Prue Chance is celebrating her 90th birthday on March 15th and, as she was born and brought up in Ross, she has amazing stories to tell about life in Brookend Street when it was very different to the way it is today.

Prue’s father, was William Harris who is often remembered by older residents as towards the end of his life he worked for the council cleaning the streets and moving rubbish.

Mr Harris was well known around the town and together with his horse Kate, was a regular feature in many visitor’s photographs as he continued working until he was in his 80s.

As time went on he turned to transporting timber to make his living, and he had four or five horses at one time and stabled them at a public house in Newent. It was here he met Prue’s mother who lived in Newport, but had an aunt she visited in Newent. Bill began to do more contact work for Kemps in Ross-on-Wye and moved to the town. He had stables in Millpond and lived in Brookend, opposite where the Aldi store is today.

Prue also remembers that there were large stables where the car park and the carpet store is today

She said that his one day of holiday a year was visiting Gloucester horse fair and she recalls that if he brought a horse it would travel to Ross on the railway.

In Bill’s later years he joined the Salvation Army and one vivid memory Prue has of him taking part in Songs of Praise which was filmed in Ross and shown on television.

Prue said her father ‘would talk his way around Ross’, as he continued working for Ross Urban Council until the 1980s, but once, when he was chatting outside Ashfield Park School, the horse went to sleep and fell down in the shafts. Prue said the children thought the horse had died and Bill had to reassure them it was not dead just asleep. A huge crowd gathered and they blocked all the traffic.

During the war years he worked for GWR, as there was no petrol for vehicles he used the horses to make deliveries from the railway. Prue said: “He was really in demand.” But then Bill was approached by the Alton Court Brewery to take on the Queen’s Head in Station Street, which is now the Drop Inn and club house to Ross Rugby Club.

Prue remembers Brookend as a lively, noisy community. There was a bakery, a sweetshop, a café which sold faggotts and peas, Gibbons the fish and chip shop and Diane Phelps at the wool shop. Prue recalls having plenty of friends who lived in that area.

She attended Cantilupe Road school and finished at 14. She said she did not enjoy school and left as soon as possible, but she always helped with the cleaning even scrubbed the doorsteps before school.

Prue told the Ross Gazette that when Bill was 89 he was still working with his horses in Ross. She looked after him at her home in Pontshill until he spent his final days at the Cottage Hospital. A true Ross character Bill’s picture and story will be included with the Ross Gazette’s Archive Project.See the full story in this week’s edition of the Ross Gazette, or subscribe to our online edition here