Mrs Sybil Rouse recalls her life of long ago, the days of long hot summers, and the winters which did not bother her then.

My first memory is of No 13 New Street, the tiny cottage when I had first seen the light of day on the 21st of June 1920.The small cottage, two up and two down, was one of several built to house the workers when the railway came to the village about the 1840s.

With so many large families in those days it is a mystery why so many small houses were built, and an even greater mystery where everyone slept.

The parlour of No.13 was seldom used, the front door which opened into it always kept locked.

There was no bathroom or toilet and no hot water. Every drop of water for the weekly washing, the washing up and the once a week bath had to be heated on the kitchen-cum-living room range which also did all the cooking. The range was kept bright and shining by me in later years; managing to get more black lead on myself than anywhere else. The steel edge to the grate and the enormous steel fender were emery papered daily, furious squabbles breaking out between myself and my older twin brothers on winter evenings for a seat nearest the fire - fights that I had no hope of winning.

The two bedrooms, not much larger than box rooms, were icy in winter but stifling in summer, the small windows letting in no air at all.

The two downstairs rooms and the stone-floored out-house or scullery were lit by gas lamps, these fixed to the walls by brackets, the gas mantles so fragile, one touch turned them to powder.

For going to bed, or to the dreaded outside privy, there were only candles to light the way.

Memories of bath nights have grown a little dim, although it goes without saying that father had the first bath with the clear hot water, followed by the twins one at a time to prevent any larking about. By the time it was Alice's turn, the water would be almost cold and decidedly murky. She saw little point in taking a bath, feeling dirtier after than she had been before. The fact that her giggling brothers had confessed to peeing in it, did nothing to help! There must have been a screen around the bath as Alice never saw her father or her brothers with no clothes on -- the boys would be safely upstairs and father gone to the pub when she took hers.

When mother took her weekly 'dip' no one knew, perhaps when the children were in bed, but judging by the amount of vests, combs, stays and petticoats that got the treatment on washing days, it must have been quite a palaver.

Recalling bath nights, it is one night in particular that stands out. I was left to bath myself when a neighbour stood on the doorstep for a gossip. Mother could jaw 'a donkeys hind leg off', according to father.

Shivering from the near cold water and the draught from the open door I put one leg outside the tin bath to reach for the towel (damp) on the fireguard and of course, slipped.

I awoke with the doctor standing beside the bed and a horrible pain that kept me in bed for two weeks and more pain when father took me for a first walk around the garden. He tried to make me laugh when he pointed to the gooseberry bushes and told me that that was where babies came from! It hurt too much to laugh anyway it wasn't very funny, I just wondered why babies were not covered in prickles, surely the silly old duffer didn't believe that rubbish.

The twins had been born in February 1916 in the middle of World War 1 or the Great War as it was called, so were four years older than me. Father was a fireman on the railway, a reserved occupation, and in World War 11 he was an electric train driver or motorman.

Both he and mother were overjoyed to have a daughter, but on looking back over my past life, I now know that I was a great disappointment to them and at times something of an embarrassment.

My earliest memory is of sitting in a very large and ancient pram (probably the twins') wearing a white fur coat, hat and muff made by mother.

Very clear are memories of uneasy nights, afraid to go to the outside privy after dark. Monsters groaned and rustled the branches of the old yew tree that stood guard outside. The disused well, partially filled-in over the years with dirt, stones and empty condensed milk tins, gurgled away in the depths. There must have been hundreds of milk tins, condensed milk on bread playing a large part in the diet of village children in those days, probably the reason for so many decayed teeth, mine among them.

Creeping down the garden path, my hand shielding the candle flame from the wind, I prayed that I would reach the safety of the privy before the light went out, but I rarely did. The eerie moans from the trees and the gurgling from the well frightened me so much that more often than not I found it was too late, I had already wet my knickers.

Rushing back in the dark, with all the demons of the night at my heels, I would be left shaking on the back door step, to find that the twins had done it yet again. Mother was otherwise engaged and they had locked the door!

Except for six months spent in the Midlands during the war, I've lived in the village all my life, a village takes its name from the three bridges that span the river Mole, little more than a stream, but so called because of its habit of travelling underground in places on its journey to join the Thames. Over the years the Mole has become a convenient dumping place for household and garden rubbish, but it was once a favourite spot for fishing and for picnics.

I took my own children there often, years later, but with the rubbish, and pollution from waste oil from the breakers yard, few people linger there now.

Remembered are the patient horses that pulled the plough, the farm wagons kept at night under the old iron railway bridge. The skylarks that sang high above the cornfields on hot summer days and the rookery that went to make way for yet more houses. It is many years since I heard a skylark singing.

It is also many years ago since cousin Gordon caught the largest fish taken from the Mole. Caught on a bamboo rod, piece of string, and a hatpin with a worm for bait the fish was so heavy that Gordon had to wade in and take it by hand. Placed on a truck and paraded through the village for everyone to see, the fish later rotted away and was hastily buried after complaints from the neighbours.