My beginning, At Temperley The Street Sole Street Kent.
(9th March 1946 to 2nd January 1951)
I was born on Saturday March 9th 1946 at 3.15 Pm at Temperley, The Street, Sole Street, near Cobham in Kent to my parents Jack Lane and Italia Pauline Harvey, then 32 and 35 respectively. I was delivered at home by the local midwife with our family doctor and friend Surgeon. Maxwell Landau and my mothers, mother in attendance.
There were many telegrams of congratulation including those from my fathers parents, his younger brother Tony, Auntie Belle his mothers sister and husband Uncle Jimmy, mothers sister Rita and husband Rennie, half-sisters Joy, Betty, Peggy, Norma and half-brother Bill, their respective husbands and wives and several friends and work colleagues.
In those first years after the Second World War, few people in our small hamlet of Sole Street near Cobham in Kent had a private car, though a number had a motorcycle or a motorcycle and sidecar. The majority of people used a push bike or walked and there was no bus service in Sole Street, the nearest service being in Cobham or Meopham, with regular buses to Gravesend our nearest large town. There was a regular steam train passenger service from Sole Street to London Victoria, which was used by the few locals who had jobs in the City and it was a means of getting to the large towns of Rochester and Chatham, which were about twelve miles away to the east.
A taxi, wedding and funeral service was operated by a small Company based in Cobham and we used the services of Mr George Mungeam and his pre-war Austin Sixteen with division quite often. We made shopping trips to Gravesend every other month and the Medway Towns were visited perhaps twice a year. A visit to London was a very special event made only once a year generally just before Christmas, to window-shop in Gamages and Harrods and see the Christmas tree and lights in Trafalgar Square then a major event!
Dress was generally more formal than it is today and most people wore suits with waistcoats, jackets, overcoats and the ubiquitous hat. No man then ever set foot outside without his hat, gloves and often a scarf. The well to do with large houses, still had live-in domestic staff, but there were not so many servants as in the pre-war days. A lot of families still had a nanny for the children, though the task was often now covered by the lady of the house’s mother.
Sole Street was predominately a rural farming community and a great number of the locals were in some way connected to the two large farm complexes which dominated the area, both being owned and run by the titled Darnley family who lived in nearby Cobham Hall. There were also a couple of large market gardens, which grew salad vegetables and flowers on a grand scale for the large vegetable and flower markets of Covent Garden in London and their produce was shipped out on a daily basis from both Sole Street and Meopham Railway Stations.
My first memories.
My first real memories are of mother and Nanna taking me out in my pram in the snows of early 1947. Our small hamlet of Sole Street was completely cut off by the snowdrifts that were in excess of five feet deep in many places. To this day I can remember my mother and Nanna struggling to push my big pram along the lanes and due to the depth of the compacted snow filling them to almost hedge top height and being able to see over into the fields, which resembled a classic scene from a Christmas Card.
From a very early age I can remember the subtle fragrance of wallflowers, lupines and apple blossom from the big trees in our back garden, which I still love and to smell their delicate perfume now, can easily transport me back to my carefree childhood days. Nanna singing, 'Twinkle, twinkle little star', 'Babe of Mine' from the film ‘Dumbo’ and Paul Robeson’s 'Lull a Bye, Bye' to me.
Some of the favourite songs of the time were 'When Lilacs bloom Again', 'This is my lovely Day', 'Martyr witch of the wild Wood', 'Remember, Remember' or perhaps it was called 'One day when we were Young' from the 1939 MGM musical 'The Great Waltz', the anglicized and popular song version of a duet adapted from I think a German operetta by Johan Strauss. "One day when we were young that wonderful morning in May. Remember, remember how we were young that day," 'I'll be loving you Always' and 'Springtime' from Sigmund Rombergs 1917 operetta, which became the 1937 MGM musical 'May-time', which I have always thought in error was from Noel Cowards musical 'Bitter Sweet'.
"Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart I will love you ever.---My darling I will remember that time ever after, love time, springtime, May". My mothers favourite singer was the exiled German tenor Richard Tauber, who I believe had made his home in the UK and died from cancer in 1948 and I can remember his lovely rich, rounded and unmistakable voice often coming from the old radiogram in the hall.
