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Quorn memories from the 1940s
Judy Goacher (nee Dorman), who now lives in Canada, visited Quorn in June 2014 for the first time in 65 years, to see Quorn Rawlins, her old school.
Judy was Quorn’s May Queen for two consecutive years, including 1945, when the top photograph was taken. The second photograph that Judy has kindly sent into the museum, shows 27 Meeting Street where she lived for a while, also in the mid 1940s.
The Mayday girls are (left to right):
Dorothy Birken, Joyce Burton (first maid of honour), Judy Dorman (May Queen), Doreen Smart (second maid of honour), Pauline Gartshore.
Judy has shared some interesting recollections of Quorn:
“My maternal family were all born in Quorn (the Grants) going back to the 1800's. My mother and grandmother took me to Quorn when WW11 broke out. We lived on Meeting Street (which still looks the same), and a lady called Gladys Birking ran a tiny grocery store out of her house half way up.
My great uncle, Arthur Grant and his wife Fanny, lived on the corner looking onto the River Soar, there were three cottages there and a cowshed on Meeting Street. Arthur was a farmer and he was also involved with care of the hounds across the street at the stables. It was through the hounds that I came to understand dogs and in Canada have bred and shown Chows for 20years. Arthur and Fanny had 12 children, one dying at birth and another at two years.
I went to Rawlins which then was co-educational, leaving there in 1945 and returning to London. My school chums I recall were:
- Joyce Burton (whose parents owned The Royal Oak)
- Margaret Langrish who lived at the pig slaughter house right there at the Cross
- Kathleen Morgan whose parents owned the delicatessen (now a real estate office opposite the Church)
- David Halford who in adulthood opened an electrical business in the village
- Donald Miller who I understand worked at the Brush
- John Thomas whose parents we considered "rich" as they owned the fairground equipment.
When the Americans came we entertained them to tea. My aunt married Homer Fowler and had a child Homer, whose lineage I have since found on your list of paratroopers.
I was beauty queen two years in a row out of the Town Hall.
Now 27 Meeting Street – I have just visited there. Wright's factory, where everyone worked, including my mother, bought that property as a residence for young women who were on war work at the factory. My grandmother who had been cook at Wright’s canteen was promoted to run the hostel. However, they only ever had one tenant, a Frances Lees, so my Mother and I moved in. The house had been a funeral parlour in days gone by. I used to play on the marble slabs, not understanding what they were. I did not encounter ghosts.
We actually lived towards the end of the war in a cottage on Nut Row, looking onto the
churchyard, now replaced with new houses. I saw the two thatches still remain, one had been a butchers shop and next door the butcher's residence.”
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Missing information: |
Can anyone name the other two girls?
Please email us at:
team2024@quornmuseum.com |
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Submitted on: |
2014-07-05 |
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Submitted by: |
Judy Goacher (nee Dorman) |
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Artefact ID: |
1838 |
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Artefact URL: |
www.quornmuseum.com/display.php?id=1838 |
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