Gillian Bayliss nee Kenzie memories of living at The Lawns, High St

 

1912 Esther Harding & daughter Marjorie at The Lawns

(Gillian Bayliss)

 

115 High St c1957 just before sale to Dr Keating

(G Bayliss)

Family background

I was born Gillian Marjorie Kenzie. My parents were Herbert (Bert or Mac) and my mother was Marjorie nee Harding. We lived at The Lawn, High Street, which had originally been called Lawn Cottage when my mother was growing up in the early 1900’s. My grandfather was John Harding who bought Lawn Cottage, now 115 High Street. (Grandmother Esther is shown in photo with mother Marjorie).

My mother taught Piano so went around different villages to teach.

My Father was the local Green Grocer/Fishmonger and drove all around the local villages selling fresh fish etc. The fish arrived in the early morning from Grimsby, at the Railway station. I can remember going with my father to get milk from the churn at a farm near the railway station. I was born in 1944 and the effects of WW2 were still with us. During the war, the Food Office in Cambridge appointed my father to distribute oranges to expectant mothers.

It was so interesting to read about my father giving the children sweets on a Saturday morning (under Moore family memories). My mother felt him to be foolish because he was a very generous hearted man and his business, selling groceries from the house and going round the villages, came to a sticky end when my mother broke her leg and could no longer run the house and be the second wage earner. That was the reason for her selling the house because of financial difficulty.

Living at The Lawn, (115) High St

When I was a child my mother told me that the back of the house was 300 years old and the front much newer because there had been a fire. Where she got that from, I have no idea. However, the back of the house then had flag stones and one had to enter what was our larder by a low door and then step down probably 2 feet into a cold flagstone room. This had once been a dairy.

There were some back stairs which I was never allowed to use because they were unsafe. My mother told me that the stairs led to the servants quarters when her mother was alive. The upstairs was difficult for a child to manage. I had to jump down into a room that had been made into a bathroom!

When we sold the property in 1957, a young Doctor and his wife bought it (at least my mother thought that the doctor’s father did). The Doctor’s surname was Keating. We went back to visit them and the house had been beautifully transformed. There was no extension and the greenhouse to the left of the property looking at the house was still there. That was probably about 1958.

I often wondered what happened to the 4 ½ acre field at the very back, beyond what we called the back orchard.
The front orchard was a picture in the Spring with carpets of Daffodils and Prirmroses. My grandfather Harding (John) had purchased 1,000 daffodil bulbs before the war (39-45)

Neighbours & village people

The house next door had a wonderful Beech tree, under which grew a mass of Acconites in the Spring. That house belonged to the Kendons and I remember Mrs. Kendon having children in the garden dancing round the Maypole. I know that I longed to be able to join them but my mother just didn’t have anything to do with them !!! I was under the impression that some people in the village were a little guarded about Mrs.Kendon because of her German association. Certainly my mother was suspicious!!!!!

Horatia Young (who married Dr Webb) and my mother were friends and I believe that before I was born there were a number of musical happenings at the village hall. Dr.Cecil Webb attended my mother at my birth in 1944.
Dr. Webb came to live with us at The Lawn when he separated from Horatia in about the early 1950’s. He moved to Comberton after about 2years. I can still remember his personal telephone number which was Harston 341……Our number was 340. He was often called out in the night to deliver a baby and my mother asked him if he found it difficult. He would say that he just wanted to get that ‘dear girl out of her pain.’ He never grumbled. Dr. Webb garaged his Rolls Royce in one of our barns alongside his maroon Morris Minor.

It was interesting to read also about the Brewer family as my mother had taught Elsie (aunty Elsie to me) before she married. I remember clearly going to her and Uncle John’s home in Bourn. It was so cosy albeit the Nissan hut style. I played with Barry and remember when Stephen was born. When they moved to Harston to Queens Close, the fish and chip van was a new innovation and came round to Queen’s Close on a Friday evening. We lost touch when we moved from the village.

There are many fond memories one of which was walking down the road to the Harvey’s Nursery. I believe Robert Harvey now lives there. I knew him as a baby when the young Harvey family lived in Little Shelford and Sid and Winnie were the Kings Head Proprietors.

In the ’40’s and early ’50’s the coalman and baker used to come round with horse drawn vehicles.