Doctors & Nurses

Sarah and Stephen brought along numerous items, including photos, advertising, nurses hats, to loosen the memories of the group with regard to Costessey's local GP surgery, the local nurse and midwife. A questionnaire has been distributed around the group, asking for each members' input. Many members had vivid memories of a stern Nurse Mason, working from her own home close to the oval public house, and of Dr Henchellwood's surgery on the Norwich Road and how he remembered each patients' records, and wrote nothing down. Most babies were born at home, many again being delivered by Nurse Mason. Very few members can remember paying for the doctor before the introduction of the NHS, but those who could, or parents did, remember paying into a private insurance scheme.

Costessey Shopping Memories

At last Monday's session Lynn bought in various reminiscence items relating to shopping. The group talked about memories of shops in the Costessey area. The men talked about the haircuts they got from Mr Skipper, David's father, boys comics and broken biscuits. The ladies remembered the blue bags and starch which they often bought and used for many different purposes - including bee stings! 

There was much discussion around Green Shield Stamps and the Co-op dividend-something even the youngest members could recall.

The Cost of Costessey

Please click on images in order to enlarge

At today's meeting of the Costessey Memories group, Roy brought in this copy of a Costessey-related document and photo. The record of land purchase shows that Miss Fisher paid £50 for a plot in June 1945. People in the Costessey Memories group confirm that these plots were a third of an acre in size. The photo, below, shows the King family proudly standing outside their make-shift home, a redundant railway carriage. 

We were all struck by how much you could purchase for so little back then. Even allowing for the fact that wages were a lot lower in 1945, this was still cheap in comparison with today's land prices. A useful tool to use here is the National Archive currency converter:

Currency Converter

Although this converter only translates values to 2005 prices, it gives us some idea of how the relative value of land has increased since the end of World War Two. Using the tool, I typed in the sum of £50.2.17 (ie the combined value of the land plus legal fees) and this would be worth £1,371.46 in 2005. 

Colin Howey