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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

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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

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

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You are a wonder Slowhands. Always ready with the right thing to say or the right place to research or a passage out of a book.

Thank you for all the info you give out on a daily basis.

May you have a great 2013.

Rita James

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As well as Winnifred F's writing I would also recommend Laurie Lee too.

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WHAT IS THE TITLE OF laura LEE`s book you are refering too

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my guess is "Cider with Rosie"
but not set in the Forest

Cider with Rosie is a 1959 book by Laurie Lee (published in the U.S. as Edge of Day: Boyhood in the West of England, 1960). It is the first book of a trilogy that continues with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). It has sold over six million copies worldwide.

The novel is an account of Lee's childhood in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire, England, in the period soon after the First World War. It chronicles the traditional village life which disappeared with the advent of new developments, such as the coming of the motor car, and relates the experiences of childhood seen from many years later. The identity of Rosie was revealed years later to be Lee's distant cousin Rosalind Buckland

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

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With the present snow, our friends were talking yesterday, how the boys used to make long slides in the snow down hills (streets/fields) and in the playgrounds - with their leather soled shoes they became shiny and extremely treacherous! My husband can remember having many bruises doing this.

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So we did, before we were turned into a nation of wimps by the health & safety gestapo and everything had to be someone's fault with a £ sign flashing at the end of it. Nowadays you close the school if it snows in case a poor little mite falls over. I ended up with a bruised and soggy backside in school playgrounds, and learned not to fall in the canal at Lydney and get muddy by falling in the canal, getting muddy and being given a good slap. Bah humbug. Bring back guts.

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"Seconded" Peter !

Until 1972 I attended Bilson School in Cinderford, a hundred yards along from our house in Parragate (below the "new" Lidls store on the old Red & White bus depot plot). There was a sizable concrete playground on the Parragate Road side of the school, below the newer infant classrooms and sloping down to the canteen. Onto this playground surface dribbled the water from an overflow pipe in the wall of the main old school building, presumably from a toilet. Every winter in those days we had proper frosts and usually snow. Hence this overflowed water would usually freeze overnight and stay frozen the next day allowing us to happily slide down the ice "track" at playtimes. This would sometimes go on for a few days, the track getting longer every night as the overflow continued dripping. The supervising teachers wern't bothered at all, not even when we would extend the track by using our empty little milk bottles to add more cold water from the toilet taps !
Rather more naughtily, in the evenings a few of us local kids used to slide down the short but steep Parragate Road itself, next to the school playground & canteen. We did this until it was late, dark and cold, using good old tin trays, much faster than traditional sledges. I recall doing this under the streetlamp, you could see the ice patches shining, and we'd pickup snow from the grass verge to add to the slipperyness !. Our respected & intelligent parents (my dad was an Edwards bus manager and my mates's parents were teachers at RFDGS) knew we did this but saw no harm in it at all, I guess any sensible local car drivers wouldn't be attempting this particular section of the road so... !.

Similarly in the summer we thought nothing of racing down Dockham Road from above the St Annals junction down thro the blind bends below another mate's house on homemade trolleys & scooters. If a car came up we just pulled into the side (often painfully), despite occasional nearmisses no-one seemed to mind and the danger was of course the attraction to us. My mate's dad was Keith Harris, Town Clerk, who also didnt mind us doing these "dangerous" things; nor his near neighbour Olly Hill the coalman who used the roads everyday and who's sons played with us !

Yes we suffered regular minor injuries but surely that helped prepare us for the big wide world !
Happy days !!

ps last year my mate wrote a letter to the Review which mentions our "dangerous" upbringing, long summers in the woods, cycling, fishing etc etc; it was an excellent reflection of how things were as 70s kids and I think you'll enjoy it, I'll scan it and post it on this site in a day or two. Yes of course sadly one occasionally heard of a kid drowning in the Forest's ponds, so it wasn't all rosy, but...

