It is a life almost impossible to imagine these days – to live all your years in the same village, doing the same job and residing in the same house you were born in.

But this is precisely how life panned out for Bill Jones, at 88 years old the oldest man born and bred in the Shropshire village of Condover.

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At his cottage where he has lived all those years, he says with a proud smile: “I’m now sleeping in the same room that I was born.”

Bill loves Shropshire, and in particular Condover, and by all accounts should get a sponsorship from the tourist board. There’s no way he’d ever leave.

Even his dreams are about the place. In one, he became a millionaire overnight, bought a local hall and made everyone in the village happy.

“I’ve never thought about living anywhere else,” he continues. 

“I had a dream that I won £17 million on the Lottery – I bought Condover Hall and turned it into flats and in front of the hall I built three lovely cottages coming up to the gates.”

When you’ve been a fixture for so long, of course, you see change with your own eyes. Not that Condover has changed a great deal, but many of the people who live there have.

In Bill’s day, everyone knew everyone. His own family lived here, grandparents down the road. he worked in the local shop – J & G Young the grocers which is now the butchers – and later served 40 years with the coach building firm JH Thorne & Son. And he never wanted for more.

The only time Bill left the village was to go to war. Already in the Territorial Army, he was called to arms on September 3, 1939 with a bunch of mates who joined the 4th Battalion of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, Signals HQ Company.

For the next seven years he was separated from his beloved village but always knew that one day, if he returned at all, he would return to Condover.

“I wanted to come back home and work here so I got a job with JH Thorne & Son coach builders,” he says.

“We moved in here with mum and dad because we were waiting for the council to give us a house. We were told there weren’t any and I was so disappointed that one evening I went for a long walk and ended up at the Stud Farm, which was a three-bedroom house owned at the time by the Army. It was empty and I thought ‘This looks very nice’.

“The windows were leaded in a diamond pattern and I cracked the window with my elbow and went for a browse around the house. I went back and said to my wife ‘Get packing, we are going into The Stud’. She said we couldn’t; I said, just watch me. I went to the works, got all the furniture and moved in.”

Bill set up a bed and lit the fires. He drew water from a stop-tap and his feet were under the table, so to speak. Then came a knock on the door.

Just where had he got his water from, he was asked by an inquiring fellow.

Bill recalls: “There was a reservoir nearby with a 3,000-gallon tank – turns out I’d turned the stop-tap and drained the entire tank.”

He continues: “I was there for four years. It was lovely, a home from home.

“I asked them to take rent off me but they wouldn’t.”

During this time the search was on for a more permanent home. By now Bill was a family man with children. He got offered council properties by Atcham Council at the nearby aerodrome in a Nissen hut, but “that was out straight away – for the last seven years I’d been living out of Nissen huts, so we stayed where we were.”

There was later a brief spell living at another property – in Condover of course – but following the death of his mum and dad, Bill and his wife Elsie moved back into the family home where Bill had been born.

And it is from here that Bill has watched people come and go ever since. In an age when people move out of county villages to pursue work, and when homes are snapped up by city slickers charmed by the lure of life in the sticks, Bill is a modern anomaly.

He continues: “There have been a lot of changes but it’s a sleepy old village, not much happens. I used to know everybody in the village. Everybody.

“Like the lad across the road, Reg Jones – we went to school together, we signed up for the Army together and he also went to work for JH Thorne & Sons. Sadly Reg died, but that’s the way it used to be.

“I’ve seen complete families disappear. They’ve all gone.”

Bill begins to count them and runs out of fingers.

“I’ve seen a lot go,” he concludes.

“And I knew every single one of them.

“I would not like to move out, I like it here. I’m very proud that I’ve been here so long. When I sit back and think about people I’ve known for many years who are not with us today I think how lucky I am to still be here.”

By Ben Bentley