Browse Items (22 total)

I well remember my father, Edgar, telling me of the time when the then Landlord, Charlie Ewer, had difficulty in getting his customers to leave, long after "Time" was called.So in desperation he went outside, found his garden hoe, and used it to…

Most people in Oakridge knew Frank, and many people much further away, too. He was born into the well-known farming family in the hamlet of Tunley, in a beautiful part of the surrounding area of Oakridge. He was cheerful, Lively, and full of jokes…

When I was working at Little Hattons (the Cottage next to Hattons, near Maker's Mill) in the late sixties when Mrs. Sutton was in the big house I came on a inscription which may be of interest. Written - in charcoal I think- on the reveal of the…

It is rare these days to come across the old-fashioned family retainer. Such was Bertha Gardiner of the Old Mill, Oakridge Lynch, whose death at the age of 90 we reported in a recent issue of this paper. Miss Gardiner went, at the age of 13 as…

Back in the 1930s an aunt of mine occasionally visited a friend in Oakridge who lived in a primitive cottage with no amenities and an outside loo. Later when I attended Marling School I met one or two lads from the village, and how envious they were…

I used to play the cornet in the Oakridge Orchestra. But I lost my front teeth in a motorbike accident and turned to the violin which my father and taught me to play while I was at school. I was a member of the Chalford Brass Band — Silver now. In my…

Extracts from an interview with Kathleen Hunt & Eileen Minchin. When I was a child at Oakridge School the most I can remember were about 125 or 129 children there. We had Scripture every morning. Mr. William Allen was the master and there was…

If you don't believe in the Archers, try the Gardners; for one thing, they're true. An Oakridge Lynch resident, Mrs Nurding, has unearthed a real—life document more fascinating than you would be likely to find in a year's fiction—reading or…

Rowley Young comes from a local family. He left school at 13 and went into the stick factory before starting to learn cabinet making at night school. He joined Peter Waals at Chalford when he was 15 and remembers that they got no pay at all for the…

Fifty years ago "The fastest train in the world" was reputed to be the run from Paddington, Reading, Swindon to Kemble. After that it dawdled somewhat. But the GW.R., did stop its trains at places like Brimscombe and Chalford in those days. And what…