XXX
Interview with Norma Barwis
24th November 2022
Interviewer: Stephen Midlane
SM:
Well, Norma, thank you so much for taking part in this oral history project for the Friends of Wandsworth Common. As you know, we've had a preliminary chat about things and we're going to talk about what your memories are of life around Wandsworth Common.
If we can just kick off, can you give us your name and your date of birth?
NB:
Norma Barwis, 24.1.33.
SM:
And can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the makeup of your family?
NB:
Well, I'm a widow. And I've been a widow since 1981. My children have all grown up I have two sons and a daughter. And of course they're almost OAPs now themselves.
SM:
And do they live in the area?
NB:
No, no, unfortunately, no. They don't.
SM:
Tell us about where you were living and when you moved into the area.
NB:
I moved over to Earlsfield in 1956. We were just married and it was very difficult to find anywhere to live. We came from South-east London from Catford and Bell Green around that area. My husband worked in the district surveyor's office in Wandsworth and luckily he got to hear of some rooms in Garratt lane. So we moved into Garratt lane to a second floor flat. Well, not really a flat; there were four rooms and a small kitchen with a bath in it. And we shared the loo with the people that lived on the flat below. And that was in 1956.
SM:
And how long did you stay in the flat?
NB:
Well, we moved up, we moved away from the area up to Ellerton Road, I suppose half a dozen years later, or maybe longer. I think 1968 we moved up to Ellerton Road. So I knew Garratt Lane very well, and then this was my chance to know Wandsworth Common area. Lovely, nice road. Very nice.
SM:
Were you living in a house in Ellerton or was it a flat?
NB:
In Ellerton we moved into a house.
SM:
Am I right in thinking that the landlords of that house were Holloway Brothers.
NB:
They were.
SM:
Tell us about Holloway Brothers.
NB:
Well, they were absolutely brilliant landlords. We were really lucky. When we first moved into the area, into Garratt lane, we paid 30 shillings a week for our rent, which was wonderful. It slightly went up when we moved up to Ellerton Road. But they were very, very good landlords. They did all the repairs. You would just have to ring them up in the morning and say the gas heater wasn't working and up they would come; a little van would arrive with workmen. Very, very nice, very efficient, very good.
SM:
So they would have a standing team of workmen who would look after all the properties
NB:
Yes, definitely. I'm saying a little van, it was actually a lorry and all the workmen used to be in the back. And they'd all arrive. No, they were really very good. Yep.
SM:
You said you had children and presumably they went to school in the area.
NB:
They started off down in Garratt Lane and they went to Tranmere Road School, which is now Earlsfield. I think it's called Earlsfield Primary School now. And they stayed there until they went off to secondary school. Two of them went to schools in the district. My son, the eldest, he went to the Bec School in Beechcroft Road, which amalgamated with Hillcroft to become Ernest Bevin School.
Sally went off to Rosa Bassett School in Tooting, which again was amalgamated, with Battersea Grammar. These schools have long gone now, and that I think is now Graveney, I think that became Graveney School.
But Nick, he actually got on a train and went up to the London Nautical School in Stamford Street. And that's the same, that still remains the same to this day.
SM:
Were your children of an age to take the 11-plus, or were they comprehensive schools that they went into?
NB:
They took some sort of test. I don't think it was called — I think they had dropped the name 11-plus, by that time but they certainly were tested. And then you went along and had a chat with the headmaster and he more or less told you where they could go.
SM:
Do you have any memories of what the schools were like that they went to?
NB:
Well, yes, very much so. I know schools were very different in those days. When Clive went off to school, the eldest one, parents were really not welcomed into the school at all. You'd have to leave your children at the gate – well, not at the gate, at the door — and then a teacher would come along and sort of drag them down the corridor. I know I was very alarmed about that because in those days there were no were no playgroups or nursery schools in the district, and so your kids had been with you right up until the age of five, and then suddenly, they've got to go to school. You had no chance of taking them to the school beforehand, showing them what it was like, they were suddenly there and whisked away. And so really, it was quite, quite traumatic, looking back on the first day, that my eldest son went to school. No Parent Teachers Association. Quite difficult to get to see the head teacher if you’d got a complaint. So that certainly I know has changed, and it needed to change.
SM:
Did you still manage to get to know other parents and was there a network of friendships that developed out of the children going to school?
NB:
Oh, yes. Well, you do, standing at the gate, don't you? Yep. Oh, no, I've got lifelong friends from that time. I still know people from that time. Sadly, they've moved out of the district. But it's a case of sending a Christmas card, the odd email, but no, no, I still know people.
SM:
You weren't working yourself at this point, while the children were growing up, is that right?
NB:
That's right. You didn't go off to work then. Luckily, there didn't seem to be the necessity to go to work. Except I really felt that I needed to do something as the kids grew up, but I didn't actually get a job until they were all at school. That was pretty much the norm then. So we were very lucky, really, being able to look after the children without sending them off — you know, without them having to come home when you were at work.
SM:
But when you did start work, what did you do?
NB:
My first job was school meals. I got a job in school meals because that absolutely fitted in with school time.
SM:
Which school was that?
NB:
I think it became Southfields, Southfield School, in the school kitchen. Washing up. I had to stand on two palliasses so I could reach the sink. Washing up the big custard vats and great big saucepans.. And then the supervisor would come along and run her finger along all the edges to make sure that you’d got it clean. No, I didn't really like that job at all. The first day, she said to me, “you're not going to stick it, love. You won't stick it.” And I thought, right. I will stick it. And I kept it for probably about six months.
But then, after we had moved, I got to hear about a new centre that had opened in Allfarthing Lane, an adult centre called The Central Wandsworth Institute which had classes more or less running in most schools in the district — evening classes. But this was different, this centre; we were on the top floor of Allfarthing School with the children below, and we took over the top floor. And I think it was the first centre that was a day centre as well as an evening class centre. I became a part -time secretary. So I think I joined a week after they'd opened. And it was a wonderful place
SM:
What sort of classes were run there?
NB:
Marvellous classes! Car mechanics, bird watching, tap dancing, cookery, dressmaking, upholstery, woodwork — had a woodwork centre just round the corner in Swaffield School. It was very inspiring, a very inspiring place to work.
SM:
Can you remember how much it cost for an OAP?
NB:
Well, at one time you could do as many classes as you liked for a pound. And I remember thinking “I bet it's not going to be that price when I get to that age.” And it's not!
SM:
Did they provide creches and things like?
NB:
Yep, we had a creche for the under-fives, so parents could leave their children while they went to classes. And they also started up a parent child workshop, which became very, very popular. And it led to a whole summer workshop that lasted I think for a month for every day of the week. There were classes up there with activities that parents and children could do together. So we had mums and dads and grannies, the whole range of people. No, it was a wonderful, wonderful place.
SM:
You were obviously inspired by it.
NB:
Very inspired, yes. Well, it took me off to do a couple of City and Guilds classes certificates so that I could actually start teaching there. So it was very good. But sadly, it all came to an end when the school below needed to expand and they wanted their top floor back. Ever since then, there's been a great change in adult education in the district. And we were sent from pillar to post, from this centre to that centre, that school, and now it's just been reduced to, well, it's all become South Thames College now, with only two centres in the borough — one down at Tooting and one down in the High Street. The adult education provision is very, very much reduced from what it was. But, luckily, we've still got some things, so, much to be grateful for.
SM:
Did you ever teach anything yourself?
NB:
Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yep. It led on to getting on to 30 years of teaching from there.
SM:
What sort of things did you teach?
NB:
Crafts. Mainly basketry — all kinds of basketry — chair seating, corn dollies. Lovely things. Yep. Very nice. Happy Days.
SM:
Getting back to your family and your children living in the area. Even when you were down in Garratt Lane, did you used to make journeys up to the Common?
NB:
Ooh, yes. Yup. With the pram, scooter, tricycle. And it's quite a long way up. I suppose at the weekends we would come up to the Common. And it was lovely, lovely. The kids remember it very well.
SM:
What do they remember most?
NB:
Feeding the ducks with bread, which of course you can't do now. Special food they have to have now, don't they? But we used to go armed with all the crusts that the kids wouldn't eat.
Look at the trains through the railings.
Watch the bowling.
The cafe was there. I remember the cafe was there. But there was no playground attached to very near the Skylark. I think there was a playground maybe over the bridge but we didn't seem to go over the bridge. We stayed this side. But there was no playground, no organised things for small tots then. I think we just plodded around and kicked the ball.
The kids — I don't think they paddled in the pond but I think they trawled sticks in the pond. No, it's lovely.
SM:
Were the ponds different then?
NB:
They were different. It seemed to be a much more informal place then. The sides had not been built up. I suppose it's safer now but I don't ever remember anybody falling in the pond. It was quite nice for them to get right down close to the pond. The wooden boards were not there. No, it was much more informal. It's more formal now.
SM:
Do you remember the area that now is known as The Scope, which is at the top of Burntwood Lane? Did you used to go there?
NB:
We didn't seem to discover that bit until we'd moved up from Garratt lane. The boys when we moved up we were about 9 and 10 and so they used to go off and play football. There was quite a nice clearance there where you could play football.
SM:
So The Scope was a bit clearer than it is now?
NB:
Well, there certainly was a big clearance there where they could play football. My husband used to trot up with them. The rest of it I can't remember. I've seen photographs of what it was like but I can't remember it as it was. It always seemed to me to have a lot of trees. There weren't all the paths cutting about like there are now; you more or less stuck to the path then I think.
And then we spent many hours once we had a dog. Sally had a dog from Battersea Dogs’ Home, and we spent many hours with the dog up there.
No, it's a lovely, lovely part of the Common, I think. But we didn't discover that until after we'd moved.
SM:
What did you or your family do in the way of other sports on the Common?
NB:
Well, there was nothing for the little ones, like I think I've already said, but there was the bowling green, which my husband I think got his eye on from then. And the bowling green was beautifully kept; the Green was really lovely and flowerbeds all around. And he later did join the bowling club and had a few years there and he really loved it.
SM:
Which Club was it he joined?
NB:
Trinity Bowls. I think it was called Trinity Bowls. Because bowling was quite a big activity. They played lots of other clubs. So every Sunday, I think, and Saturday, I think, he used to go up for bowling matches. No, that was a lovely, lovely spot.
SM:
And you say he was very fond of the green . . .
NB:
Yes, he was. In fact, he said he'd like his ashes to be put there. Which I did! And that was a bit traumatic, because I went up there with his ashes and sat on a seat and it was a freezing cold day in March. And somebody was there. Actually, the gardener was there, fiddling about and he wouldn't go away. And I hadn't asked for permission to spread his ashes because I thought, well, if I ask permission, they're going to say ‘no’, I'm sure. So, much better — and I certainly wasn't going to let my husband down — so I had to wait for ages for this groundsman to sort of wander away, which he did eventually. And in the end I took a chance and put his ashes where I thought he'd like them to be. And I just finished doing that when the chap came back round the corner, and he said, “what’s all that all over the green?” So I said, “Oh, it's my husband's ashes.” “Oh.” he said, “Oh” and he wandered off. So I didn't get into trouble.
SM:
Did your children get involved in Scouts or Brownies or anything like that?
NB:
They did, yes. The Royal Patriotic Building had a very thriving Brownies group and that was run by a really lovely lady called Sally Smallbone. She used to live in Trinity Road. Sadly, she died but she really was a fantastic Brown Owl. And then (my daughter) Sally went on to Guides in the district, at Mary Magdalene, I think, and the boys did do Scouts, not for so very long, and that was in the Romany hut in Lyford Road.
SM:
Tell us a little more about the Romany. What is that?
NB:
The Romany is a hut that is set away behind the houses in Lyford Road. It's still there but I don't think they have Scouts there any more . . .
NB:
I think it's used probably for . . . well, I don't know what it's used for now. I used to run a sort of playgroup in there for a few years, but I don't know what it's used for now.
But it's an open area of ground behind the houses. Tennis courts. I think there were tennis courts, but I don't think it's open to the public now. Anyway, I just don't know about that.
SM:
And did you do any shopping up on the Common — on Bellevue Road or Northcote road?
NB:
Oh, yes. Yes. The shops have changed hands a lot, along Bellevue road.
The Northcote — that has changed greatly, the Northcote; there used to be a really lively market in the Northcote, which I used to trundle to.
But Bellevue had three butchers at one time, and a fish shop, United Dairies.
A bank — I think Westminster Bank. I can't really remember the name of it but I think it was called Westminster Bank. That's gone.
One, no, I think two estate agents, so that number has vastly gone up.
And, of course, there was the Lucky Parrot shop. Oh, that was a lovely shop. Yeah, I still miss the Lucky Parrot. But that's gone.
Lovely antique shop with grandfather clocks.
No, it was very nice.
SM:
Sounds like a proper local shopping street. Everything you would need.
NB:
With three butchers, definitely. And a fish shop. Yup.
I think they did have a little sort of Londis place, which I think is still there, a kind of little mini supermarket. I think that's always been there or something like it.
And I think there's always been the chemists there.
But we didn't have Chez Bruce then, that was one of the butcher shops, I'm pretty certain. But I don't remember the sheep on Wandsworth Common; I think they were before my time! But I've seen photographs of sheep on the common, but I don't remember them.
But, luckily, the skyline hasn't changed. When you're on the Common and you look towards Bellevue Road, there still is that lovely skyline which I've got many photographs of at home. And that hasn't changed.
Oh, and we did have a bookshop, didn't we? But we haven't got a book shop anymore. I’m sure that’s sadly missed.
SM:
And the two pubs that either end of the road.
NB:
Oh, well, the Surrey Tavern’s gone, but the Hope still flourishes.
SM:
Did you used to go to the Surrey Tavern or The Hope?
NB:
Not a lot, but I've been in both in my time.
And the buses, we did have a bus, the 49 bus that ran right through to Crystal Palace. And I think there was another big bus that used to go down Burntwood Lane for the schoolchildren. I think that's been superseded by the little G1 now.
I certainly remember because my parents lived in Catford. So I used to go across and get the 49 bus with all the kids up to Crystal Palace, and then another bus all the way down to Catford. So that was very useful. But it only goes as far as Streatham Hill station now.
So that's changed.
SM:
I know you're a great gardener and allotment keeper. So do you know Neil's Nurseries?
NB:
Very much so, very much so.
My son got a Saturday job there. I think he was working there when he was 13 — maybe it was 14 – but, anyway, he was very young when he got a Saturday job.
That was that was very low key in those days, but it was nice. I remember they had fish there at one time — you could buy fish. And I think you could buy turtles. Someone's told me that there are turtles in the pond on the Common – terrapins, not turtles. I often think that's where the terrapins have come from. Although I've never seen one on the in the ponds on the Common.
There used to be a lot of people fishing around the Common years ago and it seemed to go on all year. There was nearly always somebody sitting around the ponds with fishing lines and little tents and sandwiches.
SM:
Do you think the Common itself has changed very much over the years?
NB:
No, I don't think so. It's always been a lovely space – a lovely breathing space. A little bit more formal now than it was I think. More joggers, lots more joggers; lots more dogs.
The ponds seemed to be quite on the wild side in those days. I seem to remember at one time we counted — I'm probably exaggerating, but I think we counted a hundred of those big geese — Canada geese. I think there were loads and loads of those up there, and swans, I think we had a couple of swans. Lots of ducks.
Yeah, nice. Always been a nice place. Yep. Very nice.
SM:
And the area as a whole. How do you feel that has changed? Or maybe it hasn't, perhaps it still feels as it did when you first moved in?
NB:
Well, the biggest changes I've seen have been down in Garratt lane. That has changed vastly. You wouldn't have in 1956 imagined that people would be sitting outside on little chairs drinking coffee.
I mean that was a real old place, with tram lines, although I think the trams had gone but I think there were tram lines along Garratt Lane.
And the station has been completely revamped.
And the shops — had more variety in the shops then, I must say; no charity shops. Nice electrical shop down there; you could get your iron mended if it went wrong, or lamp mended. Those shops, sadly, have gone. It has changed.
But not so much, Bellevue, apart from the shops.
SM:
What about the other areas? Like the toast rack, the grid of streets on the Common. I mean, at one time a lot of people would be renting in that area, renting those big houses . . .
NB:
Well, I didn't realise they were rented. I always thought they were owned, you know, by posh people. It was always a very nice area. But we didn't trundle around that bit very much. Yes, so I hadn't realised they were rented. But I suppose some people were put there during the war, maybe, and then waited to be moved out, waited for the owners to come back, maybe. I don't know.
SM:
One thing that was on the Common just after the war — so not exactly coinciding with your period — were prefabs. Did you ever see prefabs on the Common?
NB:
No, I didn't. I remember them up around the prison. They were definitely going around the back of the prison. There were definitely prefabs there. And in King George's Park, I think, but I don't ever remember them on Wandsworth Common.
And I wasn't very aware of what is now called the cricket field. It must have been there but somehow that had never registered with me.
But no, no, I think it more or less feels the same I think.
SM:
You said that your daughter went to Guides or Brownies at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building. Did you ever come into contact with that building in any other capacity or was it somewhere that you would visit?
NB:
No. I had no idea of the history of it until I joined the Friends of Wandsworth Common. Learnt a lot!
SM:
Is there anything else you'd like to say or any topic that has suddenly dropped into your mind?
NB:
No, I'd like to finish now thank you.
SM:
Thank you so much. I hope it wasn't too much for you.
NB:
You turned the camera off ? (laughing) Come on, John, turn . . . ..
Commentary on photographs
1
This is a picture of one of the ponds — now called lakes but we always called them ponds — before it had the sides, built up. So it was very, very informal then.
2
This is Clive, our eldest son — I suppose he was about five then — being a tree hugger. And I think he's still a tree hugger. And that was on the Common — a lovely old silver birch. I've often tried to look for it, but I think it's gone now. But we love that picture of him.
3
This is Clive and Nick sitting by the pond before the edges were built up. And I think you can see they loved it, they enjoyed that. I think Clive was five and Nick was three. That was about 1962 I would think. In the 60s anyway, early 60s.
4
This is Nicholas aged about three doing a bit of stirring up around the pond.
5
This is the boys looking at the trains through the railings. I showed them these pictures on Sunday, when they looked in, and they both remember steam trains. I don't remember steam trains coming through on that line but I certainly remember steam trains at Clapham Junction. There were loads of train spotters on the end of the platforms, taking down the engine numbers. And this was something that we all loved to do, to stare through the railings.
6
This is Nick on his tricycle that he had for Christmas. But it was never really a great success. I remember because it turned out to be a fixed wheel, and he didn't like that. Anyway, I think he was happy that day because it must have been after Christmas. It was a Christmas present, so it probably was January, some time like then. So we're going back to the early 60s again. He's wearing a coat that I made. And the cap? Well, they all wore caps and long socks and short trousers. He was only three. Yep. I can almost remember that day. Isn't it funny? I can, I can almost remember it.
XXX
PHILIP BOYS
18th November 2022
Interviewer: John Turner
JT:
We're all okay, Philip, welcome to your own house and the study for your studio.
PB:
Thank you very much.
JT:
Could you just for the record, so that we get it right, please say your name and date of birth?
PB:
Right. My name is Philip Boys. And I was born the 30th of March 1949.
JT:
And you were born and brought up in a relatively unusual part of the neighbourhood. Could you tell us about that?
PB:
Yes. My father was a prison officer. And so I lived in three or four houses that were actually part of the prison estate. So, behind the prison, there's another world. I used to think of it as an urban village complete, absolutely. Everybody who lived there was connected directly to the prison, nearly always prison officers.
So I lived there until I was 18 when my father retired. But carried on living around here. So I continue my relationship with the area.
JT:
I know that you went away to University,
PB:
Went to University, 1968, then did the usual thing moving around here, there and everywhere, but when I got together with my now wife Maggie, we were living in Pimlico. We thought it would be a good idea to move somewhere more permanent because it was a rented flat. Curiously my parents actually lived there after the war on the same street in Pimlico, but we moved here and to well, in fact to Balham for a long while and that’s where our two daughters Rebecca and Katherine were born. And then we moved here, this particular house which is Loxley Road in 2005, something like that.
JT:
So you are actually a pretty much a long-term resident.
PB:
Yes. All bar maybe less than 10 years. Yeah, always around here and and five or six houses within a stone's throw or two stones, anyway, of Wandsworth Common.
JT:
Okay. Now Tell me a bit about where you went to school.
PB:
Yeah, I went to first of all, I went to Beatrix Potter on Magdalen Road but at that time it was just an infant School. You had to transfer and probably the worst day of my life was having to leave at the age of eight to go to what was called Earlsfield Road or it was called Tranmere Road or which is now called Earlsfield School, which was that great triple-decker. So Beatrix Potter had been a very lovely small-scale low-rise school built, I guess in the 1920s, really beautiful school and still is — I visited recently and it was just astonishing - to move from that lovely environment to a Victorian triple-decker, was pretty devastating. It was the days of 11-plus, I did quite well and went to Emanuel school. That was in 1959, 1960.
JT:
What was your impression of how good an education you were getting at Beatrix Potter and Tranmere.
PB:
That's really interesting. Beatrix Potter. It was a comfortable place, I found it. I couldn't read until I was quite old for some reason and then all of a sudden I did pick up the ability to read and became an avid bookworm. At Earlsfield, I thought the teachers and the teaching were very good. It was like this, it was completely different times. So pretty tyrannical. There was lot of beating but not often with the cane, more to do with bats and plimsolls and things. Lots of blackboard dusters hurled across the room. Lots of, you know, cuffs around the ear and so on but actually I have to say that I thought the teachers were in their funny way, quite kindly. They weren't brutal and they needed to be quite firm. They were all ex-military men. They had to be quite firm because there were 40, maybe 41 sometimes, 42, children in a classroom. So you had to keep quite good control and generally speaking, they did. But there were sort of beautiful things too, in both schools. In Beatrix Potter I used to like maypole dancing. When I went back I asked, did they still have the maypoles? Sadly, I think they don't. And at Earlsfield School we were taught folk dancing, Morris dancing, in fact, and folk songs because the the Headmaster who was a very fine pianist obviously was following on from Ralph Vaughan Williams and others and thought it was wonderful and he was right to teach children English folk songs and Morris dancing. And that probably has had quite a formative influence on me.
JT:
Physically, was it in good condition?
PB:
Both places were pretty robust institutions because the triple-deckers were really built as massive buildings, austere, but very strong, they weren't dilapidated, which is strange because they were already 60 or 70 years old by that time. Beatrix Potter was always very cute. Was always very nice and comfortable but Earlsfield — because one of the differences and it has sort of a bearing on Wandsworth Common I suppose — in that the playgrounds were hard, it was concrete or some surface and you played football and ran about and punched each other and that kind of thing. But it's a very hard environment, you fell over and you hurt yourself .There wasn't a single tree anywhere. No grass. No flowers, nothing like that. And of course very, very regimented, but they did take sport very seriously. And curiously I can remember dragging the school cricket bag up Magdalen Road to Wandsworth Common to play on the cricket pitches there. I don't know what to call it here, in our time we always called it the cricket pitches but historically it was as you know part of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum and then when it was brought back by the London County Council in 1912, they had intended to make it into cricket pitches, as there was a desperate need, a great dearth of cricket pitches and the - I've lost my train of thought already - Yeah. So they called it the Extension because it was extending the common and it's had various names. I don't know what the current preferred name is, but names of the places do change. Like the Scope, for example, wasn't a word that we ever used. And I don't think anybody ever did use until — I don't know when the first use of, the first hearing of the word Scope.
JT:
Do you remember what you called it?
PB:
Yes, we always called it . . . Well, I’ve interviewed people about this myself, we always called it the rough bit, or Bushy Common was our favourite phrase — Bushy Common. Where we got Bushy Common from, I don't know, but it was, it was manifestly different from the rest of the Common and certainly very different from what it is now. But yes, I called it the rough bit. But I think other people have got all sorts of names for it.
JT:
So, let's talk about you on the Common. What sort of things did you come to the Common for?
PB:
That really is big because “Why did we come to the Common?” Well, cricket, played football on the Common in, in various places when you were part of some kind of formal team. So, there were cinder pitches on what's now called the Scope. They're covered in silver birch and other trees now. But there was a very large area that — I don't know when it was laid down. I've seen it on photographs from the second world war, aerial photographs. It was probably 1920s that the whole area of the far end — that's the word — Burntwood Lane end was covered in clinker. Probably from Lots Road power station or one of the local power stations, and that was used as a football pitch because the rest of the common was so wet, so many, many weekends you couldn't play proper football, as it were, on proper pitches, but we we used to play, could play there. So, I don't know whether it was Boys Brigade or Life-boys or Scouts or Cubs or whatever it was. I seemed to belong to every local organization at some time or other so played football there. That was the more formal side. But we tended not to play informal games of football there because behind Wandsworth Prison was a large green, it was called The Green and you could play there. And it was a full size, as big as two football pitches and a very large cricket pitch, which is probably why it was there in the first place, because I suspect that in the 19th century, they thought it would be a good idea for for prison officers to play cricket on a Sunday. So they made this enormous green, which is still there, not built on, which is marvelous.
Other uses of the Common. Well, we were always on our bicycles and the problem with the Common at that time was you couldn't ride your bicycle because it was a much more — it's a kind of paradox, the Common. On the one hand today almost no children go over there (it seems to me) alone without loads of adults with them, looking after them, checking on them, cajoling them or whatever, encouraging them or restricting them. But no parent ever went with a child on Wandsworth Common, that I recollect, we never did. We were always alone. On the other hand there was another sort of invigilation, which was the Park Keepers who were not kindly parental types, but they did discipline the the Common so you couldn't cycle there. They were all like another ex-military job they had bicycles and would be at you and chasing you away if you were ever to do anything naughty. They didn't, I don't recollect ever seeing any Parkies on the Scope, which is probably why it was our preferred area for just having fun because you could climb trees there, you could engage in all sorts of camp building and what have you. But remember the Scope was very different than today. It's rather lovely, it's rather wonderful, but it's got huge numbers of trees on it, obviously and bushes, but then it was much wetter, it was always wet all the year round covered in millennia grass, that puRP:
le moor grass and furze bushes and some brambles but very, very few trees. Almost no trees at all, much more open but still quite a wild place.
JT:
So that's an interesting question. The Scope or whatever was wild, the rest of it not so?
PB:
It was very smooth, was quite the opposite and was much more. It was . . . I didn't really understand it at the time and I've been thinking about it a lot more. The London County Council when it took over towards the end of the 19th century flattened everything. They wanted to make sports fields, but they also wanted to make straight or relatively straight paths, and cover them with tarmac. There was never any money when the Conservators took over after 1871, and they wanted to keep it wild, but the London County Council wanted to discipline the environment in various ways. So there were fences everywhere. So it must have been a huge . . . whoever got the contract, and, and I've seen the adverts for contracts when the London County Council was searching for people to provide the iron railings for Wandsworth Common and the other Commons. It must have been a huge commission, as it were, in that practically every path had railings on either side, and a large part of the lake. I can't remember how much of it was surrounded. It gradually went, I think maybe during the second war, some parts were repuRP:
osed as it were for guns or whatever. But there was an awful lot of railings around. So for example, the cricket pitches were sacred, completely sacred, they were the complete antithesis to what's now called the Scope. The Scope was wild and rough and wet, and anybody could do more or less, what they liked there, whereas the cricket pitches were dead, dead smooth. They were, there is a bowling green there, and there are tennis courts. But the cricket pitches, there were three, I think, grass always kept very, very close shorn. All the way around was a high fence, iron, some kind of iron or steel. It must have been iron because it rusted terribly. And it had very pointed tops and it was really saying to people, nobody is allowed in this area. Obviously, no dogs. No children were allowed unless they were playing a formally recognized game of cricket. There was no football there. There were no other balls than cricket balls, but this fence all the way around that ran all the way from the end of Dorlcote Road, Trinity Road all the way around to what's now called Neil's Farm or whatever. We used to try clambering over because if you were going in there to play cricket, you didn't want to walk all the way around. There was only one entrance and that was by the farm, by the what's now called the Skylark. But friends of mine got these horrible things through their knees and cut themselves terribly. It was very intimidating. It was designed to be intimidating, it was designed to keep people off those twelve acres or was it twenty eight acres probably, to keep them off anyway. And we stayed off it as much as possible. You didn't play on them and other areas were sacred too, everywhere. You never went in the bowling green, I still find it difficult to walk in through that gate, into the bowling green because it was saying it was no child ever went in there.
JT:
That's extraordinary.
PB:
Yes, now, you see children playing on the sacred turf which I just find completely bizarre. I'm horrified. So I have somehow or other imbibed all of that, all of the those restrictions and restraints.
JT:
Does that mean you didn't think of it as having any sort of wildlife or all those things that we now associate with the Common?
PB:
Yeah, that's interesting. I was an avid angler, so most of my early fishing experiences were on the Common and I loved bird watching and nature study generally. I mapped — sad boy — where the birds’ nests were and generally speaking didn't take eggs but knew where all the birds were so I have over the years noticed the changes in the bird life but the pond of course is completely different. We called it the pond, it’s now called the lake. It's completely different from how it was in the 1950s, early 1960s and how it had been for a hundred years. All of the banks were smooth and dry and just sandy, and gravelly. There were almost no trees or bushes or anything around. The common looks to my eyes infinitely more interesting and beautiful now, and it's just wonderful that it has been transformed in that way. There are far more environments for people, for creatures of various sorts to thrive. It was completely unlike that. We've all seen photographs of children paddling, Edwardian children paddling in the lake, in the pond with the dogs. That's what it was like in the 1950s. Nevertheless, we used to go fishing there because the islands and more particularly the one by the railway line which used to be called the Long Pond, the islands were never cut, so they were always verdant and magical and as children interestingly I've often wondered why we didn't walk across there. I only did it once or twice but we didn't — you would have expected us to wade out. I suppose, maybe it's the Parkies again, knowing that the Parkies would come along and do something unpleasant to us. But that was our bit of nature; two big bits of nature, were the Scope and the islands in the middle of the pond.
JT:
What about what we would call leisure facilities, playgrounds?
PB:
There was only one playground, which was for us, on the far side over what's now called the Cat's Back bridge. Although it's an old name, Cat's Back Bridge, it's not the name that we ever used: we called it the bridge I suppose. And right at the far end, Chivalry Road end, that was a completely different place. And I've written a bit about that because you can just sort of vaguely see it in the corners of some photographs. So sad to me that people didn't — and perhaps they do now because everyone takes photographs all the time — but they didn't take photographs of many things and if they exist, I'd love to see them. There are very few photographs of that, but it was the traditional London County Council children's playground, concrete again or whatever asphalt mostly was. But very, very hard. All of the equipment was metal, really, and incredibly dangerous. It was wonderful. It was great fun, but it felt very dangerous. There was a sandpit there that was nearly always closed because of polio. So there'd be a sign saying somebody else has got polio and so we can't use it for the moment, because there was a lot of polio as you know, in the 1950s. Friends of mine got polio, though not as far as I know from the sandpit there. There was a local A & E, which is now Bolingbroke school. That was a hospital, Bolingbroke Hospital, and so one ended up in Bolingbroke in the A&E Department there, or at St James, which is also closed, off St James's Drive. So various accidents, I had on the Common led to me going to one or other of those hospitals. But the playgrounds were, you've probably had people speak very eloquently about how wonderful the witches hat was, the very, very high slide and the bucking bronco. And swings that allegedly you could go all the way around, though I never saw anybody do that. But people were always falling and hurting themselves, but generally speaking, I don't think too many people really did — maybe did — but didn't damage themselves to too badly.
So there was that. There were no other playgrounds. Where the children's playground is now was a Pitch and Putt, which was very nice, but you needed, whatever it was sixpence or a shilling. So we rarely had six pence or a shilling. So we didn't do it very often but that was a very nice fenced-off area for Pitch and Putt that went all the way, from in fact, that whole wedge was Pitch and Putt and it closed down some time or other - it would be good to date it. And then for a long time that area looked very, very shabby and nothing much was happening. I think various attempts were made to plant it, but then it was turned over to a children's playground, very successfully. There was a time when there was another children's playground, but that was much later, I used to take our children to a playground, which is near where the passageway comes out from Routh and Baskerville Road. But that's now all grassed over again.
JT:
People have spoken of a Bandstand, in that area. Tell us about that, because apparently it's not on maps.
PB:
Right. The only band stand that I've ever seen on a map is the one that was on the Bolingbroke Grove side, and that was marked also by trees, and that was very close to the water fountain. Well, the water fountain’s gone, but the plinth is still there so you can see roughly where it was. So they were associated in some way, the bandstand and the plinth and there are many, many accounts of dances, open air dances, and brass bands, other groups, musicians and singers on the bandstands, but it's never clear exactly which bandstand they’re talking about, so that one's on the map. There are two other possible, three other possible sites of bandstands. There was one, apparently, near where the Spencer Park buildings are. There are references to a bandstand there. That was the area where I think most political and religious gatherings took place. And they seem to be somehow associated with the bandstand there, again on no map that I've ever seen, but just a textual reference in passing. There appears to have been one where this new children's playground is, and I think maybe the first Bowls Club was sited there. I've seen a photograph that suggests that there was a band stand there; next to it in the photograph is of some men playing bowls. It doesn't look like the current Bowls Club and you can see it in the background, it was quite a revelation to me when I realized that you could just see the remains of a Victorian bandstand behind it. Now whether it was there or not, I think it might have been, because there are complaints from people in Dorlcote Road and Baskerville Road about the noise from the Bandstand. Now, I've heard recently of something that I really should have remembered if it were there but I don't remember it. There was apparently a Bandstand near the place where I was saying the children's playground has disappeared was, the exit where Routh and Baskerville passageway comes out. I know that Cathy and Phil Rowntree remember it very clearly for some reason. I just don't remember it. I just don't remember it, which is very odd about memory. You remember certain things which may be false, maybe true. And you don't remember certain things. But they say that it was there. There were various buildings on the on the Common at different times. I've seen accounts of them being moved away, whether one of them was the bandstand, that bandstand? I don't know.
JT:
Going back to your own memories of buildings on the Common. What what can you actually bring up?
PB:
There was a very large changing room near the Hope. It's now pretty much where one of the clumps of pine trees is but that was really big and disgusting. It was very dirty and you know what I don't know whether it was very dirty but it was it was an uncomfortable place, and there are lots of newspaper accounts of how badly treated footballers were on the Common. No proper hot water, no showers and so on. But that was a big changing room. Really quite large, wood slatted, weather-boarded sort of building and that suddenly disappeared at some time and you can see that on maps. And there were public lavatories. There was a big lavatory, male and female hidden among trees on the path between that point that we've been talking about across from Routh Road to to the Cat's Back bridge. All of the the wooded area to the left hand side concealed a public lavatory. Of course it meant that people were really alarmed to go in there because they never knew who they might meet because there was always a lot of discussion about perverts. I don't know if that was the word that we used but anyway there was always an anxiety about those places and certainly from my reading of it in newspapers of the time, there has been a share of unfortunate activities on the common. So those are two buildings that stand out. There was a building on the other side, close to the Frying Pan, for example, that's disappeared. That was clearly marked. I think that was another place where probably the Parkies, or the ground keepers or whoever could have their cup of tea. Are there any other examples that I can think of? No, not offhand. There was some structure, building, on the path between Trinity Road and the Hope on that diagonal path. And you can just see the concrete base of it now. But that's just about it.
JT:
Fairly wild. Well, not wild, scruffy it sounds like.
PB:
Everything was scruffy but at the same time over-kept, over-manicured. It was strange but we didn't have the mental tools to think. “Oh it could be different.” No, we didn't say to ourselves. “Oh, wouldn't it be nice if, if some of the things that have happened subsequently had been done.” But there was not the mindset there, just wasn't the mindset for it. I can remember when the lake, for example, somebody had the good idea of hammering in, of edging much of the lake, particularly the large circular part of it and other parts too, edging it with willow poles, I suppose to create a harder bank rather than sloping, and they sprang into life, it was most remarkable. And bits of willow came up everywhere, but it was quite a shock in a way that the common didn't have to be smooth and cut, and edged, and fenced.
JT:
Green spaces can be used for events, festivals. What do you remember of any of those?
PB:
I was asked about this recently because somebody said that they remembered a circus on the Common and they remembered it in the Frying Pan. And the only time I remember anything really like it was over by North Side. It was out and it was Chipperfield’s circus. And since then I've seen adverts for that event, but I have only the vaguest memory of those kinds of event. It was very different, obviously ,on Clapham Common which wasn't that far away. And certainly, when I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time on Clapham Common, less on Tooting Bec Common and quite a lot of time in Battersea Park, but events tended to take place there as they still do, much to the annoyance of the Clapham Society. But Wandsworth Common has very rarely had events, which is interesting and I’m not quite sure why. But that has always been the case that Clapham Common has been the place where you have your music events or your circuses or funfairs. I think there was a funfair on the common. But that's the problem in a way with doing research into the history of the Common. It does tend to erase your own memories and create new ones that aren't memories.
JT:
Could I go back to something you said earlier about being members of boys’ clubs? That was always a thing about growing up in the 50s and 60s. I had it too. What sort of clubs and societies did you join?
PB:
Well I went to every church, just about. I don't think I was particularly religious, and attached to nearly all of these churches was some kind of boys' activity. There was one at the corner of the common where Allfarthing Library was subsequently built. It had been built there before and then it was knocked down during the Second World War and a new one was built. The Victoria Hall I think it was called then. I didn't know it at the time but that was a Primitive Plymouth Brethren chapel and they had a Sunday School. Ah yes, you just reminded me of something about events. They used to put a big tent on the grass on the Common, in front of — I don't know if it is still called the Victoria Hall, and they would have preachers and you'd all sit around. And as the day went on, it got darker and darker and darker, the chap who had been telling you about Jesus and things, he'd been drawing and you wouldn't quite know what he was doing and then the lights would go down and presumably I now know an ultraviolet light was shone, and there would be a cross illuminated on the drawing he'd made? And we would all go “Whoo.” That was very good. That was an unusual example of the Common being used in the 50s and 60s, I think.
Obviously, I know that in the late 19th century and early 20th century, it was used all the time for all sorts of political and religious activities and that there were fights that were riots and what have you. But the Common was a much more genteel place under the London County Council. So that was one place I went to and I think they had a children's, a boys club then, opposite Mary Magdalene. It's always called a Baptist but I think whether it was Baptist or Methodist — should have known the difference — but that had Life Boys and I used to go across Wandsworth Common to the Boys Brigade at Saint . . . Oh goodness, what's it called? It's on St John's Hill. It's now being converted into flats, but that was Boys Brigade, that was Cubs and Scouts. And that's an interesting point in itself. That it's a class issue, really? There was a Cubs or Scouts Hut, where it used to be called the Romany Club: tennis courts, private courts and I think maybe it's still there. But although I lived 200 yards away I wouldn't have dreamt of going there because it appeared to be a different class, which is sort of, I now realize, was totally absurd at the time, but that's not what it felt like in 1959. So instead of going 200 yards to the Romany Club I would traipse all the way to Clapham Junction to be in the Cubs and one or other of these organizations, or perhaps it was all of them, played football because it, that was one's central life interest probably. And that nearly always took place on somewhere or other on Wandsworth Common.
JT:
Can we talk a bit about the about the community around around the prison? If we think of it now, we've got the Fitzhugh, we've got he Toast Rack, we've got the prison and Heathfield. What sort of community was it?
PB:
Well where I grew up behind the prison, it was extraordinary in one way, extraordinarily homogeneous. Every single adult male was a prison officer. One had very little contact . . . I had a certain amount of contact with the children of the Governors, or Deputy Governors who in class terms were different. But on the one hand homogeneous, pretty much all of them had been in the Services, usually the Army, had been in the war, most of them, or subsequently. A lot of them had been professional soldiers, and then had become prison officers. In the main their wives did not work full-time, although quite a few, including my mother, used to work part-time in different jobs in the area. Where they were diverse was in their origins, because unlike police forces, in which it tends to be that everybody stays within their county or whatever, in the prison service you could be moved to any part of the country including for all I know Scotland, could have gone to Dartmoor, I think could have gone anywhere. My father was and this is by the by, but my father was unusual in that he stayed at Wandsworth all his working life from 1947 until he retired in 1968 or whenever it was. But it did mean that there were people from Wales, from the Northeast and Northwest, from Scotland, from all over. So every kind of accent and that was probably unusual.
But we all knew each other, the children knew each other very well, and there was a great esprit de coRP:
s, you could say, because this enormous green that I spoke about, the size of a couple of football pitches, could be used, could be repuRP:
osed periodically. For example, we always had enormous bonfires on November 5th or near that time, but to do that, you had to collect enormous amounts of wood. I mean, the bonfire was as big as a house. But to do that we were allowed to borrow trucks — how do you describe these. those you pull — because because prisoners tended to work on the houses in the area. You often saw prisoners walking around and they were pulling them. There were no motorised vehicles, they were pulling carts and we were allowed to borrow the carts. And we would go all over Wandsworth, normally about a mile radius, a mile this side of the Common. So around here, where I'm living now, or down to Allfarthing Lane and what have you. We would go along from door to door, to door, to door, collecting firewood, and then dragging it back and gradually for about a month the piled bonfire would rise, we would use it and we would come around here. But this area, where we're living now, this was the area where the toffs lived, we thought, but that meant that we would tap them for money in various ways. I don't mean beg, but Bob-a-Job if we were Cubs. This is the area where we would choose to go Bob-a-Jobbing. So I would do all the houses around here and then you would get to clean the silver or do a bit of gardening or clean somebody's shoes or what-have-you for Bob a Job. So we did that, carol singing, we’d come and they would pay us to go away as soon as possible. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. We were singing on all of these these streets.
Later on I worked - I think it's an estate agents now on the corner at the County Arms but I worked in a grocer's there and my job other than stacking bottles was to ride a sit-up-and-beg butcher’s bicycle around all these streets where the more affluent people would have placed an order. They didn't go shopping as much, or they would just place an order with Mr. Haddock and Mr. Haddock would fulfill the order, the boxes. And then I would take the bicycle around and what struck me — my parents were relatively abstemious, didn't have very much money but also were not great drinkers and so on — what struck me and stayed with me was that in all these streets, these people, drank huge amounts. So these cardboard boxes were full of whiskey and gin. And I can remember falling off my bike, on not many occasions, fortunately, and the bottles smashing, and the alcohol spilt everywhere. But I found that interesting, it was obvious they were very different. I couldn't really make an estimate of what the people were actually like, when you're just delivering these cardboard boxes.
But also during the 60s there was a kind of a change so the houses that had been generally speaking so far as I know owned by families, were increasingly subdivided and and rented out. A lot of nurses lived in these streets. So that will be true of this area and also the Toast Rack. It's not suRP:
rising, but it might have been suRP:
rising that a lot of people were immigrants, for example, living in the houses. It's probably ethnically less diverse now, in some ways than it was in the 60s. My mother was Greek — my parents had met before the second war in Alexandria in Egypt. And when she came to England she found it very difficult. She had one or two Greek-speaking friends; they weren't necessarily ethnically Greek, but they were Greek-speaking. And one, for example, lived on what we always used to call Nick OSHA road because none of us knew where Nicosia was – it had no relevance to us at all. Now everybody calls it Nicosia, and it reminds me of we said earlier about Magdalen Road because we had no idea of the association of this area with Magdalen College, Oxford. So, we called it Magdalen [Mag-da-len]and I still call it Magdalen Road. I don't know what you call it.
JT:
I call it Magdalen [Maudlin] really, because I lived in Oxford and expected it to be called that. What about the Fitzhugh Estate?.
PB:
Fitzhugh is interesting because that was built when I was very young, and I kind of vaguely remember, I think it was being built in 51, 52 53. In a way we were quite cautious about the people on the Fitzhugh estate, because the post-war baby bulge, which we all know about, the boomers, meant that there were enormous numbers of children growing up in around the prison, where I was. It was quite tribal, tribes were everywhere and the same was true of Fitzhugh because all those houses were filled with so far as I know, so far as I remember, with young families. And in the early 60s, when the Mods began, there was a sort of difficulty among us, except that they used to come to our youth club behind the prison, the Green and there was never any trouble, never any fights or anything. But there was also a kind of a residual fear. Perhap that's just how it is: people, or perhaps young people tend to feel that way about a kind of patch, their patch and other people coming from elsewhere. But it is interesting that I didn't have any friends, I didn't visit anybody on the Fitzhugh Estate. I always wanted to go up the house, up inside, you know, to see the view but never did. Some of the children went to Earlsfield School and went to Beatrix Potter, but I think probably the majority of them either went across the Common. Oh, I think they probably went to Swaffield, or perhaps to Honeywell and Belleville, I don't know. Probably not. It's a good question, where they went.
JT:
Okay. Do you remember the prefabs?
PB:
I do remember the prefabs. Yes. Or some of them. Again, it's a problem because I've researched them quite carefully, their locations. So, I know where they all were. I know the numbers and everything. Exactly their distribution. I've seen lots of photos. Fortunately, we now have photographs, and so perhaps that's displaced my memories. But what I actually remember are prefabs along Bolingbroke. Rather than, say, I don't remember them on Bellevue, I don't remember them on the Spencer Park side, though there were plenty along that road. But they were inhabited and then they weren't inhabited and they were left empty for a long time and they became dilapidated. Probably that length of time was not great. Maybe it was only a year or two. But they got smashed up, and we used to go in there a bit and probably did our degree of smashing up, but it was unfortunate in all sorts of ways. Because they were so far as I could see, originally, they were cherished houses. But for various reasons they were knocked down. The only bit that I remember is the bit near the Three Island Pond and along that section. I don't remember anything else, though weirdly — this is a error of memory obviously — I always remember them being by the railway line as well, whereas, where I know from maps and I think I remember lavatories there, and you can still see the concrete bases of them. I remember them there, but it's simply impossible. There are no maps to show them there or anything remotely like it. There’s too much vegetation and the ground is more uneven there. So the only reasonable place to have put them is where I remember by the Three Island Pond.
