Born in Panfield.

Passed exams to Intermediate School.

Worked at the Co-op until she met George and they were married.  George lived in The Gore, Rayne, and was one of the first pupils at the Intermediate School - in fact the Rayne children arrived at the school early on that day and had to wait until it opened up.  After marriage they lived in Harold Road, Braintree, then moved to Rayne.

BARNARD'S BAKERY

George's father was a carpenter, then he bought the baker's in Rayne from the Fullers.  Before then there had been two bakers next door to each other, although the other baker only sold from the shop and did not go out on rounds.  When Barnards started up the bakery, he would go round with his pony and trap delivering bread..  Their day was: up at 4am., come down into the bake house; light the coal oven; see to the dough which had been made the night before; knock it down; start cutting into loaves (one person would cut it off and the other would roll it); they put it into tins to rise (all tins had to be greased first); when the dough had risen, it was put into the oven on a long shovel.  (When they opened the oven door, if the bricks were white they knew that the oven was ready).  The loaves took about half an hour to bake.  Various types of bread (baps to order) were baked.  Mrs Barnard's mother-in-law made cakes and pastries etc. and her father-in-law used to ice cakes for special occasions.

On Sundays, people from the village would bring their joints of meat to be roasted in the bread oven.

WORLD WAR II

When rationing started, the Barnards could not obtain the ingredients to make the cakes and bread so they stopped baking and went into the garage business instead.  They had previously sold cans of petrol, but just before the war had had petrol pumps installed on the forecourt.  However, they were not allowed to use the petrol pumps during the war as they were not allowed to sell petrol.  The petrol pumps were used instead by the Americans; their tanker would fill up the pumps early in the morning, then their vehicles would come along mid-morning to fill up their tanks.

During the war Mr Barnard did all sorts of repair jobs.  He joined the Home Guard and had to attend whenever required.