Mother made me an elephant Dumbo, a deer Bambie and a rabbit Binnie, my corruption of Bunny, which stuck from chamois leather. This must have been quite costly both in time and materials, which were on ration then. I loved Binnie, who was my confidante for many years of my childhood. Bambie was all right, but I preferred the Walt Disney cartoon book, which to this day can make me cry, as can the cartoon film 'Dumbo'.
Thinking back deeply to these times has been quite a revelation, for I have realized with quite a shock that I had never actually seen the film, my first viewing of it being in early 2009 sixty-one years on, though my memories of 'Dumbo' are a very vivid recollection from my very early days. It is not possible that at the age of one or two I saw the film and we did not have a television until the early fifties and I would not have understood it, if I had seen it! I must assume that my memory is from what mother and Nanna told me and from the books, mainly picture, of both 'Dumbo' and 'Bambi' that I had at the time.
These books along with one of 'Snow White', must have been compiled from the Walt Disney cartoon drawings. For I have vivid memories of the wheeled and barred wagon, which features in the film 'Dumbo' that the disgraced mother elephant was contained in and the sign upon it 'Mad Elephant'. I also remember very strongly the mother and Dumbos trunks reaching for each other and the mother cradling her baby in her trunk and rocking him gently, while she sang 'Babe of Mine' to him. The whole film depicts ridicule, victimisation and humiliation and like some scenes in the film 'Bambie' and the later epic 'Ben Hur', which my longest known friend Tony Pickles and I were taken to London to see by his Gran in the autumn of 1959, can still bring the tears to my eyes.
For some inexplicable reason I hated poor Dumbo and his trunk and ears soon got torn off. I remember mum carefully sewing them back on many, many times, to the extent that the soft chamois leather became very holed from her repeated sewing. Perhaps this is an early manifestation of my unreasoned dislike for things that are considered a little out of the ordinary to my strange eyes. Through-out my life, I have had problems coming to terms with changes and I do not like change, or change of routine, it phases me badly and though until very recently I have never met the phenomena, I find sudden spring-cleaning and total change arounds in the home very, very disorientating and annoying. For my way of dealing with things is to work to a mental map, which tells me where everything is. My treatment of Dumbo, which I still have, along with all the others and now treasure greatly, as they hold so many memories of happy and carefree childhood days makes me feel very sad now, as my abuse of poor Dumbo must have hurt mum a lot, as she had obviously put so much love and care into making it for me.
My mother really doted on me, as did my Nanna, to the extent that I in later life became almost smothered by their love and had quite a job coping with it. Sadly like my mother, I also have a very long memory and at times I could not help recalling the profound shock that I had experienced the time mother screamed at me "You filthy little boy!" In the end I had to shut off and get away and I was often short and sadly at times downright rude, when the all smothering, love and affection was poured on. It was to a similar extent carried out with food and mum realising that I was a greedy kid, exploited this outlet for her affection in plying me with food, which was not, like her physical affection rejected.
My father was quite distant and it is probably a direct result of his very severe Victorian upbringing. He was unable to show his true feelings towards me and sadly we never did become at all close. He was very critical of my at times somewhat Cavalier attitude and mother would often go deliberately against his judgment, which often resulted in bitter and heated arguments. But I was lucky being quite quick witted and intelligent and able to cram and scrape through tests, provided that there was not too much hype placed on them, if I wanted to! When they were presented.
Temperley The Street. Sole Street near Cobham. Kent. (March 9th 1946 to January 2nd 1951)
My memories of my first family home, a medium sized bungalow on the main street through the then small country hamlet of Sole Street are as follows. The kitchen was a long room on the left side of the property with a separate pantry, there was a door at the side to the back garden and another door that gave entry to the large central hall. Off the hall were the bathroom and my bedroom at the back of the house and a sitting room and the main bedroom to the front. The loggia was a glass and timber two roomed extension built across the front of the house and was where my Nanna lived during the time she was with us.
