Childhood and later memories of Hambrook
 (with some additions and repetition from HAMBROOK TALEs)

One of the earliest things I can recall is starting at Whiteshill school on the first of July 1935 (where I remained until going to Chipping Sodbury Grammar in 1942), evidently I did not like it and decided to walk back home and was halfway across the common when someone came out to get me back! At that time there were little camp beds on the floor of one class room for the infants to have a sleep. Each day every child had a small one third of a pint bottle of milk, the top had a cardboard seal with a hole in the centre to insert a straw, two of these could be held together with a piece of tissue between as a form of kazoo, to make a horrible noise when walking home. Two of them together with wool wound round them back and forth, when cut apart produced a wool bobble. Cats cradles done with string, and a large button on a loop of thread could be made to spin rapidly, simple but we did not ask for much in those days.   Every day children walked from Stoke Gifford, Frenchay, and Winterbourne forming small caravans as children joined in as it progressed. Each season of the year had its own game to play on the way, marbles, kick tin, conkers, chase etc. A wooden cotton reel with four little nails around the hole in the top could be used to produce a long woven wool strand known as French knitting. Very little traffic on the roads, but one young lad was killed in an accident on his bike at Pye Corner. Sometimes the children could stop to see a steam wagon filling its tanks at the stream.
Sometimes Heather from the bakery would grab a handful of dough on the way out to make a mess with. In the school playground was a first World War machine gun to play with, until recovered along with the hefty school railings for the second war salvage drive. 
Our little individual wooden desks had a small china ink well in the top, and writing was done with a metal knib on a wooden handle, too many blots lead to back of your knuckles being rapped by Nelly Stokes!  Older boys often had the cane from the headmaster for some indiscretion. Mornings meant the sing song repetition of times tables, always a triumphant rise of young voices at the successful conclusion of  twelve times something. On warm summer days lessons were held sitting on the grass outside,  and sometimes there was a walk up to Bury Hill to see the old Iron Age camps. In those days the flat area of the common was quite small, with a steep slope down to Pye Corner covered with scrub and gorse bushes. When the motorway was built the contractor dumped many loads of spoil there and used the heavy machinery to level it, more than doubling the usable size, thus producing a level area able to accommodate a football and cricket pitch. Before the club house was built the football teams changed in the old malt house down at the Whitehorse Inn and then ran up the hill to play. 
Back then very few people had a telephone, the butcher, solicitor, doctor,  and Mr Pembury, because he had an important job with the electricity corporation. A public telephone line from the Frenchay exchange was provided in a call box alongside the post office, and this line was shared with the post office itself. A switch mounted on a polished mahogany box inside the post office had to be operated to do this by Miss Good, she had to remember to restore it after use. This was the usual method at most rural Post Offices. Electricity started to be installed in the cottages in the early30s, until then lighting was mostly by paraffin lamps or candles. The oil could be bought at the local shops orfrom Messrs Draisey from Winterbourne, or Kethro from 

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Hanham, when their general hardware van made its scheduled stops at various points in the village. 
Cooking was done on the coal fire or the top of a paraffin stove, or sometimes a Primus which was started by pouring methylated spirit into a trough around the burner, the paraffin tank was pressurised with a small built in pump and the subsequent vapour produce a very hot flame in the burner.
The fire for cooking had to be kept going on even the hottest summer days, and in the winter banked up with small coal dust and damp vegetable peelings ready to blaze into life when stirred with the poker in the morning. Some fireplaces had a fairly deep pit underneath so the ashes only needed disposing of over several days. Extra heating in the winter was often with a Valor Stove, powered again by paraffin, it stood about three feet high and a foot or so round, a double wick burner could be observed through a little red ruby glass window at the front. 
House wiring for the new electricity was installed, a black and red wire run in separate channels in a strip of wood with a thin strip of wood nailed over the top, the switches and light fittings mounted on round polished wooden blocks. This was known as capping and casing. There was no provision for power sockets and when electric irons started to be introduced a special fitting was plugged into the light fitting. This provided another switched outlet which the iron could be plugged into, very dangerous by modern standards!
The flat heating element in the iron was sandwiched between two thin layers of mica and there was no earthing. Later an electric Jackson stove became available, smart grey enamelled, with three hot plates on top and a  good sized oven. Heavier wiring and a switch box with an outlet for a now available electric kettle needed to be installed, the kettles were usually designed to look very much like the traditional style. Electricity was billed for by the unit, equivalent to I kilowatt.    
The cottages in the evening were now much more cheerfully lit, and an advancing wireless service, wirelesses still mostly battery powered, meant that people did not go to bed so early at night! 
Warm days of summer and children were again able to enjoy long light summer evenings, and daytime walks to the river at Moorend with a jam jar to go fishing. So many little fish there it was easy to catch them with one’s hand, or move a stone to reveal a Miller’s Thumb, minnows and sticklebacks in abundance. For the grown ups there were roach in plenty and the occasional eel. Before the wall with the two flood defence gates was built the river was open to the road, and often horses, probably having just been shod at the blacksmith’s alongside stopped there for a drink. One had to be careful as just there was a stream bringing a flow of dirty water from the sewer beds (a source of tomatoes for locals) over the fields yonder. This of course stopped when the new sewer with its sometimes visible big black iron pipes was put in along the Frome valley. 
Before the river was tidied up and the flood defences installed, flooding was frequent, pretty deep at Nightingale Valley bridge, and at Moorend often two foot or more of water on the road junction there. The cottage on the corner there has a channel either side of the gate posts in which boards could be slid to hold water back, and relatives 
in Worrells lane at time of heavy rain were on standbye to go down and lift furniture up out of the way. The garden of this cottage is on the other side of the road, along the river bank, the resident, Tony, specialised in chrysthemums and in season it was a blaze of huge blooms of all colours, they had been protected and nurtured for months previously. In about 1975 very high flooding destroyed the narrow horse track bridge
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 at the bottom of The Grove grounds This bridge was only one large stone thick and it was amazing it had stood for so long.

