"My mother started working in the local pub, which was the Red Lion Hotel, whilst my sister, who was ten years older than me, looked after me in the evenings until my mother came home from work... We had no running water in the houses at Avebury, there was a standpipe situated central to all the houses, and we had to fill buckets and other receptacles from it. The toilet was a bucket closet at the back of the house, and every so often the bucket would have to be emptied into a hole dug in the garden... The Red Lion Hotel where my mother worked had a large room at the rear with a small stage, and it was often used for dances, at which mother often sang, and so became quite a local celebrity...
"The school at Avebury was very small by to-days standards. I recall it consisted of one large room divided into sections by the use of large screens. Sections could be made larger or smaller, depending on the number of pupils in each class... Opposite the school was the lych-gate leading to St James Church, these are roofed gateways originally used for biers (carrying coffins) to rest before the burial in the graveyard. Further on past the Church was the Elizabethan Manor House. It is now owned by the national Trust, but in my day, owned and lived in by Colonel Jenner who had children around our age and many of us were allowed in there at times to play with them. On St George's day a fete would be held in the grounds with dancing around the May-pole. A pageant would be staged depicting St George slaying the Dragon.
"Starting from the school again, (it is now a social centre serving three villages - a new school having been built on what was the old playground) and going down the street in a westerly direction, there was Caswells the bakers, opposite was a small grocery shop. On down the street, we passed several large houses, one of which was the old vicarage. As the road turned sharply right, the building on the left hand corner was the village smithy. I recall many fascinating moments watching Doug Paradise the Smith shoeing horses, and also putting iron tyres on cartwheels."
