1940s: “My memories of my early life are still so vivid it’s as if we never left…”

Posted on May 23 by Kerry Hood

My memories of my early life are still so vivid it’s as if we never left, there is so much to tell. You mention the mounds of rubbish and rubble, so I’ll start with that. Much of it was the damage from the bombing during the war. In one place was a large mound where the lorries from the gasworks sometimes used to come and tip the clinker and byproducts from the gas works. Often the local lads used to go and collect bits of coal and coke. It earned quite a few of us a fair bit of pocket money.

One particular occasion was when a large general store in the market square was bombed. It was I believe called Edward Isard, much of the rubble was also tipped over there.

Some of the local Mums soon spent some time over there recovering molten bars of soap and other items. However, back to the brickie. My older brother Bob spent some time in hospital with a badly burnt foot, caused when the mound collapsed. the heat generated by spontaneous combustion was terrific. But to younger kids it was the most wonderful playground.

Many of the kids camps were either in the huge patches of Burdock that used to grow there or the older ones made quite large more permanent structures out of the abundance of water tanks.

“God Help You” if you ever went near or touched a camp belonging to another street. Among the rubble there was a constant supply of asbestos sheets that when thrown on any of the numerous bonfires resulted in loud explosions. Be assured I am in no way fantasising or exaggerating, To young kids it was the most fantastic playground you could ever imagine with new material being tipped there on a daily basis. Quite often there would be tipped a tanker of a creosote like product from the local gas works. It lay in the ground like tar. Many a kid had a good hiding after going home with it on your boots, after a couple of days the soles of your boots just fell off.

Every November the competition to build the largest bonfire caused many a fight as it was almost a nightly job to nick stuff from anywhere you could find. There was always a large one near the Walwyn road entrance.

Reading your oral history brought up just a few of the local names. My grandmother lived at No. 13 Havelock Road, next door was the Crist family of boys from the top was Jackie, Johnny, Dougie and Leslie. A little further up in the last house before the bombsite lived George Aveling and his sister Flossie the other side of the bombsite was the Matholie family and the last house lived Sheila Jarrett Then there was Mr Clapsons Shop (General Store). Directly opposite on the corner of Marlborough lived the Shaddocks family next door to the Danahers Billy, Monty and twin boys, pretty sure there was a sister Margaret also. Coming back down Havelock there was the Luck Family and the Wiles sisters Sylvie and Betty. A few doors further was the Phillips family (quite large in number) I remember the oldest George I believe joined the Guards. Then came Ray Brigden, cousin to Teddy Brigden who lived opposite me in the cottages in Homesdale Road Ted sadly died last year. Next door lived Neville Stubbs who had a printing business and shop in Homesdale Rd. Also his sister Lorna.

The Model Railway Factory you mention was located at the top of Homesdale but on the Main Road and was called Graham Farish. They are still in production and are at the top end both in quality and price. There is a stockist near me in East Grinstead called Martells

I know I’m flitting about somewhat but you mentioned free coke ? If there was any it never came my way !! It was regular pocket money for a lot of us. My dad made me a purpose built barrow that took 28lbs of broken coke (that is what you had to ask for when queuing at the window in the gas works). From memory you could get a small coke, broken which was larger lumps and then boiler nuts (they were a form of compressed coal dust and something else) they were the most expensive and burned very hot.

The Gas Works was I believe run by a Mr Skudder who lived in a house just inside the Main Gate and the ticket windows were further along on the left. You bought your ticket and one of the prisoners of war would take you with your barrow under the hopper and dispensed your measured amount. They, the POWs, would be all over the place driving low trucks called Lister trucks.

I had a regular delivery to the lady next door at No 109 Homesdale called Mrs Stokes, her husband was the manager of a large Ironmongers in the High Street called Weeks, Manager or not, he still had to come in the house through the back door AFTER HE HAD CHANGED INTO HIS SLIPPERS AND CLEANED HIS SHOES FOR THE FOLLOWING MORNING. But she was very kind to me. I still remember her giving me a lovely shiny Half a Crown for my birthday in 1943 I dropped it between the floor boards when we were hiding in the cupboard under the stairs.

