Memories are made of this

The Infant School was then situated in Church Street and was where Dr Spencer’s back garden is now. The school got burnt down when I was about eleven. I thought that the best teacher at the time was Miss Desborough.

I then went to the boy’s school on Bell Hill and a Mr. Taylor was the headmaster at the time. We used to have to go to Sunday school. I quite liked sitting on the wall that divided the schoolyard from the church cemetery next door. We used to just disappear sometimes by dropping ourselves over the wall and we would go conkering. I next went to Mulso School when Mr. Sutton was the headmaster. I passed the eleven plus with sixteen others but there was only one place available for one pupil and that was Mona Yates. I think that most parents would have found it quite difficult to cope financially if there had been more places available. Dusty Miller was the music teacher but as a group of us were not very musical Mr. Sutton used us as gardeners. We were sent to work on the soil down at the infant school. A pair of us would be allotted an oblong of ground to tend. We dug the garden, set the seed for Mr. Sutton and he harvested our efforts in the autumn which I am sure he enjoyed. We once skated on ice down at the pits instead of going to Sunday school but unfortunately we got caught out so our parents told us off and we had to go straight to bed.

My father worked for Wellingborough Iron Company digging the ironstone out from the open pit and you can imagine how difficult that must have been. He worked from 6.30am to 4pm and had to walk to work through the garden fields; at that time there was a footpath right to the workings. There was a second footpath running from Summerlee Road into Irthlingborough itself.
Mum worked for Shelton’s the butchers as a cleaner dad also worked part time clearing up for Shelton’s. Dad was responsible for feeding the livestock that used to be kept then in three fields down the grove. The animals were there until it was time for them to be slaughtered and I used to work for Shelton’s as a delivery boy I biked to Stanwick as well as Thrapston. Shelton’s used to donate meat to widows living in Finedon at Christmas. Widows Row was at the back of the Infant School (Dr Spencer’s) and there were five or six houses in that row. I remember that I used to be given three pence for delivering to Widows Row. The cricket field was used for feeding and fattening animals.

After the First World War finished dad was not able to find employment so he cycled from Finedon to Peterborough in order to look for work. There was no dole money in those days’ just handouts from the parish. One of the main characters from my youth was granny Maskew who owned Finedon Hall but lived in the lodge at the Grove. She used to keep bulldogs and we tended to avoid her. Following her death the Free French moved into the hall but this was during the Second World War.

In the Grove was a tennis court and I also recall a row of three rented cottages. Beet Payne’s parents lived in one and the Horns lived in another. I remember watching the Neal’s (John Neal was the manager of Nutts) playing tennis. The old walnut tree stood at the end of the tennis court near the little pavilion; the Grove used to be a lovely place for the kids to play in.

Before I finished school I went to live in Albion Yard with my grandmother this was because all her family had left home and my parents had insufficient space. As young boys we used to go to Watts picture house in Regent Street; before becoming a cinema it lhad been a Methodist Church and before that a warehouse. We used to sit on wooden forms at the pictures and we would have paid tuppence to get in; it was called “Tuppenny Rush” When the picture used to break down, which was frequent, we used to shout and yell. It was silent movies in those days and so a chap used to play the piano. We saw a lot of cowboys and Indian films. I must have seen my first talkie when I was a teenager. We sometimes used to go to the pictures at Wellingborough as there was a good bus service then. Kearsleys, I remember, had an open top bus, which stood in the square in Regent Street. I recall another Finedon chap who had an open topped bus was a Mr. Stanley and he lived at the top of Obelisk Road

My dad belonged to a Friendly Society called the Free Gardeners as our parents had put us into this society when we were three.
This organization would then cover medical bills if we needed to see a doctor. I remember Dr Bell coming into practice. Irthlingborough doctors and Burton Latimer doctors also covered Finedon. I later became chairman of the Rachabites and Bedfordshire branch of the Free Gardeners.

When I first started work I went to a Nutt’s in the Finishing Room and started at eight shillings. Following a reshuffle with new machinery being brought in I had a shillings increase in wages. I then did bottom scouring and my wage increased to two pounds.
I left the factory when I was called up joining Northamptonshire Regiment then Bedfordshire and Herts. I was a guard during the war working a solid twenty four hours on then twenty four hours off. I used to have to guard bomb dumps, which were underground passages where the bombs were stored; also petrol dumps; huge tanks of petrol sank into the ground. I first went to Upwood then to Witton, Alconbury, and Marham. We lived in married quarters but used them as billets and sometimes slept on the floor. We had two blankets and in the wintertime we would use our coats. I had got engaged just before being called up. I had met my wife about the time I first started playing in Finedons football team. Girls used to follow us round as we went to different places to play. On the very first date we had I asked her to go the pictures and this was on a Good Friday.

We went to the Lyric which held fortnightly Sunday night variety shows. We then started going to the pictures regularly. I used to have a twenty four hour pass when I was in the army and I used to hitch hike to Finedon from Witton. I was at Kettering bus station, which was outside the library then, when I plucked up the courage to ask my girlfriend to marry me; I then got moved to Marham. Due to leave being stopped I only managed three days to get married. When we were first married we lived on Irthlingborough Road in a council house with my parents. We then moved to a cottage in Regent Street in a row of houses belonging to Shelton’s the butchers. We paid eight shillings a week in rent and paid this at the butchers shop. We lived in that house until it was pulled down.

It was strange how we came to live in our next house in Sibley Road. I remember we had gone out for a Sunday afternoon walk and we must have decided we wanted to see how the houses in Sibley Road were coming along; they were in the process of being built I think by a Rushden firm. Anyway our small daughter went into one of the bedrooms and announced that it would be her bedroom. In fact she did have that very bedroom as we were quite soon after this incident told that we would be having the house in question. The cottages we had been living in were condemned by the council; no end of houses were being condemned at this time.
It was fortunate that some of our original neighbours from Regent Street also came to live in Sibley Road.
I then worked at the Gashouse in Orchard Road and was in the ex showroom part. We made shoelaces, zips, elastics etc for the boot and shoe industry. Dennis Cole’s owned the firm. Items were dispatched all other the country and some went abroad .I later went to work at Kettering in Havelock Street when the firm joined with Coker’s of Northampton to become Coker Cole’s.

Although Chapel has had quite a strong influence on my life it was not until 1936 that I joined the Bible Class. Bill Patterson rented the Grove and he kindly allowed us to play football there. We called ourselves the Grove Waders and I must have been around seventeen at the time. In order to get ourselves a football we saved all the tokens from Oxo cube cartons and when we had saved enough we were able to send away for the ball. Only two or three of the lads were in the bible class at the time and it was these members who informed us that a second team was needed at the bible class so loads of us trooped in and joined.

Mr. Patterson would announce once a year who had put in a hundred percent attendance .I later became a member of the first team and I played football for many years. After the war I was Secretary of the team for fourteen years.
I was also a Sunday school teacher working with Arthur Hearn. Betty Clay pole and Zena Drage took the girls. It was Zena who encouraged me to get involved with Sunday school work. Other than the war years I have had no break from the Chapel. I became Church Secretary/ Treasurer for many years. I would say that I have had a good and happy life living in Finedon and the Church has influenced my life considerably as has my family.