Conkers and Chestnuts.

 By the crossroads, after leaving the Golden Gates and going down the drive, there is a field to your right, which was known as the girls’ hockey field.   Here you will see a tree into which we threw sticks to knock down horse chestnuts.   We later drove a nail through a chestnut and then threaded a string through the hole, with a knot tied to the bottom of the string.  Then we had a ‘conker’.   We took turns hitting each other’s conker until one broke.  The more conkers you broke, the more valuable your conker became.  It was known as a oner, twoer, fiver, and so on.   Some kids soaked their conkers in vinegar to make them super hard, or kept them for the following year, in which time they would dry out and also become very hard.