Whetstone

Church of St Peter, Whetstone

Mr Kind: There was only one phone in the village and that was attached to the post office, if you wanted to phone anywhere – perhaps sound silly to you but it was the only one. That were very handy to where we lived. We had a hall built, Memorial Hall it was, named that, up against the school. That was open for everyone, you know, every meeting, or concerts, or whist drive, dances, whatever, it was there for them. Oh aye, we’d got a Co-op, the Whetstone Co-operative Society, the post office, and there was one, two, three, four village shops which sold sweets and groceries and such like. A railway station, and we used to know what time them trains were due in and out, and when we were at work in the fields, of course we couldn’t afford a watch, you know, we used to go by the trains. I can remember them now, the first out of Leicester would be about twenty past six in the morning and the first one in would be about seven, there’d be another one at half past eight, another one at ten past ten, you know. As I say we got used to them all and as I say, we used to work to them. And four o’clock there used to be one come out of Leicester, well we knew we’d got to go get the cows in at milking time you see. Oh dear. Different quarries and different works would have different hooters that’d go at knocking off time, and even at the next village we should hear them going you know, we knew what hooter it was and what time they were knocking off.

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