Melting tar …… a busy butterfly ….. and a long lost adventure

Now the thing about getting old is that there seems to be heaps more time for the memories of the past to invade the doings of a busy day.

Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 

And once that flight of nostalgic fancy starts to run its course it is easy to reflect on how your experiences of 60 odd years ago diverge from those of your kids or grandchildren.

I say that, but much of what our sons did when they were younger are only now being revealed as in their own bouts of nostalgia, they share stories of daring dos which they wouldn’t dare to have admitted to when they were 10.

Some of those stories do resonate.  Their adventures on the meadows on long summer days, chime in with my own, when armed with just a warm bottle of lemonade and a day stretching ahead of us, we wandered off in search of adventures in some faraway park, or along a stretch of the Thames.

Often it was at the end of a train journey or the limit of a Red Rover bus pass, and it usually involved a quiet suburban spot, unhindered by other people. 

One such place was at the end of a railway line, and rather than explore we just sat on the platform.  

There were no trains, no passengers and the only sound was that of a lazy insect collecting pollen, mixed with that distinctive smell of mown grass, which competed with the equally powerful smell of the oil-soaked wooden railway sleepers cooking in the sun.

We must have sat there for hours before boredom and the empty bottle of lemonade prompted us to move on.

The spot where we played  with the hot street tar in 1958

These of course can be replicated by our kids, but those of exploring bombsites have gone as is the simple pastime of watching the tar slowly melt on a hot summer’s day sitting on the side of the road and carefully making patterns of the black oozy stuff with a discarded lolly stick.  

Today the street surface doesn’t melt, and the lolly sticks are no longer there in abundance.

And in the same way those Clean Air Acts of the 1960s have happily done away with the heaps of polluted air which in turn gave us the smog’s which meant we got sent home early from school making our way along roads devoid of landmarks.

Nor today are there those thick sooty deposits on trees which when you climbed them left your hands and clothes grubby and grimy.

But enough of such nostalgic tosh.

Smog's and fogs, 1953

Our grandchildren I hope will never have to use bomb sites as playgrounds or come home with soot smeared clothes.

These they can leave to their imagination fed by granddad’s tales of aimless adventures on long ago summer holidays in that place called the 1950s.

I might try and pretend this is all about the historical context, but perhaps it is just a nostalgic wallow.

Location; nostalgia land

Pictures; Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the spot where me and Jimmy O' Donnel played in with the hot street tar in 1958, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, 2015, and Nelson’s Column during the Great Smog of 1952, N T Stobbs, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Down at the White Hart with memories of Glenton Tours and Robin Hood

Now yesterday was one of those days when the rain just came down like stair rods and when that finished we got that fine stuff, which soaks through your clothes, doesn’t stop and just makes everyone thoroughly miserable.

So it was nice to get a picture from Adrian of New Cross when the pavements were dry and the sun shone.
And like some of his other photographs it had the power to transport me back to a summer’s day around 1959.

I would have been ten and with the holidays in full swing I had wandered up Queen’s Road with no particular plan.

The only fly in the ointment was that no one was around.  My mate Jimmy was off for the week in Butlins, John didn’t answer the door and the kid that lived in one of the houses beside the Fire station was washing his hair.

All of which meant that I was on my own and a park and a long walk ain’t much fun when it’s just you and I fell back on visiting the offices of Glenton Tours at 397 Queens Road.

Now Glenton’s were the coach company dad worked for and as well as the offices in New Cross they had a West End office at 109 Jermyn Street.
I remember the place as a double fronted shop which was beside Saxton and Co estates agents who owned Glenton’s.

So as one story goes old Mr Saxton was owed money and settled for two coaches instead of cash and with that Glenton’s was born.

That was in the 1920s and it will have been sometime at the end of that decade that dad when to work for them which a part from war service he did till he retired in 1982.

I doubt I would have lingered there for long and more than likely turned past the White Hart and down New Cross Road to the library, or just maybe up past the corner of Pepys Road towards New Cross Gate and beyond.

But looking at Adrian’s picture and comparing it with my memory can also be a cruel experience.
Saxton’s long ago relocated to Brockley, and their old offices are now part of the chemist while Glenton’s  was until recently an African restaurant which I am told by a chap from the White Hart is about to become something new.

Added to which just across the way on the corner of Pepy’s Road my own wooden tower has vanished.