These floods also broke down the walls either side of the bridge by Winterbourne mill. It is probably at this time that the damn for this mill collapsed. The damn was built where a large rock, still there, protruded from the river bank. Until then the river upstream was quite deep, a suitable spot for the young village lads to go swimming. Nearby was the Red Pool, a large, deep, sheer sided quarry, now filled in, its excavation had destroyed the south side earthworks of the iron age camp above. It was a popular but dangerous place to swim, the local character known as Tarzan often diving in from the highest point above. The only other deep place on the river to jump in was on the downstream side of the narrow footbridge on the footpath between Hambrook Mill and the step ground. Seen in use quite recently.

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Order in the village was kept by ‘Copper Lee’ from the police station in the council houses at Frenchay riding around on his upright bicycle. Later with the now available police cars, two new police houses and an office were built on the corner at the 

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Old Gloucester Road and Hambrook Lane crossroads, opposite to the site of the wartime army camp. During the war ‘Coppper Lee’ with Mr Hood, and Jack Mapstone  as special constables patrolled the village checking that no lights were showing. On dark frosty nights in the winter the starlight was so bright one could easily walk around. Eagerly sought were ‘number eight’ batteries for torches, always in very short supply. Mr Hood was usually seen in the village driving his horse and cart to market, loaded with much needed produce from his market garden. The big shire horse Tommy, always wanted to stop at the water trough on the verge of the road under the huge tree that was outside of Fry’s house opposite Malmains Drive. The trough had an inscription stating that it had been given for the benefit of thirsty horses by one of the village notables, maybe the Frys or Elliots?  With the start of the war Dick Sandy, the butcher and farmer, although being in a reserved occupation joined the army, leaving his new wife Kath Hurley, daughter of Bill Hurley of Mulgrove farm to run his small business. (in those days Mulgrove was known as 
‘Mutton Tump’ and the road to Stoke Gifford was ‘up Nowhere’.  Every evening during the war I took some few scraps and maybe some bread soaked in OXO round to the three or four now wild cats living in the outhouses of the old slaughter house, the butchery business and shop was revived after Dicks return from the war. 
One dark night a group of very merry American soldiers on their way back to camp after too much strong English cider at the Black Horse, cut off the filling pipes of the petrol pumps at the garage. Petrol was in short supply and strictly rationed, only one grade ‘Pool’ being available. The only light to be seen at night was on the railway line between Stoke and Winterbourne. When the firebox in the boiler was being stoked inevitably the brilliant light of the fire illuminated the cloud of steam and smoke around the engine, some screening was tried but was not very successful and many engines had a very open footplate. Of course the railway line lead German bombers on a direct route to the aircraft works at Filton. 
A band of home Guard volunteers were stationed at the village hall and helped with general air raid precautions, and demonstrations on the commons of how to deal with incendiary bombs, they really flared up if dowsed with water! 
 With the end of the war the village was now beginning to change, some of the old characters passed on. One well known family was the Tanners, the old lady had one of the earliest electrically powered invalid carriages and in her black victorian dress and hat was often seen about in it. At one time at the foot of the hill in the village it failed and her coachman /gardener Mr Curry had to go and retrieve her. Her son Billy was well known for his drinking habits, often seen staggering home from the local public houses. The Curry family eventually went to live at ‘Lyntonfields’ when the well known the Miss uleft, (they were originally the De Guises). My friend Elizabeth was cousin to the Currys  and stayed there on visits to Bristol, on one occasion when collecting her I went into the house and was impressed by the large entrance hall and sweeping staircase inside. 
Maurice Organ at the Crown  died in 1948 and the tenancy was taken over by his eldest daughter Bette and her husband Bob, by then the pub had been improved with a large porch over the front, and it now had a spirits licence. In later years the house next door was eventually joined to it to make quite a large pub. The younger daughter Jean, with her new husband Frank Dickens took over the Golden heart pub at Winterbourne Down. 

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Crown Corner

Down the road at the Grange a dog boarding kennels was started, not popular because of the noise the crying dogs made.The kennels later closed and in the early 1950s Mr Brown occupied The Grange. he had come from somewhere up north to work at the new open cast coal mine at Filton, now the site of the MOD. At about this time I acquired my first car, a Morris Series ‘E’ and it was usual then to lay a car up for the winter because of the state of roads and also to save tax and insurance. Mr Brown allowed me to keep it in the barn there and I took advantage with the help of Jim ???? who lived in Hambrook House to overhaul the engine. This saw me pushing the engine in a wheel barrow to the garage up the road to be rebored. With the retirement of the Peters’s the business was now Bussey Engineering and they now did more complex work. 
When the big house ‘The Grove’ was sold Miss Ena Mirehouse  a well known figure riding around in Hunting gear, on an immaculately groomed horse, moved to a cottage on Inglestone common at Wickwar. She was unfortunately killed in an 
accident involving a horse and trap. After war time shop keeper Mr Harrison left, a Mr George Dixon took over to eventually be succeeded by Mr George Bracey, known for playing in the village silver prize band, and his wife. With his small van he now
started to call on residents to receive and then deliver their orders, and the shop also started to stock items of haberdashery and clothing. When the Miss Goods retired from the Post Office that, and the letter box also moved up here, a busy shop now but the telephone box stayed where it was.