Introducing Gasthorpe Tales

I was 90 years young in February. This is an introduction to some mémoires of my childhood home village Gasthorpe, Norfolk, England.

These are memories as seen through the eyes of a four-year-old upwards. I wrote it because I would now like to know more about my parents and grandparents and it’s too late to find out. This will help my children to do just that if they so wish.

I am not au fait with internet technology, thus I have a family member typing up my words and applying them to this Substack platform. It has been suggested to me that an introduction might be helpful in order I might better understand how Substack looks and works. I am told I will receive a Substack email just as will my ‘subscribers’.

I have been described as a voracious reader and frequently make hand written notes on any given book in hand. In recent years, two examples that made an impression upon me and I’ve read multiple times are:
Angels & Devils: My Extraordinary Life
by Henry Curteis
https://www .goodreads.com/book/show/43895100-angels-devils
Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food
by Chris van Tulleken
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ultra-processed-people-why-do-we-all-eat-stuff-that-isn-t-food-and-why-can-t-we-stop-chris-van-tulleken/7377793

I do use a ‘dumb’ mobile phone for text messages. My husband and I were once on a cruise ship near the Artic Circle and I was astounded when texting my sons in Rome and Istanbul to receive replies from both almost immediately. I also use email, but am told I am slow at typing. I have never engaged social media and certainly wouldn’t know how to publish a Substack without hours of practise and tutorial, hence it will be practical and easier to have my words transferred from my notes to this platform by a competent third party doing the honours.

I long ago began writing down mémoire notes and even typed up twenty pages or so some years ago. This is an introduction to twenty or so recipients as a test run largely for myself. If you do not wish to receive further posts, I am told you can easily unsubscribe. Mind you, we have just replaced two TV’s after 15-20 years for two new ‘smart’ TV’s and we’re having a nightmare trying to operate them, so what may be easy for one is not necessarily easy for another. If these TV’s are demonstrations of ‘smart’, goodness knows what dumb and stupid might be in 2025.

My mother ran the Post Office and shop in Gasthorpe. My father was the carpenter and estate foreman at Riddlesworth Hall Estate, then a private family home which would later become a private school attended by Princess Diana. On the 13th February 1935 my mother closed the shop at 1pm for Wednesday half-day closing and gave birth at 2pm. The next day being Valentine’s Day, I, Valerie Pamphilon, was thus named.

Pamphilon: of Anglo-Saxon origin, thought to be of Essex, derived from the Middle English (1200 - 1500).
"The name Pamphilon can be found as far back in time as the year BC 350 when one Pamphilus is recorded as being a great painter. Another suffered in AD 309, he being a man of profound learning with regard to the Scriptures and Christian writings. It is also possible that the name could have originated from the region of Pamphylia, located along the southern coast of modern Turkey."
From Pamphilon An Essex Family by Michael Coyne

Last Friday 28 February I attended a talk by Darren Norton at Diss Publishing Bookshop with three other ladies from the village, Christine, Chris and Hazel. He’s published a book about Little Pat who was murdered in Riddlesworth during WWII.
'Ancestry search solved mystery of my long lost aunty - and her horrific murder'
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/ancestry-search-solved-mystery-long-33464916
I sat next to Pat at Riddlesworth Primary School. here I am pictured with the author and yes, my eyes are closed. I apparently have a penchant for having my eyes shut or looking elsewhere while being photographed.

Copied from FaceBook, Darren Norton writes...
‘Last night at Diss Publishing Bookshop I spoke to an audience about Little Pat. There were so many highlights to the evening, but this lady made my day. Valerie Clarke (nee Pamphilon), was born in 1935, although looked many years younger than her age suggested. She went to the same school as Pat, and says she even sat next to her in class. Every time I do a talk I find a remarkable connection with Pat. My apologies to Valerie, I did not take a good selfie!
It was also good to field questions from an informed audience. Some of those attending had read the book, so our discussions went further than before. It was also heart-warming to hear people asking to be involved with any future memorial. It seems the number of those on our journey is growing.
Thank you to Diss Publishing Bookshop for hosting the event and to those who came along.’

The experience gave me the urge to get out my folder of notes and do something with them while I still can.

My mother Amelia Pamphilon.

My father Ned.

Me, Valerie, aged 17.

A portrait produced in 1949 by prisoner of war Heinz Jacob when I was aged 14.