I say wooden tower it was actually nothing more than the entrance to the house but it resembled one of those church ltych gates and had a sign advertising the Ancient Order of Foresters which for a ten year old had the promise of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest.

And I suppose that is one of the things you loose with time and growing up which is the ability to see your surroundings in a completely different way.

The alley round the corner from the White Hart sandwiched between the solicitors and letting agency offered plenty of room for my imagination while the fire station with its tall rounded towers on each side could be a French castle or a an eastern palace, notwithstanding the fire engines which stood ready at the entrance and the sign high up on wall which announced the building had been “erected in 1894.”

Of course the area looks far busier than I remember it and it is more difficult to think yourself back to your childhood when the width of the roads have expanded to meet the volume of traffic, but that said Adrian also sent up some fine pictures of Nunhead cemetery which are pretty much as I remember the place and will no doubt bring forth a whole shedful of memories.

We shall see.

Pictures; Queen’s Road and New Cross Road, 2013, supplied by Adrian Parfitt, and extract from Glenton Coach Cruises, 1965 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Queen Tika, Gene Autry and a hidden city ............. at the Peckham Gaumont and more memories of Saturday Morning Pictures

The Thunder Guard enter the secret rock

I remain fascinated how one image has stayed with me for over half a century and still has the power to take me back to a Saturday morning in the Gaumont.


So distant is the memory that I can now no longer even remember much of the cinema

But the scene where two horsemen descend into an ancient city 20,000 feet underground whose residents abandoned the surface thousands of years ago has never left me.

Saturday Morn' at the Pictures

The city had a Queen and all the political and social structure of a pre industrial society but many of the trappings of the future.

So while Queen Tika is assisted by Lord Argo, and her soldiers ride on horses, there are robots and a sinister death chamber powered by electricity.

For years I pondered on those scenes and had begun to think it was all in my imagination.

But no they were real enough and part of Phantom Empire, which ran to12 episodes and was filmed in 1935 by Mascot Films.

And I have an article by James Howard in Eagle Times to thank for bringing that memory out into the sunlight.*

Queen Ticka, a robot and Lord Argo

The film was “an amalgamation of science fiction, and the western genre” and starred Gene Autry one of the “singing cowboys.”**

The plot was convoluted, involving an evil Professor, his equally unpleasant gang and a plan to cheat Mr Autry out of his farm which stood on a deposit of radium.

And in to this already twisted tale is introduced the city of Murania which along with its robots and death chamber has a bunch of very advanced scientists and a machine which can restore life.

Queen Tika is unaware of a revolution planned by Lord Argo and a group who have been saved from the death chamber and is more concerned that the outside world will discover the city.

So to foil that discovery she sends her “Thunder Guard” to the surface to pretty much have a go at anyone they come into contact with including of course Mr Autry, who in turn breaks into the city and the rest as they say will be continued.***

Now until I read Mr Howard’s article I had no idea of the plot or that it ran to a full 12 episodes, and am tempted to buy the DVD if only to explore the extent that Hollywood tried to mix the Western with science fiction against a backdrop of revolution, robots and death chambers.

Eagle Times, Spring 2015

In the meantime it is reassuring that another of those child hood memories is rooted in reality, even if that reality was a tad far fetched.

All of which just leaves me to explore Mascot Films, and the actress Dorothy Christy who played Queen Tika.

Mascot Films was one of those small American film companies which specialised in making film series and B westerns and is notable for producing the first film serial to use sound.  This was the King of the Kongo in 1929.

The company was formed in 1927 and merged with several other companies to form Republic Pictures in 1935.

Ms Christy was born in 1906 and her film career lasted from 1929 till 1953 and so like Mascot Films covered one of the most important periods in the history of cinema.

Not that  had any idea about all this as I sat in that cinema just 50 or so years ago.

Such are the twists of history.

Pictures; from Saturday Morn’ at the Pictures, reproduced in Eagle Times, 2015

* Saturday Mornin’ at the Pictures, No 2 The Phantom Empire, James Howard, Eagle Times Vol 28 No 1 Spring 2015, http://eagle-times.blogspot.com/

**James Howard Ibid Saturday Morn’ at the Pictures

***The Phantom Empire is now available on DVD

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 16 ........ Saturday Morning Pictures at the ABC Regal and Gaumont

The story of one house in Peckham over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

Saturday Morning Badge 

You never quite forget that mix of noise and anticipation which was Saturday Morning Pictures.

