Child hood memories don’t always make good history but that said they remain a powerful link to the past.
The trouble with them is that they end up telescoped into a vague point in time and more often are jumbled up with a whole mix of things.
That for the historian makes them tricky because they can’t always be verified, may refer to different periods and above all suffer from that rosy glow which walks with all nostalgia and would have us believe that summers were always sunny and hot and Wagon Wheels were bigger.
But there is no doubting the sound of the coal man which not only takes me to my child hood but is a link to how we live today.
I can’t remember when he came but it was a regular occurrence throughout the winter and one which Dad kept going into the summer when coal was cheaper.
It began with that sound akin to thunder as the coal shot down the chute into the cellar with a roar and was followed by the that quieter noise as the pile slowly settled with lumps finding their own place in the heap.
And for perhaps fifteen or so minutes later the house was taken over by the smell which managed to escape from behind two closed cellar doors and hung in the house as an afterthought.
Those memories are always combined with the sound of dad raking out the stove first thing in the morning and setting a fresh fire going which heated the back boiler providing hot water for the day.
It will have been a sound repeated in homes across the country and was as much as wake up call as the alarm or here in the north the tapping of the “knocker up.”
And for the last thirty years our own children have been greeted by those same sounds as I too rake out the downstairs fires and set them ready to go.
Nor is this some affectation because as the summer draws on lighting a fire in the early evening lifts what can still be a cold room and saves on the central heating.
It was how we lived back in the 1950s when of course central heating for most people was unheard of.
And in much the same way most of us back then would not have had a fridge which in turn meant that shopping was something you did every day.
I am hard pressed to remember all of the shops on that stretch of Queens Road from Lausanne along to Dennet’s but there was a butcher’s and two grocer’s shops of which Attins commanded most of our business.
All the basics were there and the shop was yet to go self service, so butter still came cut from a block, and cheese came in two colours, red or white. But it was more up market than the other shop so the biscuits no longer came loose in tins at the front of the counter and it was one of the first to offer frozen food.
But it was that other smaller grocer’s shop which pitches me back far beyond the 1950s. It opened on a Sunday and was I suppose the out of hours convenience store of the time, which was quite prepared to defy Sunday Trading bye-laws by offering prohibited products provided they were well wrapped up and disguised with a stern command that no way was I to tell anyone what I had bought.
Now that parade of shops was doing the business as far back as 1914 when Mr Clark at number 208 was cutting hair, James Wallis Green sold oil and William George Larrett offered the finest pork along with Frederick Langley & Sons, who were cutlers, and vied for trade with a fruit shop, a fried fish dealer, Mrs Emily Virgo who ran the bakery and post Office and Applin & Flint, the laundry.
Not that the parade set out that way back in 1872 they were a fine set of houses set back from the road with longish gardens.
But never underestimate the power of commercial considerations and at some point during between 1896 and 1915 the front gardens were lost it her interests of shop extensions which might just confirm a memory of a set of steps at the back of Attins which lead up to the original front of the house.
But here I may be wrong which just brings us back neatly to the unreliability of memories and I suppose the necessity to go digging in the records.
All of which is another story for another time and just leaves me to reflect that my shops have long gone replaced sometime in the 1970s by the Somerville Estate.
And just after the post went live Adrian commented "that I can remember Larrett's the butchers in Queens Road.in the late 50's, my nan wouldn't go anywhere else for her meat,see went to pick it from the shop on Fridays and they would keep it until Saturday, as it was my job to get all her shopping.
I was given the ticket to go and collect the meat and you were aloud to go to the front of the line and not wait in the queue, then on the greengrocer in New Cross Gate for all her vegetables.i can also remember that on the corner of Queens Rd and Dennetts Rd was I think a launderette. Wow your site brings back memories of my childhood."
Which pretty much means Mr Larrett had been selling his sausages and beef for over 40 years, now I wonder id the same will be said of Aldi.
