{"id":583,"date":"2017-05-30T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T13:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brandonheritage.org.uk\/?p=583"},"modified":"2017-05-30T14:38:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T13:38:00","slug":"583-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/?p=583","title":{"rendered":"Memories of the Market Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cherry Rogers recalls the Market Hill…<\/h3>\n

The Market Hill was the meeting place for everyone.\u00a0 It was always a busy place.\u00a0 Children going to and leaving the school, market stalls and shops.<\/p>\n

Woodrow<\/span>\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Miss Dann<\/span>\u2019s, sweets and cigarettes.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Miss Dann <\/span>made lollies and put them in moulds outside on the pavement to set.\u00a0 Mum wouldn\u2019t let me have them, she said Miss Dann<\/span>\u2019s cats licked them!\u00a0 She had two or three white long haired monster cats.\u00a0 I should imagine they were more fur than cat.<\/p>\n

Mrs Lambert<\/span>‘s fish and chip shop on the corner by the ‘smithy.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know much about Mrs Lambert\u2019s shop because we went to Aud Bilverstone<\/span> on Thetford Road for our fish and chips, or a bit later Snushalls chipvan.\u00a0 I think Mrs Lambert<\/span>‘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.\u00a0 Mrs Lambert<\/span>‘s shop became a wool shop when it closed.\u00a0 There have been loads of different things in that building.<\/p>\n

The school, the Headmaster\u2019s house (Mr. Wintle<\/span> and later Mr. Lay<\/span>), next door a butcher shop – Jim English; <\/span>it always had a pig\u2019s head with an apple or orange in its mouth and bits of parsley scattered around it displayed in the the window.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t think it was all that attractive.<\/p>\n

Arthur Marchant<\/span> just across the road, corner of Bury Road and George Street.\u00a0 The Five Bells.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The bus shelter was eventually built there.\u00a0 The Flintknappers.\u00a0 Nearly everyone I know went in there for their first visit to a pub and my first visit was there, taken by Harold Lockwood<\/span> who thought it was hilarious to take me home half cut, much to the wrath of Doris Ada<\/span>.\u00a0 I must have had all of a half of bitter.<\/p>\n

The market was held there twice a week, Thursday and Saturday, and I believe it still is.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember much about the stalls from my early school days.\u00a0 I know Pinkey Wright<\/span> was there with fruit and veg on a Thursday and Les Wright<\/span> on a Saturday.\u00a0 Mum and Nana used to go to Les Wright<\/span> and I can remember piles of oranges and nuts at Christmas time, with \u201cEat Me\u201d dates and holly wreaths hanging along the top of the stall.\u00a0 Bananas hung on hooks and there were big heads of dirty celery with black fen earth on it.\u00a0 Cauliflowers with the leaves still on them.\u00a0 You were asked if you wanted the leaves taken off, nothing wrong with the leaves, just the same as cabbage.\u00a0 Late on winter afternoons hurricane lamps lit the stall.<\/p>\n

I hate grass sandwiches!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everything was fresh and nothing came pre-packed.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 No polythene bags in those days and carrier bags were strong brown paper.\u00a0 We got the cress in sandwiches with a hard boiled egg.\u00a0 I like it now but I didn\u2019t like it much then.\u00a0 I used to say, “I hate grass sandwiches”, but if I was given grass sandwiches I ate them because I wouldn\u2019t get anything else.<\/p>\n

Ted Bond<\/span> from Thetford Road in a van with fish laid out in the back.\u00a0 Lovely fish.\u00a0 In the summer Mr. Wicks<\/span>, who owned the shop and post office at Tip had an ice cream kiosk, which he towed behind his car.\u00a0 He sold the best coffee ice cream I have ever tasted.<\/p>\n

The Market Hill was used for all gatherings, such as bands, military parades and the Remembrance Service.\u00a0 Everybody went to the Remembrance Service as the war was still fresh in people\u2019s memory.\u00a0 Although we kids didn\u2019t remember we knew it was important and lots of women cried at the service.\u00a0 I remember when there was an election.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I loved them and used to rush out to see what was going on.\u00a0 An updated version of a Town Cryer.\u00a0 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\u2019t tell anyone.\u00a0 On election day, my mum and Mrs Barton were chatting outside Woodrow\u2019s, the market side, under the cinema poster and Lynette hollered as loudly as she could \u201cMY MUM IS A TORY!\u201d\u00a0 Cor blimey she got sorted out for that!<\/p>\n

I loved the market place.\u00a0 Below Miss Dann’s shop.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cherry Rogers recalls the Market Hill… The Market Hill was the meeting place for everyone.\u00a0 It was always a busy place.\u00a0 Children going to and leaving the school, market stalls…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[71,78,120,187,188,195,200,303,306,307,308],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memories","tag-bilverstone","tag-bond","tag-dann","tag-lambert","tag-lay","tag-lockwood","tag-marchant","tag-wicks","tag-wintle","tag-woodrow","tag-wright","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandonheritage.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}