It started when the manager asked if everyone was happy, continued into the competitions and lasted through most of the morning.

It is easy to over romanticise what was just another way the cinema chain could create more revenue while introducing a young audience to the magic of the big screen.

And once you were hooked you were hooked for life.  The cycle might begin with Saturday Morning

Pictures but quickly moved on to the “date” on the back row and in the fullness of time to visits with your children to Disney and of course to Saturday mornings all over again this time dropping off and collecting a new generation of Saturday children.

But you can also be over cynical even given that what you saw was pretty dire.

I can’t say I ever enjoyed those stories of daring do by young children or the equally improbable tales of faithful dogs and intelligent dolphins saving the day.

The Thunder Guard, from the Phantom Empire, 1935

I do remember a series which mixed the theme of Ancient Rome, alien invaders and a particularly nasty dictator.

On reflection it was probably shot on a back lot using B actors and involved lots of oddly dressed men riding on horseback across dusty plains.

You knew it was cheap because the plot didn’t follow a logical path and events often passed from bright daylight to late afternoon and back again in the course of one horse race.

All that said they were fun.

There were the cartoons and films, along with live events ranging from talent competitions and fancy dress to the appearance of a well known celebrity and it was always someone’s birthday which was met with a loud shout.

I am not sure whether it would still work today but from the 1940s into the 60s they were a way of life for many children with that added advantage that it freed up time for the adults.

In the 1950’s the average weekly attendance at  children’s cinema matinees was over 1,016,000 with 1735 cinemas holding cinema matinees for children.

The ABC chain began a special club in the 1940s for their ABC Minors complete with badge and song and birthday cards.

We on the other hand went to the Gaumont which I am sure also had a song a badge and much more, the trouble is I just don’t remember.

ABC Minors happy Birthday

Later when I was that tad bit older for reasons I can’t explain I ended up at the ABC Regal on the Old Kent Road sandwiched between Leo Street and Gervase Street.**

It had opened in 1937 as The Regal and was the largest of ABC’s London surburban cinemas, but was smaller than the Astoria nearby.

And it was there that I saw those epic sword and sandal films which seemed to always feature Steve Reeves with a clutch load of feeble plots but full of action and dignified young woman in classical dress.

Of course the cinema has gone as has the Astoria, and the Gaumont.  The first was the Astoria which closed in 1968 followed by the ABC and the Gaumont.

By then my Saturday Morning Cinema days were over.  But within a few years I was back this time as a dad fulfilling that cycle of the cinema goer but in the meantime the grand palaces of make believe had given over to the functional but ugly multi complex and somewhere along the way a little of the old magic was lost.

And for those who want to judge for themselves, just follow the link to what you could have enjoyed.***

Pictures, ABC Minors Badge, ABC Minors children’s cinema postcard Happy Birthday, 1948, BD084660, University of Essex, http://collections.ex.ac.uk/repository/handle/10472/3222?show=full and Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/video/abc-minors-matinee

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**ABC Old Kent Road, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/31124#

*** Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/video/abc-minors-matinee

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 14 ........ the coalman and the corner shop

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

Coal bill, 1963 for Chorlton-cum-Hardy

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.

Shopping list and receipt, 1968

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.

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/

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 13 ........ of mission halls, synagogues and a factory

The Baptist Chapel in 1872

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

Yesterday I went looking for the South London Mission Hall on Lausanne Road.

And today I found it and got a lot more than I expected which is what often happens.

In 1872 it clearly shows up as Baptist Chapel, in 1899 it was a synagogue and by 1952 as my mission hall, “seating 160.”

Then sometime during the 1970s  it was swept away along with everything else down to Queens Road.

Now I know that from 1889 till 1905 it was the South East London Synagogue which  had previously been in a "house in 452 New Cross Road in 1888, and then moved to two rooms in Nettleton Road, New Cross, followed by a hut in 1889 in Lausanne Road, Peckham." and then relocating to New Cross Road in the March of 1905.**

All of which I discovered when reading South East London Synagogue from the site Transpontine.***

After which it may have opened as the South London Mission.

I do have the names of some of the people associated with the building, which will help.

