Stories about Sutton-in-the-Isle, Cambridgeshire, UK
Archive for Stories
October 18, 2009 at 9:29 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: how-to, podcast, Stories
When we began the project our initial research was based on visits to Sutton to make contact with people and to get an impression of life in the village and we were greatly supported by the Feast Committee. We investigated the different communities that live in the village as well as the history and landscape of the area and people’s relationship to it. For two reasons it was important to us to begin the project by getting to know Sutton and its inhabitants. Firstly an essential aspect to working in a community is to establish trust, and secondly we were concerned that the project we undertook should fit into current activities. We began by making a number of visits to Sutton to meet and talk to people there and to get an impression of life in the village. During our visits we spoke with many people who have a wide range of roles within the village. We found that Sutton has a strong identity for residents who make a clear distinction from other villages nearby. Residents we spoke to told us that the village had recently undergone an increase in its commuter population. A few times people mentioned the planned development of Sutton which would increase the population. We made connections with a range of people including the Triangle Club, a group of elderly residents, the Youth Club, the WI, the Feast Committee, the Parish Council, St Andrews Church, the Curry Clubs, local business people, farmers, commuters and other individuals, and over the year undertook many activities including:
Babylon Gallery Exhibit: We set up a map and postcards to collect visitors’ stories for Sutton Grapevine and promote the project. People were encouraged to write or draw their stories and pin them down on the map, or record them. Through this we connected with two villagers who then went on to record a series of wonderful stories for the project that can be hear on this site.
Sutton Seniors Youth Group: We worked with the group on a session using a large map of Sutton and to map – with the help of string, paper, storycubes and modeling clay – what is in Sutton now and what people might like to see in Sutton in the future and recorded the groups stories of what they had created. After this we all decided to work together on some low tech animation asking the question “What is Sutton like?”
Triangle Club: We met the Triangle Club for seniors on two afternoons, mapping their memories of Sutton, and recording and listening to stories of people, spaces and events that marked their lives.
Tea Dance: We set up a table with a map outside the Tea Dance at the Glebe and used the map to start conversations and record a series of memories and stories as people left the Tea Dance.
BBQ at Painters Lane: A villager and her family kindly offered their home and garden to be used to host a BBQ for residents of Painters Lane who had a wealth of stories about Sutton to share, how they came to be in Sutton, how the Lane has changed, life in the village as a commuter, what there is (or isn’t) for young people.
One-stop shop: We set up a table with a large map outside the one stop shop on a couple of occasions to entice the steady flow of people on a Saturday morning to stop and to record stories.
Election Day: An evening spent outside Sutton Polling Station gathering stories around a map during election day.
Curry Clubs: We were lucky enough join the Ladies Curry Club and visit the mens Curry Club to gather stories. As well as describing life in Sutton the recordings give an insight into the experiences that are Sutton Curry nights.
Allotments: We visited Sutton allotments and recorded stories from two holders. Many people grow their own food in Sutton and the issue of food and where to buy it often came up in conversation.
Feast Week 2009: We exhibited Sutton Grapevine at the annual Feast. There was be a display and audio in St Andrews Church and we joined various Feast Events. We also held a wee Tea and Cakes afternoon for some residents who had contributed.
School Fete: We set up a Sutton Grapevine station at the School Fete during the Feast, and invited children to cut out and make felt pictures of their stories of Sutton. We asked them to tell us what they had made and recorded their replies on Gabcast.
You can hear edited excerpts from all the above including from the many conversations we recorded with individuals on this site.
July 8, 2009 at 10:32 am · Filed under Activities, Stories, Sutton Feast
We set up a Sutton Grapevine station at the School Fete this Sunday, and invited children to cut out in fabric their stories of Sutton. It is just amazing the imagination children have.. We asked them to tell us what they had made and you can listen to their replies on Gabcast here. Just click on the titles to listen..
And please check our flickr page for more pictures from that day..
July 1, 2009 at 11:44 pm · Filed under Activities, Stories and tagged: Stories, Youth Group
In our final session with the seniors Youth Group we spent a fast two hours making a short low tec, stopframe animation answering the question “what is Sutton like?”
alright! from Proboscis on Vimeo.
