Chubby Checker, cowboys and Pathe News ........... Saturday morning at Well Odeon with a thank you to Sandra

Now  I am revisiting Saturday morning pictures and in particular the Odeon at Well Hall.

And as ever the memories came flooding back with a fair number of people sharing their stories which got me thinking that so much of our recent history gets lost because we just take it for granted.

But these bits of our collective story are as important as any of the great events and are often just lost.
So here is Sandra Axford Wilcox’s own vivid recollections of the magic that was Saturday morning pictures.

"I remember Saturday morning pictures at We'll Hall Odeon. 

Everyone stamping their feet when the cowboys were chasing the Indians. 

The unmistakable voice of Pathe News. 

And the competitions, my big sister made me go up on the stage for a dance off - doing The Twist to Chubby Checker. 

The manager would walk along the stage holding a much coveted biro over each dancers head and whoever got the most cheers would win the pen.... and no, I didn't win."

All of which just leaves me to hope that a shed full of more memories will tumble out.

Painting; The Well Hall Odeon © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Home thoughts from abroad nu 3 ................. lost in the woods in the summer of 1964

An occasional series on what I miss about the place where I grew up.*

Now I say lost but that would not be strictly true but thinking back to that summer of 1964 I might as well have been.

This was the first summer after we had moved to Well Hall from Peckham and it was magic.

After all how could it be other wise?

True there were parks in Peckham and neighbouring New Cross but the woods above Well Hall were something different.

For a start they were big, stretching all the way to that unknown place called Welling, offered great views down across Eltham and Woolwich but above all were just somewhere to wander.

And as the next few years rolled by and I was faced with yet another broken romance, walking alone in the woods got me out and pushed away that feeling of teenage melancholy.  
.
I was too old to see the woods as an adventure playground but they were still a place of fascination.

We went back recently took the old familiar routes up to the Castle looked down towards Eltham Park and then headed across to Shooters Hill Road and the Red Lion.

Of course back in 1964 the pub would not have featured over much on my journeys, but a little over three years later the Welcome Inn would be a fine finishing point to a long wander through the woods.

None of us were 18 but we looked it and that was enough.

And it was here sometime around then that I got to watch one of those first colour transmissions of a tennis game on TV.

It’s hard now to think all we watched was in black and white and I have to say that afternoon in the Welcome was a revelation.

Today of course we take it for granted, the welcome has gone and I seldom walk the woods.

Location; Oxleas Woods, Eltham

Pictures; the Woods, 1976 courtesy of Jean Gammons, and looking down, 2015 from the collection of Ryan Ginn

*Home thoughts from abroad, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Home%20thoughts%20from%20abroad

Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... nu 8 ....... magic days and evenings by the Tudor Barn

An occasional series featuring buildings and places I like and painted by Peter Topping.

The Barn, 2017

I am guessing we all have our favourite memories of the Tudor Barn and the Pleasaunce.

Mine run from wandering around the gardens on warm sunny days with a girl friend enjoying that heady sense of romance mixed with the memories of the sunlight playing on the moat and the orange coloured brick work of the Barn

And if there is one special memory it will be of a Blues and Folk night sometime in the summer of 1966.

I can’t remember who was on but there was something magical about sitting in the small open air theatre listening to the music with all that history as a backdrop.

Junior Showtime in the Pleasaunce, 1967

For years afterwards I cherished the poster of the event which I bought for a shilling  from the entertainments office of the Council, and as you do I pasted it on the wall of my bedroom.

It featured a guitar and a pair of Chelsea boots in black on a white background and always reminded me of the Pleasaunce.

For my sisters one of their special moments might well be those summer entertainments put on during the holidays and featuring all sorts of kid’s entertainers.

By chance one of those Junior Showtime’s was photographed by the local paper and the clipping with our Jill aged about nine staring back at the camera has survived.

And there hangs a perfect moment in time down at the Tudor Barn.

Painting; The Tudor Barn © 2017 Peter Topping from a photograph by Scott MacDonald circa 2013

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures; https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Picture; Well Hall courtesy of Scott McDonald and Junior Showtime, August 20 1967 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Listening to Leonard Cohen opposite the Yorkshire Grey on a cold December night in 1966

I like the music of Leonard Cohen.

Me in 1966

They are songs I dip into now and then.

And today I want to reflect on the very first time I heard him sing.

