Philip Richard Pegg

I was born on the 18th of May 1934 and was christened Philip Richard Pegg, I was the only son of child of Philip Henry Pegg and Alice Daisy Pegg. I had a younger brother but he was still born in 1938, but more about that later.
Why Yaxham Beach? Well folk in the surrounding area, when asked where they were going, would often reply Yaxham Beach. How it was given the title no one knows, but this tradition has died out now.
My mother was born Alice Daisy Hornegold, the 3rd child of my grandparents Alice & William Hornegold. My mother had 2 elder brothers called James & Frederick, a younger brother Sidney and 2 younger sisters Violet & Anne. They lived at the Post Office in Station Road, Yaxham. My Grandmother being Postmistress having taken over from her father, my great grandfather.
My great grandfather was James Farrow, he had been a superintendent in the metropolitan police before retiring to Foundry square, Dereham before being offered the job as Post Master at Yaxham, at this time you had to have good references to be considered for work with the Post Office.
PIC 50
He bought The Yews on Station Road Corner Yaxham, this had been built as a Public House but the authorities would not grant a licence and this was turned into a post office in approx 1900. In 1905 he retired and his daughter, my grand mother took over and moved a short distance into Station Road with the Post Office being house in a new room built on the side of her house. My grandfather was a painter, decorator and sign writer by trade which he still carried on as well as being the village postman. My grandmother was a true cockney with a real cockney accent, having been born in the old Kent. My father’s parents were Philip Henry Pegg and Celice Pegg. They came from Corpusty. My grandmother came from Hoydon and lived in the Eagle Lodge on the Norwich road and was in service at Hoydon Hall. Grandfather had worked with horses most of his life, for sometime as a team man at Sculthorpe Mill, later running his own fishmongers business and rounds. He was a tall, well built man, well over six feet and about fourteen stones in weight. I think he had the nickname of fighter Pegg, I think he could look after himself. He was a strong man and during the floods of 1912 rescued a man by carrying him on his shoulders while up to his chin in water. In contrast my grandmother was small, only about five feet two inches tall. My father was by trade a handyman having served his apprenticeship at Saxthorpe Foundry. He volunteered for the 1914-18 war. He was in France in the trenches at 17, was gassed and also wounded in the leg, the bullet was still in his leg when he died in 1945. My mother had to leave as soon as she was old enough to start work. She worked at Bailey Birds of Fakenham, Utting and Buckingham’s of Dereham and she also worked at Walsingham. My mother’s life was by today’s standards short and at times rather cruel in luck. When she worked in Walsingham she was engaged to be married to a Richard Artherton, whose family had a butchers business at Walsingham. Dick as he was known died after an unfortunate accident. He slipped and fell while carrying a side of meat and ruptured himself internally. I think I was named Richard in his memory. My father came to Dereham during the 1930’s depression to work at Dereham Foundry where he worked alongside my wife’s late father. He met my mother when they both worked in Dereham at this time. I am told I was nearly born at Corpusty as my mother and father lived there for a time until they managed to get a house in Station Road, Yaxham, No 2 Rose Cottages. My parents were living at Corpusty at the time because my grandfather had slipped off his fish cart and broken his thigh and father had to carry on the business until grandfather recovered. My father when they moved back to Yaxham had managed to get employment at a factory in Norwich Road. My earliest memories mainly concern my grandparents Hornegold, being the nearest grandchild meant that they gave me a great deal of attention. I can remember being taken down to the end of the garden to see the ducks, chickens and animals on the land and in the farmyard over the road. My grandfather who I can picture today, a small man with a moustache stained with nicotine as he smoked. Another memory is of him taking me down the garden at dusk, just as a full moon was coming up over the farm buildings. I have always been fascinated by the moon ever since. It was he who told me about the man in the moon. Sadly I was not to know him for very long. One morning after finishing his last round he went to the toilet across the backyard, he was gone rather a long time so my mother went to investigate and found him collapsed inside the toilet and unconscious. He had suffered a brain haemorrhage. He lingered a few days but did not recover consciousness and was buried in Yaxham churchyard. Then was the beginning of a really tragic period for the family. My mother was pregnant at the time with a baby that would have been a brother to me. Some months after grandfather died she was taken ill and had to go to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. She would likely be dead if her brother Sidney had not written to Dr Noon. When he visited my mother on a Saturday afternoon she was in great pain and no one seemed to realise how serious it was. When Dr Noon received the letter on the Monday morning he immediately went to visit my mother and