Dance Lessons – by JP

Once a month we had the working men’s club as it is now isn’t it and we had a dance and these two middle-aged ladies used to teach us how to do ballroom you know.

Meeting my husband at a Castle Dance – by JP

We began to get dancing lessons and that sort of thing, the Castle at Richmond taught me how to foxtrot.  I met my husband at a dancing school when I was 22.  Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip had been in Canada and they’d learnt how to square dance so everybody had to learn square dancing so I went to this dance studio and he was there and that’s how we […]

Play reading and singing group – by VG

He’d started this U3A play reading group that met here. He’d organised it really well.  I was the tea lady for that because I didn’t want to do plays but I had joined the U3A.  Well I did start off with that but we left it and became an independent group, a sort of singing for pleasure group, nothing to do with .., I mean I played the guitar for […]

Local Band records a session – by VG

It was terrifically loud and crashing but Paul could sing very well, one played bass guitar and one played lead guitar and Gareth did drums and percussion and they were good, just too loud, but they were actually very good and they taught themselves it was all, Paul could sing.  I’ve got a record of it … for somebody’s birthday, an hour in a recording studio so they just went […]

Carols on the Common – by VG

We had carols on the Common every Christmas for about six years we were doing that and also in the summer. Was this in the 80’s, 90’s?  The last one was 2005 and then the year of the centenary of the view from the top of the hill we did a very big one it was sponsored by Jason Debney, yes, anyway and we did a programme it was called […]

Dances at Ham Hall – by KM

The large building which is now a youth club, I believe, on Ham Close – that started out just called Ham Hall. That was a hall for the use of the community in general. It wasn’t particularly just a youth club. It was quite a nice place when it started. It had a staging area. There was local guy, I guess he would have been in his twenties or so, […]

Palm Court Orchestra at the Castle – by DM

I think as well, you having worked at the Castle, that the Castle had quite a dance hall?  Yes, it did, Palm Court Orchestra and all that, yes, the Palm Court they used to have in the evenings there, yes, I was never part of that because a member of staff but I never saw what was going on there but I do remember people, an atmosphere, there was always […]