Time traveller who dwells in the playground of words and pictures.
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Geraldine Evans and Angela Bailey - The Barge - S1 E15 (podcast)
I was fortunate enough to find Geraldine Evans on social media when I was researching for my book, Lost Basildon. What a lady! With some really amazing stories about The Barge and Vange's history. Her family had ran the pub which has also been known as The Old Barge Inn for seventy years! It all started when her paternal aunt wanted to escape London to the then countryside of Vange and on the 20th May 1937 she paid £2,643.06 for the lease of the pub and its surrounding land. I contributed four pages to The Barge and also a couple of pages to Geraldine as the Pitsea and Vange Carnival Queen of 1967 in the entertainment section. She also let me have a copy of a picture of Doughy Saunders on horseback heading up the Vange Carnival procession dressed as John Bull.
After meeting Geraldine with her treasure of stories I knew that there was more that could be done so as I was on a writing course for The Writers Bureau and I needed to write an article I just knew that people would be keen to read more of the story of The Barge when it was ran by her family. You can actually read the article here. The article had pride of place in the EssexLife magazine.
When Geraldine's husband died suddenly she told me that her daughter and son stepped up as licensees as Geraldine couldn't do this as she was also a Justice of the Peace. Angela gave up her job and joined her mother to run the pub. I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast where I talk to the pair of them and I also have them on video too.
I spoke to Angela about her Lockdown book and her new book that is going to be published soon, you can find out more about these here.
The Old Barge Inn and Saunders & Son, the bakers close by.
Geraldine with bar staff Sharon Hayward, Jackie Stock-Baker, Shirley Ansell, Betty Barker, Margaret Price, Sharmon Szewczyk and Barbara Smith
A newspaper cutting of celebrations after the war in 1945 at the pub organised by Geraldine's dad, Ted.
I couldn't resist buying this illustration from Mike at Family Scribbles for one of my husband's Christmas presents. It is quirky and shows all the notable elements of Billericay High Street. Mike had the business acumen to advertise his illustration on The Billericay Discussion Page on Facebook, where I saw it. It is finally on our bedroom wall and looks brilliant! You might be thinking, where have I heard of Family Scribbles before? Mike was very kind to give an illustration of a very wonderful person who has become known as Colin the Clapper. He handed Colin the illustration as a thank you, Mike had been jogging past Colin most mornings as he stood on the roundabout near Basildon Hospital clapping all the NHS staff as they went to work. You can read a bit more about this here . Colin Wilkinson started paying tribute to the NHS staff on the 25th April 2020. When he had done it for forty days he made the national newspapers when he was ...
Sylvia Kent has written an article about a gentleman who has been very helpful to me when I was researching both of my books, Ken Porter. In particular Basildon Through Time . I virtually became researcher in residence on a Monday and Wednesday at the Green Centre at Wat Tyler Country Park in 2014. He is by far the leading expert on Laindon and Langdon Hills history at present. You can see Sylvia's article here . You could also visit Basildon Heritage's website , Ken is the chairman and treasurer of the group.
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