Transcript of Edie Quinton's Memories of early life in Henley.

"I was born in Thetford in 1916. I didn't know my father, as he was in the army. He came home on leave when I was 17 months old which was when my mother fell for my brother. My brother was born on 21 August. The next day on the 22nd August father was killed.

I can't say we had a hard life really, even though we never knew father. We didn't know what it was like to have a man in the house. When I sometimes hear somebody say that they wish they hadn't got a dad or a sister, they don't know what they are missing, they really don't.

I grew up and my Grandma and Grandad lived quite near, so I saw a lot of them. When I got old enough I went into the church choir,'cause my mum was church and Grandma was chapel.used to go to choir Sunday mornings and then Sunday school in the afternoons. Grandma was waiting for me when I came out then I went to chapel and choir again at night. Brought up as a Christian. Brother was not in choir, I don't know why.

School days were real good days, but them days we hadn't got schools where you could go on to further when you were after 11 (years) but our school we stayed until you were 14. I was in 'X7' for 3 years, because I couldn't get any higher, kept going over same things over and over again. (Edie had reached the highest standard at 11) I have often wondered to myself if I had gone to a grammar school or any thing like that what would have actually happened in my life whether I would have got any higher or what I would have done, mother couldn't afford to pay for grammar school, even though we were not a poor family.

When I was eight years old, my Mum's sister and her husband bought the Post Office at Henley. It started as a shop, then was made into a Post Office. Mum, me and my brother used to come over to Henley for our 6 week summer holidays.

When I was 14 years old I left school and came over to Henley for good because I wanted to come this way, so my uncle come and got me on his motorbike. I started work in Ipswich in service because there wasn't much else to do in them days, they didn't have factories and things like they have now.

Lads used to hang around shop laughing and joking in evening, which is where I met Sidney, we got together when I was 14 years old, we were married at 21 years old and stayed together for the rest of our lives until Sidney died.

We were married at Henley Church,and lived just outside Henley in a little pink cottage just past Henley Cross Keys.We lived there for 9 years. We still classed ourselves as Henley and went to Henley Church and did everything that was going on. We had 2 sons and 2 daughters,that house is full of memories, it still is.There was no water, no electricity or anything ,open fire, across the road there was a very big ditch that was ever so deep and that was the water we used to drink. I remember Sidney coming down one morning and saying "Frogs are spawning", I said" Where? " He said "in the ditch",I said "we can't drink that", he said "course we can, boil it".So we drank that. The toilet was down the garden but still, they were the happiest time of my years when my children were babies.

Then we came to Henley in 1956,we thought we had come to a little palace or the children did because we had electricity, but we hadn't got any water we used to have to go up the road, there was a pump up the road but we never used it because it came out all red. I boiled a kettle of that once and the kiddies came out in a rash so we had to stop that. We went up to the shops (two hundred yards). There was a big pump there. The water was put on to the house in 1965 (flush toilets were plumbed in 15 years later). We still didn't have a bath we had the tin bath in front of the fire which was fun on a Saturday night - for the children! This house was that cold we had a range in the kitchen and an open fire in the living room. We couldn't bath the children in the living room we had to do it in the kitchen.

Anyway, the war had ended when we came here (her present house). At the old house we used to hear the Doodlebugs (Flying bombs) come overhead, I used to stand and pray.The engine stopped on one of these Doodlebugs right over our house and of course we all got petrified, well me and Sid did, but it managed to fly on to Stowupland just across the fields.When it exploded we all felt the movement in the ground.

But when we used to take the children out for a walk the Germans used to come what they called hedge hopping about half past four and shoot at the men in the fields and I'd only got one baby then and I'd been for a walk up to Henley Square and I just grabbed Michael out of the pram and got in a ditch it was the only thing we could do. That used to be ever so scary during the war. And when I got the four children, I used to have a big pram where I could store things in the middle I put all the gas masks in there.

If any thing happened and we got to put these things on and we'd got these four children I should never got the babe in that long thing you had to pump. We were told to put wet blankets up at the door if there was a gas bomb dropped. We had a lot of instructions given us during the war. My only one regret is when we had the children as babies , I've got a photograph of Michael as a baby,on the day he was Christened, but after that we never took any more photographs(during the war) .So I've got no photographs of the other children as babies. If they'd found we'd got a camera and you couldn't get them developed and we would have been taken away (fear of being taken for a spy).

As for the food and clothing everything was delivered to the door. The clothing man used to come round and the coalman, baker and trades people,oil(parafin for lamps) and the man used pick up accumulators to keep us going for the next week for the wireless(radio). So the village life was really fun because we knew everybody and could leave doors open and unlocked. Life was one big community. There loads of activities going on , we used to have dances and whist drives in the W.I.hall .

Going back to my young days, when I was in service, I used to have to catch the carrier (horse drawn vehicle) stationed at The Running Buck(public house in Ipswich) and we used to pay six pence to get home to my aunt's here when it was my day off. Of course my boy friend had got a motorbike so we went on a motorbike back. There weren't any buses or anything other than that carrier from Debenham. I'm eighty-five now and I've still got my return ticket that we used to have for the buses costing nine pence, it now costs two pounds something.

The doctor used to live at Coddenham. We had to cycle there. There was no other means of getting there. The doctor used ride a horse a huge old man,he was. We had a nurse living in the village,but we had to go to Ipswich for the dentist.

Edith’s 90^th Birthday Village Party

There's loads of people in Henley now,they speak to me and I speak to them, but I don't know all their names. Some are here a couple of years and away they go so it's impossible to know everybody now. As I was saying, years back, you knew everybody and we go in each other's homes have a cup of tea and if anybody was ill you'd have no end of people come to see if they could help you . Times have changed a lot in that way. But, myself, I've got more friends in Henley ,I think,than anybody. What I can make out people have been very good to me ".