Pymoor - Memories

Introduction

The contents of this page come from two main sources: e-mails received from past residents and conversations with current residents. A couple of residents have been asked to write something for the site. I also have some further material e-mailed to me. I am awaiting confirmation that I can use some material before posting it on the Pymoor Pages.

Please write if you have further information or corrections to anything you see here. Do make it clear if you would like me to use anything you send on these pages.

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Corespondents

Andrew Martin

Andrew who now lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk has sent the following information. Please write to Andrew Martin if you can offer any more information for him.

My MARTIN family lived in Pymoor and Oxlode during the 1800's. My Gt Gt Gt Grandmother Mary Martin (neé Tingey) is noted on the 1881 census as the Gatekeeper at the Gatehouse on 1st Drove - I guess that this must have been for the railway.

I have never been to Pymoor, only as far as Little Downham (where my Martin family have lived for many years and where my Uncles, Martin and Dewey live today).

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John Wilkin

The following passge was sent by John Wilkin who was born in Pymoor in 1927 and now lives in Canada. He has also supplied two further substantial articles on his family history and his memories of Pymoor. If you've got further information on John's family please contact John Wilkin or me.

I was born in Pymoore in 1927 at Primrose Hill farm where Claud Starling now lives. Joan Saberton helped my mother and looked after me when I was a baby and her surname was Fenn. She married Horace Saberton and they owned and ran a shop in Pymoor and did deliver groceries to my mother and father in Little Downham until they died in 1979 and1981.

Other relatives I have in the area all the Taylor family from around the Pymoor Siding who are my cousins. Included are June Savage who lives down the lane and she and her husband own and run a haulage business which supplies vegitables etc all over the country. Other cousins include Norman Taylor, Pearl Pope, Betty Cleveland, Tony Taylor, Mary Hartley, Gordon Taylor and Basil Taylor.

I left the area for Essex in 1938. I have not lived in the Pymoor area since but the Wilkin family did return to Haddenham from 1940 t0 1945 when I attended the Kings School in Ely. In 1945 we moved back to Clacton on Sea.

I would very much like to establish contact with someone in the Pymoor area who I can use to contact relatives and friends. I am into Genealogy and would like to send material to relatives by E-Mail since it is so much less expensive than mail. If you know of anyone else in the area who is on the internet I would like to know who they are.

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Residents

Charlie Sulman

Charlie Sulman was born in the nearby village of Coveney and on Easter week-end 1998, he told me he "was just a clean shirt off eighty". Charlie has lived on Pymoor Lane since 1947. He and his wife, Ida, built their bungalow themselves. They live next door to Joan Saberton, the widow of Ida's brother.

He recalled 1925 when mains water arrived in Coveney and around that time when the roads were first metalled. This was done by sinking large blocks of stone into the earth and pouring tar, not tarmacadum he insisted, on top. He reckons that Pymoor must has had its roads made up in the same way about that time. That led us to talk of Pymoor Sidings.

To the north of the village the railway crosses the Bedford Rivers and the washes. Although the main road out of the village takes a dog-leg a few hundred yards short of the railway, a small track does carry on and pass under a very low bridge. It was here that there was a railway siding. Up to the time of metalled roads, this was the main goods route out of the village. Produce went to Ely this way and seed, coal and other goods came into the village. Passengers for Ely would go to Black Bank Road a mile further down the line towards Ely and a station which served Little Downham. Both the siding and the station have long since gone.

Gordon Golding

During Easter 1998 some of the worse floods in 100 years struck the major towns on the lower reaches of the Nene and Ouse. Large areas of Northampton, Bedford, Peterborough were affected. That led Gordon Golding who also lives on Pymoor Lane, to tell of the days he remembered just before going off to war in 1940. He was skating on the frozen washes by moonlight with the local girls. He remembers the banks being "within an inch" of over-topping in 1947. Although Pymoor was not affected by flooding then, Oxlode the nearby hamlet, right under the banks of the Bedford Rivers was, as was the road across Westmoor Common to Little Downham.

Water levels in the Bedford Rivers are inevitably of interest to villagers in this part of the world, and especially to the farmers. Not only is the interest in the potential for flood, but also for irrigation. Sluice gates keep the Old Bedford River, the one further from Pymoor, at a near constant level for most of the year. It is allowed to rise only in the spring at times of flood. The New Bedford River, the cut nearer to Pymoor, is tidal and open to the sea. Flow levels affect whether salt water comes up on high tides as far as Pymoor. When the flow is low Gordon remembers prawns (not fresh water crayfish) being caught in the New Bedford River at Pymoor.

Pam Golding

Pam was raised in Oxlode during the 1950s and says she had a wonderfully happy childhood. Life then was full of simple pleasures, such as spending the summer sliding down the river bank, using an old sack as a toboggan. I told Pam of the plan for a Web site dedicated to Pymoor. "I could write a book!", she said. I gave her a print-out of the site and talked of my plans for other features. This included sections of the "Farms and Businesses" in the village, and even "Romance in Pymoor". Pam was one of the three Barker sisters who married the Golding brothers.

Pam promised to have a chat with her mother, who she reckoned was probably the oldest person in the village and who loved talking of the old days. A few days later, Pam called clutching her notes of the conversation with her mum.

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Updated 8 February 1999