That Reminds Me was a weekly column published in the Bletchley Gazette from January 1973 to December 1978.
Originally from Yorkshire, Harold (Heppy) Hepworth had worked on The Gazette for twenty years. He preferred to describe himself as a reporter, though his title was officially Leader Writer or Assistant Editor. Later, we believe after his retirement, he began this series of articles on a wide variety of topics – though mostly about life and the characters in Bletchley. Our volunteers Wendy Williams and Penny Perdue have transcribed these stories and we present them now, as before, in a regular offering.
Creator
Harold Hepworth for the Bletchley Gazette
Place
Bletchley
Reference number
TRM
Records in this Collection
In a recent conversation with a man aged about 28 I happened to mention that I used to be a Rechabite. “And what on earth’s a Rechabite?” he asked. “A member of the Independent Order of Rechabites,” I told him. This answer, of course, only begged a further question.
It then occurred to me that here ...
The use of Westminster Hall for the presentation to the Queen of Parliament’s loyal Jubilee greetings reminded me of the occasion when, for a few moments, I had that great barn of a place all to myself. That afternoon, Mr Dick Crossman was to announce the government’s intention of creating a new town in North ...
I am sorry to read that Hanslope spire is in trouble, but glad that the parishioners are determined to raise the £13,000 needed to repair it.
In my wilder moments I have hoped that the new city might at some time build something mainly for the purpose of announcing itself, like the tower announces Blackpool, the ...
I sometimes wonder whether Milton Keynes Development Corporation or Milton Keynes Borough Council know of decisions taken by the former Bletchley Urban Council anent development in the area, or whether they have decided to take no notice of them even if they do know.
I am thinking of the county council’s plan to pull down The ...
The recent “sale of the century” at Mentmore reminded me that the 6th Early of Rosebery, whose death led to the sale, lived for a few years at the since-demolished house known as The Grange, in Buckingham Road, Bletchley.
He had not then succeeded to the title and as heir he went under the name of ...
Two days before the Queen’s Silver Jubilee there appeared in the Sunday Express a feature article which greatly interested me. It was written by the former Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson, and it was headed “How the Queen made me feel like a schoolboy who had not done his homework”.
The article turned out to be ...
I spent an interesting half-hour or so at the recent Jubilee Exhibition of village relics at Little Brickhill. The exhibition was held in the former village school which is now the community centre, and the organisers could be complimented on bringing together a very nice assemblage of items from times gone by.
Two items in particular ...
In one conversation with the late Mr Frank Howard, of Fenny Stratford, he told me that his son now occupied the farm at Newton Longville known as Dead Queen. ‘What could I make of a strange name like that?’ he asked me. At that point the conversation was interrupted and we never got round to ...
A recent Gazette item reminded me of the singularly disastrous fire which occurred at the Willen vicarage in 1946. The vicar at the time was the Rev A M Berry. He had spent a great part of his life as a schoolmaster and was now in his 80’s. He was the civil parish’s representative on ...
I wonder how many people know that Sister Dora, heroine of the much-acclaimed television biography, was village schoolmistress at Little Woolstone and that in her spare time she tended the sick there out of sheer sympathy before going on to do for hospitals in general what Florence Nightingale had done for military hospitals only a ...
Milton Keynes Borough Council have set themselves a nice problem in attempting to divide Bletchley into easily definable areas.
The suitable naming of areas, roads and streets has been an interest of mine ever since the day, 24 years ago, when I returned to my house in St George’s Road, West Bletchley, to find bags of ...
I suppose that any chimney sweep still operating in West Bletchley will not have as much work to do after the Clean Air Act comes into force there later this year. Chimney sweeps follow an ancient and honourable craft, even if – unlike broderers, horners, loriners and cordwainers – they are not represented among the ...
In my recent article headed “A town by other names” I referred to a story that at one time the old Denbigh Hall Inn was known as the Marquess of Granby.
I called it just a story because I had a lurking feeling of having heard it discounted at some time somewhere. Since writing the article ...
One day in 1950 two men came into the Gazette’s original office in the approach road to Bletchley’s Central Gardens. They told me they were setting up a Trustee Savings Bank in Bletchley, but needed a number of suitable persons to act as local trustees, and did I know any?
I was hazy about such banks, ...
Come September I shall have held a driving licence for 40 years. So, although there have been many years when I have used it very little, I was beginning to think of myself as something of a veteran – until the other day.
Then I chatted with an old acquaintance who had held a licence from ...
Along with my son and daughter-in-law, I spent three days in my old stamping ground, Yorkshire, two weeks ago. It was not a pleasure visit, far from it, but we did manage to have one day in the Dales – or just one dale, to be exact. There are five or six main dales, leading ...
I suppose everybody nowadays is concerned about the cost of living. Among the less well-to-do, the cost of food is said to be the main problem. This applies especially to retirement pensioners and most particularly to elderly widows and widowers living alone who have neither the means to buy in bulk, nor to pack their ...
Most people remember with affection the place they were reared wherever they might be and however old they are.
Such a person was Mr Herbert Purcell. Known to his friends as “Herby,” he was born at Fenny at about the turn of the century and emigrated to Australia in 1919 or 1920. He died recently in ...
I recently returned home after three or four days’ absence and found ants having a high old time in the kitchen cabinet. The attraction was just two boiled sweets which I had forgotten were in there. I never mind the old insect or two, but there were hundreds of these things. Fortunately, there is a ...
The other day I saw a good deal of harvesting going on in the countryside. I did not notice a combine harvester anywhere. Maybe conditions were still too wet for that, or else the fields concerned were too small. But the songs of the birds were drowned for the time being by the throb of ...
I wonder how many people recall the Bletchley rent strike of 1948? Though the strike was never comprehensive and very quickly flickered out, it created quite a stir at the time.
In those days, special extension of Bletchley was yet to come, but the town was getting on with its own housing programme and post-war council ...
In the temporary absence of anything world-shattering in my line of country, I append a few more notes on local church bells and bell-ringers.
In February, 1946, Mr George Grove, of Church Street, Fenny Stratford, retired after 54 years of ringing the bells of St Martin’s. For many of those years he was bellmaster and he ...
In my fairly recent article about 81-year-old Mr Cecil Hands, of Clifford Avenue, Bletchley, I deliberately abstained from any reference to the activity for which he is still remembered best of all by many old stagers. This was his prowess on the soccer field. He hung up his boots on his marriage in 1927, but ...
To my mind one of the most interesting photographs the Gazette has had for some time was that published two or three weeks ago which showed Mrs Diana Weale, of Wychwood Farm, Mursley, using a plough drawn by two fine heavy horses. The horses were pulling abreast and that is how I remember ploughing being ...
No Comments
Add a comment about this page