according to what she told me, he took one look at my mother and ordered her into the operating theatre immediately. The nursing staff’s feet did not touch the ground. She was suffering from a burst appendix and peritonitis besides being pregnant. Mum was in hospital several months. My brother was stillborn. I was looked after by my grandmother and aunt Violet who had come to help with the post office. Grandmother by this time could not get about very well and could only manage to walk as far as the outside toilet. She had an ulcerated ankle. I slept in grandmother’s bed and aunt Violet or Aunty Bo Bo as I called her used to sing me to sleep. She had a very good singing voice. She looked after me like I was her own child. Mother eventually recovered. She was employed as a domestic help and shop assistant at Kings Lynn. Another memory at the time is of my aunt taking me for walks, a few along the road to Whinburgh to see the house with the writing on the front barge boards, which she used to read to me. It goes “Stranger may this catches your eye, do a favour passing by, bless the house, ere you be gone and it will bless you passing on.” This house belonged to the Miss Becks, two spinster ladies. The house and writing are still there but the house has been extended. The time has now reached the year 1939 and two important things happened. It was time to start school and the outbreak of World War 2. Both happened at about the same time. I started at Yaxham Church School at Clint Green. My mother had now recovered her strength and took me the first day on a seat fixed to the carrier of her bicycle, one of the 28 inch wheel models of the 1930’s. Of course there were the usual tears and wailing from the first day children, me among them. For the first few weeks if the weather was fine mother took me on her cycle, if the weather was bad we went by Eastern Counties No 13 bus which arrived at the school at about 9am, just in time to start, but this meant that we had to walk home after school as there was no bus at this time. When we were a little older we used to walk both ways until father bought me a cycle when I was big enough to ride one. Yaxham School had two classrooms, the little room for the first two years and the big room for the next three years. The head teacher was a Mrs Mallett, a very large lady. The day started with assembly taken by the Rector of Yaxham the Rev Eustace Cox. It was very rare for him to miss a day, usually on his cycle with his long black cassock on. If we were dwindling along he would say hurry along lads, you’ll be late. This was the time of the outbreak of World War 2. I can remember listening to Neville Chamberlain’s broadcast on that Sunday morning and father looking very grim and worried as he had already experienced one world war and been fortunate to survive, unlike many of his young friends. This of course meant everyday we had to take our gasmask in its brown cardboard container with us to school, along with our satchel containing our sandwiches for lunch. Conditions in school were very different to today’s standards. There were two open coal fires in the large classroom and one in the small classroom. In winter it was very cold, particularly if you sat at the back of the class. The toilets were outside, the boys having an uncovered urinal trough and one earth closet the girl’s two earth closets. The playground was a large, stoney earth surface with a large coal shed type wooden hut at the end with a row of wooden seats around the three walls. Travelling to school by bus at this time was sometimes quite tough because of the petrol shortage. Eastern Counties buses were forced to use some very early 1930s petrol buses converted to run on gas, fed from a machine towed behind with a large, flexible tube running to the engine. This mostly performed reasonably well but sometimes they would barely pull at all and the driver would have to stop. Occasionally they would use one of the cream painted coaches used for long distance runs. These were diesel engined and very comfortable for the time. It was one of these coaches that had an unfortunate mishap on the way to school. When we boarded this coach at Station Corner one of the older boys told the conductor that the wheel at the rear had a bad wobble but he did not take any notice. The road past Yaxham Mill was quite straight until there was an s bend known as Pinn’s Corner. As the driver turned from a left hand bend to a right hand bend there was an almighty lurch and grinding noise as the offside twin rear wheels came off, bringing the coach to a rapid halt. The coach came to rest and was still there when we walked home at the close of school that afternoon. I enjoyed school, particularly geography and nature study. During the spring and summer Mrs Mallett would take the older classes for a nature walk along the footpath around Clint Green. In the final year we had to take the exams for a place at either Hammonds Grammar school at Swaffham for boys or Dereham High school for girls. I was fortunate enough to pass to go to Hammonds. Here I will attempt to recollect the war years, as the war finished before I left Yaxham School, which at times were rather frightening. My main recollection is of the seemingly endless convoys of Lorries, loaded with troops travelling through the village on the road between Wymondham and Dereham. Many of them were Canadians. I still have a set of cards from the back of their cigarette packets.
