Our plea in Village Affairs for memories of the Forster Country elicited this reply from Don Aldous, now living in Buntingford.

My mother and father were married in 1936 and then went to live at Bury Cottages, at the rear of St Nicholas' Church, where I was born. My two sisters and my brother were also brought up there. My father worked for Mr Smith as a cowman on the farm. I used to watch my father milking and used to help him round the cows up from the meadows in front of the farm. When I was about twelve or thirteen years old I was allowed to lead the horses and drive the odd tractor for the men to load the sheaves and generally help with the harvest.

In 1944, when the two B17 aircraft collided over Weston, my mother and my eldest sister watched the event from the garden of the cottage.

In about 1950/51 my father and another farm worker were thatching a wheat stack in Wall Dells overlooking the church when there was a thunderstorm. They sheltered from the rain under the bottom of the stack. There was a flash and a bang and the stack where they were sheltering caught fire and was completely destroyed.

When I left school I went to work for Mr Smith as a general farm worker and went to Oaklands Agricultural College. I then went on to be a tractor driver, ploughing and doing cultivation working the fields around St Nicholas' Church.

I was fortunate to have grown up and worked in this part of Stevenage and enjoyed every moment of it. My mother is now in a nursing home but still has fond memories of Bury Cottages and the farm.