Church Street, Cullompton - until we drove here recently I had never realised what a tiny, narrow street it is ... unless they have somehow made it narrower in the last 40 years.
It didn't seem so small when I was riding my bike.
And then there was Gravel Walk, just around the back of the church.
You can't help noticing the big red house - well that wasn't ours. We lived in the little white house.
Not so little, though. There were 15 rooms, and half an acre of garden - and orchard - out the back.
Here is a photo of the front of the house in the '60s. That's my brother John putting food on the bird table.
The garden backed on to the Mill Stream, just the place for many hours of childhood fun!
The Mill Stream is still there - it seems someone has converted the old mill into a home - but it has developed a little island (complete with tree!) right at the bottom of our old yard.
This is an old picture looking out over our back yard (and next door's) and the mill stream from my bedroom window back in the day.
Every summer my cousins would come to stay for a while. This is looking at the back of the house - it needed a lick of paint, didn't it? It was really old, even then - about 300 years old, they told us. So I guess it's more like 350 years old now.
Apart from that, it's remarkable how little anything has changed in nearly 40 years. When we lived here they had just built "The Bypass" across the fields at the back. Now it's the M5, and the noise from it sometimes sounds like a plane coming in to land.
Going Back Even Further
In about 1964, in the few months before we moved into the Gravel Walk house, we lived about a mile out of Cullompton on the hilly road to Tiverton, in "Little Tom's Cottage".
That's my youngest brother, Mark.
It was winter, and very cold. The cottage had no running water inside, we had to use the outside pump.
This old picture of my sister, Mary, pumping water for Mark is water-damaged, but you can still see the vege garden.
The other day we drove out to take a look.
Yep, still there! The front door is gone now. In those days it was two residences, we lived in the left-hand part. Now it is all one.
And they park their car where the pump used to be. I guess they have water inside now!
Over the road was - and still is! - Wells Park.
New gate, new wooden fence instead of the old hedgerow.
The Old Grammar School
I don't have any old photos of Tiverton Grammar School. It actually stopped being a grammar school soon after I left.
It's a primary school now, but it really doesn't look any different.
The gym where we used to have assemblies - 500 or so big kids all sitting cross-legged on the floor. I think when we got to the big end of school maybe we were allowed to have chairs.
We used to thunder up and down these stairs, pushing past students trying to go the other way.
The classrooms have computers now, but otherwise they look the same. I was explaining to this present day teacher about how my brother, John, had left some chemicals on the radiator to dry out, and the teacher had leaned on them and blown a hole in her shirt-sleeve.
This house had just been purchased by the school then, and was used for some sixth-form classes - we felt very special and important having lessons in there.
