More information regarding Shalstone HERE
News from Shalstone
The village has enjoyed two social events this autumn; the annual Harvest Supper in the Reading Room, on 13th September, and a Safari Supper at the start of November. Many thanks to all those who came together to make these occasions both memorable and entertaining. Shalstone is a small community, but we are fortunate to have committed and willing residents that regularly contribute their time and skills generously.
Services coming up in church in December
- Sunday 1 December – 10.30am Family Communion
- Sunday 15 December – 6.00pm Shalstone Carol Service
- Wednesday 25 December – 10.30am Benefice Communion
Church cleaning
December - Elspeth and Ina
January - Amanda and Kathy
February – Fiona and Janet
Cogitations…The Old Codger aka GPP
The Great Shalstone Train Robbery
I’m including this little piece under the title “Cogitations” because I think cogitations are private and personal to one’s own thoughts, whereas reminiscences require someone else to listen to them and these are private thoughts, which come to me out of the top of my head, while I’m thinking about years ago, because I sit for a long time by myself. The other evening, I suddenly woke up and realised there was a story that hadn’t passed through my brain for, probably, forty years; I had totally forgotten about it and it’s the Great Shalstone Train Robbery.
In those days, the Express trains to and from London and up north, always had a postal coach on them, which was a mobile sorting office and, just south of Bletchley, there was a gantry which hooked on to a mail sack which had been left to be collected or dropped off. During the dark days and nights of the early war, a mail sack was lurking, unattended, by the railway track at Bletchley. Some rascally people realised this and somehow managed to get the tenancy of Number 35 [in Shalstone] for a short while. Nobody was attending to the village very much; there was an agent who did the paperwork but no one kept an eye on things. My parents were in Tewkesbury and, one night, three men, with a little car, waited for the mail sack to be dropped, popped it into the car and came, hot foot, down the A422, stopping off at Bear Bridge. Two of them came across the public footpath, towards the village, to number 35. They didn’t actually have to go into the village because the path stopped just by their front door. When they were safely inside, they undid all the registered letters, put the rest back in the bag, and went back to Bear Bridge, where they were picked up again. When the Agent finally realised that, since the tenancy first started, nothing much had happened at number 35, they opened the door and found that the grate was full of opened registered letters – the contents long gone..
Bear Bridge
While I’m cogitating, lots of stories come into my head which haven’t ever been recorded and I would like to put them on paper so that they are not lost forever because, when you are 95, you have to have a very long memory and, luckily, my memory is fairly good! The very fact that they have come out means that there is some purpose of truth in the stories.
I talked just now about Bear Bridge. Rumour (or myth or legend) has it that a tramp had a pet bear and he travelled up and down the roads. The bear used to dance to provide him with some pocket money and, very often, he camped down by Bear Bridge because there was water, wood, shelter and somewhere for the bear to live, hence it became known as Bear Bridge.
Shalstone Mill and Fulwell Station
If you go on from Bear Bridge down to where it joins the Ouse, you will find the remains of what was “Huntsmill”. I have a document from 1347 which bequeaths the rights to have a mill there for the parish. The Great Ouse started at Syresham and went through Whitfield, Turweston, Westbury, Shalstone, down to Tingewick and, eventually, came out in The Wash. If you go a bit further along, you come across the railway crossing at Fulwell. I remember that refrigeration didn’t come into the countryside until the early 40s. In Buckingham there was an ice factory. My grandparents did a lot of entertaining and, therefore, there was a considerable amount of food which needed to be kept fresh. The ice factory produced ice which was put in the ice box in one of the semi underground rooms of the Old Laundry [part of Shalstone Manor]. The bottom layer of the ice box was a reservoir for the melted ice. The middle one was a container for the ice, which used to arrive with a hessian sack around it so that it didn’t slip about and, in the top, there were two cupboards which were kept cool by the melting ice and, in there, food for all the people in the house – which were many – was kept fresh.