[This is not part of the regular series of Rayne Reminiscences as in Rayne In Focus, but has been added because of its link to local family history and I have combined two emails that came to me asking for information.  Nina, formerly Grout, was born in the 1950s on the edge of Rayne in Gilda Terrace.   If you remember or know anything of the people named then please get in touch with me and messages will be passed on. ~ Geoff]
 

I now live in North Yorkshire so if anyone would like to offer information, share memories or just exchange a few words I would be delighted to get an email on this address.  Perhaps there's some family out there!

I have found there are Grouts around rural Essex but my father's father came from London and my father told me the name was originally Flemish and the family were weavers.  Other family members he said drifted Haverhill and Long Melford way.  I've nothing to substantiate that and it was 5/6 generations ago.  I don't suppose there will be anyone who remembers me, I would be just a kid playing.

I don't remember my mum going to Rayne much but if anyone is remembered it would probably be her because she had the hairdressing salon in the middle of Gilda Terrace between about 1950 and 1964 and was known universally just as Pauline.  There was a cafe next door and a large concrete forecourt in front of both shops which have gone now and been converted to a house.  She took me once or twice to a Mrs Hull's house somewhere in the village where she went to do her hair on a Saturday afternoon because Mrs Hull was too crippled with arthritis to come to the salon.  Would any one remember my Dad, Don Grout, short stocky guy, dark hair, ex navy, rode a push bike?  I'd be amazed if anyone did.

He came to Gilda Terrace about 1939 with his sister and mum when his parents separated and his mum came back from London to near where she was born - Rayne.  He later had his own house in Gilda Terrace, met and married my mum and we lived there as a family until I was about 12.  Then when my parents split up he stayed in the house a year or so on his own until it was sold.  Strangely, throughout my childhood I never knew about my strong links with Rayne despite living my early life at Gilda Terrace.

I remember playing in Rayne, coming to the fair on the playing field in May, being ill after drinking water from the tap at 'Broxy Dyers' [Rayne Road right on the village boundary].  This was more a standpipe type tap that couldn't be turned off, the water was always flowing.  That's why I got ill.  I'd been told never to drink water that didn't come out of a tap.  Well I didn't.  When I was ill and said I'd drunk water from Broxy Dyers I was told off for disobeying but I said it DID come out of a tap.  At 6 or 7 I didn't understand it wasn't safe.

I also remember being sneaked into both the Swan and Saling Oak on occasional lunchtimes whilst dad had a drink, and cycling to London Road via Queenborough Lane on errands to a friend of mums.  I remember dad was friendly with George Barnard with sons Ivan and Micheal who ran the garage.  Then there was Farmer Crow who, so my playmates and I believed, threatened to shoot us for running through his maize field at the back of Gilda Terrace (now threatened with housing I see) and paddling in Pods Brook opposite the Sun Lido (where I learnt to swim) and where we used also to watch the fire engine from town and the traction engines from halfway up Rayne Hill fill their tanks.  Such innocent memories!

My dad's mum was a Lancaster, Alice born 1894, married in Rayne church in 1916 and died in Braintree 1950.  She was the third of five children of Harry Lancaster and Elizabeth, nee Coe from Finchingfield.  Harry was born in 1867, the illegitimate child of Phoebe Lancaster who 2 years later married William Bloomfield and bore him several children, 9 of whom survived.  William was an agicultural labourer in early censuses and then was a maltster/innkeeper, finally in the 1891 and 1901 censuses working 'on his own account' as Licenced Victualler at 'The Cock' public house.  Both he and Phoebe would seem to have ended their days there in their mid-fifties in 1908 and 1905 respectively.   Does any one have childhood memories - heard from grandparents perhaps - about life at the pub in 1900?

Phoebe's younger sister Martha, born in 1861 married James Olley in 1880 and their great grandson Mark now lives in Gt Leighs and visits the Cock occassionally.  We are in email contact.  I am also in email contact with the granddaughter of William and Phoebe's youngest surviving son James who married an Alice Hornsby, who is now living in New Zealand.  There is also a great nephew (I think?) of Mollie (in NZ) Stephen Bloomfield descended from one of James' siblings.  I was interested to read on the Village site about Ralph Polley's will and noticed the name Lancaster in the list of names who benefitted from his bread allocation.