FOREST ADVENTURES part 2 (General)

by Segilla , Monday, January 28, 2013, 20:01 (4319 days ago) @ Segilla

Conclusion.

SEQUEL.
I looked into the ancestry of my Uncle Jack. Despite the difficulty with the Jones surname and his removal to London, I found that he wasn't really an orphan. His father had died and his mother re-married.

After moving from London to go to work in Gloucester in 1962 I once spoke to a Mr Frank Cotton, a very wealthy customer who turned out to be a partner in the Williams and Cotton enterprise. A very pleasant man and we chatted about Yorkley which he knew well.

Nobody got in touch about Ned's Top.

In 1993 I was over at Lydney with the Treasurer of the GLS FHS, Norman Phillips and his wife Joan. She is a Blakeney born lady and was interested in these recollections. We got into my car and went for a tour. The river we used to play in, Blackpool Brook, has much less water now than 50 years ago and it is a disappointment to find that this once remote spot is now a picnic area. On we went, stopping on a road parallel to a track which had once been a railway. Pointing up to the top of the bank Joan drew my attention to what little remains of the donkey bridge. The path over it leads to Blakeney Hill which is where she was living as a child. On we went. On the opposite side of the valley, we looked across at Blakeney Hill.

Joan told me that as a child she remembered that there were two men called Amos whose gardens reached down the hill so she couldn't point to which house I’d visited in the 1940s. We were about to turn to leave when I decided tell her something which had seemed too trivial to mention. I remember my Mother telling me that Amos' wife was rather odd. If Amos stood up, so did she. Out into the garden he went and she followed him. She stuck close to him all the time.
Joan suddenly said, "Your man was Amos James. I remember his wife; she was a very strange woman!" Immediately afterwards, Joan was able to point out the very house.

In the 1950's after the 'Beeching axe' decimated our railways, the Severn railway bridge was due for demolition. Unfortunately, the demolition contractors managed to lose control of the a huge central section with its tons of steel and it lies buried in the mud of the Severn. Commercial Union Assurance Co Ltd, (my employers, now Aviva), insured the scrap value of the contract and the loss cost them a lot of money.