My father and uncle dug a large hole in the Post Office garden and made a corrugated iron air raid shelter, covered it with earth and made a concrete floor. When the first air raid warning started we all used to troop down into this shelter, I can remember it being rather cold and dark. I can remember the Norwich bombing raids, the glow of fires could be clearly seen from our bedroom windows. Father, mother and myself were staying at my grandfathers here at Corpusty on the day that Melton Constable was bombed and machine gunned. My grandfather’s house had blast walls built by the local council in front of the east and north windows, they made the house very dark. A few bombs were dropped in the area, one unexploded one near Holland’s Hall, Bradefield, which after much digging was never found. A German bomber one night dropped some parachute mines in a line from East Tuddenham, Yaxham and Shipdham. The many land explosions were very frightening. The one at Yaxham was very near to Hollands Hall and left a very large crater in the middle of Colonel Vincent’s field. A VI Doodlebug crashed beside a farmhouse at Whitburgh which housed evacuee families, the house was badly damaged and had to be pulled down. Another large explosion occurred one morning during school time, a v2 rocket landed in a field near Brandon. Fortunately there were no casualties but a lot of properties were damaged by the blast. We were also surrounded by airfields, both British and USAAF and crashes were quite frequent. The first I can recall was when a mosquito bomber crashed in a field between Yaxham Mill and the road to Whitburgh. We heard a loud thud, not a bang. Father went out but could not see anything but later my uncle Mr James Hornegold, who was a sergeant in charge of the Home guard, said a search party had been called out and that the crew had both been killed. One of the crew was already dead in the crash, the other was critically ill and died at the medical station which was in Yaxham rectory. Both had been injured in the raid. They were trying to reach Shipdham airfield, the aircraft flew in from the north east, narrowly missing Yaxham Mill. It hit the top of a large ash tree and crashed a short distance further on. It didn’t catch fire. We went and had a look at it later and it was just a heap of broken wood and tangled metal. I still have a piece of the copper lightning conductor in my garage. A Halifax bomber crashed in a field near Birds Corner, Shipdham beside the road. There were literally hundreds of aircraft in the air at the time, flying off to raid Germany. At this time in 1944-45 the aircraft noise was virtually constant, day and night. The Americans were virtually all round us at the time. I went to 2 events laid on by them at Shipdham, most of the local schools were invited with the teachers, and we were picked up and returned in a fleet of covered Lorries and coaches. We were given food, the likes of which we had not seen since 1939, ice cream, fruit etc. Every child was given a goodie parcel to take home, as well as a wonderful spread laid on in the large hangers. One incident I can well remember was a visit to our relation who lived at Easton nearly opposite the Dog public house, it was a Sunday dinner time, we caught the no 13 Easton counties bus in the morning. It was a cold, clear and bright day but by dark there was a dense fog. We were waiting for the return bus about 7-30 but we told by a passing American that all buses for the city were cancelled. The driver asked where we wanted to go, he came from Weston Longville. He told his companion to get in the back of the truck and then loaded my mother, aunt and me into the cab and brought us home to Yaxham. He then said he had to go back into the city. Being left hand drive and with no side windows he was able to see quite well in the conditions. The American airmen were very friendly people. Living near the railway station we invariably spent a lot of time there Stanley Adcock and Fred Simons, we spent a lot of time in the signal box and riding on the steam shunting engines when the goods wagons had to be shunted into the sidings.
Again memories of the USAAF unloading truck loads of bombs in the sidings next to the road and the local farmers working next to them filling the trucks they emptied with sugar beet from the tractors trailers and horse drawn wagons for delivery to the sugar beet factory at Cantley near Kings Lynn.
