How we used to live

Pearl Jackson

My name is Pearl Jackson, nee Hotchin, and I was born up Bourne Road, Colsterworth, at Wood Houses, one of fifteen children. The Wood Houses were situated in what is now the picnic area of Twyford Woods. My father used to catch rabbits to help feed his family and he also used to take them to people in the village. My dad was a forester, for the Forestry Commission, for thirty-six years. He would catch the rabbits and the deer and the pheasants, and that is what we lived on. We couldn`t afford a butcher, but we were well fed, all the same. Dad, Harold James, came from Redmile and Mum, Annie Kathleen, was from Calverton. His job brought him this way to work in Twyford Woods. Read more....

Elsie Jessop

I am Elsie May Jessop but my maiden name was Barker and when I was a child I lived in Woolsthorpe on the top road, before the council houses were built on the opposite side. I was born on the 20th of March, 1921. My father worked on the Ironstone. I was the eldest with two brothers and two sisters. Kenneth Douglas, - always called Douglas was the eldest boy and he lives the other side of Sheffield now. Then came Alfred William who married Barbara Barker (who used to work at the Surgery). Then there was Frances who worked at Barford`s during the war and then went to work at the school in Oundle. She got married and had three children. The youngest was Mary who had two children. Read more....

Mary Stedman

I was born at North Kelsey but we came back here when I was very young. I can only remember living here. We lived in one of a row of cottages up the Bourne Road called Canister Hall Cottages. When they were pulled down the stone went to the British Steel works. My name was Johnson. My father did not really do anything. He was not a well man. At one time he used to go to Easton Golf Course and help there. Sometimes he would bring us some golf balls to play with. If he got a job he was poorly. My mother really did all the work. My mother came from Derbyshire. She came with the Blands to Colsterworth House where the Woodlands Estate is today. The Blands came here for the hunting. My mother was the cook. She had left school at 12 years old and went to live with her aunt who had a farm in Derbyshire. I do not know how she came to work for the Blands. Captain Bland had some stables built but he never used them as he was killed in the Great War. My mother was wrapping up a cake to send to him when Algy Skillington came with the telegram that said he had been killed. Mrs Bland was still in bed recovering from the birth of their daughter, Patricia. He never saw her. Read more....

Margaret Winn

Grandma's Gleanings from Newton's Woolsthorpe, Recollections from a Lincolnshire Hamlet By Margaret Anne Winn Published in 1994. This is a collection of stories and facts, recording the childhood of the Robinson children and their way of life growing up in Woolsthorpe in the early 1900's. Read more....

Marian Woolerton

Oral history collected when Miss Marian Woolerton visited Woolsthorpe Manor on 19th November 2001: Marian Woolerton was born in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe, September 1903, in the Wagggoners Cottage. She came to live in the Manor as a little girl and grew up here when her parents took over running the Manor farm after her grandparents stopped farming. She remembered sleeping in the small panelled portion in the room now known as the Hall Chamber, whilst her parents slept in the main room. Marian sat in the back kitchen and tried to remember how it was a working kitchen during her childhood. The hooks on the beams in the kitchen were used for hanging hams and bacon joints after the pig was killed. This was usually done in November so that everything was ready for Christmas. Read more....