Percy Hancock - recollections by Trevor Wedlake

Percy William Hancock, who died on 5th January aged 85, lived all his life in the house in which he was born, in Station Road, Wrington. Percy's father, who bought the house in 1913, was knocked from his bicycle by a car and killed as he rode out from Beam Mills, where he worked as a collar maker, one lunch-time in 1931.

Percy ("Perce" to all) went to work to help his mother, on Saturdays before he left school, at Sullivans the bakers at Cambridge House. This was a rapid way to discover all the villages and hamlets they served - places like Butcombe, Nempnet, Regil, Rickford, and Mendip, which, for many long-time Wringtonians, remain an unknowable labyrinth of swirling lanes.

As a teenager Percy discovered his talent for cricket, and following expert coaching developed into probably the quickest fast bowler Wrington cricket has produced. Like many other village boys of that era, on leaving school he cycled daily to work at Wake and Dean, the Yatton cabinet makers, where he stayed until 1939, when, like most of his generation, he was tailor-made for the army. He served in the infantry throughout the war, and embarked for France on the evening of 6th June, 1944 - D-Day - the day following his 27th birthday.

In his later years he would at odd times recall some of the gruesome incidents of his time in Europe. Demob saw him back in the village and in the building trade, for many years for the Yeates family - "Carpenters, Wheelwrights & Undertakers" - a few yards from his front gate. When Mr Yeates called it a day in 1960, Percy and his friend Mr John Mills went into partnership, and for the rest of his working life made his living in the local villages.

In pre-war years, Percy and his mother were keen pigeon and poultry fanciers, and Percy treasured a silver cup his mother had won in the Wrington Fur & Feather shows held in Organ Bros' printing works. Horse racing was another love of Percy's and until recently he regularly enjoyed a flutter. But many people will remember Percy best as an enthusiastic and accomplished gardener. He cultivated his long, immaculate fruit and vegetable garden until he was 83, and was always generous with the produce.

Percy never married, and in his later years, like his mother before him, he became rather reclusive. He sat much of the time in his little living-room watching the village go by, from behind the lace curtains. Little village news or gossip escaped him.

To a visitor, on the right day and in the right mood, he would relate tales of the old Wrington of his youth, three-quarters of a century ago: of Wrington when it was much more of a bike-pushing, horse-drawn, agricultural community, quietly self-contained; when most babies were born at home and everyone's death was marked by the tolling of the knell. They weren't all good days, he insisted, but he remembered them, and the people who lived them.

Last winter an ex-pat lady e-mailed the website from New Zealand for information of the village of Wrington in the 1930s and particularly for the name of the district nurse. One or two of us knew her name at once - her married name - whom she married, &c, but the name with which she came to the village, her maiden name, was beyond our memories. We decided to ask Perce. "I don't remember it at the moment," he said, "but I will." And the next day he did.