During the time that the USAAF were station at Shipdham, everyday except Sundays a truck would call at Yaxham station to pick up any parcels and goods e.t.c. that came by passenger train and they would bring any items that had to be sent by train. Among these were the large khaki brown zip up holdalls issued to force personnel, each one with the owners name stencilled on in block letters. Some days there would be none, sometimes one or two but often as many as 10 to 15. at the time, being only 8 or 9, the significance of these holdalls did not register but in later years the truth dawned on me, these the personnel belongings of airmen killed or missing in the daylight raids over Germany and were being sent to their relatives in the U.S.A, I can clearly remember the arrival of the USAAF at Shipdham. There were several very long troop trains into Yaxham station. This meant that the road to Shipdham was closed as the crossing gates could not be opened as the train stretched the whole length of the platform. The railway station was manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during the war. During the war period the post office had all the signs removed and the windows were criss crossed with tape in the event of a bomb blast. It also had to manned 24hours a day in case of emergency, there were no private telephones at this time, it was also a telephone office.
One of the facts of life during the war was the shortage of food and the rationing system, everything was so basic. Clothing had to be patched, boots and shoes repaired. Living in the country side we were probably luckier than town folk. Mr & Mrs Palmer at station farm usually had a few eggs to spare and sometimes a small amount of home made butter. Any spare eggs were put in galvanised pails of water to preserve them. All soft fruit was collected and preserved in glass jars and some was made into jam as there was an extra sugar allowance for jam making. Everyone had to grow as many vegetables and potatoes as possible. Mr Horace Knights had to grab out almost half of his apple orchard and plough the ground for food production. The result of this was that we never went cold in the winter as my father was very friendly with Mr Knights and was given all the fire wood he needed. My father had bought a double barrelled 12 bore gun from Dereham prior to the outbreak of WWII and he was a very good shot so we always had meat for lunch despite the meat being rationed, either rabbit or wood pigeon. He was very friendly with Mr Bearvis who farmed Sycamore Farm at the start of the war, my father, Mr Bearvis and Mr Rowe used to shoot this land and also the land belonging to Mr Knight. I used to go with them on Saturdays and Sundays. Mr Bearvis was forced to give up his land early in the war and my father sold his gun. He wasn’t with out a gun very long, being in the home guard he knew the local home guard commander Major Whit Worth, who lived at the Elms very well. I suppose my father had a lot of check. He knew the Major had some sporting guns, so he asked if he could lend him a gun, which the Major had no objection to as he knew it would be well looked after. It was a double barrel shot gun in a carrying case with all the cleaning equipment. I think it was made by Rosson of Norwich and was quite valuable. He was only too pleased to let it be used. My father now had permission to shoot over all the land owned by Col Vincent of Hollands Hall, including Whinburgh Wood. He used to build a hide to shoot wood pigeons, I sat many hours in these hides with him. Any surplus rabbits or pigeons he would take to Harold Saunders the game dealer at Garvestone, who paid a good price for them.
As the war reached the final two years things became a bit brighter, we even had a few oranges once or twice a year, rationed to a few per person, theses were distributed by the family who were greengrocers at the Woolpack Inn. It was now 1945 and the end of the war was in sight. It was time to take the scholarship exams for admission to Hammonds at Swaffham. I was successful together with a girl who went to Dereham Girls High school, our success pleased Mrs Mallett the head teacher. We both received a book as a prize for passing.
May 6th 1945 was a very tragic day for the family, as it was when my father died suddenly from a severe heart attack, he was 47 years of age. We knew he had heart trouble, Dr Williams our doctor, had made him change his job about a year before. It wasn’t very easy as he was classed as having a job of national importance to the war effort. The doctor signed the necessary forms to get him out of the factory in Dereham where he worked. Father had been grassed and wounded in the leg in the First World War, he still had pieces of metal in his leg. He also smoked as most of the soldiers did and the heat and heavy lifting as a furnace man had taken its toll on him. He managed to get a lighter job with Robert Grey the corn merchants at Yaxham Granary. He had been to work as usual and in the evening he took his gun and went to shoot rabbits, he had asked me to go with him but I was playing with some other boys and did not want to go. The nights were quite light. When he had not returned home at dusk mother began to worry, so I went with an American air force sergeant from Shipdham airfield who had been to a dance and was friendly with my aunt Anne. We found him lying down under an ash tree in Mr Knight’s meadow between the road and the railway line. He had obviously felt unwell and laid down and died. He had unloaded and broken the gun, 2 rabbits he had shot laid beside him. He had passed away quickly and happily doing what he enjoyed.
