feature Melbourn in the mid-20th century In 1987, the editor of Drifts, (the Magazine produced at the Village College) Marianne Peer, met Joan Downing (nee Band) on a trip to Lincolnshire and persuaded her to send some memories of Melbourn. I was born at Melbourn in September 1924 at ‘Ormesby House’ in the High Street. This was attached to my father’s shop and was in fact two houses, an older part that was a plaster-walled cottage and a newer brick built part. We therefore had two staircases, back straight stairs, and front stairs that had a bannister ‑ lovely for sliding down! In my childhood we did not have electricity, or mains water or sewerage. We had a pump in the yard, from where all our water was carried in buckets and jugs. It was awful when it froze; we had to remember to have jugs of water in over night, to heat, to pour down the top of the pump to thaw it. Our ‘loo’ was down the garden – a wooden‑seated privy, often the haunt of rats. I always walked down the path clapping my hands to frighten them away! We had oil lamps and candles and my ‘toppler’ night‑light. Electricity came first, and I remember the shop being fitted with about six lights and the switches were by the door. I had lots of fun turning these on and off! It was many years before we had mains water etc. – I think it was just after the war because I can remember ‘our’ ‘evacuees’ having baths in the tin bath in the kitchen. The shop was my delight as a small child. I loved poking in all the drawers and cupboard. The fixtures at the back of one of the wooden counters had lots of little drawers and these held nutmegs, cloves and other spices. So many things were sold loose; sugar was stored in a large barrel and the blue paper sugar bags were stored in these drawers. I used to fill these bags with sugar and others with rice or currants or sultanas. It was a long time before I could fasten the tops of the bags like my father did. And then there were the sweets and biscuits! My teeth were always aching, because I was always eating sweets. I was allowed to help myself to toffees and boiled sweets but not chocolate – I had to ask for that. The biscuits were on display in biscuit tins, opened in a glass case. Sometimes there were tins of broken biscuits, and I loved to find the chocolate pieces in these tins. We always had cats and kittens, sometimes born in those shop‑drawers. There were numerous outbuildings for the cats to roam in and catch those rats. Sometimes they were poisoned by rat poison or caught in rat traps set by a man who owned the orchards at the back of the house – I hated him very much. One of the outhouses was a wash house with a copper in it, which had a fire under it. This was lit on a Monday and, when I was very little, a lady in a cap worn back-to-front would come and help with the washing.
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Another barn was large enough to have a swing in it, fastened to a high wooden beam. There was also a warehouse up some stairs over the garage (‘gateway’ – we called it) and this was always warm. It was full of wallpaper and material and – spiders! Bats had their home under the corrugated iron roof of this building. Both my mother and father worked very hard in this shop and I was often left to play on my own, but I had lots of room to play and pretend. As I got older I could walk through fields and play by the river very happily with my friends from school. We loved the flowers in summer – the buttercups and dog‑daisies and the grasses. I daren’t walk round the village now ‑ I would be too upset at the loss of all that. The Feast/Fair came once a year and Mr. Stanford sold cherries at the top of the Moor. The Feast was held in a field down the Moor. I went to the village school when I was 5 and I remember doing sums on slates and then in a book. We learnt poems, and I can still remember bits of them. I loved copying writing in a copy‑book, but did not like sewing; I can remember not being able to thread my needle! My teacher was Miss Dowling and I have a poem and picture that she did so beautifully in an old autograph book. I went to the County School for Girls in Cambridge when I was 8, nearly 9, and stayed there until 1942. We went on the 8 o’clock bus every morning and at times there were such a lot of school children on the bus, that ordinary passengers got very fed up and complained. Very often it was announced in school assembly ‘Will all the girls who travel on the 108 bus, go to Miss Dovey’s study.’ We always had to travel downstairs in the bus and wear our uniform and hats all the way home – velour hats in winter, panamas in summer. Later we could wear berets, green ones with the school badge on them. For a while we all travelled by train from Meldreth station. This meant a bike ride to the station, or a run across the Meads. We had great fun on the train! I remember my beret got thrown out of the train window in one of our ‘games’ and a girl from school found it when she went for a walk along the line and brought it back to me. So I didn’t have to explain to my mother what had happened to it. In the school holidays when 1 was about 10, my cousins used to come and stay and we had a penny a day each to spend. I would never spend it at my father’s shop. I always wanted to get a ‘sherbet dab’ from Mrs. Hinkin’s shop round by the mill on the Meldreth Road. They cost 1/2 d and I could get some aniseed balls too. We could ride around in safety on our bikes – I learned to ride mine along the A10 with my father running alongside! I remember falling off my bike on the Shepreth Road; I was taking some groceries to someone there. The road had been newly tarred and pebbled. I cut my eye and my knee, but I rode home with my friend Joan Hale. Then my mother took me to see Dr. Gregor. I had never been in his surgery before.
