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WONDERFUL WHITTON Whitton is home to Ashwater Press. We in Whitton love our village. One letter writer to a local newspaper summed it up: 'Living in Whitton is not all bad. Really.' He points out that the high street has a proper baker, a farm shop selling home grown fruit, veg and meat; you can buy a car here or a fridge, picture frames, electric bikes or a funeral. Whitton puts on the best St Geroge's Day parades. You can spend a warm summer evening at the local world-renowned military school of music, or you can spend a cold winter day at a rugby international or a rock concert at Twickenham - and you can walk home. You can visit a brilliant nature reserve by a local river, or you can hop on a train and be in London in 22 minutes. As the correspondent says: 'It can be tough living in Whitton - but someone's got to do it.' Here's a local school:
I went to the school on the left when I was eight. The building was already condemned then. We had classes of over 30 children; how on earth were we ever educated? I don't remember the bell ever being rung (perhaps it was condemned, too) but I do know that the facing bricks of the buildings were red and soft, and we used to scrape a penny into them to collect the dust and then rub the penny with it to make it shine. (In the background of the picture is Kneller Hall, the world-renowned military school of music mentioned above.) Here's old Whitton village through which I used to walk to school. (Yes, we walked in those days.) Of course, this view was taken long before I walked that way, probably in the early 1900s:
And here's the same view today:
The buildings on the right are virtually unchanged, but the cottages on the left have long gone. It's possible that they were bombed in the war, as they have been replaced by rather unpleasant 50s-style semis. Of course, we did have bombs in Whitton - but we soldiered on. Here's the result of a bomb in the high street:
Enough of this, I need a pint - and here's the place to go:
The Admiral Nelson used to be somewhere I would never venture, as it was seedy and unwelcoming for many a year. Happily it's been refurbished, but nicely. It can be well recommended, but not necessarily on rugby match day at Twickenham, when the place is crammed out with those rugby types.
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