What price child care? ……….. Peckham 1959

I can’t be sure just when mum and dad used the P.H.C. Kindergarten, but it will have been sometime in the late 1950s.*

The cost of childcare, circa 1959

We lived on Lausanne Road and my four sisters were all born in quick succession from 1955 through to 1959, and we left Peckham in the spring of 1964.

So, the window will have been short, if that is they ever did use the place.

I have no memory of it, and at one point our Stella and Elizabeth spent afternoons at the nursery in the Peckham Heath Centre on St Mary’s Road.

This I know because it was my job to collect them after school, an onerous task, partly because it deprived me of hanging around with friends  in the playground of Edmund Waller, and also because I had to push the double pram home.

A chore which culminated in me forgetting one day and getting stick from mum

All of which is an introduction to a flier for the “P.H.C. KINDERGARTEN”, which operated from Norfolk House on Queens Road.

It is a fascinating little document, which details the fees charged, the requirements expected of parents, as well as the children, who “must be between the ages of 2½ and 5 years….. the Kindergarten runs from Monday to Friday each week starting at 9.30 a.m. until 12.30 p.m. [and] the cost is 5/6 per week or 6/6 for two children, [which] must be paid each Monday morning, or by the term if preferred. 

Where a child is absent for a complete week fees will be reduced to 3/- per week (4/-)".  

Our Stella, Elizabeth and Jill, circa 1962

An additional charge of "3d per week for Biscuits. Plimsoles or soft shoes must be won, parents are welcome to participate in the kindergarten, and infectious illness must be notified”.

And as you do I went looking for Norfolk House which is still there just two doors down from the corner of Lausanne Road.

It was there by 1872, and maybe before that, and in its 147 years it has been many things, from a residential property to a social club.

I know that just before the Great War, it was empty, and on the outbreak of the next world war, it was occupied by the Brown family.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown recorded their occupations as "Stewards at the Conservative Club and their son was a compositor".

They already had some experience of running a club, having managed the Earl Cowper public house on Ipswich Road in Colchester, where they were pulling pints in 1911.

Just as now working in the licensing trade could be precarious and Mr. Brown described himself as “Publican and Hay Trusser”.

Norfolk House, 2022

There may well be people out there who also used the Kindergarten or will know just what happened to Norfolk House since the last war and when it became a social club.

I searched for the club, found a telephone number and endeavoured to find out its history.

But despite explaining who I was, and what I was trying to do, the chap on the other end of the line put the phone down on me.

I did come across an article in the Peckham Peculiar but alas there was no reference to the Kindergarten and so I will plod on looking for clues.**

Leaving me just to comment that Dad never one to waste paper did a series of sums on the back and down the side of the flier.  

A list of sums, circa 1964

There are few clues as to what the calculations were about other than a reference to"Furniture removal", "Curtains" and "Odds and ends" which came to £544 -14-0, which may be linked to when we left Peckham for Eltham. 

But that is a story for another time.

Location; Queens Road, Peckham

Pictures;  the flier from P.H.C. Kindergarten, date unknown, our Stella, Elizabeth, and Jillian, 1962, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Norfolk House, 2022, courtesy of Google Maps

*Searching for the story of Norfolk House on Queens Road ………. stories from the 1950s and 60s, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/searching-for-story-of-norfolk-house-on.html

**Welcome to the Club, Peckham Peculiar, July 2nd, 2015, https://peckhampeculiar.tumblr.com/post/123016271414/welcome-to-the-club