Colin Weightman

Nearly every day I walked to and fro Wickham lane School, across Wynn's Common, and going down and back through Bowman's Wood. Each journey was an adventure that I looked forward to every single time.

Crossing Winn's Common I could see the houses in the distance that over looked it. They were very old Victorian residences. I thought of how lucky the folk were to live right on the Common. My old primary school Headmaster, Mr. Bull, lived in one of these old houses situated on Grosmont Road
At the very end of this road where it petered out into a grassy track stood a small lone Victorian gas lamppost. It lit the top of the track that descended into Bowman's Wood.
It used to cast a spooky light, especially so during the cold winter evenings when I walked home from school in the darkening light. It used to give me the shudders as a young kid, to be in this lonely place walking in its flickering, dancing, shadowy-pale gas light.

I am ashamed to admit that, as youngsters, we used to throw stones at it during the day and smash some of the panes of glass panels out of it. It seemed such an inviting target for us common kids, just too good to ignore. They would keep replacing the glass, for us kids to do it yet again.

I also remember watching the little old man who's job it was to come along and turn the lamp on or off. He had a short pole with a hook on the top that he used to pull a small chain lever inside the lamp housing, turning the gas on and off next to a small pilot flame that burnt all the time. He would turn the light off the next morning. He'd then cycle slowly back up the road on his old bike, holding onto his pole, to the next gas lamppost, where ever that was situated, I don't know.

I must say that as kids we did get up to mischief, yet we did not deliberately intend to cause any annoyance or to get into really bad trouble. We just did these stupid things as adventurous youngsters often did. But I am genuinely sorry in so many ways for some of the 'vandalous' things we did as kids, back in those far off days, where we all roamed free playing outdoors all day long.