My parents continued to live there until my mother died and i moved my father to live near me in Crawley He sold the house to a Mr Hennesey in 1986, I often wondered if he found my half Crown.

I think it’s time i stopped rabbiting on but if you are still interested I can clearly recall the Mornington and Walwyn Crowd And many of those from around Bourne and Jaffray Rd

Quite apart from the Homesdale road lads. Has any body mentioned the large Horses and their tip Up two wheeled carts that used to tip in to the brickfield? They were stabled in Old Homesdale Road at Mackintosh’s Yard The Night Watchman during the war was a Mr Jerry Hodder From Waldo Road He would sometimes roast a potato for us in his fire.

Peter

1948: “My Recollections of Raglan Road school 1948 to 1955

Posted on May 23 by Kerry Hood

My recollections of Raglan Road school 1948 to 1955.

I was born at Farnborough hospital in October 1942 and as my mother died giving birth to me and my father was serving in the army my maternal grandmother decided to bring me up. Unfortunately it did not work out as we never got on well even though she did her best. I still live in the same Chatterton Road house opposite what used to be Joe Russell’s sweet shop “The Popular”. I still recall seeing crowds of school children anxiously hovering over the newly installed YZ chewing gum vending machine waiting for someone to use it so that they could claim the two pack bonus for the fourth penny inserted. What a mad scramble that was !

My time at Raglan Road school commenced in January 1948 and I left to attend Cray Valley Tech. in June 1955 after I passed my 13 + exam. The infants school headmistress was a dietetically challenged lady named Miss Crossley. We youngsters used to throw six inch square bean bags to each other and I made a raffia table mat that my gran used to stand the tea pot on. Each 24th. May on Empire Day we would all march round the playground behind Miss Crossley as she carried a huge Union Jack flag then we would go home as was the case when, on Wednesday 6th. February 1952, the headmaster of the junior school named Mr. Pepper came into our classroom and informed us King George the Sixth had died. The classrooms were heated by three large black water pipes that ran along the back of each room.

When Miss Crossley retired we bought her a mirror and she told us each time she looked into it she would be reminded of the lovely children. My favourite teacher was Mrs. Taylor who took a shine to me. Other teachers that come to mind are “Dusty” Miller, Mr. Lewis, Miss Nora Fox, Miss Cosgrove, Miss Kerrigan, Messrs. Jones, Ingward and Hunt, David “Loopy” Lake, “Hoppy” Harwood, “Ripper” Gantley, “Potty” Parsons, and “Percy” Sessions. The caretaker was Mr. House.

One day we learned that Mr. Pepper’s house in Southborough Lane was on fire so we all rushed round there to gloat. A thin lady named Mrs. Payne would go from classroom to classroom selling 6 pence and 2 shillings and 6 pence National Savings stamps. We also used to pay small amounts into a boot club in order to save up for new footwear which we bought from the Co-Op shoe shop on the corner of Addison Road and Chatterton Road. The money was entered into a small yellow booklet. Miss Fox was very strict and took no nonsense from anyone. She had no classroom and ran her class just in front of the stage. Mr. Lewis had his classroom in the corner next to the stage so any children who arrived late for his class had to disturb Miss Fox’s class and got a ticking off from both of them. The music teacher was a strange “Percy” Sessions. Several times we went on strike. On each occasion we waited for him to complete his long piano introduction then as he turned to us to start we remained silent. After another attempt he gave up. Peter Woodward took over from him. David “Loopy” Lake was our PT [physical training] teacher and at the end of term we would play Pirates in the gym. This consisted of pulling out all of the ropes and each team had to get from one end of the gym to the other using the ropes or wall bars without touching the ground and avoiding being caught by the other team members. He called me Happy Harry Appley and was a lovely friendly man. Years later when I worked at the Town Hall and used to sit on the Ivy Bridge near Bromley South station waiting to see the steam trains during my lunch hour he suddenly appeared pedalling his old bike up the hill and had a lovely chat with me. His favourite saying was “You frivolous fannies – anyone would think it was friday” and it was ! “Potty” Parsons took us for chemistry and as the science lab. had gas taps on the large benches one of the village idiots would regularly light one of the taps and burn the bench. One experiment was to make glass “divers” that looked similar to cycle light bulbs with holes in the end. When placed into a screw top lemonade bottle filled with water the “diver” would sink to the bottom as the top was screwed down then pop up when unscrewed. He was another lovely master and would give me chemicals to take home and experiment with in my back garden. In those adventurous days there was no such thing as the Health and Safety curse. If you blew yourself up it was hard luck ! His favourite saying was “Oh my godfathers”. “Ripper” Gantley was a nasty man who put me off literature for life. We had to read certain recommended classics then write preces on them. I used to cheat and crib other pupils preces but eventually the supply ran out so, in desperation, I wrote about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. He went mad.

