Rural Leicestershire

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What the village was like

2.29 minutes

[604 kb]

Interviewee:

Well, it was a very small village. We had no telephone boxes or anything like that. The only telephone in the village was actually at the Post Office. There was one local farm with a telephone. The Doctor was six miles away. The District Nurse was five miles away. We had a village school which only had two classrooms when I started school, and it had a coal fireplace in it with a big guard round it, and of course now it has altered quite a lot. But that was the days of slates and pencils.

EMOHA:

Was there a church?

Interviewee:

No, the church was three miles away, roughly three miles away.

EMOHA:

So it was quite a small village?

Interviewee:

Oh very small at that, in that stage, yes.

EMOHA:

Have you any idea how many people lived there at the time?

Interviewee:

No, I haven't 'cause the farms were scattered and, but they were big families really.

EMOHA:

Was there a centre to the village at all, like a 'green' or place where people met?

Interviewee:

Well yes, there was the village green, where the chapel was. And we had a Congregational Chapel and a Methodist. Eventually the Methodist was sold and the Congregational bought it for the village, for a hall. [...] We had one bus a week, and that was on a Friday, that was what we called the market bus, and you could look through our windows and you could see that bus come over the railway bridge from the next village, which was miles away really, Shakerstone. And of course now, of course, it's all houses.

EMOHA:

Did it change much while you were there... up until you left?

Interviewee:

No, no, it didn't change at all. It was after this war, the second world war really, that the change came about. When people from Birmingham, Coventry and all those places that were very, that were bombed came out. Of course then the motorways were built so it's easier travelling now.

Last updated: 21/11/03
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