My experiences in Glinton started when I was 14 when my mother remarried a chap called Billy Carter, who was the chauffeur to the family which owned the ‘big house’ behind the church. We lived in ‘Stonehaven’, the cottage adjacent to the house and close to Cutty Neaversons farm.
Glinton Home Guard
Roy Neaverson, his son, was my age and we played cricket and football in the Neaverson’s field, which is on the right as you leave Glinton towards Nine Bridges. It was here that I remember all the Neaverson cattle getting foot and mouth disease and being buried in lime near the barn around 1938.
The Rollings family kept the Blue Bell. Their children, Alf, Muriel and Joan were our age and the main pub game was skittles. Beer was kept down in the cellar and brought up the stairs to the bar room for each customer.
When I was around 14, me and my neighbour, John Bradshaw (later to inherit a milling business out Oundle way), started work at the Co-Op in Peterborough where we cycled from Glinton through hail, rain and snow every day for four years, until I joined the Air Force when I was 18.
The Glinton Home Guard (Dad’s Army) was started circa 1939 and our base was the brick building on the main road close to the Crown pub. ‘Captain Mainwaring’ was a solicitor called Mr Lawrence and ‘Corporal Jones’ was called Algi Chapman. In the picture, I am seated on the front row, third from the right. Some of the others include Ted Markley, Stan Gutteridge, Freddie Youngman, Don Crowson (who was killed on D-Day, 1944) and Jim Saunders.
My pal Don Crowson lived in the last white-washed cottage on the right down North Fen Road (more houses have been built since then). In the council houses opposite, lived Doddy and Minor Brown, Sam Pearson, Dusty Miller, Jack Saunders and closer to the Woodcroft turning lived the Embletons – in a prefabricated building, before they moved to Werrington.
I saw Chris Embleton in the Edith Cavell Hospital a few weeks ago – the first time I had seen him in 50 years!
Back row l-r: Jim Saunders, Laurie Malton, Don Crowson and Jack Embleton. Front: John Bradshaw and Nobby Thompson. Picture taken at the old Olivers Garage forecourt in 1938/39 by Chris Oliver
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looking for some pictures or info about my dad, sam pearson who died 7/3/2011. He was 74 can you help we would like to do a photo board at his funeral 21/3/11 but have no real pictures of when he was a boy.