JT:
So did you know people who lived there?
PB:
I didn't know anybody there. They were all emptied about 1954-1955 and they were all knocked down by the end of 1956. Something like that. So it's not suRP:
rising. I was a bit too young. Probably because I wasn't walking over there frequently enough It would only have been when I was walking to the . . . we tended not to walk to Clapham Junction across the Cat's Back bridge. We used to go around Windmill Drive, Windmill Road way, but when we were going to the swings, as we called it, the playground, we would have seen them then.
JT:
I’ve asked this question of other people, was it a safe place?
PB:
Well I have to say yes and no. You were always anxious that the Parkies would get you, so that didn't feel, you know, too safe. You knew that there were men who might want to tamper with you and so that was a concern, but you just took that for granted and so on. You tended not to be by yourself and that wasn't a real concern. But you're talking about the feeling of being safe, rather than were you actually safe? There were murders, there weren't that many, but that played a part in our imagination. There were some quite notorious murders on the common. I had a friend a year or two older than me who claimed that he had discovered a body which he called — it became a sort of famous story among the children — “the lady with the red shoes”. I now realize from reading that it wasn't just red shoes, there was a lot of red involved and she had been murdered and he claimed that he'd found her or found something associated with her, and I pooh-poohed this. Well, no, I believed him absolutely, but at the same time was completely skeptical. But funnily enough in my reading, I did find that there was an unnamed boy, who did find something that the police considered to be an important clue. So so it may be that Ronnie Thomas was not telling a fib.
But it was also the days of the Teddy Boys. And in fact, there is no way that Teddy Boys would have picked on children that I recollect. Again, you're talking about the feeling of being safe. So you were concerned that Teddy Boys might suddenly manifest themselves. There was, however, there were kids who were bloody horrible. I can remember Christmas Day, when I was about six or seven, six maybe, I had been given my heart's desire which was a rifle. I mean, a toy rifle, with a white stock with a star on it, and it must have been quite snowy, icy and I went onto the Scope by myself and it must have been Christmas Day and I was probably going bang, bang, bang, because it had caps in it to fire. And two boys came over, older than me, and wrested it from me, and taunted me and mocked and so on. And I was getting a bit desperate, as you can imagine, but I just assumed that eventually they would tire of this foolish game and give it back. But they didn't. They picked it up by the barrel and smashed it on a tree trunk, so left me without my cherished rifle. So there were some people around, some young men around who were pretty horrible and you were always sort of concerned about them, but on the whole — it does sound rather awful, doesn't it — on the whole you didn't feel that that vulnerable.
JT:
Can we can we just change tack a bit? We now have the Common that we know. What are the three main things you would identify as having changed either for the better or the worse since that period?
PB:
Well I've used this expression 'the return of the repressed'. I love the fact that the the Common had once been wild, a very wild place socially, but also obviously, in terms of nature, and the London County Council's attempt to smooth it off and grind it down and discipline it, police it and fence it and so on. I love the fact that that has changed, and there are loads of trees, greater tree diversity now probably. I find it tragic that some of the old black poplars have gone, of course, but other trees have taken their place. I love all the tree planting, I love the areas that have been let's say ‘allowed to’ — I mean, I know they're managed, we've talked about it before but it takes a lot of managing to make things wild again, and to create a kind of balance. I think that's extraordinary, extraordinarily successful and I’m very happy about that.
I love the fact that more and more people of all ages use the Common in different ways and I think it was probably more probably more homogeneous — I hadn’t really thought about that too much — in the past but it's much less sport dominated than it was, though there's plenty of sport.
I love the fact that people can do all sorts of things on the Common and it means that people are around and doing things. A great variety of things. I love the openness of it, and generally speaking people don't trouble each other. It's a lovely form of peaceful, very peaceful coexistence. That's very pleasing. You asked for three, didn't you? I'm delighted that these are all presumably quite connected.
One of the most interesting useful things, strangely, is the pathway between between the major part of the Common through what used to be the Extension, the cricket pitches, right the way through to the Patriotic Building and John Archer Way and the building of that bridge there, which obviously didn't exist before. There were no bridges between Trinity Road and Battersea Rise. But there are now two, one across to Emmanuel which I could have done with when I was at school because it meant I had to do a big loop round, but I'm leaving that on the side. It's just increased the accessibility from every direction and in every direction, and I like, and those are very, very valuable things. I like the Skylark, I like the Naturescope. There are all sorts of things that I like, but you're asking me also, is there anything I don't like. Probably, but I can't think of anything.
JT:
Put that another way. Do you think there are threats?
PB:
There are several reasons why I do the historical work I do on the Common, but one of them is because I wanted to understand what it had been like and how it had been transformed and what the threats to it were. I know for a fact that it was twice the size of what it is now. In fact, it has been smaller. I’m so happy looking back in the historical record to see that local people worked so hard to secure what remained and enlarge it. So the Common is larger now than it was in 1871. Which I'm very pleased about, thanks to John Buckmaster and all sorts of other people, Ransome, what have you. But there are always pressures on the Common to, I would say, destroy it or remove parts of it or to make it less versatile. And so the work I do, I hope, reminds people that Wandsworth Common is really a very precious resource. It can be repuRP:
osed in all sorts of ways without destroying it, it can be used by all sorts of people in all sorts of different ways, but it requires vigilance and care. And I'm so pleased that there are so many people who, you know, the MAC and and the Friends of Wandsworth Common and so on, who are really devoting themselves to making sure the place stays really good. And long may it last. They're probably the most important things of all really the kind of what you might call a kind of democratic local response. And that was something that the Conservators in 1871 wanted, and in many ways achieved: they wanted local control of the Common which was taken away by the Metropolitan Board of Works and then London County Council, who did their thing, and in many ways, they did fine things as well as some disastrous things. But we're back now really to thinking of it as a very, very precious local resource, and something well worth looking after.
JT:
Thank you. We've covered all the things we've talked about before, is there anything, after all that, that has occurred to you that you'd like to say about the Common?
PB:
Well, it's not a plug for me, but it's a plug for history. When I grew up, I thought that Wandsworth was nowhere, nothing happened in Wandsworth Common or the area. That it was a bit of a pit, I thought. When I started to get interested in it — I've always been interested in the history of the common but didn't know that much about it — and when I started to ask around about the history people said, oh, Wandsworth Common doesn't have a history. It's just, you know, just maybe a few sheep because there were sheep put on the common in the 1920s and presumably had been in the 18th and 19th century as well, to cut the grass. But there's nothing ever happened around here. It's nowhere.
And one thing that I have learned, and it's a wonderful thing because it keeps giving, is that the more you study the history of Wandsworth Common and the people around it, the more extraordinary — or maybe it's not extraordinary, perhaps this would be true of anywhere you went — you would find it was equally extraordinary and remarkable and marvelous. But that's what I’ve learned really, that there is so much to to discover and it's all very wonderful. So anyway in a word Wandsworth Common is not nowhere, it's somewhere very important and it's the product of millennia, centuries, decades, years, and so on, and they're all inscribed as it were in the fabric of the place, you know, the nature of its grass, the nature of its smoothness, its trees, its shapes, it's funny shapes. Those railway lines that cut across and the roads and what have you. That it can be read, I think it has a very, very rich history that I think a lot of people would enjoy if they find out more about it.
JT:
Thank you very much.
END
XXX
CHRISTINE BROWN
20th January 2023
Interviewer: John Turner
JT:
For the record, could you just tell me your name and your date of birth?
CB:
I'm Christine Mary Brown. I was Christine Mary Brooks and I was born on the 25th of February 1952.
JT:
And you were born in the famous prefabs.
CB:
I was born in St Theresa's Hospital in Wimbledon and then moved immediately into the prefab. So that's where I went when I was a few days old.
JT:
So tell me about the prefab and your family there.
CB:
The prefab was on Spencer Park and we lived at number 69. It was quite a big building for me. I mean I was there from nought to seven, so to me it seemed quite spacious because we had a kitchen, a lounge, two bedrooms, a separate toilet, and a bathroom. And a garden out back, a small one, which we grew vegetables on and then a large one at the front, which is where we had grass and flowers and overlooked the trees and outside. So, we would sort of sit out there if anybody came to visit or anything, and I played out there because I had a swing as well.
JT:
That must have looked out on to the big houses on the other side of the street.
CB:
We did. Yes, we did. The whole of the road was tree-lined. And I've been back since because my daughter lives in Wandsworth and the trees are still there in the same places. Whether the same trees or not, I do not know. But yes, and the big houses across the road we looked out on and the road was very quiet. I don't think anybody in the prefabs had a car, but I presume the people in the big houses did because some of them had big driveways to go around and came out one way and came out the other and whatever. So yes we looked out on them.
JT:
Did you have extended family around that part?
CB:
We did. Both my sets of grandparents. One lived in Wandsworth in Longstaff Road and my other set of grandparents lived in Elmsley road which isn't there anymore — that all got knocked down when they built the big road that came through Wandsworth and they lived in a house that was just the upstairs. When you went in the house, you went upstairs and they didn't have a bathroom. You had to walk down the stairs into the garden and across the little yard, to go to the toilet. And they didn't have a bath. So we actually had a tin bath. So yeah, that was my other set of grandparents and then my uncle and aunt, one of them lived in Battersea and another one lived in Tooting.
JT:
So the prefabs were an improvement?
CB:
It was to my parents, who lived in a very damp, not very nice private flat up a huge flight of stairs, according to my mum, when my brother was born and so it was hard work and it wasn't very healthy, as I said it was damp. And that was why we moved in, because my brother was ill a lot, he had a lot of chest coughs and whatever and the doctor said he would help them find a place that was more suitable, a council house, and so he helped them get the prefab when he was just a few months old. And I think they went in new. I think he went, they went in to the prefabs new.
JT:
What did your parents do for a living?
CB:
My dad was a machine-tool setter. He had to leave school when he was 14 and in fact he didn't go to secondary school at all, his father did not want him to go to secondary school. So he stayed in the junior school for another two years and then left and just went out to work at 14, and he did machine-tool setting all his life which I have to say was very sad because he didn't like it. But he did it because he wanted to support his family. So that's what he did.
And my mum was a secretary to a chartered accountants. Actually the sign on the wall is still still there in Wandsworth, when we've been there there's the building where she used to work when we were there. She went back to work when my brother was born. When I was born, she stayed at home with me for the first five years and then went back to work. My grandmother looked after my brother when he was a baby.
JT:
You’ve told me about the new prefab and the house and very kindly sent me a sketch. What do you remember about the neighbours in that area?
CB:
I can only remember my time at the prefab as great. I can't think of one negative thing for me from nought to seven when we left. I was quite sad to leave because everyone was lovely. Everybody was just really kind. I don't remember a lot of the neighbours, like being in our house or we went to them, but everybody was always very nice, it always seemed to be a nice unit.
I did have friends to play with so I didn't — I wasn't allowed out to play in the street until I was five then I could go out. And the immediate neighbours, we had on one side, you're looking at my prefab, one to the right, they actually had a lovely aviary full of budgerigars. And I was allowed to go around every now and again to pop in the aviary and have a look. With these wonderful budgerigars flying around everywhere, it was brilliant. And they also had a dog like a corgi-type dog, and he was called Choker, because I always thought it was such a strange name. I know. Such a strange name and I never did find out why he was called Choker. But he was friendly. My mum was frightened of dogs, but I was allowed to stroke him because he was friendly.
So, that was, that was nice. And the other neighbours, I don't remember my friends actually being immediately to next door. I don't know how I was friends with them really because they weren't school friends. Most of them were a little bit older than me, but we used to sort of just . . . I showed you a photograph actually, and there's a picture of a little boy, hiding by a tree, and it was me with another girl. And she was, I remember her name she was called Jackie and we used to ride our bikes a lot, and he would be there as well, but he was a bit shy. So he was hiding in the photograph. And there are a few other children and we used to go out and play.
JT:
And did you play only in the Spencer Park wedge of the Common, or did you go further?
CB:
No, and I actually went even though I was five. Now seems ridiculously young. From five to seven when we left, I was supposed to stay within an area around the prefab. I wasn't allowed to even go too far, when I used to go to a place called the Frying Pan, which was a pink cinder circle, oval, which I presume they played football in or did other things, that we would ride our bikes down the slope into this oval, and that was a little bit far. And I always remember when we did that, we didn't do it for long because we knew that we weren't really supposed to be that far away. So we would then go back to the area which was at the end of the prefabs, which we called the dumps, which was where I wondered if it was the soil, when they built the prefabs and they laid the, you know, the base and put soil at the end of where the end of the prefabs was and just dumped it there. I don't know if that's why we called it the dumps, I don't know. But they were like bumps but unless I mis-heard everybody and we called it the dumps and everybody else called it the bumps, I don't know, but it was, it was rocky bumpy ground. And that was the best because we could ride our bikes up and down them, which was really great fun. And then occasionally, when we'd go around to the back of the prefabs, and there were little trees there, and we would climb the trees even though I was told not to climb the trees. And I remember falling out once of the tree and I hurt my arm and shoulder, but when I got back home, I daren't tell my mum and I can remember her like saying "Oh come on, in you come" and grabbing my arm and me something like "oh my gosh, that's so painful" but I still didn't dare tell her that I'd fallen out of a tree but when I did things like that I actually sort of stopped doing it, I'd sort of thought I better not do that again. So I stopped climbing trees.
JT:
You said it was a little bit like being in the country.
CB:
Yeah, definitely. It's funny actually because it was very much like it is now except the prefabs aren't there, because the paths are the same, the trees lining the paths in the little bit of Wandsworth Common that I was on. And there were still areas that were a bit bushy because around this frying pan bit, there were like bushes and shrubs and they're still there, they still line around the frying pan. It's just amazing how very little it's changed and the road is still really quiet. Spencer Park is still a quiet road, because we got out and had a look to see if we could see anything at all that resembles something where we can see a pattern or anything in the grass, or anything like that. No, nothing. I couldn't see anything. But the trees were all there and the houses were there.
JT:
Did you actually play with the kids across the road?
CB:
No, I think even at that age we knew we weren't the same as them. They were, I don't even remember seeing children from there. But they were in these big houses behind walls behind big plants in driveways, and we just played on the road. If the ball went in their garden, we were very nervous because we would sort of sneak in and grab it back. And we tried not to because we just didn't know how they would react. But we never had any . . . as far as I know (I have no idea about my parents) as far as I know, they were just quite happy for us to be there. I don't think there was ever any trouble. We never, I never remembered there being any troubled teenagers or anything like that. I presume they were built and they were mainly built for families or older people.
So yeah, we never really had any contact with them.
JT:
Now if you left at seven you must have gone to school from the prefabs.
CB:
Yes, yes. We went to Swaffield Road School, my brother and I. That was across . . . if you're in Spencer Park, it was towards Wandsworth and it was through the back streets and there at the end of Swaffield Road there was this huge school. And it was a big school, a big Junior School which actually separated the boys from the girls even at Junior School, junior level. And the Infants was mixed and we were in a different part of the building, but I remember my brother went there first because my mum used to walk us to school and I used to choose to walk to school with her bicycle and I sat in a seat at the back of the bike and then she would walk my brother to school and then we would come back. And then when I went to school at five then we were both . . . my brother by then had gone to the big school. He might have done a year where we did it together. He went off to Tooting Bec school and my mum and I walked, walked to the school together and there was a little sweet shop on the way back on one of the corners of the roads and if I was lucky she'd take me in there and buy something like a blackjack or a fruit salad.
JT:
What sort of a school was it? Was it big and relatively modern or was it old and grubby?
CB:
No, really old. Really big and old one of these, - and it's still there — huge brick, red brick building with gates, great big gates, and it's got signs up outside the doors. Girls, boys. And ours was round the back. Outside toilets, we had outside toilets, so if you wanted to go to the toilet you had to walk across the playground to the toilet block, which were covered in plastic, but you got wet going across the playground. I don't remember it being grubby. It was, I always remember it being a nice school. I liked it. It was, you can't see out the windows. It's one of those schools where you go to, and the windows are up here. So you never sat and looked out the window. There were no windows down here. There were up top and were too high. And I always remember where they had desks and you have to sit next to a boy, which I never liked to do because they were always fidgeting and being a nuisance and being naughty. It was quite pleasant, though. Quite enjoyed going there. It was really nice.
JT:
I remember you told me about the great fire in the prefabs.
CB:
Yes, yes. It's funny because I was thinking about anything else that happened at the prefab that was exciting or interesting. And that was probably the main thing, which, as I said before, actually did affect me for quite a while afterwards. I'd gone to bed as normal, my brother and I shared a bedroom, I don't remember him being in the bedroom at the time, so he must have been out somewhere else or doing something in the lounge, or perhaps it wasn't that late at night, but it was Christmas and I think my parents said afterwards that it was started, they think, by the paper chains, candles and paper chains across the ceilings. We all used to have paper chains across the ceilings in those days, but we never had lit candles. So it wouldn't happen to us, but it caught alight. And by the time everybody knew about it, it was really alight and they couldn't get anything out of the house, they couldn't get any furniture, nothing. The people were fine. Everybody was fine, and they did have children, but I can remember being in my bedroom and it was dark but it would be Christmas Eve, whatever time. And I remember there was a noise, there was something going on, and I was a bit nervous, a bit worried. And I remember my mum coming in and just saying "you stay here, you'll see, everything's fine. Stay here", you know. And I thought,"oh, okay." And I remember these, these people walking by the curtain, by the side and in front of the house where my bedroom looked out and they were walking by. People, men and whatever walking by. And I presume that must be the firemen coming around with the hose pipes, but I wasn't allowed to see anything. I think sometimes that probably made it worse because my imagination, then, of course, was thinking. "What on earth's going on?" Whatever.
All I can remember was the next morning there was no prefab, just literally burnt bits of whatever, whatever it was made of. And I was very nervous after that of my parents, not not having the same thing happen to our house. So I used to every night, say, "have you turned this off?" and "have you turned that off and have you turned the oven off and is it safe?" And my mum would say "yes, yes, yes." And I used to call them the rules and in the end I used to say, to my mum before I went to bed "Do you know, all the rules?" and she said, "Yeah, I know the rules" and then that was like,"Oh okay. Then you've got everything settled, it's fine." And then I would go to sleep and be quite happy about it. But I did that for years, I'd say "You know the rules" because it was quite traumatic.
And that was the time when my dad then went around to collect money from all the prefabs because they’d lost everything, and they wanted to get the kids some presents for Christmas. I presume they'd been re-homed by the council, but they wanted to buy some presents. So, my dad went out to all the prefabs, and every time he went to a house, it was Christmas. "This is always so nice of you to to do this and to collect money." So he'd have a drink, he'd be given a glass of sherry or a beer. He went with another guy, and my mum said, when he got home, he was absolutely pie-eyed. He was really drunk, which was not my dad. My dad never got drunk but all the other prefabs had helped collect the money so they could buy the children some presents for Christmas.
JT:
Do you remember any sort of big public events on the Common?
CB:
No, basically no. I was thinking today about what happened. I mean I was far too young to remember this, I've only seen the photograph but when I was 16 months old, the Queen had her coronation, and I've just looked at the picture and it's in Elmsley Road which is literally really only across a couple of roads towards the river Thames. It was down there down there by the train line, that train line that's still there. And the whole of the road has got a great big table in it, with all the children, my brother, and my cousins, and everybody in that road, all having a wonderful party and there is my mum holding me and a few other people with babies and small children who didn't join in the actual party. But that's the only thing, and of course I don't remember, I was 16 months old but other than that no, I don't remember their ever being anything on the Common at all, no, sort of fun fairs, or circuses or anything like that. That didn't seem to happen.
JT:
It probably wasn’t your part of the Common, was it?
CB:
I would have thought not because it was quite . . . well to me, it was big. It wasn't very big, that part of the Common really was quite small because Wandsworth Common obviously, is known for other places as well. Because it's quite nice having all these Commons, Clapham Common, Tooting Common and Wandsworth Common.
JT:
Do you remember where you went to the dentist, where you went to the doctor, where your mum went to shop?
CB:
Yes, I do remember the shops. I thought about this. We used to go to the shops a lot in Wandsworth High Street. By the way, I think we walked everywhere. I don't ever, I hardly remember getting on the bus, you just walked because that was what we did. Everybody walked. They didn't have the money or whatever: we just walked. So we would walk down Wandsworth High Street. If you go down East Hill and West Hill, go down into the High Street, there was a Co-op. My mum used to use the Co-op. So we would do our shopping there and perhaps she even did it on the way back from work, sometimes she'd walk down to get the food and then come back and then the dentist and the doctor were the other way. They were towards Clapham Junction and I don't remember completely where they were, but that was where . . . that was again local, very local. And if we were going to get big things or, you know, sort of china or crockery or whatever, then we would go down to Clapham Junction. Again I don't remember going in a bus. So I think you walked. They had a Woolworths there and we used Woolworths a lot because, and this I do remember and I wasn't very old and I've just remembered it, I was about 3 years old in a pushchair and a child came up to me and scratched me in the head. Scratched my forehead, just came up was being very mean and just scratched me and I had that scar on my forehead for about 10 years, it was so deep. I can remember it being in Woolworths when they had, you know, wooden floors. And we used that shop quite a lot. And on the other side there was a big department store called Arding and Hobbs. Which actually my dad worked in there for a very short while. I'm thinking between jobs, he was in between jobs and needed some money. He worked in the toy department in Arding and Hobbs.
And that was probably more expensive, so we didn't use it quite so much, but it was mainly Woolworths and the Co-op that was the local stores.
I also remember something else today, we had a budgerigar as well. I suddenly remembered that, I don't think we got it from the chap next door . . . perhaps we did. Yeah, we had a budgerigar because I remember when we did move, we had to take the budgerigar with us. We didn't have a car or anything so we actually went in the removal van, with the people, because when I was seven, the council decided they were going to flatten the prefabs because they were only supposed to be temporary, and they would have flattened them and make it go back to the Common and my mum and dad had to move somewhere. So we got offered, it appears, several places in London, but my mum and dad didn't want to live in a flat and they weren't too keen on London. They thought they'd live outside of London. So we were offered these new council houses, in Merstham so we moved into a brand new council house in Merstham in Surrey. My dad at that time was working as a machine-tool setter in Croydon, so every day . . . he bought himself one of these Quickly, sort of motorbike type things, it was called a Quickly and he rode that every day to Croydon and back, whatever weather, whatever time of the year, and he had to be there at 8:00 in the morning and he didn't get home until about 7:00 in the evening. And then eventually he got a job in Reigate which was more local, so he got back a bit earlier.
END
XXX
Interview with Dean Clark
27th October 2022
Interviewer: Ros Page
RP:
Good afternoon Dean and thank you very much for talking to me today about your memories of life around Wandsworth Common. I know you lived here when you were a very small child and that you've travelled some distance to talk to us today, for which we are very grateful. So thank you for that. I wonder whether we could start off if you tell me your name, your date of birth, where you live now, and, if you're still working, what your occupation is, or what it was before you retired.
DC:
Okay, well, my name is Dean Hatherley Clark. I was born on 12th March 1952 at Hammersmith Hospital. I have been living in Sheffield the last 50 years. I'm 70 years old now. I can't believe that I'm 70 years old. I'm a retired, probation officer. I ended up as a manager in the probation service in Sheffield. So I was born in 1952. I lived in Belleville Road, number 7, the top flat, from when I was born until I was about six and a half, seven, so between 1952 and end of 1958. I’ve got very strong memories of living there, as you do because your childhood memories being so strong.
RP:
Fantastic. Well, we look forward to hearing more about them in a moment or two.
Perhaps you could just tell me a little bit about your immediate family, any brothers and sisters, your parents, what they did.
DC:
Okay. My parents met during the war. My father was a Battersea boy. He started off living in Jupiter Street in Battersea and then Spencer Road, I think, or it might be the other way around. His parents lived eventually in 59 Longstaff Road in Wandsworth. They were our grandparents. We went there a lot, backing on to George the Fifth Park. So my father's side of the family were very much Battersea/Wandsworth people.
The only reason that I exist, and my sister, is that during the war my father joined up aged 20, joined the RAF. He was born in 1919 so he would have been 20. And he was posted eventually to RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. He was just a mechanic, a technician. I think he serviced the bombers that were flying over to Germany.
And he was in the Salvation Army, going back generations, as was my mother's side of the family. My mother was born and brought up in Boston in Lincolnshire. So she went to the Salvation Army in Boston. He was in Coningsby, 10 miles away at the RAF, playing in the RAF band. And every Sunday, he went to the nearest Salvation Army Citadel which was Boston. So they both played in the band in Boston, basically, that's how they met. He was nine years older than her.
So when the war ended, he came back to Battersea to live with his parents in Longstaff Road. He became a bandmaster at Battersea Salvation Army and she got a job in Welwyn Garden City. They kept in contact and he invited her basically to come and live in London. So, she came down, lived in Fulham, I think, and they courted and so on, and basically they got married in 1948. And this is how they ended up at Belleville Road.
My father, Cyril Clark and his best mate Wally, who were in the RAF together, they got their demob money. This is what my mother told me, they got their demob money with their suit, and Wally was a bit of a wide boy, became a millionaire eventually, worked his way up selling second-hand cars and things. But his idea was to buy a house. So he bought 7 Belleville Road. What stuck in my mother's throat is that he borrowed my father's demob money to help him buy that house and get the mortgage. And then he split it into two, lived downstairs and rented the upper flat to my father. So my father had given him the money to buy the house and then had to pay him rent for it. My mother never got over that.
RP:
That's how he ended up being a millionaire no doubt.
DC:
Yeah, exactly.
So their first job, my father, Cyril and Wally, was wiring up, they got jobs as electricians when they were demobbed, wiring up the prefabs. I don't know exactly where but presumably in the surrounding area, might have even been Clapham Common. So they worked as electricians, putting the electric wiring in the prefabs. So Wally and his wife lived downstairs and we lived in the top flat, 7 Belleville Road,
RP:
Can you describe the flat in Belleville?
DC::
Yeah, it was obviously quite small. Tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom, little toilet at the top of the stairs. Three bedrooms, I think, the main bedroom and then two little bedrooms for me and my sister. And a front room/dining room.
RP:
So it was completely self-contained, you weren't having to share a kitchen or toilet or bathroom?
DC:
No. You went through the front door, straight up the stairs. It was all blocked off, I think. And, you know, you got to the top and there was the flat. Walking past it today . . . it was called Oak Lodge, and it's still called Oak Lodge, because above the front door, there's the same tiling as you walked to the front door, and above the front door there's like a stained glass window with sort of oak leaves. It says Oak Lodge and it’s still there, amazing, you know, sort of 60, 70 years later.
RP:
Did you tell whether it’s still in flats?
DC: It is, it’s still in two flats.
RP:
And is it your impression that at the time that you lived there, a lot of the houses in that road and perhaps neighbouring roads were also subdivided into flats or bedsits ?
DC:
On that side of the road, I can't remember. The other side of the road the houses were smaller. On our side of the road they were like villas. When you look at them now they’re beautiful sort of George-type villas, but at the time it was a very working class area. Can't believe what it looks like now, you know, with houses for 1.8 million and so on as they are now.
But at the time we called ourselves the dirty kids of Battersea. You know, we sort of hung around, we were poor, there's lino on the floor, there're no caRP:
ets, there's no fridge. You know, we were quite a poor family. My father eventually worked at Morgan Crucible company, worked his way up, but he started as a factory hand, worked his way up as a foreman and a chargehand and eventually became a Works Manager. And he got my mother the job at Morgan's in the labs, in the sort of research Labs.
RP:
So did she work when you were young children?
DC:
Yeah, I mean she stopped working to bring us up but, yes, she started off working then went back working at Morgan's. So what I'm saying is that compared to now, it was very much a respectable working class community. The bloke who lived next door was a postman, I remember. Our friend over the road, John, his mother didn't work, his father was a police officer. So it was very much certainly not middle class, certainly not upper middle class, which is what it seems to be like now.
RP:
I believe that your parents owned a car, which probably was quite unusual in those days?
DC:
It was unusual. If you look at the photos of the time of me and my sister there were absolutely no cars parked outside the houses at all. I think because my father was a bit of a mechanic, he had this very old car. He probably bought it second-hand. Probably him and Wally brought it together or whatever. I don't know. But yes, it's very unusual. Even more unusual was that he taught my mother to drive and she told me that it was incredibly unusual for a woman to drive. She had funny looks when she was seen driving along in this car.
RP:
I believe you have a photograph of your mother driving a car. Is that right?
(shows it to the camera)
DC:
Can you see it?
RP:
Rather wonderful old car, isn't it?
DC:
It was. I'm sure he would have not bought that new. That would have been an old banger for him.
RP:
And I believe you've also got a photograph of you and your sister Jenny as young children outside the house?
DC:
I’ve got two. This one, this is a later car, like a Ford Popular or an Austin Seven or something like that. That was my father's car. That's me in my cowboy uniform. We used to play Cowboys and Indians.
RP:
Cowboys and Indians were very popular, I seem to recall.
DC:
Because it was on the telly, you know. The Lone Ranger and all the American sort of cowboy things is what we watched all the time. So when we went out to play on the street it was always Cowboys and Indians and bows and arrows, things like that.
So that's me outside 7 Belleville Road with our car.
This one is not very clear but this is me and my sister. I'm probably about three. She's probably about six. That is outside our house, 7 Belleville Road. And you can see there's not one single car on that side or the other side of Belleville Road as you go up the hill on the other side.
RP:
So it must have been much quieter.
DC:
It was very unusual to see a car. So we would play out on the street. Every sort of quarter of an hour or so you might have to step back to let a car pass.
But the main thing I remember is the rag and bone man walking up the street with his horse, with a sort of thing over the horse's mouth with hay in and he used to let us feed the horse, we’d put in a hand. And you used to hear “Rag and bone. Rag and bone” as he came up the hill collecting old bits of metal and junk basically.
RP:
So was he a fairly frequent visitor?
DC:
Yeah, he seemed to have come once a week, up the road with his horse and cart.
RP:
And would there be milk deliveries?
DC:
Oh, yeah. The milkman. Strangely, it was called a milk float. I think it was electric. And that was in the mid-50s. Used to sort of run along in a sort of quiet, electric sound. And we used to, us dirty kids of Battersea, I remember we used to sort of jump on the milk float and hitch a ride up and down. The milkman didn't seem to mind, you know. We'd pinch a bottle of milk and would drink it as we were going along, you know?
RP:
And so of course all this play was unsupervised. Presumably your parents weren't watching over you. You were just allowed outside to play with your friends and got on with it.
DC:
Well, because we were in the top flat, we didn't even have a garden and, for some reason, Wally and his wife didn't let us play in the garden downstairs. We hardly saw them, it was strange. So our playground was Wandsworth Common at the top of the hill. But mainly we played in the street, just sort of running around with our Dinky toys and our Matchbox toys, our bows and arrows and our pretend guns, you know. You'd “Bang, bang. That's not fair, you didn't take your shot” and all that sort of stuff. We were poor. We didn't have many toys really. We just made up games. Looking back, it felt like quite a deprived childhood, you know.
RP:
But it was what you had at the time so you don't know any different do you?
DC:
We were very happy. Yeah. It was just a nice happy childhood.
RP:
Were there many families, were there lots of children locally?
DC:
There seemed to be I mean when we played out on the street there were lots of kids.
The game I remember — I don’t know whether my sister's mentioned this — is film stars. So us kids would be on one side of the road and another child on the other side of Belleville Road. And they would say something like “DD” or “MM”, which would either be Diana Dors and Doris Day or Marilyn Monroe. We’d heard their names but probably never seen a film with them in, it was just a famous name that we knew. So she'd say “DD”. So whoever sort of thought they knew who she meant, would run across the road to them, back again, and then back to them and say “Doris Day.” If she got it right, you then took the place and if she said “No, no, it's not that” then you had to walk back in disgrace. And that's the only game. I really remember.
I used to run my Dinky toys down the coping as we called it on the front walls of all the houses all the way down to the bottom. But that was about it, really. We didn't have very wide horizons, looking back on it.
RP:
But it sounds like it was a very happy childhood, and secure.
DC:
It was, yeah. Well, secure apart from the fact that I took my mother to task before she died a few years ago, because she mentioned to me that while she was upstairs in the top flat doing the washing on a Monday with her little washing machine, twin tub or whatever, she would leave me downstairs outside the front door in the little yard in my pram. I remember lying in my pram and I said, “Well I could just have been abducted. You left me there for hours on the front, by the road. Anyone walking past, you know”, and she said, “Oh, we didn't have paedophiles in those days”.
RP:
Do you have any memories of what the neighbourhood was like at the time?
DC:
I was obviously only six and a half when I left, so I was very young. So I don't have many memories. What I do remember is obviously walking up to the top of the hill and across Bolingbroke Grove to the Common, walking down to Northcote Road and all the way along from Northcote Road up to Arding and Hobbs, which has since been Debenhams and something else I think, but that was the main department store.
There were all these sort of old barrows that probably used to be pulled by horses, these old carts with big wooden wheels. Quite a lot of them in the road, like market stalls, basically, selling God knows what. So I remember those barrows.
The other thing — I walked past recently and it stunned me because it's now a hair and beauty shop — if you turn right at the bottom of Belleville, Road, on the right. But what I remember is, it's all got these blue tiles, it's like a blue tiled shop. Bright blue tiles. I instantly remembered, it was called the Sunshine Laundry – Sunshine Laundry? It was a laundry anyway. And had these blue tiles with a sort of big yellow sun thing. And it's still there, those lovely blue tiles. Sunlight. The Sunlight Laundry, it was called.
RP:
I suppose back in the early 50s not so many people had their own washing machines, so laundries would have been more widely used.
So would you go shopping with your mother? Would you go down to the local shops with her?
DC:
We didn't have a fridge so she must have gone shopping every day, otherwise everything would have gone off. So we regularly walked or drove down Northcote Road.
Certainly on a Saturday morning we would go down to where Arding and Hobbs was, where Lavender Hill goes up, that big sort of crossroads there, to the bank, because unless you got to the bank by 12 noon on a Saturday, when it closed, you had no money for the rest of the week. So I remember queuing up in the bank with my parents and they'd write a cheque for cash, and that's how she'd get her housekeeping money for the week, because presumably when she was working, she couldn't get to the bank anyway. So there’s this desperate rush on a Saturday morning, to get to the bank, otherwise you had no money for the rest of the week.
RP:
So cash was probably much more widely used than it is today.
DC:
Oh it's all cash. And you bought everything on HP, hire purchase. We didn't have credit cards but it's a similar thing, if you wanted something. I mean, I think the generation before that, their parents’ generation, they would have just had to save up for months, if not years, to buy a piece of furniture or whatever. But in the 50s hire purchase was coming in, so you would buy it by paying some money every week until you paid it off, and then you owned it. It was seen as sort of quite disreputable in a way to buy things on hire purchase because you got into debt.
RP:
I know you've had the opportunity, before you came to talk to me today, to have a little wander round Northcote Road and the general area. So I wonder whether it's struck you at all that the types of shops that are there now are different in any way from the little shops that you would have had when you lived there.
DC:
I can't really remember much about the shops but obviously, I mean, I remember lots of pubs and the smell of beer as a little boy and because we were in the Salvation Army we weren't allowed to have alcohol anyway, as an adult even. It's disreputable, sort of pubs as you walk past, with men sitting in there drinking and the smell of beer on the floor and all that. So, lots of pubs. And there would have butchers, bakers, candlestick makers type of stuff. Walking there today, it's upper-class bistros, wine bars, Italian delicatessens and things like that, upmarket pubs and so on. I mean, it's absolutely nothing like it was. In those days, as I say, it was just a working-class district.
RP:
Well that's really interesting. It certainly has changed a lot.
I wonder whether we could move on to school. I believe you went to Honeywell, In spite of the fact that Belleville School was at the top of your road. Do you know why you went to Honeywell as opposed to Belleville?
DC:
I've absolutely no idea. I mean, no. Obviously I was five and I just did what I was told, but it was close. So, I mean, I do remember sitting at home with my mother teaching me to read and watching my sister walk off to school. And then, when I became five, walk down the hill, turn right, and then left, and it was Honeywell Primary School, which was a lovely school. If you go to it now, which I did recently, it's exactly like it was then, hasn't changed a bit, other than that the playgrounds have been built on, there's not so much playground there. There’s lots of that, you know, there's lots of extra buildings, like most schools now. Lovely, high ceilings old, Victorian school, big Windows. It was a lovely school.
The only real memory I have, one is queuing up. I don't know whether it was just us or all children but certainly I had to queue up at midmorning break, I think outside of the classroom. And they would hand out these little capsules of cod liver oil or fish oil or something. I don't know whether we didn't have enough vitamins or whether it was standard, I've no idea. Remember biting into these capsules. You're supposed to swallow them and that feeling of sort of oil, fish oil, yucky.
I also remember, I looked it up recently, because I remembered a maypole in the playground and Empire Day. It was before Commonwealth day. It was Empire Day. And when I Googled it, Empire Day was in May, it was connected to maypoles. I remember girls dancing around the maypole and the Union Jack and we all celebrating the Empire. That's about all I can remember of the school. I was only there for 18 months.
RP:
Yes, of course, and you were still very small weren't? So was there no Nursery School provision in those days, you just started school at five did you, that was the start?
DC:
I remember going to a nursery round the side of Wandsworth Common. It seemed to be like somebody's private house, like a big private house. I hated it. My mother took me there and dropped me off and collected me and I hated every minute of it. Can still smell the caramel pudding that they gave us. It was revolting. And we played out in the tiny back garden. I mean, she must have been maybe just during the summer holidays or something. But no, I probably went to Honeywell age sort of t four and a half till six and a half, something like that.
RP:
Do you remember if you had to wear a uniform at all at Honeywell ?
DC:
No, I don't think so. Oh, I think we had blazers. I do think we had navy blue blazers now I come to think about it.
RP:
And did the school ever take you onto the Common for games or nature trails, or anything like that?
DC:
I don't remember that. But, as I say, there were quite extensive playgrounds. So we played in the playground, you know, kicking a tennis ball around and pretending to ride horses and things like that.
RP:
And do you remember the class size ? Were they large classes, boys and girls together?
DC:
There were boys and girls together. Quite large, I'd say they were 20, maybe 20 in a class. I went back there a few years ago. I sort of sneaked in really at 3:30. Me and my sister sort of sneaked in, pretending we were parents. Probably shouldn't say that but we were desperate just have a look around again I couldn't believe in every classroom on every desk there was a computer. In a primary school, you know? I mean we were still writing with sort of nibs and pens and dipping them in the ink, sort of thing, you know.
RP:
Yes. And the teacher was probably using chalk on a blackboard.
DC:
Oh yeah.
RP:
All right, well let's move on now to memories about Wandsworth Common itself.
Clearly you lived very close to the Common and you've already said that because you didn't have a garden of your own that the Common was used as a bit of a play area for yourself, your sister and your friends, Can you tell me a little bit about how often you went? What sort of thing you got up to when you were there?
DC:
During the summer probably every day after school we’d just go onto the Common. I remember we played bows and arrows. We used to make bows out of bamboo canes that you get for the garden stuff, you know, and you do a ridge either side and put string around. So we played bows and arrows and Cowboys and Indians, as I said. We’d just run around actually.
We walked across it today. It doesn't actually look any different to what it did then, other than the fact that there's all these football goals that they've stuck up. But it was basically just a huge expanse of grass with the pond there and the little sort of hills at the back that run alongside where the railway line goes. Towards Spencer Park, on the right, there was a playground with swings and roundabouts. We hardly ever went there. It was only like a hundred yards away when you look at it but it seemed like, when you’ve got narrow horizons when you were five, six years old — we were very much like Belleville Road, that bit of the Common was our world and we didn't dare stray from it. So we rarely went to the playground. What I do remember though is we used to wander round those little hills and play our little games and make up games.
And if you walk along, you come to that bridge, cat’s back bridge. When you walk over it now, they’ve blocked it all off, you can't even see the railway line. But in those days it had a little fence, so, I mean, you used to walk, we used to stand on the top of that bridge. If you heard the train coming from Clapham Junction to Brighton, and it was steam, looking back on it, you’d hear the ‘chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff’, and me and my sister, and my friend, John, we'd sort of “ooh, it’s coming”. So we'd run onto the bridge and we’d stand there and watch it coming and all the steam would come up and totally envelop us, and all the soot and everything, it was so exciting, then it went ‘chuff, chuff, chuff’ past us. And our friend, John would shout out “Hooray for the Brighton Belle” because it was the Pullman coach, you know, the brown and the cream, posh coaches that used to come every now and again. And it was a very special moment when the Brighton Belle came along. I presume it was sort of like a special fast train to Brighton. I don't know.
RP:
Did you as a family ever use the train?
DC:
No, because, as I say, we had a car. So we went everywhere by car. Every Sunday we used to go up to what we called The Rink which is the Salvation Army Hall on Oxford Street. So we used to drive up there every Sunday and stay the day there going to all the Salvation meetings and, funnily, in looking back on it, Sundays was absolutely dead quiet because shops weren't allowed to open, apart from the odd barrows on Oxford Street, you know, the barrow boys selling fruit, calling out “bananas and apples and oranges” and stuff. But all the shops were closed, not like today, went there this weekend, you could hardly walk, you know. But you’d drive up and it was so quiet, there were hardly any cars anyway but on a Sunday, dead as a dodo.
RP:
Very different to now.
Did you ever go visit the Common as a family? I mean, it sounds like a lot of your play was just unaccompanied children. Your parents were quite happy to let you loose and play on the Common for a while. But did you ever use it as a family for recreation of any sort?
DC:
No. I don't remember my father ever being there, but he was a sort of a rather distant father, he was always at work, he was one of these men who came home from work at 7:00 in the evening, smelling of work in his best suit sort of things. So he wasn't a big part of our lives. I do remember, as a very young child being pushed up there in a pram by my mother. That's before we played on our own. So, I mean, she obviously used to push us up there. I remember, you know, summer's day in my pram being pushed along up to the Common past what was then Bolingbroke Hospital, which is now a school.
RP:
You mentioned earlier that you were aware that there was a children's playground with swings but it doesn't sound as though you ever used it. Were you aware of any other sort of leisure facilities that were provided on the Common?
DC:
There weren't any. It was just, as I say, a huge expanse of green with absolutely nothing on it. Talking about small horizons as a child, when we went over that Cats Bridge, we rarely went over the other side, it was like going into there be dragons, sort of thing, you know, because it was like that was not our world. But we went across because, if you turned right just over the bridge, after 50 yards or so there was like a house, it's still there, I think, but it sold ice creams and lollies through a hatch. So, on occasions we would go and buy an ice cream through the hatch, but then we’d quickly scurry back over the bridge, back to our world, you know. So our world was just that bit of the Common, there was just nothing there. We just ran around and made up games for ourselves.
RP:
So children then seemed to have much more freedom than they possibly do these days, it would seem.
DC:
I don’t remember adults ever being around. Honestly, after school we would just go out to play until dusk and then playing on the street outside and, you know, when it's getting dark your mum would call you in for tea. “Come on, kids, come in, tea’s ready” or “It's getting dark at 7:00, time for bed”. So we sort of seemed to spend a whole life outdoors playing and because we didn't really have any toys, it was all made up games.
RP:
Would you have a bicycle or scooter or anything like that?
DC:
I had a pedal car, a little Jeep I was very proud of, like an American Jeep, must have been tiny, that you sort of pedal along. But it was kept at our grandparents place in Wandsworth and we should go to a George the Fifth Park. I used to pedal around.
RP:
You lived there in the years immediately after the second world war. I wonder if you can recall any sort of remnants of wartime? Any bomb sites or damaged buildings?
DC:
Yes. I distinctly remember we played in what we called bomb sites, which, you know, there’d be sort of houses and then there’d be a gap where presumably a bomb hit. And it was still just rubble, just huge pile of rubble and pipes. It must have been incredibly dangerous. These days it would all have been fenced off, but the funny thing was we were not really aware of the war, we certainly called it a bomb site, “Let's go and play on the bomb site” but it wasn't real, I didn't really understand what a bomb site meant or what a bomb was. It was just what it was called, that play area was called the bomb site.
RP:
It's interesting that you refer to it as a play area.
DC:
Well, yeah, we’d sort of crawl over and have a look, under the bricks and stuff like that because it was just exciting, like an Adventure, Playground really. There were quite a few sort of bomb sites around as we call them. It was just sort of normal part of life, but didn't really connect it to the fact that a bomb had fallen on it in the war.
The other thing I do remember is the prefabs. I remember as you walk to the top of Belleville Road and cross over Bolingbroke Grove, which is the road that ran all the way along the top. I have a vague memory of these prefabs all the way along the edge of the Common. You know, must have been 20, 30, 40 all the way along, because I used to have to walk past them to get onto the Common. My mother told me later that they were built prefabricated after the war to house people who had been bombed out in the war and also returning servicemen, but they were apparently very sought after because they were modern, they had internal toilets, fitted bath, fitted kitchens, and they were quite modern, although they're sort of cheaply built. They had the latest technology if you like and they had a little garden going onto the Common with a little fence around. But by the time I left, they’d all disappeared. So they must have been there from, you know, after the war until probably 53, 54. And then they were all taken away.
