Millicent Penny

“To my Grandchildren” before their trip to Barrow Upon Soar.

You are going to the village where I spent my childhood. This is a part of your heritage. You will see that my childhood was very different from yours.

Barrow Upon Soar is the village where my parents and I were born. My mother’s father had a farm on Sileby Rd. The house had been an Inn “The Red Cow”. He also had barges transporting gypsum to and from Barrow Mlil. I can remember seeing the old barges rotting in the river behind the house.  In  1915 they moved to “The Ash” on Silbey Rd. I can remember seeing big boys diving off the barges and swimming in the river. My brother walked to and from school four times a day. It was on Cotes Rd, now a private house. There was not much traffic then. My father built the adjoining house as his first project.

My father’s father was a baker, grocer and farmer. His place was on Warner Street (now a private house). He used to knead, by hand, large amounts of dough. His grandchildren were always welcome, both there and on his pony-drawn cart delivering bread. I used to go there some nights to make grunting noises to help him knead the bread. We used to go up to the flour loft and hang out of the delivery door to see what we could see of the butcher’s operation next door.  The butcher’s boy would drive a beast from one of the farms and we would see it go to slaughter.

When my grandparents retired, Uncle Bill, Jack’s father, took over the business and they lived in a cottage on Melton Rd. We had to visit them often and ask if there was anything we could do. This usually meant filling the coal bucket or going to the shops.

I did the long walk to school with my brother Gordon but in 1928, Grandad built the house on Grove lane. The garden was much bigger then. Through a gate at the end of the path we went to my father’s farm which extended to the railway and the brook and beyond. Outside the gate was his allotment, veg. garden and garage. We kept hens, pigs, cows, geese and a goat. I used to love collecting the eggs except when the hens bit at you. We had five breeding pigs – I used to be sent to report progress. The geese were used as watchdogs. The cowman taught me how to milk a cow but I wasn’t very good at it. Cows sometimes kicked. We occasionally rode the pony bareback – very dangerous! We used to pump the troughs full of water and chip up mangolds in the chipper. Occasionally a fox got in the hen house and killed them. Someone had to close the “bobhole” after dark to prevent this and open it in the morning. Foxes knew how to open it. The Quorn hunt based up the road regularly rode by the house and was very welcome. We had a copper in which to boil pig potatoes.

As children, we didn’t have T.V. or much radio. The latter was run on a battery acid accumulator – taken to the garage for charging. We spent practically no money but there was always plenty to do. The village was much smaller then. In winter, the river froze. We had old skates, home made sledges. We made snowmen, snowballed each other and made long slides on the roads. We played outside at night – hide and seek was a favourite.

We dared each other to do things – one was running up an “entry” on Melton Rd and coming out another on Warner St. We had lights, locked gates, people in outside toilets, dogs, fences to contend with. Not to mention the people who lived there. They would clip you round the ear if caught, or worse. We played board games indoors, did our piano lessons and the girls always had knitting on the go. I knitted scarves for my cousins in Saskatchewan in the depression. I also went to Brownies and “Young Peoples Fellowship”.

On Sundays we wore our best clothes. We went to Sunday School and Church in the morning, school in the afternoon and after church at night we were not allowed to play outside. My mother frowned on board games, particularly cards. Knitting was permitted but not sewing.

In the Winter, of course, was November 5th “Bonfire Night”. Each family then had their own fireworks and bonfire.

In Summer, the village was one long, large playground. We learned to swim at the top of the old weir. Your Dad will remember that. It fell down one day and emptied the canal, exposing old bikes, bedsteads and assorted rubbish. There was a rail across to prevent boats from going over the weir. This made a great pool for jumping and diving. When we could swim, we bravely swam across the river. We changed in the long grass. We used to wave to the transport barge families who lived on them. We played in the derelict old mill and got covered in gypsum powder – our parents knew where we’d been.

The brook and fields were great favourites. We fished, paddled, picnicked, picked flowers and had a series of jumps over it. If you fell in, you tried desperately to dry your socks and shoes so your parents didn’t find out.  We picked blackberries, violets and, with the help of grown-ups, mushrooms and bluestacks. We dammed the brook on hot days and took our swimsuits. We climbed trees. We rode our old bikes. We had skipping ropes, whips and tops, shuttlecocks, battledores and diabolos. I had a pair of stilts. We played cricket, probably with a home made bat and a wicket chalked on a wall. We had chalked hopscotch on the road. There was a newt pond up the field to investigate. We walked for miles. I had an aunt who lived in Trussingtom. A cousin and I walked six miles to her once, AND back. The old delph made excellent summer slides. All you needed was a piece of old cardboard.

