Turn left from the Chapel and walk into the village, past the Prince of Wales pub and Station Road. Future Brenda will wonder how all the buildings here could ever fit into this space. On the corner of two busy roads is the village school. It only takes Brenda about five minutes to walk here from her house further along London Road, although she’s small so it feels longer. Luckily, there is a gate on this side otherwise she would have to walk around to the other gate on Coggeshall Road. It is an old building with the boys’ playground coming to a point at the front and the girls’ playground at the side and back. The school and playgrounds where Brenda plays with her friends will be knocked down in the 1960s. The site is no longer visible, but the footbridge across the A12 takes you close.

The two roads either side of the school make an awkward junction for the increasingly busy traffic. The road signs have recently been improved as cars have crashed into the railings, and a red beacon flashes the whole time to alert motorists. Keeping everyone safe is an Automobile Association (AA) patrolman. There’s an AA box across the road so he can shelter from the rain and motorists can use the telephone to call for assistance. The phone number is Kelvedon 229.

To reach the next part of Brenda’s walk, the modern walker needs to retrace their steps and go over the footbridge towards Marks Tey station. This part of the village will see a lot of change, first in the 1930s when the road becomes a dual carriageway and then again in the 1960s. Some of the houses here will remain but with a new address, now Old London Road, but others, like the school and Brenda’s house, will disappear.

The gardeners who work in the well-tended Rectory gardens live in the red brick cottages along here. There’s the man who fixes the Wilbys’ shoes and the blacksmith’s which is always busy shoeing horses, but these are all gone today. The Baptist Chapel is along here too. It closes as a chapel in the early 1920s. Brenda won’t mind too much, as it becomes a bakery and she buys 1/2d Saturday morning doughnuts there. Later it becomes a house. Other times she will spend her ‘Saturday copper’ at Aunt Minnie’s shop. Eventually Brenda will move to a house in the newly built The Crescent along here.

If Brenda takes the footpath at the back of the Baptist Chapel, she will cross the fields to the iron bridge on Coggeshall Road, a short cut to church on Sunday. Here are fruit trees planted by Mr Barleyman and nearby the Stebbings family live in a large double fronted house. Miss Stebbings sometimes rides out with a pony and trap.

Continuing further along London Road, now Old London Road, is Dobbies Seed Farm. This will become By-Pass Nurseries in the future. Dobbies set up in Marks Tey before Brenda was born. The surrounding fields grow full of fragrant sweet peas and the nursery greenhouses are a familiar sight, along with the spring daffodils and primroses growing on the verges here each spring. Along Dobbies Lane and over the railway you reach Jays Lane and Wilsons Lane with a scattering of houses before reaching Coggeshall Road.

Coming back to the village and walking along Station Road Brenda walks past The Maltings, a long building on the corner where seeds and corn are kept and sold. There is a post office with a grocer’s shop and a bicycle shop, although Brenda is still little when that moves to London Road. The modern walker needs to come back over the footbridge and imagine how it would have looked as they have long gone. At the other end of Station Road is the Prince of Wales pub and one of the many chestnut trees planted around the village in 1911 for the coronation of George V is here. Brenda will watch it grow and become the only one in the village to survive. The pub itself will be rebuilt in the 1930s and eventually demolished. This leads back to junction 25 of the A12 and just about where we started the walk.