RP:
There were actually quite a few prefabs, we've discovered, at various points around the Common. So did you ever meet any of the children or the families who lived in those prefabs or have anything to do them?
DC:
I don't think so, no. I think there were just kids on Belleville Road that we played with
RP:
I wonder if you can recall any particular events, either in your own life or perhaps more National events. I know your sister who’s a bit older than yourself has some memories of the coronation in 53, but you're obviously a bit young for that, but I don't know if there's any sort of particular events that stayed in your mind during the time that you lived here.
DC:
Well, I think that the queen had the coronation in 53, didn't she, so I would have only been one, so I don't think I remember anything. But I do remember street parties on Belleville Road. I remember sort of trestle tables being set out and all the kids with jelly and cakes and all dressed up in things and adults serving orange juice. No idea what it was about, whether it was sort of Empire day or the anniversary of the Queen's coronation or whatever, but, you know, huge street parties with the whole road blocked off.
RP:
So it sounds like it was quite a friendly neighbourhood, people knew each other, your neighbours got together . . .
DC:
It must have been but I was probably too young to understand what was going on really.
RP:
I know that you don't get many opportunities to come back to Belleville Road and the local area because you live a long way away now. But you were able to spend a bit of time before coming here today to have a look around. So I wonder whether you could just sort of try and sum up how different it seems or not different, one or the other. What are your impressions of the general area and the Common now, compared with what you remember all those years ago?
DC:
Yeah I've been back a few times over the years and what has struck me is that everything looks exactly the same in that the houses, the brickwork, beautiful brickwork, the lovely old villas exactly as they are before, but probably quite well done up and repointed and so on. But there's no way that it looked like a working-class area anymore. They've all got these white Venetian wooden blinds. They're all digging into the cellars. They’re all knocking the back walls out and creating lovely glass bi-fold, you know. And, as I say, the price is absolutely unbelievable. I can't believe that people can afford that sort of thing, I certainly couldn't.
And so it's sort of gone from being a working-class road of old villas, as they were, with no caRP:
ets and no fridges and stuff like that to absolutely beautiful looking. When you look at them now you can see they are beautiful. houses, you know, well-built, solid lovely houses, but, at the time, they just didn't seem to be that good, it was just what I grew up with. I mean, the last time I came the road, when you look at the photo, with no cars, the time before I came I couldn't park because there're all these Audis and Porsches and, you know, incredibly posh expensive cars, just filling up the whole place. The way it's gone upmarket is, as I say, unbelievable.
RP:
And what about the Common itself? Have you had a chance to go on the Common or view the Common? I mean, given that you were very young when you lived here, I just wonder if it's changed in its appearance or your perception at all.
DC:
Apart from the fact that there's some football goals that they stuck up, it doesn't look any different at all. It looks exactly the same as it was, because there was nothing there then and there's nothing there now. It's just a huge expanse of green basically.
RP:
There's probably more organised sporting and leisure activities, I would think now. There are a number of schools in the area that use the Common for sport, and there are quite a few other leisure activities that are conducted on the Common. So it's still certainly very well used.
DC:
Now you're talking, I do have a vague memory of a school sports day on the Common. They put white paint for the parallel lines for running. But, obviously, I'm only talking about a small part of the common, which is the bit at the top of Belleville Road up until the Cat’s Bridge. That's the area I knew. It looks exactly the same.
RP:
Well, thank you, Dean. Thank you for sharing all your memories of life around here back in the early 50s.
DC:
It’s been a pleasure. I've enjoyed it. I think it's important that these bits of folk history, if you want to call it, are remembered, otherwise they’re lost forever.
RP:
Well once again, thank you for your time and contribution. We're very grateful.
DC:
I think I was about eight months then.
RP:
Yeah, you were obviously just a baby, weren't you?
DC:
Yeah, well this my family. That is me at out about nine months. That's my sister Jenny. So she would have been about three or four. My mother, the Lincolnshire lass who was brought up in Boston and came down to marry my father, Cyril, the Battersea boy. He talked with a real Cockney accent, she had a Lincolnshire accent. And he left school at 14, went to technical college. I mean, I think most people left school at 14 then. He went to technical college in Wandsworth, I think, and joined the RAF at 20, became a mechanic.
XXX
Interview with Avril Crossland
28th October 2022
LM:
Louise Murphy
LM:
Well, Avril, thanks so much for agreeing to participate in the oral history project. We'll start off, as we have done with all our interviewees, by asking you to tell us where and when you were born and a little about your family background.
AC:
I was born in Clapham Maternity Hospital for Women and then my parents, and my grandfather, my mother's father, were living at the time in a rented flat in Baskerville Road. I'm not quite so sure if it was quite so posh, then as it is, now probably being on the common, on the side of the common, but very soon, I think, when I was about 10 house, came up for sale in Frewin Road and my grandfather who had the money, then rather than my parents paid, and I've been trying to find out. I remember it was something like three hundred and sixty pounds to buy. Number 21 Frewin Road and I couldn't find it. I've got it somewhere and I couldn't locate it. But I think it was that amount and that would have been 1946. I think I was probably one, so I was born in 1945 and well, the whole of my childhood was spent at Frewin Road. My parents, my father initially was a GPO telephone operator. Had a lovely voice. He grew up in a family that didn't have lovely voices. It was the slums of Peckham and he went after he'd met my mother and mixed with certainly what I do, he would say a more middle-class person he got involved with amateur theatricals and he changed, he absolutely changed his voice to speak nicely. I see. And he called it. And he did have a very good telephone voice. Which he kept throughout his life on the telephone. So if somebody rang up and they wanted to speak to my mother or me, he would say hold the line caller
So that was what he did and then he moved on to the National Cash Register company, which are American company. Still going, made, beautiful, the old-fashioned cash registers and he was a telecommunications manager, a teleprinter. When the old printers, clickety-click, they came in and that's what he did up in Baker Street. It was his office and he worked there, right the way through.
I remember him bringing 'School Friend', the comic School Friend, home every Tuesday. I waited for him to come home at 6:30. He got it because that was kind of job he had. It was very, you know, the same, same train. by train from Wandsworth Common? It was always from Wandsworth Common, he never touched Earlsfield train-wise, and then he got a tube from Victoria and then I think he must have changed again because he went to Baker Street, which was on the Bakerloo line. So it's quite an involved journey. So that was Tuesdays. I really did look forward to choose dad coming home.
My mother was a primary school teacher, all her career, and she applied for the headship at Beatrix Potter, where I went to school. But course this was long before I came along, but the war came and then everybody was evacuated. So she never got the chance to be a head. She didn't apply anywhere else to be a head, so she never taught at Beatrix Potter, but that's where I went to school, where most of the most of the young children, my age went, I think to Beatrix Potter, round here, and then I went down the hill a bit.
I've always gone to a school on a hill, down the hill, to what I remember being called Earlsfield Junior girls and boys school. Earlsfield Junior School in Tranmere Road. And that was from 8 till the 11-plus of course. LM:
Well, I don't suppose you've got any memories of the War years because you're born right as the war ended. But you must remember rationing?
AC: I do, I remember ration books. And yes, very much and going. Yes, and my mother presenting the ration book particularly at the co-op. That's where she did most of her shopping, in Bellevue Road, at the co-op. Which is now, which has been, various wine bars ever since.
But going back to school, I remember Earlsfied School. I've got pictures of it and there was a girl's entrance, up some steps, and the boys entrance, and never the twain did meet. I loved it there. I was very lucky. I had a wonderful teacher. I mean all were general teachers but my particular teacher was a musician. So I think that helped me very much, apart from my parents who were both musicians, she was very musical and put me on the path to music. I remember particularly Friday afternoons, it was it changed every term. One term was a needlework and embroidery term, we had the most difficult things to make; blouses with little Peter Pan collars and ruched. Oh terribly difficult!
LM:
What age were you there?
AC:
Well, 10, because it was in the top class that you did that. Yes, 10 and proper buttonholes with proper blanket stitch around them. So that was embroidery and knitting gloves! A disaster – I could never get the fingers and the thumb right, on four needles of course, like socks were knitted. And then another term was cookery, which I always loathed and I was never . . . . we worked in partners, there were double cookery stations and everybody always chose a partner and there's always one person left out of sport and cookery and I was there both times. Nobody wanted me as a partner. But we used to make simple things like rice pudding and sago, you know, that we brought home,
And then the third term we made bamboo pipes. We didn't play recorders. We actually made them. The teacher brought along the bamboo and she filed out the middles for us and then we designed, if we wanted to, a pattern to be painted on, or if we didn't want to do that, she would do it. And she would put the cork in, and then she would varnish it. And then she formed a little group. I've got the photograph of my row all playing the record, the pipes, and they were much more mellow than recorders. And we made the, the highest one the treble recorder. And then we made a longer one, which was the alto recorder. And when I left, it was great honour for me. She gave me her tenor recorder, and I've got them all. Of course, I've kept them all. So, then I took the 11-plus. I went to Clapham County, Grammar School for Girls which is now I think as in the is a private school. think it's one of the Thomas's schools. It's on another hill, at the top of Broomwood Road and I loved my school years, I really did.
LM:
And was it single-sex?
AC:
Oh yes, definitely. Dreadful uniform. We had well a tunic, which was all right, you know. Like a square neck with a belt and pleated skirt. But we didn't have a shirt, we would long for shirts like boys, I think I don't know why, but I think a lot of girls wanted shirts; you know, a proper collar and tie but oh no, we had another square neck white blouse, which will have looked awful with the tunic.
The sports kit was extraordinary. Navy blue knickers. And then we were, I think we were probably in the second year, so we would have been 12. And knickers were considered, even by the staff, much too childish. So we had felt, would you believe felt for sport, divided skirt? And they had to be exactly when you were kneeling down two inches off the ground. I think that was quite common in girls schools, but felt I mean in the summer, and we didn't even have summer shorts, felt all the year through. And of course, very nice felt hats with the band round with CCS on the front, commonly known as Clapham Cowshed CCS. And then, in the summer, it was blue, a sort of almost Madonna blue, not any blue dress. That was quite forward-looking I think, in those days. It was a uniform blue dress, quite nice. And, of course, a Panama Hat, very smart.
And I had only had two detentions in my school years. One was for a teacher, saw me out of school, but in my school uniform, but I taken my hat off. That was worth a detention and the other time I think I had my hat on, I was waiting at a bus stop for a bus and I was eating a Bounty. I remember it was Bounty because I loved Bounty, and that was another detention. Imagine these days!
So I loved school, I loved the sixth form. We had drama, we did, the sixth form did, a school play every year and there was also a drama competition. And I was definitely in that. I was bad at maths, partly because my parents said to me, we don't expect you to be good at maths because we weren't, which didn't help really. But I was put into the fourth, the bottom, division at maths. And the thought was that if you were in the top division, you have the best maths teacher of course that thinking is not, I don't think the thinking is like that now. We should have had the best maths teacher. Actually, but we had the worst maths teacher. So when it came to the mock, it wasn't, it wasn't 0 level. 0 level was it or even GCE GC. No, I think it was 0 level wasn't. It could have been, I think it was just a year before it was GCSE. But maybe it was. So anyway, the the one that you did in your fifth form, the mock, I got something like 15% for maths and I was told, don't worry dear you needn't take an O-level in maths as long as you do a science. Well, I was hopeless at physics and chemistry as well, partly because I thought, not for me, science. But as long as you've got a science, and biology counts as a science, and English, you'll be all right. And it turned out, so I left maths, didn't do maths at all. And when I got to about 40 — 45, I was really miffed that I hadn't got maths O level, because I had, you know, all the others, except physics and chemistry, and I did it, a distance learning thing. I got a B, I did the sort of easier one, where you can't get A but that was very satisfying. So I was very drama orientated, right? From the start actually because I remember being in little plays in Earlsfield, in the junior school, because that was in the family as well as music, drama and amateur theatricals, a very musical family.
LM:
So you were very musical weren't you, growing up, and do you have memories of music featuring in your home life?
AC:
Oh very much, very much, in my home life. A lot of my home life, because I was trying to remember, you know what I did, playing with friends and things, and a lot of my home life, from about seven years onwards, right up to when I left for University, was practising the piano. I mean, there was a stage, probably from about 11 to 18, it was two or three hours practice a day, and an hour of that was before school. So I suppose I didn't get a lot of time. And then with my parents I did a lot of singing, at school and at home, and my parents both sang. So we stood around the piano, the three of us, and I played the piano as well. And we sang little things like madrigals and things. You know, it was very classical, classical music. I mean, I'd never heard of pop music at all. When I went to University, at one of the freshers parties that I went to, you know, all night things, something called Love Me Do played and I said, oh, what's this? They said are you serious? It's the Beatles. The Beatles. Who are they? I had no idea! And what, I was 18, I suppose 18 or 19, and never heard of The Beatles! That was what my upbringing was like.
LM:
that would have been the late 60s I suppose you went to University.
AC:
Yes, sixties Sixty three to sixty six were my University years. So I was at Clapham County from 1956 to 63 yeah. And I suppose The Beatles were in the early 60s. Yes, that's right. Yes.
And I also learned the cello as well as the piano. So I used to take my cello to school every . . . no, Tuesdays were flat feet class, before school, and we had to pick up pins and things with our toes, because we had flat feet. Yes, Tuesday was flat feet class but here I think it must have been straight after that I had my cello lesson. So every Tuesday I had to lug this great thing because they, I didn't really want to learn the cello. I wanted to learn the oboe, but they didn't have an oboe anyway at school and they had a cello. It wasn't my I didn't have one to start with. We bought a cheap one, but they needed a cello, somebody to learn the cello, for the school orchestra. So that's why I took up the cello. And so this thing I lugged to school every Tuesday and sometimes I walked across Wandsworth Common and then up Broomwood road, but sometimes if the weather was bad, I went on the bus and that was not popular because the seats. I mean these days some of the seats are horizontal, as it were facing each other, but all the buses were like that. As far as I remember, then. And I, because I couldn't get into, with my cello, a seat with a another seat in front of me. So I would sit with the cello kind of between my knees on the, you know, the little platform and that that was quite fun for me anyway. LM where did you take the bus from?
AC:
It would have been the 49. So it would have been across the common. I would diagonally go across the common, so near Wandsworth Common Station, opposite Miller's the butcher's, as it was then, which is now a posh Restaurant, you know, in Bellevue Road. That's where I think I took it from. I have vague, you know, memories about that, or I could have taken it from Trinity Road opposite the St Mary Magdalen church, but I don't think I went that way. So that was from the age of, because I used the cello at school for a couple of years, so I was probably about 13, and I was always asked to play my Cello annoyingly, at the school concert to show off, but never asked to play the piano because I didn't learn the piano at school. I learned privately at home and they didn't want to . . . but but they made use of me playing the piano for dance classes at the school. And you know, oh yes, and my father went up to have a row at school about that. He was furious but they never changed it.
LM:
talking about the common. And do you have childhood memories of playing on the common or visiting it with your family?
AC:
Not a lot. I do remember, there's no sign of it now of course, but there was a bomb crater right on the, almost on the edge, of the Scope backing onto Lyford Road, a big bomb crater. And of course, on one side there was a wonderful, well all the way around, a wonderful slope, right down into the hole. So we had great fun. I say we, I don't remember who I slid with, but it must have been one of my friends. It obviously wasn't my parents and I wouldn't have done that on my own. So it was probably Veronica or one of my friends from junior school.
I also remember, but that would have been with my parents, blackberrying, which still happens as there are still blackberries on the common. But apart from that, of course, there was no children's playground near the cafe there, I don't think. I don't remember if there was, I was never taken to it. I remember the pond of course. We had a dog so I did walk quite a lot with my parents round the pond. That was the walk and and I think it used to be called the lake. In fact, I think some people still call it the lake.
And I remember the cinder patch where they played football after the war. I think it was that was up sort of backing onto Burntwood Lane, Burnt Wood Lane and Trinity road, that sort of triangle there. [00:20:02] That's all overgrown now. Yes, and that was called the cinder patch. We knew it as the cinder patch and I think it still is remembered as the cinder patch and football was played there. So I used to go sometimes on a Saturday morning with my father to watch the football and then there was another place, not on the scope. On the other side of Trinity Road, near the railway line, that was a proper football pitch. With, you would call it a pavilion , but a changing shed really. And that was a proper pitch. There were permanent goalposts and that was proper football games and my father used to go there. I didn't go with him to watch that. I wasn't really into football at all! But I don’t remember any other playing on the common.
I had a friend who lived in Baskerville Road and of course their back gardens, and their back gate opened onto the common. So I did play a little bit on the common with her. Veronica her name was but we played more in her house because of course they had very big rooms in Baskerville Road. And I particularly remember, and I must have been less than 11 because we went to different schools at the age of 11. I went to Clapham and she went to Putney High. But I remember, and I was probably 9 or 10, a wonderful, game, pretend post offices. I don't know if anyone else remembers this. I was talking to John, my husband who's recording this, and he had won a post office kit, and you had quite a big sort of outline of the cashier's counter and all the stamps, and those things you stamped with, and that was wonderful. And money that we had. We always played that when I went to play with her and I had my first, and probably my last, midnight feast at Veronica's house, and we made ourselves stay awake till midnight. It was Agony, and we'd made cucumber sandwiches. The most indigestible thing you can think of, and I think we had some chocolate as well, and of course, after that, we couldn't get to sleep at all! And I don't remember any other midnight feasts or even staying the night with friends.
Of course, it's done all the time now, it’s called a sleepover, isn't it, it wasn't called that then, it was called a midnight feast really.
LM:
The post office probably featured large in people's lives in the 50s and 60s, didn't it?
AC:
Yes, I remember we had a local Post in Bellevue Road and outside it had automatic stamp machines. You lifted a little metal thing up and do you remember those? Maybe not. And yes, you pulled out the stamps, they were perforated and they came out. There was a telephone book and I think there was telephone box, inside the post office, or maybe two or three, or maybe just little stations with phones. I can remember my father was still collecting his pension at that post office when I was in my teens. Yes. So I remember that quite well. I think it became a book shop after that, and then it was a Jewellers and I'm not sure what, its probably a cafe now. Probably a coffee bar now, but, yes, the post office did play a large part. Yes. LM : Yes. I know when you were at Secondary School you used to travel to school across or around the common.
AC:
Yes, I walked. I walked and I particularly remember, one time, a great fog, We were certainly sent home from school I think at lunch time. I mean, I don't know how much phoning around the was done by the staff in those days. I mean these days that, you know, there's a network , but there wasn't in those days. So nobody came to collect me. So after lunch, we were either collected or we just went home and I was totally on my own in this terrific fog! Well, it was smog actually, a terrific smog and I think it was 1959. So I would have been 14. Yes, that would have made sense. I think there was another fog earlier, but I don't really remember that one, but this was really bad and I got lost on the common absolutely lost. I mean, I did [00:25:02] what they say, you do in a bad fog, just went round in circles, and I don't remember how I got home, but nobody came to collect me and I'm sure I wasn't sort of taken off by a stranger and taken home. I must have eventually got home But I remember that sense of just wandering round. I wasn't I wasn't nearly as panicky as I would be now. I'd be terrified now but I don't remember feeling terrified. Just a little bit worried.
LM:
Do you think you'd walked across the grass rather than sticking the paths? AC:
Probably but I dont remember, do you know I don't remember. I just remember that I kept coming back to the same place, which was the path by the public toilets. Yes it was it was round about there. The public toilets on the common and of course they were manned by, well not actually manned by all the time, but park keepers dressed in brown very wonderful, almost HarrisTweed, suits and a hat, a brown hat, a lovely uniform. And they patrolled the common the whole day. I don't know about evenings, but they would, you know, was make sure there was nothing funny going on in or around the toilets and they were kept clean. I mean, I remember using them. Yes. So that was the fog on Wandsworth Common and yes I would have been 14. LM : And you walked across the common to and from school winter and summer alike?
AC:
Yes. Oh yes. I mean occasionally when if the weather was bad, with my cello, But I think I walked there all in weathers. Yes, across the common, and then down Broomwood Road, then up the hill. Yeah.
LM:
Do you have memories of visiting the shops? You've already talked about the Co-Op and the Post Office?
AC:
Yes, the Co-op. Yes, and, we called it the oil shop, I suppose it was a hardware shop. I think everybody who's ever been in an oil shop, can remember the smell. The smell, a wonderful smell. It's gone really. I suppose that might be a few shops left. That was for the paraffin. And the oil heater.
LM:
so that was the form of heating you used, was it? AC:
Yes, In Frewin Road. Well I was there until I was until I went away to University and then I moved back for a while, after University. We did have radiators by then, but no when we moved in there was no central heating. So yes, it was. We've got we've still got one, we haven't got the paraffin heater, but we've got a convector heater. I think they were called, we still use it with a bulb and a light and it convects heat. Yes, we had an oil heater but it gave up eventually, because my grandfather, who lived with us in Frewin Road, he had his own lovely front room, and he had the oil heater and when it gave up it these gave out these terrible fumes in the night. And poor, poor Grandpa was completely black in the face! And he used a commode. You might want to cut this out, but he had a, what do you call it, a district nurse? who used to come in, and wash him when he was very ill. Because I only remember what him when he was elderly really through my teens. Yes. And he sat on the commode, the lid of course during the night had been open. So these fumes got onto the seat where he sat and he must have sat on the commode because I remember her saying when she washed him that his face and his bottom were completely black with soot or whatever. He was a delightful man.
Where was I? Sorry, where we did the shopping. Yes, the hardware shop and Mac Fisheries. And of course, Miller's, the butcher's, a beautiful building with the gallery. And yes, there were all the hooks with the carcasses on them, which is now, a posh restaurant and has been a series of posh restaurants. And then there was the Wool shop, which was by the bus stop, the bus stop at the end of Bellevue Road, which turned into Trinity, the Trinity Road end, and the bus stop was just outside the wool shop. So, I spent many hours, because buses were not nearly as frequent in those days as they are now, so you could spend 20 minutes easily waiting for a number 49. No, the 19 didn't go up there. There was a 189, which went up Burntwood Lane to Clapham South. And then, there was a 49, and a 19 that both went to Clapham Junction, but the 19 went, I think the route, the 219 goes now and the 49 went the route that the 319 goes now. So it would have been just the 49 at that stop. And I spent many, many a fond time going into the wool shop, and it was everything to do with haberdashery, a lovely, lovely shop.
LM:
This was on your way perhaps to school?
AC:
no, because I didn't wait at that stop for school. That would have been going the other way, that would have been going down to Tooting. I would have been at the one, the other side of the road near Wandsworth Common station. That end I think that's where I, waited but I didn't, I think it was just with my cello. I don't really remember getting the bus to school. Maybe I did if it was awful weather, I don't really remember.
Then, the other shops: there was, well I was going to say the hairdresser's but that was around the corner and called Muriel's, that my mother went to. That was in Trinity Road next to Saint Mary Magdalene Church. Yeah.
LM:
And there were still is a hairdresser there . . . .
AC:
Yes there is, that was about the third one I think. And there was, in Bellevue Road, Moon's, which became Bouts, or it was Bouts that became Moone's? I can't really remember. It was a newsagents and sold sweets, and I remember, I think it started off in Trinity Road, because on our way back, there about three of us that walked back from brownies together, and on our way back, because we would walk quite a way, right along Trinity Road, we would always call in at, I think it was Bouts at that time, newsagents, That sweet shop and we would each buy a sherbet dab. We all had a sherbet dab. It was on Trinity, yes, that was I think next to Muriel's and the church. And then I think the old lady died, there was an old lady and her son that ran that and I think Moons took over and moved to Bellevue Road. And they were a newsagents, a similar sort of shop.
But there were no cafes or restaurants but the pub on the Trinity Road end, which was called the Surrey Tavern, because the other pub was the Hope. And yes, the Surrey Tavern had a wonderful restaurant, which, as a treat, my grandfather would take us to and occasionally, if it was a real treat, it was the Arding and Hobbes restaurant, which was Debenhams, and now it's being rebuilt for flats I guess, on the top floor of Arding and Hobbes. That was a real treat. Waitresses in proper uniforms and he was very friendly with one of the waitresses so we always got extra portions of food. But the Surrey Tavern had a very nice restaurant at the back of the pub. Well, they probably still have actually, I don't know. I know the County Arms has one.
LM:
Well its not called the Surrey Tavern anymore is it?
AC:
Oh no, of course it's not, it's Brinkley's, that's it. I've never been its too expensive. So yes, most of the shopping I remember was at Northcote Road, with my mother on Saturdays. I think because there were no supermarkets she did shop in Bellevue Road. She was working full time but but I guess after school I occasionally went with her, but I remember definitely going to Northcote Road to do the fruit and vegetable shopping. All the stalls, and she had one of those lovely baskets on wheels. You know, a proper basket with a proper wooden handle because I was asked, well I don't about being asked, I was allowed to pull it, and I loved pulling that basket along.
LM:
I suppose you didn't have a car did you?. AC:
No, we never had a car, not even when cars became more popular. No, we had friends that did, the ones that lived in Baskerville Road. They were the first friends of ours that had a car. No I mean it was buses, it was buses and walking so all shopping [00:35:02] had to be brought home by hand. From Northcote road we would have come on the 49 bus to Bellevue Road and then walked across the common.
LM:
So nothing was delivered?
AC:
Well, there were mobile shops. This was when I was a bit older I guess. Yes, the milk was horse drawn. It was the United Dairies, and there was a mobile fruit and vegetable van. That was a bit later. But I remember, I must have been, we had a lodger at the time, so probably 12 or 13 and the milk was still delivered by horse. Yes, it was United, I'm sure it was United Dairies. Oh I have the lovely memory to do with horses. So the horse stopped in the middle of the road, more or less outside my house, and it was our delivery, which I think was United Dairies, and the horse did his number two's outside our house, right in the middle of the road! My mother rushed out with a brush and shovel, with a shovel and a bucket. And at the same time, one of the neighbours from the other side of the road rushed out, also with the same idea and it's, I think it's the one of the very few times I've seen my mother shout at anybody, she was the most good-natured person ever. And she shouted, she was really cross, that's not yours! You don't have United. Dairies you have the Express Dairy, or something. That was not her fertilizer!
LM:
Oh she wanted it for the garden?
AC:
She did! oh yes. I mean everybody was doing it and it was just that they clashed over it and this was definitely my mother's horse and droppings and it wasn't theirs!
LM:
So this would have been horse-drawn deliveries in the 1950s.
AC:
Yes the 50s.
LM:
fascinating, lovely good. And what about other activities; you mentioned just in passing, the Brownies. AC:
The Brownies. Yes, I enjoyed the brownies. I was a gnome in the Upper Tooting Seventh or something Upper Tooting, which was well, I suppose it was the Village Hall of Holy Trinity Church which was just near Tooting Bec in Trinity Road, and on the other side near the Fire Station, which is still a Fire Station, and it was the village hall. And it's now flats. I loved the brownies and then I went on to the Guides. I think I was in the Brownies when I did the cooks badge. I failed of course! I think my husband would probably understand why. Well I did take it and I was failed. I think we had to make real rice pudding, not out of a tin. The rice pudding itself was lovely. But I was failed on presentation because when I was spooning it from the saucepan to the dish I dripped a bit on the side and I didn't clear it up, and I failed because of that. So I think I took it again and it was all right, that time.
And I also took the, Music Badge. I'm not quite sure if that was the Brownies or the Guides, but one of the things that we had to do, we had to play the national anthem. And I sat down and they said no, no, you've got to stand when you play the national anthem. I said, but I can't use the pedals. No, I couldn't use the pedals. Anyway, so I had to stand and they said, why do you need the pedals? Because of course they weren't musicians themselves. They were just ordinary guiders that tested everybody on whatever it was. So they didn't really understand about the pedals. And they understood even less, when I said, what key would you like the national anthem in? And they've completely flummoxed by that! So they said whatever you like. So [00:40:03] I didn't fail that. I passed that one.
But the Guides I didn't stay in so long because I suppose I was probably 12, 11 or 12, when I went into the guides and I think, like a lot of other almost teenagers, a couple of years in the guides in those days, was enough, School began to take over, more homework, more piano practice, more cello practice. So I stopped.
LM:
Were your family churchgoers?
AC:
Well, not really, I was sent to the Welsh Chapel Sunday School in Trinity Road. Trinity Road Chapel which, I enjoyed. I really liked that because we used to sing the most marvellous . . . they weren't called hymns, they were called choruses. And they were lovely things, like I'm A TPPY, And Jesus Loves Me wants me for a Sunbeam and Give Me Oil in My Lamp O My Savior , they were lovely, they were really jolly. And I enjoyed those, but when we get got to a certain age, we were sort of chucked out of the of the Sunday school. And we were encouraged to join the Bible class. So I suppose I was probably 11 or 12 and of course, who was asked to play the piano for them, and they weren't choruses by that time, they were hymns. So that's what I did, which was fine. But there was something that I didn't enjoy. They expected, each week, a different person in the Bible class, and we were teenagers, to say a prayer. And everybody had said a prayer except me and I really didn't want to. So I left. So I would say, my parents were not churchgoers, but I went to church as a child and a teenager. Yeah.
LM:
So, you you lived in Frewin, Road until you were 18, and then you returned after you went to University. So, that would have been in the mid 60's. And here you are, still living on the Magdalen Estate, in the same area. So have you ever lived anywhere else?
AC:
Well, at university I was at Nottingham . And then I came home, after Nottingham, because I was doing a further degree, a teaching degree at London University. So l came to live at home for that year and then I moved to Camden Square, which sounds frightfully posh, and it is now, but it wasn't then. It was all bedsits, and that was great fun. And that was my first teaching job and it was quite a drive, because it was up to the north of Camden square, and it was a comprehensive convent school which is quite strange, but I only did that for a year. And then, well you don't really want to know about the rest of my career do you?
LM:
but then you moved back to the area?
AC:
Yes, I did. That's when I started to try and save to buy a house and my first was a maisonette in Smeaton. Road, Southfields. It was very difficult to get a mortgage then but I managed.
LM:
So a little way from Wandsworth Common? .
AC:
Yes, but not that far off. I've always been local, after university and all that. And then, from Smeaton Road, that's when I met John at the BBC. And we moved from Smeaton Road, we bought this house. That's right. Yes. And we've been there ever since. So what year was that? 1983, and then we had our daughter Kate in 1985. Yes. And she's now living near Hemel Hempstead.
LM:
And do you think you'll ever move from here?
AC:
Oh no. I think in his heart of hearts John, because John is from Yorkshire, [00:45:04] and he was a country lad and I think, he would like in a way to move back to the country. But he'd also like to have, at the end of the road, he'd like to be in a field. But at the end of the field, I think he'd like an Indian restaurant and, and a doctors and a chemist and a post office. You see, we're very well set up here and, when you get to a certain age, I think you start thinking about the future and and a lot of people make the mistake of moving out. I mean, if they moved near, you know, their daughters and sons, then that's different. But if they think, oh, I'd like to be in the country with roses round the door it so often turns out to be a mistake because they're not near anywhere, and then they have to stop driving. And so, you know, one's always got that in mind and we are very, very well served here.
LM:
who needs the country when you've got Wandsworth Common
AC:
absolutely! And it’s been great, because we had a dog when we first got married. And yes, it’s just at the top of the road.
LM:
Yes, yes well that's all been lovely. Thank you so much.
AC:
And thank you. I do love to talk as you can tell!
XXX
Hazel Elam
26th November 2022
Interviewer: Stephen Midlane
SM:
So, Hazel, thank you so much for taking part in our oral history project for the Friends of Wandsworth Common and agreeing to talk about your memories of living around the Common.
Can we just kick off with your telling us your name and your date of birth?
HE:
My name is Hazel Elam and my date of birth is 7th October 1942.
SM:
Tell us when you first moved into this area, and whereabouts you were living.
HE:
I first moved into the area with my new husband in 1971, and we bought a house on Tilehurst Road a few years later. And then in 1976, with a baby, we were vaguely thinking perhaps we should move, because of various bits about the house — that there was only one living room, because the kitchen was, at that stage, not an area you could actually sit in. With one child it was rather difficult, trying to pretend to be tidy all the time. And I walked one day along Loxley road and it was lovely, I thought, “the trees, I like this.” And there was a house for sale sign outside this house. So, we moved quite rapidly, actually.
SM:
Can you talk a little bit about both Tilehurst Road and Loxley Road and how in your opinion the two roads compare?
HE:
Well, we worked in Tilehurst Road on the house for several years. Ron, my husband, was very practical, built the cupboards and things like that. So we didn't really see much of the neighbours and when I had Anneliese in 1975 it was lonely, because I didn't really know any neighbours. Well, there was Frances who lived next door, but she was elderly; she was at least 70. That felt very ancient at the time.
I didn’t have communication with many people, I had to begin to establish it. Whereas when we came to Loxley Road — I didn't go back to work until Jonathan was six or so — I was at home, so I was able to get to know people. It felt to me a much friendlier place. I think Tilehurst Road is a long road, whereas in Loxley there was communication between all different bits of the road, even then. I mean, now, post lockdown, post pandemic, or from the pandemic, people really developed links, you know. WhatsApp didn't exist back then. So, it was different from the start. And there were things like — Tilehurst was always difficult for driving along, and Loxley’s much more manageable.
SM:
And there was a slight social divide?
HE:
Oh, yes,
Tilehurst Road was built in the 1930s. The houses were beautifully built, but there was a great divide because there were the privately built houses — I think they were probably Holloway's as well, as this one is — but the houses on the opposite side of the road were developed as council housing. Back then council housing meant council housing. So all the people were council tenants and the one side of the road didn’t necessarily socialise with the other. It's not that they didn't communicate, though, I found that one or two of our neighbours, our opposite numbers, they were lovely and kind and helpful; and I didn't know neighbours on our side, necessarily, to be helpful.
SM:
And was there also a divide between this area of Loxley and Ellerton Road and Tilehurst Road? Do you know about the houses that ‘plugged the gaps’?
HE:
Oh, yes. Well, with Ron telling me all about it with his picture collection, yes. Well, originally, the developers way back at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, they were thinking of a whole large development of houses and roads running so that you could turn off Ellerton Road and get to whatever there was going to be further down.
But then the council built the Tilehurst Road houses and others and I think that it was felt that you didn't want what would now be rat-runs, too much communication between the roads, so they built non-terraced houses, you know, freestanding, detached opposite the roads.
SM:
Just to clarify, can you run through the makeup of your family?
HE:
Yes. Well, there was Ron, my husband, and our children, Annaliese and Jonathan.
SM:
Two children? They both went to local schools, I understand.
HE:
Oh, yes. They were in Local Education from the start. In fact, it was the time that there was a lot of pressure for there to be nursery schools, but nobody was giving the money. So there was a big movement, the playgroup movement. And it was round about then that we benefited because there was the Playhouse Playgroup, which still exists in some form or other I think, gathering at the Romany. It was quite a parent-led organisation even in the days when it was actually run by Sally Smallbone. But parents always had to do their shifts to help; I don't know if that is still the same. Because nowadays many more women work; back then most of us didn't go back to work when our children were really small. So we had played (?) and Sally was very much a power in the Girl . . . she ran the Brownies and the Guides as well for quite a while.
And then they moved on to Beatrix Potter School with Mrs Clegg as Headmistress.
SM:
And then, for Secondary School?
HE:
Well, Annaliese went to Southfields. We looked around and it was nice and we were very invested in the Local Authority system. But by the time that Jonathan was coming to need for us to have made a decision about it the ILEA was being abolished by Margaret Thatcher. Many local teachers were anxious about their possible fate under Wandsworth Council as there’d been various combative noises about what would happen. And Jonathan actually wanted to go to school as far away from Anneliese as possible. I can't remember which he applied for — was it Graveney or where? — but actually he didn't have a chance of getting there because it's a long way away and there were catchment areas. So he also applied, just in case, to Alleyn’s and got in. So he ended up going to Alleyn’s in Dulwich and had a very happy time there. Strike free as far as teachers were concerned.
SM:
You mentioned the ILEA and I gather that you yourself worked for the ILEA. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, so that was almost the start of my working career. I and the ILEA started together in May 1965. It was just when it was newly formed. My first job was placing what were then called handicapped children in boarding special schools. I say placing, I was doing the administrative case work on the recommendations of the professionals, the inspectors and so on. I was involved with a couple of local schools. 1965 was not when first I was in Wandsworth because it was before I married; from my base in Kensington or County Hall Wandsworth felt more distant back then.
In fact, it's an interesting thing that when we were deciding where to live when we married, we obviously had to think about economics and so on. Ron was adamant that he did not want to commute. He didn't want to be like many other young couples living in Kent or Surrey or somewhere which was were comparatively cheap then, and the commute was not expensive – a bit unreliable because, not necessarily leaves on the line, but there were strikes and all sorts of things. So we had to be within walking distance of County Hall. And we did indeed walk from our house in Tilehurst sometimes to County Hall when there was a lot of snow or other impeding factors.
Where was I?
SM:
Local schools?
HE:
Oh, yes. Yes, yes. So one of them was Oak Lodge. Now you'd say Oak Lodge isn't a boarding school. But back then there was a hostel. And my recollection is that it was for Jewish children. Because there had been previously a day school for Jewish children, Jewish Deaf children. I think it had a boarding element, so there was a hostel. And children might have to be in that boarding environment. So that's where I came in, placing the handicapped, deaf children in boarding schools.
I actually had a different involvement with it later on because I worked in the section of clerking governing bodies of boarding special schools. It was coincidental and I think Oak Lodge was one of mine. So I would attend the termly governors’ meeting. Governor's back then were not specifically attached to one school, there would be a group of schools. And I think that the other school that I also dealt with, back in the boarding special school days, was Linden Lodge.
SM:
Can you just explain where these schools were?
HE:
Oak Lodge was where Oak Lodge is now. I think it had just been built. Back then I just took it for granted – oh, Oak Lodge has always been there. I may be misremembering but . . .
SM:
This is off Nightingale Lane?
HE:
Off Nightingale Lane, that's right. Yes.
SM:
And Linden Lodge? Where’s that?
HE:
Linden Lodge is Princes Way? Can’t remember. Over in Merton, Augustus Road? I take it for granted that I know when I can't remember
It doesn't feel like Wandsworth, London Borough of, but as a school it has always been managed by Wandsworth. Originally, I think Linden Lodge was on Bolingbroke Grove or somewhere.
SM:
I think Linden Lodge was off Bolingbroke Grove. The building’s still there.
HE:
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, that's right. It's a Lutyens building, I think. Something like. Anyway, yes.
So I dealt with placing the children. I don't think it was in Bolingbroke Grove then. My recollection is it was over there.
SM:
Is there anything else you want to say or you can remember about the local schools ?
HE:
No
SM:
Let's move on to the Common. You're living just down the road from the Commons, it’s right on your doorstep.
SM:
Presumably, your children used the Common quite a lot, did they?
HE:
Yes. Well, we used it when they were very little, you know, still in the buggy. For both of them, I think, their absolutely favourite expedition was going to look at the trains. Never mind the ducks, they loved, just loved, looking at the trains. My daughter was taken by my mother who would come over and take them for walks and let me get on with things. And on one occasion I can remember, they walked and Anneliese wanted to look at the trains and it was cold, it was winter – back then they had proper winters. Annalise had forgotten her gloves, so she was cold and my mother gave her her gloves. And then Anneliese insisted on watching the trains go by, and my mother became colder and colder and came home as an ice block. So that was a favourite expedition.
And there was a little play park. I think it's moved, it's moved nearer to the bowling green and the tennis courts, but back then it was — I can't describe it. I could point it out to you on a map – but they enjoyed that.
SM:
Did they used to go onto what is now known as The Scope?
HE:
Well, we never really walked there. It wasn’t sort of walkable back then, A lot of paths have been ploughed since our time.
But Jonathan, in particular, met up with a friend from Frewin Road – they were great buddies – and they’d take their bikes and cycle round there. I never enquired too deeply where or how but they seemed quite happy and it was safe to allow them to do that. Now you hear horrible stories about things but it was quite safe back then.
SM:
What else did you do. Did you go and feed the ducks?
HE:
Slightly reluctantly, but yes, we did. We always felt it was bad for the birds but it was before they had notices about it. My mother would take them with half a loaf of sliced bread and break it up for the birds.
I think back then it was a slightly less attractive area. They've done quite a lot of work in subsequent years. I think one thing was that they dredged it and after the dredging that
improved and they landscaped the whole thing and it was beautifully done — little walkways and things like that. It was lovely.
SM:
You mentioned the playgroup and Sally Smallbone. Did they use the Common at all?
HE:
Well, I puzzled about that because I mentioned to you that I had happy memories of some parties on the Common but how that arose I don't remember exactly. I think it must have just been a group of mothers from the Playgroup. Because, of course, the Romany had lots of land and we had things there. But I think the Romany grounds might have been rather more bumpy. It's a long time ago and I don't necessarily remember. But we did have some quite jolly parties on the Common as well. Yes.
SM:
And what other facilities can you remember being on the common at the time?
HE:
I'm not quite sure what you mean by facilities. There are certainly no more toilets. There were toilets, which was extremely useful, you know, grandparents, little children. I don't know how people manage these days. Maybe they've changed people's internal plumbing somehow.
SM:
Was there a café?
HE:
There wasn't a café. Well, there probably was eventually but what I remember, initially, was a restaurant. I don't think it was a bring your own bottle sort of place, but they had a wonderful cook. And it was, you know, quite a good place to go. And we went there a few times for Sunday lunch and for a special occasion. You know, we had one or two of the older members of the family having golden wedding anniversaries or significant birthdays. And it was nice to go there and be looked after. The children could, if they got restless with grown-ups talking all the time, they could run out onto the Common and play.
SM:
Your husband, Ron, was a well-known figure on Bellevue Road. Do you want to talk about why that was? What he did?
HE:
I just had a thought about your previous question first, just to muck things up.
Talking about facilities on the Common, sometimes it was difficult if we wanted to go out, if we wanted to have a special family ‘do’, an interim solution we found before the restaurant opened, was to have a private caterer come and prepare a meal here. And the advantage was there was a servant bell (in this house), so we could summon the next course or the waitress to come, bring us our food. That was a great excitement for the children when they were, if they were, allowed to participate. And for me, because I didn't have to do anything.
Okay, back to Ron. Mustn't forget Ron. No.
Ron was always a collector and he started to collect boys’ adventure stories, favouring first editions and second editions and eventually he didn't want to keep the second editions or he had duplicates or something and how to dispose of them? So, there was an antiques market at Mary Magdalene Church hall once a month on a Saturday. And so he decided to try to dispose of his books there. But he also had some postcards of Wandsworth in the early 1900s. So I think he mounted and framed them himself and took them along as a sort of additional interesting feature. And of course, what happened was a few people wanted the books, and everybody wanted the pictures, so he had to go and collect more pictures. And gradually that grew, and they weren't in themselves, obviously antique. So eventually, he had grown out of the antiques market, which was run by the wonderful Margaret Brown, who had a house on Ellerton for many years, and she was a different power in the land. So, Ron decided to see whether he could have a stall of his own or, as somebody once described it, a barra!
And he approached somebody. He moved from one end of Bellevue Parade to another over the 30 years or so that he did this. And the name I remember was Don and I think he had a barber shop but I really am not at all certain. And Ron set up his trestle tables and his pictures in front of that place, and people were interested, came along and bought them. Later he moved to being in front of the Lucky Parrot. And later again, in the later days, he was in front of the chemists, the Bellevue Pharmacy. When we first came it was called Vessels and was run by a very elderly couple; they ran things, it was very, very old fashioned. Anyway, Jacques took over from them and he and Ron got on quite well, he had the store there. The disadvantage of the store always was that it was on a slope. If you stand on a slope for five or six hours, it's quite tiring.
But his collection grew and people would come along and say, “do you have such and such a road” and he quite often did. If he didn't, he'd go off and look at the postcard fairs. Postcard fairs up in Bloomsbury on Sundays, so we didn't see much of him at the weekend. It was time-consuming but he loved it. He loved the collecting, engaging with people who would tell the stories about the people in the pictures. All sorts of things we didn't know. Can't think of them now. But he really enjoyed it.
SM:
So over the course of the years, he built up an extraordinary collection
HE:
An extraordinary collection — many tens of thousands, we don't know exactly how many. He may have exaggerated slightly, but not a lot. Take out these big covered boxes full of cartons and fill the car. He couldn't move them. I don't know what he would be doing now with all the restrictions on parking.
SM:
You mentioned that he had his stall up on Bellevue Road. Can we talk about Bellevue Road a bit, about its shops and restaurants?
HE:
Well, way back, it's all rather hazy. I'm going to have a look at my list for all the different ones I remembered. I mean, there were several butchers, there were several bakers, there was a fishmonger, an electrician, a wool shop, a haberdashers, at least one bank. I'm thinking of the NatWest but I've got a vague feeling there might even have been another. And there was a post office which was extremely useful. And there was even a little Waitrose; I think that had just gone just before we came. And all we have now are the restaurants and the estate agents and the coffee shops. None of which are actually useful, except very intermittently. Oh, yes, and the butcher was M.L. Ware and it was a family business, it went way back. And it was M.L. Ware in my time originally and there was also another one round the corner on Trinity Road. Of course now it’s – I want to say Harvey’s – Chez Bruce, a restaurant. Yes. A one Michelin-starred restaurant. Very popular with people who want to go out for something special.
