The West Devon Diary is very happy to have received another letter from Mr Ron Hellier, a former Tavistock resident now living in Australia. Ron’s delightful style of writing brings alive happy memories of times gone by in his beloved home town.
Greetings Tavistock!
Yes, this is the “Ancient Brit” out in the Antipodes, whose first letter you may remember from the May 2010 issue of the West Devon Diary. For the past months I have again been casting ye olde grey matter back and have come up with so many memories of Tavistock, but what memories they are to me. Let me take you back to 1933 and to the Tavvy Primary School in Plymouth Road. I was 6 years old and silly me, wrote something on one of the school books. Teacher reported me to Johnny Nodder, Headmaster, who then decided to give me the cane every day for a week, which taught me never ever again to write on school books. Aged 11, I started at Dolvin Road and sometimes on the way home to West Bridge I’d go down to the river. One time down at the weir, over on the other side from the Abbey wall, I came across an eels ‘nest’, hundreds of baby eels, you could pick them up by the handful. Magic!
Then in 1939, whilst in Dolvin Road School, when the air-raid siren sounded we all had to leave school and walk ‘crocodile fashion’ up to where the school football ground was, I think it is “Greenlands Estate” now. But there was one time - maybe they thought Gerry was going to have a go at Tavvy - we all crossed quickly over Dolvin Road into the cemetery. Luckily we did not
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stay there. At the very beginning of the war I was on the way home from school and the siren sounded, so I, on my bike, put feet down on pedals and went down Russell Street fast, got to where it meets Plymouth Road and a car got in the way. I hit it and ended up in the Tavvy Hospital to have my left knee put back in place by Dr. Lindsay. From that day I love hospitals after laying on the op’ table awaiting the Doc’ to arrive. Very likely I could be Tavvy’s only ever air-raid victim! Living in West Bridge, one of my jobs for Mum, was to walk out to Able’s farm for milk every day, milk straight from the cow. Mum used to make the best clotted cream you’ve ever tasted from that milk.
Later on as I got into the mid-teens, the farm known as Mortimers, which I used to walk past for the milk, was on the edge of the Tavy and a pool in the river was known to all us swimmers in West Bridge as the Brook. A few yards up-stream from the Brook is somewhere you can stand with one leg each side of the river.
I used to tell people I could stand each side of the Tavy with the river running between my legs. The Tavvy Football Ground is just the other side of the field where the Brook is.
And speaking of that, there was a time in 1952, when a few of us who followed the fortunes of the team, went along to the Tavvy Hockey team’s ground at West Bridge. The team, which was to have played the men’s team, did not turn up, so we made up a team to play the game. Tavvy Football team goalie played goal for us, I played “left back” ... hey WE WON! But ask me not the score. Then to top it all, we then played the Tavvy ladies team ... and the day after that I suffered all day with aches in every part of my body. I wonder if Cyril Hodge remembers that day? Back in 1941 on leaving school at age 14, Dad got me a job in Boots the Chemist, a general factotum having to do all sorts of things, which included cleaning all the things used in the pharmacy. Back then pills were hand made and medicine mixed in the chemist’s pharmacy. One job there was dusting everything and this day I was
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