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September 2003
As Feltwell goes to sleep in the summer, metaphorically speaking, this will be a short newsletter.
The sky is currently turning grey and the long spells of English sunshine (didn't you know that the sun was English?) seem to be over. Must be time to go back to school! Yes, the summer holidays have finished, but what a wonderful holiday it has been. Not only personally but on the website front. I finally got a digital camera and was able to start and finish the St Mary's sub-web on site 3. Hope you have enjoyed the photographs, I'm particularly proud of the stained glass windows myself. And I've made progress on the newspaper clippings files, well, volume 1 anyway. Yet again this is a bigger job than I'd at first thought. The most interesting articles, in my humble opinion, will dribble onto the site over the coming months. One article that caught my attention concerned the creation of RAF Feltwell's badge. Apparently suggestions were sought for the central image and the most popular got incorporated into the official station badge. Which is why RAF Feltwell has a pheasant in the middle of its badge. Unfortunately I cannot get a good scan of the small image in the newspaper so I asked the USAF historian at Lakenheath, Greg Henneman, who also looks after some RAF Feltwell records if he could get me one. Imagine my surprise when he wrote back, "I have looked everywhere for the badge this week. In all of our archives.... the RAF Station Commander... Arts and Crafts center.... not only can I not find it, but I can't find anyone that has ever seen it." So Greg would like a copy as well! Can any member help us with this quest?
Membership news this month is saddened by the fact that long-standing members Ralph Carroll and Martin Burgess have both died of cancer. I'm sure you would want to join me in expressing our sympathies to both families.
New members are Janet Macrae, Ken and Barbara Wright, Jack Cassidy and Frank Bolingford. Frank lived in a cottage in Paynes Lane and sends us these recollections, "I can still visualise it (the cottage). It had a toilet at the back and I can remember my young brother being in there when a German Bomber rear gunner let off a few rounds as he went over the house after strafing the airfield. No harm done as his aim was a bit high. There were sentries on duty at the top of our lane and we had to show passes to get in and out and I think at one time my father worked at a service mans club of some sort." Ken Wright's father, Charles Wright once owned a shop in Feltwell and used to go round on a horse and cart to sell groceries. Jack Cassidy shares these memories, "I was an RAF brat - my father was a RAF Police Sergeant - and, along with my parents and eight brothers and sisters I lived at numbers 11 and 13 Wellington Road on the base: two houses to accommodate such a large family. I remember The Beck and the walk from the camp to Edmund De Moundeford. There was a mural of Edward on the wall of the school hall back then, long vanished I'm sure. (No, it's still there). I remember borrowing an old bike from an older gentleman to take a walking stick to a friend of his elsewhere in the village - freewheeling down The Beck the stick entered the spokes of the front wheel - bicycle and I parted company very swiftly and very painfully. Both the old and the new school were still in use then. My older brothers attended the old school whilst I and my younger siblings attended the new. My brothers thought it quite amusing that they were taught by a Mr Feltwell."
Before I finish I want to pass on a quest from Sylvia Armstrong because both I and the A&H Vice-chairman, Chris Cock, are interested in the answer. Sylvia says, "I have been looking at various items on the Web and decided to look for the origin of Daren Bread. I have had an enamelled badge with Daren Bread on it and always wondered where it was from. It belonged to a long gone relative. I would be grateful if you have any information on Daren Bread and/or why these badges were manufactured." And the Feltwell connection? On one of the photographs of the old Wilton Road Mill can be seen a sign for Darren bread. Presumably they milled for the bakers of the bread.