SM:
So lots of changes in the nature of the shops . . .
HE:
You don't notice it at the time. And you think it's all the same, and it all looks more or less the same. But no, it's very different. I don't think, don't remember there being a hairdressers for instance.
SM:
So lots of changes there. What about the Common itself and the area generally? How do you think that's changed over the years?
HE:
How do I think that’s changed? Well. Is it called a lake? The one on our side of the Common, cos I wasn't ever really familiar with the other side. It's only when I took up running 20 years ago that I began to notice the other side of the Common significantly. With the lake, as I said, it's been dredged and it's been beautified. Much more interesting now. And I think there's been a lot more. There's been a lot of effort into the fishing and the birds and encouraging all of that.
SM:
You mention the children’s area. The one that’s there now is near the café but you remember it being somewhere else?
HE:
It was somewhere else. I’m very bad on north south east and west which doesn't help. But
I think it was near the lake in the bit between the diagonal path running across to . . . Yes. Why do Words fail me?
You were asking about changes to the Common, what's different now? I mean in the old days it was the parks department. And, I can't remember, it might have been around the time of the big storm that I think the bushes and things had been destroyed. I know that, after that, the area just near the traffic lights with Bellevue Road, Burntwood Lane and Trinity Road just the area, the Scope really, was planted with lots and lots of little trees. They are close together. But I haven't taken the tally. But now it's an attractive wooded area. So that's a change that I've definitely noticed.
SM:
What about the water on the Common?
HE:
I was thinking about that because back about 20 years ago, the director of the Volunteer Bureau had died very unexpectedly and many people wanted to plant a tree in her memory. I consulted the Parks Department about that, saying “what about in a particular area?” And they said “Oh, no. Don't plant a tree there. Because it'll be flooded in the winter”. So we planted it somewhere else, without a plaque because they said that they're more vulnerable to damage if they have a plaque on them. Apparently. That's why I'm no longer sure the tree that I look at is the same as the one we planted.
But that was in one of the paths running towards the railway bridge. Just off it. And I don't personally think that ever really did get all that soggy. But in recent years, I've noticed that, you know, further on nearer the end of the path leading to Wandsworth Common station, opposite the Hope, there's a positive.. it’s more than a puddle, it's bigger than a pool. I don't quite know how you would describe it, but it is a watery area throughout the winter. And I don't know whether that is post pandemic, whether so many people have pounded the spot that they have damaged it, but that’s a definite change.
And I'd have to say the other change I've noticed is the vast increase in the dog population. Yes. For good or for ill.
SM:
And joggers?
HE:
Oh yes, jogging was an almost unheard of activity back in the 70s.
SM:
You mentioned the Great Storm in passing. You remember the 1987 storm?
HE:
Yes I do. Our neighbours had a wonderful mulberry tree. We which we all loved because of the fruit of course. And privileged people were invited in. You could climb into the tree, the children climbing higher than the adults of course. Pick the fruit, and there were pounds and pounds and pounds of it. And we made jam and we made jelly and we had it fresh. We sold it at the Playgroup, the Brownie sales, all of that, and it just seemed solidly large and there. And then in the great storm it just broke and fell completely across our neighbour's garden and also some heavy branches fell against our fence and damaged it and knocked down the half of our morello tree that was in their garden. I mean the tree was quite old then I think. I mean our morello was quite old back then but goodness knows how old the mulberry was, because I think they grow comparatively quickly, but it looked very, very solid. And I didn't think to hop over and count how many rings there were when it happened.
SM:
Is your memory that there was quite a lot of damage from fallen trees as a result of the storm?
HE:
Yes, yes, I seem to remember walking down to the station and trees from the cemetery littered the place and anywhere you went . . . I can't remember about any incidents, what the Borough News said at the time, but trees in the road. But for us the memory was that mulberry tree. Yes.
SM:
And you also mentioned a flash flood..
HE:
Yes, that was way back; that was about 1972. And Ron and I both worked at County Hall, headquarters of the GLC — Greater London Council and the Inner London Education Authority, the ILEA. Back then you could even drive up there and park. I mention these things because it's all very different now. And so Ron drove up there. We came home one evening and on the way home there was a torrential rainstorm. It was early September. And when we came off Trinity Road and off Ellerton into Tilehurst Road, we noticed there seemed to be water flowing along Tilehurst Road, especially near where we lived. We lived near the Burntwood Lane end and there's a slope down from Magdalen Road all the way down to Burntwood Lane. As we approached the house, there was a plant coming down — because also there was a slope up Tilehurst which was visible, you know, towards the road itself from further back. And the houses are terraced, but they are two and two with an archway with a passage between the middle two houses. And through the passageway from our neighbour's house came bobbing a plant on the water. It was quite funny, really. But we were a bit alarmed. So we went and opened the door and the water had come up right through the house and flooded and completely covered our newly acquired caRP:
et. So you went squelching through. Fortunately, we hadn't acquired any valuable furniture at the time and we hadn't got many things at ground level but it was all fairly catastrophic. Our neighbours similarly, owners of said plant, she had been badly affected as well and, of course, she didn't get the benefit that we did because we were all insured but she only got a fraction of the cost of the replacement value because her caRP:
ets were very old. Ours had only been installed six months before, if that. So we got the full replacement value. So it was just like starting again. Yeah, I do remember that.
SM:
So anything else you want to talk about?
HE:
Well, I suppose really. I was just thinking about how lucky I was to walk along the road that day and see this pleasant street without many cars outside the houses and tree-lined. In retrospect it was a perfect location. I didn't think of it like that then. But now I can see. There was a community of people. They're all lovely.
I've just remembered there was an episode with the Council buying a house for a large family some years before. Try as we would to be nice to them, they were very difficult. I've just remembered that. But, actually, apart from that, and even with that, it was lovely.
And we were near public transport; there was Wandsworth Common station if you went one way, Earlsfield station if you went the other, and the walking wasn't a problem, certainly back then. There were bus routes down the hill to Garratt Lane, loads of buses, or you could go just along to Trinity Road. And there were some rather eccentric buses like the 219. But it was all very helpful. And then there was just the perfect thing, which is what we started with, which was just three or four minute walk, a bit longer if you get older, into Wandsworth Common.
SM:
Would you say the Common has been a really important part of your life?
HE:
It has become even more important. When we first married and when we were working, it was not so significant, and from Tilehurst it's further away – you know, a bit of a drag to get there, actually. And you wouldn't necessarily puRP:
osely do it when you could get into your car and drive off to Surrey and go and take a nice long walk there. But with the children and for myself getting older, it has been wonderful. It's not going to be easy to move from here because I've got friends and all the amenities I need. Very accessible and the Common.
SM:
That’s lovely. Thank you, Hazel.
H
Well, thank you. Can’t remember — there were all sorts of things that popped into my mind to say.
XXX
Interview with Pam Jones
8th October 2022
Interviewer: Ros Page
RP:
Hello, Pam. Thank you very much for talking to me today on behalf of the friends of Wandsworth Common, and the oral history project that we're doing. So, just to start off with, I wonder if you could just tell me your name and your date of birth, and where we're talking from today.
PJ:
Well, I'm Pamela Jones. I was married for nearly 67 years to Raymond and I'm now 91. I was born July 15th 1931. I was born in Balham. I had three older brothers, a grandma, mother, father, and two soldiers, during the war who were billeted with us. And we moved into Openview, into a very nice little house there when I was three.
RP:
Could you maybe tell me a little bit about the house or the flat in Openview, where you first lived ?
PJ:
Yes. It was number 27, and it was nearer Burntwood Lane than Magdalen Road. And the Magdalen Road school was just at the end of my road, so we hopped along to school every day. But it had three bedrooms, it was a council house and I think they paid possibly under two pounds a week for it, and now it was on the market for one point something million, would you believe? But that's life these days.
RP:
Indeed, it's changed a lot. And could you tell me a little bit about what your parents did? What were their occupations?
PJ:
My father was literally a jack-of-all-trades. He worked for anybody and everybody, mostly his family. His brother had a restaurant or some of this happened or that happened. During the war he joined up because he was too old to join any of the forces, so he was a policeman for six years. As Granny was with us we were quite lucky because she did all the cooking, made a rabbit stew and things like that. My mother liked little jobs, so she went off with a catering company and a friend and did jobs. And life sort of just plodded along. I went to Magdalen Road school and all my brothers did. And then I was evacuated when war came.
RP:
Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about the general neighbourhood around Openview? I think you said that was a council estate.
PJ:
Yes, Openview was They. were all council houses, from Openview down to Garratt Lane. And we were very lucky: it was called ‘view’ because we had three sports fields in front of us and then we had Fieldview which was looking this way, obviously. So OpenView and Fieldview. And the Common, of course, was about another three or four hundred yards up the road, Wandsworth Common. You looked as if you were in the country, it was lovely, really lovely. As I say, the school was very handy. Lots of fogs and things in the wintertime but we got by and it was good. It was happy.
RP:
Now since then you've lived in several addresses, all in the local area. You haven't moved very far. I'd be really interested for you to describe a bit more about the other houses or where you lived and the general neighbourhood.
PJ:
Well, Openview and Fieldview were in a sort of rectangle from Garratt Lane to Trinity Road to Magdalen Road to Burntwood Lane. I was born in Balham, so I just moved across a mile.
And then, when I got married I moved up to Magdalen Road. And then, when I got pregnant I moved up to Lyford Road. And then Grandma came to live with us, so we went to Ellerton Road. And from Ellerton Road my tennis club was demolished so I moved into my tennis club. And here I am, where I am today.
RP:
And I believe that's Burntwood Grange Road, where we're having this interview now.
Can you describe some of the various houses and the neighbourhoods at the time at which you lived — starting at Magdalen Road.
PJ:
Burntwood Lane was where the big girls’ school is now. I think there's a thousand girls school. When I was a child it was a field with cows. There were cows in the field, half a dozen cows.
And we had a funny little bus called the 5A. Where it went that way, I don't know. And where it went that way, I think it went to the Junction, which it was around. And then, of course, Earlsfield station just down the road.
Wandsworth Common station was heaven, because it was in the middle of trees and it was just lovely. Not that I went there often but we knew it was there.
Houses? Mostly all from Garratt Lane upwards and to Fieldview were council properties, and they were all houses as opposed to blocks of flats. And now, of course, they're all privately owned and Earlsfield is getting to be the place to live. We've spread our wings, I think.
Next door, the Pickford (?) family also had four children, two boys, and two girls, and Maureen, the girl, was my age too, we were just buddies. We just grew up together, went to school together and she was my bridesmaid and I was her bridesmaid, sort of thing, and she moved away, and I was still in touch up to a couple of years ago.
RP:
Was there anything in particular about your house in Lyford Road or Ellerton Road you can remember?
PJ:
Well, Lyford Road was lovely because it was great big houses along there. And we had a little cottage built around a couple of garages at number 64, which was literally across the road and you’re on the Common. And so when Tim was born, every day I’d take him for a walk around the Common. We’d feed the ducks and then we’d go and watch the trains come in. And he used to say “Again, again.” So that was lucky, but then Grandma had to come and live with us and It was difficult because there were only two bedrooms. So then we took a bigger house in Ellerton Road, which was a Holloways property, and they owned an awful lot of property in this area. Holloway Brothers.
RP:
They were builders, weren’t they?
PJ:
So they only rented, they never sold. And we would have loved to have bought the house in Ellerton Road because it was a double this and a double that. But in the end we moved, obviously, from there to where we are at the moment. And then Holloway's went bust and sold all their properties anyway. We weren’t very lucky.
RP:
Oh, that was bad timing!
Perhaps we can turn now back to your school days — could you tell me about where you went to school and any particular memories you might have of school life?
PJ:
Well, I remember Magdalen Road very much because it was only just down the road. It was literally down the road – just a two minute walk. When the war came I was evacuated with them. And then I took my 11-plus while I was evacuated at a little place called Shamley Green. Then I came back for a year before the doodlebugs started. So off I went again on another evacuation trip.
But I took 11-plus and managed to get a scholarship to Putney High, and so did Maureen, my next door neighbour. But getting to Putney was a bit of a drag, except I think you paid a penny on the bus to get there and then you had to change at Putney Bridge and get up the hill. But we had half a dozen happy years there.
To begin with, school was divided because the higher school was evacuated and the lower school was in the Upper Richmond Road. And so I was 11 when I joined there, I think, and I was 13 when we moved back up to the proper school. And then I settled down to my tennis courts. I loved all my sport so that was heaven to me there.
RP:
So your primary school you say was Magdalen Road. I believe that is now known as Beatrix Potter.
PJ:
Beatrix Potter. It's the school. Every time you buy a house in this area and you've got Beatrix Potter school. And it's practically doubled in size. You hear some very good stories about . . . the children love it and they do very, very well.
RP:
You don't happen to know when it changed its name from Magdalen Road to Beatrix Potter do you?
PJ:
It was always Magdalen Road when I lived in Openview. I got married in 52 — I would say it was early 60s. Mr. Crosskey (?) died, and his son took over, I think, at one time.
I had one, lovely teacher who used to throw a bit of chalk at you if you were naughty. Practically all I remember about that, apart from walking down and walking home again, and my brothers had all gone off to The Bec School anyway, which is a boys’ school quite close to here. It’s along . . . what’s the road? Oh, for goodness sake. Sorry, I'll remember in a few seconds and I'll tell you where it was.
RP:
And does that school still exist?
PJ:
Yes. But it's not called the Bec School any more.
RP:
Is it Ernest Bevin School?
PJ:
Yes, quite right. Yes.
And then in Burntwood Lane, of course, there was my cows in the field. And now there's a thousand plus girls in there. And they're opening for everything at the moment, they're doing classes for kids on Sundays and it's quite exciting, I suppose. But you try and get down Burntwood Lane at three o’clock in the afternoon . . .
When I was evacuated my younger brother came with me for a short while and there were a lot of Canadians were there, and we used to go to Sunday church and wind the organ up for them. We used to. So it was my turn, then it was Peter’s turn, and it was my turn. And they gave us a bar of chocolate for doing that, so that was quite fun. Then, back we came.
RP:
So if we can move on now and talk about the sporting life because I know you've always been a very keen sportswoman. You’ve played a lot of tennis and bowls. I wonder if you could tell me a little more about your involvement locally with both of those activities?
PJ:
Well, I remember as a child — I was the youngest, I was the only girl so I always kept the kit. I was always in goal, with my brothers, of course, because one was a great runner, the other was a great golfer, and the other one just knew everything — the other younger brother. So, there I was, front row of the scrum.
So I grew up with a tennis racquet and ball or a cricket bat in my hands anyway, and when I went to Putney High, they had tennis courts around the school. We went ice skating on a Friday, you know, it was all exciting things where I could use up my energy. Having three brothers you get a bit tough, but it was fun, it was fun.
And then I thought, I like this game, tennis. So I eventually captained the tennis. I got plenty of badges and badges and badges. When I left school, my parents had very little to do with universities and things like that. But we were just a happy council family, earning very little and no great plans but a happy family especially with Grandma there as well.
RP:
But you played quite a lot of tennis.
PJ:
I played a lot of tennis, yes. All those lovely professional people. I was in a sort of Virginia Wade era. And the Mrs. Jones, of course, not this Mrs. Jones, who everybody loved. Talking about Ann Jones. And we had this wonderful tournament down in Torquay and Sue Barker was about 14 or 15, then. I didn't know them, know them, but they all said “hello” and we chatted and while they were playing I took their dogs for a walk or something or other like that. So my claim to fame was I was in The Daily Telegraph as the other Mrs. Jones.
RP:
Perhaps you could tell me a bit about where you played tennis around Wandsworth?
PJ:
Luckily, I lived in Openview so that right opposite me was some tennis courts. And while I was at school, a Mrs. Wightman came. We used to play the Wightman Cup against America and she asked me to knock up on the gym wall, so there I am, knocking up and, lo and behold, within a week of her going, she's got me lessons at a pro in Kew (?). I used to go over. That was indoors and that that was great.
I played in all the Juniors, well, not the Junior tournaments because by that time I was about 16 or 17, I'd outgrown the Juniors, but luckily in Surrey we had a lot of tournaments. I was a good club player, put it that way, played for my County once.
RP:
Did you play locally ?
PJ:
Yes. Well where I lived in Openview, the Spencer, we played on grass courts. That's where I met my husband eventually. But so we played grass at Spencer and then the hard courts would be Heathfield or Morden Park. Both of those have got bowling greens, so when I got a bit ancient, I thought “I can't play this game anymore”. Somebody said “have a rollup.” I thought “what is a rollup?” Anyway, I got on that green and loved it.
RP:
This is now bowling?
PJ:
This is bowling, you see? Because the Heathfield was the tennis courts, then the clubhouse and then the bowling green. So we all met in a bar anyway and they said, why not have a game? And I said “It's an old peoples game.” But sadly, sadly, sadly, the game has changed completely. It's joined from no ladies and men. It's Bowls England. They've changed, changed everything, which is a bit sad.
RP:
Did you ever play on the bowling green on Wandsworth Common ?
PJ:
Yes, the ladies used to have a lovely afternoon with them. There was always afternoon tea and we'd sit down for tea, and sandwiches and cakes. Nowadays, well, they don't play any competitions any more. But it was lovely because it was such a pretty place to go and you meet so many friends, you know, and you go from club to club and have friendly matches. And now it's all mixed and we don't like it, well the ladies don't like it very much.
RP:
We're now going to turn our thoughts a bit more to the actual common and its surrounding areas. So my first question is can you remember which parts of the Common you mostly visited? And how frequently would you go there? And when you went there, what sort of things did you do ?
PJ:
Well, when Tim, my son, was born in 1956, I lived right opposite the Common so every morning we’d dust the pram off and off we’d go with a bag of bread and bits and pieces. He loved feeding the birds. He loved going over that little bridge and then we'd go off to the railway station or the line and watch the trains come and the trains go. And he’d go “woo, woo” every time a train came through. And then back we’d come again.
And it was much rougher, not rougher, but it was it was more trees and untidy and things in those days, you know. And suddenly over the years it looks immaculate. It's just a lovely . . . it's very strange that common because not only do we have the one that I love, but we have a bit there and we have a bit there with a bit there — everywhere you go. You get on a bus and you can follow the Common all the way round. You can wave to Wandsworth Common station but then you can say “hello” to Clapham Junction. It's crazy but it's lovely. And people say, “you only live six miles out of London”. Americans would come — my husband worked for an American firm — but they'd come to Wandsworth Common station: “this is so pretty!” They loved it, absolutely loved it. Of course, having Chez Bruce, the restaurant of the year, on the corner was idyllic for them. It was great.
RP:
I think you've told me in the past that your son used to play football on the Common, in the early sixties. Was there an association with Chelsea Football Club?
PJ:
Yes, Tim went to Highfield School, which was in Trinity Road, which backs onto the Common, when he was probably 4 or 5, something like that. And they’d get their footballs and go down and play on some patch down there somewhere. So that was his first sort of introduction to the Common – well, no, his first introduction, of course, was with him in a pram going round and round and round. And his father went to Highfield anyway. And then one day — we'd moved by then into Ellerton Road — he was about 11 or 12, and there was a funny patch on the Common they used to call the cinder patch, which is just literally behind the bowls club. These boys were running around in blue shirts and I thought “I know that face” and it was the Chelsea boys, the footballers.
So I got home. I said “come with me, young man”. So back we went and he stood there gobsmacked. And look where Chelsea are now. I mean, that huge, huge beautiful place down in Oxshott or Cobham, I don't know how many thousands a week they get paid. But I thought “this is Wandsworth Common on the cinder patch.” We've got half a dozen top, Peter Bonetti and people like that, who are now about 70 or 80, I'm not really sure.
I'll switch quickly because Tim’s Grandpa was in Bolingbroke hospital, which is along the road with the Common right there, and the hospital was there. And when Tim was three – so we’re going back to ’59, something like that — his Grandpa, sadly, was in hospital — and never came out — but he would come to the window and Tim would be, about this size: “Hello Grandpa. Hello Grandpa.” And he’d wave to him from there.
And then he’s still got a connection because he’s into wines is my son, and they've got a wine club and every first Monday in the month – they call it the Monday Club — they meet on the Common opposite the Hope Tavern, which is the pub just by the station, and if it's summertime they’ll picnic on the Common, or otherwise, if it gets a bit chilly, they pop into the pub. So he's still there. He said, “tell them about that, Mum.” I said I would.
So to me Wandsworth Common has always been romantic, not romantic in a sexy sort of way, but romantic because it's pretty and it’s lovely and it's still there. And don't anybody ever do anything with it.
RP:
Quite right, too!
Can you remember any of the sports and leisure facilities which were provided on the Common over the years and perhaps some that you remember being there but are no longer around?
PJ:
I don't actually but I’ve got a couple of neighbours who now use it for all sorts of things. There's a ladies football training, keep fit classes, running around the Common class, I think, or something like that. But I never got round to doing that. Suddenly, I got old, I thought “I can't do things like that anymore.”
RP:
I think I remember you telling me at one stage that you described a couple of dusty tennis courts.
PJ:
Well, they were to me because if you belong to a club everything is immaculate. You paid for it anyway, when you're in a club. I don't know how much we paid. I did have a knock-up there once for some reason, I can't remember why. But you wind your own net up, but they looked a bit sort of past it, but it’s still there. You could still play tennis, it was still properly legal and the net was the right height . . .
RP:
You also referred to what you call the White House.
PJ:
Yes, it was a very pretty little house and if you go on the bus and you turn into Trinity Road on the 219, you can still see it in the background. The cricket pitches all here, and the White House is there and there's a very nice walk around the back there now. But we didn’t use it much because it was for Sunday lunches, but now I think it's a sort of a coffee shop. I can't remember the last time I was there, for what particular reason, but it was busy, which was good, it was good and lots of children, running around on the bowling green actually, which is very taboo, but they don't use it now as a bowling green.
But made lovely friends and, of course, we'd have home and away matches; they’d come to us, we'd go to them. And in the area we’ve got Morden Park, we've got Heathfield, we’ve got Wandilea down the road, we've got five or six bowling greens.
I mean, the grass has been there for 100 years. We moved our club – our club came from across the road, from the big patch of grass that's on the corner of Trinity Road and Burntwood, Trinity Fields.
And in 1875, or something like that, they moved the bowling green and the tennis courts from there to here and now of course the tennis courts have gone but the bowling green is still there. 1875 I think it was. Well, some professional said it was 1873, and all sorts of people have played cricket over there and played bowls there.
RP:
Now you've lived in the area for 70-odd years, so it would be very interesting if you could think about how the appearance of the Common has changed and in what ways.
PJ:
I don't really see it a lot really. Now I've got my own car, we tend go to wherever we shop. I used to get on the bus a lot and sitting on the bus was lovely because it all, still does, look super, you know. If you're coming to Wandsworth Common station and you think “gosh, this is lovely.” There's trees. I love trees. We had one removed from next door, over 100 years old. Anyway, it looks lovely and it's very tidy and smart. And people out there, picnicking if the sun shines, like today, they will be out there stripped.
RP:
Does that differ from how it was?
PJ:
I think so. I think so, because all the shops have changed over there — not all of them — but now the pubs let you have a drink and take it on the Common if you want — plastic glasses or whatever. At one time they never did that. And course barbecues. Sadly, people don't behave properly with barbecues. They just let it burn and leave it, which is very, very, very wrong. But in the summer, hot summer days, you see smoke rising or people just out with families, just enjoying themselves.
RP:
So would you say that the Common seemed a bit wilder in days gone by?
PJ:
Probably more natural, you know. Just trees and paths and ducks. Ducks skidding in the pond and then skidding out again and things like that. It's just a lovely place where you could run around and do things.
There was an awful lot of football that went on, if you turned in on Bolingbroke Grove, football matches, little boys now and kids running around, which is lovely.
But I very rarely, since I've got that old, just literally walk across it all or go anywhere like that. It's just memories. Lovely memories, actually. I've been so lucky to be able to live here, for ever, it seems. Yes.
RP:
I wonder whether you have any particular memories that you can tell us about any events on the Common during or just after the Second World War.
PJ:
Well, I'm sure in Openview we had a barrage balloon at the right hand corner and I think there were a few guns on the Common. But after the war, there were these white sort of homes like long caravans
RP:
Prefabs.
PJ:
That's it. Prefabs. Well done you.
But they were on wheels. I think they were on wheels. A friend of ours bought some of them up and sold them for a fortune; he was that sort of man, he didn't pay his VAT.
So anyway, I can remember them, they were on the corner going down Bellevue, and I think they were prefabs and not on wheels — I've probably got in a bit of a muddle. I thought they looked like a single decker bus, you know, with wheels but, no, they were square. They were definitely square — one, two three. Maybe, a dozen of them. And all kids running around and dogs running around and that's what they needed because we had quite a lot of bombing here.
When I lived in Openview we had to move to Putney because we lost the back of our house and two people were killed in the house next door, from a bomb. It was a doodlebug, so it was a bit later in the war. But they moved us to a fabulous house, Richmond Park. Five bathrooms, seven bedrooms but three other families. So that’s when I went to Putney High so I was I was quite pleased about that because I didn't have so far to walk or get on my bike. It was . . .
Well it was weird really when you look back on it. But suddenly all these years they've suddenly gone. It's like yesterday, my whole life seems like yesterday and that's all. You think you've had 90 plus years of it and you can remember this, this, this and little things you can't really remember. My brother, brother Roy, flew his Lancaster backwards and forwards to Berlin and dropped a few bombs and brother Johnny got divorced and went to Canada and had another family, so that was rather fun. But, sadly, they've all gone, but that's what happens to us all, isn't it? You're here, you’re there, and then you’re gone.
RP:
Going back to the war, you talked about some bomb damage on your own house and neighbourhood. Do you remember any other bomb damage ?
PJ:
I remember whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh in the night, and I thought “oh, dear”, woke up in the morning — I lived this side of the fields and that was Fieldview,, there was a hole, a hole, a hole, and the last one ended up in the cemetery. And my naughty brother, my youngest brother, but he was older than me, loved going around on his bike picking up shrapnel, or if there was a hanging at Wandsworth prison, he'd be there, you know. And he came home once with a bone, and my father looked at him and said “Where did you get that from? Take it back.”
RP:
He found that in the cemetery?
PJ:
He found the hole and it had blasted its way out, probably into Magdalen Road. But that's what he did. So little things like that suddenly come and you think “Oh, my goodness. Oh dear, this Is War, isn't it, sort of thing.”
Then they sent my grandma away which was rather sad. They sent her up somewhere north. So she was evacuated.
But I was told once that I was ‘evaporated’ to the country. One little coloured girl said to me “Were you evaporated to the country, Miss Jones? And you didn't have McDonald's?” “No, I didn't have McDonald’s.” “You didn't have a phone?” “No, I didn’t have a phone.”
RP:
Can you tell me a little bit about the park rangers who used to patrol Wandsworth Common?
PJ:
Well, they were two perfect gentlemen actually. They had this lovely uniform on; It was sort of khaki coloured and with dark green long trousers and a flat hat. And fairly young, sort of 30 to 40 year olds, I suppose. And anything you wanted:. “where's the ladies’ loo?” you know, sort of things like that, and they’d point you in the direction of “where's this” or “where’s that?” They were lovely. They were on bicycles.
RP:
Were they there all the time, a constant presence?
PJ:
They were always around if ever I was on the Common with Tim with a pram, or with a friend with a pram, pushing a pram. Someone came up to me once and said “do you know where the White House is?” and I said “ask that gentleman there”. They kept an eye on you, make sure you were behaving yourselves, you know, which is good in a way.
RP:
Presumably they were employed by the Council?
PJ:
I think they must have been employed by the Council. I only remember a couple of them. It wasn’t a troop of them or anything like that.
RP:
The forerunners of the current parks police, by the sound of it.
PJ:
It's possibly, because we've had the parks police up quite a bit behind our bowling green. There’s been some nasty goings-on. Picked up a gentleman, he was hardly a gentleman, but anyway, they moved him, and there we go. So they are around.
I found a couple of bodies on the Common. Do you want to hear that silly little . . . well, it's not a silly little story, is it?
When I lived with Tim on Lyford Road I’d take the pram down for a walk. I looked to my right and there was a naked lady. It turned out that she was a prostitute and she'd been . . . So, by the time I got to the butcher, the butcher said to me “Hello Mrs. Jones, I hear you found a body on the Common this morning.” I said “oh dear.” Of course, I had the police around.
Another time we were wandering somewhere and there was a lady collapsed, and I thought “oh dear”. That was even before phones, so it was a long time ago. I found someone on the corner, I said “I've got to go home and phone the police. Would you mind staying?” And they came and they said “it's okay. She's okay. She'd had a diabetic whatever. But thanks for calling us.”
So, apart from that. That’s my hoobie-doobies on the Common!
RP:
Well, that's pretty special events. Are there any other special events in your own life perhaps that you associate with the Common? I think there was a Beatrix Potter school reunion?
PJ:
Yes. First of all I went to Esher with my Grandma, just for a few weeks, because my uncle lived there. And we went on the bus and my mother said, “You can come home at weekends because they don't bomb at the weekends.” Of course, when they did bomb at the weekends, I got immediately evacuated to Shamley Green. What was the question?
RP:
You told me about a school reunion . . .
PJ:
Yes. I think it was 50 years after. We met at Magdalen Road, Beatrix Potter, any evacuees at the time, we were going back down to a reunion. So, we went across to Wandsworth Common station and suddenly this train came in and it was just like I was being evacuated again. It was a puff of smoke and ‘whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo’ and the smell was wonderful, wonderful. And we all piled into this train and we were picked up at the other end, I think probably Guildford or something like that on a coach, and we all met on the green in Shamley Green. And I kept saying “the school was there” “no, no, the school’s down the road” and then somebody came up and said “Mrs. Jones is right. The school was there.” It was one of the big houses that had turned into a school and we used to go on the common and play silly little games.
RP:
Did pupils at Beatrix Potter School come with you on this journey?
PJ:
There were only five of us who had actually been evacuated, so we were in our eighties
by this time.
RP:
But the current pupils in the school?
PJ:
Yes, because they dressed them all up. They dressed them all up in their little grey shorts and they looked like my brothers. And they kept asking questions. “What did you do? Where did you go to school? What did you do this and what did you do that?”
RP:
It must have been a wonderful experience.
PJ:
It was, especially when this lady said to me “are you Pamela Brampton?” That's another story, but it was quite exciting. And I said, “where's the house that I lived in, because it's not there anymore?” And that's another nasty story which I won't tell you about.
RP:
It must have brought back memories, traveling on a steam train.
PJ:
You know you used to have this window. You’d pull the strap down. Because the smoke would come belting in, little bits of soot. “Can I shut the window please?” then “Can I open the window?” And you had to open the door yourself, none of this automatic stuff. But it was just ‘Wooh-ooh’ and off we went and I thought “Holy Moses” because it was a second batch of us that were taken down after Christmas, I didn't go with the original. I had a lovely typewritten thing by Mr. Crosskey (?) who wrote about all our days. And I found it. I read about it and I've got this lung problem. I was even then, in his minutes, “Pam Brampton was in bed with a sore throat or with a cough.” So I started my problems then but there we go.
RP:
Perhaps we can now turn our attentions to some more of the neighbouring areas around the Common such as shops and transport.
PJ:
Well, Bellevue Road, of course. There was a lovely sweet shop. As I'm going down, there was a bank and there was a sweet shop. There was a bread shop that made their own bread, and you had to walk up four steps to get in. And then there was another bank. And then you would cross the road.
Then there was the oil shop. Everybody needed oil to fill their fires or lamps or whatever and you could buy this and buy that.
And then we had a grocer’s shop “can I have half a pound of butter?” Donk, donk. donk, donk, donk, donk, wrap it up, pack it up, give it to you.
Of course during the war we had one egg, every fortnight. So that wasn't very much, and scrambled egg — I love scrambled egg – with the powdered stuff. They mixed it up with a bit of milk and threw it in the pan.
Mind you, I ate anything and everything when I was a child but you had to because otherwise you didn't get it, you know. And I think you had two chops that would last, hopefully, for two weeks or something ridiculous like that. It was crazy and rationing was absolutely idiotic.
We had a dog and I could go down to the corner shop with a penny and a farthing and buy myself at least a stick of toffee and a sherbet dab or something and the dog got hold of them and he ate them, the stick and all. That was our Scruffy, he was called Scruffy.
And you got on the bus to Tooting. It was a penny (inaudible) one penny and a half. You had pocket money. We were poor, you know, we weren't a wealthy family so it was a job here and a job there. Then when you leave school, you go and get a job. I should have gone to college and all that but I didn't. My sister-in-law did. I wish she hadn’t, but never mind.
RP:
Were there any shops on Trinity Road that you recall using ?
PJ:
Lots in Bellevue Road, because we had a haberdashery which I loved. You could buy wool. I was a great knitter in those days and anything like that you could buy and knit. And there was a sort of a fresh fish shop, a lovely post office, and John Ware had, where the restaurant is . . .
RP:
Was Harvey's. Now Chez Bruce
PJ:
Yes, it was John Ware, the butcher. He had his shop right down the bottom there and he also had one round the corner by the church. But we didn't have Indian or curries or anything like that at all.
We never had a coffee shop but nowadays it's houses, houses, coffee, houses, coffee all the way down the road. It's all just there and everything sort of built up and little houses are built behind the shops.
RP:
What about transport? I seem to recall you mentioned a trolleybus that would run down Burntwood Lane.
PJ:
No. The bus that went down Burntwood Lane was a number 5a, but down in Garratt Lane we had trolley buses and of course they were attached to the wires over the car.
I used to go to the Earlsfield Baptist church, so it was always down the bottom — we had our 100th anniversary last Saturday which was quite fun, and the boys from the Boys’ Brigade were there.
But you'd get a trolley bus if you wanted to go to the cinema at Tooting, you know, for a penny and we used to get . . . the fog was yellow, it was yellow. And the trolley conductor (?) used to get the people out, just to stand behind the trolley and just, don't push it because the electrics still work, but stay together sort of thing. Thick, thick fogs we had. I don't know, where have they gone? I don’t know where they’ve gone.
And then of course we got the war and we got the bombing, and we got the air raids. We got the balloons and we got the rationing. Six years was a long, long time.
RP:
You've certainly seen a lot of changes around here in all those years that you've lived in the area. If you could sum up, what would you say have been the main changes both to the Common itself and the surrounding areas?
PJ:
Money I suppose really more than anything else, I’d say money is. Everybody’s buying these days here around here. I mean when we first got married there was a house down the bottom for £2,000. No way did we have £2,000. And then, when we moved into the cottage, the house next door, they wanted £6,000 for it. It went for 5.4 million. So, yeah, if you think, if you knew what was going to happen you’d rob somebody for that money or go to a wealthy aunt or something. I said to Ray “I've got some wealthy relatives in Norfolk” He said “Don't you dare!”.
RP:
So you would say that the area generally has become more affluent?
PJ:
Absolutely. Completely. Yes. But I think most of the world has. Everywhere you go nowadays. I mean, look at the rents the kids have to pay — a thousand pounds here and a thousand pounds there. And it's just so sad.
RP:
And would you say that that affluence has had an impact on the Common, the way it looks and the way it's used?
PJ:
I think it's used far more than it used to be, because once one person takes a barbecue then you're going to get twenty people taking barbecues. But I think it's in control, thank goodness. I say you are in control, but somebody is in control, wandering around thinking. “Well I hope you're going to tidy up” but sadly you’d probably get abuse if you said to somebody “pick that up”, you know. It's not a nice world at all.
I mean I was in the hospital . . . I won’t deter you but it's a silly little story yesterday in the hospital. “We're not insured for doing that” said this woman. All she had to do was walk down ten yards to help a lady who was blind.
RP:
Well, thank you very much for sharing . . .
PJ:
I’m sorry. Have I gabbled?
RP:
You’ve been fine. You've told us lots of really interesting things.
Thank you so much.
PJ:
Well, thank you both. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Would you like a cup of tea?
XXX
Interview with Jennie Kramer
27th October 2022
Interviewer: Ros Page
RP:
Well, good afternoon, Jenny. Thank you so much for coming to talk to me today about your memories of living around Wandsworth Common. So we're here in John's house who's recording and is a cameraman for this interview. So I wonder whether we could just start. If you could just tell me your name and your date of birth and where you are. Living. Now what you're doing
JK:
So I’m Jennifer Kramer now used to be Jennifer Clark and I was born on the 28th of April 1949 three weeks late and I was born in. I realized the Waterloo lying in hospital which is right next to the London Eye. And I never only realize that about 10 years ago.
I was born a cockney, I think. And I'm now living in Cornwall. I've lived there for 40 years in a village in an area of outstanding Beauty. Oh, nice.
RP:
So were you born? You said you were born in in Waterloo lying in hospital. So your parents, obviously already lived in seven Belleville Road. Yes. Okay. Could you tell us a little bit about your family that your Parents and siblings and perhaps what? You're your parents
JK:
did. They met through the Salvation Army. So both families were in the Salvation Army which is but obviously big in those days. And my father was he came from the middle of London, as he's a bit older than my mother, he was in the RAF, my mother lived in Boston, in Lincolnshire. And with the Salvation Army, like with lots of things, they would invite Salvation Army, RAF people in Conersby, when they came to the meeting. So, that's how they met. So, my mother married him when she was young, she came down to London to work in Welwyn Garden City. And her mother said ‘Brenda's gone down to London.’ And so that's how it came about. My father came from a very poor background but very aspiring and [00:03:02] worked for Morgan Crucible company. And he Worked himself up to be a foreman and a manager, worked really hard very Innovative in his thoughts about, I think it was sort of brushes to do with aeroplanes or something they did but he's a very well-known company. I don't know if it still exists Morgan Crucible company and he was just about to be a managing director when he suddenly died, aged 45.
RP:
That's very young. Yeah, that must have been A shock to you all.
JK:
But when we were young, you know, he you know we always had a car and every Sunday we went to the Salvation Army all day. So in terms of our community we didn't we had another community in the middle of London Regent Street.
RP:
Okay, so, can you tell me how you came to living in Wandsworth, and perhaps also, can you describe the house, or the flat, in which you lived where it, where it was?
JK:
I think after the war people, you know my dad wanted to marry my mum and what they're going to do to live. I think it's to do with good friend of his in the RAF whose brother had bought this house in Belleville Road and they, I can still remember it so clearly, They built a wall. So we lived in the upper part, but it was three. We thought we were very poor, but it was three bedrooms with a toilet and a bathroom and a kitchen in a lovely road, which still exists, we just walked up it today. There was no garden because the downstairs, I think his friend's brother lived with his family underneath. So it's split into two.
I remember I had a big bedroom but my mother would come with the washing. And there was one of these pulley things and she'd come in to dry the washing their and so Wandsworth Common was our garden and the road.
RP:
So you say that the house which obviously is still there was split into two flats at that time. And still is something. Yeah, is it? Yes. And we just walked past it and yeah still still like that. Yes. Was that fairly common in those days? That a lot of the houses would have been split into Flats? Do you think
JK:
we don't really know because our close friend, John who lived over the road, we think there were slightly smaller houses and don't think that was flats and he had a tiny God. They had a tiny garden. I'm still in contact with him. I did try and get him involved in this project but it was too complicated for him. So no not necessarily, it's interesting, isn't it? When you think about your memories because I left when I was 9, but [00:06:02] I have such a variety of memories,
RP:
That's brilliant. We look forward to hearing more about them later. So I think you said you lived at number 7 Belleville Road, which is at the top end near the common. So you were actually very close to the common itself.
JK:
So, it's perfect in a way, we had a decent house and good friend over the road and then the common for playing and a lovely school.
RP:
And I assumed it was rented,
JK:
yes. And I think it's something like £2. Something, a probably a month. I don't know. Now, but it was rented. But what when we look back, when we were nine my Father's job was, you know, he was ascending, although he always felt and said to my mum, you know, all the other people in the management level were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and he was coming from a very poor background. So he felt he had to work even harder. As many people still do, you know depends on your background, isn't it? But Yeah, they wanted a mortgage.
RP:
Did your mother work at all?
JK:
She was very clever a year ahead of everybody on top of the class in Boston but it was something to do with the A-levels. You had to get three A-levels to do anything to get a degree and she was messed around and took the wrong one. She took French, instead of Chemistry, you know. And so she failed it and her mother would not let her retake ‘Right, you. Get a job, go to London, get a job.’ And so it wasn't till she was 50 she got a degree and at 18 she had to go out to work and yet she could have retaken that A-level in November. But ‘no I'm not looking after you.’ I mean we shouldn't have horrible parents but it's so sad because she then got married to my father and then had me. I'm grateful, she did and my brother but she had a place at Imperial College. She was very bright. So yeah, it was a long time before she came there in the end.
RP:
And can you tell me a little bit about some of your neighbours? Do you remember? Who else lived around you and in that road?
JK:
Vaguely. But if you think about it, first of all, when you're very young and then we had John over the road and we the parents got on very well, always running across the road, we only really remember John. I was the only girl in the road that I remember there was a postman next door. There were sort of random people and then on a Sunday, you would put all your food for the day. You go to the Salvation Army region Hall in London for the whole day. My father was really good musician. My mother played the piano, we're all very musical. So that was the whole day and then you're going [00:09:02] to school. There wasn't a lot of time to get to know your neighbours. Whereas now in Cornwall I really appreciate community but in the other days you didn't think about it.
RP:
And what about the slightly wider neighbourhood? You do you remember much about any of the shops or leisure activities or any of the other residents particularly ?
Speaker 1: I had a very good best friend who lived is it called Lavender Hill by Arding and Hobbs. So I met her at my school, Honeywell School. Those are we have my brother and I but I have very strong memories of that where we've just walked up today,
Northcote road, with all the trolley things in the road, you know, lots and lots of shops in the road. And then, what I do remember is a fish shop. There was all fresh fish in there, eels in water and stuff like that. And the DeMarco ice cream shop. Does anybody remember that? Because it was so memorable, Italian from a different country, and lovely, ice cream. And I just remember those two shops and vegetables in little carts going down. I see there are still a lot of carts there which is still quite unusual.
RP:
So would your mother or parents tend to do their shopping in Northcote Road ?
JK:
Think so but they always had a car Which looking back you think that was a bit of a head start you know. So we didn't. I was saying to Dean today, my brother, we didn't really ever go on a train because we were not buses to our grandparents, went down to Clapham Junction, to take a bus to our grandparents, in Wandsworth. But we moved when we were nine. So I'm taking I said my grandson now is nine, he's lovely but I got much him taking a little child or a bus to Devon or something.
RP:
I think you've got a picture, haven't you? You've got a photograph of your father in his car. Yes. Would you like to show that damn camera? Yes. There
JK:
He was a bandmaster when he met my mother because he was nine years older than my mother. So he's got his band. Last two uniform. It's very important music to our family and he talked my mother drive. So cars were very important
RP:
That must have been slightly unusual. Yeah. Then then the car ownership was much less than it is today, isn't it? So, presumably today when he walked down roads like Belleville Road, they're absolutely chock-a-block with the cars on both sides. That presumably, was not the case when you lived there?
JK:
No, no, because we remember a lot playing in the road, we have to make up going to wasn't much going on, but we really think about that because we made up games, they wonder, I became a Drama teacher and things like that. When I was older,
RP:
Did you have a television?
JK:
Yes, we did a television and a telephone. So, the black and white television and a telephone Remember it black. Remember the number and everything, but I also remember, a debate because it's a very good school, Honeywell interesting. We didn't go to Belleville because there was a Belleville School.
RP:
There still is, at the end of Belleville Road
JK:
But we never ever went up that part of the road, where Northcote Road and up and John's mother, I remember saying no, no, Honeywell was much better. So we all went to Honeywell which is still a good school as well.
RP:
Were you given the choice? Your parents presumably were given a choice, whether you went to Belleville.
JK:
It was definitely going to Honeywell, it's better, and it's a massive school, but it was a lovely big, primary school. And I have a very strong interesting memories from there. I was very glad to go. I'm not saying Belleville wouldn't have been good but we never went there.
RP:
Can you tell us about your memories of Honeywell School?
JK:
Yes. So, One of the things I remember. So I was probably there from 1954 and 55.
I was saying to my partner recently, there was the Hungarian Uprising, so I would have been about seven. This is a very strong memory and we were told to bring some wool in to make squares, to make blankets for the Hungarian people. This is all I remember, obviously, and I took in some green wool. and I knitted a square, so badly it wasn't even a square. I have never knitted since I felt so ashamed of myself, I've lost sewing. But that put me off knitting. I couldn't even at seven, I couldn't even make a square.
JK:
When we were little, you know, you're definitely, you know, it was all going on then. So little bits. I thought it was quite a progressive school. I don't know if other people that you've spoken to went there, but the head teacher, Mr. Pinder was amazing. [00:15:03] He told some lovely stories about stuff and I just remember being enthralled by his stories.
And we also had houses called Elgar, Turner, Dickens and Shakespeare, and Elgar was red, Turner was blue, Dickens, which was mine, was yellow and Shakespeare was green.
But I didn't kind of get it. About on the Friday afternoon. We all sat in an assembly and people got called up to and they got so many points and then they give Awards, and I always remember sitting there thinking, I don't know how you get points and I don't know why they got, you know, I just let everybody go. It didn't upset me, but I don't. It's a strange feeling like how do you get points? And that nobody ever explained. It was points for your house. I think of something, but I just remember there was no, obviously grass or anything there. But, lovely playgrounds.
