Sound recordings 2
Here you can listen to more recordings of oral history relating to Stanhoe. Most of the recordings were made by current and past residents of the village and collected by Stanhoe Archive.
Unless otherwise noted, all the sound recordings on stanhoe.org are copyright © Stanhoe Archive. Please do not re-use them without permission. All photos are copyright © Rosemary Brown.
Ronnie Newell (1920–2011)
(24 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Ronnie Newell was born in 1920 and lived in Stanhoe all his life. Here he talks about his life as a farm worker, sports, Scouting and the Home Guard.
(3 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Ronnie tells how Charlie Seaman rescued the gunner of an aircraft that crashed in the grounds of Stanhoe Hall, and other hazards of life in Stanhoe during the Second World War.
Ann Adeney
(6 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2010)
Ann Adeney (née Wright) was born in Stanhoe in 1940 and lived here until 1957. The daughter of a strong Methodist family, she talks about the Hunstanton and Docking Methodist Circuit in the 1950s, and the Methodist Chapel in Stanhoe.
(6 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2010)
Stanhoe School in the 1940s and 1950s; Mrs “Kitty” Wake and Miss Pike. The terrible winter of 1947–1948, and writing messages in the snow for German prisoners of war.
Dennis Ford
(8 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Dennis Ford was born in Leicester in 1935. In 1965 he came from north Lincolnshire to Stanhoe to be headmaster of the village school – and discovered big problems in the relationship between village and school.
(12 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
40 years on the Parish Council: shaking up a feudal organisation; a battle over land ownership; rural attitudes to trees; the restoration of the cross; how the proposal to amalgamate Stanhoe and Barwick Parish Councils disappeared into a bureaucratic black hole on John Prescott’s desk; dog problems; and the Bircham Road footpath project, first proposed in 1972 and moribund ever since.
Gillian Beckett (1935–2016)
(23 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Gillian Beckett (née Tuck) was a knowledgeable botanist and local historian, and a key member of the WI. Gillian was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1935. She came to Stanhoe with her parents in 1948. Here she describes adjusting to rural life, the pantomimes of 1948 and 1949, and the coming of mains water and electricity in the early 1950s.
(10 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Winter weather: Stanhoe cut off by heavy snow in 1947 and periodically through the 1950s and 1960s. The great flood of 1953, when Gillian could lean on the wind and the sea roared like a train.
(20 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Peace and quiet in Stanhoe in the 1950s. The quiet of Norfolk and the dark skies. A huge variety of bird life in the hedgerows. Stanhoe’s four cars. Trains and buses. Three village shops and a Post Office. Deliveries of paraffin, fish and meat. The simplicity of banking and bills. The decline of village self-sufficiency.
Iris Ireson
(16 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Iris Ireson was born in Syderstone in 1937 and has lived in Stanhoe for most of her married life. For 32 years she was closely connected with the village Sports and Social Club. Here she tells Rosemary Brown about the club’s foundation in 1977 and the successes of the 1980s and 1990s, including the extension of the Reading Room in 1981. The Sports and Social Club closed in February 2010.
Ivy Scales
(14 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2010)
Ivy Scales was born in Stanhoe in 1937. Here she remembers a wartime childhood in Stanhoe, including a plane crash, GIs in transit and Italian prisoners of war.
(6 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2010)
Life at the Norfolk Hero – including the ghost – after the Scales family took over the pub in 1955.
(2 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2010)
Playing near the ruins of St Peter’s chapel in the field by Cross Lane.
Jenny Sparks
(10 minutes, recording by Rosemary Brown, © Stanhoe Archive 2009)
Station Farm is a very special place: the only remaining small farm in the area, and a haven for wildlife. Jenny Sparks describes how she and her late husband Michael came to Station Farm in 1981 and set about turning back the past.
