The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half,
and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
 |
| Dad and Glenton's circa 1948 |
Now I took for granted that we had a wine cellar in our
house in Lausanne Road.
It was in the small middle room next to the coal cellar and
was filled with bottles of Moët Chandon, some from the French German border and
I am sure the odd Italian one.
And the reason was that dad was a coach driver who did the
seven and fourteen day trips to France, the Low Countries and the Swiss and
Italian Lakes.
These were conducted coach trips with specified stops for places of scenic beauty and cultural interest.
But the firm allowed the drivers the
freedom to call in at the odd winery along the way and the perk for Dad was a
bottle of what ever they made from a grateful owner who more that recouped the
price of that bottle of champagne.
Dad spent his whole working life in the holiday trade taking
people of modest means on sightseeing tours of Britain and mainland Europe.
In the age before cheap air travel this was the holiday for
those who didn’t want sun and sand or a week at a Butlin’s.
 |
| Selling the holiday in 1965 |
These were all inclusive trips which offered “Your own
reserved seat in a special Glenton touring coach, a tour of your choice, hotel
accommodation including dinner and breakfast, gratuities to hotel staff,
services of an experienced chauffeur-courier and a specially written guide
book.”
The tours lasted for anything between 7 and 15 days. For £45
Tour C7 in 1965 offered nine days to the Swiss and Italian Lakes, leaving
London on the Saturday, staying in Brussels on the Sunday night and travelling
on to Lake Lucerne on the Monday, then later in the week to Lake Maggiore and
then in to Switzerland and back via Burgundy to London.
Of course it is easy today to sneer at an experience where
everything was provided and if you failed to look out of the window you might
miss a country, but in an age before the internet with television still in its
infancy this was a relatively cheap way to see places which would otherwise
just be a picture in a book.
And this was value for money given that the
national average wage in 1965 was £26.
There are still plenty of travel companies offering this
sort of holiday but back in the late 1940’s and ‘50s this was an experience
just opening up for thousands who were beginning to enjoy the first taste of
consumer prosperity.
 |
| Dad and Glenton's in 1965 |
They are as much an indication of that new Britain as the
washing machine, television and motor car.
Now Dad had worked for Glenton's from the 1920s when Mr Saxton
who ran an estate agents business at New Cross settled an outstanding bill by
accepting a coach and so Glenton Tours was born.**
For me it meant Friday nights when dad having
deposited his passengers would call in briefly at home to collect me on the way
up to the garage to drop the coach off for serving before going off again in
the morning.
It was just simply a treat which mixed seeing dad again, travelling in the coach to the garage and watching the business of preparing the coaches for the next set of trips.
And as you do I went looking for that garage which of course
has long gone.
It was off Brabourn Grove but in its place standing on
Glenton Mews is one of those neat little developments which the property
company advertised as “12 HIGH SPECIFICATION 3 &4 BED TOWN HOUSES WITH
GARDENS.***
Nor is that all for the odd lock up which stood at the
entrance was transformed into a smart looking house sometime between 2008 and
12.
I wonder what dad along with Frank the manager and Wishy
Washy who cleaned the coaches would have made of that.
Pictures, dad with Glenton Tours coaches, circa 1948, 1965
and the 1965 brochure
**Glenton Tours, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Glenton%20Tours
***Glenton Mews, www.glentonmews.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment