The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
We don’t have any pictures of the house I grew up in on Lausanne Road.
My parents never thought to take any of either the inside or of the outside and the few that feature me and my sisters just happen to catch the odd glimpse of the place.
But of course back then I doubt many people would waste film on something you knew very well and took for granted.
So you fall back on memories which are notoriously dangerous as sources for information more so because as a 10 year old everything seemed so much bigger.**
Added to which at that age you have no reason to question anything you saw.
So the big emergency water tank opposite our house was just something that had always been there as had the other one at the top of Lausanne just where it joined Evelina Road.
Its tall brick walls hid a pit which had once been the cellars of a row of houses and during the war this pit would have been filled with water.
I can’t remember how we ever got to look in but back in the 1950s it contained just a rusty old pram.
And sometime during the half century since we left it was demolished and became Walter Green House.
With it went the old Baptist Chapel which mother maintained was full of rats which swarmed out of the building in the dead of night and more recently the Swiss Tavern on the corner of Lausanne and Belfort Road.
Now the passing of the water tank and the chapel do not surprise me, but pubs always seemed to survive.
So long after the houses, and little shops had fallen to the grand slum clearance plan the pub on the corner remained.
Not so today with a shed full closing every year I am not surprised the SwissTavern has gone, only saddened that I never got to go there.
During the summer month’s on a Friday night Dad would go in there for a swift half leaving me on the doorstep.
These were the nights he had returned from a trip abroad and having dropped the coach off at Glenton’s garage would call in briefly buying a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps for me.
I suppose it just confirms that old observation that you should never go back to where you lived as a child.
The passage of time can become too much of a gulf and you stand on what were once familiar street corners trying to make sense of the present.
But you can still be pleasantly surprised. There on on Dennet’s Road is the Earl of Derby which Mr and Mrs Potts had taken over when they left the house next to ours in the late 50s.
For a while afterwards I would go and visit the triplets who were just a couple of years younger than me and marvel at the size of the pub.
I never quite got used to that smell of stale beer which seemed all the more pungent on a warm summer’s afternoon after closing time when the place was as silent as the grave.
And those would have been the days when we explored the mysteries of the upstairs function room, which contained a mix of worn leather chairs, a battered table and a large set of ancient cow horns on the wall above which was the sign for the “Ancient Order of Buffalos.”
In time I think I will go looking for the history of the Earl of Derby but for now will content myself with the memory of Edmund Waller School which is still there behind the pub looking pretty much as it did when I left it in the summer of 1961.
Back then six weeks of adventures stretched ahead in to be followed by Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School for Boys.
Pictures; Lausanne Road in the 1950s from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Edmund Waller and the Swiss Tavern, courtesy of Colin Fitzpatrick, 2007
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
**Peckham, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Peckham
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| The garden the tent, and a pram, circa 1958 |
My parents never thought to take any of either the inside or of the outside and the few that feature me and my sisters just happen to catch the odd glimpse of the place.
But of course back then I doubt many people would waste film on something you knew very well and took for granted.
So you fall back on memories which are notoriously dangerous as sources for information more so because as a 10 year old everything seemed so much bigger.**
Added to which at that age you have no reason to question anything you saw.
So the big emergency water tank opposite our house was just something that had always been there as had the other one at the top of Lausanne just where it joined Evelina Road.
Its tall brick walls hid a pit which had once been the cellars of a row of houses and during the war this pit would have been filled with water.
I can’t remember how we ever got to look in but back in the 1950s it contained just a rusty old pram.
And sometime during the half century since we left it was demolished and became Walter Green House.
With it went the old Baptist Chapel which mother maintained was full of rats which swarmed out of the building in the dead of night and more recently the Swiss Tavern on the corner of Lausanne and Belfort Road.
Now the passing of the water tank and the chapel do not surprise me, but pubs always seemed to survive.
So long after the houses, and little shops had fallen to the grand slum clearance plan the pub on the corner remained.
Not so today with a shed full closing every year I am not surprised the SwissTavern has gone, only saddened that I never got to go there.
 |
| The Swiss Tavern, 2007 |
These were the nights he had returned from a trip abroad and having dropped the coach off at Glenton’s garage would call in briefly buying a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps for me.
I suppose it just confirms that old observation that you should never go back to where you lived as a child.
The passage of time can become too much of a gulf and you stand on what were once familiar street corners trying to make sense of the present.
But you can still be pleasantly surprised. There on on Dennet’s Road is the Earl of Derby which Mr and Mrs Potts had taken over when they left the house next to ours in the late 50s.
For a while afterwards I would go and visit the triplets who were just a couple of years younger than me and marvel at the size of the pub.
I never quite got used to that smell of stale beer which seemed all the more pungent on a warm summer’s afternoon after closing time when the place was as silent as the grave.
 |
| Edmund Waller School, 2007 |
In time I think I will go looking for the history of the Earl of Derby but for now will content myself with the memory of Edmund Waller School which is still there behind the pub looking pretty much as it did when I left it in the summer of 1961.
Back then six weeks of adventures stretched ahead in to be followed by Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School for Boys.
Pictures; Lausanne Road in the 1950s from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Edmund Waller and the Swiss Tavern, courtesy of Colin Fitzpatrick, 2007
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
**Peckham, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Peckham
We called those Water Tanks "Reservoirs" They held water during the War for the Fire Brigade to use as bombs often damaged water mains, which meant that the hoses could not connect to the usual Hydrant points,as the water pressure was too low or non-existent.
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