Rita was born in 1931 in a cottage in Duck End Green.  She had three brothers and two sisters.

When Rita was three years old the family moved into the newly built council houses - no. 7, Brookfield Cottages in Shalford Road, which was subsequently renumbered 43, Shalford Road, where her brother still lives.  At that time there was no bathroom or indoor toilet, they had a bucket toilet in an outhouse in the garden.

Shalford Road was a narrow country lane at that time as there was scarcely any motorised traffic going along it.  Apart from the council houses, there were very few houses - just a few tied cottages for the farm labourers, although the Thatched Cottage (next door to no. 58) on the other side of the lane was rented by the Challis family and had tennis courts along the lane.

The children used to walk to Rayne School along the footpath across the fields to The Street by the old Barrack Yard (now where the bungalows at the top of Capel Road are), then along Station Road (which was known as Station Lane), across the railway line into School Road and then come home at mid-day for their dinner.  Sometimes in the winter when there was thick snow on the ground they would take sandwiches of jam, egg or cheese to eat at school at mid-day.

At harvest time the boys would go into the fields to try and kill the rabbits with sticks to take home and eat, but the girls would not go with them.

Life at home was fairly strict as the children were not allowed to go off on their own and were expected to help with the washing-up, washing and housework.  The children did not have many toys, perhaps a doll for Christmas or boxed games such as snakes & ladders or ludo which they would play with.

Rita left Rayne School at 11 to go to the Margaret Tabor School in Braintree.  She left there at 14 and went to work at Crittall Winterton's in Braintree, then Hawkes in Rayne.  After she married she went to work in Courtauld's in Braintree.

There was a Youth Centre at The Old School Room which held dances twice a week and regular whist drives.

In the early part of the war they had to take their gas masks to school and Rita remembers hating the practise they had to do every so often of putting on their gas masks as they were suffocating and smelt strongly of rubber and were very uncomfortable to wear.  They would sometimes hear the doodle bugs going over during the air raids, but none landed near the village.

In the summer the children would go pea-picking in Killenbank's Farm (now Sexton's) or Woollard's Farm with their mother to earn pocket money to put by for Christmas or to pay for new shoes.  They would pick the peas, put them in a pail and then when the pail was full, tip it into a sack and when the sack was full it was then tied up - they were paid for each sack that they filled.

Rita's father worked at Lake and Elliott's in Braintree - he earned £2.50 per week before the war.  During the war he was not called up because of working in the essential manufacture of castings at Lake & Elliott's.  He grew all the family's vegetables as he had a large garden plus three allotments.  He died of tuberculosis at the age of 63 as a result of working in the polluted atmosphere at Lake & Elliott's.

After their father died, the family stayed on in the house until their mother died.  When Rita married she and her husband moved to near Gould's Farm, Duck End Green for a few years and then when Mr Claydon who owned the field by Shalford Road, decided to build some bungalows there, Rita and her husband bought one of the bungalows with the largest plot of land and moved in to no. 58 where they still live.  Brother Jack then took over the tenancy of the council house which was renumbered 43 and still lives there with his wife, Pat.

Mr Claydon could only sell two of the bungalows which he had built so he rented the others to American servicemen from Wethersfield Air Base.  However, this was not a happy time for the original residents as the Americans drank heavily, took down boundary posts and their children would play in the sand and pick flowers from Rita's garden.

Another problem which they had with the bungalows was that the septic tanks were constantly overflowing creating an unpleasant smell in the area.  They were not linked to mains sewage for some years.