Extract from an interview with Lena Church, October 2025 (by Grahame Lacey)
Cinema
We used to have cinema in Clutton. We used to have Saturday nights. And fairly up-to-date films.
And Mrs. Wilcox, you know of Aubrey (Wilcox)? His mother, we would sit at the door and take your money as you went in. Everybody sat in the same seat every week. And it would be Saturday night, half past seven, home by 9:00. And my old dad would, who lived with us, he would have gone over to the fish and chip shop. So we'd come home for a fish and chip supper. I remember that was rather fun.
I call it a mobile chip shop. It had been made out of an old coach, but it wasn't very mobile. I think it was stuck. And it was up at the top of Rogers Close. When you go up there, you've got a detached house.
It's looking at you. Yes. It was built for the nurse. And next door to it was a shop, and that was Tommy Gibbs's shop. He built this little grocery shop.
And his brother-in-law, did the Wednesdays and Saturday fry up for the chip mobile.
Well, I thought they cooked it. Because I can remember having a greaseproof bag full of scrumpy bits.
Where they'd been fished out of the oil.
So, I can vaguely remember that. And I remember Charlotte's little shop in Maynard Terrace as well.
Well, she just sold sweets and things, and I don't know where she was.
And of course, was it Ted Francis? He was the barber. He was in the number 9 at the top of the slope (Maynard Terrace).
And you start on the long terraces. He was in there.
Doctors
So, were there any doctors in the village?
We always went to Temple Cloud, you know where Cameley Surgery is.
Well, that's where we went. But it wasn't like it is now, of course. But you may have noticed that…
when you go to turn right, you go through that sort of garage way to get in. And as you turn to go in through there, there's a flight of stone steps that go up on your left. That's where you went. And the door would be triggered open. And then if it was full up in the waiting room, you knew who was in front of you, and you knew who was behind you. And if it got too full up in the three-sided waiting room, they queued up along the passage. And then Dr. Vaughan would come up, as the doctor is not up yet, because he came up from inside the house, and came along and sat on a high stool where he dispensed medicine in bottles. And you discussed your condition to the doctor. In public.
What sort of period was that? Well, 1930s, 40s.
And then along came, he finally, he had trench feet from the First World War, Doctor Vaughan. He put the coldest hands on my mumps, I remember.
So, people, people would put you going off to the doctor's, if you wanted to pour out your personal ailments and problems and, gynaecological things, I mean, you wouldn't do it, would you?
No, but, and then, of course, in the day that was in the days of smoking, you could cut it really, all these people there waiting, and sometimes they'd be waiting outside, down the steps.
It was Doctor Fleming who came then, and he still dispensed his own medicine, but he did have a consulting room that you moved on along the passage.
They did operations at Paulton, because my mother had a hernia operation done there, which would probably be straightforward, and appendicitis, perhaps, if it's important. But they've got the minor injuries there now.
You'd probably be shunted off to the BRI in fear and trepidation (for operations). You didn't call out the doctor unless you had to.
And we were with Doctor Vaughan and my sister was hospitalised to the VRI for emergency surgery.
In the days when nobody told you anything.
The W.I.
So, we discovered that there was an early copy of a village history booklet, one from the early 1950s, which we didn't know about.
So yes, I haven't seen it for that. And it was Mrs. Pritchard who was, she took it upon herself, they persuaded her to write it.
Mrs. Pritchard lived, did you know Mavis Flower? They lived in a big pair of semis at Townsend, the top of the other little hill, that concealed entrance. Well, Mrs. Pritchard was the daughter of Mr. Pullen, the first headmaster.
So, she was WI president, not at the very beginning, but I think her mother was probably the president at the very beginning. And then she was later on, but she had put together this story of our village. So, she wrote it or compiled it.
Well, compiled it, with the help of other people.
And it was just a gestetner (copier), as they did in those days, and it's all dog-eared around the edges. So, 1971, we decided 50 years of the WI, let's rewrite that and bring it up to speed. So that really was down to me. And somebody said, it's very badly written. And I said, it doesn't matter. It's down in black and white.
We got sponsorship for the photographs because they had to put on blocks because Durham West were the printers who did it for us.
And we, I think, I can't remember how much we sold them for, but those printers' blocks were about four pounds each. Does that sound right?
So that was an update of the 1952 one.
I joined the WI when I was quite young, in the time before I was ever married.
And then, but that was. That was my life. I absolutely loved the WI.
For further recollections from Lena Church - Click here