It was on an LP featuring the song Suzanne which belonged to the sister of my friend John Coward.*

John was one of those new friends I made when I started at Crown Woods in 1966.

We were just 16 and beginning to see the world in a new way, revelling in every type of music and  poetry and fascinated by the work of Picasso, and the Pre Raphaelites.

I can’t remember the exact night I heard Suzanne, but it must have been sometime in December of 1966.

We were at his house opposite the Yorkshire Grey and with a slight air of conspiracy he said I should listen to the song Suzanne which came from the LP,  The Songs of Leonard Cohen.

The record belonged to his sister and carried a dedication from a friend "who wished he could have written the lyrics."

It was he said her favourite song and I could see why.

It still has the power to move me, but when you are sixteen and everything is more intense than it will ever be again Suzanne took me over.

We must have played it a few times and on the promise of looking after it and returning it the next day I walked out into the night with the song.

I have to confess it was more than a few days before John got the LP back but it was before his sister Susan came down from university so all was well.

We remained friends sharing music and LPs and then in the fullness of time John took up a place at Queens University in Belfast and I moved up to Manchester.

Even now when I hear that particular song I am still transported back to that moment, when we were young and everything was an adventure.

That said 58 years on I still think it is all an adventure and that is a good enough way to close.
Location; Eltham

Picture; me in 1966, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Suzanne, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o6zMPLcXZ8

A bit of nostalgia for the Eltham of the 1960s

In the garden of 294 Well Hall, June 1964

Today I have descended into bit nostalgia for the Eltham of my youth.

Now this is not something I do often, after all nostalgia is a bit of a false trail.

In my experiences the sun didn’t always shine, ice cream was limited to those blocks of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate and you only ventured upstairs on a bus if you wanted to breathe in clouds of tobacco smoke.

And yet there was something special about growing up in Eltham in the 1960s.

I guess it started with the discovery of the woods just above where we lived on Well Hall Road.

Once in there they just seemed to go on and on.  Never underestimate that sense of adventure and sheer freedom that comes from walking the woods which of course is also matched by the knowledge that you can’t really get lost, for eventually if you walked far enough there was Welling while to the north was Shooters Hill and south Eltham Park.

All of which was pretty exciting to someone whose had grown up around New Cross.

© Scott Macdonald

And then there was the Pleasuance which with its barn and moat had a charm all of its own.  Not that I knew of the depth of its history, or of Well Hall House that 18th century mansion or the connection with Edith Nesbit.

But the place still had a magic with its Tudor walls and garden and summer evening concerts which the ever present railway station and trains did not spoil.

Thinking about I spent a lot of my time at Well Hall Station travelling back to school in New Cross for nearly three years and the crowded homewrd jorney in the afternoon rush hour.  Even now I can picture the scene as the train slowed to take the curve into the station and there in the distance was that impressive view of Shooters Hill, all trees dominating the horizon.

Not that the morning rush hour was the best time to take in the place.  For me that had to be late morning on a hot sunny day with just one other passenger on the platform.

There was stillness about the place and the only distraction was the smell from the warm oil which had soaked into the old wooden sleepers and  left its trail on the ballast stone.

© Scott Macdonald

All of which was shattered with that twanging noise from the wires to the signal box alerting you and the railway staff that the train was on its way.

I continued to use the station as a way of escaping back to New Cross and my old friends for a few months, before this gawky ill at ease teenager discovered that apart from the woods and the Pleasaunce Eltham had even more to offer.

That started with exploring the High Street and continuing on down along Bexley Road past Avery Hill Park.  And had I known it to the north was Crown Woods which a little over two years after we washed up in

Eltham was where I would go.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Scott MacDonald.

Magic nights in Well Hall

I can picture the poster now.

It featured a guitar and a set of unlaced boots, was finely drawn in black ink resting on a white background, and advertised a folk and blues night at Well Hall Peasaunce.

Its design and the event perfectly appealed to a 16 year old and it ended up on the wall behind my bed and stayed there  long after I had left Well Hall Road.

As for the concert it was all the poster promised and while I have long ago forgotten the names of the artists the evening has stayed with me.  It was one of those memorable nights which began with the setting.

To the right of the stage was the southern side of the Tudor Barn with the moat running alongside it and to the left were the gardens with the railway station beyond.

And as the dusk turned into night the odd break in the performance was filled by the sound of trains passing through Eltham and the noise of cars coming down Well Hall Road.

I remember the concert being full and while I did go to a few more  nothing compared with that one.

And that got me reflecting on what makes a perfect memory.

We all have them bits of our past however trivial which stick with us and bring back home.

Going back even further and before we even moved into Well Hall Road I can still remember laying in bed and watching the night sky lit by the blue flash of what must have been a train at Queens Road Station.

I say that but the blue flash may have been caused by something entirely different but it remains with me even now.

As does the day sometime in 1964 when on a first adventure into Woolwich I discovered by sheer chance the ferry and like so many others before and since it caught my imagination.

Now there is nothing unusual in any of these memories.  Since I first posted a story about the concerts in the Pleasaunce others have told me of their magical nights on those hard metal seats listening to the music by the Barn.

And in the same way the Ferry remains one of those bits of so many people's past along beside the market stalls, a traffic filled Powis Street and of course trips to Hind’s in the High Street.

Not that this is not  just another bit of nostalgic tosh but an appeal for those memories, with if possible a picture and better still a story, like the one from my friend Jean on a tram heading home to Eltham with a live eel bought by her grandmother on the market.

And these memories however episodic and disjointed are all part of our history.  Put them together and you have a set of stories to tell your grandchildren.

Location, Eltham & Woolwich, London

Picture; Tudor Barn, Well Hall courtesy of Scott MacDonald, 2013 and the floral display 2014, from the collection of Chrissy Rose

Peck's meat and fish pastes ............ a meal on its own

Peck's meat and fish pastes were something I grew up with.

They came in small glass jars and offered up a variety of tastes, from fish, salmon, beef and chicken and were spread on bread.

I had all but forgotten them until my friend Lois opened up the flood gates of memory with a story on her blog.*

I did go looking for the story of Peck's a few years ago but the research led nowhere and I gave up.

Now I knew there was an Australian connection because the jars arrived via a friend of mums who was given them at work and she said they were from Australia.

We always just called her B and it never occurred to me to ask how she came by the regular supply of the paste but I think she worked for a wholesale firm and these came as one of the perks of the job.

You were never quite sure what would arrive and I suspect that was also how it was with B.

I remember they dominated our lives and were a quick meal, although now I have no idea which I preferred.

Looking back now over sixty years I see they sit along with dripping, blancmange and tinned fruit salad as part of our basic diet and would only be replaced by the fish finger, beef burger and instant whip sometime in the 1960s.

Not that any of this helped with Peck's products.

The best I could do comes from the site of General Mills which is a food company based in Minneapolis and which has  factories still producing the pastes in Australia.**

It would appear that Peck's were making their spreads in Britain by 1891 and opened up in Australia in 1904 reaching their highest sales in the 1950s and 60s.

All of which fits and confirmed that I hadn't mistaken our Australian paste jars and of course offers up that simple observation that more often than not childhood memories are more likely to be true than imagined.

And in turn reminds me of that post war period when rationing had ended but the full impact of the consumer revolution had yet to arrive and in the absence of a cornucopia of instant foods, Pecks pastes on sandwiches did the job.

And all the way from the other side of the world, Matthew Lock, messaged me with a picture of the said product with the comment, "Still on the shelves in Woollies in Tasmania", so I guess Peck's have gone home.  

Thank you Matthew.  I wish I could offer a jar of the meat past to any UK reader who comes up with a similar find, here in Britain ..... we shall see.

Pictures; adverts for Pecks product date unknown, taken from Spreading the love for a vintage Australian brand

*Paste sandwiches anyone?  http://loiselden.com/2015/04/29/paste-sandwiches-anyone/

** Spreading the love for a vintage Australian brand, Taste of General Mills, March 2015

Home thoughts from abroad nu 4 ................ catching a train and borrowing a book

An occasional series on what I miss about the place where I grew up.*

Now when you leave the place you grew up and pretty much only go back for the odd short visit it becomes frozen in time.

Not so of course for my sisters and their families which of course is just how it should be.

All of which has made me come back to these two pictures of Eltham from the collection of Steve Bardrick.

They were taken by his grandfather sometime in the 1950s or 60s, and are just as I remember home and both in their way are special.

And the station is the first I would single out for having moved to Well Hall in 1964 I still made the train journey every week day back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School.

I can’t say I ever felt that happy about the school and so the walk up along the station approach was a mixed one and was something I did like the visit to the dentist.  You did it because you had to but it was never going to be something you chose to do.

Added to which as the trip was done during the rush hour the chances of getting a seat were never high.

