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  1. Home
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  4. Wartime Theydon Bois

Wartime Theydon Bois

A Memory of Theydon Bois.

My lasting memory of Theydon is the walk from the station to my aunts house which backed on to the railway line. This was near the end of the war I think but I clearly remember a field full of the remains of downed aircraft . To me it looked like hundreds but I was quite young at the time. I remember seeing the swastikas of the German planes and the markings of both US and British
planes. I would love to know how long this dump stayed on what was obviously farmland . I am
now 76 but if there is anyone out there with any information please put it on the website.
.

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Added 27 June 2015

#338003

Comments & Feedback

By Sue Terry on Sat Apr 16th 2016, at 10:20 pm
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In the 60s there were some very tiny cottages along the railway line on the pond side of the village where there is now a housing estate, which were almost you would call them shacks. I'm too young to remember the planes though.
By Sue Terry on Sat Apr 16th 2016, at 10:27 pm
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I do remember the planes in the field. I am 77 now and used to stay with family friends , "Uncle" Harry and "Auntie" Doris. They lived in a cottage on Theydon Park Road at the bottom of the hill.
It was a gravel road then (1945 ish) Harry owned the hardware store near the station "H T Standon". He and I spent may happy hours fishing for Minnows and small perch in the River Roding after crossing over the railway at the farm crossing at the top of the hill. Good memories come flooding back after all this time
By petmarmar on Wed Feb 22nd 2017, at 2:42 pm
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I used to live in the flat above Harry Standon's hardware store. I lived there from when I was born in 1946 until when I was married in 1969. My mother Ivy Locks lived there until around 1982.
By annshreeves on Thu Nov 16th 2017, at 5:16 pm
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There's a page on the Pakes Field Aircraft Dump in Jack Farmer's personal memoir Theydon Bois As I Knew It. Some of that is reproduced in the Epping Forest Then And Now coffee-table book, together with a photograph of some of the planes, and a location on a 1946 aerial photo. Jack says "at the end of the War and for a short time after". There's a 1951 photo on the History of Epping in Photographs website showing the Pakes Way/Green Glade estate being constructed on the site (opposite Blackacre Road) but my last house (no.85) is still a patch of grass.
By davidecox on Thu Feb 1st 2018, at 4:14 pm
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In the seventies I lived on the corner of Barn Mead and Coppice Row, and we used to fish in a pond off the road to Theydon Garnon, near where the M11 cutting now is. Lovely place to live, we did not realise how lucky we were to be there. Are there street lights in TB now?
By Paul Dowden on Tue Nov 16th 2021, at 12:05 pm
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