Josie Coleman (nee Hollowell ) is the daughter of Bert Hollowell, a noted Denton resident, whose rich fund memories have been recorded elsewhere on the site.

 Josie, like her grandfather, Jesse Hollowell, spent some years delivering the post around the village and consequently has much knowledge of the community.

She has shared below stories recounted by a neighbour from both wars and her own recollections of the Second World War years as a very young child at the time.

‘Our next door neighbour, George Burge told of when he went out very early one morning about dawn to catch rabbits. He was in the Whiston Road near a place called ‘Moonshine Gap’ when he was startled to hear the sound of marching feet.  He quickly hid behind the hedge and three men passed quite close to him. He thought it very strange so he followed them and saw them go into what was called from then on German Spinney, because the men turned out to be German soldiers. He went to Yardley Hastings, alerted the policeman there who came to Denton and a group of men went to the spinney, found the men asleep and arrested them.

Alec Hollowell, my father’s brother was about 3 years old at the time but remembers seeing them on the village green. He said they were dressed in gamekeeper’s clothes with knee breeches and hats obviously to disguise who they were.

He also remembers a German parachutist being found sleeping in a ditch between Horton Road and Denton Wood. My grandfather was postman  at the time and always walked across the fields from Beecheners to Denton Wood Farm and must have passed quite close to him.’

Beecheners refers to Cliff Beechener who kept The Elms Stud from 1931 onwards so this incident comes from the Second World War and is fully reported at The spy from the sky , as do Josie’s own memories below -

‘My memories of the Second World War are (being a child) that sweet were on ration and we had coupons with which we could buy 1lb and a quarter if we had the money. Didn’t know what a banana was until after the war. I remember the London evacuees coming on a red bus which stopped near the trough and we had a woman and a child staying with us for a while but she missed London so much she soon returned.

Our school numbers rose overnight and we had London teachers as well. One Miss Webb brought her mother and she stayed with us for a number of years. Miss Webb is now in her eighties, lives in London but has such wonderful memories of Denton she visits whenever she can. There used to be what seemed like hundreds of aeroplanes droning over every night on their way to bomb Coventry. My father called me to look out of the bedroom window one night and there was a British fighter plane following a ‘gerry’ and shooting at it. One night we had bombs whine over or very near our house being aimed we were told later at the Slade Farm which is a few fields away. Slade Farm has or had a slate roof and it shone in the moonlight so must have seemed like a good target. Fortunately they missed but the craters were to me very large. Army lorries were backwards and forwards through the village and up the Whiston Road to Castle Ashby where the army was stationed. Mary, one of my mother’s sisters was in the ATS there and would pay us a visit occasionally.’

This incident is also referred to by Lord Northampton in some notes he wrote about the experience of the Estate in the War years. He recorded :

' On two dull days about this time (October 3rd and November 9th 1940) a solitary plane came out of the low cloud in the middle of the afternoon, and dropped small bombs harmlessly across open fields about 80 yards apart, and then disappeared into the cloud. On the first occasion 20 were dropped between Barker's Bushes and Blenley Farmhouse; on the second 17 were dropped betwen Avenue Lodges and Denton Barn. No harm was done, and it is difficult to understand why they did not drop the bombs on defenceless villages instead. A much bigger bomb was dropped 100 yards South of Whiston Slade farmshouse on December 11th, which is said to have killed a rabbit! The hole was about 50ft across and 8ft deep.'