July 1, 2009 at 2:10 am · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: allotment, Food, Fruit, harvest, Plant, Stories, sutton-in-the-isle, Vegetables
During our stay near Sutton in June I was lucky to be invited, by Roger, to visit one patch of Sutton allotments. He explained to me how the allotments had grown more popular in recent years after a small group had got together and reinvigorated them. Now the number of holders has grown from a handful to over 30. You can read about then on the allotments website. It was fantastic to see Roger’s inspirational allotment, taste some of its just ripened strawberries and see and hear about the huge range of what people are growing. You can hear a list of one allotment holders summer crop on the podcast section of this website with more allotment stories to come… If you are growing things in Sutton send something about it to the grapevine – what else are people growing?
When I first got to know Sutton I had thought it ironic that here on the fens, breadbasket of England, the food from the large farms heads off to the supermarkets and not into the village where, these days, there is no greengrocer anyway. So its been inspiring to meet so many people who grow and share their own in gardens and allotments as well as all the honesty shops where I enjoyed picking up baby beetroot among other things.
June 29, 2009 at 9:42 pm · Filed under Activities, Stories and tagged: BBQ, Food, fun, neigbours, Stories
Kennedy Hunns and her family kindly offered their home and garden to be used to host a BBQ for all the residents of Painters Lane. Unfortunately, it was a busy weekend and quite a number of the Lane residents were unable to join us for the afternoon. But those who were there, had a wealth of stories about Sutton to share, how they came to be in Sutton, how the Lane has changed, life in the village as a commuter, what there is (or isn’t) for young people…
It was a lovely afternoon and luckily it didn’t rain.
Several of the neighbours who were unable to attend left old documents – minutes from General Meetings – St Andrews Guild, Sutton from 1931 up to 1996; old posters / newspaper cuttings from the area; a fossilised shell from one of the gardens; and deeds and legal documents from 1800s.
It was great to see all this information being shared among neighbours – could be the first of many Lane parties…
June 25, 2009 at 8:02 pm · Filed under Stories and tagged: allotments, british legion, cat, daughter, Ladies Curry Club, line dancing, listen, lost, pub, secret, smell, Sutton Tandoori
Today, I’ve uploaded more episodes from my lively encounter with Sutton’s Ladies Curry Club.
See the Podcasts section of this website to hear about a secret place in Sutton, find out what has been lost in Sutton and where to go if you want to be alone – or even, where to go if you want to be with people.
And learn the answer to that all-important question – What does Sutton smell like? Members of the Triangle Club thought Sutton smells like chicken, will the Ladies Curry Club agree??
June 19, 2009 at 2:02 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: Drainage, Hill, House prices, Ladies Curry Club, Moving to Sutton, podcast, Sack trolley, Stories, Sutton Tandoori
A closed-looking Sutton Tandoori, site of the LCC
When I was in Sutton recently I was lucky enough to go for dinner with the Ladies Curry Club. Obviously I can’t tell you all of what went on as the ladies need to preserve their mystery, but I can tell you that they were good enough to let me record their answers to some questions about Sutton. I’ve just uploaded three of these recordings to the podcast section of this website with many more to come. As well as describing how these ladies came to end up living in Sutton, I hope the recordings will give you a little insight into the fabulous experience that is Sutton Ladies Curry night..
June 18, 2009 at 5:36 pm · Filed under Miscellaneous, Stories and tagged: farm, Food, Fruit, Future, harvest
This picture is of one Sutton seen from one of the huge fields of wheat that surround it, growing in that rich fenland soil. Many of the conversations we have had in Sutton have revolved around local food, how Sutton-in-the-Isle used to be quite self sufficient in food – having grain and bakers, butchers and a slaughterhouse, orchards, fish in the rivers. Many people seldom went to Ely for food as so much was produced and sold in and around the village. Thinking about this I came across Transition Ely initiative, the Ely Food Group and the Ely Food Conference - October 31st 2009 – which will be exploring how people can reconnect with, and regain control of, their food systems:
“Never before have there been such compelling reasons to rethink how we deal with changes to our energy supply and our environment – and we cannot make headway on any of these without addressing the issue of food.
• How can we access more locally produced food?
• How can we intervene, and play a greater role, in our local food system?
• How can we connect with, and support, local food retailers?
• How can we connect with, and support, local farming?