The boys made carts out of old wooden boxes. We made see saws. I made a long jump pitch in the fields. High jumping was popular too. We took people’s babies for walks in their prams. We used to spend hours taking train numbers and sitting on the Grove Lane fences.

We used to go to Cotes Rd, run along the path to the railway bridge and let the trains go “through our legs”. They smoked then. Then we’d run as fast as we could down the steep hill to Briggs Hill. Many skinned knees ensued. We would watch people taking out the rowboats and punts.

There were always children to play with. We were welcome in many homes. There were few telephones. If Mum or Dad were sick or had something urgent to do, there was always a neighbour to look after the family. Very few women went to work then. We used to go to Melton Mowbray cattle market. This was wonderful. I wanted to buy all the baby animals. We always had a dog at home. We had a cat but that had a job to do on the farm.

We made a small Maypole and on May 1st, got dressed up and went around the neighbours, sang the maypole song and collected a few pennies (or ha’pennies).

I used to go on the lorry sometimes with Dad. I’d seen the inside of many houses “high” and “low”. Building sites were very interesting. Dad also kept greyhounds which, on Sunday mornings, he’d race in the local fields. A stuffed hare was pulled by turning a bike wheel. We also used to go “ferreting” chasing rabbits out of their holes,

If someone were sick, we were sent over with a few eggs or an egg custard. My father killed a pig once a year (well the butcher did) and we were sent around to distribute offal. We killed our own chickens and ate them. At harvest time the farm hands would come and leave rabbits hanging in the porch. Presumably they got a pint at the pub for them.

We were fortunate in going with the family for a week to Skegness  seaside resort. Sometimes, we went at Whistun too. I occasionally went to stay with Aunt Alice and Cousin Audrey in Leicester and Sarah in Thrussington.

There were 3 or 4 chapels in the village, one Catholic Church and the large Anglican. Almost all children went to Sunday school. We always looked forward to our anniversary “sermons”. We had new dresses and hats and sang to the audience. This was on Trinity Sunday. (Holy Trinity Church).

There was social activity attached to all the churches- concerts, Christmas parties, handicraft shows. I won a prize once for a knitted cardigan. There were also summer Sunday School “outings”. We went to Bradgate Park and Windmill Hill, Mount Sorrel. The windmill was burnt down.

Saturday night, I regularly walked up to the cemetery to tend the graves with mother. It usually earned me a chocolate bar from a shop on the High Street.

Of course, Easter and Christmas were celebrated but on a much smaller scale. There were many more shops in the village then, each well decorated for Christmas, we used to save Cadbury’s cocoa coupons through the year and get a large “Selection Box” free by post. Strictly shared of course.

Friday night was bath night. There were few showers.

We freely roamed the village day and night. We had to be home on time but the works sirens (hooters) told us when. We didn’t have watches.

Most of us had some chores to do. Some children who lived on Sileby Rd would leave school at lunchtime and pick up a cooked dinner from home to take to a workman at Ellis concrete works on Sileby Rd. It is now a small business park.

By now, we were at “top school”, the one still in the Hall Orchard. Its much bigger now than it was. Then the playing fields were well-tended allotments.

At age 10, I won a scholarship to Humphrey Perkins Grammar School on Cotes Rd. Its still there as a much larger comprehensive school. It had about 160 pupils. The teachers all had degrees. We wore uniforms. There I had to learn to behave like a young lady. Pupils came by train and walked the path from the station to Cotes Rd. many others, from the farms, cycled 6 miles to school. It was a very comprehensive education and an introduction into social and moral values. We had to be in the gym and on the sports field, tennis, badminton, hockey, and cricket were all compulsory. We had to watch the boys play rugger and entertain the visiting team as part of the learning process. We had homework. I loved it all.

In my last year at school, war broke out. I volunteered as a junior firewatcher (for German incendiary bombs). We did the evening shift before the men came on for the overnight shift.

The German bombers used to fly over Barrow to bomb Liverpool. They used the Charnwood forest reservoirs – shining in the moonlight – as markers. We watched the Coventry bombing from the house. A wounded German plane narrowly missed the house and village and crashed at Burton crossroads. The sirens sounded most nights.

Then I left the village after joining the Women’s Royal Airforce as a volunteer.