15th December 2014. The fifteenth contribution to the Village Advent Calendar Windows, at Gabriel’s Cottage, Little Street.
More pictures on the next page.
I don’t have any old pictures of Gabriel’s Cottage but I do have a memory. In 1949, aged 11, I did the village paper round. On Sundays I collected the money. On one shoulder was a large hessian bag, with about fifty copies of the now defunct “News of the World” and a single copy of the “Sunday Times”. On the other was a linen bag jingling with heavy half crowns, shillings, sixpences, threepenny bits, pennies, half pennies and even farthings. Obviously the paper round took much longer than during the week, not least because I became the bearer of village news and long chats were often necessary. My memory is that it was in Gabriel’s Cottage that a very old lady lived at that time. It was towards the end of November and the clocks were due to be put back by an hour. “No good’ll come of it”, said the old lady, “tis interfering wi’ the course o’ nature….it’ll rain from now to Christmas” and it probably did!
Colin Wootton