Keeper’s Cottage
residents: Joe, Eddie, Clarrie [nee Larkin] & Ed Grundy

Built in the early 1960’s as a replacement to the workers’ cottages that were demolished for a new road, Keeper’s Cottage is a semi-detached home adjacent to April Cottage and across the street from Ambridge Hall. The cottage’s first tenant was Tom and Pru Forrest [nee Harris]. The couple married late in life and had no children. The pair spent considerable time nurturing and cultivating the new cottage garden. It was a shared source of pleasure for them both. Their love for one another flourished in their entries in the Flower and Produce shows where they usually walked away with top prizes. Pru, known for being the silent type, miraculously spoke in 1989 sounding very much a Dame. However, fate dealt the doting couple a lethal blow when Pru suffered a massive stroke in 1991. Unable to care for his wife on his own, he reluctantly admitted her into The Laurels retirement home, where he joined her in 1997. Tom died on November 5^th, 1998 and was followed by his wife of forty years six days later.

It is unclear when Jack Woolley took ownership of April and Keeper’s Cottages. However, he is the current landlord to the Grundy family who moved in after a disastrous, but brief time in Meadow Rise council estate and a caravan on Aldridge/Estate land. Eddie and Joe have added a lean-to greenhouse to the architecture so that Joe has a place to smoke his baccy and cultivate seeds to plant around the two cottages. He also keeps a pony, Bartleby, there who pulls his trap around the village.