The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
So just what do you do on a summer’s day in 1959 when the rain is coming down like stair rods?
The answer I suspect was not much.
This of course was before day time telly when the best you could hope for was a morning with a pile of old comics dodging the request to go to the shops.
But on the days when the sun shone hot enough to crack the paving stones and made the road side tar runny, then that was the time for adventures.
And given that I was nine that could mean a whole shedful of things.
Saturday’s would be down at Queen’s Road railway station seeing just where you could go for two shillings return but a tad less if you wanted to factor in sweets and a drink.
Sometimes you struck gold and others were grim.
But in the middle of the week with little more than sixpence it was pretty much wander the streets looking for some old haunts and discovering new ones
And most of the time it was the parks.
For reasons I don’t remember Rye Lane Park was not one of the places we went to regularly although I can remember ending up at Goose Green on East Dulwich Road with its small collection of 1950’s play furniture much of which would be deemed unsafe today.
A more happy play ground was Pepys Park which had all that a nine year old could want.
It began with that vast expanse of grass which stretched away from the entrance and which at the top along the Pepys Road side provided a secret rat run where you could creep through bushes and trees undetected from view.
But my favourite must have been the small dusty enclosure which might once have been a pond but long ago had been turned into a play area with that hollowed out tree trunk which became everything from a tank to the conning tower of a submarine.
Occasionally we might venture up to the top park but there wasn’t much there. True the views down across London were spectacular, and there was the water fountain but that was it.
Added to which this was one of those invisible boundaries which marked off the familiar and safe, beyond which we rarely went.
And even though I ended up at Samuel Pepys I can only think I wandered into Brockley a handful of times and Deptford no further than the swimming baths.
In some ways it was safer to take off up into town and while Queens Road was one passport New Cross Gate and the Underground was another.
It began with riding the Circle line and progressed to the full Tube empire, but for most of the time it was one bit or another of central London which meant I had a pretty good knowledge of the place by the time I was 11.
But all such things come to a close and by the time we moved out of Peckham new interests and new attractions drew me away from those simple jaunts.
And today most of those adventures are lost although I still delight my own grown up children with that trip from Rotherhithe to Wapping under the Thames with that illuminated sign “Caution Men Working On Pumps.”
Back then I thought nothing of it; today it would scare me stiff but then thinking about my kids I have to admit I never gave them the degree of freedom allowed us.
Pictures, Telegraph Hill Park, 2007 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick and London on Tower Hill, Judge, courtesy of Mark Flynn Postcards, http://www.markfynn.com/
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
 |
| Telegraph Hill Park 2007 |
The answer I suspect was not much.
This of course was before day time telly when the best you could hope for was a morning with a pile of old comics dodging the request to go to the shops.
But on the days when the sun shone hot enough to crack the paving stones and made the road side tar runny, then that was the time for adventures.
And given that I was nine that could mean a whole shedful of things.
Sometimes you struck gold and others were grim.
But in the middle of the week with little more than sixpence it was pretty much wander the streets looking for some old haunts and discovering new ones
And most of the time it was the parks.
 |
| Where not to have fun, 2007 |
A more happy play ground was Pepys Park which had all that a nine year old could want.
It began with that vast expanse of grass which stretched away from the entrance and which at the top along the Pepys Road side provided a secret rat run where you could creep through bushes and trees undetected from view.
But my favourite must have been the small dusty enclosure which might once have been a pond but long ago had been turned into a play area with that hollowed out tree trunk which became everything from a tank to the conning tower of a submarine.
Occasionally we might venture up to the top park but there wasn’t much there. True the views down across London were spectacular, and there was the water fountain but that was it.
Added to which this was one of those invisible boundaries which marked off the familiar and safe, beyond which we rarely went.
In some ways it was safer to take off up into town and while Queens Road was one passport New Cross Gate and the Underground was another.
 |
| Tower Hill, 1955 |
But all such things come to a close and by the time we moved out of Peckham new interests and new attractions drew me away from those simple jaunts.
And today most of those adventures are lost although I still delight my own grown up children with that trip from Rotherhithe to Wapping under the Thames with that illuminated sign “Caution Men Working On Pumps.”
Back then I thought nothing of it; today it would scare me stiff but then thinking about my kids I have to admit I never gave them the degree of freedom allowed us.
Pictures, Telegraph Hill Park, 2007 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick and London on Tower Hill, Judge, courtesy of Mark Flynn Postcards, http://www.markfynn.com/
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
No comments:
Post a Comment