GREAT Grandmother Olive Drury took a trip down memory lane on Sunday when she returned to Urchfont, near Devizes where her father once ran the village pub.

Mrs Drury, 92, who now lives alone in Sussex has fond memories of The Lamb where her father Harvey Lodge not only served the pints but also ran a haulage business.

But tragedy struck when Olive was only six and her mother Nellie died leaving her father to bring up two young children.

Mr Lodge along with Olive and her elder brother Ivor stayed at the pub for a while but eventually he found it too much to cope with the business and childcare and they moved first to Easterton and later to Market Lavington.

Mrs Drury said: “It was incredible to return to Urchfont on Sunday. I never in a million, trillion years thought I would come back.

“We had lunch in The Lamb but at first I couldn’t work out the layout as it had all changed so much.

“The serving hatch had moved and the main bar was very different.”

The trip for widow Mrs Drury was organised by David Richards who lives near her in Sussex.

Mrs Drury said: “We are very lucky in our village as there is a group of people who do everything they can to make life easier for older members of the community.

“David organised everything for me and drove me from where I live near Lewis to Urchfont. It was such a lovely thing for them to do.

“I have such fond memories of Urchfont it was wonderful to come back.”

As well as taking animals to market Mrs Dury’s father also ran a furniture haulage business at weekends.

She said: “At the weekend we had to clean out all the muck and make it tidy so he could drive furniture about.

“I often used to go with him in the lorry and travelled to markets all over Wiltshire when I was a young girl.”

Mrs Drury met her husband to be John in a pub in Market Lavington and they married when she was 21.

She worked for a bakery in Easterton and helped set up a bread delivery round. But the family eventually left Wiltshire and settled in Sussex.

The couple had a son, granddaughter and a great grandson.

Mrs Drury kept an old picture of herself as a young girl with friends Doris Potter and May Cocker and her father Harvey Lodge outside The Lamb in Urchfont taken about 85 years ago.

During the visit on Sunday she visited her mother’s grave in the village churchyard.