Pictures; Coal bill 1963, and shopping list 1968, from the collection of Marjorie Holmes, Queens Road, from the OS map of London, 1862-72, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
 |
| The coal bill, 1963 |
That for the historian makes them tricky because they can’t always be verified, may refer to different periods and above all suffer from that rosy glow which walks with all nostalgia and would have us believe that summers were always sunny and hot and Wagon Wheels were bigger.
But there is no doubting the sound of the coal man which not only takes me to my child hood but is a link to how we live today.
I can’t remember when he came but it was a regular occurrence throughout the winter and one which Dad kept going into the summer when coal was cheaper.
It began with that sound akin to thunder as the coal shot down the chute into the cellar with a roar and was followed by the that quieter noise as the pile slowly settled with lumps finding their own place in the heap.
 |
| Shopping list and receipt, 1968 |
Those memories are always combined with the sound of dad raking out the stove first thing in the morning and setting a fresh fire going which heated the back boiler providing hot water for the day.
It will have been a sound repeated in homes across the country and was as much as wake up call as the alarm or here in the north the tapping of the “knocker up.”
And for the last thirty years our own children have been greeted by those same sounds as I too rake out the downstairs fires and set them ready to go.
Nor is this some affectation because as the summer draws on lighting a fire in the early evening lifts what can still be a cold room and saves on the central heating.
It was how we lived back in the 1950s when of course central heating for most people was unheard of.
And in much the same way most of us back then would not have had a fridge which in turn meant that shopping was something you did every day.
I am hard pressed to remember all of the shops on that stretch of Queens Road from Lausanne along to Dennet’s but there was a butcher’s and two grocer’s shops of which Attins commanded most of our business.
All the basics were there and the shop was yet to go self service, so butter still came cut from a block, and cheese came in two colours, red or white. But it was more up market than the other shop so the biscuits no longer came loose in tins at the front of the counter and it was one of the first to offer frozen food.
But it was that other smaller grocer’s shop which pitches me back far beyond the 1950s. It opened on a Sunday and was I suppose the out of hours convenience store of the time, which was quite prepared to defy Sunday Trading bye-laws by offering prohibited products provided they were well wrapped up and disguised with a stern command that no way was I to tell anyone what I had bought.
 |
| Queens Road before the shops 1872 |
Now that parade of shops was doing the business as far back as 1914 when Mr Clark at number 208 was cutting hair, James Wallis Green sold oil and William George Larrett offered the finest pork along with Frederick Langley & Sons, who were cutlers, and vied for trade with a fruit shop, a fried fish dealer, Mrs Emily Virgo who ran the bakery and post Office and Applin & Flint, the laundry.
Not that the parade set out that way back in 1872 they were a fine set of houses set back from the road with longish gardens.
But never underestimate the power of commercial considerations and at some point during between 1896 and 1915 the front gardens were lost it her interests of shop extensions which might just confirm a memory of a set of steps at the back of Attins which lead up to the original front of the house.
But here I may be wrong which just brings us back neatly to the unreliability of memories and I suppose the necessity to go digging in the records.
All of which is another story for another time and just leaves me to reflect that my shops have long gone replaced sometime in the 1970s by the Somerville Estate.
And just after the post went live Adrian commented "that I can remember Larrett's the butchers in Queens Road.in the late 50's, my nan wouldn't go anywhere else for her meat,see went to pick it from the shop on Fridays and they would keep it until Saturday, as it was my job to get all her shopping.
I was given the ticket to go and collect the meat and you were aloud to go to the front of the line and not wait in the queue, then on the greengrocer in New Cross Gate for all her vegetables.i can also remember that on the corner of Queens Rd and Dennetts Rd was I think a launderette. Wow your site brings back memories of my childhood."
Which pretty much means Mr Larrett had been selling his sausages and beef for over 40 years, now I wonder id the same will be said of Aldi.
Pictures; Coal bill 1963, and shopping list 1968, from the collection of Marjorie Holmes, Queens Road, from the OS map of London, 1862-72, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
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