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 two or three days’ time it will be Remembrance Sunday. Curiously enough, when that day comes round my thoughts turn not so much to that war of 30-odd years ago in which I was personally involved as to the war of 20-odd years before that – the war of 1914-1918.
How can that be? I ...
Three business premises now occupy the site in Bletchley’s Queensway of two former semi-detached houses, in one of which I lived for three happy years. Next door lived Mr Ray Holdom and family. From there he carried on a music business previously run by his father. In those days I used to do quite a ...
A number of small matters have lately engaged my interest. Matters like the proposal to turn Gayhurst House into separate houses and flats.
Incidentally, the English Place Names Society say that Gayhurst means “goat wood.” The Old English word for a goat was pronounced “gate” and a wood was a “hurst” – hence Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst ...
One of the Met Office’s cold northerly airstreams is passing though these parts at the time of writing.
We had a marvellously hot and dry summer, followed by a period of so much rain that reservoirs which were said to be at crisis levels have been refilled in record time and ground that was bare is ...
For the past few years, residents of West Bletchley have had a good laugh at the very idea of becoming a smoke control area.
They have pointed upwards to the reeking chimneys of the LBC brickworks and have said: “What? Stop our small domestic fires when almost next door we have those huge chimneys spewing smoke ...
Little Brickhill is on the warpath again. And yes, it’s about the Watling Street and how once more the growth of traffic is not only threatening to isolate one side of the village from the other but is also threatening the very lives of the people.
The people say that in 12 months the amount of ...
A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY READERS. And for goodness’ sake cheer up, everybody. Especially you younger ones. For I tell you without much fear of contradiction that the average person aged 65 and over has come through at least 35 years which were worse than this one. If any fellow oldey doubts this, let ...
I apologise for the non-appearance of my usual odds and ends in last week’s Gazette. You see, I went to another part of the country for Christmas, thinking the paper would miss a week’s publication at Christmas, as it had done for several years past. But it did not miss, and I returned from holiday ...
I suppose that if these weekly notes have any intrinsic value it is that on occasion they add perspective to current affairs. I owe this ability, such as it is, to my extensive – though thoroughly unco-ordinated – reading and to the fascination which old men and their memories have always had for me.
I caught ...
Continuing my last week’s jottings on interesting old men who lived locally, I am reminded of Mr Ernest Margetson Coe, who for many years was butler to Sir Herbert and Lady Leon at Bletchley Park. He entered their service when only an old farmhouse stood on the site of the present mansion and was still ...
During the last war, Bletchley became a refuge not only for organised evacuee children, but also for a number of private people. Some of these had been bombed out of the London area and remained here. Others were so elderly or infirm or both that they judged it would be better for all concerned if ...
Reference to the decoding activities at Bletchley Park has been made in the BBC’s series on “The Secret War.” As a result, we are now clearer about what happened to our defence on the night Coventry was blitzed. In particular, we know now that there was no question of Coventry having been deliberately left undefended ...
Does it seem to you like 25 years since Princess Elizabeth became Queen? I suppose your answer will be the same as mine – sometimes it does and other times it doesn’t. It does when you look at all the changes that have since occurred both locally and nationally. It doesn’t when you consider all ...
One advantage of age is that we have been at or near the beginning of so many developments that were exciting in their time but which are commonplace today. One of them is the cinema.
I saw my first moving picture on a wet Bank Holiday. I was maybe six years old and my father said: ...
I hope everybody has taken notice of Mr Ron Staniford’s recent letter to the Gazette regarding the true nature and extent of the debt on Bletchley’s Leisure Centre. And I call it “Bletchley’s Leisure Centre”, not “The Bletchley Leisure Centre”, quite deliberately, for reasons which I hope to make clear.
The story does not go back ...
I note with interest that UFOs are with us again. I say “again” because they have been with us from time to time for the past 20 years at least. When they first appeared they naturally attracted our attention at the Gazette office and after making a number of inquiries we arrived at an explanation ...
I like talking with young people. They teach me a lot. Oh yes, they do! They have a better grasp of some aspects of 20th century life than I will ever have. And they can cause me to question the validity of some notions which for practically all my days I have held to be ...
About this time of year in 1937 – 40 years ago – the people of this district and of every other place in the British Isles were busily preparing to celebrate the coronation of King George VI, father of our present Queen. I was not living in North Bucks at the time. In fact, I ...
When I was a boy in Yorkshire, I lived practically next door to the village church. It was a big building with a high tower, but it had only one bell, albeit a very sonorous one. The sexton rang the bell at certain regular times. If it sounded at any other time, it almost always ...
To continue last week’s story of the bells . . .
No-one knows for certain how long there have been bells at Bletchley St Mary’s. The Rev F W Bennitt, writing in 1924, assumed that the tower had been built in 1420 specifically to accommodate bells. I think it quite likely. But the only actual information ...
Imagine our predicament if there should ever be a severe shortage of 10p pieces. What, for instance, would the borough council do then with their car parking slot machines? Such a happening sounds bizarre. Yet a similar kind of situation arose in this country, and not least locally, in the 17th century.
Whether from shortage of ...
My grandmother had a curious way of dealing with the more perplexing of her personal problems. “Pass me the good book, bairn,” she ordered. So I fetched the Bible and placed it on her lap. She then closed her eyes in prayer, opened the good book at random, placed her index finger on the page, ...
In considering road transport past and present, we are apt to think in terms of a straight transition from genuine horsepower to the horsepower generated by internal combustion engines. We are apt to forget the part played by the steam engine. Not the steam engines that ran on railways, but the steam engines that ran ...
I had not been long in this district when the only optician, Mr Leopold Durran, chided me about calling Fenny Stratford “Bletchley.” Standing outside his premises on a corner of what are still universally known as the Fenny Stratford crossroads, he went on to delineate the local ecclesiastical and civil boundaries, including the fact that ...
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