Remembering much I had forgotten .............. Peckham and New Cross in the 1950s and a thank you to social networks

Helen Potts in our back garden, circa 1953

I am looking at a picture of a scene which is slowly coming back to me.

We are in our back garden and in front us is the girl next door and one of her brothers.

She is Helen Potts and the picture will have been taken sometime in the summer of 1953.

That said the lad could just be me which would push the date back another year.

Judging by the open windows and the sunshine I am guessing we are sometime in high summer and up there outside his bathroom window is Mr Potts.

Those long ago days are now so far at the back of my memory that I sometimes question they ever happened.  But bit by bit in the last few weeks more of my time in Lausanne Road is coming back to me.

Along with Helen Mr and Mrs Potts had triplets who I think were called Bobby, Susan and Billy and occasionally there was also May who was the sister of Mrs Potts.

We also have pictures of the triplets in our garden and they are stuck in my memory as three very young kids because the family moved on to Dennet’s Road sometime in the mid 1950s where they managed the Earl of Derby.

And with that our paths diverged.

Until recently that is when having posted a story on a social network site someone asked me if I knew them and then as they say the flood gates opened.

Sue knew Helen and was able to tell me a little of her later life including the name of her husband, and the pubs they ran.

Me, Bobby and Susan circa 1956

All of which made it possible to track Helen back to the year she was born and go looking for the pubs they managed.

I doubt that I would ever have pursued the enquiry had it not been for Sue’s comments which confirmed other half remembered memories, including the Cocoa factory on Kender Street and the prefabs almost opposite.

And that is one of the spin offs of social media because it brings people together allows them to share their memories and helps restore the history of an area which is particularly important in an urban area where whole redevelopment and the movement of people can mean that as an area changes much is lost.

Not that this is not a slide into cosy nostalgia but a recognition that much of the history of where we grew up has gone and any little clue is important in rediscovering it because that helps us know more about ourselves

So I shall continue to explore the stories of Lambeth where I was born, Peckham and New Cross where I lived until 1964 and Eltham where I finally grew up.

And by posting them on the facebook sites I hope I will stir up memories and connections and make a shedful of new friends.

Now that can’t be bad.

Pictures; Lausanne Road in the 1950s from the collection of Andrew Simpson