My name is Glenys Hutchinson and I lived in Leek Wootton until November 1953. Both sets of Grandparents lived in the village - you may know of them George Henry and Clara Terry and William Henry and Sarah Elizabeth Jones. I still have aunts and uncles in the village - Audrey and Les Jones and Brian and Pam Jones. My maternal grandfather was churchwarden and bellringer.

I was interested in the photo of the old school taken in 1902 as I have two taken in the same spot - one with my mother Edith Annie Terry (as she then was) taken circa 1923/6 and one with myself taken in 1953. I was maid of honour to the May Queen that year - coronation year and well remember the crowning (with fresh flowers) in a garden which I believe was to the left of the main road going towards Warwick. I believe my brother still has some photos but would love to have a copy if any are in existence.

I remember the Ravens at the farm and the police house where a little boy called Sam lived. I lived for a short while at Stone Edge and then to Avenue Lodge near Blacklow Hill. My friends at school were Margaret Timmins and two sisters called Barbara and Julia (whose surname escapes me at the moment).

Mrs Mead was my last teacher but I remember Miss Davies who used to keep her hankie in a pocket of her blue silk bloomers and the boys used to snigger when she went and sat at her tall desk to retrieve it! Miss Davies used to read stories to us on her lawn underneath the apple tree - I remember there being lots of daisies in the lawn. My paternal grandparents lived next door. My father was their eldest son John Reginald Jones. All my uncles used to play cricket at the weekends for the village team and granddad was umpire (he also used to play bowls).

I loved the maypole dancing and rehearsals in the big main room. I do have more memories but don't want to bore you.

I am now living in Spain - slight change of climate from Leek Wootton but I am coping!!

Glenys Hutchinson (nee Jones) - 18.07.2004

An excellent community web-site. I saw it mentioned under "District Digest" in KWN. In Kenilworth we're supposed to be getting a web-site ourselves any day now!! If it's half as good as this it'll be great.

Rob Daniel - 26.01.2003

Hallo,

As I am a Broome (although a Swedish one) and probably with roots just in the Woodloes, I want to know if there is any good information to get on the Woodloes (Woodlows) and the Broomes there during the 15th-17th century, for instance in your book "Leek Wootton and its hamlets" or elsewhere.

Best wishes

Hans Broomé (Sweden) - 30.11.2002

Dick, Audrey, Grace and Josie when they first arrived

Dear Everyone,

... As one of the first to be evacuated together with my younger sisters Jean, Grace, & Josie from Aldeburgh to Leek Wootton, its absolutely brilliant what you are achieving. My best years with, Aunty & Uncle Holmes [The Lodge Wootton Court] together with my War time 'sister', Audrey Holmes. Very best wishes for now and the future.

My best wishes to everyone.

Dick Gunning - 24.11.2002

I do recall ... Clarkes, Hobbins, Pickering, Woods, Rose & her son Arthur, Lawsons, Silk, a farmer just North of the village, Sir Wathan & Lady Waller, the Marriott family, including Jean & Cecily.

I think the Post Office and Store were seperate buildings, as Mrs Clarke used to go around the back of the store to collect milk each day, either in bottles or ladled out of a churn into a jug, ... the Post Office was opposite the road to Hill Wootton and set back slightly off the main road.

As you described things have changed, ... I know about the Police Headquarters, but other names like 'Anchor' cottages 'North Woodloes Farm', Woodcote Park, Wootton Court, 'Ivy' cottage or 'Spring' cottage are all new to me.

Just a note, in change of lifestyle, Melbourne and suburbs covers an area 40 kms accross and a population of over 3 million people.

Kindest Regards, Tony

Tony Foster (Australia) - 13.10.2002

Whilst on the internet I noticed your home page and read part of the history of the village.

My thoughts were maybe you would be interested in my story in Leek Wootton as an evacuee during World War 2.

How my brother and I came to be in the village, started on the 2nd September 1939, at 6am when we were taken by bus from the local school in Ilford, Essex. This is where we were put on a paddle steamer, The Royal Gem and then on a voyage to Felixstowe, then by bus to Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

While in Aldeburgh we helped troops fill sandbags for gun emplacements and pull sea mines up the beach, we also saw an oil tanker blow up after hitting a mine, and the lifeboats leave for Dunkirk, this is when we left for Leek Wootton.

Tony and Stuart Foster with their mother, Dorothea,
on leaving Aldeburgh, Suffolk

Arriving after an air raid on Coventry I remember seeing the injured being carried through the village on stretchers across the seats of Midland Red buses.

Our first stay was with Mr and Mrs Hobbins and their son John who lived in the houses opposite the school, I think the next door neighbours were the Court family.

Mrs Hobbins with her son, John, and the father of the boys, Len Foster
with Stuart and Tony and their baby sister, Carole

After a short stay we moved to Mr and Mrs Clarke, who lived in the thatched cottage on the corner of the lane opposite the Anchor Inn. The cottage consisted of one room and larder downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs, the front one being ours; memories of a feather mattress and an eiderdown quilt. Across the yard was the washouse with its copper and fire underneath.

