Just opposite the top end of our market garden in Station Road was Frank Bassett’s blacksmith shop. We were allowed to watch him shoe the large Shire horses which were brought in from the local farms. Some of the largest horses came from Eastrop Farm and were brought to the smithy by Reg Alexander who worked for Mr Dibble. One day when I was coming out from watching the horses being shod, I ran into the front of Gardiners bakers van, which was being driven by Harry Jefferies. My right knee was cut and bleeding badly, so my father carried me to the doctors surgery in the High Street for treatment. Afterwards to our home in Sheep Street where I was put to bed to rest my leg. Luckily no bones were broken.
At the end of the war Mrs Hollas at Parsonage Farm started to make ice cream and sold them from the dairy and from a shed in the tythe barn field opposite the farm entrance. These were much sought after, because there had been no ice cream during the war years. Frank Turner in the High Street also sold Wall’s ice cream in small blocks; one to each person, sometimes the queue would stretch back to Willis’s grocery shop. Sometimes when we were hungry we would buy a small crusty loaf from Bill Gardiners bake house at the back of the High Street. We would then lie on top of the high wall near ‘The Blind’, and eat it while it was still hot. Sadly this wall is now gone to make way for the town library.
At the end of the war we had a Victory party on the front lawn of Herbie and Middie Haines house in Cherry Orchard, with jelly, blancmange and fancy cakes, and a bonfire in the Welcome Home Field during the evening. All the children of the town queued at Mr Hicks’s butchers shop; where the Jesmond House is now; to receive a bar of Fry’s chocolate cream each. Mr Hicks kept telling everyone not to get back on the end of the queue, because there was only enough for one bar to each child. I remember getting on the end of the queue just past the Home Farm gateway, wondering whether there would be any left by the time I got to the front. As far as I know everyone received one each.
One of my best friends; Tommy Dilley; lived in the Market Square in the house just opposite the ‘Red Lion’ pub; where the podium is now; one Saturday evening the house caught fire and was gutted out. Luckily, Tommy, his mother, and brother Ron were spending the evening with their aunty in Cherry Orchard. Tommy’s dad was still away with the army in Germany at the time. Sadly their pet cat died in the fire. People living in Sheep Street at that time, and who we saw quite a lot of were; Harry and Mrs Peapell who kept the ‘Globe Inn’; next door was Eric Woodbridge at the ‘Red Lion Inn’, then Freddy and Connie Barrett with their Draper and Haberdashery shop; next to them was Mr Jack Dunn’s Chemist shop. In the big house next door lived Mr Percy Chick and his wife, with their large building business in the yard at the back. Mr John Pitman lived at Camrose House. Opposite lived Mrs Wallis, with next door Mrs Baker and her two sons, Jim and Charlie. Then there was Jim and Betty Haggit’s house where Mrs Haggit was the agent for Sunday newspapers. Mr Haggit had a coal business. Across the Market Square lived Mrs Dilley with sons Ron and Tommy. Next to them in Sheep Street was Wilf and Mrs Akers with their two sons, John and Jimmy. After the war Stan and Nora Peapell and their children came to live at the Globe Inn with his parents.
After Mr Head died, (who was my grandfathers next door neighbour) Mrs Head asked my brother and me if we would dig her garden for her, which was on the site of the present Methodist Church. This we agreed to do for her each year. The soil was very black and easy to dig, and in the middle was an orange tree which Mrs Head had grown from an orange pip. Every year it was full of sweet scented blossom, but there was never any oranges on the tree, no doubt due to the weather conditions. Mrs Head always planted the vegetable seed herself, and always had good crops. Under Mrs Head’s house was a large cellar which each year seemed to get flooded quite deep, so the Swindon fire brigade had to come to pump the water out. This was exciting for the children of Sheep Street, because we had great fun floating small pieces of wood on the water which gushed down the street. My grandfather Archer’s house also had two large cellars underneath. From one of them there was a tunnel leading out under the road towards Church House. One day Jim (Brumm) Haggit was driving his small coal lorry past my grandfathers house when it started to sink into the road down to its axle. The road had caved in due to the weight of the lorry load of coal. Eventually a breakdown lorry came to lift the lorry out, and the council came to repair the road. Another incident like this happened in the High Street near the Saracens Head Hotel; this time it was a Churchill Tank. It was said at the time that it had gone down into a secret tunnel which led from the Saracens to St Michael’s church. I remember seeing a gang of council workers filling the hole in with Johnny Dunbar in charge of them. Another thing I can just remember during the early part of the war was the men cutting all the iron railings from the front gardens of houses. They started to cut the railings from the churchyard by the “Winding Hatch” but Vicar Webb stopped them. If you look carefully at the railings on the left hand side of the church gate you can see the marks where they were welded back on. Not all consecrated ground was protected, because the railings along the front of the cemetery in Cricklade Road were cut and taken away.
The Archer Family Tree 