The front garden was quite small and was set below road level behind a tall and thick privet hedge. Flowerbeds containing the wonderful tall straight lupines and wallflowers were at each side of the central path and a rose arbour screened the house. The back garden had a big lawn, to the left of which was a sunken area, with lots of ferns and shade loving plants. A large plum tree was at the back of the lawn, which was flanked by a vegetable garden that was bordered by the big wooden shed where my father tried to grow mushrooms commercially. At the left side of the house there was a path from the front garden that passed the kitchen window and on the other side that flanked the lane that went to the Smiths orchard and bungalow, there was a small garden shed behind a high privet hedge, where Julie the dog and others before her had lived. High damson hedges flanked the whole rear garden.
I can remember a time sitting in the kitchen playing with my cuddly toy rabbit Binnie, while my mother washed up at the sink, which was below the window on the sidewall facing our neighbour Mr. Guest. My attention was drawn to something that I thought was a leaf that kept appearing at the pantry door. I drew my mothers attention to it and she said not to be so silly, it was nothing. A little later a large mouse came into the kitchen from behind the pantry door and this time my mum saw it and dealt with it by trapping it in a dishcloth and putting it outside.
My fathers car at the time was a pre-war Morris Series E saloon and I recall quite a few drives around our local area at weekends with dad, mum and Nanna in the Morris, soon to be replaced with his first Company car, a 1948 Hillman Minx saloon. I remember on several occasions dad parking on the various railway bridges in our area, opening the sliding sun roof so that I could sit on the roof and watch the steam trains go hurtling by below us. Occasionally during the hard winter months, mum and Nanna would call on the services of George Mungeam and his car to go to Cobham shopping. George Mungeam was the local Taxi, Wedding and Funeral car driver, his car was a 1936 Austin Sixteen with division and he was a very softly spoken man in his sixties, who had seen terrible action in the First World War, having been gassed and was always very nice to me.
Piggyback rides on mum’s back down to Baldocks shop that was opposite the end of Manor Road and the small pond then in front of the little chapel, she often dressed in one of her macks. The strong rubbery smell of her many mackintosh clothes, her cape and the mackintosh sheets of various colours that were in one of the cupboards in the hall, said to be blackout curtains from the war, but there were very many more than was required to cover the small number of windows that the house had! I was encouraged to use these, her macks and cape to make camps in the house by mum. Often at night, she would come into my bedroom, with one of her macks or the cape and wrap me in it. I found this very comforting and many is the morning, that I have woken in the warm rubbery smell and soft smooth feel of one of her macks.
In my first few years the dogs Nibby, a white Sealyham, rather a fashion statement at the time and two other dark coloured longhaired terrier types Peter and Jack, were always gambolling around my pushchair. All these dogs were elderly and died off, Nibby being the last in late 1949, long before I really understood the finality of death.
Nanna holding me in a shawl and walking me around the garden, I remember being fascinated by and pointing to daffodils, but not liking the sour smell of them much. Later I can remember the heady scent of the many lupines that grew straight and tall in the front garden, they would have won at any flower show and the massed clumps of strong smelling wallflowers, the perfume of which I love to this day.
Mr. Guest, our next-door neighbour calling me his Golden Boy, I went blond shortly after my birth and had golden curls until I was about two. Mr. Guest is the person who physically goes back the farthest in time of all the people I have met during my life, as he had been born in the mid eighteen-hundreds. He often told me of times when he was a boy walking almost everywhere and sometimes riding on horseback, in carts and gigs and once in a coach and four. He could vividly remember the first time he had seen a motorcar in the early nineteen hundreds, which he said had frightened the life out of him. He had seen service with the Army in the Boer War, Crimea and First World War as a Major in intelligence. After his death aged ninety-six from yellow jaundice in 1949, a couple of schoolteachers the Cools moved in, they were not liked by mum for some reason, they probably tried to be friendly!
There was water under the house. This could be seen glinting through cracks in the floorboards especially on moonlit nights, when the moonbeams passed through the ventilator grille in the wall below my bedroom window. One day the old pre-war, wooden cased radiogram that we had in the hall, catching fire and mum rushing in and tipping a jug of water into it, after ripping the flex from the wall socket. I remember to this day the huge cracklings and great amounts of steam that very effectively said its life was over.