PPS as much as I agree with your view re the schools closing, its not just the childrens "safety" that closes schools, or at least not here in West London. Three? years ago we had a stiff few weeks snow yet I insisted my son set off to secondary school in his boots. He'd get home complaining that a lot of kids who lived nearer school hadnt bothered. I was annoyed there was NO criticism of those who hadnt bothered, or gratitude to those who had. And when they did close the school for a day or so, it was invariably because the staff "couldnt" get to the school rather than the kids, as some were travelling quite a long way (albeit many via the clear M40 motorway, so ??. That said I also do sympathise with the schools, modern parents can be very fast to blame everyone but their child, or threatening legal action, unlike in our day when we were taught & learned "common sense", and were usually expected to live & learn by our mistakes, even painfull ones.

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I too remember sliding in Bilson School yard,perfecting the collier squat was one of our favourites.Mr Gowman,our headmaster in my days would very often joined in.Another favourite pastime was playing 'chariots'.I often tell people who ask where we played,that as I lived in Heywood our playground was from there through to Mitcheldean.What a playground that was.Looking back now I wonder how we survived some of the risky things we did,but it was all part of a learning curve and made us more self reliant.
Maurice

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Very much off at a tangent, Jeff, you've brought back a memory of the old Cinderford bus depot by mentioning how close you lived, and resurrected a question I've had in my mind for years.

My grandparents and I sometimes used to go from Lydney to Ross, changing at Cinderford, to see my uncle and his family before they also moved to Lydney. One night on the way back, it turned out that the bus from Cinderford to Lydney had set off from the depot without waiting to connect with the bus from Ross. I still have a mental picture of my grandfather William Frank Essex (who'd been a senior copper in London, was now a Lydney councillor, and wasn't to be messed with by any bus company) banging on the counter at the depot with his fist, pointing at little me sat there loving it, with the words "I want to make a protest (bang) in the strongest (bang) possible (bang) terms (bang)." I didn't care, because it meant I didn't get to bed back at Forest Road until nearly 11 p.m.

According to the Red & White man's cowering defence, but only if I remember it rightly, you were supposed to get off the bus from Ross at the stop before the depot and cross the road to connect with the Lydney bus as it came out. Does that ring any bells? My geography of Cinderford was never strong.

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Hi Peter,
sorry for slow reply, been quizzing my mother re your question, yet sadly no sure facts to solve your query.
I suspect you're remembering a time pre 1970 ?, I only recall the Station from perhaps 1973 onwards after it had closed operationally. Mum recalls it a little before then. Thankfully my dad didn't start his short career as a Red & White driver until then, which was definitely after this Cinderford garage had closed and he worked out of Ross Garage, so he was NOT driving the buses to which you refer ;-)

Please take a look at the Old Maps site for a reminder of the Station layout and it's location within the town. Enter postcode GL14 2LY to bringup "Lidls", click that and it will produce a map centred on the station plot. Now select the 1960 1:2500 map from the R/H menu to display the labelled Bus Station centrescreen which can be enlarged.
http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html

In reality the ground slopes downwards right->left across the map as you view it, so the Station plot is "below" the High Street and we lived below that in Parragate. Steam Mills hence Ross is down the High Street so off the top of the Map. At far left of the Station plot at bottom of the slope is the big wide garage I recall playing in; a glassroofed openfront shell with a row of deep inspection pits with access steps, the shed was probably wide enough for 8 or more buses to back into sidebyside. So you can see it's a plot with just enough room in the centre to turn buses around in. According to mum the narrow building at "top" of the plot, near the High Street entrance included a small cafe or staff canteen, a waiting room & presumably the counter you recall ?. As there was a waiting room I presume buses came out of the garage or centre yard, stopped there for passengers at the yard entrance, then immediately exited onto the High Street, turning left for Ross and probably? right for Lydney. Your bus from Ross would have come up the High Street from Steam Mills, I guess you'd have disembarked on the far L/H side of the High Street next to the YMCA before the bus turned right across the road into the Station, you'd then cross the road to the Station waiting room or another bus stop on the roadside.
Ever since the Station shut there has always been a bus stop on the High Street at this point, near Arthur Edwards' hardware shop next to the yard entrance, opposite the YMCA. So it seems reasonable buses stopped there (on the High St) even when the garage was operating - perhaps the plot was a little busy/cramped to have people strolling around where the buses were turning ??. Whether they stopped in both directions I'm not sure, I suspect that not all buses would bother to turn into the Station especially if they wern't Red & Whites, such as Edwards' etc etc.

