Down at the New Cross Speedway with Stan Greatrex and the New Cross Rangers in 1939

Now I never went to Speedway even given that while I was growing up the New Cross Speedway Track was not far from where we lived.

Plenty of my friends did go and would sport the black and gold badge with added bits for the different seasons they attended.

But then I get bored with motor car racing and even given the thrill of a live event I doubt it would ever have attracted me.

That and the fact that I would have had to have  been taken by my dad who was no more interested in the sport than I.

But lots were.  The track was not far from New Cross Road and from the 1930s was where a number of teams raced with names like the New Cross Lambs, from 1934-35, the New Cross Tamers in 1936 and from 1937 till 1963 the New Cross Rangers.

And in the collection there are three postcards of riders from the Rangers.  This is Stanley Greatrex who rode for the team in the 1930s, and captained them in 1939 as well as riding for the England team in 1936, ’38 and ’39.

Picture; Stan Greatrex, New Cross Rangers, courtesy of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm

No babes in arms just bug sprays and exciting films ....................... Lydia remembers the Ideal cinema on Queens Road

Now I am back with the Ideal Cinema which stood on Queens Road midway between Pomeroy Street and Kender Street.

The Ideal Cinema 1914-1940

It had opened in 1914 as the Queens’ Cinema House, changed its name a year later to the Queens’s Road Cinema and in 1916 was renamed again as the Ideal Kinema.

Then around 1935 it was bought by Naborhood Theatres Ltd around 1935 and became the  Narborhood Cinema.

And there in its 790 seat theatre audiences could have thrilled to Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and been enthralled at the first talkies.

Alas it’s time as the Narborhood were numbered.  It was destroyed by German bombs in 1940 and the remains demolished the following year which I suspect was why I knew nothing of its.

That said there are people who remember attending the place in the 1930s.

One of these is Lydia Bush who told me that "the Ideal Cinema was on the main road, on the left side going towards New Cross, with the pub was on the corner.

Tom Mix, 1925

It was a small cinema with one level, no balcony, I remember on the other side was a small barbers.

I think it may have been privately owned, and based on an American style.

I went to one in the States just like the Ideal , and that really brought back memories.

It changed the film on Thursday, but in those days cinemas didn't open on Sunday.

I remember a sign on the small box office which said 'No babes in arms!'

They came round with a spray occasionally, I used to think it was perfume!

But it was probably bug spray!

I saw many films there, mum was a film fan, I think she must have kept it going.

Hated the walk home though.”

Now that bug spray was not peculiar to the Ideal, and talking to people across the country they not only remembered the practise but singled out certain picture houses as “flea pits” and “bug havens” where you went at your peril.

And likewise many of them continued to refer to the cinema of their choice with names that long ago had been changed .

So for Lydia our cinema will always be the Ideal and in that she was not alone, because maps of the 1930s and 40s still referred to it by its pre 1935 name.  In fact the updated map of the area in 1953 continued to show the cinema which had long ago shown its last film and seen its last bug spray.

So there you have it ............ in the space of a few days the Ideal has offered up more of its story.

All we need now is a picture.

Pictures; the Ideal cinema and Queens Road, 1953 from historical map extract courtesy of Southwark Council at Historical map extract courtesy of Southwark Council at http://maps.southwark.gov.uk/connect/southwark.jsp mapcfg=Historical_Selection&style=historical&banner=historical with mapping provided by Landmark Information Group,  Tom Mix, May 21 1925, Wikipedia Commons, this work has been released into the public domain by its author, Herbert A. French, who grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

This story first appeared in 2015

Growing up in Pomeroy Street in the 1930s ............. Margaret Nash remembers

I was born into a house that was not only falling down but also over crowded.

This wasn't unusual for residents of Pomeroy Street but what was unusual was that the houses in the street were all different as if built at different times in the
1800's.

Our house had two rooms and a scullery downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs and these were shared between my mum, dad, sister, two brothers, my Nan and
Uncle Jack.

My Nan had lived in Pomeroy Street since her marriage but in the early 1930's she left my granddad and crossed the road to live with us bringing Uncle Jack with her.

Uncle Jack wasn't a relative at all but a friend of my dads, he had no family and had lodged with Nan and granddad since his early 20's and stayed within the family until he died in 1988.

You may wonder how we all fitted into this tiny house well Uncle Jack and Nan had the front room as a sitting room which also doubled up as Uncle Jacks bedroom while Nan went next door but one to sleep at my Aunts house.

I can see her now putting on her coat, picking up her alarm clock and going out of the front door to go to bed. We had the back room as a living room and my two brothers shared the back bedroom while me and my sister shared the front bedroom with mum and dad.

Despite everything it was a happy house and everyone got along.

There must have been cold rainy days but I can only remember the sunny days which we spent playing on the bomb sites or hanging around the cocoa factory in the hope of getting a bit of cocoa which we would mix with sugar to make a 'dip' or getting some free crumpets from the crumpet factory.

Once we'd broken up for the school summer holidays it was time to get ready for hop picking.

A few families in the street used to go hopping so it wasn't unusual to see vans or lorries loading up with tea chests and bits of furniture ready for a summer in Kent. I remember one year my mum sitting in an armchair on the back of a flat backed lorry while us kids dangled our legs off the back.

We must have been a sight to behold as we drove through the Kent countryside.

Then in 1953/4 the Council condemned the houses on our side of the street and one by one families moved out and into the new flats that had been built since the end of the war.

Most families moved into the flats including Nan and Uncle Jack. My dad wouldn't live in a flat so we went to live at Bellingham which none of us could settle to.

I still came back to New Cross to go to school and to see Nan and my mum carried on working at the café in Kender Street.

When I got married in 1966 I left for the Church from Nan's flat and spent the first year of married life back in New Cross.

Whenever I've been back to New Cross in recent years there's very little left of the place I grew up in but the memories are a treasure to hold.

© Margaret Nash 2015

Picture; family pictures in the Pomeroy Street, from the collection of Margaret Nash,

My Peckham .............. nu 1 the New Cross Telephone Exchange St Mary’s Road

A short series of places I grew up with.  

Some have already appeared and others will be familiar because as iconic buildings they are well known.

Now the telephone exchange was a place I took for granted and I don’t remember a time when it was not there on St Mary’s Road.

Until recently I was not that impressed with it but it does have a solid boldness which speaks of the 1930s when it was built and the more I look at it the fonder I have become of this big brick built place.

But I have a problem because all the authorities suggest it was built in the 30’s and it does look like a 30’s building which is confirmed by a survey from 1949-54, but another map dating from to 1936 to 52 all  the original houses are shown stretching up from Queens Road round to Dundas Road.

The key I suspect will be the origin of those maps, and who commissioned them.

In the meantime the 30’s seems to be the decade because Ms Gwen Wilkinson was working in the exchange during the last war when a bomb landed in the yard close to their surface shelter behind the exchange.*

Now with all these things there will be someone out there who knows more than me and will tell me so.

Well I hope so.

All of which just leaves me to reflect that living in Lausanne Road we were just round the corner, which on days when we waited for the party line to clear it would have been easier to walk round to St Mary’s Road

Picture; New Cross Telephone Exchange, 2011, © Copyright Stephen Craven and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence, http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2331589

*The Bomb at New Cross telephone Exchange, WW2 People’s War BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/73/a5885373.shtml