I had my best friend and I remember being shown the film Oliver Twist had a big effect on me. And doing a project about tea in India about the Empire and all that stuff.
RP:
Did you have to wear a uniform?
JK:
I think there was a blazer but I don't remember wearing it, you know. All I remember was I was really happy there and although it's a big primary school and I had to move to another Primary School in South London. I just got lovely memories of it.
RP:
Did the school ever take you to the common for visits?
JK:
No, no, no, it's all very enclosed in that just this lovely building and all the playground. But not, you know, just pleasant memories.
RP:
Do you remember much about classroom sizes?
JK:
I just remembered when you asking me about television, I remember having a discussion in the classroom, I can still picture it and so it's quite sort of innovative in terms of, you know, having discussions about what you believe do. You agree with this? Is that what do you think about a television program having adverts in it? So, I don't know what year that was, but that was probably when ITV was coming on screen.
So, I don't remember much about sport or drama or art. This is sculpted it. No give you lunch, or did you? They must have time for lunch too far. We remember going, you know, walking to a very poignant lovely walking to a Honeywell and back. And then when we were younger, our parents would meet John's mum and our mom would take us for picnics with the smaller children on Wandsworth Common near the pond.
RP:
Well, that's very good timing because in fact I was going to move on now. Now to talking more about the carbon itself and your memories of how it was and how you used it. So perhaps we could start by you telling me how which parts of the common do you remember, visiting, how frequently would you go there and I presume you watch there because it was so close to where you lived.
JK:
Just remember a lot of freedom and trust and in those days, you know, there's that road to cross. When you think I left, when I was nine in charge with my little brother, John was the same age as me really but we just go there a lot. I'm just thinking, was it the weather that we went there? But it was just like a massive garden that, and the way I am, I would tend to make up a lot of games, which I led with some of the other children. Like, right. You know, the Germans are coming, we got a bow and arrow, and I've got an offset ocean. and we just made stuff up and I can see now a bit like drama re-enacting stuff because there was nothing around like today, there's all these football goalposts, everything was nothing, there is nothing there, but we didn't need anything because it was just running around without parents around but also we play games in the street, but yes, it was just a wide open space.
And there's a bit of prefabs there were some prefabs But we don't remember anything about it was after the sort of anything to do with food growing or rubble. There, it was just, we knew they were called prefabs
RP:
Did you mix with any of the children who lived in the prefabs?
JK:
No, not that we know of not. Didn't I mean you only find special friends. I have my special friend in Honeywell but she'll I said lived in Lavender Hill or something. And John over the road we tended to just have close friends because we also have another community in London with the Salvation Army.
RP:
So, do you remember whether you mentioned the prefabs were they lined up along the main road, which is Bolingbroke Grove in front of Belleville Road, where they are in that section?
JK:
To me, it seems a bit to the left maybe because the pond’s still there, but we didn't really just knew they were prefabs.
The strong thing was we missed the war, aren’t we lucky? We missed the war because all our grown-ups had just been through it or some of our grandparents had been through two wars. So and also for some reason maybe because my mom grew up in Boston with it. You know she didn't have to be evacuated or anything like that and she was at Secondary School, all through the war.
There was no sort of dislike of the Germans somehow. It was like, we won. Thank goodness, poor old Germans. And so interestingly, later on in life, because my father died suddenly, she married a guy, our dear stepdad, who had a German mother, had got out of Germany early and my husband was half German as well. So she taught us German words. I mean, she didn't know any Germans, but there was no sense of nastiness about them, which I really love. Because we feel now it's you know it's the way to be, isn't it?
RP:
So you were obviously allowed to go on the common unaccompanied. You didn't always have an adult with you. So did an adult see you across the road?
JK:
No, they didn't need to know. Yeah, there was a lot of, you know, we were good, children been well-behaved and we were trusted. Yeah. In those days. I mean, I don't think my parents were so aware of stuff then anyway but there was nothing, nothing untoward happened and I was the only girl that I mixed with and I felt in the road. And so I grew up with John and my brother, with Eagle, what will those magazines? And that and on a rainy day playing Monopoly and Dinky cars and Matchbox. So I grew up very much in a boy's world but feel very comfortable, which I think stood me in good stead for my life.
JK:
Did you ever venture further afield on the common? Because it's the railway line and what we call the cat's back bridge. Did you ever go over the other side?
JK:
Usually and we don't know why perhaps one night we got a little bit older and I because I was a sensible person. Perhaps a girl to look after my brother. We occasionally just went over the bridge to ice cream, tea and ice cream and then came back again but we had no desire to go further than that. We were very comfortable in that little part of Wandsworth Common near where our home was. We could have wars gone home if we needed to but I don't ever remember needing to it was just our playground.
RP:
In terms of the appearance of the common at that time, can you record how it looked? Did it feel wild? Did it feel safe?
JK:
Yes, when they're lat not saying that, just lots of grass. Yes, that's all. It was.
RP:
Now, you also lived in the district in the years immediately, after the second world war, do you have memories of any bomb damage for instance, or anything else, a reminder of the fact that the war had only ended a few years previously?
JK:
No. I mean, I don't even know, I have not thought about it, whether this area got bombed much. Because well obviously the house is still in Belleville Road, which we knew the most, you know, Belleville Road. Northcote Road. That was sort of all we knew and then getting the car and going up to the Salvation Army in London. But so, no, there wasn't a sign. Maybe when we were up in London, because we went to Central London a lot, but not around here. No sense. And nothing impact will be just, it was just like, I'll be lucky to have missed it.
RP:
So, just moving on to something we touched on a little earlier, which was some special events that you might recall, that could be of interest to our audience, such as the coronation in 1953. Were you able to watch that on television? Or was there a street party? Did you recall that event?
JK:
I recall two things. So they can't have been on the same day and first of all until recently, I thought how can these memories be true? Because I only would have been three until I realized that you know with all what has happened this year, there was a year later so that explains why my memories are better. But I definitely remember going to the Salvation Army in London in Regent Street and looking out of the window and actually seeing the coronation down the road. I know that's not in this place. So that's, you know, that was our second home. So that's what I remember. But, also, where you said you saw it, I looked at we looked out the window was actually live. It was going that's a fashion watch on any of that on television. I mean, maybe my father, because it was like, called the shop window of the Salvation Army. I know that he was on television and things like that. At Buckingham Palace even when we were little it was that sort of high profile at the time. So maybe he was playing in the band then and things like that, my mother played the piano for the choir and but the other memory I have. So it couldn't.
I'd have to check with John on this but there's picture of me and John dressed up in Belleville Road with a street party. Definitely, we just can't find the photograph at the moment. So, yeah, there was definitely a street party in, Belleville Road for the Queen's coronation. So I don't know what date that was.
RP:
I think it was June 1953
JK:
But was it on the same day as the coronation? You'd think it would be, but how can it be? But I need, you know, I'm not quite sure about that but both memories are strong. Yes.
We're still, you know, we haven't spent our lives together but we're still friendly. Yeah, he lives in Devon.
RP:
So just lastly, really. How would you describe the general area at that time where you lived there in in the early 50s or early to late 50s?
JK:
Secure peaceful. Narrow in what sense. So we're very safe very peaceful. But when you think of how some people's the opportunities given to some people, it was very muted in terms of what our capabilities could have been or were in the end. You know, it was playing in the street, in fact in my village. Now some of the children because they're old, Victorian houses in the main street, sometimes you walk along this, all the saw Hopscotch with the chalk, and that's what we did. We play these games running across the road, it all seemed incredibly safe, you know. You lived upstairs in a flat and you haven't got any garden. But there wasn't any stimulation of any sort other than I loved reading. I read as a sort of like some people might be ashamed of drinking. Wine. You know under the bedclothes with a torch, it was my escape from where my mind was and what was going on in life. So it's quite a plane. And secure. Does that make sense?
RP:
Yes. And obviously you now live quite a long way away in Cornwall. So you don't have many opportunities to come back to the area where you spent your early childhood. But I know you and your brother have managed to spend a few hours before meeting me today. I wonder if you could just talk about your impressions of the area, coming back to it today?
JK:
Specially, we look through estate agents’ windows. You what? How much these houses are going for, and why? You know, why did our parents want to leave? And we moved to Morden. Their first mortgage, near Morden station. It was not as interesting and amazing as [00:30:04] we feel where we lived in the area and Belleville Road and Wandsworth Common, so we didn't realise until we were older what an amazing place it was, how near it was to London and all its possibilities and supposing our parents. I think they probably had a chance to buy the flat but wanted to have a proper house. So the aspirations of when they were fairly young parents, their aspirations, what could happen, and what they need to have like a car and a mortgage and a proper house or Tudor style, faux how do you say it, you know, to pretend to do mock Tudor, you know? And there was no need for all that because we were, you know, Will, my partner, and I often even though we live in Cornwall, we can get say the train from our village to Plymouth and then up to Paddington. And I've done a lot of work as a teacher in London until I retired and I would often be paid to go for a day or go to conferences and things like that. And London is amazing, but we do find in our village at some people who come from London or have connections with London. Still, we're all so happy to come back to the peace of our village, our very vibrant village and the community and the viaduct and everything. It does seem very busy here but it has its charms. And of course all the art galleries, all the concerts that is amazing, it's still worth coming up to go to.
RP:
Thank you, Jenny, and, and thank you very much for talking to me today.
JK:
Yeah, it's wonderful to be doing a project like this. Thank you. I'm proud to be part of it.
RP:
Jenny, you brought a couple of photographs from the time that you lived there, which would be really interested to see. So, and I believe the first one you've got is a picture of you and your brother Dean in Belleville Road and your friend John.
JK:
That's right. Yes, a neighbour and almost like a brother to me, you know, because there were just the three of us.
RP:
So would you like to show us that? Yes. And just talk us through the photo. If you can.
JK:
Yes, I love this photograph. I think Dean is there. He must have dropped his toy at that point. And so they're just being John there, but because he was a sort of brother to me and has more memories than perhaps Dean and I have in some places, but it shows as outside the houses where we played and also Belleville Road and you know, just posing there. It's just for me, a lovely memory. And I think John is he dressed up there dot he's got a tie on his knee. I think it's very smart.
RP:
I wonder if it was a special occasion.
JK:
Yes, I can't remember. He says he's got five boxes of photographs at home. That may have some other memories for us.
RP:
Okay, thank you. And then we have another one, which is you. And can you tell us who your word that? And where that is?
JK:
Well, yeah. What it says on the back. I think it's a Norwegian lady. It says 1952. So I would have been and the ladies and handwriting, it's not anybody, I know, but just after the war the Salvation Army band went to Norway. I always remember it being so exciting that Daddy had gone to Norway with the band, and this was a return visit. And, you know, when you have ladies State, you know people to stay when you know, like they did in those days and this lady took me up. I don't know why I took me up to the top of Belleville Road and there's a photograph of me, you know, it's one of the earliest photographs outside of my family and I love it because it says Belleville Road and they give member it. Yeah. So there's a bit of a garden or something behind. So, yes. But that was that was I think it was part of Bolingbroke Hospital. Yeah, at the top but of course we always just bought past. Yes.
RP:
So was that a general hospital at the time. Do you remember?
JK:
We don't remember because I broke my nose when I was one and a half and I wish now and I'm trying to find out what hospital I went to bed. I don't think I went to that one.
RP:
Well, I well thank you very much. Okay, let's thank you. Thank you.
JK:
I was going to say that my mother tried to get help for me. Yeah, and the doctor said all babies noses with whom themselves and the fourth one said get her into Hospital quick and I was in hospital for a week and my parents came to see me every night. So I don't, I don't think it was that hospital and they could peer through a window. I wasn't allowed to see them. And so the end of the week I had to have plastic surgery. And I didn't recognize my parents at one-and-a-half. Talk about trauma. But somebody said, I don't believe that. That's not happening. So I looked it up and it was true in those days you didn't allow children to see their parents in hospital. I mean, our parents would be staying in hospital, hoping to look after them.
XXX
Interview with Dora & Barbara Littlechild
14th October 2022
Interviewer: Louise Murphy
LM:
Okay, well hello Dora and Barbara it's so good of you both to agree to take part in this oral history project for the Friends of Wandsworth Common. As you know we're recording quite a few people that have lived in the area for a long time and then we're going to edit it into a short film, which I'm sure you'll have the opportunity to see at some point. So, what we're going to do is start off with me asking you, Barbara to introduce Dora and say where and when she was born and to tell me a little bit about the family background.
BL:
So, Mum was born in 1928, she lived in Trinity Road, 186 Trinity Road, which is just opposite Trinity Road Chapel, living above the Grocer's shop there. Her dad Wilfred and mum Louisa Locket ran the grocery shop. And she had two older brothers, Les, and Stan. Who were I think, eight and six when you were born?
DL:
Yeah,
LM:
So quite a bit older than Dora. So what can you recall, Dora about life in the grocer's shop before the war?
DL:
My dad was the grocer. He did the provisions. We had a cellar down the stairs, which was used during the war as an air raid shelter and he had a stepladder took him up to behind the provisions side of the shop. Then there was the grocery side, which was more to do with my mother. It was anyway. And he used to get have the sides of bacon. The whole side would come in, and they had to chop it up and joint it all.
LM:
What sort of people used to come into the shop. Can you remember?
DL:
Well, the servants, used to come in – they used to enjoy that — and they sat on the chair, my cat's chair. And then they'd have a nice chat before they had to go back and work, you know. So they were all from the posh side.
LM:
And what did they bring in?
BL:
They'd bring in orders. You were saying that your dad used to deliver the goods to the houses afterwards?
DL:
Yeah, yeah. Well what happened in the day? My dad was behind his side and had the rashers of bacon and all that. And my mum was on the grocery side. Yes. And so that's how they work. We had a special chair, which was my cat's chair until somebody came in but yeah, that how it works. And then when it got to 6:00, the shop was shut, and my mum had already got the orders packed up. So they went out like that you know, on the bicycle but it was a tricycle, wasn't it with a, with a basket on it and dad would get on it and he'd go out over there to the posh side.
LM:
And do you remember much about the common itself in in those pre-war years? Do you remember playing on tHE:
DL:
common — yes but it was open ground as I remember it, the pond was big, I fell over once and hurt my knee and of course it was a right how do you do. But yeah the pond was a big then. They used to, you take out canoes and the bikes — pedaloes . Yeah, they did that sort of thing. Well, you know how you sit in them and people could hire them with their kids and you give them the fare, and then pedal them up and down the lake.
LM:
Who did you used to go to the common with?
BL:
with your brother's friends. And with Joan, your friend, Joan. Yeah,
DL:
The boys went to school We all went to school. That was the three of us went to St Mary's in Balham. Yeah. We went down Sarsfeld Road which was a slope and so they used to play marbles all down in the gutter. I don't know how they got there with their little sister doing things like that. Anyway we needed to get to school. I went to the Infants of course but gradually got to the Juniors.
LM:
Do you remember much about the war years?
DL:
Yes, I do because we were evacuated. It was the whole school was evacuated somewhere. I was evacuated to the people who owned the shop. The Mansons had the shop. They had the shop then they gave it up. They retired down in Beaconsfield. And that's where I went and stayed there in the war, when I was about 11, to the country. And I went to the church school there when I was 11 and I came home again in 1943 when I was about 14
BL:
which you was just before you were 14, wasnt it?
DL:
And I went to work in Buckmasters, at the florist shop. That's just on Trinity Road. Yeah, it's now
BL:
Now, it’s a French restaurant.
DL:
I think it's still a conservatory, with a glass roof. We had to put everything out in the front every day and people came and picked and chose their flowers and then they went into the shop to pay for them and then at the end of the day we had to pick it all up again, and bring it back in again.
LM:
and where did the flowers come from?
DL:
come from? From God. But not like heaven, from Covent Garden,
BL:
Dora used to use to drive up there to the market at Covent Gardens to collect the flowers in the morning.
DL:
Oh yes. When I had my license when I was 14 but before then they used to deliver them
LM:
so you could drive at 14
DL:
. Yeah. I got a license at 14
LM:
That was quite a responsibility for a young person.
DL:
I think that's when there was nothing else on the road really. I used to go up to Covent Garden early to get the flowers and so I never saw any other traffic at all. And I got back in time to open up the shop at 8:30. So that was all right.
LM:
What else can you remember about that period? When you working
BL:
you used to do other things didn't you in your free time? When you came back from Beaconsfield.
DL:
They evacuated the Girl Guides. We moved the meetings to the youth club at the church.
BL:
I think the Guides met in the in the Vestry at the back of the church.
DL:
Yeah. Because I was told that the church hall was full of everyone's furniture from their bombed-out houses. Yeah. So then we didn't have the space. We didn't use the back of the church actually.
BL:
you and Joan with all the older Guides were effectively running the unit because the Guide Captain was away on active service. So now the older girls, you and Joan and the some of the older ones.
DL:
Yeah, Joan Taylor I don't know whether she was she with us or not.
BL:
She joined when she came back from being evacuated and when you came back from being evacuated.
LM:
Can you remember much about bombs falling locally?
DL:
My brother used to get up on the roof and watch them.
BL:
did any of them fall nearby?
DL:
there was one that fell at the back of us in Brodrick Road but it didn't explode. But that's why we ended up in a prefab. I were there for a little while because we couldn't get into the house.
LM:
So did the shop have to close?
DL:
I think the house was alright, in the front, we just couldn't live in there.
LM:
And did you take shelter? You said earlier that the cellar was sometimes used as a shelter.
DL:
Well, we did during the war. Yes, and during the bombing we used to live down there. Now my mum papered all the walls and put pictures up and we had beds down there, and we stayed down there for support when we got home too
LM:
So how long did you carry on living above the shop at Trinity Road?
BL:
Was it till you got married? You helped to look after the place, didn't you when your mum passed away quite early?
DL:
Yeah, my dad was widowed and so I went on to help him to look after the shop,
BL:
And didn’t you say you remembered, one of the other things you used to do with the ration books? The ration tokens.
DL:
Well, you asked everybody to bring their ration book to the shop. Oh that's right we had to cut out the coupons, you have to cut them out and then string them all up into hundreds and threading them up through the round hole. So I spent ages threading them up and sending them to the Ministry.
LM:
And where did you move to from Trinity Road?
BL:
When you got married,
DL:
We moved to Magdalen Road opposite the tennis courts.
LM:
So this is a good point to bring to bring you in Barbara because you can you tell me when and where you were born.
BL:
So I was born right at the end of 1961, on New Year's Eve, in Magdalen Road. I've got two younger sisters with just under three years or three and a half years between us. Quite close in age. So yeah, we lived there and went to school nearby at Beatrix Potter.
LM:
And what did your father do for a living?
BL:
So, dad was the managing director of a local lift engineering firm, just up at Saint John's Hill. And Mum looked after us when we were little and then you, worked at the play group opposite, at the tennis court.
LM:
and have you got childhood memories of living close to the common?
BL:
So to my main memories are from when I was a little bit older, I do remember when we were in the Girl Guides going and playing games on the scope. So that would have been much more open like small fields that you could actually play running around games. And I also remember the late 1970s, when the bin men were on strike and the scope was used as a Rubbish Tip. And I remember walking across it coming back from school and trying to dodge the rubbish.
I'm sure we went and played on the common when we were little but I don't remember much about that.
LM:
What do you remember about the local shops and businesses around the common?
BL:
So I know we used to get sent off to go and do the shopping and go up to the butchers, there were two butchers on Bellevue Road. We used to get liver and bacon and things from the butcher's. I also remember when coming home after ballet we used to go to the sweet shop on Wiseton Road.
DL:
I remember when we were little my brothers being given a penny for the collection at church. Well it never got as far as that because they spent it on the way on sweets in that shop.
LM:
Do you have any other memories Barbara of the shops around the common?
BL:
There was a greengrocer where the Pizza Express is now, and a hardware shop
LM:
And you yourself got very involved with the Girl Guides didn't you Barbara?
BL:
Yes. Well I think I was born into it, because mum carried on running the Guide company once she was old enough right up until my younger sister was born. Then I joined the Brownies and then the Guides and then the Rangers, and then eventually I went back as leader of the company myself. And I'm still running it now. So, yes, it's been in the family and the Scouts as well. In fact that was where mum and dad actually met. It was, dad was in the scouts and then Scout patrol leader and you were the Guide Patrol Leader and then they got married.
LM:
where did you get married?
DL:
in St Mary Magdalene's. I remember the vicar – he rode everywhere on a bike in his suRP:
lice, across the common, to the vicarage on the corner.
LM:
and then some point you move to Ellerton Road.
BL:
Yeah. So when I was 12 this was so this was my father's parents’ house. So when my granddad died we moved around here. I was just twelve, and you've lived here ever since.
DL:
Yeah. That's 48 years or so. Yeah, I never moved not move very far,
LM:
Is there anything either of you wanted to add?
DL:
I remember that the butcher used to graze their sheep on the common and they were killed there, in Wiseton Road and chopped up, in the abattoir there.
XXX
Interview with Karly Olsen-Haveland
8th December 2022
LM: Louise Murphy
LM:
So Karly, thank you very much for agreeing to take part in this oral history project for the friends of the common. As you know, the interviews are a being edited to make a film, which will be shown at the Wandsworth Heritage Festival in a few months’ time and then the edited transcript of all of our interviews, of which there are about twenty, will be stored in the Wandsworth Heritage Library after that. So can we start by asking you to tell us where and when you were born and a little bit about your parents and family background?
KOH:
Yes. Well with a name like Karly Olsen Haveland, I'm not actually from these parts. I'm Norwegian by background, and my parents were living, obviously in Norway, until my mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And the feeling was that the best place for her to be under more investigation and get a new treatment was in England, and actually in London, that's in St Thomas's hospital. So they moved over here and they ended up in Wandsworth Common near Burntwood Lane. And so that's my background as a child, I was about five, I think when we were in Wandsworth, when we first came.
LM:
And what year would that have been?
KOH:
Oh, 1950s, no, probably 60 something. Yeah, 1959, 1960, something like that. Yeah. And I got to know around here really well, because we'd come to the common most afternoons in the summer, most weekends and it just became sort of part of life.
LM:
What did your father do for a living?
KOH:
He was an accountant and so he was busy and mum was in and out of hospital. So I did end up in boarding school, in Sussex actually. So holidays. Then Wandsworth became the place for holiday times. So it was somewhere that again, I'd ride my bike on [00:03:09] and we'd go across to the shops.
LM:
Did your parents own or rent your home in Burntwood Grange?
KOH:
They owned it.
LM:
and who actually lived there was it just the three of you?
KOH:
Yes, yes
LM:
Because you didn't have any brothers or sisters?
KOH:
Well my brother had died by that time. So it was just the three of us here.
LM:
So what can you tell me about your home life in your early childhood when you were living in Burntwood Grange?
KOH:
I suppose. It was, it was a very 1950s lifestyle. In the sense of I went to the local school and I was trying to remember the other day, which one it was because I've got letters in a box in the other room, between the headmistress and my mother, and I can't remember whether it was Bolingbroke or Beatrix Potter. I know it began with a B and I can't find the document, otherwise I'd have that to hand. And so I went there and I cannot remember a thing about it, so I don't know if I was there for very long because obviously after that, I went to boarding school, but I do remember having to walk across the common to get there.
LM:
Ah, so that implies it was on the other side?
KOH:
So and, you know might have been even beyond Northcote road. So that's why I don't know which one it was. And maybe that was Honeywell, I don't know. But, you know, they're all much of a muchness when you're five or six. But as I say that was a very short part of my education, because then I went to boarding school in Sussex. So I didn't have local friends until I was about nine. When I then went to Virgo Fidelis, which is in up on Crown Hill, sort of the other side of Streatham. And then, interestingly enough there were Patricia and Betty Dolan. And they also lived just of Burntwood Lane as well. So, they were my local friends and we all got the bus and the train together to school. So yeah. But it wasn't local. It wasn't a Wandsworth school.
LM:
No, So let's move on then to your childhood memories of the common. You've told us that you used to walk across it to school, presumably with one or other of your parents escorting [00:06:09] you. So you've got to know the common extremely well, if you were walking on it every day.
KOH:
Absolutely and, interestingly enough you know, when I look at it now compared to then, everything seemed much smaller back then. And I know, you know, as a child, you always think things are bigger, but I was thinking the other day, everything has grown since the 50s, because then there was a lot of bush, what I would call bush anyway, which are now trees. The pond was I don't know, it's felt as though it was, you know, people used it in a way, more than now, in the sense that people would put their little boats on it. I had a sailboat that I put on it. People would fish there. I don't really ever see anybody fishing there now. I know you can get fishing licenses to fish. And then of course there were the wardens, who were like Canadian Mounties but in brown. So they had, they literally were a mix of, I suppose Country Park managers, and as I say, something from the Canadian mounties with their big, brown hats with the dents in, and they were always chasing after children who were being somewhere they shouldn't be, or doing something they shouldn't be! Catapulting was one thing. They were always chasing small boys!
LM:
What other things do you remember doing on the common? You've mentioned your little boat.
KOH:
Yeah. Well I was cycling and with my friends Betty and Patricia, we used to go cycling on the common. We'd have picnics and very much the same as people do today. You know, that, there'll be birthday parties. What I have remembered was we didn't go the full hog and have any kind of gazebo, which, of course seems to be, you know, the thing in the summer here now, we didn't do any of that. It was very basic, a blanket and then your Tupperware. Yes, and that was that.
LM:
Absolutely. Okay. So your parents went to the common with you, at the weekends presumably, when they were free to do that. And you say that you can remember the vegetation being lower.
KOH:
Well, it's just the assumption that I've got is that you know, the trees, like here really, the trees just weren't as big back in the 50s as they are now and they've grown tremendously. So coming back here in 2012, I was quite suRP:
rised actually.
LM:
And of course you would have crossed the Scope, or skirted the scope to get to the common from Burntwood Lane?
KOH:
Exactly. And that, I think it's a more pleasant place now, shall we put it like that? It was seen as somewhere a bit dodgy when I was a child. Anyway, wasn't somewhere I was allowed to go on my own. No. Or even with my friends. We definitely had to walk around, down Burntwood Lane, rather than go through the Scope.
LM:
And I suppose there was far less traffic in those days. So it was much safer.
KOH:
Well, the fact that we were allowed to walk around Bellevue Road, Northcote Road over the common. As long as you were with friends, you told you parents where you were, they didn't really mind that much, and off we went on our bikes and I'm not sure if that age group because I'm talking about under 12, I don't know if today I just don't think would happen today.
LM:
No, I don't think it would at all. Okay, nice. Did you ever play any formal games or sport on the common?
KOH:
No, I didn't. I mean, obviously, they were football matches but of course, I was brought in a time when football wasn't for girls. So I didn't get a chance and all the other games, like hockey and things like that, we played at school, so no, it wouldn't be something we would do on the common. And so that was the boys only bit, and the cricket of course, I always watched the cricket with my father because he loved cricket
LM:
Oh, and where was that, on Trinity Fields?
KOH:
Oh no, just here, just outside here. Yeah, so that's been a cricket field for forever and a day.
LM:
So, what do you remember about the local shops and businesses around the common?
KOH:
Well it was interesting because Bellevue Road is probably where we went shopping the most with my mother, because, what is now Chez Bruce, used to be a butcher's and the first time I ever went with her to the butchers, they had hooks on the outside, with all the hares and the rabbits hanging down. And apparently I went in, and I have no memory of this, except what my mother told me, we went in, she was going there to order, whatever it was she was ordering. And I went up to the Butcher and punched him in the stomach and called him a cruel, cruel man, because of all these [00:12:09] rabbits hanging outside. And apparently, I was about five or six, and I said, I stood in the shop and said I'm never eating meat. My mother kind of looked at me and said, oh, that's a shame because you're going to go hungry. So yeah, so I remember that being the butchers and there was the greengrocers. There weren't, not that I can remember, any cafes. Obviously there was the Hope, but those were the days when they were pubs and they didn't sell coffee. But it was very much you know, the butcher, the fish monger, the greengrocer. And then, of course, just along here in Trinity Road, all I remember, and maybe it's because we didn't go there that often because there weren't the sort of things that my mother needed. But there was a post office down there, and then it became part of the sort of mini supermarket. And it was a newsagent and whatever. And then they've got rid of the Post Office now, which is a shame, but and I think there was a lady's hair dressers there as well. But I think mum went to the one on Northcote Road. So it was, you know, it was this bit of Trinity Road, Bellevue Road, Northcote Road. Those were the sort of areas. I don't remember Clapham Junction really very much at all, other than the department store, Arding and Hobbs. And I do remember going to Arding and Hobbs and I do remember my mum, taking me there for tea and cake in the cafe. So, so that was my little world really,.
LM:
of course, yes. And I suppose all your shopping was done, because we didn't have big supermarkets in those days, so all shopping was done locally, and probably more often.
KOH:
Well, it was interesting because of course, back in the 50s and 60s, you could get deliveries. So you'd go in with your shopping list and then they'd ask, do you want it delivered? And my mother always did because she wasn't going to go carrying everything around because we didn't have a car at the time until a bit later. So she would go to all the shops and then later on that afternoon it would all get it delivered. A fantastic service, and I remember thinking years later, before we got deliveries again, you know, that's a missed opportunity. We've lost the delivery culture and of course, it’s all back now, but not quite in the same way.
LM:
So what did you actually visit Northcote Road for? Was it the market?
KOH:
I was going to the library, and it was mum having her hair done, and just generally you know, when she wanted something that she couldn't get on Bellevue Road, then it would be Northcote Road, and obviously there was the market as well, for fruit and veg and stuff. But it's interesting now, today when you look at it because it's not what I would call a market anymore. There's the odd stand, but it's become very niche and it's certainly not a market. So, so that's changed.
LM:
No. It's not a fruit and veg market, that's for sure.
KOH:
And I mean, even if you look at Bellevue Road now, with the new greengrocers, it's not a greengrocer that I would have remembered as a child. So again, it's the sort of a store and the odd bit of fruit and veg
LM:
and it's a florist. So do you have any memories of other formal activities in than in the neighbourhood? I mean, for example we you ever in the Brownies or the Girl Guides or did you go to church?
KOH:
Yes, so I was brought up a Catholic so we went to the church down the road and it was St Mary Magdalene, but it's the Catholic one, and it's on, what's that road that goes down to South Side. It's just sort of parallel to that, past the new old people's home, and it's just on the left and it's tucked away. It's quite big inside but we went there and, was it St Johns Road or something? No, it's part of Battersea, no, it's not Battersea Rise. It's part of the A205. It's part of the one way bit, when you come up from Clapham Junction. If you're on the bus, you're sort of going round. I can’t remember name the road at all
LM:
Did you walk there?
KOH:
Oh yes, as a child. Yeah, it's about five minutes. Yeah, it's five minutes from here but, as you can tell, I don't go there anymore, so I haven't got a clue what [00:18:09] road it's in. I mean, you know, I went there, I think two Christmases ago for midnight mass because I had friends to stay so it was the first time I'd been in the church since I was about eight. It hadn't changed a bit, except the choir was better! So, yes, that was the church. But I didn't, again because I was at boarding school, I did all my Brownies and Girl Guides through the school, from my boarding school in Sussex. So, it was like having a half and half life, out in the country and here weekends because I was a weekly boarder, and then main holidays. So it made it quite difficult to do anything like Brownies or Girl Guides here because I just wasn't around. Yeah. So I did it all at school.
LM:
Yes, I understand that. So what age were you when you went to boarding school?
KOH:
About six — very young. That's largely because mum's MS, was getting worse. So walking across the common was proving to be difficult for her. So, you know, they made some choices and, and she'd been to boarding school in Sussex as a child anyway because it was during the war. So, she had latter years, before she joined the Norwegian Air Force, she was boarding school in Sussex.
LM:
What age were you when you came back to London and went to school in Norwood?
KOH:
So I would be about 11. Yeah, about 11, and that was a great experience again. Because I was a day girl, I did get more involved again, but with school Brownies, and school Girl Guides. It was interesting again, I don't know how common it is today, but I would walk across the common, go to Wandsworth Common station, get on the train, get off the train, get the bus, get up to Crown Hill for school. So, and I'd be doing that without any parental escort. No nothing I mean, you'd get to the station at Wandsworth Common and all the other girls who lived locally, who went to the same school, will be there. So we just go with each other if you like, but I was the norm. There were no parents in sight.
LM:
I suppose with secondary age children, that's probably fairly common now. [00:21:09] OK, well, let's move on to your memories of the Fitzhugh estate, where you now live. So I believe you used to regularly visit the Fitzhugh estate as a child?
KOH:
Yes, because I had friends here and I'd met them through the primary school I went to, which must be, must have been Honeywell because of having to go across the road at Northcote Road.
LM:
maybe it was Belleville, if it began with a B.
KOH:
Oh it could have been Belleville, it just goes to show memories gone completely of that whole time. I'm sure it was lovely. Yes. So I met some people at that primary school who lived here, and it was very different. There were children's playgrounds for each block, which I used to play in. And there was a see-saw, there was a climbing frame, and it was just paving stones, none of that soft, you know spongy stuff. So if you fell, you hurt yourself and that was normal. And we'd cycle all round the estate. And in those days you couldn't get to the common from here, because it was fenced off. And the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building was derelict. So nobody went there either. Although some young people did try to go in there, because it was always very interesting, but it was a bit dodgy. And it was, you know, sort of bricked up and everything.
LM:
was this in the 60s then?
KOH:
yeah, because they obviously had the school, the John Archer school, which is where the John Archer Estate is now, and all of that. So you had sort of like brick walls and then the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building sort of fenced off. So it was just the 10 acres that we sit on and to a certain extend nobody really minded. I do know that sometimes I would say to friends. Let's all meet on the common and they said, then we've got to go walk all the way around, up Trinity Road and down the other side, and kind of, you just come here instead. So I'd go on my bike.
LM:
So that was the only way to get to the common, to go out onto Trinity, Road, and round.
KOH:
Yes, there was no access. It was quite interesting that the garden areas here or these the flower beds have never changed. They've always been fantastic. There was a guy who lived here in the 60s and he would plant daffodil bulbs every autumn I went to it and he would just add to that every year. And so now in Spring the amount of daffodils on the estate in the spring is phenomenal and largely from the ones that he put in back all those years ago. And the rose bushes just keep going. So you know, that's what I remember from then. But again what I remember is that the trees weren't as high as they are now, so the horse chestnuts weren't, you know, mind you they've all got disease now. So that's another problem.
LM:
And were there common facilities on the estate, because I suppose they were all Council tenants in those days.
KOH:
Yes, so the ground floors were all laundry rooms. They had big industrial laundries which I used to go into with my friends because it was somewhere interesting to play but they were done on a rota basis because, there was a warden who lived on the estate then, who would give people a kind of rota of when they could use the laundry room, so if you missed your slot, that was it for the week. So, all the laundry rooms had these massive washing machines and then these huge drying cabinets and we've still got them in this building. I don't know about the others, and obviously they, you know, they're just rotting away which is a real shame. But we would like to re-puRP:
ose those rooms for more communal things. But you know, nothing's happened yet.
LM:
And what floor they are they on?
KOH:
The ground floor, and so they're still there, and the storage areas where the storage rooms that exist were actually made for prams, because when these were built, it was largely young families, because, my understanding is that the target group were young professionals. So nurses, teachers, doctors, whatever, and they were all young families. And of course, today we have got three or four people that I know who have lived here ever since this building opened, and they came here with their young families.
LM:
So that was the 1950s ?
KOH:
Yeah, that was 1953. So they're all in their very late 90s now. And they tell you all sorts of stories about what it was like right back in the 50s, because all the communal halls were used for children's play on rainy days. So they said all our front doors were open and the kids would just go in and out and we, you know, could see them but also the way the laundry rooms were designed, they faced the children's playgrounds, so you could be in there doing your laundry, looking out of the window and watching the children.
LM:
Was washing never hung out?
KOH:
No, apparently it wasn't allowed. You can't use the balconies for laundry. So that's why they had these laundry cabinets and they had heaters in them. So it was all quite, you know, modern, And I remember thinking, oh, we haven't got one of those at home. We had a very old-fashioned, sort of circular lobby, and then you had to do a mangling thing as well, so I was quite envious of some of the things that they had here. And the fact that, you know, there was the playground and there was like a lot of land, because as say this is built on 10 acres. So you know there's lots of space, lots of room to play. Yeah. And there were a lot of children here in the 50s and 60s and of course that all changed although, there are still people here, who were children then, who are still living here, and you know, they talk vaguely, they say, wouldn't I have known you? And I say, no, only if you knew such and such a person on the 10th floor of Gernigan. No I didn't know any of those people. So, yeah, there's a core group of people who actually grew up here from the 50s and there's a core group of sort of their parents age, still here.
So that that makes it quite interesting as a building because, of course, the original windows were all crickell windows, so they are all gone. And, although I have got a neighbour who is an architect, and when the crickell windows were taken out, she asked if she could keep them, so she's got them in her store room downstairs. She said, I never know when I might find them useful. But, you know, it was, they were built by Waites. And they were going to be built as private flats and then Wandsworth Council, or London County Council, as it was then, said, could we buy them off you? Because obviously, we need to house people?
LM:
Well, after the war there was massive demand.
KOH:
That's right, so Waites sold them for peanuts. But there's some really interesting photographs of them being built because, obviously, the land it's on is actually part of the common, which is actually part of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, and it was part of the front garden area at the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building and it went right back to where the community garden is now, where the vegetable garden was. They're all Patriotic grounds. Yes, so that's why, when we were digging it, we found lots of glass from the old greenhouse. So yeah, you know, these little twinges of history hit, every now and then, so it's quite fascinating.
LM:
Yes. So I suppose everybody would have been a tenant initially. Yes. And then I suppose people started to buy their flats in the 1980s, when the Right To Buy was introduced.
KOH:
I mean, my understanding, because I'm the chair of the Residents Association, so I get all the data from the council, practically 70% of the flats are now lease hold owned. And in Wandsworth as a Borough, right across the borough, there is now a 50/50 split in all their properties between lease holders and tenants. So, you know, which is good for a lot of people and also causes more problems, the lack of housing.
LM:
Yes, absolutely. So I suppose a lot of the original tenants would have gone on to buy their flats, and then possibly sold them on?
KOH:
They have, yeah. I mean, I think most people. I mean, I thinking of, you know, my neighbour across the road, he bought two years ago, his predecessor bought it eight years before that, you know. There's just turn over all the time. So, and I've lived here since, I've owned it since 2002, and lived here since 2012.
LM:
So, finally, when did you leave the Wandsworth area, and where did you move to? And let's catch up, when did you come back again?
KOH:
So I must have been about 13 or 14, and we moved to Kent and then I went to school [00:33:10] in Kent and then I ended up going to University in London. And then I work for an international company and spent most of my life abroad once I was working. So, I did when I discovered there is a place here for sale. I thought, oh, that's a good idea. I need a base in London, even though I'm not living in England, and I thought I could rent it out. So I brought it in 2002 and I never dreamed that I would live in it, because I always thought I'd stay abroad, and I came back to England in 2012. And I suddenly thought, oh, hang on a minute, you know, because I was talking to friends about where I should live, and one of my girlfriends said, you've already got a flat in London, and I said, oh yes, I have. So, I spoke to my tenants who, actually one of them was my godson, and he said, oh, we're moving. And I went, oh, that's handy. So I moved in and they moved out and then I got, once I was in, I then renovated it and changed it completely, and started to really realize the benefit of being here, and you know, being right on the common, being close to everything. I'm just realizing, wow. you know, why would I want anywhere else? So that's how it's just worked really well. And of course since having this flat and living in it, you know, I've developed a community from the estate, but also from the Friends of Wandsworth Common, and other groups that I'm involved with in Wandsworth so it's become, you know, a really great place to live. For me, put on a personal level.
LM:
You mentioned that you were chair of the Residents Association, is that for Gernigan House?
KOH:
It's the whole estate. So it's 250 flats. Yeah, it gets quite busy. It feels like a full-time job sometimes.
LM:
It must do, and you're still working?
KOH:
Yes but I'm easing off. The great thing about being involved with the Residents Association is the number of people I've met. I mean, I probably know most people on the estate now, where I could say hello to people, but we've got our own Facebook page, we've got a WhatsApp group, we've got the Community Garden. So yeah, you know, it's a community [00:36:10] on its own within Wandsworth Common.
LM:
So do you have to convene, is it your role to convene regular meetings? And where do you meet?
KOH:
Well, that's interesting, because everybody who walks up and down Trinity Road will see FitzHugh Community Room. And it's not, it's a private Nursery, much to our chagrin. So we tend to go either to the County Arms or La Gothique, which is rather nice bar restaurant in the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building. So we don't have a space for ordinary meetings but we are allowed to use the Community Room for our AGM. Which we do. But you know, and it depends on what the topic is or, how busy people are. But you know, people will have meetings in their flats as well, especially if it's an emergency type thing, because, we have to remember that there's a very mixed community here. So you've got a lot of people who wouldn't dream of going into a pub, on any level, for any reason, and so that does make it more difficult. So you know, we do open our homes up for meetings as well.
LM:
And would you say the demographic of the estate has changed?
KOH:
Well yes, I mean, like everywhere I suppose in London. There are less children here now and it's more young professionals, and young couples, with a mix of Somalian, Sudanese refugees, who've come and then gone on to go to university or whatever and have stayed, and a mix of older, single people. And as I say some of the people who've been here since 1953, so it's a real mix, so a mix of age, race, interests. We have a lot of people who just buy as an investment and then rent it out, and we have quite a few people who use it as their London base but live in other places as well. So it's a real mix and so the fact that we've got 42 people involved in the Community garden. And we have probably that number and a bit more who are regular members of the Residents Association, I think is pretty good going, because I always think of it and I say to people here you've got to remember, this is like living in five streets, five blocks. And the fact that so many of us know people from other blocks. I said that's pretty good going for a London Community. You know, we've got 215 households and people will know people in all of the blocks.
LM:
and are there are a lot of elderly people living on the estate?
KOH:
Yes, and they get very involved with the garden, and telling stories to me about what it was like, you know, back in the day, and people who have moved here for various reasons, you know, they came here in their 40s and 50s for work or whatever, when they were living in London, and they bought here, and now they're in their 70s and 80s, and they've stayed. So, you know, we've got people, like any community, we've got people with dementia, we've got people who are physically disabled, we've got people with mental health problems, you know there's everything.
LM:
Well with the lifts of course, and you've got two per floor, so for elderly people, it’s quite liveable isn't it?
KOH:
Totally brilliant. Yeah. So Yes. I mean, like any building that's of an age, there are things that need doing. We need a new roof on every building at the moment, which hopefully we will get in the next year or so. Plus solar panels on top of the roofs, which will be great.
LM:
But I suppose the estate is a little microcosm of the borough isn't it?
KOH:
Absolutely, I mean, it's fascinating. We've got people who are antique dealers, we've got someone who's the picture editor of Elle Decoration, we've got people from the BBC, we've got people from a podcast company, we've got an artist, we've got actors. yeah, everybody.
LM:
and then as well as that, some very ordinary people that have lived here all their lives?
KOH:
Absolutely, a real mix of people, which I think makes it a really interesting place to live you know, because it's we've all got different issues in aspects and people get very exercised about certain things happening on the estate and other people won't bother, just like anywhere.
LM:
Do you have any social problems on the estate like vandalism?
KOH:
No, we're very lucky, and it’s interesting, because if anybody was seen to be doing anything, there would be an immediate, hello, who are you? what are you doing? Or there'd be something on Facebook immediately, has anybody seen this? I've just taken a photograph of this person doing this, who are they? does anybody know? should we call the police? So yeah, they're very responsive. I mean, because we're open access from Trinity Road, you get all sorts of people coming in here and they'll walk through to get to the common. So, there'll be the odd thing happening, but as I say, everybody looks out for everybody and they'll say, just seeing your car move to such and such, is it you in it? you know, but that sort of thing has gone on, so people look out for each other.
LM:
Interesting, most interesting. So well thank you very much Carly. It's been a great pleasure, hearing your reminiscences of the common in general and of the Fitzhugh estate in particular, and how it's changed over the years.
XXX
ED POTTER
24th October 2022
Interviewer: Rosalind Page
RP:
Good afternoon, thank you very much on behalf of the Friends of Wandsworth Common. And for agreeing to talk to me today about your recollections of life around Wandsworth Common over the 50- odd years that you've lived here.
We're speaking today from the kitchen of your house here in Baskerville Road. So could you start by just telling me your name and your date of birth and what your current occupation is.
EP:
I am Edward Potter and my date of birth 15/9/41. I was one of those war babies, compliments of the Polish Air Force. I am a chartered architect still working in Wandsworth.
I do projects in Wandsworth and Putney, Barnes, Chiswick, etcetera. And outside London. 50 years of work, really.
RP:
So perhaps you could just tell me a little bit about where you were born and a little bit about your own family background and your early life and perhaps what your parents did, for instance.
EP:
Well, I didn't really know my parents as parents. I was brought up by Grandma, was sort of a surrogate grandma. She was a friend of my mother's and she took a deep interest in my mother, and she was married. That was Mrs Wignall. And she was Henrietta Wignall, dating back to of 1890! She was 60. She and her husband were 60 when they took me on board as an 18-month-old child.