The headmaster of the senior school was Mr. Bullock and I well remember standing outside his office on many occasions waiting to be given the slipper or cane for my endless examples of bad behaviour. I am not much better now.

We read comics like Beezer, Film Fun, Eagle, Hotspur and, of course, the wonderful Dandy and Beano.

The games we played were marbles, conkers, cigarette cards, five stones [later to be called jacks], yoyo, hopscotch and we made models out of plasticine and glitter wax. We would sing silly ditties like “Tell tale tit, your mother can’t knit, your father can’t walk without a walking stick” and songs like “Glad that I live am I, that the sky is blue, glad for the country lanes and the fall of dew, after the sun the rain, after the rain the sun, this be the way of life ’till the work be done.”

Our sports day events were held in Whitehall Recreation Ground and in those days we had winners and losers rather than the present day situation where everyone has to be a winner. Sometimes we would walk to the Blue Circle outdoor pool in Crown Lane for swimming lessons. I believe we also went to the lido in Baths Road. A group of us would regularly scale the railings at night and climb over the bike sheds fence and onto the balcony of the lido to swim naked in the large pool. On several occasions the police were called because of all the noise we made but we just hid until they went away.

A lad named Robert Hayward kept bullying me so one day when he was standing at the top of the playground stairs I pushed him off and he rolled all the way down to the bottom of them. We got on well after that.

In the winter we used to make ice slides the whole length of the playground. One day when I was sliding someone must have tripped me up and I fell onto the back of my head and was rushed to hospital with concussion.

My gran’s cooking was so awful I thrived on school dinners. The lovely cooks included Mrs. Bartle, Mrs. Paige, and my dear aunts Maud “Sammy” Salmon and Peggy Lewis with Miss Bloomfield as chief cook. To the well known Max Bygraves song “Out Of Town” we would sing “Say what you will school dinners make you ill and Davy Crockett died of shepherds pie, all school dindins come from pig bins out of town.”

The building now the Studio was originally the workshops where Mr. Ingward taught metalwork and Mr. Hunt taught woodwork. Where the garden area now is stood a wooden building where Mr. Jones held his pottery lessons.

Our favourite sweet shop was Townsend’s opposite the Co-Op where we would buy liquorice pipes, gob stoppers, lemonade powder and sherbet dabs. In Wallace Pring’s the chemist we bought penny liquorice wood to chew. We took empty jam jars to Mr. Stansfield who lived in a gypsy caravan in Chantry Lane and he gave us a penny for each one. He always wore wellington boots and was the wayward son of Lord and Lady Stansfield. We walked to the local stream to catch sticklebacks or minnows and climb the ash heaps that were eventually levelled and landscaped to make Normans Park or go to Whitehall Recreation Ground which we called the “rec.” and play on the large swing by Union Road or sail our model boats in the shallow pond where the children’s playground area now is. When, for example, we cycled in the park the park keeper, Mr. Doggett, would chase after us, much to our amusement and derision. One of the keepers we nick-named Walrus because of his bushy moustache. The head keeper was Mr. Sid Mortimer who lived in the house at the corner of Walpole Road and Cowper Road. How many of you remember the lovely Victorian water fountain near the house that mysteriously disappeared in the 1950s ? Another pastime of ours was roller skating along the length of Chatterton Road or pushing each other in our home made soap box carts.

