Chobham in the Thirties and Forties.

High Street, c 1930. Painting: N Stone (from a old photograph)

I have lived all my childhood at Pear Tree House - the Seeney's Comer end of Chertsey Road. Once, this part of Chobham was called Northbourne - it was literally North of the Bourne before the road bridge was built, separated from Benham's Comer and the High Street by one of many fords in Chobham, with only a foot bridge along the Causeway. Even in my childhood it had the feeling of being a separate hamlet of some antiquity.

We were a close knit, friendly group of neighbours dependent upon each other. Looking back to the years just before the war, the days always seemed sunny, people smiled and sang, my sister and I were treated as small girls and usually wore dresses. My brother was a baby and seemed to mostly be in the pram and we used to help take him for long and lovely walks. We girls took turns on Dinah, a small pony, because our legs got tired.

Next to us at Old Pound Cottage lived Mrs Lloyd. During cider-making we were invited to visit with our parents so we went via the pavement, the small white wicket gate, past the house and down to the depths of the garden among the apple trees, the cider press, various barrels and the wasps! Next to Mrs Lloyd was the Gospel Hall where the singing came from on Sunday evenings.

Ted Pritchard ran a bicycle shop across the road from us at Coopers Platt, he was a famous cyclist - but maybe that was after the war. Mr and Mrs Tanner of some renown, lived, worked and slaughtered at the butchers shop. Sometimes on a bad day, a bullock would charge into our place by mistake! Just along from Tanners was the Electrical Shop - where the "Care" shop now exists.

On the comer, of course was Seeney's the hairdressers and barbers shop. That was a friendly meeting place on the way to everywhere when everyone walked or bicycled. Just round the comer was the old wooden warehouse where Mr Lamp the upholsterer remade and stuffed mattresses - with horsehair I expect. He worked behind huge wooden doors that opened right up to the roof on hot days and when the mattresses were finished and had to be delivered.

On our side of the road, on the comer lived Mrs Lamb at the Homestead which looked just the same as it does today and has done for hundreds of years. Old Mrs Chown lived in the joined-on cottage next door. She used to visit my Granny to keep her company, but always in her overall in case she could be useful. They used to sew and mend together especially during the war. And next to that at Northboume, my Granny came one day to live and brought Carrie and Joy with her. That was exciting. Our gardens joined at the back, and hers was filled with hedgehogs and hedgehog babies, and Mr Collins came to look after her garden. We could visit him in the big wooden shed with the work bench below the huge sunny window. He was wounded in the Great War and had a bad limp. At 'levenses time he rolled tobacco from a pouch in his pocket for his cigarettes, offered us incredibly strong peppermints, told us stories, teased us, helped us with our guinea pigs, answered all our questions. That shed was a wonderful place.

Across the Windsor Road, at Chobham Cottage lived Mr and Mrs Tom Sutton, elderly and kindly people. Mrs Sutton was friendly; Mr Sutton stood up very straight, wore a stiff white collar with sharp points that turned down, a black tie and a camel waistcoat, and he always used his walking stick. He and my father loved to talk farming together. He was there the day my father tested the fire escape from the top floor of the house with a rope and harness, and his big feet brought down all the window boxes.

Beyond was The Grange, a very large house in a very large garden with rhododendron bushes, where we went to see "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on a lovely hot sunny afternoon. The Wigan family lived in Chobham House - the whole of it! Ruth Wigan took me to school with Margy and Gary in the governess cart. I can remember two problems in life at this time. One was getting into that cart each morning with a frisky pony at one end, and the step to get in at the other - neither of which would keep still. The other was the Steam Roller, an enormous handsome conglomerate of metallic bits and pieces, two huge wheels, an enormous roller in the front, a roof, a shining silent fly wheel spinning and various puffing, spitting bits in between. It lived in a green shed at the bottom of Waterperry Lane. That was fine while it was housed. One day we must have met it on one of our walks, thundering and steaming down past the Round Pound. The whole earth trembled. My recurring nightmares were for years about being chased by this monster.

High St Painting: N Stone

A great occasion each summer was the coming of the Life Guards. Very early in the morning, they passed along Chertsey Road, turned left onto the High Street, wave upon wave of them, trotting to summer camp at Pirbright. Shining black horses in all their jingling gear, carrying the soldiers all the way from Knightsbridge Barracks. In our beds we used to hear them coming, hear the trotting. Leaping to the window cill, we would watch them passing. About 20 horses in each group riding 4 abreast. About 100 horses passing by - it was a wonderful sight.

Another seasonal event was the bringing home of the bracken for wrapping the nursery plants sent away during the winter months. In the autumn, great wagons drawn by huge shire horses brought the dry bracken down from Brick Hill and the Common to the nursery packing sheds at Hillings Nurseries.

During the winter the thrashing machine and traction engine and its accompanying machines travelled from farm to farm round Chobham and further afield - Seeney's comer was a good vantage point to witness whatever was going on.

The War came. After much thought we were evacuated.

Two and a half years later in Spring 1942, we were able to return. So much had changed. The house had criss-cross sticky paper across the glass and gloomy black-out curtains. A small room downstairs had an additional thick concrete ceiling. We all slept here and, until the doodlebugs and rockets began to come, we felt safe. My father was away a lot of the time and my mother worked hard at so many things and always had the radio on in the kitchen. This meant we were left to our own devices much of the time and had special jobs; feeding and looking after rabbits - we knew they were to supplement the diet of Seeney's Corner; picking caterpillars off the cabbages in the kitchen garden across the road, keeping the weeds at bay and tending the animals. Clothing coupons were short, so when we weren't at school my mother put us all in flannel shorts, and we got on with life, for the most part happily. Granny was patient at mending our torn and worn out clothes.

We had grown up while being away. My sister was now 7 and I was 10, our legs had grown longer. Our house had a telephone - Chobham 42 - and we became messengers with news of relatives and friends of our neighbours away at the war. This took us further afield. We came to know Mr and Mrs Watts at the farm, and the huge black barn that backed onto the road where the parade shops now are. The geese were fierce there, down to the fields and the river. Along past the end of Delta Road and Waterperry Lane to the huge old apple orchard where Brookleys is now.

The Grange had become a factory for Negretti and Zamba, instrument makers for aircraft and tanks and Chobham House had become a nursery home for children from London. Up the footpath past the house and round the corner, the path went over the weir and die sluice gates to the Mill. Water thundered through the sluices from the mill-pond down into the river below with the enormous millwheel turning and dripping beside, forced round gracefully and slowly by the water in the chute. From inside the mill the connecting machinery grumbled and creaked, and ground relentlessly on. It was fascinating and impossible to hear anything that was said. The mill yard beyond was busy with horses and carts, men in caps shouting, laughing and teasing. Tom Varndell used to tease most of all, but he gave us bits for the animals.

High Street, 'the Causeway' Painting: N Stone

The best place to play was the Causeway. Mr Wood, the road sweeper was a good friend there. We fished for sticklebacks and minnows with jam jars in the leat, found snails and bugglywigs of all sorts. Sometimes we could venture up the river as far as the mill sluice to find crayfish in the sluice brickwork, but we had to watch for Tom raising the mill sluices at the end of the day or we should get a real soaking!

We had a chestnut tree just by the back gate. It had been pollarded many times and in summer it made a leafy canopy to climb into, sit and watch the world go by. Bread was delivered by pony and cart from two of the bakers in the High Street. Mitchells pony was our favourite. The steam roller had by now become a friend, and shuddered along the road most mornings and evenings. But now we had to watch for the tanks and bren-gun carriers weaving their way through the village. They were alarming things to meet, it was difficult to know which way they were actually going to go, especially when cycling to school.

Things were not the same, times were anxious, people were tired, my mother didn't whistle any more. We went to church with my Granny and mother each Sunday and sang "for those in peril on the sea". Even the church seemed dark in those days. Outside the seasons went on, the sun shone, the rain poured down, the river ran on. So another three years went by, the tension began to ease, and one day the church bells really rang out again and a great bonfire was built up at the Treacle Mines by Killy Hill and everyone went wild. Gradually familiar people returned to Chobham.

Real life began again, but it was changed, so changed - and we moved on.