Fields by the Quarry

The Church of St John the Baptist, Enderby.

Mrs White: A lot of the men worked in the quarry. My dad was not a surface worker, he was in the office. A lot of the men worked down there. Where we lived it was situated, as I say, opposite the Hall and just down the hill from the quarry, and as children we were allowed to go and play down what we called, down the ‘warren’; it was called that because really it was a rabbit warren, you know, this was the days before myxomatosis. It was a beautiful area down the lane, between the fields, then you came down to the quarry. So, we could go down there as long as we got back home by twelve o’clock because that was the time of blasting. Every day they blasted the stone out at twelve o’clock, and of course great rocks used to fly out over the fields and you had to be well clear, you know, nobody could be down the lane at twelve o’clock otherwise you’d risk getting killed. And I remember one field opposite to the quarry, we called it the pancheon field – I don’t know whether you know what a pancheon is? No? It’s a bit before your time – when our mothers used to make wine they had a massive bowl, earthernware bowl, about this wide and this deep, very, very big, called a pancheon, which they made the wine in. And in the middle of this field was a great big dip exactly the shape of a pancheon, and you could go into that field and down into the dip and nobody would know you were there. It was a gorgeous field and then was a stream, running along the bottom where we used to catch tiddlers.

©EMOHA