'When we were children you were expected to eat whatever your Mothers gave you,' said Mrs Olive May Sharman (nee Hewitt) who was brought up in East Grinstead from before the Great War.

' Meals were often rather stodgy, lots of suet puddings with treacle, jam or full of currants or dates, stew with more vegetables than meat, but very tasty. There was very little tinned food. Things like baked beans were cooked very slowly, several days in the fire oven with a piece of fat bacon and herbs to flavour them.

    Cheese was used a lot also, dripping from meat and fat pork scraps made tasty toast or put on new bread or inside hot baked jacket potatoes to warm up on cold days. Mum was a good cook and never wasted anything. Her roasted rabbit was really a treat.

   
She made jams and pickles and worked very hard. Dad mended our shoes and spent most of his spare time planting the allotments, sawing wood, etc. They helped us with reading, writing and manners and when they met our school teachers, liked to hear how we were doing at school or anything that they could help with. I think we were most fortunate in having the teachers we did and I often look back and remember our country walks, the stories we were told and the interest that Governesses took in each of us, good or naughty.

    Mum made most of our clothes, these were passed down from one sister to another. Not much notice was taken of this as this was the usual practice in working class homes until the garment was finally discarded or made into rag rugs.

    For cold nights patchwork bedcovers, lined with an old blanket or curtain, were needed as our house was very cold. On winter nights Mum used to put bricks to warm in our fire oven. When we went to bed these were first wrapped in brown paper and wrapped again in pieces of cloth or cloth bags and put into our beds to warm them.

    For amusement on winter nights we played simple card games or played Ludo or Tiddly Winks and in fine weather outdoors played the old games of 'Wolf', 'Chase', Farmer's in his Den', Marbles, Skipping or Trolling Hoops. Our street was a lane with a tarmac centre and grass banks and was a very country place to live in.

    There were two small shops and a Baker as well. One shop sold anything from bacon to candles and oil for lamps, soap, etc. I always remember the mixed smells of this shop. The other one sold sweets and we could take our farthings or halfpennies in and get eight aniseed balls or a strap of toffee for one farthing, sweets like this were not wrapped and you were given them in a screw of paper.

    Acid drops and pear drops also went eight for a farthing and a dried bean was a great favourite, it is given to horses usually and I remember it tasted of dried dates and cocoa. If you wanted meat, bones or suet you had a long walk up to the town.

    Sometimes we would take cakes (for neighbours) or meat and potatoes to the Bakers who cooked them, after the bread came out of the oven, some people only had open fires with no ovens. Bakers charged 2d and we usually got one penny to take and collect them and the Baker sometimes gave me odd pieces of new bread or cakes that had broken off his baking.

    Sometimes also, in winter on Sundays, we would hear the muffin man's bell and he would come along the lane with a wooden tray on his head, it contained muffins and was covered with a spotless white cloth. If Dad could spare the money, he would buy us one each and at tea time we toasted them in front of the fire and put butter on. They tasted better than today's do, with home-grown celery, home-made jam and cake.

    We really enjoyed tea on Sunday.'