Sharon Taylor about playing by Aston Brook

In the school holidays we’d just go off down to Aston Brook or we’d get our bikes and go down to what is now Fairlands Valley.

Stevenage Museum

About playing by Aston Brooke

Group of children playing on a wooden sculpture, Donkey by Mark Harvey. The back gardens of a row of terraced houses back onto the play area. Area identified as a park at Bandley Hill Valley, not identifiable on map.

Stevenage Museum

Transcript:

And we’d be out playing all day, you know, probably once I moved up to Chells, when I was seven, in the school holidays we’d just go off down to Aston Brook or we’d get our bikes and go down to what is now Fairlands Valley. But in those days it was farmland with streams at the bottom of it. And we’d go down and play down by the stream, and we’d just be out all day and we’d go home at tea time. Have a sandwich to take with us, or whatever. And nobody thought anything of it, you know, and all our mates did it so you’d all go off on your bikes. And, we’d play in the bluebell woods, we had bluebell woods in Chells. So we’d-we’d go in there and make camps and things like that. Much freer than children are now, and very enjoyable. I mean, I had a very happy childhood – I look back on those days, you know, it was great.

Sharon Taylor 2007