In 1878 it was the Rev Thomas John Cole who I can track around Peckham from the 1870s through to the 1900s on the electoral rolls and at one point lived at number 1 St Mary’s Road.

Of manufacture amongst the smart houses, 1872

So as they say it’s all still to play for.

But in the course of wandering up and down Lausanne Road using the maps of the late 19th and 20th centuries I came across a Confectionery Manufacturer.  It stood four doors up from Mona Road and shows up on the 1872 OS and is still there on 1952.***

And that means that it will still have been there when I was growing up and in all probability I will have passed it countless times on my up to  the doctors at the top of the road.

Something of its industrial past is still there to see and like my mission hall it calls for more research.

I just wish we had taken photographs of both.

Picture; Lausanne Road, 1872 OS London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The story of one house in lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**South-East London Synagogue, Jewish Communities & Records,http://www.jewishgen.org/JCR-UK/London/selondon/index.htm London Synagogue

***Transpontine, http://transpont.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/south-east-london-synagogue.html

****1872 OS London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
 and Southwark Historical Mapping, http://search.ancestry.co.uk/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gss=angs-c&new=1&rank=1&gsfn=Thomas+John&gsln=Cole&msrpn__ftp=Peckham&msydy=1891&msypn__ftp=london&gskw=Rev&cpxt=1&cp=11&MSAV=1&uidh=zga&pcat=35&h=1054650&recoff=4+5&db=LMAelectoralreg&indiv=1&ml_rpos=15

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 12 ........ a vanished mission hall, adventures in Telegraph Hill park and a mysterious crypt

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

St Mary's Church, 1906

I went looking for the old South London Mission yesterday.

It stood at 39a Lausanne Road and was pretty much just opposite where we lived.

I can’t remember any services being held in the place or if it was used for anything.

But back then I was just too young to take any notice of the building unless of course it offered an adventure.

And there were plenty of other places that offered that mix of edgy opportunities and hours of endless fun.

Of these the crypt on the site of St Mary’s Church was just one of those places.  The entrance was boarded up but all too often it was open to anyone who had the courage and a candle to venture down its damp and smelly stairs.

Of course there was nothing to see.  No treasure, no dark secrets just that musty smell and the echoing sounds of the kids in front exploring one of the corridors.

It was one of those meeting places where total strangers became friends united by a common sense of purpose and the vain hope that we would turn up something which it never did and if I am honest its attractions were limited.

It had been destroyed by a landmine in 1940 and was rebuilt in 1962, not that I remember that rebuild and now my fondest memory is one from dad who was doomed in one of those awful fogs of the 1950s to have walked around the island looking for the bit of St Mary’s that would have taken him to Belfort Road and home.

I suppose the real reason I didn’t like the place was that simple one of feeling uncomfortable in enclosed spaces which did me no favours when I was taken down Seaham Colliery in the early 1970s.

Hundreds of feet down and three miles out under the North Sea was not my idea of an adventure, but you don’t turn down the invitation of the chief mechanical engineer of the pit who was my prospective father in law.

But that as they say is another story for another place.

Telegraph Hill Park, 1904

A more happy play ground was Telegraph Park which had all that a nine year old could want.

It began with that vast expanse of grass which stretched away from the entrance and which  at the top along the Pepys Road side provided a secret rat run where you could creep through bushes and trees undetected from view.

But my favourite must have been the small dusty enclosure which might once have been a pond but long ago had been turned into a play area with that hollowed out tree trunk which became everything from a tank to the conning tower of a submarine.

Sadly magical places fade and by the time we were making our way up to Samuel Pepys the park was just a place to walk through.  I doubt I even gave much thought to what was left of the band stand and only remember that expanse of grass with its slope as the place in the big freeze of 1962/3 where we hauled up park benches to slide back down over the frozen ground.

All of which is a long way from the church hall and is beginning to border on nostalgia so I shall go looking again for the South London Mission.

I have written off to the one in Bermondsey and just maybe someone will have a picture.

We shall see.

Pictures; St Mary’s Church, 1906,from  Parish Churches** and Telegraph Hill Park,  circa 1904, M G Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society, http://thehill.org.uk/society/Telegraph.htm

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

** Parish Churches - Church of England, http://www.peckhamhistory.org.uk/churchesCofE.htm

***Ideal Homes; http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/lewisham/assets/galleries/new-cross/telegraph-hill-park-2