I was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, because the Polish Air Force were in Blackpool, Lancashire, and in one or two other places. I lived in Bolton for my formative years. I went to a Junior School, (unintelligible) school, and then Bolton Technical School and Bolton Art School simultaneously and met a lot of dear friends there and some of which I still have connections with. Then from Bolton, I worked in Bolton, in an architect's office, Bradshaw, Gass and Hope. I think they were the architects of Wandsworth Town Hall in the pre-war days, specialization, then I worked in Bolton in an architect's office. And then I went to study at the regional College of Art in Manchester in their school of architecture, I was there five years. We were guinea pigs on this new course where you have to work in an office and do studies. So it's quite a gruelling time, really, commuting from Bolton to Manchester – it’s only 12 miles, mind, and a 20 minute train ride. But then there was some doubt about the course being accepted by the RIBA in Manchester. So I moved — with other people — I moved to Oxford School of Architecture and I was accepted there and I spent three years, two or three years there and graduated from the Oxford School of Architecture, then did professional practice in London in Chelsea. And I finished up in Wandsworth because one of my chums from Manchester, David Greenwood, fellow architect, he lived in this house on the top floor in a flat.
RP:
Where we’re speaking from today, he lived in this building?
EP:
Yes, he lived . . . But at that time, he just rented the flat from Sarah Scoby, the landlord, who also owned 13 Baskerville Road. She was an architect, and I used to stay here with David on the top floor, when I was doing my thesis research. My thesis, my final thesis at Oxford was the reconstruction — you may laugh at this but, very much in the news these days, the reconstruction of Downing Street, Number 10 Downing Street. To demolish the lot and start again. And it won a prize , a student prize at the time.
RP:
So just tell me how old would you have been at that time? What sort of years are we talking about?
EP:
Born in '41 so, '71 I’d have been, what, 30. Yes, 30. I actually began to live here, in Baskerville Road, not this house but number 13, must have been . . . it was a year that steam ended, coming into Waterloo, so it was 67-68, that period. And I was also working in Chelsea. I was commuting from Wandsworth Common on the bus the 19 bus in those days or the 49 bus into Chelsea.
RP:
So from what you're saying it sounds as though the houses in Baskerville Road were a little different from how they are today. It sounds like perhaps some of them were divided into flats?
EP:
Yes, they were . . . quite a few of them were divided into flats and some were in quite poor condition. House number two, that was in very poor condition. It was used by Wandsworth for impoverished social families, sorry, I'm using the wrong description.
RP:
Deprived families, was it?
EP:
That’s it. They sort of wrecked the house. Hmm. And then, then they were able to buy it through the scheme that Mrs Thatcher instigated and then they sold the house to developer and he sold it and it's been renovated.
RP:
So it'd be really interesting, I think for people to hear today, what living conditions in a flat in Baskerville Road, which is now probably one of the most desirable roads in London, was like back 50 years ago, when you first came to live here.
EP:
Yes, well, it was all after the war, you see. There were big houses that people had left during the war, evacuated or whatever. And it was easy to make them into flats. And it was also slightly run down but there was a certain charm there, I think. But if you wanted a taxi from Chelsea to Wandsworth Common you wouldn't get one. Cab drivers – ‘’Where's that?! Where is Wandsworth Common?’’
RP:
Was every flat completely self-contained? For instance, you would have had your own kitchen and bathroom, would you?
EP:
Yes, I had the little flat in number 13 which I had, which was virtually identical to the one here you see. Tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom, and two bedrooms and a sort of self-contained landing with a fire door that gave access to the main staircase. And that was the same in number 13. There were other flats I went into, but they weren't quite as nicely done, as 13 or even 5.
RP:
So can you tell me about how you came to live in this house? Because I know you've lived here at number 5 for a number of years.
EP:
The lady, the person who owned this house was Nina, Nina Stubbs. She was a theatre designer and did costumes. She was married to Ralph Coltine (?). They were married when the house was bought. Nina bought the house because her father died, the family came from LiveRP:
ool, father died, so she had £12,000 to spare, so she bought the house.
RP:
And that would have been which year?
EP:
1968 — 67 or 68.
RP:
So the whole house would have cost £12,000!
EP:
Yes, the whole house as it stands today. She and Ralph lived in the cottages on Heathfield Road.
RP:
Heathfield Road, near the prison? Do you mean . . .
EP:
No, no, the six houses there – what’s it called? It juts into the Common. One, two, three, four, five houses.
RP:
Oh, I think I know where you mean.
EP:
They were requisitioned by the GLC during the war as Army quarters, etc. And they lived in the end house. They shared, it was two flats. They shared with the Kearney family, graphic designers. Ralph also did theatre and also there was another person that lived there; Smilby, he was a cartoonist. He did stuff for Playboy. He and Ralph were friends and the two families lived . . . and then Smilby and his wife moved off and the Kearneys moved in. Mike and Mary Kearney, Mike was a graphic designer. There's all this design connection all the time. Mike did a lot of posters for Ballet Rambert. Digressing a bit, but you can see the art connection. Ralph was doing theatre and Nina was doing theatre. Did work together on a number of projects in the 60s. They did Wagner’s Ring Cycle together. Ralph would do the sets and Nina did the costumes. But Ralph got the accolades.
RP:
Yes. So when did you move to this house?
EP:
Well, I didn't really (laugh). I met Nina in the mid-70s, and by that time she’d divorced Ralph. So it was a very open situation. But I also, I bought a house in Westover Road, which I had until she died. So this was her house and that was my house. And I also ran my office from Westover Road and and I [unintelligible] just here because the first floor here was a studio where Nina worked, did all the drawings and I did the same. So there was an overlap of interests.
RP:
Do you still own the house in Westover Road?
EP:
No, no, I got rid of it. I had to but no, I sold that when Nina died. Nina died in 2016. Very sadly, dementia. Ralph died two years later. He was living in France.
RP:
So you've lived in this road for well over 50 years.
EP:
Yes. Yes from about 19 . . .
RP:
Late 60s, till the current day.
EP:
Yes 67 years ago. Getting mixed up.
RP:
So you must have seen some changes in the road and the general neighbourhood?
EP:
Yes, the road itself, the sort of traffic pattern has changed slightly because there are one-way systems and no entry bits. But the physical layout is the same and the houses have really very little changed externally, but internally they’ve been renovated and things added on the back. I've done several myself here and it has got slightly smarter, yes.
RP:
Well, it’s certainly become a lot more expensive hasn’t it? So would you say that overall . . . Because this area is known as the Toast Rack . . .
EP:
Mind you, that was a name that only appeared very recently, in the last 15 years. On the cupboard there, there is a piece of china which a local estate agent produced as a publicity stunt and it's called a toast rack, so I think that's where it came from.
RP:
I sort of was under the impression that it’d been known as the toast rack . . .
EP:
(unintelligible)
RP:
So would you say that the whole area of the Toast Rack has become more affluent, more gentrified, the sort of people that live here now, are they different?
EP:
The people who live here now tend to be I suppose generally in finance or insurance, There's a man that lives in Baskerville Road who works for the Bank of England for example, and it's all to do with finance and sort of high finance and banking.
RP:
Has it changed in any way in a sort of sense of community, perhaps?
EP:
Well, yes, because before there was remnants of old Wandsworth and Battersea living here. It was, it was the odd plumber and the odd tradesman and they all had their funny ways of doing things, and their houses were sometimes a bit higgledy-piggledy. But that has changed, yes, it's now professional. Highly professional and it has made the social difference. That's quite, quite marked.
RP:
OK. Well, if we can now turn our thoughts, perhaps a bit more to the Common, it's well, which obviously your house backs on to. So, I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about perhaps some of your earliest memories of the Common, what it looked like back 50 years ago, how it got used, how you used it personally, perhaps if there are any particular features on the Common which may no longer be there. I think you mentioned in a previous conversation that there were some gentlemen's toilets which had been demolished and there was a wooden hut opposite the Hope Pub? Anything you can think of?
EP:
Generally the extent of the Common is as it's always been really since I knew it. What is quite different — It's slightly better looked after, the trees have grown generally. Some along the railway, for example, the trees have gone . . . , it's quite dramatic really when you compare photographs, and the grass areas are much the same and they have, and as you say there have been these landmarks, which have been and gone. The gents toilet, which was just behind this house actually, on the Common, that was demolished. It became a bit of a meeting place — ‘cottage’, I think they call it.
RP:
Cottaging. Can you remember when that took place? When it was demolished, approximately?
EP:
About 15 years ago and then there was a wooden hut, as you mentioned, opposite the Hope Pub. We called it the Scout Hut, a sort of changing room, but that was burnt to the ground. Just timber, quite a large thing. It just burned.
RP:
How long ago did that happen?
EP:
About the same, about the same I suppose. Because there were a few ruffians, wandering around the Common in those days.
RP:
And you say it was used as a changing room?
EP:
Yes, it was a single-storey affair, very much like an army hut and it was used as a changing room by the football teams that played. But the football teams tended to play on the Common along Bolingbroke. But that seemed to upset a lot of people because there were orange peels thrown all over the place and drinks bottles left and cars parked on the pavement and it caused a lot of, bit of friction.
RP:
Well, that part of the Common is still very much used for Saturday morning football, isn’t it?
EP:
The other, but the trees I suppose, the trees have changed the landscape. Also there was a children's playground behind at the end of Routh Road Passage we call it. You might remember that yourself. It was a circular palisade and that became a bit vermin-infested and syringes and things were left there, I understand and bottles and it became rather a hazard. So it was all scooped out, literally cleared and the, the activity was then moved to the triangular site by Neal’s; Neal's Farm.
RP:
Yes. Now Skylark Café.
EP:
That was 10, 12 years ago, I guess that was. Yeah, that’s done. Yeah,
RP:
And drainage has always been a bit of an issue. I think, hasn’t it?.
EP:
Yes, there was a Falcon Brook sewer, which was constructed, which starts, sort of originates in Balham. Because at certain times, Balham would be flooded, certain streets in Balham would be flooded. I've seen photographs in local newspapers of people in boats in Balham and that was a problem. So they built this almost like an underground railway underneath the Common. There's a shaft by Wandsworth Common Station and there's a shaft down near the Thames. And they built this tunnel which is quite a size and it was called the Falcon Brook Relief Sewer. And it takes that excessive water — surface water — down to the River Thames and it discharges discharge, I think near Wandsworth Bridge somewhere. But that was a massive undertaking. But you didn't see, you just saw the drill hole, the shaft by Wandsworth Common Station. just outside, that was all that you saw.
RP:
Because there are still a few areas that tend to get a bit water-logged, aren’t there?
EP:
Yes, yes. Yeah, that was a major exercise and it was quite successful. Because the Falcon Brook, there's a river that goes, it's still there. I think, which goes — you can imagine where Nightingale Lane dips, and you can imagine that projected towards as the River Thames and where . . . it followed Northcote Road. And I think it’s probably still underneath Northcote Road.
RP:
Yes, I've heard the same. Yes, so that's not the river Wandle that goes under . . .
EP:
No, it’s the Falcon Brook. Yeah, the river Wandle, that's really Garratt Lane and discharges by the brewery.
RP:
OK. Now if we can talk a bit about . . . I know you’ve been an active member of both, the Wandsworth Society and MAC or the Management Advisory Committee for the Common. And as such you've been involved with various projects over the years.
EP:
Well, yes. Yes, yes.
RP:
Such as the widening of Trinity, Road, which I think many people would be interested to hear about. So if you could maybe talk us through some of those projects?
EP:
Trinity Road, that was a massive exercise which the GLC were hoping to do. The idea was they would extend the dual carriageway which they were already building in 1970/71, as it popped up on to Wandsworth Common and the plan was to extend it. Well they got it far as the County Arms and then they wanted to demolish the County Arms and all the buildings, houses etcetera, on the west side of Trinity Road, and it would have gone along the edges of the Common, chopping a few trees down in its course of course, and then it would have swung down Burntwood Lane, done a right turn into Burntwood Lane.
RP:
and the dual carriageway, all dual carriageway?.
EP:
Well yes it was a massive exercise by GLC because they had these little bits and then join them all together and eventually get a motorway! But Heseltine was the Minister, Secretary of State dealing with that at the time and I did write to him. And there's a lot of opp . . . ., a lot of local activity about that and it was I suppose quietly dropped.
RP:
Indeed. It never happened, did it? But it's interesting to know that it was actually . . . ..
EP:
But I'm sure in some archives somewhere in the GLC, there's those drawings of engineers’ designs would have been gathering dust. So there could be, who knows?
RP:
And I think we’d also love to know a bit more about some of the early work of the Wandsworth Society. Important figures that you were associated with . . .
EP:
yes, Nina was . . . She'd always lived on Wandsworth Common for many, many years and I became also interested in the Common as she was in the committee, on the committee. So we used to attend meetings together and there are various matters were always being raised: litter and vandalism and trees. General management matters which were all discussed in these in these meetings and I was asked on behalf of the Wandsworth Society to look after the open spaces subcommittee so which I did and wrote the minutes for it, which I've still got boxes of it. Which I think people should know about because I can't keep these things for ever. And then there was an overlap of the MAC committee and Wandsworth Society committee and all of us were actively monitoring what was going on on the Common, in terms of these aspects of management and we had regular meetings to try and . . . Some of the Council people were quite helpful, others weren’t. But there were results. We got things done.
RP:
I assume at that time, the maintenance of the Common was undertaken directly by Wandsworth Council, whereas now it’s let out.
EP:
They wheeled in subcontractors. But also the other thing with Wandsworth Council they had GLC, really, they have these park keepers and brown coats.
RP:
Oh, the park rangers?
EP:
Yes, they would chastise anybody . . . .They used to stand by the Cat's Back bridge and chastise cyclists or people, youngsters fooling around because they used to be a, I suppose, a tide of school kids going to school and from school so they would always be there, these people — usually two of them . . . .
RP:
the fore-runners of the Parks Police, I imagine. But they were a permanent presence, weren’t they, on the Common?
EP:
Yeah, Parks Police came later. But that was another aspect. I managed to get meetings with Metropolitan Police, Parks Police to coordinate their activities. That was during my time as secretary and I was chairman also of my committee. But it went on and I found it . . . by about 2010 I was still doing minutes sometimes, but it got rather political, so the actual reality of the Common and then people wanted minutes online and all this business. So, that was it.
RP:
Time to go? And now also perhaps you could tell us about any particular events which took place around the Common. I don't know if you remember time such as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, the IRA bomb by the railway station or the great storm of 1987?
EP:
Yeah, the Queen's Jubilee. I don't remember much of it actually apart from a street party in Dorlcote Road, (
RP:
which is one of the roads off Baskerville Road) that was sealed off by then. But there was also a dual celebration on Heathfield Road, when Nina's friends lived in the little cottages which I've referred to, and there was things going on there, that was also Wandsworth Common of course. And I used to spend a lot of time on that side of the Common because of the social contact. And then the IRA bomb, of course, that was, fortunately, no one was injured, but the IRA managed to plant a small explosive in a signal, in a metal signal control cabinet by the railway line between the Cat's Back bridge and Clapham Junction on the, on the fast line, it's called. It just blew it. So, it affected all the signalling between Clapham Junction and Norbury for a few days.
RP:
Which year was that?
EP:
That was . . . .90 . . . 92 was that? 10th of March 92. I might be corrected on that. It might be 94, 92 or 94. However, I’ve got a poster on that, if you’d like to see it?
RP:
Yes. And the great storm of 1987 did that do any damage?
EP:
The great storm, I was here that night and I remember waking next day and I hadn't heard a thing overnight. And the storm was raging and I looked out of the window back at the house here, and I couldn't understand — the trees were missing. That was very distinct. And a lot of trees laid to the ground around, quite large trees, which are still rotting away, they're still in odd places and those were the trees that fell in the great storm and they were left so that it would encourage micro-biology to thrive and they’re still rotting away. Mind you the trunks, 2-foot diameter almost and still there's several of them, and latterly of course, we’ve got some more trees that fell down this year and two years ago. Some poplar trees which were rather similar size. And they’ve just been left or chopped up and one’s become a children's playground of course, by the Cat's Back bridge.
RP:
But fortunately the Friends are replenishing some of those trees. There’s been quite a big tree-planting programme.
EP:
I attended various tree-planting exercises on the Heathfield Road Common, and this Common, which the Wandsworth Society work with the Council. Usually planted them in November, that was the time. So we’d all turn out in overcoats and dig holes and shovel the soil and those trees are doing quite well.
RP:
Now, changing the subject slightly, I know you've always had a great interest in railways. And you actually have a rather wonderful collection of pictures and memorabilia. particularly concerning Wandsworth Common station which is our local railway station. Do you have any particular memories around the station?
EP:
Yes, the station is quite an architecturally pleasing station. It's lost its canopy in my time, this canopy on both platforms. It was cut down by British Railways. To save maintenance, I suppose, and built from stainless steel ship huts but the brick bits have survived, but the canopies most of the canopies have gone, except on the middle platform, just as where people have got to wait for trains. So where people get off trains, they can walk straight out of the station and also the station footbridge was divided. There's a . . . ..you could only exit by a ticket collector. That's the cage, a sort of cage structure was taken which was built down the middle of the footbridge so you can only get out that way and you have to show a ticket.
RP:
Were there still steam trains running through?
EP:
No, because sadly the steam trains, when I came to live in Baskerville Road, the steam trains were just, were literally just finishing in 1966,67, the steam trains out of Waterloo and Victoria. But there are private excursions running – several, about once a month or once every two months, through Wandsworth, one hears them. Then the Beatrix Potter School organized a school function re-enacting the 1941 or 1942 evacuation of schoolchildren, and Wandsworth Common station was paraded with youngsters with gas masks, and the policemen in traditional uniform and the very ancient Wolseley car which the police used in those days. And they all marched up from Beatrix Potter School and presented themselves at the station, and the headmaster, the then headmaster of the school had, I think must have had, a friend in British Railways and they managed to organize to close the line, the fast line for about 15-20 minutes, get all the children on this train, which is hauled by steam locomotive. It was a West Country class. That was my only experience of travelling by steam from Wandsworth Common station. And we took this train up through Croydon, and then swung around to a village near Guildford. That was, that was quite a . . . and the village green was . . . there was buses, double decker buses waiting to take us back and there was a little show there of roundabouts and things, but it was . . .
RP:
It must have been quite an event. And can you recall which year that happened?
EP:
It was about eight years ago.
RP:
Oh, quite recently.
EP:
Yes,, it was an anniversary of when the war started but that was the only time I've been through Wandsworth Common with steam but on the special excursions but never to set foot on a train from Wandsworth Common, that was quite . . . well, to an enthusiast. And it was a Southern engine. So . . .
RP:
(laugh) Yes, very special. Well, I think that sort of pretty well covers everything. So really, just to sum up . . . If you can, sort of how you feel the area has changed? In what respects have you noticed the change over the last 50 years that you’ve lived here?
EP:
Well yes as I recollect in my talk, I mean, it’s got more affluent. I think more affluent and slightly, a bit smarter than it was. And well, the street is full of motorcars. Course, I mean of a certain kind, but they were much more modest vehicles when I first came — Ford Corsairs and Ford Zephyrs and Morris Minors, Standards. But now the slightly grander vehicles.
RP:
And what about, in terms of local amenities, I don't know whether you use the sort of local shops, for instance. Has the kind of shops changed?
EP:
Also, the shops have got more affluent, and the basic shops are not there and where will you get a pair of shoes mended? The nearest place I know is now Balham railway station to get a pair of shoes mended. Where could you buy a packet of nails? Belton & Slade in Wandsworth High Street, I suppose, a good place. But yeah, the traditional elements of retail are missing really. Because, well, there used to be on Bellevue Road, a fishmonger, Macfisheries were there and just a tiny Post Office. That's gone. And there was a traditional chemist — glass jars and things. Run by a very elderly gentleman, and there was . . . ..
RP:
The shops were of a more practical nature, by the sound of it.
EP:
Yes, the fishmonger and the grocery. And there was a very quaint newsagent shop, I think they sold more sweets than newspapers, yes, the Moon brothers. Yes, they used to be in a funny sort of shop. But those things one remembers, and there were some characters around living in the district and one met sort of characters In the County Arms. The County Arms has changed considerably. I mean, been ruined by Young's Brewery. They took out all the glass screens, all the cut glass and leaded lights. They took them out but to reinstall them in the Green Man in Putney. If anyone wants to see, those glass panels from the County Arms were depictions or images of birds, feathered birds that used to live on Wandsworth Common. And all those pieces, all those screens were taken out. May be one or two left. But the whole pub was decimated really. I tried to get it listed but at the time the Department of Environment was not that interested. It would have been listed now as an amenity, a civic amenity. As the pub down in Tooting, the Wheatsheaf. That's been listed.
RP:
You said that some of the glass panels depicting the birds that lived on Wandsworth Common are now in the Green Man in Putney?
EP:
Young’s Brewery never threw anything away really. And they sort of moved these things around. But that's because I . . . a planning officer told me that: he'd seen them, seen them in the Green Man. Yeah, the County Arms was quite a place to meet people and all the builders went there. And it was . . . prison officers of course. And there were three bars, the public bar and the middle bar, and we used to call it the Titanic bar, the wallpaper bar and different . . . It was a different atmosphere in each room but it was full of characters. Not today.
RP:
All right. Well, I think that probably concludes the interview. Thank you once again for your time and sharing your memories.
EP:
My pleasure.
RP:
End of! Thank you.
XXX
CATHY AND PHIL ROWNTREE
11th November 2022
Interviewer: John Turner
JT:
Cathy and Phil, thank you very much for taking part in this exercise, on behalf of the Friends of Wandsworth Common. It's really good of you not just to talk to us but also let us do it in your own house where we've made your living room into a studio, but thanks very much indeed. Can we start just for the record each of you in turn starting with Cathy, tell me your name and your date of birth.
CR:
My name is Cathy Rowntree. I was born on 3 September 1946,
PR: And I'm Phil Rowntree born on 25th of February 1947, so I'm the toy boy.
JT:
That's fine. So Cathy first, tell me a little bit about the house you were born in and who was there?
CR: I was born in a house in Nicosia Road, right next to Wandsworth Common which was just across the road and there was an alleyway onto the common. My mother had lived in the house before she was married to my father who'd come down from Yorkshire and she was bringing up her own siblings and went on to have six children of her own of whom I was the eldest. So the aunties and uncles were like brothers and sisters in a way.
JT:
All in one big house.
CR:
Well it was a big house, a three-storey house.
JT:
What job did your mother do?
CR:
Well, she was mainly occupied in looking after us and her siblings. The youngest of those was eight when she lost both her parents. So she had a big job there but later on she had various jobs part-time that she took on to help with the family economy.
JT:
And your father?
CR:
He worked when I was young, he worked for Woolworths in their head office, I think he was in Oxford Street, on the accounts department. Later on he left there and worked for Croydon Council, again doing accounting, in their Housing department.
JT:
What do you remember about your neighbours?
CR:
Well, our next-door neighbours on the very corner of Nicosia and Baskerville, my father's sister, my Aunt Effie lived there with her husband and eventually she had four children there. So we actually had a gap through the garden fence so we were sort of living in each other's houses and then various neighbours that we got on with. There were a lot more children around in those days and nobody had cars, so, you know, we all got together playing in the street, so we knew quite a few of the neighbours.
JT:
Tell me about your forger.
CR:
Oh yes. Well I don't know how many people would remember it. I was still at Junior School, I think, because I came home for lunch one day and there was a police officer in plain clothes, as we later found out, waiting for these people to come home, because two families who were related to each other, one lived in Nicosia Road and one lived in Baskerville, they'd actually been forging five pound notes. They were discovered because their machinery was interfering with people's televisions, and when there were complaints they traced the interference to their house where they had the printing press, I think down in the cellar. We were confused with them because one of their surnames was Small and our surname was Short and if people heard the name Short connected with Nicosia Road, "Oh, you're the forged banknote people, forged fivers."
JT:
Now, Phil, you're another native of the place, aren't you. Tell us about where you were born.
PR: Well I was born in Broomwood Road, one of those big double-fronted houses. And when I was six, my parents decided to sell it because there was the V1 bomb just across the road, they bought it actually during the war and there was a lot of bomb damage on that house, and I think they were frightened it was going to fall down. So when I was six they bought a house in Alfriston Road, and I lived there until I got married. Regarding neighbours, one of our next-door neighbours was a girl called Margaret. We were about the same age, so we grew up together and in 1980 she became Mayoress of Wandsworth. That was on one side. The other side, there was an Irish family there and I saw the son about a year ago who must now be in his nineties and he's still living there.
JT:
So I'll get you together in a little while OK? What do you remember about school? Because that's an important thing when you're a child.
CR:
Yes. Well, I used to go down the hill, down Magdalen Road to Beatrix Potter School, which we referred to as the potty school. One thing I remember there was there being an eclipse and we were all trying to watch it in the playground through bits of negatives, photographic negatives. I think we were all aware that it wasn't very safe. The nearest we ever got to an outing was, we're right next to the allotments there and sometimes they would take us into the allotments and walk around and see how food was grown, and also because of the connection with Beatrix Potter that was always being pushed and her stories were always in the forefront of any stories that we heard. But it was the time of the war bulge and classes were well over 40 in the class, and I don't remember ever having any formal teaching regarding being able to read. It was only an infant school, it's junior as well now, they've extended it. But when I left there to go further down the road, to Earlsfield Junior Girls I left Beatrix Potter unable to read. And in those days you had an A class and B class. And the thing I most remember from when I left Beatrix Potter is that the teacher — there'd been tests at the end of the year - and when they put all the marks together, the teacher called out one, girl I think it was, who'd got the best marks and then she pulled out the next one, till eventually, she had a whole line of people round the room in order of how well they'd done in the tests. You'd lose your job if you tried doing that in school now. And I was the last girl in the line. There were about three or four boys after me that were sort of known to be the Naughty Boys of the class. So, you know, it was pretty humiliating, but I remember being sat down in a circle, you know, a reading circle, and I sat there thinking, well, what am I going to say? I haven't the faintest idea what? You know, make something up from the picture, but I hadn't the faintest idea how to read that page. So, my mother was very busy looking after children and my father was going to evening classes to get higher qualifications, so I didn't really get any help at home, but my mother said to me, "everything you see, try to read it". So if a bus goes past, try to read what's on the bus. Earlsfield school was directly opposite Earlsfield Library, and I got to the stage where I was going in that Library, I think you were allowed six books, and I would take them home and when I did learn to read I was reading voraciously through the night, till I heard the birds singing and thinking, “Oh I'd better, stop reading now and go to sleep because morning's coming”. And from being at the bottom of the B-class in my first year I was then put into the A stream and by the end of what is now a year six, I was third in the A, and if I'd known how I did that, it would have helped me so much in my own career as a teacher, if I knew what happened in those four years to turn my life around. But my brother, the next brother, and my sister both again left Beatrix Potter unable to read and my mother said, "I'm not sending any more of my children there." And so the last three went to Honeywell.
JT:
And Phil, from the other side of the Common
PR: So I went to Belleville School, just around the corner here and quite enjoyed it because I had a really good class teacher and — you'd never get away with it now — but he actually taught us glass-blowing. No Health and Safety in those days. He just got a Bunsen burner, tube of glass. We would heat the glass up and blow it into a ball This is a 10 year-olds doing this, no goggles. It was some really good education and he taught us to make a jet engine out of glass, well steam engine, I suppose it was, steam coming out the back. And then when I left Belleville, I went to Spencer Park. It was 1958 I think I went there so it had only been a comprehensive school. Before that it was Honeywell Secondary school and there was a big school and the girls went to what was then Burntwood, and the boys stayed there as Spencer Park. It was okay, it wasn't the greatest of education and then after that I went to Croydon Technical College for four years. So that was good. That's when I left school and got an apprenticeship in the motor trade.
JT:
I think we said before, it was a real apprenticeship where people actually had to work.
PR: It was, it was a five-year apprenticeship. My wages for a 44 hour week, the first year, were 2 pounds 17 and 6 pence a week.
JT:
So there you are. You're in this part of the world, each of you actually next to Wandsworth Common. What do you remember of it? What sort of a place was it when you were kids?
PR: It was a place where you would knock on all your friends’ doors "Are you coming up the Common?" or "Coming up the swings?". And a group of that six or seven friends would all go out the Common together. We'd either go to the swings or our favourite place was probably Bushy Common, the other side of Trinity Road but they call it The Scope now, I believe. And we used to play Cowboys and Indians over there. And I remember there was a wood merchants in Northcote Road which is now the Antique Centre just by the library but that was a wood yard and we used to go in there and buy a twopenny piece of wood and make a bow out of it and bamboo arrows. And we used to go to Bushy Common playing Cowboys and Indians, that was probably the wildest part of the Common.
JT:
Where did you go?
CR:
Well, I was so much nearer to the Common than Phil because, you know, I just only had to cross over the road and go down the alleyway and you were on the Common. So yeah, there was the element of knocking for other kids but of course I had my siblings. So there might only be a few of you but then the numbers could grow. But we played in the street as well. I think Phil remembers a game we used to play — Cannon.
PR: It must really be local game for Battersea and Wandsworth because we've spoken to other people who've never ever heard of it. It's a cross between cricket, ball-hey — I don't know.
CR:
Yeah, you had three sticks against the wall, only sort of short sticks, and then another one across the top. So it was like a cricket stumps with bails on, and you had two teams and you took it in turns to throw the ball at this, that was the Target, and once somebody had hit that everybody scattered, and the idea was that the people who had knocked it down had to get in there and put it back up again. But the other team would have the ball and throw it at you. And if you got hit by the ball than you were out. So it sounds a bit complicated, but we've spent hours playing Cannon. And it wasn't so easy to play that on the Common because you had to have a wall to stand the sticks on. But as Phil said, the go-to place was the swings, but it was quite a walk for us to get to.
PR: And so dangerous, the swings in those days. There was huge great big, high long slide and no soft landings. You fell off, you hurt yourself.
CR:
Other than that, you really made your own fun. You made your own games. Later on in that space between what we used to call the Refreshment House, which is now the Skylark — we still call it the Refreshment House — between there and the Cat's Back bridge — this is later on, when I was in my late teens — they actually had a putting green there, but that came much later. It was where the swings are now. But when we talk about the swings, we talk about the ones by Chivalry Road. But the big treat was if there was a steam train coming, you'd shout to everybody "Train coming" and you'd all run up to the Cat's Back bridge and stand in the middle because as the train went through, you were enveloped in this cloud of steam and smoke. And I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but we found it exciting because (PR: Wonderful smell, wasn't it?) you couldn't see in either direction. I'm sure we got filthy doing it. But then of course the pond. My mum would be saying "Don't go near the pond" or, you know, if you were looking after little ones, "Don't take them near the pond".
PR: The pond was much bigger in those days. It went virtually up to the bridge.
CR:
The big pond went as far as the Railway Bridge. They drained it when I suppose we were still at Junior School. They drained all the water because they wanted to make a surround, a firmer surround and so they were supposed to have removed all the fish, but in fact there were still fish floundering around in the mud as it was drained. And lots of people, some of the older brave kids used to go through the mud on to the islands, and rather trample the islands. But we'd always enjoyed watching the water voles you could see from the side of the pond, you could see on the islands, the little water voles burrowing around, and I think it was from the time it was drained there didn't seem to be any water voles.
I remember one occasion we had some cousins come to stay and we went off to the Common and the mum and the auntie said "Don't Go Near The Pond". And we thought if we go to the Three Island Pond which is, you know, near Bolingbroke Grove, they won't know we've been near the pond. And sure enough one of the cousins fell in, so we couldn't get away with saying we haven't been near the pond, obviously. She was soaking wet, so they knew we had, but we used to do things like, I'm sure you didn't do, it was probably a bit of a girly thing, although I hate to say that. When they cut the grass they left all the cuttings on the on the ground, on the grass, they didn't clear them out so there were great piles of lovely smelling grass. But we used to sort of pile them up and make little, you know, a pretend house and we'd build a bed in one corner and that, you know, we'd sort of pretend furniture all out of this piled up grass.
PR: You say that, but at back of where the Bandstand was, where Loxley comes onto the Common at the end of the Toast Rack there used to be a small bandstand there. It wasn't huge, about 15-20 feet across. Nobody's got any records of it (CR:
We've looked at it on maps.) My sister is seven years older than me, six years older and I used to go around with her and her gang. And we found one of the panels in this bandstand was loose, and we actually built a little hide in there, until one of the brown common keepers actually caught us and it's the first time I think I was really scared. I was probably about five or six, I think. And he's really shouted at us, and he marched us off to his office, which was I think it's one of the buildings at the back of the Skylark caff and he got us in there and he said, “I'm going to call the police, I'm going to call your parents.” I remember at the time being really terrified for this but there's absolutely no record of that bandstand. You remember it all? Yeah, my sister remembers it, but there's no record of it anywhere, or any maps.
CR:
These common keepers, they were real tyrants. I think they were sort of ex-army people and they seemed to delight in making our lives miserable. If you were on a bike there was a rule about cycling that you could only cycle on the common if your wheels were within a certain radius — it was to stop adults, it was only it had to be children's bikes. But if a child had a bike that was vaguely, had big wheels, they'd be there with their measure, you know. "You can't ride that on the common, it's too big" and another thing, the Bowling Green, that used to be lovely around the Bowling Green, there are lots of shrubs there now, but it was beautifully kept in those days and lovely flowers, all around, but you weren't even allowed to walk around that without being accompanied by an adult and you had to be 15 to be allowed to go through that gate into the Bowling Green.
JT:
Was it a well-kept common? Or was it a wild common?
CR:
Compared with Clapham Common it was much better kept. I remember all these sort of climbing frames and things, it didn't have anything like that. But as we went through from Baskerville Road, going through the alleyway, you would go out on to two fields and the one on the left had been used for allotments in the war and I remember them, they put fencing all around it. Well, they smoothed it all out and put grass back there. But another wartime thing, which we both experienced although we didn't know each other at the time was when they had the prefabs on the other side from me over the Cat's Back bridge. All along Bolingbroke Grove, there were prefabs (PR: They called them Bolingbroke Bungalows). I've actually got an old Honeywell Secondary School register, and I think there were about 50 kids in the class and five of them, this was five years after the war, there were five in that class whose address was Bolingbroke Bungalows. But they were only meant to last — I know some are still even in existence — but they were only meant to last for 10 years, I think it was. So they demolished them when we were (PR: Late fifties?) Yeah, we were still at Junior School. (PR: That was our playground then.) You could go in exploring them.
PR: They didn't knock them down for about six months after everybody left. They were just left there. So for older children that was great. We'd go in there and play.
CR:
And as they started to demolish them, they were full of fibreglass and asbestos, I'm sure. So, we're sure you know, there was no Health and Safety. We were in there, and we'd come home with our arms really itching, because the fibreglass got into our skin. So it was quite a vivid memory of the Common at that time. So obviously after wartime they were all tidying everything up and the same with the one place that a lot of kids wouldn't have gone was the cricket pitches. They'd been made into allotments during the war as well, but after I've seen maps with them with it. But my father, he started a Cricket Club in 1945 when he came down from Yorkshire, well it was actually my mother's brother and he started this Cricket Club, which they called Baskerville Cricket Club and their badge was The Hound of the Baskervilles, and my mum used to embroider these in red on the blazers for them. And they said that other people would complain when they came to play cricket that the ground was too bumpy and they put it down to the fact that it had been allotments during the war. So we would often go in that enclosure because our Dad was playing cricket there. I think probably otherwise you wouldn't have been allowed in.
JT:
Was it a safe place?
PR: No, I wouldn't say so, no.
CR:
Later on, as I became a teenager, I think I was aware of the fact that if I wanted to go anywhere, if I wanted to go to a club somewhere over in Clapham, or somewhere, I had to get home in the dark. And because I was in the Toast Rack, you're surrounded on three sides by the Common. So unless you could get a 19 bus to the top of the road, which were quite rare in those days, you had to run the gauntlet of getting home in the dark. And it did have some not very salubrious characters around. Certainly, we were always told not to. Routh Road is the end one, isn't it? — if you go to the left between the path leading up from there to the Railway Bridge there was some public toilets there and we were always told don't go in those toilets. Yeah, I think we were always told, you know, you don't go anywhere on your own, obviously you've got to be with your friends, but we used to think, you know, safety in numbers. I'll tell you the story about one of my brothers in the pond later. But no, we weren't allowed to go in those toilets. They've been demolished now, but probably, that's why they demolished them because they can't afford to pay for an attendant. What I was going to tell you about going near the ponds, not being safe, you know, that you could actually fall in the pond. I was endlessly being told to take babies in prams around the common so Mum could get on with the housework. But the next brother down to me took another one of the babies in the pushchair over to the pond. And he was so busy watching his friends fishing — because that was another thing, you could fish; you couldn't have a fishing rod but you could have a net and fish for tiddlers or frogspawn which he took to school for the nature table — but my brother left the pushchair with the toddler strapped in and it went down the bank and as it got to the water it tipped over so the baby was then underneath and it was strapped in the pram, but they had to get the pram out while he was still strapped in it because it was on top of him. So his friends that were fishing they all hauled it out, but poor old Neal he'd swallowed so much pond water he was very sick. We rushed him home. That was a dodgy thing. One thing that you were more safe from than I think you are now is that you didn't have the proliferation of dogs that you see now. (PR: Very, very rare to see.) I think it was that people had to have a license for dogs in those days. It seems like every family's got a dog these days, I always remember a penfriend coming to stay and we saw an advert on the television, "special food for cats". Why should you? You feed your pets on scraps and that's what most people did but as I say, you had to have a license. And so you could play on the Common without fear that a dog would come snapping at your heels. And I mean, when I had my own children, I was still living here. I learned you never went for a picnic on the Common because some dog, this is in later times you know, the dog would come galumphing through your picnic and you know, you just thought right just pack up and go home, you know, you can't have a picnic here and a few weeks ago, exactly the same thing happened.
PR: We actually decided we were going to have the picnic around the Bowling Green because it's a dog-free area. And Nick and the kids wanted to go to the field and play football. As soon as we sat down on the field at the back of Baskerville Road, they're surrounded by dogs, running around and it actually smelled of dogs, didn't it? Horrible.
CR:
But that's a modern-day rant, isn't it . . .
JT:
Do you remember it being a place where there were a lot of special events, coronation parties, and things like that?
CR:
No. It was raining on the day of the Coronation, and we were supposed to have a party for our street and Baskerville Road kids. They were all going to have this party in the street and because it rained the lady who was organizing it all was one of these people, you call a facilitator, which means that they arrange everybody else to do the work and my mother was the one although she got four kids I think at the time, just had the fourth one on the 31st of March. So he would have only been about two months old and yet she was the one that got delegated to have the party move into her kitchen. So we had the street party in our kitchen in Nicosia Road, but you had one in Belleville didn't you, but it wasn't the school.
PR: No. It was because it was for children who lived locally to Belleville school, but my grandparents lived in Berber Road. So, that's how I got involved in the local school.
CR:
Yeah. So the other events, I can't think of any other events.
JT:
Tell me about the circus.
CR:
Oh well, yes. Recently, a friend of mine insisted that there had been a circus on Wandsworth Common and I said “Oh no, I'm sure I don't remember ever being a circus or a funfair. I'm sure they were on Clapham Common”, but she insisted that she and her brother remembered it. So I got on to the trusty Philip Boys. And I said “Do you know anything about a circus?” And it turned out it was actually a Chipperfield Circus. He sent me a newspaper cutting advertising it. It was in 1954 and it was the biggest circus in Europe at the time. (PR: 600 seats.) I'd seen the parade going along the end of Trinity Road up by the Huguenot cemetery, that road there, and all the elephants were in line in descending order of size each holding on with its trunk to the tail of the one in front. And I knew there were a lot of elephants, apparently on the advert there were 16 elephants, but they also had lions and a giraffe which apparently they transported in an adapted bus. But I don't remember actually seeing the circus myself, but my friend insists it was there. It was probably a part of the Common I didn't go to very much.
We used to walk from the Granada at the top of St John's Hill. Used to go to the cinema there regularly because one of my aunties who lived with us was an usherette and she used to get us in for free and you could sit there once you'd seen the program around. You could stay and still sit there and watch it round again, because it was a continuous loop of A film, B film, A film. And so we used to walk along Windmill Road to go to the cinema. But you've got memories of going to other Cinemas.
PR: There was a Century which was in Northcote Road which is now the Co-op, the Grand, that was a cinema. Then further down the hill, there was the Imperial and then the Granada at the top of the hill. So four cinemas, within a mile.
CR:
Because we didn't have televisions in those days, did we. I think we talked about the Coronation. I mean anybody who did have a television, you invited neighbours in. So they were quite a crowd. I think, my dad must have hired the television just for the Coronation because it disappeared for sure again shortly afterwards. We did eventually get one. So I suppose, you know, people went to the cinema more, didn't they? Another thing: bonfire night. See, I mean until recently, Clapham Common used to have bonfires. Never had them on Wandsworth Common as far as I remember, but in those days, people had firework displays in their own garden. And because my father had all these friends from his Cricket Club, they would all congregate at our house. So, there were always lots of fireworks, everyone bought some because you could just go up the road. Children could go and buy fireworks. But yeah, so we'd have roast potatoes, toffee apples, sausages, and it was, you know, it was a real exciting night for us.
So, they don't really have events on Wandsworth Common now, do they?
JT:
I don't think they do and I think you're right that it's Clapham Common that's become the event place, but let's get back to you two. I remember you, Cathy, said you had almost literally been here, all your life.
CR:
Well, we've both been on lots of travels (PR: And you went off to college) Yes, I went to college up in Grantham in Lincolnshire and I chose that particular College because it was puRP:
orted to have an archaeological site in the grounds. But if it was there, I never saw it. But a lot of my fellow students training to be teachers, they wanted once they'd qualified, they wanted to come to London because I already lived in London. So I always wanted to go home because three years at that college taught me I never ever want to live in the country. You know, this Escape to the Country programme would be my nightmare to do that, I'm afraid. And people say, well, how can you live in London? It's so crowded. But because we're very lucky here, aren't we? Because between the Commons that we have got all that lovely green space that you know, a lot of city people don't have.
PR: In our teenage years I used to go to Spencer Park, which that was the far side of Wandsworth Common and Cathy used to walk over the common to Clapham County. So we used to pass each other on the way to school. And the Spencer Park boys took delight in knocking the hats of the Clapham County girls because in the summer, there were also these straw boater type hats, and they were great for knocking off. And then you grab hold of them and use them as a frisbee.
CR:
The winter ones were less likely to be knocked off. But you didn't realise that if you were seen outside school without your hat on it was an hour's detention. Things were very different in school. You know, discipline was very different. I mean, the teacher came into the classroom you automatically stood up, if any adult came into the classroom you stood up. But I was going to say there was one occasion when it snowed, and we had a snowball fight with the boys. This particular gang of boys that we as a group of my friends and we'd go together, and on this occasion we had a big snowball fight and I think we were certainly on the winning side because a teacher came past, and we thought we were going to get in trouble, and she called out, "Well done girls."
I remember going over that Common when there was a — what was that really bad winter? (PR: Sixty-three) You were working then, but there was no coal getting through for the school, the boilers to heat the radiators, and they had to close the school. All the kids were told to stay home, but this was in the fifth year and we were doing our mock O-levels. And so, all the girls doing their O-levels still had to go to school. So I remember going across that deserted common in the snow up to school, I used to take a hot water bottle with me because you just sat in the classroom with your coat on and you know, just tried to do these exams. You think, well they're only the mocks. You know, it wasn't as though it was the real exams, but yeah, that was a time when nobody was venturing out. Same was when we had the smogs, you know, you could get lost on the Common. I remember, once going over, I had to go to Balham through the Common to Wandsworth Common station and on towards Balham Park Road. I remember getting lost.
PR: The last smog I remember I was at Croydon Tech and they knew the smog was coming and they said right, they closed the college, everybody, right, go home, this is about lunchtime, and sure enough, at half past three you just couldn't see anything and that's the last smog I remember. That would have been about 63, 64. But before that — horrible.
JT:
What would the two of you say are the biggest changes in the Common since that time?
PR: I don't think it's a place where children go up and play anymore. (CR:
On their own, certainly) I think it's a place where people take their dogs for a walk and then walk home, it's not a place where people go and stay.
CR:
Cyclists are bit of a threat, I think. I mean in terms of it being a lovely green common, over the years, we've lost a lot of the lovely trees. I mean, I always used to remember the horse-chestnuts in flower, lovely, but all along Bolingbroke Grove we lost a lot of trees there from the Dutch elm disease that had to be destroyed. And then there was the storm, we went over there and took photographs. Yeah, so we lost a lot of trees.
PR: We couldn't even get to your mum's house. You couldn't walk across the Common to get to the alleyway.
CR:
So that is sad. But I mean, I mean, it's good that they've got things like, you know, the Exercise Trail. I'm sorry to go on about it. But when you've got a sign saying, dogs must be on a lead or dogs not allowed here and people just continue to defy it. And where there are paths, where you're allowed to cycle and paths where you're not, the cyclists ignore those.
PR: So they need to bring back the common keepers! Perhaps not!
JT:
That reminds me of something you said that the water voles seemed to have gone.
PR: On the one hand, hedgehogs you used to see over there an awful lot as well. Never see the hedgehogs now but as a child used to see lots of hedgehogs.
JT:
The question was, what do you remember of the wildlife? Ducks? Swans?
CR:
Always used to be a bit scared of the swans. Because they always said they can break your arm. But certainly we would always feed the ducks. And of course you can't get to the pond now, there are walkways now, which in some ways are good. But I've got photographs showing the banks of the ponds completely bare (PR: You used to go paddling.) but now there's much more foliage around the ponds. (PR: There was sort of a beach area.)