That said the journey back was always something to look forward to and even now I can remember the train taking the curve past the signal box and pulling in to the station with that view of the woods above where we lived.

I never tired of it then and I still have fond memories of the scene  which signalled I was home.

The new station might be more shinny and look the part but the old one with its wooden booking hall giving out onto the platform and that cast iron footbridge are part of my Eltham.

And in much the same way so is the picture of the High Street offering as it does Woollies, the library and the electricity showrooms.

If you are of a certain age the old Woolworths will have powerful memories.
It starts with that special smell, continues with the wooden floorboards and those mahogany island counters and culminates with the sound of Apache or Telstar blaring out and those small round ice creams.

The library was to become one of my favourite’s haunts, a place you went when you needed to do some homework and better still the place to borrow an LP.

Even the electricity showroom was not without its charm with those odd shaped windows.

And by 1966 the library won out over the station, because in that September I had swapped schools and was going to Crown Woods, a place which will always be special.**

It was there I met friends that have stayed the course over the last sixty years and it was there that I discovered the magic of books, and history and a way of looking at the world which I have never lost.

All of which meant that it was looking down at the High Street from the top of the bus twice a day which pretty much took over from the walk up the station approach.

And then one day in the 1980s I returned to find that the station had moved, and later still Wilcox’s and Woollies were no more and even later still the Greyhound had been transformed

Of course there is that simple response that I should get back more often and there is much in that idea.

But even so I rather think I would still miss the old station and if I am pushed hard it will be that slow final pull into Well Hall with the view of the woods which were best seen from the old site.

And before I forget that look down on the Pleasaunce which in the summer would always be a place to stop and sit for a few minutes beside the old moat and equally old garden wall.

Location Eltham, London




Pictures; Eltham Well Hall Railway Station & the High Street circa 1960s from the collection of Steve Bardrick

*Home thoughts from abroad, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Home%20thoughts%20from%20abroad

**Crown Woods School Eltham, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Crown%20Woods%20School%20Eltham

The Dark End of the Street 1967 .............. songs you never forget

I can’t remember listening to The Dark End of the Street when it was released in 1967 and it was only years later that I came across it.*

All of which is a shame because it is the sort of song that my 17 year old self would have instantly fallen for.

And it has the lot from unrequited love mixed with a big dose of a relationship based on a lie and of course some fine music.

It begins

“At the dark end of the street
That is where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don't belong
Living in darkness, to hide alone
You and me, at the dark end of the street
You and me”

And after that you are pretty much hooked.

It was written by Dan Penn and Chips Morgan and according to one source was inspired by a card game where the two were cheating and led them on to write a song on the theme of cheating.**

It took them just 30 minutes and was first recorded by James Carr and later by Percy Sledge.***

 Percy Sledge has always been one of my favourite singers but on this occasion I have to say that James Carr wins it for me.

But I am well aware that the jury will be out on that, so I shall just return to the story of  a love that they stole and the pain of having to let go.

Now you can’t get better than that either back them in 1967 or now a full 54 years later.

Picture; a young Andrew Simpson in the spring of 1966

*The Dark End of the Street, James Carr, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3AXQ8dPJM&feature=share


**The Dark End of the Street, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_End_of_the_Street

*** The Dark End of the Street, Percy Sledge, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj3UdRmhgvM

A golden childhood growing up in Well Hall in the 1960's

Lost in the woods, 1977

Now Eltham was a pretty good place to grow up in the 1960s especially when you had come from Peckham.

It was partly the opportunity to wander over large areas of open and wooded land where you could play, walk and just let your imagination out for the day.

That said I was 14 when we arrived in Well Hall which made some of the “play thing” a little old hat.

But that freedom to set off up into the woods on a warm summer’s morning with no real idea of where you would end up was magic.

Of course the first few times you took off up there it really was discovering new places, and then later it was equally special as you shared it with a girlfriend.

What started out at Well Hall could by degree take you off to Welling via the castle and offer up some stunning views.

And when you tired of trees, solitude and aimless meanderings there was always the Palace and the pleasure of walking along King John’s Walk towards Mottingham.

King John's Walk, towards Mottingham, 1977

Looking back all that didn’t last long, partly I guess because the summers were all too short and soon there were widening horizons and counter attractions.

Never underestimate just how a sixteen your old starting out a fresh at Crown Woods with a whole new set of friends can be drawn away from the simple pleasures of a walk in the woods.

