My Long Walk To School

A Memory of Southborough.

I lived with my parents in Southborough until I was 17 years old. My Gran also lived quite near to us. My dad and all his brothers and sisters went to St. Peters School on the common. So did my older brother and two young sisters. I can well remember my first long walk there, all the way down Manor Road, past Holden Pond, where we often used to take our jam jars to try to colect tadpoles, (Mrs. Petty used to have a shop there where we used to buy fizzy drinks.) then all the way up Constitutional Hill I think it was called, which was a long way for a five year old to walk. Then at dinner time we had to walk all the across the common to the canteen for our dinner, I well remember lumpy potatoes, fatty meat, that we were made to eat, and what we called frogsborn, tapioca really. We often had our art class on the common drawing the different trees and were taken once a week to Monsoon swimming baths in Tunbridge Wells were I was taught to swim.