CR:
But certainly, we collected tadpoles to take to school to watch them. I think they usually died before they actually got to be frogs, but I don't think there are frogs there still.
JT:
I'm sure I've seen a frog but it's not a big deal!
CR:
Conkers, that was another thing. You always collected conkers for conker fights. You know, you take your conkers home and either soak them in vinegar or bake them in the oven to try and make them a bit harder, you know, put them on to string. So you were always taking, you know, sycamore helicopters, and play with those. Take those to the school. Every classroom had a nature table, where you had acorns. If conkers had a flat side you could make them into little chairs for dolls' houses.
JT:
Going back to what you think, the big changes are, what you said, Phil, that it's not a place that kids go and play by themselves. When you were kids it definitely was.
PR: Oh yeah, yeah.
JT:
Bit of a loss.
PR: I don't know whether it's the Commons fault or it's children who just plug in computer games, that sort of thing. So they don't actually meet up with lots of other children and make their own entertainment.
CR:
I think it's also a fear amongst parents. That is not safe to let the children go on the Common on their own, which I think probably is not really justified.
JT:
But certainly there was no fear of that in your day?
CR:
You did get the occasional flasher. Once when we were at school, I remember where again it was it was hockey on Clapham Common or tennis on Wandsworth Common and you'd sometimes get gentlemen, shall we say, would come and you know, watch you playing, you know, with girls in there. I mean the shorts were down to here but even so. I remember, a teacher actually shouting, on Clapham Common this was, you know, we were playing hockey and the teacher shooed the certain gentleman away. Yes. But I did mention earlier about having to come home. If you could get a 19 bus, it would take you along nearly to the top of my road. But if you couldn't, if you're coming from Tooting and you had to get a 49, that turned the corner at The Hope, so you had to walk that last bit alongside Bushy Common, and it was very good place for people to come on and grab you. And somebody did try to drag me on the Common once. I managed to get away.
JT:
Thank you very much for telling us all that stuff. Quite a picture of what it was like.
CR:
We’ll probably think of something else when you've gone.
JT:
Well, of course, perhaps the most suRP:
rising thing for me was the idea of Spencer Park being called Honeywell Secondary.
CR:
Well, the reason for that was that, being the Honeywell archivist I am aware of what happened there. Honeywell had always been . . . In schools at that time you went from the infants right up to when you left school at the age of 14, and once the war started Honeywell children were evacuated and any children that were left went to Belleville. And so once the children started to return it tended to be the younger children that went back to Honeywell and a lot of the secondary age was still at Belleville. But they raised the school leaving age to 15, and so there wasn't room in the school for the older children. So in the meantime, the Patriotic Building, which later became part of Spencer Park School, had been a girls’ oRP:
hanage, but they were evacuated during the war, and they never came back again, so the building was empty. So they sort of said "Let's make a school there". But whereas at Honeywell the girls and the boys had been in separate schools on different floors, they put the girls and the boys together plus children from Belleville and made it Honeywell Secondary School. It was only a few years and then in 1957, they divided it and the boys went into Spencer Park and the girls went to Garrett Green, which is now Burntwood. So the girls and boys were separated again. So that's why it was Honeywell Secondary for a while.
JT:
But when you were there, Phil, it was Spencer Park?
CR:
It was the second year of it being a boys’ school.
PR: But the other school were in the Patriotic Building.
CR:
That was when it became a comprehensive. So they were both comprehensive schools. Up until then you had the grammar and the secondary modern although the thing is, although they made the comprehensive schools, they weren't truly comprehensive because they still kept the grammar schools. And anybody who could get into a grammar school, wanted to go to a grammar school. So they really could say the comprehensive schools weren't truly comprehensive. And Clapham County was eventually amalgamated with Marianne Thornton and then became Walsingham, but that was late 70s.
JT:
It was always Clapham County when you were there?
CR:
It was always Clapham County when I was there, yes.
JT:
What sort of a place Phil, was Spencer Park to be at school at?
PR: I don't think the teachers were that good there. It was an education. A lot of bullying went on. Lots of fights went on. It wasn't a very nice school, I would say. And they were big classes, then, even at secondary school.
CR:
But they kept the classes much smaller than I'd been used to at primary school. But if I might just add, the thing was before Honeywell Secondary School started at the Patriotic Building it had actually been an emergency teacher training college. Because they'd raised the school leaving age they needed more teachers, and a lot of men, coming out of the forces were encouraged to become teachers, but they were only getting a sort of superficial training, shall we say, two years and so. I know a guy, another headmaster I'd worked for in Battersea, he'd done that, you know, he'd been in the RAF and only had two year's teacher training, but you know, became a headmaster. That was a big difference, then.
JT:
So I'm sure we'll all remember something else but thank you very much, that's really kind of you.
CR:
So nice to reminisce.
PR: Yeah, but we met up in 1970 at a party and we actually bought this house in 71 and been here ever since.
JT:
You aren't exactly the diaspora, are you?
CR:
Well, that was another thing that we lost because we had the evening adult education classes. It was actually through that, that we met at a party. But because that went, with the break-up of the ILEA all the evening class have disappeared,
JT : But that's another rant, isn't it?
CR:
That's another rant!
JT:
Well, thank you very much.
END
XXX
BARBARA STREEK
13th October 2022
Interviewer: Louise Murphy.
LM:
Well Barbara, thank you so much for agreeing to take part in our filming exercise for the Friends of Wandsworth Common Oral History Project. We've met before and we've discussed how this is going to work and we're just going to run through a few general questions with you. The idea is that you just talk about what you remember about your childhood and your early years in the locality. So, let's start off with me asking you what is your full name and when were you born.
BS:
Well, I was born in 1943 on the 2nd of June and I was actually born in Nicosia Road in my grandma's downstairs bedroom, right? And my full name is Barbara Streek. I never had a middle name, simply because my mother wanted me to be called Helen after her mother, and my father wanted me to be called Gertrude after his mother. Well, my mother didn't like Gertrude, so I just got plain Barbara Harvey. Then I was Barbara Harvey.
LM:
So tell me a little bit about your family. What did your parents do for a living?
BS:
Well, my mum didn't work as I remember as a small child, she did some cleaning work around here; and my father worked for British Rail, which his father and grandfather done, but then he became ill and he wasn't well at all. So he stopped working for the railway. And my mother, there was a company that opened up in Trinity Road. And I'm not sure if it's the right name, but it was called Foxborough and Yoxalls, and they did a lot of work for the TV. They did all the soldering, you know, for like, when you open something up, it's got all little wires going everywhere. And my mother used to do all that soldering, and she could bring some home, so she did that for years. And then my father then got a job with the council, which he stayed with till he retired.
LM:
So tell us about the house in Nicosia Road. Who actually lived there and owned it?
BS:
Yes, well, we moved there, I think, well, it was must have been either before the war because I was born during the war 1943 and the war finished in 45, didn't it? I think. And yeah, so I think we came from Battersea originally and my grandma actually rented the house, we didn't own it, so she rented it and there was my grandma downstairs and my mum and dad upstairs, and there was like my mum and dad, and my brother and myself. So we lived there all the time. And then when my uncle, her youngest son, got married his wife, because I think she was just about 19 at the time, they had a couple of rooms upstairs. So we sort of all squashed in together and they stayed there until they actually bought a house in Nicosia Road. So, yes, so we lived there for let me see . . . Well, I was there when I got married and I got married at 21 and then my uncle bought our house. It was offered to us. And then my uncle bought it in Nicosia Road. And then I got married and I did live with my parents for a couple of years and then we were offered a flat in Herondale Avenue, again to rent, because John and I, we were going to buy, but we weren't happy with the new building that they were building this flat. So we stayed with my parents. And then, as I say, Holloways did offer us this flat in Herondale Avenue.
LM:
So what can you remember about living in Nicosia Road?
BS:
Well, I mean, there wasn't many children in our road at the time, as I remember, but that we all, all the children that were my age or round about my age or my brothers age, because he was two years older than me, we all were friends and we used to go on the Common together and in the FitzHugh estate, they had a social club. So when we were sort of 11, 12, 13, you would go to the Social Club that used to be open once or twice a week, and because he was older than me, my brother, my mother was happy if I went to the social club with him. She wouldn't have allowed me otherwise. And that's how I met my present husband because he met John and they got friends together from the club. And we just used to go every Sunday. We'd meet at the County Arms and that must have been about 13 then 14. And we'd go to Egham, or I can't think of the other name, the other one but we used to go fishing. The boys would go fishing and we'd swim in the in the water there and take a picnic, come home and get changed and then meet at the County Arms to go to the pictures together.
LM:
What was life like actually in the house? There were three branches, three different families?
BS:
That's right.
LM:
So, how did you all share the house?
BS:
Well, we just managed. We only had the one bathroom. I can't remember, I think my grandma might have had a bath, a toilet downstairs. I'm sure she might, yes . . . But we had a toilet. We had a toilet in the bathroom and a toilet on the first floor up. So you know, I think I'm sure my grandma did have a . . . I don't know if it was an outside toilet or an inside, I'm not sure. But yes. So we all managed because we all got on so well, at that time, my grandma looked after children, two or three children, at home and she used to have them. 'Cause she was, she was very lovely. She was a lovely lady and very kind. So while mums wanted to go out to work, she used to look after the children and then as time came on and she didn't do it anymore, because she got older. My mum used to come home lunch time. So she'd see to Grandma, if she needed anything and then mother would be home at about 4:15 in the week. You know after work they finished at 4, so yeah, we just all got on. The family lived in the road and also Baskerville Road and an auntie and uncle had a flat in Baskerville Road. So yes we were we were all a happy family, you know, really.
LM:
Obviously you were very young during the war, you were born during the war. Have you got any memories of those war years?
BS:
No. Now I don't, I mean I was two when the war ended but they had a bomb in, you know, there was a house that was bombed in our road, and it took a long, long time before it was rebuilt. So we weren't allowed in there till they boarded it all up, but we did manage to creep in and that, and my parents, you know, said you're not to go in there, it's dangerous and things like that. So yes, you know, I don't remember an awful lot.
I remember, I do remember going dancing to Jeanette Battershell. I think that might have been a married name. I'm not sure. But she lived at Trinity Road at the top of the road I lived in as a child, and she had a dancing class of tap and ballet. And I used to go, my cousin and I both did that. I can look back on it, we didn't have a lot, my parents and I. We didn't own a phone. We didn't have a car. We never had televisions in those days, but we were happy,
LM:
Of course. So, do you have any memories of the war at all? Or did your parents talk to you about the war years?
BS:
No, not really. My mum's brother, the youngest one, he was a . . . what was it . . . a Coldstream Guard. Is it that the right word? Yes, I'm not sure, my memory's going now. Yes, but he was in the forces and that and no, I can't remember really much about that. But when the war was going on I used to sleep in the cellar, as a baby, in a little drawer and then, and during the day I would be upstairs in my mum's bedroom, and I was asleep in a cot. Not near the window. And eventually what happened was that the sirens went, and a bomb dropped nearby and all the glass from the window blew in and it covered the cot and when my mum came up to the room, I was still fast asleep but covered in glass on the eiderdown that we had on me, you know, to keep me warm. So yes, lots of things like that happened but my mother used to tell me about them . . . she used to say . . . you could have been cut to smithereens if it had been hot weather or something you know, but we because it was wintertime, you were covered by this eiderdown so yes you had a fortunate escape. I did. Yes, yes. I did have a fortunate escape.
LM:
So you said earlier that the local children used to all play together on the Common. Do you have many memories of playing on the Common?
BS:
Lots of memories. We had our bicycles, we used to cycle round the houses here, and the Common. And I remember the Common Keepers, and they were always dressed in brown and had a brown trilby, brown coat, and they used to walk around the Common just to make sure that everyone was fine. They had the toilets on the Common then and sometimes we used to get these sort of men what they call flashers coming along, but you could go to the Common Keeper all the time so he would come up and see that you were okay, you were playing on your own and where your parents were, and my cousin lived in the block of flats that overlooked the Common. So we used to say, you know, they live up there, my aunt is up there and . . . yeah. So it was fun. We just, you know, we didn't have a lot of . . . there wasn't no equipment on the common or anything like that, except they did have a putting green where the children's play area is now. So I used to enjoy going over there to play a game of putting.
LM:
Did the Common look very different in those days?
BS:
No, not a lot. I mean, the little part that you walk through, where there's quite a bunch of trees and things, they've cut back a lot. So you can sort of see. That used to be quite dense and the same with the Common. As you cross Trinity Road, before you cross Trinity Road from this side, that would be very thick and dense. Yes. And you know but as years have gone on, they've actually thinned it out. But yes, we used to play in there, you know, build a little house in there with . . . we'd take blankets over and the boys, my brother and them, they played football over there and there was all sorts of games. I remember having a sports day over there one time, you know, racing and yes. So it was always made . . . we always loved to go to the Common, you know, or we'd always say that's what we were going. Because we had it on our doorstep, you know, at the bottom of the road.
LM:
Yes. And no dangerous busy roads.
BS:
There wasn't that many cars in the road either, you see. You were lucky if you saw three cars in our road. So yes. And people used to leave their doors open, you know, my grandma did, you know if I was going out to play so. Yes.
LM:
Do you have memories of visiting the local shops around the Common. Do you remember Bellevue Road?
BS:
Well, we used to go to Bellevue Road and they had a butcher's over there and a fresh fish shop, where you could get fresh fish. And yes, and there was a shop where they had got lots of knitting wools and like, I don't know what you call the shop, but you could buy little clothes for the children. I think that shop was called Jenny's when my children were little. But as a child, I don't remember them so much. I remember, going round to the County Arms with my mum and she used to go to Haddocks the grocery shop where they used to sell . . . I used to always think of it as like Arding and Hobbes, or like, what was the other shop we used to say. But it was, it was a lovely old-fashioned shop. You could smell the wood and . . . Yes, that's right on the corner opposite the County Arms, it was right on that corner there and it was a lovely, lovely shop and you know everything was fresh and you know they would cut the cheese off for you, there wasn't any pre-packed food. I remember that. And also we used to go in there when my cousin and I went swimming, we'd always go in there and get some . . . and there was another shop bit further up, which I think is now the paper shop, but that was another shop where you could get groceries from. And they used to have all the biscuits lined up, and if they had any broken biscuits those you could buy quite cheaply, and we used to take them swimming with us to have.
LM:
And what about Northcote Road, did you ever go over there?
BS:
Yes, yes. Well, Northcote Road. We used to walk across there because I think there was Bolingbroke Hospital and I remember going to the swings over that part of the Common. That's going over the bridge. There was a swing area . . . and my brother was there one day. And I remember going, and he told me to wait outside this wrought iron, sort of it was partitioned off. It was a very big swing that. Anyway, I didn't do as I was told and I did walk towards him and the swing came back and caught me here on the, on the forehead. And I don't remember any more and the next thing I was in Bolingbroke Hospital and apparently my brother had to run all the way home to get my mum because I had to have stitches. And I remember them saying, “Oh just another few, you know, inches or so she would have lost her eye”, and I remember having a mask put on my face, I do remember that. So we used to use that hospital quite a lot, and when I had appendicitis, I went to that hospital and then there was St James's Hospital. And my uncle, they had a prefab there and I had cousins that were twins. And so we sometimes used to go over there and see them, I remember. And of course the Bandstand. We had the Bandstand on the Common there, but the Northcote Road we used to go down there every Sunday. My dad used to take Brian and me and we used to have a Knickerbocker Glory in De Marcos. Which we absolutely loved. And yes, that was the sort of a thing that I remember that was quite special, you know, to have it. And my dad used to have a banana split and Brian, and I, we had this enormous Knickerbocker Glory, which was so lovely. And the ice cream was delicious. Absolutely delicious.
LM:
So that's not there anymore, is it?
BS:
And because the Northcote Road was all fruit and veg, you know, it was always busy. And at Christmas time, they used to have a store where they used to sell off things very late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. And I remember my mum going down there and she, because I particularly wanted this little red handbag, and she went down there, and she waited till she could get me presents because we didn't have a lot of money. And so they would sell them off really cheaply and it was, I remember it was so exciting, little things like that, you know, it was really, really, it was just lovely. Yeah.
LM:
And what about school? Do you have many memories of school days?
BS:
Yes, I mean, I went to Beatrix Potter school and then from Beatrix Potter, I went on to Tranmere Road School, in Earlsfield. And then you did your 11-plus. And then after the eleven plus, I went upstairs to the senior part of the school, where you stayed until you were 13 and then you did a technical exam, and I got into Mayfield School, but you had to learn a sort of trade and I actually went there for, most, it was like girls were offered cooking or needlework and I went in there for needlework. Yes. But they were all happy years. Yes. I enjoyed my school years. Yes.
LM:
And did you used to go to and from school with your brother or with friends?
BS:
Yes, Brian went to the same school as me and then he became . . . he got a job as a tool maker in Richmond and he stayed with them till he retired. It was a family business. But I think John, my late husband, he, I think he worked with Brian there for a short time. And that's how he met my brother. But then, John left to do other things, and my brother always stayed and is now retired.
LM:
So by the time you were 21 and moving on from Nicosia Road who was still living there? was your grandmother still alive?
BS:
Yes my grandma was still there. I'm just trying to think now, she was still alive when I left there, my grandma. I'm not sure what year she died. Yes, I can't remember that now. Yes, I think she still lived there. I know, with my aunt and uncle, then she moved out. And then that's, that's right. Because my uncle wanted to buy the house that my mum and dad were in and I think that's . . . Yeah, that's when my mum and dad moved to Tilehurst Road. I think John and I were married then and then we were . . . no that was before that. I have to think back because we were in Herondale Avenue for . . . we moved when Natalie was about coming up for five and we moved after that. That's my daughter. Yes, we moved before she was coming up for five years and Holloways’ properties because the flat belonged to Holloways’ properties and they had this house in Ellerton Road, there were two houses actually, they had one in Frewin and one in in Ellerton Road. And I remember the Jarvis family moved into Frewin Road and John and I moved into Ellerton Road, which we rented until you had the right to buy, and then they offered it to us at a price, Holloways. And then we bought it. And then that's where I've stayed ever since. And yes. And Natalie was about five just going to school. Yes.
LM:
So you've lived there an awfully long time.
BS:
Well, Herondale Avenue we were there till the children were, as I say, Natalie was five and David was about two and a half and then we moved across to Ellerton Road, which we bought then and Natalie is what, 55 now? Yeah. So we lived there a long time.
LM:
Yes indeed, good. Well, that's all very interesting and thank you so much, Barbara, for sharing it with us.
BS:
It's just sometimes things come to you your memory and sometimes, Helen, my daughter-in-law, she always says to me “I don't know how you remember back that far”, she said, “I'm better at remembering like now”, but she said, “When I try to look back at my childhood, I can't actually remember anything.”, and she's younger than me, she's in her 40s but I don't know. I always think, I think because we had it, that's what I wanted my children to have, the same. We didn't have anything. That was the thing. You know, we weren't lucky like . . . . We didn't have it like children have today, you know, there's so much the children have, you know, and its progress, isn't it in? Things come out and they want them, whereas in my days, there wasn't all this. You were very simple and had things like holidays on the train. My dad used to get a cheaper rate or not have to pay, he was allowed so many free tickets and we'd get up early in the morning, Sunday morning, or at the weekend and we'd get the train from Clapham Junction, go to the seaside, and then get the train back and the same with the cinema, you know. We'd all go to the cinema together, the four of us because we didn't have a TV but they were happy times. You used to stand in the cold at the bus stop and I always remember, I think my mum and dad used to buy some . . . . it was either a Crunchy bar or Bounty bar each, you know to go in the cinema with and they were simple things but they were really happy times. So yes, it's nice. And I was telling my cousin about today and, you know, she remembered things because she lived at the bottom of Nicosia Road. Yeah, she had the flat there but no, it was in Baskerville Road, that's it. And she used to say different things to me that I say, oh yeah, I remember that now. I'd forgotten that, you know? Yeah. So yes, I think growing up here in this area we've been very lucky and I think to have the Common has been absolutely special to all the families and still is for generations. Yes. So popular I mean it would be awful if you didn't have that common. Yes, yes. So good old ones with the Common indeed, right? Yes.
LM:
Well thank you Barbara.
END
XXX
JOAN & MICHAEL TAYLOR
22nd October 2022
Interviewer: Henrietta Gentilli
HG: Can I say what a pleasure it is to be here this afternoon with you both. It might be an idea if you could start by just giving your names and your date of birth.
JT:
Well, I’m Joan Taylor and I was born on the 1st November 1930. And this is my brother . . .
MT: Michael Taylor, born 29th September 1940.
HG: OK. So, ten years apart. What would be very interesting would be to find out where you lived at the beginning of your lives and how you came you be in Trinity Road.
JT:
Well, I lived in Cambridgeshire in a little village, but Dad’s job came to London, so we had to come to London in 1938.
HG: Right. OK. And Michael you were born 1940 . . .
MT: I was born in the house in Trinity Road where we lived.
HG: Right. So, your experience of World War 2 was entirely in Trinity Road.
JT and MT: Yes.
HG: Can you share some of your memories about the war?
JT:
Yes. The siren used to go on the police station down in Trinity Road and then we would take shelter in our front room, we had a Morrison Shelter which was a large steel frame and as children we played table tennis on top of it. (laughs).
HG: How very useful. The lighter side of the year, the war years.
JT:
Then, you know, different times during the year because after Father was killed Mum had to work, we got sent down to Cambridgeshire, all three of us because there was a brother between us, all three of us were sent down there to stay with relatives – grandparents, aunts, uncles.
HG: OK. And during the war what were the main memories you have of the enemy, the dangers, how the Common looked?
JT:
Well, I don’t think as children we thought of the dangers. I think it was adults that thought of the dangers. To us, to some degree to us it was I suppose a bit of an adventure really. And . . . it was . . . I mean I remember the bombing quite well. I remember the doodlebugs, the V1s and the V2s coming over. I remember various houses being bombed in the locality.
HG: There was one at the end of Broderick Road I think you mentioned?
JT:
There was one in Broderick Road. I think Michael’s friend used to live there, didn’t he?
MT: No.
JT:
Wasn’t it where the Hartfields lived?
MT: No. They lived further down the road. But that house when it was bombed, the blast took our front window out. And I remember we were in the shelter, and we could see it. The window, complete with its frame and glass went across the room and shattered on the far wall. It’s one of the few memories of the war that I have because I was only a toddler.
HG: And a vivid memory, I’m sure. You mentioned some time when we last met about anti-aircraft pits and these fixed guns?
MT: Yes . . . They had anti-aircraft guns on Trinity Fields which in those days was the Old Boys of Sir Walter St John School and Battersea Grammar, had half of it each and they also had some on the part of the Common between Trinity Road and Lyford Road. No, it’s not Lyford Road any more, they changed it to Sandgate Lane
HG: Exactly.
MT: On that bit. But to put them in they dug holes that were about a foot square and about ten inches deep to anchor the guns. And when they moved the guns out, they just left the holes, so as you ran across the Common you had to watch where your feet were going (laughs).
HG: OK. And did you mention that some of them were moved up and down the railway?
JT:
There was an anti-aircraft gun on a railway carriage and during the night it was shunted up and down the railway. You could hear it, because there was no traffic or anything, but you could hear the train going up and down. Either Wandsworth Common or the one here, Earlsfield one.
HG: And Michael, I think there was a cobbled runway – a sort of runway across the current pavement in Burntwood Lane onto Trinity Fields and that still exists doesn’t it?
MT: The cobbled pavement does but there’s no gate. It’s just a solid fence when you get there.
HG: Yes it’s just chain link fencing to Trinity Fields but that still exists. And how about Bertha? The family name you had for the barrage balloon.
JT:
Oh yes, we had a barrage balloon that was anchored in what is now Trinity Fields and that was up above, and we always called it Big Bertha. The idea was that the wires holding the balloons up in the air would entangle the wings of the planes coming over to bomb.
HG: Oh, I see. That was their intention. OK. And I’ve got a feeling there was some damage done to Mary Magdalene Church along there but that was after the war? Is that right?
JT and MT: No.
HG: It was during the war?
JT:
There was a German landmine in Trinity Fields, and it actually blew the windows out right by our door. And then it also bowed our big west window, but we didn’t realise that was bowed. We got the two other windows replaced as war reparations, but we didn’t do anything for the other one so now when the rain comes that way it drips down inside.
HG: Still.
JT:
Still.
HG: To this day (laughs).
JT:
Well, it’s a big window, that big west window right at the back there.
HG: Of course, of course. And your memories of ration books . . . Where did you use them?
JT:
Yes. Used to have to go to all the shops and take the ration books with us.
HG: Did you use them in the Jewish bakers? I was interested in hearing more about those.
JT and MT: No.
JT:
No, bread was not rationed. It was actually short, but it was not rationed.
HG: OK. And the Broer family who were from Nazi Germany . . .
JT:
Yes Broer. B.R.O.E.R. A family that came over from Germany pre-war and opened a bakery in Trinity Road next door to the Baptist Chapel and they made lovely bread and beautiful cakes there.
HG: And I think your mother had a little arrangement with them . . .
JT:
Well Mum used to do sewing to help eke out her pension and Mrs Broer would give her money or give her cakes instead to pay and that suited us quite nicely because we always had lovely creamy cakes and not many other people did (laughs).
HG: That must have been a real treat. And Joan, there was also a connection with the butchers, I think they were called Stanleys? And meat deliveries . . .
JT:
Yes, butchers called Stanleys in Trinity Road almost next door to the church. And because there weren’t any young men around, he wanted an errand boy to deliver his meat and I wanted some money. I could ride a bike, so I became the errand boy and delivered the meat for him so that’s how I got my pocket money.
HG: Yes of course. And just moving onto Bellevue Road . . . there was a wonderful selection of different shops all privately owned of course in those days. Just tell us a little bit more about those, what you might remember of them.
JT:
Well, there was a Macfisheries, we had a post office which we could jolly well do with now.
HG: Yes.
JT:
There was Macfisheries, there was United Dairies, there was a greengrocer who also did removals, by the name of Smiths. There was a wool shop. There was a lovely clock shop by the Surrey Tavern bus stop. I know it’s not the Surrey Tavern anymore, but we’ll always call it that . . .
HG: Yes of course.
JT:
. . . called Sherrards and he had some wonderful, wonderful clocks in the window so while you were waiting for a bus you could watch his clocks actually working.
HG: Ah that’s wonderful. And there were places selling hardware?
M and J: Yes, Hollands.
JT:
And he sold paraffin too
MT: Yes he did.
HG: Necessary I guess at the time. And . . . wool shop?
JT and MT: Oh yes.
HG: And also . . .
JT:
Also a sweet shop where we could spend our, buy our sweet ration.
HG: And Goodwin Cycles?
JT and MT: Yes.
HG: So those, all those shops must have come and gone at different stages during your, your childhood, I guess.
JT and MT: Yes.
HG: And what about Mr Miller? He was an interesting character. He was a butcher.
MT: He was a butcher in what is now (pause) . . . Chez Bruce restaurant (
JT:
Chez Bruce) and at the back in the little alleyway that goes round there he had a slaughterhouse which I don’t remember him using, but he did have grazing rights for sheep on Wandsworth Common, and when people started arguing he didn’t, he borrowed some sheep and kept them up there for one night, on Wandsworth Common.
HG: What a great memory.
MT: It was about six sheep he had. And being a schoolchild I went to look at these sheep on . . . (laughs)
HG: Shall we move on to schools and where you went to school and what you remember of the local schools. Joan . . .
JT:
Well, when war broke out I went to, I was at Fircroft School and of course that closed, and we had a little lady who lived round the corner in Brodrick Road who opened a school for the children who were not evacuated, and my brother Alan and I went there, but because I was older than Alan I went in the morning and he went in the afternoon. But then, when the bombing started, she had to close it because she couldn’t take the risk of having children there. And then of course I went to St Mary’s Balham for a short while and then after Dad was killed I was sent down to Cambridgeshire for a while, so I went to the schools there, and altogether in the six war years I went to nine different schools. Some of them were lovely, some were not so nice.
HG: And the school that was set up by this lady, was that Mrs Macauley?
JT:
Yes.
HG: And what sort of activities did you do there?
JT:
Oh, she just did very much reading, writing and arithmetic, very much basic.
HG: And she might have provided meals?
JT:
No,no,no, I was there in the morning and Alan went in the afternoon.
HG: And Michael, moving on to your schooling . . . where did you start?
MT: I started at what was called Fircroft Road then. It’s now lost the ‘Road’ bit. Until I was eleven. Then I went to the Bec in Beechcroft Road, which is the site towards Tooting High St on the, on Beechcroft Road next to the current Ernest Bevin Academy and I was there until I left school . . .
HG: That’s interesting.
MT: . . . and then they turned it into Ernest Bevin and built the new school on the playing fields which were very fine playing fields.
HG: Yes, I’m sure they were, John. Sorry Joan, just thinking about Thomas’s School as it exists now. That was the Clapham County School?
JT:
Yes.
HG: . . . and it also became another interesting school I believe.
JT:
Yes. All of us who passed the eleven plus, who were still living in London, we, all the girls were sent there, and it was the South West London Emergency Secondary School for girls. It then became, when the war eased a bit and the other schools were open . . . My school was Streatham County Grammar and when we moved there it was just girls on the ground floor and the fire brigade on the top floor with fire engines on the playing field but you know, it’s all the other schools, girls who’d passed the scholarship for about eight or nine different secondary schools were all sent to South West London and then it became back to being Clapham County and then of course it then became Thomas’s.
HG: And there were two schools also on Trinity Road. Highfield School do you remember?
JT and MT: Yes.
HG: You didn’t go there?
JT and MT: Private school.
HG: It’s a private school. And Upper Tooting High School?
JT:
Private school for girls.
HG: Between Dalebury and Wandle Roads. So, close to where you live.
MT: It’s where Finton House now is.
HG: I see, yes. Just moving on to, briefly, medical experiences. I was interested in how that worked before the NHS was created.
JT:
Well, if you were unwell, you got taken to the doctor and it cost 6d. But if you were so unwell the doctor had to come to your house, it cost a shilling. So it was much cheaper to take somebody to the doctor’s however ill they were or however contagious they were just to keep the price down.
HG: Of course, that makes good sense. I believe that you, Joan, did some work at St James’s General Hospital and you, I know you knew Dora Littlechild very well prior to that, but you and she — and she of course is going to also be doing some interviews with us so that links very nicely — she also joined you in work for attaining the War Service Badge.
JT:
Yes, we were both Guides together. It was actually Dora that took me to Brownies when we first moved to London. And it was . . . We were Guides together and so we went together to St James’s Hospital to do various odd jobs for staff that had been called up, you know, like laying the tables and taking things to different wards and that. And we got our War Service Badge as Guides for that.
HG: And did you also do some messaging work?
JT:
Yes, because I had a bicycle, I was allowed to be a messenger for the wardens, taking messages from one ARP:
post to another.
HG: And for both of you . . . the appearance of the Common, it’s changed hugely of course. What were some of your earliest memories of walking up the Common and what made you go there?
JT:
Well, it was the nearest open space to us, quite honestly, and of course having come from the country I thought it was very funny that there was no sort of open spaces like we’d got there.
And . . . but it had an iron fence all the way round it pre-war but that was taken away for the war effort which was quite different because you didn’t have to go in through a gate any longer. It certainly has changed a lot. The piece that is between Sandgate Lane and Burntwood Lane has become very wild. It was quite different, wasn’t it?
MT: It was . . . well maintained as a park more. And towards Trinity Road there was a cinder patch where we used to have an annual funfair arrive for a week or two in the summer.
HG: Yes. So that’s the current day named the Scope I believe.
JT and MT: No.
HG: Ah that’s not the Scope . . .
JT:
The Scope’s further . . . Isn’t the Scope further down Trinity Road, near Windmill Road?
MT: No, that’s the Frying Pan.
HG: Yes.
MT: The Scope is over towards Routh Road.
HG: That’s right, that’s right. And that’s quite wild there . . .
MT: Thought the original Scope was in one of the gardens, just by against the Common (not very audible).
HG: Of course, of course. The telescope. And just moving on to that interesting subject of the keepers of the Common. You may have vivid memories of who they were and what they looked like. (laughs)
JT:
They wore a brown uniform with a brown trilby hat, and they all carried a stick with a spike on it. And every bit of rubbish was spiked up, put in the sack. And also, they shouted at us if we climbed trees. They shouted at the boys if they were caught paddling in the pond. But on the other hand, I think if you were in trouble they would help you.
HG: And where do you think they came from? Who gave them the authority to do that job?
JT:
I think it was the LCC, the London County Council. Because if you went to another Common they wore brown uniform just the same. But the commons were kept much nicer, much safer, and certainly the stuff wasn’t allowed to go quite as wild as it has now.
HG: And when do you think they left, those wardens?
MT: The 1960s, I think.
HG: Some time then.
JT:
No it would be later than that, I think. Because I remember them when we were moving that cupboard across there.
MT: Oh yes, when we took the cupboard across the Common (laughs).
HG: That was the late 60s and the 70s.
MT: Yes.
HG: And the big pond that went up to the footbridge. That has now become a tidier feature of the Common.
JT and MT: Yes.
HG: Of course you remember it slightly differently I think.
MT: Yes, it was at the end by the footbridge, it was just a mud patch most of the time. And occasionally when it was wet weather you’d get water there, but other than that it was just mud, and then the Council decided the easy thing to do was to block it off, let trees and shrubs grow on the end bit, and leave the pond that much smaller.
HG: And talking about ponds and skating, there was a big freeze in ‘47/48? Do you remember ice-skating?
JT:
Be about that, because I remember the milk bottles freezing, and the milk came out of the top and had a little plastic – not plastic, metal top – on about four inches of milk sticking out the top. That’s how I learned that liquids expand when freezing (laughs).
HG: Do you have memories of skating on those ponds?
JT:
Yes. No, I didn’t skate on the pond. I used to skate in Cambridgeshire on the dykes there, but I grew out of my skates, so I didn’t skate on the pond.
HG: It would be good to move on to other memorable events perhaps a little after the war. There was a Coronation in 1953 and I believe the Queen was in the local vicinity and you have wonderful memories of that?
MT: Yes, she did tours after her coronation, of Britain, and one of them took her along Trinity Road across Wandsworth Common. And between Routh Road and Burntwood Lane the Bec School were allocated a place along the kerb, and we had to raise our caps as the Queen went past.
HG: How wonderful. And where did she . . .
MT: And she waved.
HG: Did she? Where did she turn after that? Can you remember?
MT: Down Bellevue Road, and we think she went to Lambeth next.
HG: Yes, there might have been a tradition of going past the town halls on her route.
MT: Yes, I think she did, and the mayors had to be there of course, in their robes, and they had to be there to show the council’s allegiance.
HG: And later she may have come several times with George VI on her way through to the Derby. Do you remember?
JT:
That was her mother. That was the Queen Mother . . .
HG: Of course.
JT:
. . . with George VI. Yes, they used to ride on the top of a double decker bus, or in a carriage. We saw them in a carriage, didn’t we? And also on the train, they’d go slowly through the stations so all the kids could wave.
MT: Yes, the instruction to the drivers of the trains I discovered the other day. They were not to exceed 40 mile an hour (laughs, JT laughs too) which is ridiculous when everything else is going much faster.
HG: Of course. Also round about 1950, there was a film called The Galloping Major filmed by Wandsworth Common Station, Michael.
MT: Yes . . . on the Common by St James’s Drive, between there and the station. And the story was this army chap, a major, thought he could train a horse and win the Grand National. And he trained it on Wandsworth Common – which was called something else for the film – and then at the end of the film he didn’t win the Grand National. He came off at the first fence (laughs).
HG: How funny. And then there was another local film, made by Robin Gisby?
MT: Robin Gisby organised for the pupils at Beatrix Potter and St Mary’s Schools to find out about the evacuation of children for the war and he arranged, using his Network Rail contacts, for a special train to take them down to where the children from those schools were evacuated to.
HG: And what did the children look like in the film?
MT: They all dressed up in ‘40s gear that the schools had scrounged.
JT:
’39.
HG: So they would have had something round their neck . . .
JT:
They all had their label on them like the children did when they were evacuated.
MT: And they had a box which . . . I don’t think it actually had a gas mask in, but it was the same sort of thing that they took with them.
HG: And did they carry anything else like little suitcase or . . .
JT:
They were allowed a small, a small suitcase and a toy.
HG: And it may have featured policemen in old cars?
MT: There were policemen in an old car parked in the station entrance road and they were in old uniforms on the station.
HG: That must have been wonderful. Did you see the film?
MT and
JT:
No (laugh).
MT: We don’t know if it ever existed
JT:
may never have reached . . .
MT: I only knew it was going to be there because Robin Gisby told me that he’d organised it.
HG: But there was a film that was released called Summer Holiday, with Cliff Richard. We do know Michael, I think, something about that.
MT: Yes. Part of the film was Cliff Richard driving a London bus down Bellevue Road (laughs).
HG: I wonder what year that might have been.
MT: It was when Cliff was top of the pops so it was in the early part of his career which would be probably the 60s or the 70s.
HG: I would guess so. Just going back to the war and the area round Trinity Road . . . the lighting changed from wartime experience to after that.
JT:
Yes during the war there were no lights on anywhere. And after the war the lights that came on were a bit feeble and that, I think they were the gas lamps. And Wandsworth Council decided it wanted some new lamps, so it carved Trinity Road up into blocks of six lamp standards and they had different lights on each block of six. And they had buses and cars and ambulances all different colours going along, and the drivers were asked to say what they thought about the lights and then the Council people were there looking at how these various coloured vehicles stood out in the lights. And we had the orange lights outside our house, and they were the ones that Wandsworth initially took for the main roads.
HG: And during the war there were no lights . . .
JT:
None whatsoever.
HG: And you did mention at some point that the lights would go off at around 10 o’clock, around pub closing time . . .
JT:
That was after the war. And pre-war of course all the street lamps went off at 10 o’clock when it was pub closing time.
HG: That does make sense doesn’t it.
MT: The main roads had every other street light on. Most of the night.
HG: Yes.
MT: But only the main roads. The side roads had no lights on at all and that was because there was a shortage of electricity. We still had power cuts into 1948, ‘49, you could suddenly find your lights went out.
HG: And just thinking about the war, and what happened during that time . . . I was very interested to know about the prefabs. We seem as a local community to have very little information about that. But they were built around the Common, and I wonder whether you could just talk a little bit about those.
MT: Yes. Down Bellevue Road there was two rows of prefabs built which were basically factory-built houses, that came as a kit to put together and were put on a concrete base. And then when you got to Bolingbroke Grove there were two more rows along by the road and they disappeared very quickly after the war when they built the Fitzhugh Estate.
HG: Oh, that’s interesting.
MT: And a lot of the people who’d lived in the flats (prefabs?) moved in there.
HG: And were there any allotments?
MT: Yes. After the prefabs across the Common there were allotments. And they disappeared because it returned to common land, to the puRP:
ose it was there for.
HG: And do you remember people, did you know people living in the prefabs?
JT and MT: Yes.
JT:
But I can’t remember who they were now. (laughs)
MT: I can remember one. He was a Scout with me. Albert Deighton’s (Dayton’s?) family, lived in Bellevue Road, the last prefab in the second row.
HG: Is that right? And where did he live before that?
MT: I don’t know. Don’t know. I only knew him when he was a Scout. And then after he went into, I think he went into the RAF, and then moved abroad when he left there, so I lost touch with him.
HG: And Michael you have strong memories I think of men, women perhaps, working at the Victoria Patriotic Building and what that building provided for the local community.
MT: Yes. During the war they used to take people they weren’t certain of into the Patriotic School, where they had a number of multi-lingual judges, and I worked for a chap whose father had been one, and the idea was if these people couldn’t convince the judges that they were general, genuine immigrants they could be taken straight across to Wandsworth Prison for execution as spies.
HG: What an extraordinary tale.
JT:
There was suspicious people. I don’t understand why but there you are.
MT: Apparently the judges could listen to the prisoners talking to each other to find out all about them without them knowing they’d been eavesdropping.
HG: And there was a connection of course between that building and Wandsworth Prison which you just mentioned. But Joan, you had an experience I think as a Girl Guide at the church, looking after the girls whose fathers were involved . . .
JT:
I ran the Guide Company at the church for many years and if there was a prisoner in the condemned cell the prison officers were all a bit uptight, and the children were kept absolutely under their thumb at home . . . And by the time they came to Guides all I could do was let them play games and go mad. You couldn’t get them to concentrate on anything because they were kept under strict supervision at home. And it was quite a good thing actually when they stopped the hangings.
HG: And do you remember particular hangings? Ruth Ellis . . .
JT:
I remember them bringing . . . was it Ruth Ellis?
MT: Ruth Ellis. Yes.
HG: She came from Holloway Prison?
JT:
. . . from Holloway Prison because Wandsworth for a long time was the only prison with a condemned cell and a gallows. And of course, any prisoner that was hung there whose relatives didn’t want to take their body away are buried in Magdalen Road Cemetery in a bit near the prison which is not consecrated ground.
HG – That is really interesting. You mentioned also about Canadian soldiers being buried. Was that also in the same cemetery?
MT and
JT:
Yes.
JT:
I don’t know too much about it, but I do know that pupils from Beatrix Potter School care for those, and a group of them were invited by Canadians to go over to Canada four years ago, five years ago?
MT: four or five years ago . . . as a thank you . . . for looking after the graves.
HG: That is really interesting.
MT: And the school take pride in the fact that they do regularly teach about that sort of thing and take the children up to do the maintenance on the graves. And I believe they started that just after the war ended.
JT:
Yes.
HG: That’s a really good, good reflection of how life was difficult but some sort of gratitude was shown.
JT:
I think it made us the people we are today quite frankly (laughs).
HG: And in summary, what would you say is one of the most obvious ways in which the Common has changed, the community has changed over the years that you’ve lived here? Because you did live in Bramfield Road as well didn’t you?
MT: Yes. Well the big thing is how people get their beer in the pub and take it onto the Common, which was never allowed before. You weren’t allowed to take the drinks out of the pub. But now you see, you even see the Hope has a place where you put your empty glass for them to collect and the AlthoRP:
e give you a chair to sit on, on the Common.
HG: As long as you buy their beer . . .
MT: As long as you get your beer there, yes.
JT:
I don’t think people care as much for the Common as they used to. I mean people have barbecues on it and if it singes the ground, they don’t seem to bother. Now the Common keepers would never ever have allowed it, anything like that (laughs).
HG: Do you think it, as a place it’s become safer? Friendlier? Or do you think it was . . . better when you were here as a child?
JT:
I don’t think it’s safer because as a child I would go up there on my own. I don’t think many parents would allow a child to go there on their own up there now.
HG: Traffic being a problem . . . apart from other things . . .
JT:
Well apart from people on the Common because I remember somebody telling me that there were 57 types of tree on Wandsworth Common and I wanted to find them. And I went up there looking for 57. Well, you wouldn’t let a child of about eleven go and do that nowadays. So I don’t think it is any safer. But it’s much more open than it was I think you know. More people use it than used to.
HG: And do you think as an area it’s changed in the profile of people and families living here.
JT:
Yes. There’s a lot more money around than there was.
MT: And there’s a lot more dog walkers.
JT:
Yes.
HG: Yes. That’s for certain. There’s one thing I should have asked you, Michael, that was very interesting, when we were talking about Bellevue Road, about the boundary divisions between Battersea and Wandsworth, and how that affected a particular house in Wiseton Road.
MT: The boundary used to go along the middle of Wiseton Road. When you got to the Common end, on the other side of Bellevue Road, there was a little railing. And on one side it had a notice that said, Bellevue Road Wandsworth and the other side it said Bellevue Road Battersea.
JT:
Absolutely side by side.
MT: Side by side. And the boundary along Wiseton Road went through the middle of the end house. And if somebody had a baby there, the story is they had to declare which room the birth was in for registering the baby.
JT:
(laughs)
MT: Of course Battersea disappeared, and it’s now all in Wandsworth anyway. But the two notices have gone, to tell you it’s Bellevue Road in somewhere or other.
HG: Well that’s a wonderfully comic, and human, story to end on. Is there anything else you’d like to add to your memories?
MT: Only when they changed the borough boundary Battersea spent the rest of their money putting up notices on lamp posts saying ‘This was Battersea’ (laughter) and that was about six weeks before they disappeared (more laughter).
HG: Joan, anything you’d like to add?
JT:
No. Could talk hind leg of a donkey off, but . . . no (laughs).
HG: Well may I say thank you so much.
MT: Well, thank you.
JT:
Thank you.
HG: You’ve been very generous with your time and all your memories. Thank you so much.
MT: With pleasure.
JT:
It has. It’s been lovely to think of things . . . and suddenly you think, oh, and the thought leads you on to some other . . .
HG: Yes . . . And these are all memories that will be of huge interest for people now and in the future. So a great record of life round the Common. Thank you so much.
END
XXX
XXX
AVIVA & CHARLES WALTON
17th November 2022
Interviewer: John Turner
JT:
Thank you very much. Well, Charles and Aviva, thank you very much indeed for agreeing to talk to the Friends of Wandsworth Common. It seems especially good since you've been so much involved with Wandsworth Common for so long. And I'm going to start in a very obvious way by asking you, please, one after the other to state your name and your date of birth.
CW:
I'm Charles Walton and I was born on the 7th of July 1946.