At the time I was fed a lot of rabbit, something that I no longer care for and fish. The Fishman was a regular on Fridays and I remember Huss being a favourite, again though I do like some fish still, Huss (Dog fish or Rock Salmon) is not one of my favourites now. Another monthly visitor was the Sleep-Easy man who was I think a travelling salesman for a bed company who sold new beds on tick, quite a common practice in those days. There was also Mr Griggs the insurance man, who had a badly injured left hand from an old injury sustained when he was an apprentice carpenter and had put his hand through a circular saw. He came on his old motorbike once a month to collect my parents subscription to their house insurance he visited us regularly well into the sixties after we had moved to the Tollgate near Gravesend and had a penchant for telling the most boring monologues. When Nanna lived with us, her rooms were in the loggia, a half-timbered and glazed compartmented room built across the front of the house. This was always a very cold area, especially in the winter and it cannot have done the old girls bronchitis much good.
Walking in the woods at the bottom of Manor Road, then a rutted unsurfaced unadopted muddy track, mum almost always dressed in one of her many mack’s and taking Edna’s big Collie dog, Buster with us. My first experience of a wasp sting, one that I did not enjoy at all occurred in the bomb crater in the these woods at the age of about two and a half.
In what was probably the spring of 1949, I was in the woods at the bottom of Manor Road picking Primroses with mum and Nanna. I became separated from my mother and grandmother and all of a sudden bumped into an old dishevelled woman, dressed in a long pale blue skirt with a dark shawl about her shoulders. I was terrified and fled from her, soon bumping into my mother and being very comforted by her and the familiar smell and soft feel of her mackintosh. I was convinced that the old woman was a Witch, which she may well have been, but it is far more likely that she was a Gipsy. My unreasoned fear of witches stayed with me through my early childhood and this may well have heightened my psychic awareness.
There was a big old wooden shed at the bottom of the garden, where dad tried to grow mushrooms commercially. I remember the warm dark interior and the sweet smelling deep fertilized beds and several paraffin heaters in the main isle between the mushroom beds and red paraffin lamps hung from the rafters. This venture was sadly an expensive failure.
The green wooden lorry made for me by Mr. Leak, the Stationmaster of Sole Street Railway Station for my second birthday. He also made me a large sit in, wooden railway locomotive, but being unable to pedal or steer either of them, I very quickly lost interest, though both were very nicely made things.
Playing with the Belfors or Belpers children whose parents ran The Railway Inn, which was at the head of the approach road to the station forecourt on the ‘Up’ side of the line. They had a big sandpit, a slide and a complicated double swing set up in their large garden.
Nanna eating plums from the big tree in our back garden, giving me one and me coming up in a rash, choking and nearly passing out. I have never been able to eat raw plums since.
Another ritual in the early spring was to walk to Rookery Corner, usually on a trip to Cobham shopping and look at the massed snowdrops in the gardens of the big house Owletts
Nanna, mum and I waiting at the farmyard at Rookery Corner, which was our nearest bus stop, where the Maidstone and District Motor Services bus Number 23 to Gravesend stopped on The Street opposite the big house called Owletts. Nanna looking up to watch the rooks wheeling around the treetops and while pointing them out to me, getting a great dob of bird mess right in the eye.
There were generally very few private vehicles of any sort on the roads in our area and only a few of the locals had a car, van or a motorcycle. Mostly people walked or rode bicycles to get about and Sole Street had no bus service. Our nearest bus stop was either in Meopham at the bottom of Norwood Lane or Cobham at Rookery Corner. My mother and Nanna walked miles in my early years, at first with me in my pram, then a pushchair. I was quick to learn to walk and talk and I was soon making the long walk to Cobham village and back with them. This could well be why in later life I was never very keen on walking, though I have walked many miles in my life due to my hobbies of shooting and bug-hunting.
The lady in Camer Lodge, showing me her many oil lamps, at this time her only form of lighting. This was probably around 1948/9 and she was a tenant of the titled Darnley family from nearby Cobham Hall who were the major landowners in the area, owned Camer Park and its big model farm, nearby Nursted Court and a great deal of land around Cobham, Sole Street, Luddesdown and Harvel.
It was quite a ritual in the spring to walk through Cobham village and out on the road to Shorne that passed the daffodil fields of Cobham Hall, where the massed blooms were quite a sight. The titled Darnley family had dabbled in the growing of daffodils commercially before the war.
