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