Brandon Heritage

Category: Memories of Brandon

  • Happy Birthday Community Centre!

    One of the joys of volunteering at Brandon Heritage Centre is that you never know who will walk through the door next.  Sometimes it is someone looking for information about their family or project, or someone who is simply intrigued as to what is in the centre.  Then there are those who bring artifacts or…

  • Polish Camp

    Today we had a visitor bring in two photo albums of their family from the 1940s and 50s, including time spent on the Army camp off London Road just after the Second World War.  Anna McInnes’ parents, Alfred and Paulina Zelke, met while Alfred was serving alongside the British Army in Italy.  Paulina was Slovenian…

  • Polish 2nd Corps visit Brandon (1946)

    Polish Army disembark in Brandon, 1946 … Following the end of the Second World War there was a large settlement of Polish ex-servicemen into Brandon.  They have since been credited with restoring the weekly market in the years following the war and many created their own businesses which are still thriving today.  Today, generations later,…

  • Memories of the Market Hill

    Cherry Rogers recalls the Market Hill… The Market Hill was the meeting place for everyone.  It was always a busy place.  Children going to and leaving the school, market stalls and shops. Woodrow’s on the corner of London Road and the market, it was one of those shops that had the smell of paraffin and…

  • Towler’s buses

    Cherry Rogers recalls Towler’s buses in Brandon. When I was growing up everybody used Towler’s buses.  My first memory, or it could be what I have been told rather than being a memory, was being taken to Bury St. Edmunds to have my photo taken.  I would have been coming up for two years old…

  • Memories of the funfair

    Cherry Rogers remembers going to the funfair My first memory of going to the fair is of me sitting in my pram, in Nana’s kitchen, ready to go.  My Nana looked out of the window and said, “I don’t know Doll, it’s a bit black over Will’s Mothers.”  I piped up, “I don’t want to…

  • Life with the railway

    Cherry Rogers’ memory reflects back on the railway … For some reason the station was a favourite place to walk to.  Mum and nana used to push me down there in my pram to see the trains and I in turn used to take my kids down to see the them.  It was a nice…

  • Going to church

    Cherry Rogers recalls antics going to church I was christened at St. Peter’s Church.  Nana was Church of England but always went to the Methodist with Grandad, so I always went to the Methodist on London Road.  Watson’s shop was next door, across from Towlers Lane, and Mr. and Mrs Watson lived there with their…

  • School days

    Cherry Rogers remembers her school days I remember my first day at school.  I told mum I didn’t want to go and I should make a fuss, so she was dreading it.  I went with a girl called Rita who was the granddaughter of Mrs Parrot who lived at the old Manor House.  When it…

  • Life as a telegram boy in the 1930s

    The late Bob Mortimer recalls being a telegram boy in Brandon’s Post Office. In 1933, aged 14, I left school and got a job at Brandon’s Post Office, along the High Street, as a Telegram Boy.  I wore a uniform, which included a hat with a red button on it, which, to begin with, I…