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
Last week I told of a man who was a partner in the former Bassett’s Bank for 66 years. Quite a record!
It is well beaten, however, by that of Mr. Frank Howard, of George Street, Fenny Stratford, who has been in the building business of Howard Brothers for no fewer than 69 years and still ...
Last week I told how the 69-year-old Fenny Stratford building business of Howard Brothers came to be founded. This week from the lips of 85-year-old founder-member, Mr Frank Howard, I tell something of the story of the firm.
First of all, however, I must mention one of the most interesting developments to take place in Fenny.
Where ...
I find something awesome in the fact that by the time these notes are published we shall have entered the last quarter of the 20th century. I would like to live to the 21st century, but as I would then be 92 my chances are pretty dim.
Not so my wife, however. Long ago one in ...
One day about 50 years ago Bletchley fire Brigade were bowling along in all their glory to a farm fire at Shenley Brook End.
The outfit comprised a brightly burnished steam pump on solid-rimmed wheels, manned by a brass-helmeted crew and towed by an old Fiat motor car.
This arrangement was quite an improvement on the former ...
From time to time newspaper offices are invaded by students seeking information on local history or on some aspect of it for their theses. Quite often I myself used to be drawn into the exercise, though I could hardly afford the time. Sometimes I wondered what the eventual theses would be like. I never saw ...
I am obliged to my friends, Leslie Stevens and Ron Staniford, for their laudable attempt to put me right out about the centuries and quarter-centuries. I understand their argument, of course, having used it myself in 1950 and possibly also in 1925, when I, too, considered myself a sharp-witted lad.
I now think differently, however. I ...
How far we have travelled in the past 50 years! Some of the items that appeared in the now-defunct North Bucks times during the month of January 1925, would stagger you if they appeared in the Gazette today. Yet they probably did not raise much more than an eyebrow then (and I was already in ...
Grim warnings of economic disaster are in the air. “Tighten your belts” is one call; “Save energy” is another. We older people do not face the prospect in any mood of complacency. Yet we are fortified by the knowledge that we have come through similar periods of short commons in the past.
My own experience began ...
From time to time in previous notes I have referred to the tremendous amount of work done by civilian women during the 1939-45 war, but without going into details.
The truth is that 30 years later such details are difficult to find. For the most part, women did a job. Then, when their service was no ...
Sunday evenings at Fenny Stratford during the early part of this century were regularly enlivened by the baa-baaing of two or three hundred sheep who passed through the town on their way to Bletchley railway station.
The sheep belonged to Mr Janes, of Mount Farm, Simpson. Besides being a farmer, he was a sheep trader or ...
Mr Frank Howard’s recollections of the old Fenny Fire Brigade recently published in these jottings call to mind another story of derring-do on the part of that doughty band. It was told in 1946 by Mr George Bates, of Water Eaton, who was then aged 82 and had been a member of the brigade 50 ...
Of all the many local railway anecdotes the one I find most intriguing is that about how driver “Coddy” Foster’s engine came to be in the Newfoundout and the consequences for the said Coddy.
The Newfoundout, I must explain to newcomers to Bletchley, is the triangular stretch of water off Water Eaton Road bounded by the ...
The other afternoon I had a run through the new part of the new city of Milton Keynes. I wanted to find the whereabouts of the Stantonbury Campus in daylight in case I wished to go there in darkness some time. I had heard that the road which begins in Bletchley as Bond Avenue led ...
Galley Hill Women’s Institute have celebrated their first anniversary. Nothing much in that, some might say. But wait a minute.
Commonly a WI is a village institution, but Galley Hill is a new city housing estate. And commonly a village is a place where most people have known most other people all their lives, but a ...
“But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire.”
So runs the great bass aria from Handel’s Messiah, and for scores of years I have enjoyed hearing it whenever it has been sung by a competent singer.
Recently, however, I came upon the ...
I was a little surprised to read in a recent issue of the Gazette that St Martin’s Church is now the only building in Fenny Stratford proposed to be listed for conservation on historical and archaeological grounds.
Only a little surprised, because since the war there have been a number of such surveys, proposals and recommendations ...
The somewhat tortuous and, in places, very narrow road from Little Brickhill to Great Brickhill is still known to local people as “Jack Ironcap’s Lane,” after a highwayman who is said to have used it to pounce suddenly on Watling Street travellers and to make his get-away afterwards.
Here and now I must point out that ...
By rights, this article should be read only by old soldiers. It contains just a couple of wartime reminiscences they might appreciate, including how I won my first stripe and lost it again the same day.
I had done the usual six weeks’ square-bashing, followed by several months of technical trade training, and now found myself ...
Just a few notes on recent events…
First, a salute to the memory of old friend and fellow Yorkshireman, Charles Gerry, of Harlech Place, Bletchley, who has passed away at the age of 86.
A fairly recent Gazette profile pointed out that he rose from private soldier to major in both world wars. He did himself rather ...
A NOISY AIRPORT THREAT TO THE CITY
The idea of a third London Airport is being tossed around once more. The news fills me with unease, for the suggested site is Thurleigh in Bedfordshire, which is only a few miles from the Borough of Milton Keynes.
This minor airfield was among a number of sites from which ...
The big secret of the wartime set-up at Bletchley Park has only recently been revealed. I do not wish to minimise its importance. On the other hand, I do not accept all the claims made for it.
Nor do I subscribe to the view that had the enemy been aware of the activities at the park, ...
I was rummaging in our barn the other day when I came across an old camp bed. Not that anybody would ever use it for camping; its wooden frame and folding legs were far too heavy for that. But it was still in good order, except for the canvas, which needed renewing.
Then I remembered how ...
Today’s talk about the very real danger of inflation reminds me of an experience in the days of my youth. At the time I was a junior reporter in an industrial town of over 30,000 people, but this was only at a branch office of a newspaper, whose headquarters were in an adjoining town of ...
For a few years after the second world war there were periodical auction sales of old furniture and other household articles at the Bletchley market place. One day I was nosing around there when I came upon a lace-making pillow. It was complete with pretty little bone bobbins inscribed with mottoes and messages of a ...
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