• How might peak oil and climate change impact our local food system?
• What is our vision for the future?
The aim is to create links and initiate projects that will build Ely’s access to locally produced, sustainable food systems.”
Alice
June 5, 2009 at 2:44 pm · Filed under Activities, How we made this, Stories and tagged: Pavilion, Stories
Orlagh canvassing stories
Orlagh and I spent yesterday afternoon outside Sutton Polling Station at the Pavilion where a constant stream of voters entertained us with stories of Sutton in the past and present. We heard talk of Winston Churchill’s uncle, Clement Freud’s first election to Parliament and rumours of Princess Margaret. There were tales of Sutton schoolteachers and flying blackboard rubbers, of lying at the end of the Mepal airfield runway watching the bombers take off and of elusive landlords.
Our map of Sutton and collected stories
One of the questions we asked was ‘Where do you go in Sutton to meet people?’ The most popular answers were ‘dog walking on the fens’ and ‘the pub’ while the surgery and the bus stop also got mentions. It wasn’t all positive though and several people told us that once your children leave school it can be difficult to meet people and that Sutton can be ‘clique-y’.
There was one moment when two men who stopped by the map to read the stories and tell me about Clement Freud, the old train line and the house they used to live in, discovered that they had been at school together back in the 1940′s! As one of them put it.. “I wouldn’t have recognised you!” For me, it was just great that the Grapevine had restored old connections.
May 19, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under Do You Remember?, Stories and tagged: dialect, Stories
What memories do people have of the old fen words that are now not used? I can only think of SLUB = MUD, DOCKY = MID-MORNING SNACK, and TRAWLING = CATCHING BIRDS IN NETS.
These came from my dad, who died in 2002 aged 93, so I don’t know when they died out of use. In the 70s he always took cold black tea to drink with his docky, and the trawling was something the boys did when he was young, so that would be in the very early 20th century.
Are there any more words out there?
Judy Ballanger
April 28, 2009 at 1:36 pm · Filed under Do You Remember?, Stories and tagged: Future, train, transport
Tuesday 21st was a gorgeous sunny day for a visit to Sutton to speak to members of the Triangle Club, meeting some of the Tea Dancers and others at the Glebe. I am always inspired at the depth of the history and knowledge people have about Sutton and its history. I cycled there and back today and have a plan to do some Kayaking around the area this summer so that has set me to thinking a lot about the ways people have travelled and might travel in the future to the village.
One of the great images of the future we had in the past was of monorails and raised trains. I’d love to hear from people who remember the Hovertrain Project, according to wikkipedia:
“A test track for a tracked hovercraft system was built at Earith near Cambridge, England. It ran SW from Sutton Gault, sandwiched between the Old Bedford River and the smaller Counter Drain to the West. Careful examination of the site will still reveal traces of the concrete piers used to support the structure.”
It was apparently abandoned due to finances, I wonder what what the landscape would have looked like if it had been finished, would more people have moved here? Would it be a curse or a blessing? So next time I’m near Peterborough I am going to go see the RTV31 itself at Railworld. I was wondering why this mass transit system was planed for that route – does anyone know more?
Please post if you know anything about this lost part of our imagined transport future.
The RTV31
April 20, 2009 at 9:53 am · Filed under Stories
Having moved to the area as recently as January this year, I think that it would be fair to call ourselves real newcomers to Sutton in the Isle. After being associated with businesses in Cambridgeshire for a quarter of a century, I was eventually offered the opportunity to relocate from the North West and take up a permanent position in one of what I was informed were the “northern villages”. This I did in 2005, living in various rented acomodation for the three years which it took for my wife and I to a) find the property we wanted and b) find the village type environment we wanted. After many, many viewings and many, many hours spent researching various locations, we finally succeeded in November 2008, taking up residence in High Street , Sutton, in January 2009.
We can both honestly say that our hopes and expectations were exceeded as far as the locality and the people here. There is a genuine warmth form almost everyone we see, and whether out walking in the area, gardening, or just walking to the shops, the norm is that we are greeted in a most friendly manner, which of course we return gladly. We are pleased to have the pub, shops, post office and all the other amenities which add up to the quintissential English word – “village”, and of course do what we can to support these businesses, albeit that the superstores are a hard habit to break, we will do our best to “use it before we lose it!”
