Memories of Mrs Gray's cottage

Alice Louisa Gray died on 27th March 2010 at the Cedars Retirement Home, Bourne, aged 89, and the following contribution by Adrian Simmons appeared on the Bourne Forum on Thursday 1st April:

Alice Gray sadly passed away a few days ago. She lived on North Road. Alice together with her husband David used to own the cottage opposite the Tudor cottages on South Street which was pulled down in early 1977 to be replaced by two new dwellings. The cottage was reckoned to be of mud and stud construction its walls were filled with mud and clay. In the 1970s it had green wooden-framed windows and a front door that if you stepped out of you would be more or less planting your feet on the road surface itself. The Grays also then had a large vegetable patch between the cottage and what was in the 1970s Tucks garage. In the late 1940s, locals remembered David Gray employing a stockman they nicknamed Chappie. At the back of the cottage they had a barn that housed several dairy cows that Chappie used to take in the morning down South Fen Road to some grazing land, returning with them late afternoon to milk them. Locals used to get what was unpasteurised milk from the Grays' metal urns - using a ladle to skim off the cream first. Chappie was remembered because he didn't look after himself very well. He slept in the barn and never cut his toenails. How often he took his socks and boots off is not known but his nails eventually curled and carried on growing underneath his feet.

My article about lost cottages which was published by The Local on Friday 24th July 2010 also brought back memories for Bourne’s senior citizens who remembered these long vanished properties with some affection. Kenneth Pick, aged 79, was particularly interested in the photograph of Mrs Alice Gray’s old home on the double bend in South Street, a scene which showed a young lad cycling by with a dog chasing after him and he immediately recognised both. “That’s our Ian”, he told his wife Cynthia as he read the newspaper soon after it went on sale. “And the dog behind is his pet Manchester terrier, Lulu.”

Mr and Mrs Pick, of Harvey Close, Bourne, had not seen the photograph since it appeared in the Stamford Mercury over thirty years before but they remembered quite clearly that the young cyclist was their son, then aged nine years old, probably rushing home for his tea to their house which was then in Ancaster Road. Ken, a retired printing worker, was born and bred in the town, but Ian has now left and lives and works in Cambridge but dad sent him a copy of the photograph as a reminder of his vanished youth when he always seemed to be in a hurry.

Another reminiscence came from Mrs Dorothy Hodgkin who remembered the same cottage when it was home to her uncle and aunt, Snowdon and Cassie Gray, and always known as the old farmhouse. As a child in the late 1920s, she would visit them on Sunday afternoons after attending Sunday School held in the Abbey Church and special treats were always on offer. “Aunty Cassie’s speciality was cinder toffee”, she said, “always specially made for us and those visits are among my happiest times of my childhood years.”

Dorothy was born at Northorpe Lodge near Thurlby in 1921 and later lived at the Wellhead Cottage and then in George Street but now, aged 89 and a widow, she is a resident at the sheltered housing complex in Meadow Close. “I always remember Bourne with great affection and the fondest of memories”, she said, “but it is such an awful shame to see these lovely old homes disappearing and it is a great pity that we cannot find some way of saving them.”

A delightful anecdote about Alice and David Gray came from John Squires, a former Bourne resident now aged 71 and who lives at Gonerby Hill Foot, Grantham, but as a boy, he spent a lot of his spare time helping out on their farm. He wrote:

My mother was a friend of Alice and also got her milk and butter from her.  Mother would send me over with a jug to collect the milk which Alice (Mrs Gray as it was in my day because you never called your elders by their first names) would ladle from a large shallow bowl on the dairy floor covered with muslin to keep off the flies. While there, she would have me turn the handle on the butter churn. I would also have great trouble carrying the jug over the road to our home at No 36 South Street which was part of Cavalry House, without spilling any. One of our jobs was to help take the cows to and from the field on Stamford Hill, a job usually done with the help of a man who lived in the barn at the farm called Chappy Rowland who would ride his bike rather than walk because he had a bad leg or foot. The first job for me was to stand in the road and stop the traffic as the cows came out of the yard on the corner of South Street. There was not a lot of traffic in those days but there was no way of seeing if anything was coming without standing over the other side of the road.

See also The article on lost cottages

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