Sorry so vague re your question, but maybe this helps a little..??

If you view the next 1:2500 scale Map dated 1974, the old station buildings are still there but not labelled, confirming it was shut by then. This map shows the new Station at the top of the High Street where it meets Dockham Road, alongside Roy Grindle's coach yard & the rugby club. Why they moved such a short distance I don't know, perhaps for more space and certainly easier access off the narrow High Street ?. In it's turn this New Station was closed in the late 1980s and is now the Co-op shop & carpark, albeit with a bus layby.... These dates appear to match various changes of Red & White ownership as per the attached histories.

Sadly I've been unable to unearth any photos of the old Bus Station, yet...

However, here's a nice photo of the NEW Station(with Grindles behind) apparently taken in 1973, with a bus from my dad's old firm Edwards' abt the time he'd left their management stresses for an easy life driving Red & Whites. Not sure about that destination board unless it was reversing into the station !
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9003948@N05/6780477150/

This similar photo of a Soudley Valley bus is after 1978 when Red & White became part of National Welsh, see the maintenance garage behind.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24467251@N02/6268793516/

This site has many Red & White bus photos plus a detailed history and forum.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/red__white_services/
ALSO SEE
https://www.redandwhitebus.uk/RedandWhite

Not forgetting this site's prior thread re Watts Of Lydney, founders of Red & White.
http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=36995

FINALLY, this recommended site gives a detailed study of a recent total restoration of a Red & White double decker in Cinderford, talk about dedication.
http://www.old-bus-photos.co.uk/wp-content/themes/Old-Bus-Photos/galleries/red_and_whit...

POSTSCRIPT:
In his excellent "The Changing Forest" published 1962, Dennis Potter opens by describing a journey home from Oxford New College (so abt 1957) by Red & White doubledecker out of Gloster. He describes what was clearly an unpleasant halfhour in a miserable wintry Cinderford waiting for another bus onwards to Coleford. To pass time he takes a stroll thro' the town centre. I'm unsure as to whether he got off the first bus at or away from the Station, but he writes
"Lower down, opposite the garage where I could get the second bus, I find a place for a hot coffee and to warm myself, The Telebar"... The star of this cafe was no longer the television, but a gleaming jukebox, he describes the antics of the local youths discussing Elvis Presley & Tommy Steele amongst others. He ends
"I left to catch my bus in the freezing & blustery main street outside the window"...

Maybe his writings mean something to you Peter ?. Even if they don't, I know you're a fan of old buses having seen your writings on other Dean websites, so hopefully this was of interest anyhow.

As a huge fan of 50s music & culture and Dennis Potter's works, I think it's great that the only thing he could find appealing about my admittedly lessthanattractive home town was a loud coffeebar & some friendly locals, I was definitely born too late !.
If you've not read this book then please do especially if you're from the Berry Hill area, 1996 paperback reprints are very cheaply available.
http://intranet.yorksj.ac.uk/potter/biog.htm

