How surprised I was to see a description of Old Sulehay, Northamptonshire, with no mention of the Old Sulehay I grew up in (Country diary, 26 November). On the north-west side of the woods was Sulehay camp – Nissen huts where families used to live 70 years ago. All long gone now.
Just after the second world war, my father, recently discharged from the Royal Navy, needed somewhere to live with his growing family. Hearing about the old prisoner-of-war camp and its availability, he applied to Thrapston council. The only mod con I remember was a brick-built copper in the kitchen where my mother boiled clothes and terry nappies. It was bitterly cold in winter, with condensation running down the corrugated iron structure, but idyllic in summer, surrounded by those great oaks.
I still visit the woods, for I left a large part of my childhood there. If you search carefully on the forest floor, especially in autumn, you can spy the odd piece of concrete floor or a discarded glass jam jar – evidence of the families who, like mine, were so grateful for that corrugated roof over their heads.
Marie Davis
Peterborough
