Tower and Town, July 2021

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'We used to go down to the station and help the shepherd take the sheep through town and up to the common'

Alan Crook was born and brought up in Marlborough and, apart from a stint in the army and a short spell in Swindon, has lived there for all his 91 years. He lives in St Martins, a stone’s throw from his childhood home.

I can't say how many generations my family has been here but I know that my father lived in Marlborough and his father before him. My mother's family were the same. Hamblen was her name. There were a lot of Hamblens.

I grew up in 7 South View, off Blowhorn Street. My father, Herbert, was a plumber. I went to St Mary's Infant School on Herd Street, then St Peter’s, which is now the public library. I remember I had an ear operation in Savernake Hospital, which meant I had to miss a lot of school. When I went back a teacher hit me on the ear – teachers used to bang people about in those days – and my mother came down to St Peter’s in a rage.

As boys, we used to go to the forest and the Downs. We were part of the community. We were content, I suppose. We liked the Mop fairs and the circus on the Common. That's where they held the sheep fairs too. Some of the sheep were brought over the Downs and some came by train. We used to go down to the station and help the shepherd take the sheep through town and up to the common.

I trained as an electrician and then worked as an apprentice telephone engineer in Swindon. At the interview, they asked if I could draw a circuit of a two-way electrical switch. I could, so they took me on.

I joined Marlborough Dramatic Society, where I met my wife-to-be, Joan. She lived in Rockley. Her father was the butler at Rockley Manor. She used to cycle to work every day except when the weather was too bad, when she would ride to Marlborough on the back of a tractor.

We lived at 25 The Parade, opposite The Crown. Then we bought the plot in St Martins and built our bungalow, where our children David, Susan and Alison grew up. I got involved with the swimming club when I took David there to learn. It was an open-air pool near the Parade and River Kennet, and I coached there for many years.

My job as a Post Office TO - technical officer – was based at the telephone exchange in Blowhorn Street. Work took me to many other exchanges, so I got to know them quite well. I was an army reservist too. But I wouldn '’t have wanted to live anywhere in Wiltshire other than Marlborough. It's a nice, settled atmosphere. And you've got a job to beat this view of the forest from my window.

Alan Crook