A Change of Ownership
A Change of OwnersIt was a daunting prospect to take on this well loved place. To retain the character, charm, customers. Part of the charm for people lay in the neglect and quant old-fashioned air added to by the rat chewed electrical cables in the shop .
We set about this, as sensitively as possible, aware that there could be resentment to fundamental change and, after all, why did they love it so much. We knew that Tom was well loved by many people as a unique, unrepeatable person. We also knew that he had found it increasingly hard to manage on his own which is he had done for the last few years
So we attempted to make change slowly and preserve those things that have added to the magical qualities of the place.
Because it was impossible, financially, to knock down the existing toilet block we set about reconstructing from the inside, thus there has been an organic growth rather than a fundamental change.
This was not easy as so much was so badly neglected and run down, we were told tales of the ladies who used to go round cleaning the toilets in the mornings for fear there would be a visit from the Environmental Health Officer. When we arrived they heard that it was very close to closure. There were piles of perilous, and often unidentifiable, rubbish everywhere including broken glass, heaps of rusting metal growing grotesquely from ivy strangled areas and, curiously, piles and piles of plastic in every form from sheets buried below the surface to heaps of old cracked plastic toys. Every time they spotted a piece of plastic and pulled, it writhed out of the ground in seemingly unending sheets which in turn unearthed yet another layer in the subsoil.
There was a building in the corner of what is known now as ‘The Club Field’, which was so completely covered in ivy, that they did not know it was there, there was a tree growing right through the original structure, now known as The Barn this was restored and used as storage. You can never have too much storage on a campsite, there are gardening tools, tractors, ropes, strings, bins, buckets, notices for every occasion, taps and tools, paints and pipes, washers and screws and so on and and on.
We first went to Toms Field in 1969, and continued every year, always in August, until around 1980. Tom was a relative of a friend of ours. We loved it for the freedom for the children, the walks, over walls, dragging pushchairs, children and dogs, down to dancing ledge. Between us, we had 4 tents, which we always pitched in the bottom right hand corner of the bottom field. This was our spot and Tom always saved this pitch for us all. We had such fun, living like Gypsies. We made friends with so many of the local residents of Langton, friends to this day. Even organising football matches between the villagers and campers and the occasional cricket match. Toms shop was amazing, used to give the kids 6p to go and spend there, and the barn with a hotch potch of “camping” gear, some which seemed left over from the war years. Happy days, happy holidays...the little shop at the top of the road was great too, my sister in law bought a second hand Clarice Cliff bowl in there, imagine. I guess a bit commercialised now, too old to camp these days. All of our children have been back though, great childhood memories.
ReplyDeleteJust remembered “old Tom” too, bless him, shuffling around bless him, in fact bless them, both....bit of a hard life, putting up with the grockles, we were almost from another world.
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