I thought I might use some of Howard Phipps engravings to illustrate some of the places where we lived or visited.
We lived in the Cotswold twice. The first time we were in a caravan near Bourton on the Water on Whiteshoots Hill in about 1958 -59 whilst I was a student at the Central Flying School at RAF Little Rissington. Looking on Google Maps there is no sign of any such caravan site there at the present day, and, alas, RAF Little Rissington is no more. The domestic site is entitled “Upper Rissington” and appears to be partly private houses. The Officer’s Mess seems to be abandoned, all boarded up, a terrible waste of a building which one would think could be a hotel, or the embryo of a College, or something like that.The image capture is labelled 2023 so seems fairly up to date. To say that we cannot accommodate refugees when buildings like this up and down the country are standing empty just shows how xenophobic the Government really is.
Our second stay was a bit later, from about 1961 to 64. I was on the staff at CFS, and we lived very happily in a sectioned off part of Great Rissington Rectory and that was where our second son was born. It also got me interested in the Church, the New English Bible came out and I did readings from it in the village church. The Rector was a Mr. Bates, an ex greengrocer. He was a nice elderly man who was alas, later, killed whilst driving his little Austin A 35. Also whilst there we lived through the great snow of 1963, which was an interesting experience, although we never really got cut off, or into any real danger.
From there we went to Nairobi, but that is another story.
