Fiona was 5 years old when she moved into the vicarage in October 1945 with her parents, two siblings, and two sisters who were their Cook and Nanny. Her mother was to be one of the general practitioners at Oundle Surgery, and her father was to be inducted as the new vicar at St Mary’s Church on Saturday, 27th October.
(Taken from the front lawn of the vicarage with the chicken run to the right. Note the church in the background)
As Fiona was quite young when she arrived, she has a limited memory of the Vicarage details, but two facts really stick out in her mind and these were the green baize butlers’ door that swung both ways and the wonderful banister rail that was good for sliding down. She also remembers that the house had two pitch roofs with a gulley in the middle and her brother’s bedroom had its window overlooking the gulley, so they both used slip out at bedtime and sit in the gulley.
Fiona’s first day at Woodnewton Primary School was on Monday 15th October and she was told at a later date by Mrs Bates who lived opposite beside the pathway to St Mary’s, that she was taken to school by her Nanny, but 5 minutes later the Nanny returned home with her. Next, her father was seen taking her back down the street to school and this time she stayed. She recalls that when her mother returned from work later in the day, she asked her what she had learnt at school on her first day, and Fiona repeated a naughty rhyme that one of the lads had taught her. Fiona says that her mother marched straight down to see Mrs Hughes, the headmistress to complain. Fiona left the Primary School and went to a Boarding School in Kent three years later.
St Mary’s Church had a choir and Fiona became part of this group and recollects being very proud of their red cassocks, as most other choirs wore black ones. The choir attended church for Morning Prayer and Evensong, and she said that her father loved rousing hymns and made the choir learn all the words as he said that the words could not be heard if your head was in a book! Archie Ramsay from St Mary’s Hill was her father’s churchwarden.
Her mother held a weekly surgery at the home of Mrs Bates on a Friday morning between 10 and 11am. Fiona recalls that during vaccination time she used to help when she was home from school, by passing the vaccine to her mother to speed up the procedure. One of Fiona’s strong memories was of the great snowfall of 1947 – she was kept home from school so she could accompany her mother on horseback to her patients’ houses and hold onto the horse whilst she attended to her patients. This went on for several weeks.
(The photograph shows Mr & Mrs Bates in front of their house. The surgery was held in the end room on the left.)
A village lad’s antics reminded Fiona that at Mr Spademan’s Spinney Farm, one of the three dairy farms in the village, he cooled his milk by using a system made of a metal frame and that this lad used to enjoy licking the milk off the frame.
One of Fiona’s distinct childhood memories as it has been with several other peoples’ memoirs was the weekly visit of the sewerage wagon with the children running after it and chanting a ‘rhyme’.
The family left the village in 1951 when Fiona’s father retired due to ill health.
2021
Mrs Preston purchased the rocking horse from the Primary School when it closed down in 1990. It is still in the Preston family and the photograph shows it after it had been restored.
