Mrs Sadie (nee MILLS) SHOWELL writes for the book: “150 Years a Village School”
In 1896, I came to Owslebury as a very young child with my parents to live in Chalk Pit Cottage, the then Police House for the village, for my father JAMES MILLS was the newly appointed policeman for the village. I recall the constant fear my mother lived in, that one of us children would come to an untimely end by falling over the Chalk Pit.
On reaching school age, I started at the village school, at about the same time that Mr G W PIERCE came to the school as a very young, unmarried schoolmaster, he was assisted by MISS MAY GURMAN.
The schoolhouse was about half its present size (The OLD School House), whilst the site of the houses now known as The Sycamores, Restholme and West View was the schoolmaster’s garden. We had in the village two windmills, and a Blacksmith’s shop, and how we children loved to lean over the door of the Smithy and see the sparks fly, and smell the odour of burnt hoof.
Under the tuition of my old school master, my daughter passed a scholarship, which, because for lack of transport for us, meant a move back to Winchester, but now, in the evening of our lives, my husband and I have returned. There are many alterations from early days, and I sometimes wonder if we are not fast becoming a ‘dormitory’ village, and the rural atmosphere is fast disappearing.
SIDNEY SHOWELL (husband) age 71 Mrs Sadie (nee MILLS) SHOWELL writes for the book: “150 Years a Village School”
In 1896, I came to Owslebury as a very young child with my parents to live in Chalk Pit Cottage, the then Police House for the village, for my father JAMES MILLS was the newly appointed policeman for the village. I recall the constant fear my mother lived in, that one of us children would come to an untimely end by falling over the Chalk Pit.
On reaching school age, I started at the village school, at about the same time that Mr G W PIERCE came to the school as a very young, unmarried schoolmaster, he was assisted by MISS MAY GURMAN.
The schoolhouse was about half its present size (The OLD School House), whilst the site of the houses now known as The Sycamores, Restholme and West View was the schoolmaster’s garden.
We had in the village two windmills, and a Blacksmith’s shop, and how we children loved to lean over the door of the Smithy and see the sparks fly, and smell the odour of burnt hoof.
Under the tuition of my old school master, my daughter passed a scholarship, which, because for lack of transport for us, meant a move back to Winchester, but now, in the evening of our lives, my husband and I have returned.
There are many alterations from early days, and I sometimes wonder if we are not fast becoming a ‘dormitory’ village, and the rural atmosphere is fast disappearing.
SIDNEY SHOWELL (husband) age 71 8th October 1966 |