I attended Riddlesworth Primary School and then Diss Grammar, for which I would cycle 7 miles every morning to catch a bus at South Lopham with my friend Madge to Diss and after school make the same return journey. Madge is alive and kicking in Rotorua, New Zealand and will be one of the recipients of this Substack. I later went to Teacher Training College in East London and my first teaching job was in North Woolwich Docks. I was living in East Ham, East London when I met Eric at the Harmonic Dance Hall in East Ham. He was a marine engineer in the Merchant Navy. We married at Riddlesworth Church 03 January 1959, had our wedding reception at Diss and moved into a flat in Frognal, Hampstead, London. After circumnavigating the world three times, Eric took a job on land and we moved into our first bought home at Thorogood Way, Rainham, Essex. We then moved back to my home Norfolk into a rented home at Riddlesworth Stud while waiting for our Coney Weston home in Suffolk to be built c.1966. At Riddlesworth Stud we lived next door to whom had been ‘Little Pat’s foster parents and the house she had lived at. By contrast to today’s world wide web internet communications, Eric would have a telegram hand delivered to inform him to call head office. He would then drive to Garboldisham to use the local telephone exchange.

Those were the days of a local Bobby on the Beat and a milkman, baker and grocer all coming in person to the door. If you wanted to see the doctor, you would simple go to Hopton surgery and wait in the reception area to be seen shortly by the doctor. Today you have to call and cross your fingers to actually have a face to face appointment and likely the same day only in an emergency. The front door was only locked when we were out and about and the car door probably never. Our sons would go off playing in the village and surrounding countryside without undue fear or concern. Those were the days when Knettishall Red Arch truly was a wild county park where the cast of Dad’s Army can still be watched on TV crossing the Heath during the closing credits. There was no car park, no signs, no fences, no cattle grids, just wild countryside covered with bracken, trees and bushes. How times have changed. Today Knettishall Red Arch has been turned into a manicured and no longer wild country park as chronicled by local villagers:
http://wood-wide-web.net/latest-news.html

A recent experience, perhaps a rather puerile one, has left a sorry impression on Eric and I. Last 05 April 2024, we were returning from Hillcrest Nursery having bought our usual Friday fresh fish and drove into a pothole on the edge of Barningham causing £205.99 worth of damage to two passenger side tyres. The road had only just been reopened after maintenance and the 100cm x 50cm x 20cm deep ‘puddle’ lay just beyond the freshly fixed road. We worked, pay our taxes, have rarely if ever put our heads above the parapet and just for once decided to apply for compensation for the damage to CEO Ian Gallin at West Suffolk Council. We did not expect much and had Mr. Gallin responded promptly and courteously would have happily settled for any reasonable and agreed recompense. However, we have been treated with distain, disinterest and disrespect by Gallin, Suffolk’s CEO Beach, the police, the local MP Prinsley, the Suffolk Highways authorities et al to the point that a pothole experience has come to represent the contrast between today and the days of my childhood when there seemed to be less sophisticated forms of communication yet a greater sense of community, common decency and people were apparently physically and even psychologically healthier. We’ve gone backwards!

At the time of Pat’s murder, we were surrounded by Flying Fortresses and Eric was evacuated to Yorkshire away from the London Blitz. Since WWII I wonder if we have lived through a golden age until now. Perhaps I’m looking back through rose tinted spectacles, but today’s life seems more complicated and challenging. We still have not managed to access BBC Teletext on our new so called smart televisions. Of course, most probably don’t even bother with relics such as teletext, but we did and although we are told the service is there, we can’t find it. This is hardly the end of the world, but I do wonder if smart is the new stupid and dumb. Eric and I came bottom at Bridge, the cards game, in Elmswell yesterday. Mind you, I had an ambulance visit me last Thursday for the first time ever since I felt my heart was beating irregularly. It seems it might have been a false alarm and an unusually warm March day may have been partly the cause. So, attending Bridge was an added bonus and we have come first before. That experience is perhaps another incentive to get on and publish these mémoires.

My recollections of a time at the beginning of my 90 years upon this earth might be interesting for others to ponder and compare. I hope you might enjoy my Gasthorpe Tales.

Continued at:
Gasthorpe Tales No: 001
https://gasthorpetales.substack.com/p/gasthorpe-tales-no-001