On Saturday mornings many of us attended the Gaumont cinema at Bromley South where, for sixpence, we would sing popular songs before watching features like Zorro, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Dick Barton – Special Agent. At one time we had yoyo championships on stage and my pal Pete Gilbert, another Raglan Road pupil, won a dart board and I won a cricket bat which I still have.

In the early days it was a very rough school with many poor and ragged children attending but over the years it has been turned into the high standard and desirable school it now is.

Despite all my domestic problems I do have very happy memories of my time at Raglan Road school and am very grateful to the teachers who fought hard to teach me my basic knowledge to face the outside world with confidence. Bless them all – even “Ripper” Gantley.

Adrian Appley.

1940s: “Rubbish from derelict bomb sites … always steaming hot…”

Posted on April 23 by Kerry Hood

“I have lived in this road since I was five years old, and I am now 81 years.

This park has beneath it rubbish from derelict bomb sites during the war. It was always steaming hot. Some parts of the Rec sink (because of this) so it was deemed unfit to build on – I don’t know if the powers that be still know about this – heaven help us if they built on this ground and it started to sink! I thought I should tell you the history of this land as there are not many of us left in the road to tell this story.

Before this [that it was a dump] my Grandad used to work in the Brick pit, building bricks, and this is why it was originally called Havelock Brickfields. It was a large hole until it was used as landfill of the wartime bombing rubbish.”

from a supporter’s email (2018).

1941: Local Oral History – Mrs T Coombes in 1989

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Mrs T Coombes, daughter of J. Pepper (Headmaster of Raglan Road Junior School 1941-59 and previously master in Senior Boys) in Raglan School’s Centenary 1889-1989:

Something I shall always associate with wartime is seeding grass – it grew along every pavement and at the bottom of every fence This contributed to the general air of shabbiness in the streets. The houses mostly had peeling paint, gates leaned on their hinges or were propped open, and windows were obscured by sticky netting or replacement parchment, or were blacked out with old lino or impenetrable dark air raid curtains.

The disused brickfield behind Havelock Road, which was used as a tip for industrial and household rubbish, was an irresistible adventure playground. We called it the Brickie and would sometimes wander there at lunch break and scramble about through the rubbish via little pathways, having to take care to avoid the more unpleasant patches.

Local oral history – Mr Arthur Sheppeck

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Mr Arthur Sheppeck

Some recollections from Arthur Sheppeck, who played in the brickfield, mainly from 1941 to 1949. He remembers the Brick Pit being 60 feet deep.

He told me, in 2015:

‘One day, one of the ARP wardens approached us boys. He told us “For God’s sake don’t do what I’m going to do” and he took an incendiary bomb he was carrying and lobbed it into the pit. It exploded with a blinding flash of white light, and the warden told us “that could have been you”. I can tell you, it fair put the wind up us…!’

Local oral history – Mr Daniel Bentley

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Daniel Bentley writing as Chatterton Road History Society, in 1917:

“Tony, my friend, a retired butcher was telling me that during WW2, they used the pits to dump the debris from bombed houses, things like bricks, wood, house fittings etc.

After the war the area was grassed over and used as a football pitch. Problem was that even when things are buried, the lighter materials come to the surface, and this includes the broken glass from all the house windows, which resulted in some pretty horrific injuries. Imagine the consequences of a slide tackle over broken glass . . .”

1950s: “when he was a boy he used to cut across the brickfield…”

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Reg from Bourne Road

One long-time local, Reg, from Bourne Road told me in 2017, that when he was a boy he used to cut across the brickfield and through all the piles of dumped rubbish, as his family lived in Cannon Road, and he attend Raglan Road school.

