Hilary Anderson (1939 -)
Hilary Anderson was born in 1939 in Gillingham, Kent and moved to
Freckenham on her marriage in 1966. Both she and her husband were teachers,
taking up new posts as science master at Linton and teacher of infants at
Freckenham school.
'We bought our house from Mr. & Mrs. Rumbelow who moved into the bungalow
next door to us. Mr. Rumbelow kept the garage and ran the taxi, and he would
only take you if he felt like it and never at night! The villagers were pretty
isolated unless they had a car, which few of them did. I took over Mrs.
Rumbelow's job at the school, as she was retiring. Before we married Terry used
to come up quite a bit doing up the house, and he'd call in the Golden Boar. It
was different then, really old fashioned; it had a tap room and you just banged
on the wall if you wanted service. The village was very quiet, very calm. Not a
pretty village, no thatched cottages, but people coming through said what a nice
village it was - and it still is.
The people were very friendly to us when we arrived, very kind. They didn't
invite us into their homes but they would always give you help if you needed it.
The only one who did was Mrs. Hood, who worked at the school, and she used to
invite me into tea when Terry went away on courses. She introduced me to the W.I.
which was held in the Village Hall here. It was very well attended then with the
Red Lodge people coming down by mini-bus; later attendances dropped in the
village and we had to go to Red Lodge. Terry started up a youth club and they
made canoes and went camping in Santon Downham; that was very well attended,
too. The Shop was a very good meeting place; the Chalmers had built it up
nicely. At the front was the grocery and post office and they'd opened up the
back room where they had cottons and wool and that sort of thing. The next
owners gradually wound down the post office, then the shop and now it's gone
completely.
I worked at the village school for one year and one term. I left at Christmas
1967 to have my first child. The school closed down about two years later. There
were about 60 or 70 children there and three teachers. I took the infants class,
from five until they were seven. The next class was for the seven to nines and
the last class was for the nine to elevens. The original schoolroom was a long
room which could be partitioned off to make two rooms, one part was used as the
hall and the other half was the middle classroom. Next to that was another room
which was my classroom and then there was a prefabricated building in the
playground, which was the Head Teacher's room. We had boilers in the classroom
for heating and outside toilets, not flush ones. They would come and clean them
out once a week, if they remembered! School lunches were served in the village
Hall, they weren't cooked on the premises but came from one of the schools in
Mildenhall.
I think the heart went out of the village when the school closed, community
spirit declined because it had drawn people together, but gradually it's come
back and it's a good community now. After 25 years I do feel part of the
village, I feel accepted as a villager, I suppose because for some of the
younger ones I am part of their history. I certainly wouldn't ever want to leave
the village.
Extract of Interview by Sandie Geddes 1991.