April 2008 - Village Voices

Shingle Street a hundred years ago
My grandparents’ life at Shingle Street
was so different from anything we know
today. Fresh food and hard work were
plentiful, but cash was short in the
home-made wooden cottages, clinkerbuilt
like the boats. The day started early
when one of the boys would set out to
Oxley Dairy for the cottagers’ milk. In
1929 my Uncle George was earning 1/- a
week for his milk round, (about 6p). He
was 11 years old and probably did the
round on his brother’s old push-bike
wearing home-made wooden clogs.
Depending on the season he would stop
on the way home to collect birds’ eggs or
mushrooms for breakfast. There might be
traps to check for rabbits or hares, and
bits of wood to pick up for the fire in the
kitchen range where all the food was
cooked.
The heavy, cumbersome old bike was the
real difference between him and the boy
Three sailors outside a house at Shingle Street
who had done the milk-round at the
beginning of the century. There had been
no bikes for the children then, and they
had walked to Hollesley School.
Almost everything was heavy and hard
to handle. Hollesley Bay was alive with
fish and every house had a winch and a
boat on the beach, but shifting those
boats required some strength. Some of
the men had turned worn out hulls upside
down to serve as smoke houses or
workshops; others had built wooden huts
for the purpose. If the breakers were too
strong the men were unable to launch the
boats, but there could still be fresh fish
or lobsters stored in wooden crates kept
in the ponds. There were two ponds
between the houses and the sea and you
could row a boat on them. A boy had
drowned in one of those ponds.
Shinglestreeters did not fish out of sight
of the beach. They didn’t need to – all
April 2008 page 10 www.villagevoices.org.uk
Photos supplied