If there is one down side to the Sutton experience it is the traffic. Not the normal everyday people traveling about their daily business, be that commuting or agricultural, but it is the preponderance of heavy vehicles, flouting the speed limits through the village from early o’clock to dark & beyond. This coupled with the poor road surface created mainly by such heavy traffic is the foundation of my fears that my house’s foundations are taking an unprecedented pounding, making us feel that if things cannot be calmed to an acceptable level, and very soon, will we have a home to take us into the future, as we have planned? We take comfort in the fact that the local Parish Council recognises the problem and can, one way or another, bring about the change which is so badly needed.
On a positive note, we are happy that, HGV’s apart, we made the right choice in coming to Sutton and hope, one day, to not think of ourselves as “newcomers”
Brett & Kathy Collard
April 14, 2009 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Stories and tagged: farm, harvest, Stories
I was born in Sutton in 1950 and although it has grown, I still love the friendly and relaxed feeling I get as I walk around.
My Father, John Charles Robinson (to differentiate him from his dad, John Willie and his cousin, Walter John,) had a farm on the Earith Road. It was called Between Ditches and included fields like “The Chainground,” on Chain Corner, where there was formerly a pub, and “Rose Sawyer.”
Mr Bill Jupp lived in the cottage on the farm, with no sanitation or electricity and a huge pile of eggshells one side of the fireplace, with his armchair on the other.
The drove down there to the farm was very long and bumpy in our Austin A30. My dad kept pigs, hens, young Herefords and a huge carthorse called Boxer. Sitting on Boxer’s back was like sitting on the dining table, with my legs out flat either side.
I remember the old binder, used to cut corn in the 1950s, with Boxer pulling the machine, then the Fordson Major tractor, very innovative, and old combine harvester, a Massey Ferguson that left my dad and George Peacock who worked for him covered in dust and straw.
Harvest did not start until we were back at school in September and one farmer used to thresh the corn in a field next to “Top Class” which was good fun as a distraction from lessons. He used an old threshing machine with lots of exposed belts and pulleys everywhere, with men at the bottom throwing stooks up to be caught by men at the top.
My dad took cold tea for “docky”, a snack, every day and drove the tractor home for lunch.
He also drove the tractor to Ely RAF Hospital when he had put his fingers into the combine when it was stuck. Of course his fingers were then stuck and he managed to pull them out, bound them up, drove the tractor and yes, he did lose the ends.
The village had more shops and pubs then but there was so little traffic that we could walk down the middle of the road to the bus stop.
I remember doing just this and slipping and sliding down the hill near the present Bellairs turning during the hard winter of 1963. That was the only year that our school buses arrived early to take us home – by all of 10 minutes.
The Hamence brothers had a farmyard over the road from our house and used to drive the cows over for milking, at 9 am and 9 pm daily, with no problems!
There were far more open spaces and smallholdings along the High Street and I guess down the lanes as well. We ourselves kept around 100 rabbits and a pet mallard duck in our back yard, along with the outside cat and a tortoise, who was always trying to escape.
Our back yard had a row of ancient sheds in which we later found 2 pine fireplaces, since put into use in houses, enough bits to build a man’s bike, and loads of tractor parts and nameless bits of tools. There was the former “dunny” at the end of the path and the mangle shed where I do remember my mother mangling the washing, in about 1958.
It was a great place to grow up as we could play out freely. Birds-nesting down the Gault, climbing trees in The Row, Pond-dipping at Stankers Pond, hanging out in The Greenhills – all happy memories for me.
Social life? I remember Mrs. Neal and the Girl Guides. Mrs Smith taught me to play the piano, but I was hopeless. Nevertheless I did have to play a duet, with Janet Stimpson, at a concert in the Gault hut, in about 1959. Bill Read had his banjo and it turned into a barn dance – lots of loud laughter!
We had our own stories about the village, like the ghost story of the broken tomb beside the church that we knew a spectral hand had been seen to come out from, holding a Bible. Then we knew there was a tunnel from The Burystead to Ely Cathedral, but despite much wall tapping, we never did find it. We knew The America was so called because it was west of the village, and because its first inhabitants had emigrated to the USA. Lovely to have such certainties!
Judy Ballanger
