This is a photograph of one of the Fair that used to periodically visit Knightwick. It always placed itself on the Talbot Hotel's car park just across the road from where we lived. I used to look out of the front bedroom window of the Post Office and wish I could join in with all the boys and girls. As I grew older I was allowed to go to them with mum and dad and loved to ride the bumper cars. People came from miles around and it was a very special event. These little fair grounds eventually either couldn't afford to carry on or perhaps didn't make enough money and slowly stopped coming to the village. I really missed those bumper cars and the candy floss and playing the penny one-armed bandits.

Knightwick in my youth consisted of one pub, The Talbot Hotel., The Post Office, which my mum ran and which was also the village shop, a Primary School. St. Mary's Church, The Nurses House, a Butchers, the Doctors Surgery, some farm labourer's cottages and the Alms Houses with Ankerdine Farm beyond the Talbot.

Many things have changed over the years but the village remains the tiny hamlet set in beautiful scenery that it always has been.

The Primary School closed soon after I went to start my education at the age of five, at Broadwas Primary School. By the age of nine a new by-pass was developed with a new bridge across the river Teme and the old hump back road bridge was demolished and a footbridge made to replace it. This caused the river to change direction and start to erode the land where the Talbot's car park is. Engineers had to move in swiftly and put in place the large stone blocks which stopped further erosion to the river bank. The Nurses House was sold in to private ownership. The land behind where the old AA box used to stand on the corner near to the Talbot was cleared for a semi -detached cottage to be built for farm labourers. The cottage which was next to the Post Office and where our neighbors the Morris' lived was demolished and a new house built on the plot.

The Post Office where I was born and which had been lived in by my family for nearly 80 years (owned by the Walker Family) was sold and modernised. The School was sold and has had a number of owners, one of which produced local wine. The black and white cottage opposite the church was demolished and two new private dwellings were built on the ground and the Church is now up for sale. The Doctor when I was a child was Dr. Clarke he went into partnership with Tony Parsons who has also since died in August 2006 at 82 years of age. The little surgery which used to be tacked on to the side of Woodford House has long gone and today the new surgery stands in part of the grounds of the property. The Butcher's shop next door to Woodford House and adjoined to what once was a public house, The Flying Horse, .is still flourishing, albeit under new ownership and the many old buildings around these dwellings have since been made into modern housing.

All the old fruit orchards that I walked through when I was young have long been uprooted. Many of the Hopyards too now are derelict due to Wilt. The area still has its pedigree stock of Herefordshire cattle. which were very lucky to survive the recent foot and mouth out-break.

I still go back to Knightwick for a pint at the Talbot. I spent many hours there when I was a young lad, playing for the darts team and pool team. Now its nice to look and remember those halcyon days of my youth, fishing on the Teme late into the night for eels, shooting rabbits and pigeons in the woods and fields behind where I lived and searching for birds nests in the hedgerows around the village.