Mum and Dad usually tried to take me away for a week in the Summer, but of course it had to be somewhere very cheap […]

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One Summer we went to Dad’s home, a little village three miles from Billericay in Essex; there were only a few houses, and the people we stayed with belonged to a Faith called the “Peculiar People” (I don’t think I’ve heard of them outside Essex). Mrs “M” met us at Billericay Station with the pony and trap, and she wore a long navy blue coat, and a bonnet tied under the chin with ribbons, not unlike the Salvation Army. She told Mother afterwards, that she was very apprehensive as to what she would meet at the station, and quite expected us to arrive in “Pearlies” with feathers in our hats, seeing we’d come from the East End of London […]

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The Meeting House was in the garden at the side of the house, and on Saturday, everything was done that could be done [so that no work was undertaken on Sunday]. After breakfast on Sunday, children went to Sunday School, then stayed on for the “Grown-ups” service, the “Elders” sat behind a bench on a platform (five or six men); there was no piano or harmonium, only one of the “Elders” with a tuning fork to start the hymns. 

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The children went back to Sunday School in the afternoon, where the teacher was very surprised that I could answer most of the questions, as there again, he thought we must be heathen, coming from London, but going to a Church School, and to Sunday School, I’d had a good “grounding”.