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 lubricating oil, wooden floors which must have been impregnated with those smells.  They sold ironmongery, nuts, bolts, screws, hinges, all in drawers, polishes and lubricants, bleaches, household items such as lamps and kitchen equipment, mincers, graters and baking tins.  Miss Dann’s, sweets and cigarettes.  It was popular with the school children who bought packets of broken crisps, penny chews, liquorice boot laces, flying saucers, sherbet dips and ice cream.  Miss Dann made lollies and put them in moulds outside on the pavement to set.  Mum wouldn’t let me have them, she said Miss Dann’s cats licked them!  She had two or three white long haired monster cats.  I should imagine they were more fur than cat.

Mrs Lambert‘s fish and chip shop on the corner by the ‘smithy.  I don’t know much about Mrs Lambert’s shop because we went to Aud Bilverstone on Thetford Road for our fish and chips, or a bit later Snushalls chipvan.  I think Mrs Lambert‘s was popular with people who came out of the cinema, but sometimes there was a chip van on the market place for the cinema crowd.  Mrs Lambert‘s shop became a wool shop when it closed.  There have been loads of different things in that building.

The school, the Headmaster’s house (Mr. Wintle and later Mr. Lay), next door a butcher shop – Jim English; it always had a pig’s head with an apple or orange in its mouth and bits of parsley scattered around it displayed in the the window.  I didn’t think it was all that attractive.

Arthur Marchant just across the road, corner of Bury Road and George Street.  The Five Bells.  Then a long piece of fence where the posters for the fair or events were stuck where you could look through the gaps and see piles of flints behind it.  The bus shelter was eventually built there.  The Flintknappers.  Nearly everyone I know went in there for their first visit to a pub and my first visit was there, taken by Harold Lockwood who thought it was hilarious to take me home half cut, much to the wrath of Doris Ada.  I must have had all of a half of bitter.

The market was held there twice a week, Thursday and Saturday, and I believe it still is.  I can’t remember much about the stalls from my early school days.  I know Pinkey Wright was there with fruit and veg on a Thursday and Les Wright on a Saturday.  Mum and Nana used to go to Les Wright and I can remember piles of oranges and nuts at Christmas time, with “Eat Me” dates and holly wreaths hanging along the top of the stall.  Bananas hung on hooks and there were big heads of dirty celery with black fen earth on it.  Cauliflowers with the leaves still on them.  You were asked if you wanted the leaves taken off, nothing wrong with the leaves, just the same as cabbage.  Late on winter afternoons hurricane lamps lit the stall.

I hate grass sandwiches!

Everything was fresh and nothing came pre-packed.  There was always a big heap of mustard and cress, which was sold by the ounce, you got masses if you bought an ounce in a brown paper bag.  No polythene bags in those days and carrier bags were strong brown paper.  We got the cress in sandwiches with a hard boiled egg.  I like it now but I didn’t like it much then.  I used to say, “I hate grass sandwiches”, but if I was given grass sandwiches I ate them because I wouldn’t get anything else.

Ted Bond from Thetford Road in a van with fish laid out in the back.  Lovely fish.  In the summer Mr. Wicks, who owned the shop and post office at Tip had an ice cream kiosk, which he towed behind his car.  He sold the best coffee ice cream I have ever tasted.

The Market Hill was used for all gatherings, such as bands, military parades and the Remembrance Service.  Everybody went to the Remembrance Service as the war was still fresh in people’s memory.  Although we kids didn’t remember we knew it was important and lots of women cried at the service.  I remember when there was an election.  Loudspeaker vans drove through the town urging people to vote and all the parties did it, in fact loudspeaker vans were used for lots of things.  I loved them and used to rush out to see what was going on.  An updated version of a Town Cryer.  I remember it was very busy on the Market Hill, lorries decorated with the party colours and people wearing huge rosettes, a band playing, it was all very secret as to who would receive your vote and you didn’t tell anyone.  On election day, my mum and Mrs Barton were chatting outside Woodrow’s, the market side, under the cinema poster and Lynette hollered as loudly as she could “MY MUM IS A TORY!”  Cor blimey she got sorted out for that!

I loved the market place.  Below Miss Dann’s shop.