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I'm delighted this site has posted my scan of a letter published in a Forest newspaper last year, thankfully my mum clipped it for me. It was written by a lad full of fun & popular with all, I consider it a great privilege to have been a close schoolfriend to Richard "Harry" Harris. We first met on starting in the same class at Bilson School c1967, our mothers knew each other thro St Stephens Church. His letter absolutely summed-up my recollections of endless warm summer holidays where every day we packed our lunches, stockedup on sweets, and rode our bikes past Latimer Lodge into the forest at Collafield for the day. We'd climb the conifers and try and sway them to catch and climb into the next tree, one day Harry was slowest to come down for "home time"; he asked if he should come down the "slow or quick way" - before he'd finished speaking there was a loud crack, a woosh, and he hit the ground very hard, for a few shocked seconds we thought he was dead. He'd lost his handgrip, dropped like a stone with his legs still around the trunk, as he fell the branches broke under him so slowing his fall as did the usual summer cushion of shed pine needles, thankfully nowt broken except pride. Another time we invented the new sport of riding our bikes thro' the rocky streambeds around Blackpool Brook, in about 6" of water. Great fun until "our leader", Harry of course, hit a particularly hard rock and his handlebars stopped steering the forks - most of our bikes were old, heavy and strong but he had a beautiful new "lightweight" Coventry Eagle (very posh!) and was distraught taking the long walk home to his parents who were NOT pleased with his shattered steering !. Fishing at Lightmoor ponds, did anyone ever catch anything there ?.
Longer trips to Speech House & deer "stalking" at Cannop, then upto Coleford for fish & chips & err drinks... It's all coming back to me and it was idyllic. In those days if we told our parents we were going "mucking about" in the woods, they trusted us and believed we'd be safe, even when cycling the main roads as 13 year olds - a different age, sadly. But then again IF we transgressed, despite their excellent coaching of "common sense" & "life skills", boy did we know about it, no ifs no buts !.
The war we had in Adrian Close's orchard pretending rotten windfall apples were grenades, they exploded on impact, not good for the laundry we later learnt ! Also browncoated (but deliberately & neatly) was Arthur (Mr! to us) Edwards behind the counter of his oldfashioned but superbly stocked hardware store, just up from our house, he was also the Cinderford Fire Chief. When he told us to handle knives with care, we did !, they were only ever tools, yet now...ug.. He scraped me off the road and walked me home when a motorbike wiped me off my pushbike, a lovely caring community chap (it hurt but I got a brand new bike off the speeding biker, yay!).

Thursday nights Cub Scouts c/o kindly Kim Dawson at the hut near St John's and paperchases on "the rocks" above The Bridge. We were "2nd Cinderford" - but where were the 1st ?. That long route march on our first weekend camp at Holly Barn, heavy rain, all our oldfashioned caps shrank ! (still got my uniform, we both became sixers, even did a "gang show" at the Wesley Hall once).

Such simple homemade pleasures but great days, if it did rain we stayed indoors and built Meccano & Airfix kits, thank heaven for no computer games or kids tv ! We all kept pets, Harry had a large greedy guinea pig that sounded like a farmyard sow when "singing" for his morning feed, it was so big it had a chicken wire run on the lawn, it would angrily square up to Olly Hill's Jack Russell. Our pet's bedding was woodshavings collected free from Giles joiners down the road; nowadays we buy specially selected, refined chemically treated stuff at considerable expense.. are modern pets softer too ??.
I did his paper round when he was on holiday, from James' in the Triangle ALL the way across Church Road to St Johns, took 3 hours on a Sunday morning with over 100 big heavy papers & supplements and no trolley, up and downs lots of awkward little side lanes, and return to the shop to promptly spend the £2 or so earnings on comics and a drink, would kids work like that now !?.

Mind it wasn't all good. The day he taught me the route we were collared for riding two-up on a bike, we were both petrified the policeman would tell our parents (he didnt but we wouldnt know that, we'd only ridden 50yards across the Triangle at 8am on a quiet Sunday morn). Our first brush with the Law, and boy did we remember it.
Back to the summer hols, when at Harry's house he insisted on listening to the Radio One Summer Holiday Roadshow, he liked his reggae & soul music, whereas I (oddly perhaps) disliked 70s pop intensely but unusually loved 50s rock n roll (still do). Worse still, we were sent to separate secondary schools, very upsetting for me as most of my daily schoolmates weren't from Cinderford, so we slowly drifted apart. He wanted to become a ship's Radio Officer and studied accordingly in Bristol, whereas I was in Cardiff doing engineering, so by time we qualified jobs were in decline & we both had to leave our beloved Forest. I'm ashamed to say the last times I saw him was during my apprenticeship at Ranks, Ranks Social Club Friday nite disco(ugh) my workmate Nicky Hill (Olly the coalman's son and Harry's neighbour) occasionally took Harry there when he was off from College.

