A COLLECTION of memories of growing up and living in the Old Heath area of Colchester over the past century form the basis of a new book.

Historian Patrick Denney first began speaking to the older residents of the area 25 years ago and has now added these to a set of new memories he began collecting last summer.

“The first group took the memories up to about 1920 and then when it was decided to speak to present day Old Heath residents and others with local connections.

“This second series of interviews effectively represents the next generation from the earlier group, thus taking the story up to around the 1960,” explains Patrick.

More than 40 residents contributed to the book, Old Heath Memories, which has been sponsored by the Old Heath Community Trust and focuses on different topics for each chapter.

Patrick says: “For each chapter I have then asked the interviewees for their memories and recollections and doing it that way meant I always new where I was headed with the interviews.

“There was quite a bit of stuff that I therefore already knew would come up but I have to say the memories of living in houses with no running water or toilets inside is always surprising.

“Even one of the ladies who recalled her family moving into the new estate on Speedwell Road in the 1920s remembered them not having a hot water tap in the bathroom and having to pump it from downstairs,”

says Patrick, who is a Blue Badge Guide and lecturer in Colchester.

One of the oldest residents to be interviewed for the book in the most recent group, Gladys Rudd, recalled being evacuated during the Second World War.

Born in 1927, she explains in the book how she was 12 when war broke out and remembered being given her gas mark and also getting on the train with her brother and fellow evacuees.

Gladys told Patrick : “When we got up there (Stoke on Trent) they herded us all into a Church hall.

“We were all stripped and washed and there was a nit nurse to make sure that nobody had anything wrong with them and then we were given something to eat and drink.

“And then we were like cattle. We had to stand and wait to be picked out by all these men and women.”

Margaret Moss, who was born in 1934 spoke about her vivid memories of the Old Heath Laundry being bombed in 1940 while teacher Mary Bareham spoke of the large classes at Old Heath Primary School.

Margaret, who was six at the time, told Patrick her father would cycle down Distillery Lane to get to work but her mother had made him wait after the siren went off as he was about to leave.

“And within four or five minutes there were these almighty bangs.

“They had hit the laundry, another went in the pond and one hit a house in Scarlett’s Road, where a lad and his mum were just going back to school.

“And I can remember our windows - how they didn’t break -the vibration was terrible.”

She says her mother was crawling on the floor with a kettle of boiling water at the time because of the suddenness of the incident.

“She was trying to get us into the air raid shelter and she was crawling around with this keelte of boiling water. That did frighten me.

Others remember the gardening club at the school which saw youngsters grow their own vegetables and spending entire days playing on the Wick.

There are also chapters focussing on the trade and occupations in the town, what people did in their leisure time and the role of the church in the village.

Patrick, who has written a large number of history books about Colchester, says the support of the community trust has meant the cost of the book has been kept to just £6.

“They were really keen because it is something that will be useful for generations to come.

“There were some really interesting things that came out of my conversations with them and I particularly enjoyed hearing about how the children spent their free-time.

“They would spend hours and hours on the Wick, which of course now you cannot get on to and many remembered playing while bullets whizzed over their heads.

“They would head out with some sandwiches or potatoes to cook over a fire they would build themselves and then be gone all day.

A special launch event, tickets for which cost £2.50, is to be held at the Old Heath Community Hall on Friday September 16 where the book will be on sale.

It will also be available to buy from Red Lion Books, Colchester High Street, from Monday September 19.

* For tickets to the launch e-mail patrick.denney@sky.com