The Clarke's where very good to us, so much so that I cannot say we missed our parents. I still recall a bath on Saturday night in a tin bath in front of the fire, warming the bed with hot coals in a warming pan, and hot bricks wrapped in a towel, better than any hot waterbottle; also Clematis growing on the front of the cottage, and the shutters closed every night.

Some of the villagers I can recall at the time were, Mrs Rose who lived opposite whose son had joined the airforce, The Lawsons next to Clarke's and the Marriotts up the lane across from the Tinkertank walk, ... Mr Marriott was the local builder and handyman with whom my mother and sister stayed; also there was Mr and Mrs Woods who ran the local shop, and Mrs Pickering living over the road from the Police station with whom my grandmother and Auntie Flo stayed.

The thing I remember most vividly were the wounded servicemen coming from the lodge and gathering outside the Anchor Inn dressed in a light blue suit red tie and their service cap, none of these men were allowed to be served alcohol. Joe Clarke had the job of retipping the billiard cues and repairing dart flights for the pub.

Other happy times in the village were waving from outside the gates to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as they drove to Woodcote Lodge, (which was a convalesent hospital for the servicemen), to visit staff and patients, and seeing the steam tractors driving threshing machines on the recreation reserve in a nearby field, and a demonstration of how to put out an incendiary bomb by a member of the Civil Defence.

Mr Marriott the builder got the job of repairing the roof of the vicarage after it was damaged by a bomb which fell nearby, after school my brother and I used to help in the Blacksmith's forge opposite the lane, whilst he was shoeing horses or making bomb scoopes we worked the bellowes. We also assisted Mr Hobbins as Church Sexton to clean up the churchyard and ring the bells, the reward a ride in a horse and dray around the district. Other times in season we would collect chestnuts and conkers from a field alongside the Tinkertank, other times we'd go down to Hill Wootten and place nails and halfpenny's on the railway line, or fish in the canal near Guy's Mill.

The only personal things I can remember about anybody was with Joe and Mary Clarke, they didn't have any children of their own, Joe was born in Kendal in Westmoreland and served in the 1st World War in France and was wounded in the face, whilst in hospital he made a large tapestry of the Sussex Regimental Badge; he kept an air rifle in the corner by the door to scare the birds from his vegetable garden, and a birch near the fireplace which luckily he never had to use. The age difference between them was about seventeen years, he being seventy-two and she fifty-five, Mary never went anywhere without a hat, I suspect she may not have had much hair, she cooked wonderful Yorkshire puddings and cheese biscuits.

Mrs Clarke took us out on rare occasions to Kenilworth Guy Mill, and to her brother's bicycle shop in the shadow of Warwick Castle wall. Other memories were of the school with its percussion band, I was the conductor and my brother the drummer, and somehow fifty pounds was raised in savings, enough to buy a Bren Gun, which was brought to the school and shown to the class, on the wall was a chart with the prices of war equipment, like a splitpin one penny, and a Spitfire seven thousand pounds.

Mrs Clarke had a habit of on hearing an aeroplane engine, would go outside to see what type it was, ... on one occasion it was a twin engine bomber with three Spitfires close behind, a flash from the back of the bomber and Spitfire peeled off, we heard later the pilot parachuted safely near Rugby with a broken ankle.

Winter in 1943 was the coldest ever, with snow up above the top of the doorways, and Mr Clarke having to dig us out to go to work, incidentilly he worked at the Lodge as a gardener and mole catcher, the mole skins were used to line flying boots.

Most of the time we were kept away from parents so as not to upset us, sometimes when our father, (a Fireman in London) came up there was a family reunion. Other things remembered were convoys of army trucks and airforce Queen Mary trucks carrying aircraft wings and bodies travelling South, and just before 'D Day' American convoys of troops who we waved to, and they would throw chocolate bars and K rations out to us, also white balloons which we blew up, "we were very innocent at that time"!

After leaving Leek Wootton we were reunited and lived in Coventry until 1950 when we all migrated to Melbourne, Australia. I have never been back to visit, as I would like to remember it as it was, and not be disappointed with what I might see.

After arriving in Australia Tony spent some time
in the Royal Australian Air Force
as an armaments fitter

These great memories have lasted me over sixty years and was a major part of my childhood. Does anybody remember Stuart and Tony Foster?

Regards Tony

Tony Foster (Australia) - 9.10.2002

Hello I just found your website, in particular the page [on the Anchor Inn].

Joseph Caves of the Anchor Inn was my great-great uncle I would love to find out what happened to his family as my father remembered visiting Leek Wootton as a boy.

Any information you might have would be gratefully received

Hugh Wallis (Ontario, Canada - formerly of Reigate, Surrey)
- 9.9.2002

I was surprised to find your site! I was looking for information on the Corbetts of Leek Wootton, perhaps someone who reads this could help me? Many thanks. (If anyone has information on the Corbett family, please contact the Webmaster, who will pass it on, thank you)

Anne - 23.02.2002