pheasants could be hanging up on hooks with a few chickens in the window. Tompkins the butcher had his animals delivered to the back of his store where they would be slaughtered and dressed. He had a huge fridge/freezer where they would be stored. The meat cut as he needed it. Mum would go in and "What can I do for you today luv" would be the greeting. The floor covered in sawdust covered the smells of fresh meat. A sort of damp smell. Mum would always buy our Poodle Poppett fresh meat every day. She was a fussy poodle and if mum got liver and she was not in the mood, well she would have to go back and get kidney or whatever else she thought of. One day Mr Tompkins suggested brains............well mum took that home and cooked it. Stunk to high heaven and the dog nearly gagged............so mum had a word or two with Mr Tompkins about that and bought something else. Mr Pratt's shop was next to the knackers yard so his was just as fresh.

The baker was Mr Ward. Fresh bread daily, no cut bread in our house Dad would never eat that. We had the real deal fresh and crunchy crusts, sometimes still warm and delivered. I loved the mini Hovis brown bread. A whole loaf to myself, not much bigger than a roll really.
Mr Green was our milkman. An older gentleman when I was a kid. When I did my family history I found we had some connections there. I also found that my friend in Australia, Stella, she was in the Womens Land Army during the war............she was assigned to Greens farm. My Granddad Burt's brother Buster
worked down there sometimes he had a way with ducks apparently. Won prizes for his Aylesbury ducks. Some times Mr Green would come around with his horse and cart loaded with vegetables and all the ladies would be saved a trip to the village shops.

The thing with villages is that everyone is connected some way, some how..... if you go back far enough you will find the connection. They tended to marry within the village until more recent times when travel became easier. So it was that we grew up in a place that grew the food local. No preservatives. No pesticides. Just honest good fresh food bought from people you knew and trusted. Until the new estate was built most of the local men kept an allotment. They grew their own vegetables. Some people kept their own chickens. We could do that then. Good wholesome food and lots of good exercise. How could we not be healthy? Not like today. I don't remember kids having ADHD...........sugar was rationed into the 1950s so sweets were not readily available and never in the quantities they have now. Miss Dickens had a tobacco and sweet shop. Us kids would go in with a penny and she would tell us what we could get for a penny. Not a lot, but it felt good to buy and choose our own. She must have had the patience of a saint that woman. When we got older we could buy Woodbines one or two at a time (Cigarettes)

Further down the village was Mr Odmans the news agent. We would get our comics there. It was a funny place. Very dark. All wood floors and a huge counter with a flap. Mr Odman always wore a striped shirt and an apron, a cap and a cigarette. It smelled of tobacco and newsprint.
Another character was Mr Perry the green grocer. His store was a conglomeration of every imaginable thing. From buttons to tacks, vegetables in tins and fresh. Ask for a pot of glue and somewhere he had one. Lots of little drawers and nooks and crannies full of all sorts of things. Well its all gone now, along with most of the people. The kids moved out and strangers moved in. I still have a cousin living there, so there is still a Hines in the village.

Linking up with Our World Tuesday

Old Friends.............

I love Facebook. I just check in every day and say hello to friends all over the globe. Some are new and some are old. Some I have not seen in 40+ years and some I have never met. Its a wonderful thing this technology. I enjoy small glimpses into their daily lives and giving them a part of my own. I know we can't tell a lot about each other in such brief encounters but its a connection, and one that is so easy now. Before it was a matter of setting aside time to write a letter and mailing it, then waiting for the reply. Now it's instant if you want it to be. It's also a great way to share photos and just so much more. There was a group started on Facebook about the town near where I came from.....Dunstable. I had fun reading that and a friend thought we should start one on Houghton Regis and so I did. What great fun that has become. The group has grown by leaps and bounds and so many stories and pictures being shared. It has got people outside into our old haunts taking pictures to show everyone and rummaging through their own collections of old pictures. Oh the memories. We are remembering how our village used to be when we were growing up. Nothing like the place it has become. Some of the younger members do not remember the village any different to what it is now and they are learning how some of the place names came about and what it was once upon a time when us old folks were young. For most of us old Houghtonians the village had not changed since our fathers days and grandfathers all the way back to the beginning. It was a small village with gas lights and thatched roofs. A farm community with a village pond and a green that was used for the original purpose. The pond for wagons to go through so that the wood in the wheels would not become brittle. The Village green became the place for soccer and cricket and a play area for kids. They took out one of the big farms to build the London overspill estate and tore down the old Tithe Barn and all the farm buildings in order to make it. All the thatched roof cottages are gone, the public houses have dwindled or become eateries now.




Some lovely buildings remain, just a glimpse of what we once knew. The church that has stood for hundreds of years. The Kings Arms. The Chequers. The manor house on the green is still there with its tunnels that are supposed to go all the way to the church, blocked in now no doubt. The Crown public house is still there but little else of the old village. The ponds are gone and built upon. There are faint signs here and there, where the hairdressers are you can still see exposed beams from way way back. The village we knew was quiet and slow moving, everyone knew everyone and their families knew each other from hundreds of years back. Those same families are most likely gone now because the children (like me) moved away. There is only one Hines left in the village and he had girls.





Talking to others from the village about the places we played and the things we did, its a far cry from what children do now. We were content outside, finding our own games and troubles to be in. The pranks that kids got up to were so innocent compared to what people do now. No less troublesome to the parents of the time no doubt. Back then our village police man rode a bike and he would take a child home for punishment if the need arose. In my dads day the local Bobby would deliver a good "thick ear" and take the offender home for another one from the father of the child. Today we are not allowed to do much about wayward children and the world is a worse place for that.



Us girls loved to pick wild flowers. We climbed trees and played in the chalk pits and fields. Innocent but fun games with our friends. We didnt need or want toys we made our own fun. Just as well as no one had the money for them. Inside things were books and crayons and paints. Outside we made our own chassis out of old pram wheels we found that had been dumped in the hedgerows by the visiting gypsy band. We got wooden boxes from the grocers if we could and spent ages putting it all together to race them down Bidwell Hill. We were scavengers. I never had a bike and neither did any of my friends. We would go down to the Green to play on the swings though or traipse along the footpaths in search of birds nests or rabbits lairs. Mud pies and dugout dens or tree houses were the big thing to do. I remember Mick Bird and myself digging out an underground home that we put corrugated iron on for a roof, covered it in branches and got a candle to light the place up.We would just sit for ages in there thinking it was the best thing in the world especially if it rained.



Most of my childhood was spent with my friend Margaret who lived at Grove farm. We loved the outdoors and I learned a lot being there. I learned about what made the hedgerows and about the critters that lived there. The woods and fields and all that grew or lived in them. I saw how a sheep was shorn and dipped, and how to get eggs from under a cranky chicken. I saw a lamb being born and the wonder of it all..........baby cows and what a disaster foot and mouth disease used to be to the farmers and the animals. I remember fowl pest and farms being wiped out by it the smells of burning carcasses that permeated the air. Of having to walk through disinfectant to get on or off any of the farms to prevent the spread of disease.
I will be forever grateful for my life, for my childhood and now for being able to remember it again with old friends .