Growing up in the Forest (General)

by slowhands , proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Monday, January 21, 2013, 08:24 (4374 days ago) @ roy meek

My granddaughter asked me this question and I am asking the forum
What did my great grandfather do when he was let out of school (what games did they play What would they have as presents at
Christmas what sort of childhood would one have was schooling free in the 1800 hundreds. One thing I can recall my father saying
That he had to wear a smok

depending on their ages I'd recommend they read Winifred Foley's books / chapters about childhood in the Forest - admittedly a little later than you are initially interested in but they will gain an idea.

Full Hearts And Empty Bellies: A 1920s Childhood from the Forest of Dean to the Streets of London

Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter - in a world of unspoilt beauty and desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at thirty and children died of starvation. Living hand-to-mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving family and the woods and streams of a forest 'better than heaven' as a playground. But a brother and sister were dead in infancy, bread had to be begged from kindly neighbours and she never had a new pair of shoes or a shop-bought doll. And most terrible of all, like her sister before her, at fourteen little Poll had to leave her beloved forest for the city, bound for a life in service among London's grey terraces.

Child in the Forest

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Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>