But they never quite went away, after all when you live on Well Hall Road the woods dominated the view from the back window and on those storming summer nights when the sky was lit up with the jagged flashes of lightening it was hard not to be drawn up there.

Not that anyone with any sense would venture there in such a storm.

A much better attraction was the Welcome from where you could sit out the storm with a pint although all too often I was less lucky.  Those storms seemed to pick me out as I was walking back from a Friday night in Woolwich, and later still falling out of the King’s Arms in the High Street.

And now the woods and Well Hall are a long way from where I live and separated by a gulf of time but they still exert a pull and bring back a pretty perfect childhood.

Pictures; the woods and King Jon's Walk, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 16 ........... a revolution on wash day

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now this was Dad's welcoming present to 294 when we moved in in 1964.

I say Dad's but the reality will be that it will have been mum who insisted on this piece of cutting edge technology.

And with that "keyplate" which "automatically selects the right water temperature, the right washing action, the right number of rinses and the right spin-drying time for what ever wash you are doing" we could really feel the future had arrived.

And on top of all that here was a front loading machine which was already plumbed in and needed no endless filling of water buckets to put into the machine.

I could also comment on the rather sexist headline but won't.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; advert for the Hoover Keymatic, The Observer Magazine January 30 1966 from the collection of Andrew Simpson







*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, 

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 16 ........... the plays wot mum wrote

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Well Hall Road, 2014

For as long as I can remember our mum wrote plays, short stories and worked on a novel about life in south east London.

She had begun writing in the RAF during the last war when as a typist she had all that a writer could need ........ spare time, a typewriter, and paper.

All of which were the building blocks to give full vent to her vivid imagination.

On those long quiet moments on an RAF station in Lincolnshire she wrote about what she experienced including the loss of life and the fears and triumphs of the air crews and supporting teams.

Mum and friend circa 1942

Later as we were growing up she tried her hand at writing plays discovering there was a market for the three act play which was aimed specifically at women’s groups.

The basic requirement was that most of the parts had to be for women, and while the plot could be anything from a comedy to a murder there had to be opportunities for women of all ages.

I can’t now remember how many she produced but I know it was a fair few, although sadly none of the published plays have survived and as yet I can’t find any reference to them anywhere.

But we do have the manuscript of the book she was writing on along with some short stories.

Looking back we never thought it was unusual and yet here was a woman whose formal education had ended at 14, and who had spoken only German until she was three years old.

She began work in a local silk factory and went onto have a succession of jobs until the war swept her up and deposited her in “bomber county.”

Later after moving to London she began writing again, using at first a battered old typewriter before acquiring a slick “Oliveti” model.

And as someone who uses a computer all the time I marvel at those who wrote using a typewriter which doesn’t allow the instant use of the delete button, the facility to cut and paste, or either a word or spell check.

Mum in 1949

On the other hand it has left me with a collection of paper copies of her literary output.

The manuscripts maybe on flimsy paper, now are over laden with a musty smell and tinged with yellow but they offer up a link to mum, more powerful than an electronic text.

That said the computer and social media have offered up a huge opportunity for people to record and share  their memories, and publish both photographs and paintings which might otherwise never have seen the light of day.

All of which demonstrates the amount of talent there is out there and by extension just how much of that talent in the past never saw the light of day.

By contrast on facebook and other sites people regularly post fine photographs which are as good as any “art work” and write in the most vivid and direct way about growing up and the places that mean so much too them.

And yes I am sure that if mum were still writing today she would have embraced them all.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; 294, courtesy of Chrissy Rose, 2015, and mum from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 3, looking for the first residents

Our house today

This is where we lived  in for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

And so I have decided to explore its history.

I can’t say I have ever thought of the people who lived their lives in our house but now I think it is time to start.

After all we accounted for just under a third of its existence and so I have begun to look for the people who were there before us.

Now  most of the spade work is being done by my friend Jean who has already been down to the Heritage Centre at Greenwich and trawled the street directories from when the estate was built.

And Jean will be back there looking for connections between the first occupants and the personnel records of the Royal Arsenal during the Great War.

The first of those residents was Basil Nunn who lived in our house until 1919 and was followed by Alfred W Rendle who stayed there until 1928.

I have great hopes that much more will be revealed for of course once you have a name then lots follow.  I have already started looking at the electoral registers for the period, and in time there may be the odd newspaper story, baptismal and marriage record and perhaps even someone who remembers them.

