Browse Items (22 total)

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…

We first knew Oakridge in 1922 when my parents rented what is now known as Lyday Close from Dr. Percy Dearmer, as a holiday cottage. I was seven years old at the time, and my two brothers were five and six. It was a wonderful village for children 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…

During WWI the women in the village took in machining work for one of the factories on Brick Row where Mr White, who lived in the village worked. The factory made khaki and white overalls for the army and local women sewed the pieces together.…

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…