Interview with Wendy Checkley (nee Brace b.1953) about moving to Bletchley, education, employment and recreation.

Wendy Checkley was born in London, and adopted into the Brace family. They moved to Bletchley when she was three; she has early memories of being pushed to Bletchley in the pram for shopping.She talks of family life, her Mum, visits from her Nan and the routines of family Christmases. She didn’t notice any resentment from Bletchley locals as a child, because they lived in a neighbourhood where almost everyone was an incomer. She talks of the market, local shops, Castles School, Rickley School and the old Denbigh secondary, now demolished. She enjoyed Denbigh School and its youth club; she remembers Mike Spencer the English teacher and school trips to plays. She got into trouble for truanting, but was allowed an extra year to take her CSE exams. After leaving school at 16, she did office work for various companies: at Cigarette Components she was secretary to the maintenance engineer.

As a child she joined the Brownies, then the St John’s Ambulance in Sherwood Drive. Entertainment included the Derwent Drive youth club, weekly discos behind Whaddon Way shops, the Studio (Bletchley) cinema, occasional Wilton Hall dances, the Dolphin pub, and Makarios café. She remembers the Bletchley clothes shops then, and mini skirt fashions. She recalls the Queen’s visit. She met her husband at Denbigh School; they married at age 18 in the Registry Office. They lived first in a caravan they bought at Cosgrove to get on the housing list, and were later housed by the council in Albert Street.

She recalls attitudes to all her Mum’s adopted children: ‘everyone knew my Mum in Bletchley’ because the children were coloured. But people seemed to accept it quite well. She enjoyed having the younger children around, and recalls annual family holidays in Wales in a Dormobile and a tent.

She remembers having her first baby in the maternity unit at Whalley Drive, and the antenatal classes; she talks of her family life with the children. She thinks Bletchley is less good now that Milton Keynes has arrived; the shops are shutting down. She feels she is a Bletchley person and that it’s a good place to live, although there are job shortages now; her husband has had to take a part-time job.