Added to this I will be able to conjure up the family who occupied our house and give a different context to the rooms we took for granted including how those rooms looked originally and how they might have been used.

The Bullet Factory, the Arsenal, circa 1916

And not for the first time during the search I have lapsed into a bit of idle speculation, pondering on which part of the Royal Arsenal Mr Nunn and perhaps Mr Randel worked in and whether they took the tram or cycled to Woolwich.

In turn I have thought about what they did to the garden and whether Mrs Nunn or Mrs Randel complained about the steep staircase which runs up the centre of the house, and how many times in a day they had to use them.

But all of that is a flight of fancy and rather stops me from the serious business of finding out more about the house and the first families who lived there.

So while Jean beavers away I shall go digging for any evidence of what the house might have been like when brand new and Mr Nunn moved in.

Research by Jean Gammons

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose and inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.markfynn.com/

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20100%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 1, reflections

Well Hall Road and our house 2014

The story of one house over a century and a bit.*

2015 was the birthday of the house we lived in for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

So this will be the start of a series of stories about the house which next year will celebrate its centenary.

Now despite spending most days digging deep into the past and uncovering the lives of those who interest me I have to confess that the people who occupied our house for the first forty-nine years are unknown to me.

But their lives will span the two world wars, along with the uncertain years that followed the end of the first war and the growing prosperity that came in the decades after 1945.

In the garden 1964

And more than anything it will be about the house and how it changed from a fairly basic but well built early 20th century property to one which was adapted to the growth in consumer products, central heating and the revolution in leisure.

So when we moved in in 1964, there was still a water heater which had been run off a solid fuel stove, the kitchen possessed just two power points and the windows were the originals that had come with the house in 1915.

The first residents would have gone off to work on the tram, and no doubt welcomed the new Well Hall Odeon which offered up evenings of excitement and was far closer than the first picture house up along the High Street.

And on those fine warm summer evenings there would still have been plenty of open spaces to enjoy.

The real discoveries will also be in just how their lives in the late 1920s and 30s matched and contrasted with those of the people I so often deal with who lived in the north  in the more challenged old industries of textiles, coal mining and ship building.

So it is all there to search out, and on the way I am well aware that George, Jean and Chrissie will be on hand to offer up their memories of their bit of Well Hall and Eltham.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1964  and Chrissie Rose 2015

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

As others see us ......... Well Hall in the summer of 1966 by Ian Nairn

The thing about guide books is that they date so quickly.  

But that can be what makes them so intriguing and that pretty much sums up Nairn’s London.*

It was published in 1966 and I picked up my copy over 20 years later from Bryan the Book.

And that is a tale in itself given that Bryan’s bookshop on Beech Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy is 214 miles from Well Hall where I grew up.

Nor is that all for the original cover price was eight shillings and sixpence and I bought it for 40p.

The publisher warned that “some of the entries are already disappearing; so go and see the rest quickly.”

That said it is reassuring that the places in Well Hall and Eltham visited by Mr Nairn are still there, although not all are described in that fulsome and respective manner of most guide books

So in writing about Eltham Lodge he comments, “nothing great, but worth at least a sentimental journey to see this grandfather of all Georgian brick Boxes.”

But I am pleased my own estate fared not only better but also was described with a little affection.

“Well Hall Estate, Eltham Sir Frank Baines and others, 1916

This extraordinary place was designed in seven days as a rush job to house war-workers for Woolwich Arsenal.  It seems an odd recipe for one of the best housing estates near London.  

Perhaps the architects imply did not have time to air their preconceptions, and the local officials their disastrous application of bye-laws.  

Comfortable, cottagey design, slate and stucco, taken out of the rarified atmosphere of the garden cities, always trying to see streets as entities rather than collections of units.  

The best part is Ross Way, running from Well Hall Road at the junction of Rochester Way.  

This curves round a gentle slope with a raised footpath and uses every possible trick of gables and end walls.  

Half way along, footpaths run off under archways as part of a fairy-tale composition which by an irony is more like a German village than anything else.”***

It is a long time since I have looked through the book but with a wet weekend ahead I think I shall spend a few hours crossing London courtesy of Mr Nairn.

And as the publisher promised the book is the first of a series with one planned for the Industrial North, which sadly was never written which is a shame because  having said some nice things  about where I grew up I wondered if he would do the same for where I now live.

Well we shall see.