The tree washing machine that mum called the “Sinka Sinka Chain Engine”, a very apt description of the noise it made. This was a large tank/chassis mounted on spoked iron wheels, with a big triple plunger pump at one end driven with the aid of a long open link chain, by a bright red, hit and miss, horizontal, open crankshaft, twin flywheel, hopper cooled, single cylinder engine that was probably an Amanco. I remember being enthralled by this piece of equipment as it whirred, clanked and spat away to itself, as the farm workers used it for high volume tree washing in the local orchards. This machine was usually towed about with the aid of a Standard Fordson tractor. The whole thing would have given todays health and safety inspectors apoplexy!
I have treasured and lasting memories to this day, of happy late spring hours spent with mum and Nanna sitting on the lush grass under the huge stately Napoleon, Rivers and Gaucher cherry trees, all clothed in massed white blossoms and full of the sound of countless bees buzzing away. Walking in the local apple orchards under the trees that were covered in delicate pink sweet smelling blossom, while listening to the liquid trills of the Skylarks high in the sky above us, the mournful ‘peewit’ call of the Green Plovers and the strange croak of the Corncrakes in the golden fields of corn. Fields were generally much smaller than they are today and had thick boundary hedges that were alive with small mammals, birds, butterflies, many other insects and countless wild flowers. There were many more hedge row trees and the individual stately old English Elm trees gave an unmistakable rich dark green and very typical silhouette of Southern Englands landscape to the distant horizon.
Nanna leaving us in the late summer of 1949 and going to live with her son Billy Birchley and his family at Number 57 St Albans Close Valley Drive in Gravesend, which devastated me, for I was very attached to my Nanna and loved her very much. This move I think was instigated partly by my father, as he like I am nowadays, was not too keen on other people in his house on a long term or permanent basis.
For my third birthday, my major present was a pedal powered Jeep finished in creamy yellow with red wheels and folding windscreen frame. I loved this car and got a huge amount of use and enjoyment from it. It went to Watling Bank with us and became a favourite of my friend Tony’s too!
Long walks were made at the weekends across the fields behind our house, over to Great Buckland with dad and later our St Bernard Julie. Often my treat was either a bag of Smiths Crisps or a Mars Bar from Baldocks Stores, where old Nellie Smith worked. I often went off with my mum for a shorter walk into the fields behind the Smiths orchard, usually ending up at the old light blue painted, latticed iron footbridge over the railway line that was in a deep cutting through the fields at Luddesdown near The Cock Inn.
Many hours were spent here waiting for the bright, malachite green painted Merchant Navy Class, known derogatively as 'Spam Cans', Bullied steam locomotive hauled, Golden Arrow boat/train to hurtle down the deep cutting on its way from Victoria Station in London to the steamer docks at Folkestone and Dover. Julie the dog would often disappear into the tall corn much to my delight. I remember far more butterflies on the wing during the long sunny and warm summer months than there are these days and lots of flax being grown by the farmers then, with its delicate massed pale blue flowers.
Baldocks General Stores the only shop in Sole Street, had a very meagre selection of sweets that included Humbugs, Imperial Mints, Jelly Babies, Bulls Eye Toffees, Brazil nuts coated in butterscotch toffee, Banana Whorls and Toffee Apples, most of which were sold loose from big glass display jars and after weighing out, were handed over in small white paper bags. There were very few pre-packed things then, some of these were Smiths Crisps in white, red and blue greaseproof paper bags, with a small amount of salt inside in a twist of blue paper, Mars bars and small bars of Cadburys plain and milk chocolate. 3d, 5d and 6d respectively, at the time when there were two hundred and forty pennies in the pound, in todays money 1.2p 2.0p and 2.5p! They also sold biscuits, McVities Rich Tea, Plain and Chocolate Digestive mostly loose and again from big square clear glass storage jars, fresh bread on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sugar, flour, cornflakes, porridge oats, cigarettes Players, Woodbines and Craven A, which mother smoked 3s 6p (17.5p) for twenty, a small selection of seasonal vegetables and some newspapers.
All sweets and cigarettes were then on ration still and one of the first things to come off rationing was outer clothing and mackintoshes, which pleased my mother an average mackintosh then cost about thirty shillings and a good quality ladies fashion mack about £5.
