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"For many years during the 70's, 80's and 90's I played hockey for Norfolk Wanderers Hockey Club, which later amalgamated with Grasshoppers to form Norwich City Hockey Club (it was never quite the same again!). At least once every season we made the safari away trip to play Pelicans at North Runcton Cricket Club. The match team was always a highly enjoyable affair and supplemented by copious quantities of beer poured and topped up from a watering can! Sadly, I was always a driver and thus limited on intake, though the others certainly made up for it!" Jonathan Neville |
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"My dad was very keen that I should get my Brownies semaphore badge, not least because no one else had ever done one. They had to bring in an examiner specially. He and I stood at opposite ends of the green and signalled until I had demonstrated my ability. Lots of people I knew were on the green watching and it was the most excruciatingly embarrassing experience - I can't have been more than 9 or 10 at the time." RM |
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"I've finally got around to scanning in these two photos of North Runcton Cricket Club. Both were taken around the early 1950's. My father, Tom Blomfield, is seated 4th from left in the first picture and is standing 3rd from left in the second. I'm unsure about the origin of the first picture, but the second was taken by the Lynn News. I also came across this poem about a famous victory by the club"
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My name is John Hubbard. I lived in North Runcton from approximately 1947-8 to 1957, attended the local school and later Gaywood and the Norfolk Tech. I played cricket for the village. The Club House was situated near to the tennis courts, and was moved to its present site by, I believe, Italian prisoners of War. I have a photo of a childrens' Christmas party taken in the old club house in 1949.
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I lived in what was then known as Stud Farm next to the Folgate cottages, but I now live in Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. I lived in North Runcton from about 1952 until my parents moved, in about 1957. I attended the village school on the green - the headmaster at the time was Mr Manning. The Rev Muzio was the Rector, and I was in the church choir along with his son. I am afraid that we used to play around during the sermons, which led to the whole choir (adults and children) having to file down and sit in the congregation during subsequent sermons. There was a lot of social life around the church when I was a lad in Runcton. The Rev Muzio organised, with the help of various local people, the cubs, scouts and various other things for the youngsters to do. I remember pushing an old barrel organ around the streets - we knocked on each house and rattled our tins - dressed in cub and scout uniforms with a bandana on our heads to seem authentic. We went from the Rectory as far as the little shop at the start of the common - an old lady ran it and I used to go over the fields and fill my shirt up (the sleeves knotted) with wild mushrooms, sell them to her and she would sell them on to her customers. Across the common were the old cottages as they appear in your picture of the common. Just to the right of those cottages was a large group of wild blackberry bushes and that's where the village folk - including yours truly - would pick the blackberries every year for the homemade blackberry and apple pies. Sometimes there would be members of several families, either with latticed "chips" or enamel bowls from the kitchen sink. The crop was prolific - are those bushes still there I wonder? I recollect there were four elm trees on the green in Rectory Lane, planted as a square and close together. They stood in as galleons, spaceships etc during many a game with the other village kids. The pictures of the old Hall on the web site remind me of the yearly village fetes held there - it was a lovely old building.  I found this picture of a North Runcton school trip to Whipsnade Zoo in 1954. back row from left to right:? ?, Clifford Winters or
Dixon, Michael Bray, Peter or Michael Bennet, Desmond Mallows,and
a lad who I seem to remember was called Keith... Sorry to be vague, and apologies for any mistaken or forgotten names, but time plays a few tricks with the memory. This picture was taken forty eight years ago so I guess I haven't done too badly with the names.....
"I was born in North Runcton in 1911, at the Foldgate Row by the Common Gates. I remember the farmer who lived at Manor Farm used to have a horse and trap, a gig. The children in Foldgate Row used to wait for him to come and they'd open and shut the gates and he'd throw them a ha'penny. They never got out of the cart." RR "When my brother, sister and I went to North Runcton school, we used to walk there through the churchyard. At one time we had been dressed in plastic mackintoshes in red, yellow, blue and white. We decided they were too hideous and embarrassing to wear to school, so we took them off at the church gate, and hid them behind the wall there. Then we dashed across the green in the rain. In the afternoon we collected them from behind the wall and wore them home." AH "I went to secondary school in King's Lynn during the 70s, which meant catching the service bus from the Hall gates or the bus shelter on the green. If there was enough snow or ice in winter the bus would skip North Runcton. On those days, as we got more and more frozen and it got later and later, we would realise that the bus wasn't coming. We then had to trudge up to the A47 and wait there for one of the buses coming from Norwich. The compensation was that, with a bit of luck, it might be that we missed two or three lessons. There was virtually nothing for us to do in the village at that age. At times a few of us were tolerated at the Sports Club, for which we were glad, and monopolised the bar football table. We stacked up piles of coins - it was 2p a game. I can still score goals from the back row, so it was obviously time well spent." RH |
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