AW:
And I'm Aviva Walton and I was born on the fifth of April 1949.
JT:
Good. Thank you very much.
JT:
How did you first came to be aware of Wandsworth Common, when you first came to live in London.
CW:
I used to very occasionally go out for a run on Wandsworth in my plimsolls long before the days of trainers and I found the place gloomy and unattractive and, yes, it was it was not a welcoming space at all.
AW:
And we moved to Wandsworth in 1971 and lived halfway down Earlsfield Road. And when we had children, I would push the pram up to the Common and try and go on to the main bit. We could have gone to West Side or North Side and it was really difficult to access it because we didn't have the bridge over to the Windmill estate. And we'd have to go along Trinity Road and then in through opposite the pub, and by the cricket pitch, and as Charles says, it was bleak and unwelcoming, and it seemed as though, it was football pitches and dog poo. But the exciting thing was, although it had a forbidding atmosphere, I met other people who were pushing their babies in prams and we began to recognize each other and talk to each other. And then, that made me look at the Common with slightly different eyes because it became much warmer because we had human contact and I was really seeking some fresh air and green space for the children, for the babies.
JT:
And that must have been the nearest green space to you.
AW:
It was, it was. And then we moved much, much closer, and West Side was our nearest bit of Common and the years had gone by and our awareness had grown. And we used the Common in a very different way.
JT:
When did you first become involved in or interested in how the Common was run and looked after?
CW:
About 25 years ago I used to come up onto the Common each morning for a run before I went to work. And in doing that, I'd find myself stopping and chatting to Parks Officers and the guys who worked there and indeed a lot of other people, the fitness trainers. And one day, the Head Parks Officer, Bruce Faulkner, said, “Charles why don't you join the MAC?” and so I thought more about it and I've always worked on the basis that if you are involved with something, you get a greater level of satisfaction, and certainly understanding. And so about 15 years ago, I joined the MAC and my interest grew progressively, as I began to know more about it.
JT:
And what was the MAC actually doing at that point and what was its relationship to the overall management of the Common?
CW:
Well, it dates back quite a long way because the LCC took over the ownership and running of the common in the late 1800s and that was succeeded by the GLC, which was within that time scale relatively short-lived. Margaret Thatcher then ditched the GLC in 1986, and the ownership of the Common was handed to Wandsworth Council. And they realised that they ought to reach out in some way to the users of the Common. So, quite sensibly, they went to the Wandsworth Society, whose remit was an oversight of the Common and Wandsworth town centre. And so in about 1988, the MAC was formed largely from people from the Wandsworth Society and primarily that towering person, Shirley Passmore, who became such a great name in maintaining aspects of the Common. And as I say, I joined the MAC and was a member for three years. And frankly, by the time I joined, it was a bit of a dead and alive organization. And after three years, at one meeting the then chairman stood up and said, “I think I've done enough time on the MAC and I want to stand down,” and Shirley turned to him and said, “Bryn thank you very much indeed for what you've done and when are you thinking of resigning?” and he said "Now", which surprised everybody, and Shirley looked round and said, “Charles, I think you should take over from him.” And all the rest is history.
So, for the next seven years, I was chairman of the MAC and I was very happy to say with the support of the Parks officers and a variety of other people, we enlarged the MAC from a struggling six or seven active members to really quite a vibrant body of 20-plus. And it was interesting because after seven years, once again, I felt I had done all that I could, but we had laid the foundations for what became the Friends.
We had realized that actually the MAC was really a little bit . . . its Constitution didn't give really give it the ability to go out, raise money, take a higher profile. So, largely through Aviva's initiative, we started a thing called the MAC Enhancement Subcommittee, the MAC-ES, and Valerie Selby, the Council biodiversity officer was very helpful and supportive. And she had seen the way Tooting was developing and their Friends and the way it worked and the problems they had faced and she said to us, “Just take it slowly, take it slowly.” And that was very good advice. But soon after I stood down from being the Chair, the Friends was formed very much in the style of the MAC-ES. And it's blossomed ever since.
AW:
And I got interested in joining the MAC because Charles would come home and talk about the meetings and I realized too that I felt passionate about a lot of the subjects that they were talking about. You know, about a balancing act of the management, balancing, what the people wanted, what the Common needed, nature, ecology. And the way to know and learn more and give back was by joining the MAC. And as Charles says, one of the things that we realized was that the MAC was the voice of the users of the Common, but actually we had no way of engaging with the users of the Common. And we felt that this was a very important part of what was happening and we were given grants by the Council when we applied for them to buy things like a gazebo and tables. And form photographs, and literature, and go out and have pop-up stalls, and take a stall in the local markets and actually talk to the public about the Common. And the other thing that came out of it, which is very important for the MAC and for the Friends of Wandsworth Common, brilliantly led by Julia Bott and Richard Fox who took on a lot of the philosophy behind it, was education and engaging with the people. I mean that's the whole nature of the Friends and that has just continued and blossomed.
JT:
Can I take you back to the period when you were first involved in it? What what were the sort of three main problems facing the Common at that time? As you remember it?
CW:
I was intrigued when I was chairman, because there was a management plan which dated back 25 years. So although the Parks officers were immensely dedicated and knowledgeable, there was no particular aim or pathway involved. And I got hold of Councillor Johnson, who was a Cabinet Member for Parks and Open Spaces, and various other things, and he came and had a coffee with me at the Skylark. And he could see that actually having a management plan — particularly as Enable, who were the management company by this time — their contract was going to be up for renewal every three or five years and we could have had anybody running the Common, and indeed all Wandsworth open spaces. Interestingly enough there was a firm in Bolton in Lancashire who were getting rather good at that sort of thing. And when I pointed out to Counsellor Johnson that it could be a French company, it could be someone completely detached from Wandsworth, really there had to be a good framework of what was needed, both in the short and long term and Councillor Johnson managed to find the necessary £60,000 and in 2019, I think it was the management plan was produced.
But to go back, I think that one of the things that we really saw was that Wandsworth Common was run more as a park than a common and it was run for the sake of what I would describe as the vociferous users, the football clubs particularly and they came from right across South London and they had no local interest. All they wanted was that their football pitches should be usable. Which was sometimes just a pious hope because of course Wandsworth Common actually, historically, was not farmland, was not used for much else because it was prone to flooding. So for quite a significant part of the winter after there'd been heavy rain, you couldn't use it as sports pitches. But the really important thing was transforming the Common from an open space into something that was a fully balanced place for biodiversity and ecology. And by establishing that you then got a very, very attractive area.
AW:
Yes, I agree. I think going back in years, the Common was used specifically for recreation, for active recreation, mainly football and walking dogs, and there was no awareness at that time of the landscape or the ecology or nature, and there wasn't a balance for what the users wanted to be able to do on the Common. You need to balance the activities, be they formal or informal. You want to balance people being very quiet and wandering around lying on their backs and looking at the sky, you want to re-engage with nature. None of this was happening at the time, and this is what has evolved since then.
JT:
And you've both said the Parks officers were able and committed. What sort of thing were they able to do to develop that idea?
AW:
Well, I think where it really began to develop was when the council decided to outsource the management of the Common. And what happened was that the Parks Department was allowed to set up a staff mutual. So the staff and the Parks Department were allowed to set up an autonomous company which then became totally independent: Enable. And Enable was full of Parks officers who were passionate about the open spaces. So they brought this with them but they were actually allowed to manage it for the Council in liaison with the Council of course, which was very, very important — they didn't have a free rein — and this enabled them to actually go on the ground and say this is what we need to do. You know, this is how we're going to manage the woodland. This is how we're going to manage the lakes. It's how we're going to maintain the amenity grass and then we'll start growing longer grass for biodiversity for the insects, for corridors. So the whole philosophy began to change within the company, but also on a wider scale within the UK and the world really, as to how you should manage your open spaces.
JT:
And what do you think with were the obstacles to their success? What were the obstacles , the challenges they faced in making that change?
CW:
I think the difficulty is the Parks officers were beholden to the Council. And of course, the Council is then driven by the councillors and so you got a situation where you would go and talk to the Parks officers, they would then have to report back to the Council. And if there were sort of political pressures from various groups, they would, or wouldn't be able to do certain things. And a lot of the the older Parks officers had been brought up in a certain tradition, a way of doing things: providing facilities, the little changing rooms here, maybe a One o'clock Club there, but there wasn't a great sort of spark of originality. And I don't think that they, none of them, I don't think, had been trained in the importance of respecting the ecology and the biodiversity and I think it was very much due to when Valerie Selby arrived, which must have been 25 years ago. And she by strength of personality and perseverance, she really did wake people up to the recognition, the simple recognition that if you provide habitats, you will have the beetles, the insects, which provide a food source for the birds and small mammals, and then you then manage the Common for that. And in a balanced way. I mean, I hasten to add here, there are an awful lot of people who use the Common, who would say to us, “Well, look at it, it's just an open space. It doesn't need managing. Just let it get on. Doesn't it just do itself?” And it took a long time for people to understand that, actually, it's a very complex thing that needs a great deal of knowledgeable attention. And yes, I think it was the inspiration of a few people that carried the councillors and the Council and developed the Common. One thing we noticed when we were running stalls at the Bellevue Fair or the Northcote Road Market was the number of people would come up to us and say, oh yes, we've moved here from Fulham, from Clapham, from goodness knows where, because of the Common and the open space. Well, if they'd come 40 years earlier and just seen a sterile green space, that would have been unattractive to them. And I think, as years go on, we are getting a really extremely attractive area.
JT:
You mentioned political pressure? Do you think there's a threat to the continuing success of the Common from lack of resources? Is it an expensive thing for the council to do, and for Enable?
CW:
It's interesting because quite often at meetings we would press the council officer who would attend our MAC meetings to know what the budget for Wandsworth Common was. And they would always say we can't give you a budget for the common because we have 43 or 44 Open Spaces in the borough and we have X millions of pounds for that and we don't divide it up. And so that was always a source of frustration. I think now Wandsworth Common has gathered a certain momentum and there are so many people who recognize it's an important open space that there would be huge resistance if the Council backed away from it and said "You know we've got so many cuts we can't do this." But now, of course what we've got is the weight of the Friends who are able to do, things like, crowd-fund, raise money. I mean, take the scheme over the last year or so, with the tree planting, which has been hugely successful. And around the Common, there are quite a number of you know, fairly wealthy individuals who I think would hate to see the Common deteriorate. I think there is a risk that the Council, now we're seeing the Autumn Statement, that they will seek cuts wherever they can. But I think Enable now are very experienced and they will do their utmost to continue keeping it as a beautiful and well-managed place. But perhaps without any much more investment.
AW:
I'd just like to say that one of the differences is with the Parks officers you were asking and the way things are now is that Parks officers and the users of the common were very separate. There was no dialogue, even though there was a MAC, there was still no proper dialogue and now, slowly slowly, there's much more of the idea of everyone working together. So the managers of the Common, which happens to be Enable, and the users are much more connected now and all are working towards the same aim. Which has seen the way the MAC works, engages with the officers from the council and from Enable and the Friends do as well.
There was a time when in fact, the Council were very keen that the Open Spaces should raise their own money for their own upkeep or at least money towards their upkeep. And I remember a lot of conversations in the MAC when we were very concerned about this because there is a great difference between somewhere like Wandsworth Common which is a small and very changing landscape. It's got areas of natural countryside and small areas. I mean minute areas and small sports pitches compared with Battersea Park which is huge and has actual wide areas of grass which are used for huge events and they make an awful lot of money there. And no way could Wandsworth Common be able to do that.
It was not only something that was worrying us here on the MAC, but but it was across Britain. All councils were turning to their open spaces and saying how are you going to find all the money or at least contribute to your running costs and fortunately that seems to have gone away now because our Council in particular and many other places realize the importance of green open spaces and how we use them, we can re-engage with nature, we can be very active, we can be very passive, it's very good for our physical health. And it's very good for our mental well-being, and Wandsworth Council itself now uses this. It says, we are the borough that has all these wide open green spaces. And that's made a big difference to the finances, I think. The other thing is that I asked a Councillor once "How do you value your green open Spaces. How do you value Wandsworth Common? And she said, "we do have a formula but we don't use it." The important thing is they now do value it. And that's a big significant change. It's not just a headache to be managed. It's something that enhances people's lives.
JT:
Does that make you optimistic about the future of the Common?
AW: I think so because I think across the world people's attitude is changing. We're very aware of our environment. We're very aware of changing environments and especially people who live around Wandsworth Common really do value the open spaces. It's used by everybody, one of the important points that the MAC felt should be foremost was that the Common was for everyone. It was open to everyone and it was for everyone to use. It didn't matter what walk of life, you came from, everybody should be included, and I think that this is something that will go forward. People are aware of how management styles are changing. There's much more emphasis on the ecology, on biodiversity. There's much more emphasis at looking at the whole person and then the whole green open space because it's very easy to get lost in 'What do people want?' You've also got to look at this scenario from what is good for the open space, what is good for Wandsworth Common. I may want to have an ice rink on Wandsworth Common, but would that be good for the Common? You know, you must look at the viewpoint from both sides. What is good for the Common and what is good for the people and then balance and merge the two. So I think that will go forwards much more.
JT:
Is there any further change in the way things are happening that you would like to see?
CW:
I haven't been directly involved with the MAC for four years now, but from everything I've seen it's a dynamic organization working very closely with the Friends.: And what I like to see, and indeed it was happening whilst I was Chair, is that both the Friends and the MAC are recognized as very important bodies in relation to the Common. And I was very glad for instance that when Crossrail cropped up we were one of the first organizations - the MAC — to have a meeting with Crossrail because they were planning the route which was going to come from Wimbledon via — would it go to Tooting, would it go to Balham — and then it was going to go to Clapham Junction and then across the river and it was very funny because we invited Crossrail to have a meeting with us in the Parks Office, which is just adjoining Skylark. And they brought a small team along and the beauty of the conference room in the council office is it has a panoramic view of the Common looking down that stretch to Bellevue Road. And the intention had been to build a ventilation shaft, almost immediately adjoining where the office is. So on that stretch of green space where Skylark is would have had a thing. They said it would be discreet, but it was nevertheless going to be the size of a house. And as we sat talking to them, we were aware that they were looking around and we said "It's just not a good idea." And they said "Well, we selected the site from Google Maps. And we walked here from Wandsworth Common station, and we now recognize that it's not a good idea." And we then maintained the close contact with Crossrail until the whole thing sort of faded into obscurity. And it was very interesting to see that they actually listened to us and reached out. And that was very satisfactory.
And indeed Network Rail, who are famous for ignoring people, were installing a new communication system which involved a thing like a telephone mast. And it was going to be built in the cutting between Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Common station, and it just was not sitting harmoniously in amongst the trees, it was going behind where the tennis courts are, and we asked for a meeting and we went and had a site meeting with the liaison manager and interestingly enough, she said, "Well we can do things, we can we can supply you with trees to screen it off. We've got to have something and it's really got to be here because it's all line of sight." And sure enough they paid for six trees which were going to be be planted on the rather infertile embankment that faces towards Bolingbroke Grove. But that actually convinced us that the MAC had arrived as a body that was, dare I say it, respected and whose advice was sought. And that's also now passed on to the Friends. And so the MAC and the Friends, I believe, are a very strong and influential body with the common now.
JT:
And have you any idea of the threats? In the immediate future?
CW:
I can't think of any because, of course, the protections, as far as the Common is concerned, are very tight indeed. And the Council acknowledge that if they wish to take a bit of the Common, they must replace it with something of equal value. Well, of course, the accountants in the Council say "Equal value, there isn't a value to the common, so it doesn't really matter if you want to take 50 square meters for widening a road" and we say, "Value means attractiveness." So, we always pressed that if you take a bit, you can't give us some rubbishy bit somewhere that is unusable. What you take away must be of equal attraction and indeed there has been conversation as you probably know about taking a bit off Burntwood Lane to help the flow of traffic and even that has faded into obscurity. They're now looking at taking a bit of Trinity Fields, although not for traffic, for a cycle lane. And one of the other things that we talked about was taking a chunk of Trinity Road, which, when you think about it, a six-lane highway was cut through the Common to make the London Orbital Motorway. And it got as far as the County Arms, six lanes and it suddenly goes down to two. So, Trinity Road for years, has been actually sometimes not much more than just a pool of slow-moving cars. And we advocated that perhaps part of Trinity Road, the County Arms end, should actually be returned to the common. It was wishful thinking we knew, but it has actually sown a seed. And I think that might eventually happen, it would be very interesting.
JT:
It would be the first time the Common has been expanded in very long time.
CW:
Oh well the Common has expanded. Interestingly enough 25 years ago we got 10 acres back when the Windmill Green estate was built. And that was interesting because, when Wandsworth Council gave planning permission for Windmill Green estate, Shirley Passmore as chairman of the MAC was tenacious fighter. That area should actually be returned to the Common as it had been many years earlier. And funnily enough her husband Gordon was twice mayor of Wandsworth. And at that time, he was chairman of the Planning Committee. So I think probably the home life of the Passmores whilst that was going on, would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall. But anyway, Wandsworth Council gave planning permission to build the Windmill Green estate, and in doing so the area in front of the Patriotic building was returned to the Common — 10 acres - and it was very exciting. And I remember Wandsworth Society — and this was long before, the days of Friends - actually had a celebratory summer picnic on that space and the security men from the Windmill Estate came and said "You can't do that here. This is private land." And we said "No, it's Common and we're here to stay" and, give them their due, they went away and talked about it and they didn't come and join us but they acknowledged it, so that was returned. And there was also, I'm trying to think what other bits — the One o'clock Club and Heathfield enclosed space. That was returned to the Common when Trinity Road was built. So in fact, the Common went down from a hundred and seventy seven acres down to about 150 and has now gone back up to 170 Acres, but I don't see any areas that could be reclaimed and returned to Common.
JT:
Spencer Park would be a fine thing, but yes, too many houses.
AW:
I think one of the important things, hearing Charles talking about that and hearing your question beforehand, is the way we see things going forward is that the management of the Common and the philosophy of how you manage open spaces generally is changing in the right direction. Looking at ecology, looking at nature, looking at people, what people want and getting that balance and enhancing, all always moving towards enhancing the environment. And the other thing is engaging with the wider public and education, terribly important. If you don't talk to people, if you don't engage with them, if you don't give them the opportunity to learn about their surroundings, they won't feel a connection in such a close, or passionate way or feel responsibility because they'll just feel that they're entitled to this open space. They will not understand that it's managed, even if it looks like a wild bit of countryside, they won't understand that. The birds, the bees, the ducks, the little mice need an environment to live in. If they walk through somewhere like the Scope and they have the cathedral of trees above them and enjoy that atmosphere, that's actually managed. And unless you tell people about about it or engage with them, they won't know or appreciate it. And that's a very good thing that's come from generally, a better communication and it can become even better with the MAC and especially with the Friends. It's a role that the Friends have taken on to engage with the wider public, offer talks on all sorts of different aspects: heritage, culture, landscape, ecology, and people are really having a greater understanding about what's happening.
JT:
Do you think that it's easy to engage young people with the same thing?
AW:
I think it's easy to engage children who come with their parents. I think it's very difficult to engage with youngsters, but that's across everywhere. But it is interesting. There are quite a number of younger people in their late twenties, early thirties who do join in activities but they're measurable. Whether that's busy lifestyles, whether they move around a lot, they're not static in one place, so they don't have time to form an attachment, who knows? But I think it is a common problem trying to engage with a certain age group of people, but if you do engage with children, they're going to grow up and have a better understanding and take that on with them. So it'd be interesting to see what happens in the future.
JT:
Now that that concludes the areas that I thought we might talk about, is there anything I've not thought of?
AW:
Well, I would just like to say that if you, if anyone is interested in the Common, as we were, to participate gives one an enrichment that you would never imagine: going in volunteering to plant whips for a new hedge, watching the grass being mowed so that there's an area of long grass that, you know, that the insects are going to be able to travel along and yet by the side of it, there's a mown area where you can picnic or play informal games, fly a kite. These things are really exciting and I think in particular for me going - before there was a Friends — going on walks with Valerie Selby when she had the time to do it for MAC members but asking if we could join a walk with Kevin Freed, who was the man on the ground - he was second to Valerie — but he walked all the open spaces and we asked, could we come and walk with you and he would tell us about the landscape that we were walking through and the problems and how they were solving them and the positive aspects of it and what his aspirations were. And Shirley Passmore, who wrote a history of the Common, she had very particular views, she didn't want the Common to change, but I learned an awful lot from her and although I feel things need to to develop and change for the better, without her and without Valerie and Kevin, I don't think I would have learned or have come as much or become as passionate as I am about Wandsworth Common.
CW:
I think the Common is in very safe hands. Enable has had their contract renewed. They've shown themselves to be committed, competent. The Friends is hugely successful and to allude to your comment about getting people involved they now have a schools liaison person which is very, very important and it's very gratifying when you hear little children say, "Oh Mummy, let's have a look at this, this tree or these bushes here" because we'll see something or other. "And Mummy, we must pick up our litter as well." And I think in that kind of way, the more people can get involved, the more they'll understand and the more they will value it. And long may that continue. I don't think there is any chance that the Common will have chunks taken out of it. I mean, the whole thing is enshrined now so tightly in law and public feeling that we are going to go from strength to strength, and that's the way I like it.
JT:
Thank you very much indeed.
AW:
The Wandsworth Common MAC Enhancement Subcommittee, such a long name that then became the Friends, but when it was a subcommittee, we thought that part of our engagement with the public was education as much as possible. We were very young, very small. We had been told to go slowly, but they had signs that had gone on the Common saying, don't feed the swans and ducks, but it's in our culture. And so we thought, how are you going to approach it? So with Valerie Selby's approval, we bought organic swan and duck food. And volunteers got together and packaged it, and Skylark, and various other cafes agreed to sell it for the minimal amount of 50p. So that children could actually, even if you had three or four children, you could afford, you know, two pounds, two and a half pounds for a bag for each child and you hear children saying "You know, we can't feed swans and ducks bread, we have to have our swan and duck food." In our little stripey bags. So I think that's, you know, an important part of engagement really and an illustration.
CW:
It's very successful
AW:
And it's match-funding. So when you're having to fund-raise, you’re always asked to match fund. So there's a really good steady income from the swan-and-duck food. So it's education, engagement and match-funding. Which is, you know, brilliant.
CW:
One of the other things I think everybody should understand about the Common is we have a beautiful space, not just for ourselves but for future generations and we must respect and understand that.
AW:
It's not just for now, it's for the future. Must get someone to talk about that because it's for the future generations that we're looking after it now and our use of it has to be tempered with the management of it. Yeah, terribly important.
JT:
Thank you very, very much.
END
XXX
BARBARA WINDSOR
24th October 2022
Interviewer: Ros Page
RP:
Hello Barbara. Thank you very much for joining me today to talk about your time living around Wandsworth Common. We're actually here in the house of John Crossland who is recording and filming this interview and I'm Ros Page who is one of the Friends of Wandsworth Common who are the ones who are doing this oral history project. So if we can start off, if I can ask you to give me your name and your date of birth and perhaps just tell me where you're living now.
BW: Okay. Well, it might be a good thing or not a good thing to say that my name is Barbara Windsor, but the other Barbara Windsor is dead and I'm very much alive. Barbara Windsor: my date of birth is the second of May 1944. So, yeah.
RP:
And where are you living?
BW: Now, we're living in Suffolk, just south of Ipswich, like my husband. We moved with his job, some 45, 50 years ago, long time ago.
RP:
Thank you. So, can you tell me now where you were born? And then tell me a little bit about your family, your parents, and your siblings and perhaps tell me what your parents did.
BW: Okay, I was born in Brixton, in my grandmother's house, in 1944, and obviously in those days just towards the end of the war, families tended to live together. So, I think we lived in the house, my grandmother, my uncle, my aunt. So, I think probably about — I can't believe — 10 or 12 people living in that house and you do wonder how you managed with the one sink and two taps. But anyway, we did but I think probably because my father was in the RAF, I think there was a priority given to service people obviously. There were all sorts of problems with housing but there was priority given to service people to move into prefabs because I think there was a huge demand at the time. So, there was my mother and my father.
My father has a strange background, he was part Danish and all he ever wanted to do was be on the stage and he belonged to, I don't know if they existed around here, but he belonged to a group called The Dickensian Players. Basically, that's all he wanted to do. So I think what he did all of the time to satisfy that was play the violin in Northcote Road — I don't know if you remember Charlie Chester – and obviously moved to Battersea, but because he actually couldn't do what he really wanted to do, which was to go on the stage, he ended up being a painter and decorator but he was also a very good artist and musician as well. So that was my father.
My mother had actually been born in Leeds and my grandmother — too long a story — my grandmother and her family, my mother being one of them, lived in Leeds. My grandmother lost her husband when her youngest child was two. And my grandmother actually had an accident and ended up completely blind. And apparently she had a dream that if she moved to London, everything would be all right. So how she moved to London in the late 1920s with four children and no sight and ended up in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, which is why actually I'm here now in London, we don’t know. And so that was my grandmother. My mother was a housewife. She was a very good needlewoman. Her family had been tailors. I have one sister who's younger than me. My sister was born in Battersea. So obviously the time that from 1944, the time I was born in Brixton, and moving to Battersea must have been about 1945 time because my sister was born in 1946. And obviously, I have absolutely no memory at all of moving to the prefab, I was obviously probably 2 or less. That's how we ended up in Battersea.
RP:
Yes. So, you just mentioned that you moved to a prefab, and it sounds as though that was just after the end of the war.
BW: Yes. I mean because my sister was born in 1946 and she was born in Battersea we obviously between the period of 1944 to 1946. That must have been the time that that we actually moved.
RP:
And so you would have been the first occupants (BW: Absolutely. Yes.) Could you tell us a bit more about the prefab where you lived, what it was like?
BW: I have really strong memories of living there because it was such a community. There were, I think there were probably 10 or 11 prefabs on that particular site, right next to St Mark’s church.
RP:
So, can I just stop you there. The St Mark’s church you're talking about is the one on Battersea Rise?
BW: That's the one. As you walk up Battersea Rise towards Bolingbroke Grove, the prefabs would have been on the right, just slightly beyond St Mark’s.
RP:
There's a triangle.
BW: Yes, I sometimes wonder if I went back there and dug the ground there, I might find some of my old toys or some dead cats, maybe. But there was a really strong sense of community and looking back, and obviously not realizing it at the time, looking back on the people that lived there, there were quite a sort of diverse backgrounds. I mean, for instance, a strange thing is I'm Barbara Windsor, the person who lived next door to me was Michael Jackson. And his father was a teacher. Michael Jackson himself went to Emanuel College. So, I mean, presumably you were paying in those days as well. So, you know, they were living in a prefab, but, you know, the son was still going to a private school. So that that was them. And next door, we had the Jones family and Mr Jones actually worked for Hodder and Stoughton and was actually involved with publication of Enid Blyton’s books. So at the time, you don't realize, but if I look back now I realize that the sort of life they had was obviously going to functions because Mrs Jones had a lot of very fancy dresses. So we had a wonderful dressing-up box and I've always all my life been told I'm a terrible control freak, but if I think back now to when I was about six I was always organizing plays in the garden with all these dressing up clothes and I'm sure we tried to sell people tickets as they walked up the path. And then on the other corner that there was the other family, he was the taxi driver. So you had a schoolteacher, a taxi driver, somebody working in publishing and everybody thought my father was a round peg in a square hole because he used to correct the way everybody spoke and yet he was going off on his bike every day to decorate people's homes. Mainly because he just actually didn't, he didn't really want to know, he was totally irresponsible, totally.
RP:
It sounds as though that was a very diverse group.
BW: Very, very, very, very diverse, I mean. And then, there was a family there too that were at sort of the other end of the scale because I can remember when my mother was in one of the neighbour's houses, writing a note to her saying there is a policeman in the house at the back, so they were very diverse actually. I've only just realized that sort of looking back but there was a real sense of community. A real sense of community there.
RP:
Do you remember how many there were in in your particular part?
BW: I think that there were, but there were probably 11 or 12, probably 11 or 12. Yeah.
RP:
And can you just sort of describe the buildings? You know, what accommodation did they give you? Were they single-storey?
BW: Well, oh yes, absolutely. We had, I think there were doors on three sides. So, you had a door that was in effect your front door and then you had a side door and a door at the back and of course the wonderful thing was that you had a garden, had a garden all the way around. And, you know, one of the memories that I have is the smell of tomatoes growing because people grew their own vegetables. So, we had — I mean you wouldn't squeeze four people in that space now just with one bathroom, would you. I mean, people expect a bathroom each. So, there was what in effect was a fitted kitchen. So, you actually had a fridge and you had what was called a copper where you could boil or wash clothes, a pantry and a table that came down from the wall that you could fold back up again. And then you had your main living room with a fire with a back boiler because I can remember my mother rolling up paper and turning them into knots.
RP:
So it would it have been a coal fire?
BW: A coal fire. So to get the coal fire going, and probably there was a back boiler as well. And then, there were two bedrooms and there were all these, I suppose you’d call them fitted cupboards, or these spaces that you could put things. So, in the bedrooms, you had in effect something that I felt that they were made of metal or something because when you shut them they sort of made noises. But then the other thing was on the outside we had what was called a coal shed, you know, and I think what we used to do, we used to make a swing in the doorway, so we'd swing into the coal and back out of the coal, okay? So that’s one of the reasons that I was so pleased to see that there was a museum to the prefab because actually I could — I mean, I've not been there, but online you can look in and actually can revisit the space that that you knew so well.
RP:
Because presumably, they were all built more or less to same design, weren’t they?
BW: Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. And I presume as well that they were all two bedrooms because certainly there were I mean, there were families there just with one child, some with two, but there was, there was a family there with three or four children. So they obviously all squeezed into the same space, but no, it was a lovely time and strangely enough I can remember the names of all the people there. But I can’t remember the names of the people, when we first moved to Ipswich.
RP:
But I think you can even remember the address, can't you?
BW: Our address was 20 St Mark’s Bungalows, SW 11. Yes. And then do you want me to tell you about the school next door?
RP:
Well, you're actually going ahead of because that was going to be my next question to you. So, where you went to school and any memories, you might have of school life.
BW: I went to the little school right next door, which is attached to St Mark’s Church. In effect it was an infant school. So, you went to infant school from the age of 5 to 7 and then you went on to primary school and then at that point, you know, you took an eleven plus. So, the little St Mark’s School, the head teacher there was Mrs Carter and the other teacher was Miss Webb and it was just a one big schoolroom with a curtain down the middle, a huge fire with a big guard around. And it's funny because I think I can recall the smells. I can remember the smell of the chalk and pencil boxes and having inkwells — no, don't think we had inkwells, it’s so ancient, inkwells in Infant School. And it was, it was boys and girls, but we were separated. So the boys had their own little playground, which was along Boutflower Road and the girls were in the Battersea Rise side of the playground. And I have a vague memory, a very vague memory of winning a prize, of standing in front of this fire, and being given this book, but I don't know what it was for. And I can't remember if it is actually true, but I do have a very vague memory of that. Strangely enough I was looking recently to see if there are any old photographs of Northcote Road and, you know, when you get sort of comments on the side and one of the comments on the side was, actually from somebody that I remember I was at school with. And she also remembered the names of the teachers at the school. So, I mean, obviously, I don't remember much about what we did. The only thing I do remember, is I do remember on the first day crying because my friend Penny Jones, who lived next door, was a year older than me so she was in the other class and so we weren't together. So I do remember, I do remember crying the first day.
RP:
Did you have a uniform?
BW: No.
RP:
And did they give you lunch, did you stay?
BW: Well, no, no. Because I just literally could walk through the fence and go home. But what you did have was a third of a pint of milk. Yes. And you know, that's the sound of the milk bottles, clattering and sticking straws in and all that. Yes, I remember that, but I must have gone home. No, I mean, the school was so small it wouldn't have had any facilities to give you lunch at all.
RP:
And then, after St Mark’s . . .
BW: After St Mark’s I went to Belleville Road Primary School. And my mother used to walk and of course in those days as well I can also remember walking to school and experiencing all the terrible fogs, which you just accepted really, didn't you? And you were cold, and you had chapped knees and that sort of thing. But you still went to school. And I went to, Belleville Road School, my first teacher there was called Miss Juke, the headmistress was Miss Cox. And the teacher who taught me in the last year there was a Miss Giles, there were 45 children in this class and every single one passed to go to Grammar School, apart from one. And I can remember probably about the first day that I went there and because there are desks all in rows and, as I say, 40, 45 children, girls and boys separated, the boys are in one part, girls in another and I can remember going in the classroom. I think I just wanted to sit right at the back. I didn't want to be near the front at all, and the teacher coming and standing on the platform and looking very authoritative and looking for somebody to go and collect the dinner money from all the classrooms and she stood there, and she said “You, little girl at the back, you’ve got an honest face.”
RP:
That was you?
BW: And so I was absolutely terrified because I had to walk all through the school to the classrooms on a Monday morning and pick up the all the dinner money which was probably about a shilling or something.
RP:
And at that school they did give you lunch, you stayed for lunch.
BW: Yes, it was a canteen. And again, you can remember the smells of those canteens, the smells of carrots being cooked, and potatoes. And I mean that obviously, some people took a packed lunch, but I think it was quite common then to stay for lunch. Miss Cox the headmistress was very much into drama and used to enter the school for the South London drama competitions. So there was a lot of dressing up. And the only thing is of the photographs that I've got, it's always me with my back to the camera and never facing anybody. And then my father used to paint the scenery as well, that sort of thing at school. And I can remember, it’s strange when you think now, how vulnerable children are, because I can remember walking along Northcote Road, and I can remember the stalls there and the ice cream parlour. And it's all a bit poncey now, isn’t it, or it is to me. And I can remember walking along holding my mother's hand — I must have been seven or eight — and saying to her, “You don't need to walk with me anymore. I can walk on my own,” and did so, too, which children did.
RP:
Leading on very nicely actually to my next question, which was just to talk a bit about what you remember about the local neighbourhood, such as Northcote Road which as you say has changed quite a bit since then, hasn’t it?
BW: Well, yes, I mean thinking about that area the other thing now is that going up the other way towards Plough Road? There's the Granada Cinema which I think is still there.
RP:
It's not a cinema anymore.
BW: And again, as very small children, we used to go to Saturday morning pictures, I think, sixpence for Saturday morning pictures, and you would just go with your friends, they were seven or eight. And if I think back now, compared to where I live now, out in the country with a big field and having to get in the car to go to a shop, bearing in mind that living in the prefab, you literally walked out on a walk into Woolworth’s. And there was Arding and Hobbes there too, wasn't there, and there was I think another place called Jollies that served sort of fancy meat or not fancy meat or whatever. But I do remember going out on a Saturday afternoon with my mother and father along Northcote Road to buy shopping at the stalls along there. I can remember one vegetable stall or green-grocery stall with a woman that had obviously dyed black hair and looked a bit like a gypsy, and the smell of the salad stalls. And in a way, it's disappointing to go back to places because you want it to be the same, don't you, just want to see the same thing again?
RP:
It was obviously quite a vibrant area, lots of shops and things.
BW: Yes. But the thing was that as a child you're always sort of aware of the points beyond which you didn't go. You know, you, although I say that I do remember on one occasion when at school at Belville Road school coming out of school with a friend of mine. And again, we were we were probably only eight or nine, and Belleville Road crosses over Northcote, doesn't it? And the top of Belleville Road goes up into the Common and I can remember one day my friend and I decided that when we left school, we would just walk up and walk over the Common, which we did. We had absolutely no idea of the time, my mother was nearly tearing her hair out when we got back wondering where on earth we’d been so we did walk up and walked all over the Common.
RP:
Well, again, you have led me on to what I was going to talk about next, which was Wandsworth Common itself. So, I'm just wondering if you could tell me a bit about which parts of the Common you would mostly visit? How often you would go there? And what sort of things did you get up to when you were there?
BW: Well, I mean, strangely enough that very last time that I was on Wandsworth Common was in 1972 because my mother was in Bolingbroke Hospital and we had to come down from Suffolk, and we just spent time wandering over the Common, I think it’s quite close to the prison at that point, isn't it? So that was the last time that I was there because my mother died in Bolingbroke Hospital. But from the prefabs one of our neighbours, I think it was the chap that was in publishing, he used to pick my sister and myself up and take us as a treat probably at the weekend. Over to the Common. We would aim for the swings which were the bit that was closest to us. I mean, I don't know if they're still there but there were swings there.
RP:
Were they part of an overall playground?
BW: Yes, it was a sort of a play . . . it was a sort of area that was fenced off as a sort of area for small children and my husband tells me that he used to fish in the pond there. I didn't fish there but apparently he did, he fished in the pond. That was long before we knew each other, of course. And it was just, it was just a treat because in a way we were between Wandsworth Common and Clapham Common. And the only reason we sometimes used to go to Clapham Common was because I think our doctor lived on the edge of Clapham Common and so if you had to go to the doctor’s you went to Clapham Common but certainly Wandsworth Common, we used to get taken as children because it was such a fantastic space to have, wasn't it on your doorstep? But I mean the prime reason probably was as I said, our neighbour took us to get us just out of our parents’ way and take us on the swings and then we just had that fantastic feeling to run. I mean where I moved to when we moved away from the prefabs, where we moved we had Brockwell Park but a park is a different thing isn't it, more formal? It has gates and it closes. The thing about a common, it doesn't close, does it, it's open all the time.
RP:
So you were allowed to go there on your own without adults, was it considered a safe place to go?
BW: No, I don't have any memories of that. I don't have any memories of going, you know, just with my sister or a friend, just saying, “Let's go off.” We were always taken. We were always taken there.
RP:
Did you go as a family ever? Did you do family outings?
BW: I don't think we did. Funnily enough I think if we went anywhere, we probably went to Wimbledon Common as an outing because I think I remember my mother saying that huge amounts of heather grew on when Wimbledon Common, whether that was the case or not. But no, I have to say that my main memories of living in Battersea, obviously, were around where we actually lived, but obviously very aware of the Common, being very aware of being taken there but mostly to play on the swings. And I don't think, I don't think that my sister and I ever went there on our own. I think some of it was to do with the fact you had to cross Battersea Rise, which felt like quite a big road at the time but actually isn't, is it really?
RP:
It is actually it is the South Circular, so it's quite an important busy road. I'm sure it was less busy at the time you lived there, but nevertheless it would have been a fairly major road. So, can you, do you have any memories of the sort of general appearance of the Common at the time when you lived there?
BW: Well, I suppose just that it was green, it was very green. I mean, I've got no memories of anything being in flower beds. For instance, in Brockwell Park, you have flower beds and flower gardens. Well, I don't have any memories of that. I don't know if there are any there or not.
RP:
A few areas, but it is a common.
BW: Yes, but I don't quite know whether the pond was where my husband apparently fished, but I don't think I was aware of a pond. If I was, I can't remember it.
RP:
Yes, the other thing I'd like to ask is, you were obviously living there in the immediate post-war years, do you recall any kind of reminders of the war such as bomb damage.
BW: Well yes again I mean it's interesting – when I say it's interesting, it's terrifying actually, when you think about it — where children would say, “Oh well, let's go and play down the bomb damage.” And you weren't stopped, you know, I mean you'd go out and play all day and nobody would worry about where you were, and it was a thing to talk about. I don't remember really being aware of the relevance of it at all at that age, you know.
RP:
Were these houses, buildings?
BW: Presumably. I mean, I don't quite know where this bomb damage was but certainly I can recall you know, going out talking to friends and saying, “Shall we go and play down the bomb damage?”. Where was the bomb damage? I don't know, but we certainly did and nobody said, “No, you mustn't do that, it’s dangerous.” You just did, clambering over all sorts of stuff. I can't remember where it was, but I mean, obviously it must have been around there somewhere.
RP:
Okay. And do you recall any special events during the time you lived locally? Were you still there perhaps at the time of the Queen's coronation in 1952 or any special events perhaps in your own life?
BW: I mean, we were there in 1952 because the prefabs actually were pulled down, it must have been while we were still living there. I had obviously left Belleville Road school and then went to St Martin-in-the-Fields school in Tulse Hill. So I was getting two buses to go there, but I think I mentioned already, I can remember my mother holding a letter and talking to one of neighbours obviously they had had a letter saying, sorry you’ve got to move on, prefabs are coming down. And I think we were probably one of the last families to go because they started pulling them down around us. Everybody else, people were moving. I think the people next door, the chap that worked for Hodder and Stoughton, I think, well I know they bought their own house, which then was quite unusual. They bought their own house and I think moved to Surrey. Other families moved along to Trinity Road to some flats along there. So, I think that the point that they were pulled down must've been about 19 . . . maybe a bit longer than that, 1956, maybe.
RP:
So, just jogging back to the Queen's coronation, were there any special celebrations?
BW: Well, yes, I'm sure that we heard. Well, I tell you one thing that we used to it's we used to get together with friends and say we're going to have a midnight feast. We were going to sneak out with this food at midnight, but we never did obviously. Yes. I mean people got together and I can remember books that were published about the Queen's coronation. I can also remember things like May Day. People celebrated May Day and probably on the Common one of the things they would have had would have been a maypole. And then you would have had a May Queen so thinking back now I think that's probably one thing that happened on the Common. They had a May Day celebration and people literally danced around the maypole.
RP:
Yes. That doesn’t happen anymore! You didn't have a street party or anything like that for the coronation in 1952. Not that you remember.
BW: I can remember being taken to see the crown jewels in the Tower of London with my aunt, but I mean there was always such a community anyway. I mean people did get together and just shared things really and I can remember books that were published, which I've still got actually, on the coronation and being quite sort fascinated by them.
RP:
Did any of you own a television or listen to what’s on the radio?
BW: Now, we do know it's interesting because talking about the current crisis, what's going on. But I don't understand really because my parents weren't especially politically involved, although I think they undoubtedly were socialist and voted Labour. I think my father was probably a member of a trade union as well. And so we obviously had a radio and what I can remember (and I don't know when the Suez Crisis was), I can remember the Suez crisis (
RP:
That was 1956), I can remember not probably knowing what it was about, but being aware of politicians’ names. Much more aware of politicians’ names than now, actually. So obviously, you know, you are very aware of Sundays as well, and the smell of people cooking on a Sunday and all the Sunday radio programmes, Life with the Lyons and that sort of thing. So it's quite a ritualistic thing, a Sunday. And, you know, the other thing was that we all huddled around one fire. People talk now about being cold, but we all huddled around one fire. You really didn't want to go to your bedroom because it was freezing cold. You didn't have your own television or your own this or that, and you buried yourself under the covers, got up in the morning, dragged on your school uniform, which we had at Belleville Road school, and basically you were cold, but people were very inventive. My mother cooked and we never felt as if we were going without anything.
But going back to talking about the Common, I think probably the significance of having a common close by was the fact that you actually didn't go on holiday. We didn't go on a holiday that much, and if you went on a holiday, it was probably a caravan on the south coast somewhere. So those spaces, I think, were very significant for children, for families, somewhere to go because you didn't actually go anywhere else. People used to talk about the holidays “Do you go to the country or the coast?” And so, I think for us going to the country, in effect, was going onto a common and just the feeling of being able to just run and, which I couldn't do now, just run. And, and that sense of space around you, and I think, as well being as we were sandwiched between Clapham Common and Wandsworth Common and I don't know much about Tooting. There's Tooting Bec Common, isn't there. I don’t know very much about that one. So yeah, I mean, I do have really very strong, very fond memories.
RP:
Thank you. You certainly do. So, I know you don't have many opportunities to come back this way these days, but I just wonder, lastly, if you have noticed any particular changes to the area. Have you observed that it's looks different, or it feels different in any way to the time in which you lived here?
BW:
I said the last time we were down here was 10 years ago, but it wasn't actually, it was more recently than that because my daughter was studying on a law course, in central London. So we did drive round and in fact, went along Northcote Road and went into a little Italian restaurant there. Well, I wish I hadn't because I wanted it to be what it was, and I wanted it to be the market, and the shops as they were.
And, of course, it's all very upmarket now, isn't it, very upmarket, and where we actually lived in that on that triangle of land next to the church. I mean, that's just an open space now and actually, we drove past (or did we drive past? Did I look at a photograph?) and I felt quite indignant because I saw people sitting on the space where I used to live.
The other thing that I did as well, when we were living in the prefabs, I went to the Brownies in the church there but that's all changed. It’s all being built on. We did go back as well, some years ago and I was really quite upset to see the state of the little school. I think they'd been using it as business premises at one point. And I could just imagine my mother coming and passing me through a bag of biscuits or something at playtime through the little railings there. And it was quite distressing to see the state of it.
You want to go back, and you want it to be as it was, and everything has changed so much really. In fact, you know, driving here today, lots of street names I recognized, but everything has changed. Everything has moved on and it's especially hard to accept that really. And in some ways, your memories are better staying in your head, really. Because when you go back to places, I mean, I've been back to the house that I was born in and I wish I’d not been back there because it's all sort of white and clean and open and no character. Where's the old tatty bits of furniture, and my grandmother's rocking chair, you know. But, I mean, I wouldn't not want to come, I’m grateful actually for the opportunity to have come back. And when we leave here, we'll probably go and have a look around and see if it's possible to park the car and go anywhere.
RP:
Well, thank you very much. Your memories are amazing, the recall of all those years ago, so we're really grateful for you for coming in today.
BW:
It's a pleasure. Now, I'll go away and think why didn't I say this? And why didn't I say that much better?
RP:
You've done very well! Thank you very much.
END
XXX
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