Shelford Plaques

For anyone who has lived in Shelford for 30 years or more, Freestones Corner is an essential point of reference. If you arrived after that, you probably don’t know where it is. It is the corner of Station Road and London Road, and on that corner stood the well-loved and well-remembered Freestones Bakery. The bakery was started by George Freestone, a Cambridge man, in Woollards Lane. But in 1901 he bought a corner plot, and built the “Corner House” which was both his home and the bakery. When his eldest son Bert married, George retired to the Railway Tavern, for a new life as a publican, leaving Bert and his wife Lily to run the bakery. 

 Ron Gooch worked on the railways all his life. He grew up in Suffolk, and started work in 1944, aged 14, as an engine-cleaner. He rapidly worked his way from fireman to driver. First he drove steam locomotives, then, in later days, diesel, followed by electric. He moved with his wife, Jean, to Shelford in 1956. Ron loved the railways: for him they were an interest as well as his work, and he was generous to those who shared his interest. In later days, Ron would often encounter someone who’d stop and say, “You let me ride in the cab when I was a boy”. When Ron retired, he continued to take a lively interest in railway affairs, and he was distressed by the run-down condition of Shelford station. When the opportunity to become a “Station Adopter” volunteer presented itself, he happily spent his time restoring the station to its former glory. Ron was thus constantly to be seen by passers-by as they went up and down Hinton Way, as he swept and cleaned the station, or tended the flowers. He was always happy to exchange a few words with passengers and pedestrians in his rich Suffolk accent, and he made the station a welcoming place.  

Sadly Ron died in 2014, but our local railway company, (which was then) Abellio Greater Anglia, commemorated Ron’s work on the station with a plaque in “Great Eastern blue”, entirely appropriate for a man who spent his working life on the railways of East Anglia.  

Philippa, now an adult, left the village, and worked first for the BBC, then later as a book editor for a publisher. She was also a writer, and wrote a number of children’s stories. Her most famous work for children is “Tom’s Midnight Garden”, which drew heavily on the Mill House and its surroundings for its background. Having married and been widowed, in 1973 she moved back to Shelford with her daughter, living once more in King’s Mill Lane. The plaque can be found on the wall of the cottage she then occupied, no. 2 King’s Mill Lane.