Picture; cover from Nairn’s London, 1966

*Nairn’s London, Ian Nairn, 1966

**ibid page 207


***ibid page 208

Saturday Morning Pictures at Well Hall Odeon in 1965

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 collectiing 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.

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.  It cost just 6d.

I can’t now remember which cinema I went to, but I still have vivid memories of collecting my sisters from the Well Hall Odeon and getting there a little early just to catch the last ten minutes of whatever was going off.

They were never ABC Minors, after all when you lived just minutes away from the Odeon there was no point tramping all the way up to the High Street to the ABC on the corner of Plassey Place.

So that was my Saturday mornings in Eltham till mum judged that Stella and Elizabeth were old enough to take my two younger sisters without me.

I don’t suppose my mornings at the flicks had lasted that long and nor did theirs. They were probably one of the last generations to enjoy that mix of noise and anticipation in the dark accompanied by that warm smell of cinema disinfectant, and popcorn.

There may still be Saturday Morning Pictures but it costs a lot more than 6d and I can't think they will be the same, but then perhaps I am just old and biased.

* Wheare Committee http://terramedia.co.uk

Pictures, Well Hall Odeon, courtesy of Eltham, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eltham/210661675617589?fref=ts and  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
http://cinematreasures.org/video/abc-minors-matinee

Home thoughts from abroad nu 1 ................. Well Hall Road on a warm spring day in 1965

An occasional series on what I miss about the place where I grew up.

Now I don’t do nostalgia.  It’s over rated and too often offers up a view of the past which at best is deceptive and at worse downright wrong.

But having been away from Eltham for over forty years I have bit by bit been drawn back.

It’s partly those bouts of reflection that come from someone in his seventies but also because it was one of the places I was happiest.

That said for most of that last forty years it is somewhere I only came back to on flying visits.

In the early 70s Well Hall was home between term time, and then a place to catch up with family and friends and later still where we brought the children for short holidays.

During those early visits I have to confess to a mix of feelings.  It was always nice to be back amongst familiar places but when you are 19 it is easy to be over judgemental.  After all I was living in the heart of Manchester which was vibrant and new, offering up a wealth of experiences and Eltham seemed small beer.

But I never entirely lost the pull of Eltham and in the last few years have begun digging deep into its history and remembering so much from my childhood.

So this is the first of those memories and it is nothing more than that walk I took from our house up to the High street.

We lived just beyond the roundabout and so on a warmish spring day it was no hardship to stroll down past the Odeon and the parade of shops taking a detour into the Pleasaunce before going under the railway bridge up past Spencer Gardens and that second parade of shops before reaching Willcox’s and the parish church.

More often than not there was no real purpose behind the trip which meant you could take your time, be delayed by looking in the window of the electrical shop near Wells the Chemist, gaze at one of the guitars in Norman’s before  deciding on a book from Willcox’s.

And then with the whole High Street ahead of you an hour or two could pass just looking at the shops and visiting the library.

Like others I have very fond memories of the library which offered up plenty to do, from digging out those obscure old volumes from the reference section to choosing an LP and a couple of books.

Of course Well Hall Road offered up more than just a route to the library and on other days when the sun shone it was the way up to the woods and on to Woolwich.

Now I know others will have their own favourite road and I have to concede that Court Yard and Colepits Lane had their attractions but sitting here just 4 miles from the centre of Manchester I will go for Well Hall Road.

Location; Well Hall Road, Eltham

Pictures; Well Hall Road, & Eltham Library, 2014 from the collection of Chrissy Rose

Home thoughts from abroad nu 2 ................. walking home from Woolwich on a summer’s night in 1966

Woolwich Common, 1970

Some memories stay with you and are as vivid now as they were then.

I was sixteen, it was the summer of 1966 and I was walking home from Woolwich to Well Hall.
It was a journey I must have made countless times and it was one I always enjoyed, especially once you had cleared the town and made it up to the common.

It was that mix of peace, the lingering heat of a hot summer’s day and the smells from the grass, the bushes and the trees.

The bonus was always those nights that brought on a thunderstorm.

And almost the same spot in 1906

If I was lucky I got home before the rain but either way there were those magic moments when the woods above our house were lit up by the jagged streaks of lightening followed by the roll of thunder.

The best place to see it was just past the police station as the road fell down towards the roundabout.

And usually I was alone which made the event all that more awesome.

After all back in 1966 few people were daft enough to walk out of Woolwich at nearly midnight and so the only company were the occasional passing car or the odd 161 with all its lights off heading I knew not where.

