Tamerton Foliot in the 1960s

This photo of Tamerton Foliot, probably taken in the early 1960s, really reminds me of my childhood. When I was a kid, we'd wander everywhere and one of the places we'd end up would be the small village of Tamerton Foliot. A friend in my street seemed to know the whole area although we'd both just moved in at the same time in 1968. We'd take the road past Ernesettle Woods and up through Milford Lane in Whitleigh heading towards the village. In those days, there was no housing estates such as Badgers Wood or Holly Park and much of the area was farmland. It wasn't unusual to wake up in the morning to discover a cow asleep in your garden. It's hard to imagine now!
Following the narrow lane down towards the village, there appeared to be only one house, 'Casa Silva' which had a big 'Private' sign on its driveway. We never dared to venture up there. On the left were just open fields where Holly Park stands today and the farmer's milk churns, full of milk, would be placed beside the roadway, waiting to be picked up. Today, the road is quite busy but back then, I never remember a car passing us.
Once in the village, we would always head to the corner shop (now gone) where we'd buy sweets and bubble gum cards with our pocket money which was made up of large pre-decimal pennies and threepenny bits. We'd always get a gobstopper and suck it on the way back, taking it out every so often to see if it had changed colour!
It's probably not the sort of thing kids get up to nowadays but back then it seemed like a big adventure. Once we were back home, we were soon out again, climbing trees, building dens or shooing cows out of our gardens.
Things have certainly changed over the years!