He and the other lads would look through the rubbish discarded from the little model railway factory, (which was where Excel house now stands by the railway, on the corner between Homesdale and Godwin Roads) in the hopes of adding to their own railway sets (or selling re-usable parts).

One teacher he particularly remembers is a Mrs Evans, They called her “Creeping Jesus” because she would appear silently behind them, and when they were not attending to their school work, and hit them across their hands with a ruler.

He remembers a bakers on Havelock Road that they frequented.

Two families he remembers living in Havelock Road, and having loud remonstrations on Fridays nights, were the Crisps and Danhers.

At that time, most pupils attended Raglan Road until they were 14, and some of their lessons were in one of the school extensions, the one behind the Hayes Lane baptist chapel on Hayes Lane (I think it’s now a pupil referral centre). When they had to get back to the main buildings for the next lesson (or registration at 4pm), and one of the horse drawn rubbish carts was coming up the hill, he and his friend would run out – without the driver spotting them – and hang on the back of the cart.

Sometimes, when they got to the main road, a public spirited soul would tell the driver that the poor horse had two hangers-on at the back and they would have to jump off. Other times they would get a lift all the way to the Havelock Road entrance to the dump and then they only had one road to walk back down.

Local Oral History – Mrs Marisa Dennington

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Marisa Dennington, Havelock Road, since 1959.

Marisa told me in 2015: The brickfield was already a grassed playing field when I moved here in 1959, but the lady down the road, who had moved in 8 years earlier remembered it being grassed over. The work was done by the contractors, the McIntoshes.

I was told that in the war there were two big guns (anti-aircraft) in there as it was a very big pit. And, there was half a house left (from the WW2 bombing) at number 43 with all the children playing in it.

raglan school sports day 1969

Every year at the end of the year, Raglan school would have a sports day on the brickfield, and my Maurizia was the champion running one year.

At the weekend, the Raglan boys used to come and play football with the teacher. We used to go there in the evening as a family and play tennis and badminton. My Maurice would never allow us to picnic on the other side of the field, it had to be in our corner.

The Brickfield was left to the children of Raglan Road School, and the council was to look after it on their behalf.

History of local Road-names: supporter/context letter

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Date: Tuesday, 17 February, 2015, 9:39

Dear Friends of Havelock Rec,

My wife and I only recently heard about this plan to move the ‘La Fontaine’ school to Havelock Rec this past weekend… I whole heartedly support your efforts in stopping the proposal to build on this land….
I would also like to add that the individuals planning this proposal have failed to consider the appropriateness of having a French named school located around Victorian built street names that are named after famous and revered British Generals, namely : Lord Wellington (Battle of Waterloo 1815 defeated the French) Wellington Road, The Duke of Marlborough (Battle of Blenheim 1704 defeated the French) Marlborough Road, Lord Raglan ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade (Crimean War 1853-1856) Raglan Road and last but not least Major General Sir Henry Havelock who was mostly associated with India and the recapture of Cawnpore during the Indian Mutiny 1857 Havelock Road.Therefore my point is that it is highly insensitive to British military history and the respected and former British generals that a French named school should descend upon our neighbourhood in the 200th year of the defeat of the French by Lord Wellington Arthur Wessley in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. I am not anti-French and I appreciate other peoples’ cultures and nations and the need to move forward with the times but please can we respect British history too.Perhaps we should consider lobbying the Ministry of Defence for additional support on this topic namely to stop the building and relocation of this school to Havelock Rec in this bi-centenary year of the Battle of Waterloo (1815–2015)?

Please keep up the excellent work.

Regards
[name with-held]
Marlborough Road Resident

History of local Road-names: Chatterton

Posted on March 18 by Kerry Hood

Thomas Chatterton

There is also a page about Thomas Chatterton, that Chatterton Road (and now ‘Village’) is named after: from Chatterton Road History Society pages (with this evocative picture):

Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis