The Royal Oak Public House And My Cousins

A Memory of Twyford.

When I lived in Twyford and surrounding areas between when I was born in 1944 and when I moved away from the area in 1971, much of my time was spent in Twyford. My uncle, aunt and my cousins lived in Norton Cottage, which was situated 20 yards from this side of the Royal Oak, and set back from London Road shown in this photo. The house between the Royal Oak and Norton cottage belonged to Mr and Mrs Jones, who were always good neighbours to my uncle and his family. When the area was 'developed', I think in the 1970s or early 1980s (I'm not sure exactly when) the Royal Oak, the Jones's family house and Norton Cottage were all demolished to make way for the new shops and public house, for which I think they kept the name of the Royal Oak. I remember going into the new pub with my cousin in the 1990s and where we were stood at the bar, he said that that was approximately where their old front door had stood.
From the year of 1962 the Royal Oak was used by myself, my cousins and most of the young men and women of the village as our local. This was mainly because it contained a juke box and it had a good atmosphere, very few older people used the pub. Most of the other pubs, of which there were many in Twyford, at least ten from my memory, catered for an older clientele, so I have lots of good memories from that era. At that time the pubs had to shut at 10.30pm during the week and 11.00 pm Fridays and Saturdays, so quite often a gang of us would go back to my cousin's house 20 yards away and have a few beers there before we all went off to our respective homes. Although at that time there were no breatholisers being used, because we all lived locally, nobody had the need to drive home. But at some weekends (due to the fact that the police only prosecuted anyone for driving under the influence if they were unable to walk a white line drawn in the police station) we had competitions to see who could drink the most amount of alcohol and still walk a chalk line drawn on the floor of the pub. Happy days!