MEMORIES of childhood years spent in Princetown have stayed with Dorothy Taylor for more than 60 years. Mrs Taylor, now 72, was born in Manchester, but grew up in the village when her father, David Roberts, was promoted in the Civil Service and transferred to Princetown. She takes up the story: On a freezing cold day in December, 1937 my family, David and Daisy Roberts and children Kathleen, Ted, Michael, Jean, Marjorie and Dorothy arrived by overnight train. The house we were allocated proved too small for my family but a larger house had become vacant at the other end of the village, so in a very short time our large family settled into the more spacious surroundings. The house had four bedrooms, four reception rooms and a lovely garden with a wide lawn, flower beds, laurel and flowering currant bushes, and in no time at all my father had made us a lovely swing and a wooden bench for sitting outdoors on warm days. Myself, Michael, Jean, Marjorie attended the village school while my elder brother Ted went by train to Tavistock Grammar School. When winter arrived with large falls of snow Michael made a sledge out of old pram wheels and small boards and fixed an old fashioned bell on the front. We would ride it to school and would be the centre of attention as we whizzed by other pupils with the bell clanking loudly. Then it was Christmas. By now the war had started and children's toys became scarce so mother and father would make a lot of our toys – something we didn't know at the time. As the festive time approached Marjorie told me there was no Father Christmas and it was mother and father who provided the presents. She said: 'If it's true there's a Father Christmas, why are the sideboard doors locked when all the rest of the year they are open? Because the toys have been locked away.' A few days later mother asked me to fetch her knitting from a draw and hadn't told me which one so I raided through them all and saw a half-made doll. I didn't say anything to her about it but on Christmas morning there was a beautiful rag doll with golden pig tails dressed in red checked gingham with little red shoes. First up on Christmas morning would be my father making mother a cup of tea and lighting the fire in the nursery. During the war you were only able to buy clothes if you had coupons and these did not stretch to dressing gowns and slippers, so we would pull on some thick socks and a jumper over our night clothes. In the summer we would spend a lot of time outdoors in the garden. My brothers would take out the wooden kitchen table, we girls would spread the table cloth and arrange the cutlery while mother dished up and we would all enjoy our alfresco meal. One Saturday after lunch my father asked whose turn it was to wash the dishes and it happened to be Jean's turn — but she was missing. Dad asked again and she didn't turn up so the job was given to my two brothers. They were fuming mad, especially Ted who muttered darkly as he slapped the dishcloth onto the plates. When the chore was finished the boys hatched a plan to get their own back. They organised a feast at our den in the attic and as we girls lined up to creep through the small attic door we all made sure Jean was the last in line. Michael and Ted were inside the den and as we filed in they quickly shut the door in Jean's face, leaving her stranded on the landing. Then we feasted loudly on crisps, Lyons fruit pies, chocolate and lemonade. These exaggerated sounds of feasting and celebration coming through the thin wall drove Jean to distraction and she wailed and screamed. My father heard all the commotion and eventually learnt of the conspiracy against Jean – he concluded she had received her just desserts for he took no further interest in the matter. On one occasion Michael forgot his routine chores so when father reminded him Michael forgot again so was punished with the cane across his hand – this aroused rebellion. Michael immediately laid plans to run away from home. He hoarded several slices of bread and when he judged these to be sufficient he approached myself, Jean and Marjorie in the garden and said: 'Come on girls, we're going to run away from home.' How long we were supposed to survive on a few slices of stale bread was not discussed but we all set off and headed for the moors. We walked for miles and I became very leg weary and then it started to rain. We took shelter beneath a bridge over a stream and I looked with dismay at the litter disfiguring the banks. Michael's stale bread looked disgusting, we were cold and damp and we had lost our enthusiasm for the great adventure of running away from home. Suddenly, Michael said: 'Let's go home.' With one accord we retraced our steps, life at home was much better than this damp and dismal existence. We all held hands and hurried back home in the rain. Arriving at the kitchen door, four damp, bedraggled, hungry kids, we sniffed at the appetising smells wafting from cooking range. Mother was baking something for tea and told us to go and change our wet clothes, wash our hands and sit up to the table. Some time later mother said: 'And where have you lot been this afternoon?', she had been so busy she had hardly missed us! We were all so relieved to be back in familiar surroundings that none of us mentioned running away from home – it was good to be back. One day while out walking we discovered an ideal picnic spot close to a stream so one warm sunny day during the school holidays we all prepared for the outing. The family's new edition, Baby Grace, was quite put out when her pram was used to carry the picnic hamper of sandwiches, buns and crockery. My brothers carried dry sticks for a fire, a camp kettle and large bottles of water. We all brought bathing costumes and towels in preparation for a paddling session in the stream. Several hours later saw us plodding up steep Burrator Avenue into the village, tired but happy. Those childhood picnics on the river banks were truly memorable. Ripe bilberries were our next discovery while walking over the moors in late summer. We soon realised the potential and went equipped with empty sugar bags to harvest the delicious wild fruit. Mother made bilberry pies and bilberry puddings to go with custard. They were delicious! I live in East Suffolk in a village surrounded by heaths and woods. Deer roam freely among the trees and in the autumn we have the purple heather just as we did at Dartmoor but here we have mile upon mile of spectacular bronze-coloured bracken. We lived in Princetown for four years and we children all agreed they were the happiest years of our childhood.
