An email from Mazzy

Tim

Your new project is a remarkable coincidence. I have never before heard from anyone who remembers Oldton. In fact, over the years I've begun to doubt my own memories of the place.

I never lived there myself but my grandparents had a house on the outskirts of the village at some point in the 1970's. The road was called Matthews Lane, I think, or something like that. Strangely, I have no memory of the house itself but a very vivid recollection of taking my imaginary dogs for a walk to the end of the road so that they could get some exercise while we were visiting and, presumably, so that they could do what little dogs need to (even imaginary ones). I can remember clearly that there was a bus stop near the corner and a phone box but I don't think we ever went beyond this on our leg-stretches. Since we arrived and left by car I never formed any other picture of the village itself and don't recognise the scene in your photograph at all.

These walks must have been a trying matter for my parents because we always had to make sure that there was a large enough gap in the traffic for two excitable corgis to walk along the stretches with no pavement. Long after my grandparents moved to Bristol, while I was away at university, my mother
revisted Oldton. She reported back that it was strange to look out over what were once uninterrupted fields and see the lines of motorway lighting that had sprouted up in the middle distance.

I've also been looking to see if there's any evidence of former Oldton residents. I wondered whether John Oldton might be a colourful part of the village's early history?

http://www.rootsweb.com/~mdannear/firstfam/garrett/garrett.htm
http://www.watkins.org.au/archives/states/maryland.shtml

Good luck with your work to uncover more information about Oldton. As there don't seem to be any contemporary references to the place I can only suppose that it's had some sort of makeover and been renamed.

Mazzy

Comments

[Mazzy]

Tim

It's really odd to be back in Oldton again, after all these years.

Somehow it's good to know that the old place still doesn't exist, and is just as strange as it never was...

Mazzy

P.S. Thanks for the memories from all those who remembered the place too.