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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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Sir Stafford Cripps 1889 - 1952 In Attlee's Government 1945 - 50 as President of the Board of Trade and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Policy of Austerity (rationing and controls preparation to adjust Britain to its reduced economy following withdrawal…

Mr Ken Bucknell has many vivid memories as a young man living in Waterlane, below he remembers his Grandfathers years as sexton:Frederick Halliday born - 1864, was the sexton at Oakridge Church for 46 years, although he had a full time job at Bliss…

In August 1837, there had been a mass exodus from the village to the young colony of New South Wales. The great poverty among the agricultural community had been further aggravated by the decline of hand-weaving on the cottage looms, brought about by…