Penny And A Bun

Over the past few days I have been going through my old photographs and cards scanning the interesting ones to go into photo albums on my web site, I came across this gem.  An old tradition that I ‘think’ still happens each year.

My first school, Somerleyton Primary School, is close to Somerleyton Hall the home of the Baron Somerleyton family.  His Lordship sent all five of his children to this school until they went off to their boarding school.  The school building was part thatched and has architectural details going back to the early 1800’s.  There are just three class rooms, a small library, we had to move desks and cover them with cloths for school lunches, the sports green was the Village Green and I attended this school from age five to ten, before leaping into the much larger 1960’s built Lothingland Middle School.

Each year there was this Penny and a Bun tradition.  On the Thursday nearest Valentine’s Day the whole school would bus to Somerleyton Hall where we would process through the Orangery to be given a hot cross bun by Lady Somerleyton and a brand new freshly minted coin from Lord Somerleyton.  My Dad kept all these coins in posh plastic wallets and I didn’t get my hands on them until he died in 2003, at first they were the one penny coin, which then graduated to a two pence coin.

This particular year the local news paper featured an article and sent a reporter and photographer to capture this piece of social history.  Yeap, there is me receiving my coin from his Lordship, and the young lad with his mouth wide open is Colin Woolterton, lol.  I remember this particular year after we had had our bun we were let loose on the lawn where there lay about two feet of fresh virgin snow.  Groups were banded together and snowmen were built.

I am trying to figure out which year this could be, the child in Nanny’s arms is the youngest Crossley, Louisa, and she was born about 1974, maybe this was February 1975.