After father died we exchanged houses with my uncle Jim and Aunt Maud Hornegold, my mother’s brother. We left our 3 bed roomed house and moved into a 2 bed roomed house next to the Post Office so that mother could help my grand mother in the Post Office as she was getting more immobile. This was a smaller house but more comfortable and cosier that the one we left. We had electricity but the post office still used oil lamps for lighting and an open fire for cooking. The paraffin was delivered by a Mr Carter from Shipdham who called once a week.
It was at this time in 1946 that I started to get interested in my lifetime passion of things mechanical, particularly motorcycles. I am an active member now of the vintage motorcycle club. Arthur Hornegold, mothers brother had always bought, sold and repaired motorcycles. He had a large workshop which was always full, with others standing in the yard, leaning on the walls. I used to go out with Arthur and a young man who worked with him at the Dutch factory, to buy motorcycles which were advertised for sale. We spent many hours sitting on a bench or in a cold and draughty shed haggling over 2 or 3 pounds difference in the price. I used to get a little fed up at times but I was grateful for the ride out. He also had some interesting cars, one I particularly remember as I have never seen another one since. It was a Vauxhall 14 sports tourer made in 1936, a full 4 seater with fold down canvas hood, coloured in maroon and cream with maroon leather upholstery, a very attractive car. I went with him to buy it from a Canadian officer at Bylaugh Hall which was used by the RAF during the war and was still complete. I can remember going inside the front entrance and into a very large reception hall with I believe a huge wide staircase. The owner had to sell this car as he was going back to Canada. Around this time he also owned several other sports cars.
By spring 1946 life was beginning to return back to normal. You could visit the seaside again and in Norwich the stadium opened its doors to the speedway fans again, I was fortunate enough to be taken by my uncle and 2 of his mates. The stadium was absolutely full and I was passed down to the front to be able to see. I was 12 years old now and the spectacle to a young lad was quite breathtaking, but one thing made the evening for me and made me hooked on speedway and later motorcycle grass track racing, this was the wonderful smell of burning oil and methanol fuel the machines ran on. I have been a speedway fan ever since. I had left Yaxham School at the start of the school holidays in 1945 and I started at Hammonds Grammar School Swaffham when the holidays ended in August. This was a whole new experience, it meant travelling by train from Yaxham station to Dereham, then changing to the Swaffham, Kings Lynn train which had enough compartments reserved for school boys. School life was very strict under headmaster Tom Welborn. When you saw him coming you disappeared quickly. There were far more subjects taught than I had been used to, plus home work and I’m afraid I did not enjoy the first 2 years at all. I could not get to grips at all with maths, literacy, algebra or ancient history which I found very boring. I believe I was still finding it hard to come to terms with my father’s sudden death and missed his guidance. By year 3 I was starting to enjoy school life. I concentrated on the subjects I liked, particularly chemistry, geography, French and English but maths and physics I could not come to terms with. I enjoyed art under the late Harry Carter, also football but hated the cross country run but managed a 13th place in the junior race one year. We had lunch provided, there were 2 sittings, juniors and seniors according to the year you were in. (juniors having the first sitting). The school lunch was very basic but usually edible. Rationing was still in force and food was still short. By the end of year 3 my exam results had improved considerably and I was usually in the top 6 in the class. I was now coming up to 14 years old and other distractions now interfered with my homework in the evening, in the shape of a local farmer’s daughter. We spent most evenings together but all was above board. I played football for the school and house teams. In the last year of school in 1950 I sat the final exams, this was the last year of the old Cambridge School Certificate examinations. I passed in 5 subjects but missed out on English so did not pass. I could have stayed on and taken the failed subjects the following autumn but mother felt I would be learning more if I started work, so that was the end of my schooling, or so I thought but an apprenticeship found me attending Norwich City Collage one day a week, later for motor engineering.