Harry's doing well and still lives in the county so I believe, if you ever read this PLEASE get in touch mate, if I've not found you first, we've got some catching up to do over a beer or three. But don't ask me to go to Cinderford rugby club on disco night ;-)
Rich, as you know your parents were truly lovely people and I sincerely regret being unable to attend either of their funerals even tho my parents were there.

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If all this hasn't bored you enough, please read Harry's letter, it may even bring tears to your eyes as it did mine...
http://www.forest-of-dean.net/downloads/Stories_Articles/Cinderford%20Childhood%20Memor...

-----
Sincere thanks for letting me air just a few of so many very happy childhood memories.
Thanks Harry for writing to the paper - I never knew you were such a softee under that tough shell !.
How lucky we were to be born n bred young Vurristers in the good old days.

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Well that one brought back some memories. Thanks for sharing, it was a great time to grow up in the forest. I had to smile about the paper rounds as I was the boy who delivered to the houses of Olly and Harry ( mirror and express I believe ). Thanks Jeff from the other Jeff ( the Dockham road one)

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You're very welcome, pleased you liked it.
You're not a Morgan by any chance ?

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Yep that's me

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Well well, that makes my day !

Hi Jeff or is it still Howdy ?.
Are you still in California ? Bet you've been missing the rain, rain, and err rain of Pontypridd !. Or snow for that matter, did you see my mention of your verygood self in this post re your foolhardy bus prediction, we had some "fun" on our drives home didnt we....!.
http://www.forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=36698

Great to hear from you and know that you're on this great forum. Well done for going against my grain & proving that Ranks did occasionally knock out some very talented engineers in those distant days, really pleased you've done so well.

Hope the family's all good, are you still trying to teach proper football over there ?
I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the Lake you boat on ?. It looked far more inviting than the UK ones I used to ski on ! (bet you don't know what a dry suit is never mind own one !). I'm afraid I lost yours ands others contact details when my old pc hardrive blewup 3 years ago - blooming electronics.... ;-), please send me a pm.

ATB Jeff Jones, demon fast driver (but slow stopper!) - (reformed now!!).

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I've just rediscovered the great "Foresters Reunited" website which was first created around the year 2000. I attended the Royal Forest Grammar School near Berry Hill, 1973 intake, as was Richard Howarth from the "FR" site. Despite sharing a dinner table and mutual mates we wern't close friends, probably as he was already "well-in" with several others from that neck of the woods, whereas I was an "outsider" - one of the "invading" minority from across the Forest; Cinderford, Littledean, and as far out as Westbury.

Anyhow, thankfully we all get older and wiser, so it was a real pleasure to find that Richard and I share a common love of the Forest and Foresters. I particular enjoyed reading this piece; despite supposedly being from "different" parts of the Forest, clearly boys in the late 60s and early 70s all did the same mad things on our bikes, except our scrambling track was at Collafield at the top of Cinderford. When considered old enough, abt 16, we'd cycle to Coleford for a day and maybe an illicit lunchtime GL shandy in a pub where we wern't known - I wonder if Richard and his mates came to Cinderford for the same, I'll ask him at the next school reunion ?

No doubt other readers were doing similar daft things wherever they lived, be it Ruardean or Lydney or.... we were SO lucky having the world's best adventure playground on our doorsteps; and parents and grownups who thought it all part of just "growing-up".

I hope you enjoy "Ol' bikes and O' Buts - 70's Child in the Forest" by Richard Haworth
http://www.helm.uk.com/pages/forestreunited/forest4/bikes_o%27buts.html

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