Now yesterday was one of those days when the rain just came down like stair rods and when that finished we got that fine stuff, which soaks through your clothes, doesn’t stop and just makes everyone thoroughly miserable.
So it was nice to get a picture from Adrian of New Cross when the pavements were dry and the sun shone.
And like some of his other photographs it had the power to transport me back to a summer’s day around 1959.
I would have been ten and with the holidays in full swing I had wandered up Queen’s Road with no particular plan.
The only fly in the ointment was that no one was around. My mate Jimmy was off for the week in Butlins, John didn’t answer the door and the kid that lived in one of the houses beside the Fire station was washing his hair.
All of which meant that I was on my own and a park and a long walk ain’t much fun when it’s just you and I fell back on visiting the offices of Glenton Tours at 397 Queens Road.
Now Glenton’s were the coach company dad worked for and as well as the offices in New Cross they had a West End office at 109 Jermyn Street.
I remember the place as a double fronted shop which was beside Saxton and Co estates agents who owned Glenton’s.
So as one story goes old Mr Saxton was owed money and settled for two coaches instead of cash and with that Glenton’s was born.
That was in the 1920s and it will have been sometime at the end of that decade that dad when to work for them which a part from war service he did till he retired in 1982.
I doubt I would have lingered there for long and more than likely turned past the White Hart and down New Cross Road to the library, or just maybe up past the corner of Pepys Road towards New Cross Gate and beyond.
But looking at Adrian’s picture and comparing it with my memory can also be a cruel experience.
Saxton’s long ago relocated to Brockley, and their old offices are now part of the chemist while Glenton’s was until recently an African restaurant which I am told by a chap from the White Hart is about to become something new.
Added to which just across the way on the corner of Pepy’s Road my own wooden tower has vanished.
I say wooden tower it was actually nothing more than the entrance to the house but it resembled one of those church ltych gates and had a sign advertising the Ancient Order of Foresters which for a ten year old had the promise of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest.
And I suppose that is one of the things you loose with time and growing up which is the ability to see your surroundings in a completely different way.
The alley round the corner from the White Hart sandwiched between the solicitors and letting agency offered plenty of room for my imagination while the fire station with its tall rounded towers on each side could be a French castle or a an eastern palace, notwithstanding the fire engines which stood ready at the entrance and the sign high up on wall which announced the building had been “erected in 1894.”
Of course the area looks far busier than I remember it and it is more difficult to think yourself back to your childhood when the width of the roads have expanded to meet the volume of traffic, but that said Adrian also sent up some fine pictures of Nunhead cemetery which are pretty much as I remember the place and will no doubt bring forth a whole shedful of memories.
We shall see.
Pictures; Queen’s Road and New Cross Road, 2013, supplied by Adrian Parfitt, and extract from Glenton Coach Cruises, 1965 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
And like some of his other photographs it had the power to transport me back to a summer’s day around 1959.
I would have been ten and with the holidays in full swing I had wandered up Queen’s Road with no particular plan.
The only fly in the ointment was that no one was around. My mate Jimmy was off for the week in Butlins, John didn’t answer the door and the kid that lived in one of the houses beside the Fire station was washing his hair.
All of which meant that I was on my own and a park and a long walk ain’t much fun when it’s just you and I fell back on visiting the offices of Glenton Tours at 397 Queens Road.
Now Glenton’s were the coach company dad worked for and as well as the offices in New Cross they had a West End office at 109 Jermyn Street.
I remember the place as a double fronted shop which was beside Saxton and Co estates agents who owned Glenton’s.
That was in the 1920s and it will have been sometime at the end of that decade that dad when to work for them which a part from war service he did till he retired in 1982.
I doubt I would have lingered there for long and more than likely turned past the White Hart and down New Cross Road to the library, or just maybe up past the corner of Pepys Road towards New Cross Gate and beyond.
But looking at Adrian’s picture and comparing it with my memory can also be a cruel experience.
Saxton’s long ago relocated to Brockley, and their old offices are now part of the chemist while Glenton’s was until recently an African restaurant which I am told by a chap from the White Hart is about to become something new.
Added to which just across the way on the corner of Pepy’s Road my own wooden tower has vanished.
And I suppose that is one of the things you loose with time and growing up which is the ability to see your surroundings in a completely different way.
The alley round the corner from the White Hart sandwiched between the solicitors and letting agency offered plenty of room for my imagination while the fire station with its tall rounded towers on each side could be a French castle or a an eastern palace, notwithstanding the fire engines which stood ready at the entrance and the sign high up on wall which announced the building had been “erected in 1894.”
Of course the area looks far busier than I remember it and it is more difficult to think yourself back to your childhood when the width of the roads have expanded to meet the volume of traffic, but that said Adrian also sent up some fine pictures of Nunhead cemetery which are pretty much as I remember the place and will no doubt bring forth a whole shedful of memories.
We shall see.
Pictures; Queen’s Road and New Cross Road, 2013, supplied by Adrian Parfitt, and extract from Glenton Coach Cruises, 1965 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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