How far back can you remember? For many, our earliest memory is the arrival of a sibling, or perhaps languishing in a cot or pram.
When a study revealed all memories before the age of two are likely to be imagined — based on photos or stories rather than fact — hundreds of you wrote in with your earliest memories, some of which came from way earlier than two. Here are some of the most poignant and intriguing…
Clare Swatman’s (pictured when she was a child) earliest memory is from the age of two
WOMB WITH A VIEW
Ivan Silverstein, 72, is managing director of a television company. He is married with two children and lives in Bedfordshire. He says:
My earliest memory is vivid. I am floating in a dark void. Suspended on my front, my arms and legs buoyed up around me, I am looking downwards. There is no sound or emotion attached to this, but I have always sensed that this memory goes right back to when I was inside my mother’s womb.
I remember being inoculated in a large building (probably hospital) which must have been before the age of one. And another occasion I’m a babe in arms and my mother is holding me and singing, ‘Oh What A Beautiful Morning!’
Until now I’d only dared admit my recollections of the womb to my family. The experts may think me a fantasist, but we are far from knowing what the brain is really capable of.
I REMEMBER BEING BORN
Winston Eversley, 72, a retired construction manager, lives with his wife on the Isle of Wight. He says:
My earliest memory is of the struggle and rough handling when I first came into the world. Most notable was the strong smell of antiseptic and a deep sense of foreboding or fear of strange, wild, threatening surroundings.
How do I attribute this to my birth? The key is the fact scent is known to trigger memory. I’d always been aware of this early recollection but I didn’t fully understand it until I was five.
That’s how old I was when I cut my thumb on a broken jam jar while playing in Glasgow: the blood spurted everywhere. I was rushed to Oakbank Hospital, where I was born. On the ward, the strong antiseptic smell hit me and it all came flooding back . . . the fear, the anxiety, the sense of coming into a strange place. I knew instantly that this hazy memory was from the moment I was born.
Sadly, my mother died at 27 of pneumonia when I was only three, so I wasn’t able to ask her more about my birth. I remember her strawberry blonde hair, but other than that, my memories of her are frustratingly few and far between.
MY ANGER AT BEING SWADDLED
Pam Wootten, 68, from Plymouth, says:
My first memory was always in the back of my mind but it was only in adulthood that I voiced it. I was with my mother, a former nurse, when I asked her: ‘Mum, did you ever tie me down in my cot?’
She was shocked and said, ‘No, certainly not.’ But when she thought about it, she said she used to swaddle me. This is the age-old practice of wrapping newborns tightly in blankets to restrict movement and make them feel secure. No mother would ever imagine their baby could recall such a feeling. But I do.
My memory is of one occasion when someone came into my room — they were talking and I wanted to see what was going on. But I couldn’t lift my head or move my arms. I think the fact my frustration was so strong caused me to remember it to this day. That there was something big by my cot, blocking my view, only compounded my anger. When I asked what it was, years later, my mother said there was a wardrobe between her bed and my cot when we briefly lived in my grandmother’s house.
Seeing as you don’t tend to swaddle once a baby can roll on to their tummies, I could have been younger than six months.
SWEET CAKE ON MY BIRTHDAY
Emily Monckton, 26, is a stylist from London. She says:
My first memory is of my second birthday. I remember being at home in Hertfordshire in a kitchen. All of the adults were sitting in a circle on chairs and I remember being eye-level with their knees — they were cooing over my new baby brother Oliver. There was a tiny cake later in the day — it was very sweet.
Emily Monckton (right) remembers loving her tiny cake on her second birthday
AEROPLANES ON VE DAY
Janet Coleman, 74, a retired typist, is widowed with three children and lives in Gloucestershire. She says:
It was a sunny afternoon. I was sitting in my highchair at the head of a very long line of tables covered with white sheets.
There were lots of people milling about and one of them bent down and told me to look up. I remember the shock of seeing the sky awash with aeroplanes.
It was a celebratory fly-past and I was at a street party in Broxtowe, Nottingham, to celebrate VE Day in May 1945. Considering I was born in June the year before, that means my first memory is from the tender age of 11 months.
BITING WHILE BREASTFEEDING
Iain Hunter, 66, from Alloa, Clackmannanshire, says:
I know it sounds highly improbable but my earliest memory is of my mother breastfeeding me. More specifically, hearing her surprised voice saying, ‘Addie (my father’s name) he’s biting me!’
This was somehow transmitted to me and I recall thinking, ‘I’m not meaning to’ and then I remember trying to stop. I can’t have been more than six months old.
It wasn’t until my mid teens that I raised this. My mother had no recollection of it but my father was amazed and said he could remember it, too.
DADDY IN CHARGE
Clare Swatman, 43, is an author from Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. She is married to Tom and has two sons aged eight and ten. She says:
I have a very clear memory of sitting on the floor of our old family house in Colchester, Essex, when I was two, surrounded by books.