And now a full half century later I still think of those nights.

Location; Eltham, London

Picture; Woolwich Common, 1970, from the collection of Jean Gammons and the Royal Military Academy, from the series Woolwich, 1906 and the Royal Military Academy from the series Woolwich Town and City 1905 issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 17 ........... of what is to come

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now how we celebrate Christmas is a very personal thing and is a mix of the current commercial hype, and family traditions which go back generations.

Growing up in Well Hall our celebrations drew not only on what we had done as kids every year but also leaned heavily on the type of Christmases enjoyed by mum and dad in the middle decades of the last century.

All of which has passed on to how Christmas is spent by own family here in Manchester.

Somewhere along the way we began having two trees one of which always has to touch the ceiling and while the advent calendars are no longer a feature the Christmas Day kick about on the Rec opposite the house still goes on.

In Well Hall the start of Christmas was never the end of term or the first set of Christmas cards but the arrival of Uncle George up from the West Country.

He would arrive a day before Christmas Eve and stay for the January sales and then like snow in the winter sunshine he was gone.

And what we looked forward to with him coming was the annual visit to the Christmas lights.

Today even the smallest village and hamlet will have its festive show but growing up in the 1950s and 60s there were only and ever would be those on Oxford Street and Regent Street.

Combined with the wonder of the bright lights was a bag of hot chestnuts still in those days sold from an old fashioned brazier with burning coals.

Later of course all five of us began Christmas Eve in a pub which for me was usually the King’s Arms and our Stella, Liz Gill and Theresa could be any one of those on the High Street and beyond.

But like all families the following day was spent with the presents and later the Christmas dinner which involved sitting around two tables put together and an assortment of chairs most of which of varying heights and degrees of safety.

When I was younger it finished with one of those long games of Monopoly followed by the telly.

Dad and mum had long ago done away with the “real” Christmas tree and instead settled on an artificial one made with what looked like long green brushes tipped with white and fastened into a wooden pole.

Its appearance was always accompanied by Dad saying that this would be the last year he would bother, but it was always there the following year.

The lights were those big pear shaped ones which sometime in the late 1950s had replaced the candles which were attached to the tree by means of a metal holder and clip.

And with them came the paper chains made form coloured gummed paper.

Looking back those Christmases may have been simpler but no less magic.

Location; Well Hall & Chorlton

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, 

The magic of Well Hall half a century on

Now I have been thinking about what made Well Hall and the Progress estate such a magical place when I was growing up in the 1960s.

It started with the roads that led off in all sorts of directions taking you along raised pavements, into a narrow alley which was almost a tunnel and then out on to an open green which could have been transported from some village deep in Kent countryside.

And along with these were the houses which were so different from those tall, narrow and forbidding terraced properties in Peckham where we had lived.

I never tired of the different designs and still today delight in coming across them.

This was matched by the interior which was in direct contrast to our old house which stretched out over three floors and stood on cellars which were dark cold and uninviting.

Never underestimate the loneliness of being seven and sleeping at the top of the house having first had to traverse endless flights of stairs in the semi darkness.

All very different from 294 Well Hall where every bedroom was close to dad and mum downstairs listening to the wireless.

But that was not the biggest attraction of the estate that came from discovering the Tudor Barn and the vast expanse of the woods.

Long before I trawled the history of the Pleasaunce, the Ropers and the fine old house inhabited by Edith Nesbitt there were the gardens, the moat with its wooden bridge and the old leaning walls leading to the gardens but which were nothing set against the woods which were places to wander, letting the imagination roam from stories of Roman legionaries to highwaymen and much more and always finished off by the castle.

Later of course came the attractions of the Odeon, the High Street and later still the challenge of Woolwich which in turn gave way to the pubs of which the Kings Head and the Rising Sun were my favourites.

That said the call of the Welcome on a Sunday night and the place above Burton’s somehow missed me by.

I have tried sharing these pleasures of the estate with my own lads on visits back to Well Hall, but they were all born in Manchester and they walk to different adventures framed by the open land to the south of us bordering the Mersey and city centre attractions.

And of course now as I reflect that I have lived here in the North longer than I ever did in London the magic of Well Hall is but a memory but none the less pretty good for all that.

It will I think call us back for the centenary celebrations.

Nostalgia  is never that good but I rather think a walk around the estate will live up to those memories.

Well we shall see.

Pictures; of Well Hall 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose