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
What games do children play today around the streets and on spare patches of grass? I see pavements marked for hop-scotch. I also see girls skipping with a long rope swung by a girl at each end. But apart from that I see little to remind me of the improvised and nearly costless games of ...
Although I say it myself, as shouldn’t, I have always been a pretty good speller of the English language. I know that practice makes perfect and that I have had a lot of it. Yet I do believe I was given a head start through my prior knowledge of the Yorkshire dialect, which was spoken ...
I see that the Wizard of O’s has been at it again – to the further bafflement and discomfiture of all we 60 and 70 year olds who now wrestle in despair with the intricacies of the metric system.
This time he materialises in the form of an ‘important notice’ to customers of the East Midlands ...
The path of the local historian is bestrewn with pitfalls, especially when he (or she) writes of events which he himself cannot exactly remember but which older people can.
This happened in 1952 to no less an authority than Sir Frank Markham – then Major S.F. Markham, North Bucks MP. That year saw the publication of ...
Today, when I read there has been a “big crowd” at this or that local event, I wonder if it is generally realised what a big crowd really is in local terms. I have never seen a figure actually stated for a local event in recent years. I guess, however, that a figure of 5,000 ...
While I cannot agree with my old and much-respected friend, Cllr. Bill Caldwell that today the Gazette “does not publish one iota” of the business of the new Milton Keynes Borough Council I have a certain amount of sympathy for him, if not for his remark. I believe he was following the tine-honoured tactic of ...
A factor that made me feel more at home when I first came to Bletchley was the presence here of a number of other Yorkshiremen who were in fairly prominent positions in the town and had been for years. Men like Mr. R.L. Sherwood, who was clerk of the urban council, Mr. E.C. Cook, who ...
We had not long been in occupation of our council house at St. George’s Road, Bletchley, when we returned to it one day to find an unordered load of coal being shot into the barn.
I forget how the affair was resolved, but the explanation of the error was that the coal had been intended for ...
In one of her recent articles my Gazette colleague Susan, wondered “what sort of population this brave new city of ours” was going to have. She pointed out that the Wolverton Community Association was said to be defunct after only 18 months; that there was a fear that the Bradville Community Association might fold up; ...
I was intrigued to read in a recent issue of the Gazette of a Roundhead Association and particularly of the status in that association of Jon Mengham, of Woburn Sands, as a lieutenant of Sir William Waller’s Regiment of Foot.
This is the most harrowing and bitter period in the country’s history reduced to fun and ...
What struck you most about the plans for the central area of Milton Keynes new city? For my part it was the two-decker transport system, whereby the private cars of shoppers would be segregated from service vans and lorries.
This is in line with the development corporation’s first-announced intention of creating a motor car city. I ...
As we older residents of Bletchley view the developments now going on at the station end of the former Bletchley Road, now Queensway, I do not think I shall be far wrong in stating that our general reaction is one of mingled distaste and dismay.
Those gigantic black boxes of impending new shops now blocking off ...
On rainy days – and at the time of writing we are having lots of them – there is nothing I like more than looking through old newspapers, especially “local rags”. By “old” I mean anything published more than 50 years ago. Maybe because I was 50 years at the trade, I find that they ...
At the end of the 1939-45 war, there was a dire shortage of teachers. Auxiliary teacher-teaching-colleges were set up and two-year crash courses were instituted to take the place of the normal three-year curriculum.
During the war, a large number of government buildings had been erected in Bletchley Park. For various reasons, all these were now ...
A week or two back I gave some advertising items from the Fenny Stratford Weekly Times of August 28, 1879, which I trust were not without interest. Now I turn to the paper’s local editorial content. It comprises only four-and-a-half columns on the back page of the four-page paper, but I personally find it a ...
There is a good deal of talk nowadays about the need for a greater re-cycling of industrial and domestic “waste.” Quite rightly, it is pointed out that much material is now being dumped which, with a little ingenuity, could be reclaimed for further use.
There is one material, however, which has been intensively re-cycled for 120 ...
I used to like Fenny Stratford. It had character. This was not just an old world charm. Still less was it a quaintness. Nearly every building, whether of the 17th century or of the early 20th century, was in strictly utilitarian use.
It was a hodge-podge of architectural styles. Yet this gave it a certainly liveliness ...
I like a good mystery. Especially do I like a good mystery of history, such is why a Gretna Green situation seems to have arisen at Great Woolstone during the six years 1664 to 1669 inclusive.
This mystery, with its suggestion of runaway marriages, was brought to light in 1947 by Mr. Warren Dawson. Mr. Dawson ...
Just a few reflections on the general election, now that it is over and done with. Non-party reflections, of course. As I have said before, I am the most floating of floating voters. So if you read anything party-political into any of these lines, it is in your eye, not mine.
For 20 years I covered ...
At mid-day next Monday, if all goes according to custom, six loud bangs will rend the air of Fenny Stratford. The bangs will be repeated at 2p.m. and again at 4p.m. After that there will be no more such bangs until the same times next year.
The bangs will be made by the famous Fenny Poppers, ...
The closure of the Jubilee brickworks at Skew Bridge brings to an end another chapter in the long story of brickmaking in North Bucks.
When I came to Bletchley in 1946, three groups of brick kiln chimneys to the south and south-west of the town were the outstanding features of the skyline. Predominant were eleven chimneys ...
I see that Bletchley’s wandering loos are likely to make what the Gazette calls another “public appearance” shortly.
I am glad to hear this. Not just for my own sake, but for the sake of all those who, with uncomfortable looks on their faces, buttonhole me at the Bigger, Better, Blacker end of Queensway to ask ...
During the week following the publication of my article on the former Bletchley Park Training College for women teachers I was delighted and highly honoured to receive a letter from the former principal, Miss D. Cohen, herself.
I suppose the letter might be intended to be entirely private. But in it she draws attention – most ...
When I was a boy the old people around me did not wholly trust the Bank of England’s £1 and ten shilling notes which had been issued in great numbers at the beginning of the 1914-18 war.
They much preferred sovereigns and half-sovereigns. If it had been possible, they would have done all their paying in ...
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