Dad was in charge of me while Mum was out, and I took the opportunity to sneak off and pull all the books out of the bookshelf. I don’t know who got in trouble when Mum got home.
I also clearly remember the pain and shock of riding my Donald Duck push along truck off a step around the same time and hurting myself. There are photos of me with a bandage around my ankle at this age. I hope Dad wasn’t in charge on that day, too!
NAPTIME AT THE ORPHANAGE
Suzette Quinn, 72, is divorced, has three children and lives in Blackburn, Lancashire. She says:
My second son has often tried to impress upon me how traumatised I must have been when my mother left me at an orphanage in London in 1947. I was only ten months old. My mum had tried to keep me for as long as she could, but she was unmarried and coming from a Catholic family that wouldn’t do.
My earliest memory is of being at the orphanage as a baby, but it’s a happy recollection. I am toddling up a long corridor with camp beds on either side. I remember clambering on to one, and tucking myself under a thick ‘army’ blanket for a post-lunch nap.
I used to love doing that, and I really do remember my baby waddling action very clearly.
It is a memory that reminds me it wasn’t all bad. I was in the orphanage until the age of 11 when I was fostered. I got to meet my birth mother when I was 64 and she 89. I visited her several times over the next few years. I was so pleased to see she looked just like me.
MY NEWBORN SISTER ON SOFA
Rosemary Stevens, 68, a retired charity CEO, lives with her partner in Deal, Kent. She says:
Returning home from staying with my great aunt, I walked through the door into the sitting room at our home in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, and got a bit of a shock. There on the sofa, wrapped in a shawl, was a newborn baby. It was my younger sister, Alison. I was only one year, 11 months old and back then parents didn’t prepare you for such things in advance, as they do now.
I’d never seen a real baby before and it’s the feeling of surprise that stays with me most.
GRANDMA TREMBLING
Jack McKenzie, 76, an actor, lives with his partner in Deal, Kent. He says:
The feel of the coarse, knitted blanket I was wrapped in. The trembling of my grandmother’s arms, in which I was being held. An enormous aeroplane, its wings pitted with great holes through which I could see the sky. These are the details I recall from my first memory when I was no more than two.
Born in 1942, I was orphaned during the War — my mother died in childbirth and my father was killed in action — and had gone to live in Edinburgh with my paternal grandparents.
One night in 1944, we had made our way to our shelter and I remember my seeing what appeared to me to be the most enormous plane as we went outside. I was too young to realise the danger or feel fear but I recall my grandmother shaking.
MEETING DADDY FOR FIRST TIME
Carole Oliver, 75, a retired nurse, has four children and six grandchildren and lives in Plymouth. She says:
Peering out the living room window, I saw a man in uniform stride down the street with an oversized rucksack on his back. My heart was racing and the moment he stepped through the door, I ran to embrace him.
Carole Oliver with her parents Emily Monckton and Brian Watson in 1945
I was three yet it was the first time I saw my father. It was 1945 and he had been away at war, in the Navy.
Apparently I was forever asking about him. When he returned, I wouldn’t leave him, clinging on to him for dear life. I’d seen photos of him and he’d been allowed to visit when I was two months but of course I don’t remember that.
I recall going to the beach with him and Mum the day after his arrival — we lived in Cornwall — and me jealously trying to prise my parents apart. ‘He’s my husband,’ I told my mum.
A HOLIDAY DUNKING
Les Wood, 86, is a retired civil servant from Haverhill, Suffolk. He has been married to Joan for 63 years and has three children and six grandchildren. He says:
Aged 20 months, I was on holiday with my parents at a small resort called Seasalter on the Kent coast. My dad took me out in a rowing boat. I remember leaning far over the side and then suddenly — splash! — I plopped into the sea.
I was scooped out by my father and came to no harm. But I have always been afraid of deep water.
Brian Watson remembers the Queen smiling at him at her Coronation
THE QUEEN WAVED AT ME
Brian Watson, 68, a writer, lives in Purley, Surrey. He says:
It was a rainy, dull June morning on a crowded London street. I was sitting in my pushchair and my view was a sea of legs. Everywhere you looked there was red, white and blue: flags flapping from windows, draped around lamp posts just like the little one I held in my hand.
I caught glimpses of people in tents by the roadside and rows of policemen in ceremonial uniform, complete with white gloves, lining the streets. Then a miracle happened: one of the police officers, a slightly rotund sergeant, cleared the way for my mum to push me to the front.
There, kerbside, my pushchair became a grandstand seat for the Queen’s Coronation. As the golden royal coach approached, I waved my little flag with all my might. Her Majesty must have seen because she waved right back at me, smiling.
The excitement and joy of that moment has stayed with me for a lifetime. I was three years, eight months old, and small wonder it’s the first thing I can remember.