Enjoy this wonderful story taken from the memoirs of Ada Newman, who would have been born around the year 1900. Ada recalls:

My early childhood was spent in the lovely Suffolk village of Stoke-By-Nayland. Here I grew up, with my three brothers, in the general stores run by our parents, to which they held the deeds, dating back to 1694 when, with the adjoining cottage, it was called the Half Moon Inn.

It was a rather gambling building overlooking the village green, with five bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.

At the top of the stairs was a large window overlooking the vicarage garden, and the back bedroom. From this bedroom was a passage with another bedroom on the right hand side in which were kept the boots and shoes for sale in the shop, and separate stairs led up to this bedroom from the shop.

A door on the left of the passage opened into the anteroom and a front bedroom. Straight ahead was our parents' bedroom from which one entered the Nursery. Here my brothers and I slept in cots. There was a fireplace with a high steel guard round it, in front of which we had our baths.

There was a cupboard in which mother kept the medicine - ipecacuanha wine - very nasty, for colds, camphorated oil to be rubbed on chests for coughs and Fenning's cooling powders - a yellow powder in a folded paper - these we liked and even helped ourselves to occasionally.

Then later there was Dineford's Magnesia. But not that awful Fenning's mixture which an aunt dosed us with if we happened to be off colour when with her.

My brothers and I had chicken pox and whooping cough together, and I remember the sticks of liquorice we were given to ease the coughing! We all had red flannel dressing downs and I remember sitting on our doctor's knee in mine and as usual, noticing his large red nose, but we all liked him very much.

Now to come downstairs. There was a passage leading to the front door, and a turning to the right leading to the shop and the living room. Under the stairs was a room called the larder, in which was stored tobacco and medicines for the shop.

The top half of the room door had small panes of glass with pictures painted over them. The room was fairly large and contained mahogany dining table, chairs, and a piano. We cold hear mice scampering about the walls and ceiling.

The chimney sometimes caught fire, and it had to be put out with salt from the large blocks of salt in one of the sheds. Then the sweep had to be sent for.

There was a walk-in cupboard where games and a sewing machine were kept. Just before Christmas mysterious parcels were put there. These, we were told, contained 'dolls eyes and tin tacks'.

From the room was a passage leading into a small courtyard containing the well that we shared with the next door family, a coal shed and a door into a lobby containing a sink, and finally into the kitchen. It was quite a big kitchen with a coal oven, a large cupboard, and a copper for heating the water for our baths and for the washing. There was a mangle with wooden rollers through which we wrung the washing.

A little way up the garden past the kitchen and a large shed was what we called the WC, no water closet, but one with two large seats side by side and a very small one on one corner. This was emptied periodically by the 'night chariot'.

There was quite a large garden, on one side of which were the houses for father's chickens.

There was a stable for the horse at the bottom of the garden and one of them used to put its head out and open the latch of the lower part of the door and walk out. I can just remember driving with my father to buy a horse from the Vicar of Old Newton, near Stowmarket. It was called 'Duchess' and we had it for a long time.

Groceries, sweets, tobacco, oil, china and hardware, drapery, boots and shoes, millinery -- all were there in our shop! And what rivalry there was with the other store shop in the village! (Never were we allowed to darken its doors - nor do I think we ever desired to do so).

Goods were taken out to customers and to neighbouring villages by horse and cart, and occasionally one of us would be allowed to go too. One of the first roundsmen we had was big William Grimsey, whose daughter Elsie stayed with us for a time when her mother was ill. She was a shy little girl, with dark curly hair.

I well remember the day when the horse bolted as the cart was being loaded outside the shop. Down the street and along to Park Road it careered, with the goods shooting out in all directions!

At the back of the shop was a shed (room) where the sugar was kept. This was emptied from sacks into tubs there and how the wasps swarmed around in the summer. We never went into the shop that way if we could help it. Drawers that went under the counter in the shop were filled with sugar and this had to be weighed and put into bags before it could be sold.

Sometimes before Christmas, we helped clean the dried fruit. This was spread onto a sieve over a tub and sprinkled with water, and as we rinsed the fruit, we picked out any stalks that appeared. But what we enjoyed at Christmas time was trying out the mechanical toys before they were put into the shop. I still remember a duck that moved across the table, but marvellously, never fell off!

This reminds me of a painful experience I suffered at the hands of one of my brothers. I had a toy which one wound up, then a ball ran up a spiral slope to the top. Here it opened showing a man inside. We had been playing with this in the nursery, and one of my brothers tied it on top of my head. I had curly hair, and this, of course, got caught up in the works!

I imagine that my cries brought someone (probably the maid), to see what it was all about and eventually part of the toy was taken off but the works were so tightly entangled in my hair that no one was able to release it.

So the horse was harnessed into the trap and my father drove Mother and I down to the doctor at Nayland. He was able to cut my hair free with a very sharp knife and I can imagine the entry to his accounts: 'To removing toy from a child's head!'

Magazines and comics were sold in the shop at the weekend and several of them Mother read to us beforehand. There were The Magnet and The Gem, with Billy Bunter, Charles Wharton, Augustus D'Arcy and Tom Merry - the Boys Own Paper and Comic Cuts, with Weary Willie and Tired Tim. (I don't remember any girl's books but anyhow they would not have interested the boys).

I can only remember having one doll and that had a wax head. After spending a night in bed with me it emerged with the hair stuck all over its face. (Exit: that was the fate of my one and only doll).