The Post War Years
I remember the 1947 winter which was a bad one for snow and ice, but it was good for us youngsters as we had one of the best sledge runs you could wish for starting at the top of Wybornes Chase and ending on the ice in the pond in the Glen. The ice was thick ice and compacted snow that it was so slippery that to get back to the top of the hill we had to have a rope tied to the fence to get back to the top and go hand over hand so that you did not slip back down again, it lasted about 6 weeks, the best toboggan run we ever had. Dozens of dozens of people came from all over the island just to use it, a bit like the Glen now a days when we have some snow. This was a good winter for sledging but made it hard work on the farm, carting hay and feed from Bell Farm to Upper Wards farm, about this time we brought a new Ferguson tractor on rubber tyres which made things a lot easier for us, and the horses became redundant at this time. After this the next big event that I remember were the floods of 1953 which happened over night, the winds were very strong and from the North East with high tides, it blew so hard the sea came over Shellness, Minster, Leysdown and Sheerness and it flooded the marshes from Shellness all the way to Sheerness, including Sheerness High Street, and in a lot of place between 8-10 feet, it caused most of the houses in Sheerness to be flooded for about a week. The farms on the lower side of the island and marshes lost hundreds of sheep and cattle from Harty to Queenborough right round to the White House and Scrapesgate Road in Minster.
After this the next bad winter I can recall was in 1963/4 when we had a long cold spell and the sea froze along way out at the White House and along the seafront to Sheerness, so much ice that you could walk out on it.
I seem to have written about major events that have happened over the course of time so I think I had better write about some of the good times as well. When I got to 16 years old I passed my tractor test then moved onto motorcycles then cars. I passed my car test in an old Ford 8, not very good as it did not go any faster than 40/50 miles per hour, but mostly 30 mph anyway I made up for that with my motorbikes. I started with a new Royal Enfield for about 2 years then I moved onto a BSA Golden Flash which in its day was one of the best you could buy - £213 brand new. I changed and that again after 2 years for a newer model, then again shortly after, in all I had 5 of these bikes!!
On Sundays we would go on the A20 from Maidstone to Charing to try and get 100mph out of our bikes. The other road which was being built is the now Thanet Way which was a really good road but it had too many roundabouts.
Another thing we used to do was roller skating, mostly on the fairground rink where Tesco is now built. In the winter we would go to an indoor rink in Rochester. By then I had started to run the farm so I could not get out in the summer so much.