IT WAS all very different then, back in the 1940s and 1950s of an unspoiled Hampshire countryside where cart-horses and hay-wagons were a familiar sight, a local milkman delivered a pint to the doorstep, flocks of geese grazed on the village green and the privy was at the bottom of the garden.

Nostalgia tends to put a rose-tinted view on childhood memories but for many life really was better in those unsophisticated times now more than half a century ago.

Those days are recalled in a new book, Scenes from a Hampshire Childhood, in which Chandler's Ford-based historian Gerald Ponting remembers growing up on a small farm in the village of Breamore on the edge of the New Forest.

As a child the author lived in Virginia Cottage, which took its name from the creeper that spread across the front of the house.

"The scullery was where most of the housework was done,'' writes the author. "It had a floor of uneven flagstones. Our water supply was more advanced than some of our neighbours', as the hand-pump was in the corner of the scullery, rather than outdoors.

"Below it was a large wooden sink which drained into a soakaway a few yards from the house - there were no drains.

"In the opposite corner was a 'copper', basically a big tub with a fireplace underneath, built in and surrounded by whitewashed brickwork. On washdays, the tub was filled with cold water using buckets, and a wood or coal fire was stoked up. The clothes were deposited in the tub with soap flakes and soda, then swirled around by hand, using a wooden paddle, a long and hot process.

"Hidden away under a large yew tree was the privy or earth closet, our only toilet facilities. It was a small brick building with a tiled roof and wooden door, with a latch operated by a length of string. The seat was an area of scrubbed wood with a circular hole.

"The privy was about a dozen yards from the back door of the cottage, which seemed a long way on a cold wet winter evening! - visits would be kept as short as possiblein icy weather.''

Modernisation of the cottage took place in the 1980s. The scullery tiles were kept and now can be seen on display in the Breamore Countryside Museum.

The book contains chapters on the war years during which the family was paid 6d (2p) a night for three soldiers to be billeted in the cottage and the author's father, Ernest, was a member of the local Home Guard.

"To a child with no knowledge of how things were before the war, strange things happened in the months and years afterwards,'' said Mr Ponting, a graduate in zoology from the University of Southampton.

"I had never seen a banana till I was seven or eight years old, and I know many of my contemporaries have a clear memory of the first banana.''

There are also memories of Muffin the Mule, Meccano, the Eagle comic, life at Breamore School, trips to Southampton docks to see the liners, hay-making and listening to Dick Barton, Special Agent, In Town Tonight and The Goon Show on the wireless.

"Our toys were mostly quite basic, but I don't think we had any less fun because of this,'' writes the author.

"For home entertainment, radio satisfied me and my contemporaries, though by the late 50s we would have liked a station which played the early rock'n'roll stars.

"Our expectations were lower then. No one in modern Britain would expect to live in a house with no indoor toilet, no bathroom,

no running water and patchy heating, but at the time it was normal in rural areas.''

Scenes from a Hampshire Childhood by Gerald Ponting is published by Millers Dale Publications at £6.95.