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Chelveston 1946 1946 saw the start of change within the village; all be it very slowly. The most notable change was the gradual withdrawal of the American personnel from the airbase, the Flying Fortresses had departed during the later part of 1945.
Dad introduced some additions to the style of bread he offered from the "High Tin"; to the "Square Tin Loaf", which we now call "Sandwich Loaf", and the "Coburg", which was a round loaf with a smaller roundel on the top. He also introduced bread rolls which included the traditional round roll and the finger roll as he used to call it, which was about 120mm in length, and buns. He had a name for these which I think was "Sticky Buns", they were sticky because as soon as they came out of the oven I had the job of using a bakers brush, a bit like a paint brush but a lot softer, to paint beaten egg white onto the top. Not only were they sticky but they also had a high gloss on them, you could almost see yourself. These all proved to be very popular with his customers.
Men were starting to trickle back from the war. The first one was a man who lived in the first house up the hill from Water Lane in Sawyers Crescent, he had been in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. (Try as I might, I can't remember his name). He had TB and was so thin and ill, dying within eighteen months of being home.
Boys from the village were still required to work on the farms. We were allowed a maximum of four weeks from school to help with the potato crop. Alf Carr was the main grower, six of us from the village were picked up at 6.30 am. in an open lorry, with most times only a tarpaulin as cover against the cold wind. Extra boys were picked up en-route to the potato field. We usually arrived just at day break to start work, and not returning home until after dark. The foreman had a simple system worked out so that everybody did their fair share, he paced out 22 yards, the length of a cricket pitch for each one of us. A tractor was used to draw a spinner behind, which spun the potatoes out to the right-hand side of the mounds. You were given a bucket to fill and as soon as that was full you emptied it onto a large piece of sacking which two men could lift and empty into a horse drawn dray.
There was only just enough time to pick up your allotted area before the tractor and spinner returned to spin out the next row, I devised a method of jamming the bucket between my knees and waddling along like a duck as I flicked the potatoes in, most times I had a bit of a breather before the return of the tractor. To ensure we were potato picking the school required the farmer to fill in a book about the size of the modern day passport for each boy. The day of the week was entered, hours worked and duly signed at the end of the week. We were paid the princely sum of 1s / 6d (7.5p) a day. At the end of the week we would line up outside the back door of the farm to be paid, and came away thinking we were millionaires. At the end of the four weeks we returned to school and handed in our books for checking.
In addition I still worked on George Britten's farm at weekends and after school, learning to plough, scarify, cut hay etc.
The most important thing to happen during the later part of 1946 was the installation of a water main through the village, water was not connected to houses until nearly a year later. The only installation put in at the time of the main was the standpipe/faucet which was located next to the village pump. Villagers boycotted this for quite some time because they didn't like the quality of the water, preferring instead to use the pump.
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Post-War 1946 |
