Mrs Tricia Adams, whose husband was the Rector, Peter Adams, talking to Andrew Waters of her memories of Marks Tey, 1975 -1985.

Hello. I'm Tricia Adams and my husband was the Rector, Peter Adams. And I was born in 1946 and we came to look at Marks Tey and Aldham in 1975 and we travelled from West Bromwich, the first very hot summer. And out of that, we felt God wanted us to come and for Pete to be the Rector there. And so he came in the autumn of that year, in '75.

And we were at Marks Tey and Aldham and eventually with Little Tey for 10 years, and we left in '85. When we came to Marks Tey there were lots of nurseries growing chrysanthemums and they weren't garden centres. And then an awful disease came that hit the chrysanthemum flowers. And so some of them went out of business and had to do different things. And then there was the place where they grew the lovely Easter lilies, Mattins, at Easter time.

When I came, there was a Mother's Union. And I led that and there was some of the ladies from the village who were all part of that, Mrs Wilby and Mrs Beard, a number of others. And then I started a Young Wives, a younger ladies group in an evening. Also we had Mrs Graham who was the health visitor for the village and we asked her what the needs were of this new village that, because the whole village had been changed a few years before with the building of the A12 and divided in half. And so there was lots of new people who came into the village, young mums with young children and babies. And Mrs Graham said there were lot of mothers who were quite lonely and, you know, they had to catch a bus to get anywhere. And so I started Teddy Club. And there were lots of Mums who came with their children, and that went on for many years. After we left, it was still going, I think, Teddy Club.

And then we, in the summer, we used to have a Strawberry Fair in our garden. And we'd have competitions and games and coconut shies or whatever we did. And then there was a lovely carnival every August time, I think, with all the floats and the Fitches, I think Nigel Fitch, used to run that. And that was great. We had a lovely time there. At times there were challenges, but we had a Mission there in the church and lots of people came to real faith in Jesus Christ and there was real growth and we were very, very fond of the place.

During my time there I was involved in a very serious accident in Colchester and I was ill for some time. And people were very supportive and brought us meals, came and cleaned the house, brought us cakes and we were so grateful for all the kindness that we've received from people during that time. And then eventually we felt the time had come for us to move away.

Andrew - Trish, you mentioned earlier to me about the Rectory when you went there, what it was like? Can you describe in just a couple minutes what it was and how you felt it?
Trish - It was in a poor state. It had got big rooms, but the kitchen was tiny. And there was mould about, and it was dark and the garden was like a jungle. In fact, my daughter thought there might be wild animals in the garden at the back - my daughter, Wendy. And anyway, yes, and there were men when we visited it who were, got masks on and they were treating woodworm, and I just saw this Rectory and all these windows and I thought, if we come here how I never on earth am I going to put curtains up everywhere, but it turned out that Great Tey Village Hall was having new curtains and somebody said to me they'd like to get rid of their curtains. So we had some of those and put them up in various windows so we could have, we'd have some nice new ones in the lounge and places like that, but we could have curtains up at other places. So, yes. Yes, and I, it took me a while to get used to a big house, but we had the kitchen changed. I said to the Archdeacon, women will put up with anything, but we want a nice kitchen. So they turned the little dining room that was at the back and turned that into a kitchen and made it more accessible and easy to live in. Yeah. So that improved things.

Andrew - Can you tell me about the Holiday Clubs, which you had at the church in the summer?
Trish - Yes. That was when they made the playing field. Because the playing field wasn't there when we first came, and they acquired that, the Council acquired that field that is now where the new Village Hall is. And we had Holiday Clubs on there and we'd have a big marquee and it would go on for a week in the holidays and lots of children came and there were games and Bible stories and music and then we'd have an evening where all the parents were invited as well. And we'd have music and a talk and it was very successful with that happened for a few years, that did, it was very good.

Andrew - Can you remember any stories about Miss Brooks the organist?

Trish - Yes. She was quite a character. She lived down a little lane near where the cafe is now, I think, near the Methodist Church. It's a little rough road and she kept chickens and she used to talk to them. And some of 'em used to get up in the trees and she'd say to them. 'You're not a starling, you're a chicken, you need to come down. And she'd give us eggs. And she used to make lovely lemon curd and give us all lovely lemon curd at certain times in the year. And she played the organ for many years and we used to go and pick her up and I think she played at Aldham as well a bit. So yeah, she was a lovely character. Yeah.

Andrew - Peter got on well with the Methodist church, didn't he?

Trish Yes. One of the, one of the ministers there, particularly. Glanville Martin, yes. Yeah. He was minister of a number of churches, West Bergholt and various. He got about four. Yes. Yeah. And then he retired. Yeah. From that did something else.

Andrew So was there any major building works done on the church while you there in your time there?
Trish - Yes. The tower - a flagpole had been put up at some certain time because they wanted to put up a Union Jack or whatever, or St. Andrew's flag or something. And that had been done some years before we came and it had caused rust and had done damage to the wooden structure. So we had to have new wooden structures on the outside done at that time.

And we also had the other big thing that happened was the ashes. We had a square and it got filled up and we had to have a Consistory Court and we had to have a judge come with all their wig on and everything. We had a court in the church because they didn't want English churches to be filled with little blocks. They wanted the, there's still the character of what we think of English churches, but how it was done, they did do another square, but also they made another square inside the other square for people who could bury their ashes there.

Andrew - Peter was going in quite regularly to the school.

Trish Yes.

Andrew- Do you remember, was Mrs Mason, the head mistress still when you arrived or not?

Trish - I think she was just retiring and we had Mr Tebbutt for most of the time that we were there. Yes, he was great. He was a good head master. Yeah.

Andrew -There was a drama group in the church. Is that right or not?

Trish - There was, but in the village we also had the Stane Street Players, and we had the Junior Stane Street Players. And my Wendy was a very shy little girl when she came to Marks Tey to the point of she worried us a bit. And she tried the Brownies and she tried things and she wouldn't join. And the ballet she wouldn't. But she joined the Junior Stane Street Players and she liked that and she really came out of herself. And we used to, I know the Stane Street Players did a pantomime every year. It was excellent. But we had some people in the church who liked drama as well, so we used to do these drama pieces by Riding Lights and we used to go around other churches to do that. The Lock’s girls were all in that. Yeah.

Noel King was our lay reader and his wife, Freda. They were great supporters in the church. And he, I know he worked for Mattins and he was very much part of Marks Tey and Little Tey. And he'd been brought up in the area and he was a lovely man. People really respected and loved Noel.

And then we had playgroup, which Freda King and Maureen Moore. Yes. And there was another lady who lived in God.., yeah, I can't remember her name, but I helped at playgroup and that was, that went on for years and it was a lovely group who came into the church hall.