The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
Now I am part of that generation that walked everywhere.
This was partly out of choice but only partly because we never owned a car which had much to do with dad being a long distance coach driver who at the end of a season of driving across the Continent had little time for sitting behind the wheel of a car at home.
And I can’t remember any of my close friends having a car so you either walked or got the bus.
But buses don’t go everywhere and so the trips to the local authority dentist were a walk.
And that I think is where I need some help because I have no idea where it was.
I have a vague memory of it being a bit of a stretch and think it was a wing of the local “spike” which was the casual ward of the workhouse where the homeless found a bed for the night.
This will have been the Gordon Road Workhouse “which was originally intended to house only for able-bodied inmates, of which it could house 743. Male inmates performed stone-breaking and wood-chopping, while the women were mostly employed in laundry work.
In 1930, the Gordon Road site was taken over by the London County Council and became the Camberwell Reception Centre. The administrative block and two main pavilion dormitory blocks survive and have now been converted to flats”.**
So if you got there at a certain time there were the long lines of men queuing for admittance or leaving after a nights stay.
Now I may have that wrong after it all it was 60 years ago and perhaps I have confused that memory but the waiting room is still vivid with it stone floors and tiled walls, nor the long hard wooden benches and the simple semaphore device telling you it was your turn.
This was the age of dentistry before “happy gas” and smiley stickers when the dental equipment looked more like torture tools and the care was stiff and businesslike.
Added to which there were those abiding memories of the smell of the rubber gas masks and that hideous rolling dice feeling as you came to from the gas.
That said the care couldn’t be faulted and I suspect my parents took a degree of quiet satisfaction that we were receiving the best care that the local authority and the NHS could supply.
Not so perhaps that dentist on Queens Road who showed no apparent concern that my teeth were crooked telling mother that I was a boy and so shouldn’t be over bothered.
All of which is a digression so I shall return to Gordon Road and reflect on the power of one image to bring it all back.
Looking at Google street maps there is a picture of the old work house on a crisp April morning when the strong sunlight cuts throw the day and that is how I remember the place.
It is a powerful memory mixing that bright promising day with the uncertainties of what was to come and then the equally long walk home.
Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, circa 1958
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
**Camberwell (Parish of St Giles), Surrey, London, Peter Higginbotham http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Camberwell/
This was partly out of choice but only partly because we never owned a car which had much to do with dad being a long distance coach driver who at the end of a season of driving across the Continent had little time for sitting behind the wheel of a car at home.
And I can’t remember any of my close friends having a car so you either walked or got the bus.
But buses don’t go everywhere and so the trips to the local authority dentist were a walk.
And that I think is where I need some help because I have no idea where it was.
I have a vague memory of it being a bit of a stretch and think it was a wing of the local “spike” which was the casual ward of the workhouse where the homeless found a bed for the night.
This will have been the Gordon Road Workhouse “which was originally intended to house only for able-bodied inmates, of which it could house 743. Male inmates performed stone-breaking and wood-chopping, while the women were mostly employed in laundry work.
In 1930, the Gordon Road site was taken over by the London County Council and became the Camberwell Reception Centre. The administrative block and two main pavilion dormitory blocks survive and have now been converted to flats”.**
So if you got there at a certain time there were the long lines of men queuing for admittance or leaving after a nights stay.
Now I may have that wrong after it all it was 60 years ago and perhaps I have confused that memory but the waiting room is still vivid with it stone floors and tiled walls, nor the long hard wooden benches and the simple semaphore device telling you it was your turn.
This was the age of dentistry before “happy gas” and smiley stickers when the dental equipment looked more like torture tools and the care was stiff and businesslike.
Added to which there were those abiding memories of the smell of the rubber gas masks and that hideous rolling dice feeling as you came to from the gas.
That said the care couldn’t be faulted and I suspect my parents took a degree of quiet satisfaction that we were receiving the best care that the local authority and the NHS could supply.
Not so perhaps that dentist on Queens Road who showed no apparent concern that my teeth were crooked telling mother that I was a boy and so shouldn’t be over bothered.
All of which is a digression so I shall return to Gordon Road and reflect on the power of one image to bring it all back.
Looking at Google street maps there is a picture of the old work house on a crisp April morning when the strong sunlight cuts throw the day and that is how I remember the place.
It is a powerful memory mixing that bright promising day with the uncertainties of what was to come and then the equally long walk home.
Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, circa 1958
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
**Camberwell (Parish of St Giles), Surrey, London, Peter Higginbotham http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Camberwell/
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