Our coinage then was very different to what it is today. The smallest coin was the Farthing, a quarter of a penny and nine hundred and sixty to the pound. The Ha'pney, half a penny and four hundred and eighty to the pound. Penny two hundred and forty to the pound. Threep'ney bit, a nine sided bronze coin, worth three pence and eighty to the pound. The Sixpence, forty to the pound. Shilling, twenty to the pound. Two shilling, ten to the pound and Half-crown, eight to the pound Crown, minted on special occasions like the Coronation, four to the pound were all silver coins and notes were Ten shilling, brown. One pound, green. Five pound, blue. Ten pound, red. Twenty pound, gold and Fifty pound, pinky/red. Though the larger Twenty and Fifty pound notes were rarely seen, as fifty pounds then was a huge sum! Representing in excess of a months average wage.
Gander’s Stores in Cobham.
Gander’s the grocers and general stores in Cobham, where my mother did her main shopping, was a wonderful big shop full of the most exotic smells. Eric the son was the same age as me, his father George had taken over the business from his parents, who lived in a small bungalow at the back of the shop. Our groceries and provisions were always delivered on Wednesdays, with the aid of an old 1930s long-front Morris Commercial box van.
The shop was quite large and held a wide variety of provisions. There were many large hams and sides of bacon hanging from big hooks in the ceiling of the cured meats section, which had a huge gleaming red and chromium plated bacon-slicer on the counter. There were a great number of large Hessian sacks on the wooden boarded floor that contained dried mixed fruit, apple rings, prunes and many types of split dried peas, beans, lentils and various nuts. The cheese and butter counter was always piled high with huge round cylinders of various mature English cheeses wrapped in muslin and the butter was in big salt encrusted wood chip boxes.
The cheese was cut into wedges with a thin wire with handles at each end over a wooden structure with marble surfaces and a gap through which the wire was pulled and then wrapped in grease-proof paper, butter was scooped out of the tubs and then weighed with the aid of a set of small platform scales with varying sized brass weights, patted into shape with a pair of wooden bats on a marble slab, wrapped in grease-proof paper and handed over the counter.
There was also a section of the shop devoted to kitchen goods and utensils, ironmongery, paint, paraffin and creosote, lamp wicks and chimneys, Primus stoves, Aladdin heaters and Valour stoves and ovens. Various oil and petrol lamps, including the American made Miller petrol vapour, mantle lamps, Petromax petrol pressure mantle lamps and Aladdin paraffin pressure mantle, wick and mantle and plain wick lamps. After our move to the Tollgate, we remained a customer of Ganders and they still delivered our groceries every week for many years until my family moved to Lower Halstow. The old van had by then been replaced with a brand new Morris Commercial flat-front van, the vehicle with the inverted heart shaped grill, which I have always though was the most miserable looking vehicle ever produced.
Many hours were spent at the forge opposite the war memorial, converted into a house in the late fifties and where a friend from my days at St. Andrews School Richard Walker subsequently lived, watching the big Suffolk Punch and Shire farm horses being shod. As most villages did then, Cobham had its own bakery with traditional wood fired brick ovens and the smell of the freshly baked bread was a joy. There was not the huge variety of breads one gets these days, just white, brown, Hovis and sticky malt loaves, either plain or fruit, but I for one would go back to those days when bread tasted of something, like a shot! On Tuesdays and Thursdays it was sweet and savoury baking day respectively with apple pies and turnovers, plain and jam doughnuts, cream slices, horns and ginger cake. Thursdays saw the beef, beef and onion, beef and potato, pork and apple, chicken and chicken and mushroom pies of various sizes being cooked along with Oggies, a local version of Cornish pasties.
Every visit to Cobham, about a mile and a half walk from our home in Sole Street, had to have its ritual pump of the handle on the village pump that was on the opposite side to the Church on the road to Rookery Corner. I never got any water from it! But developed a lasting fascination for pumps and water generally.
The Airedale Terrier dog in Sole Street that unusually, for from a very early age I have always had a deep affinity with animals, especially dogs and cats, I did not get on with. It was a bad tempered creature and to this day, I have never liked the breed.
One day when walking past the ornamental pond, at Sole Street House asking dad if I could walk on the pondweed that completely covered its surface like a green mat and for some stupid reason, not really understanding his reply that it would not take my weight. Our main village pond was near the turning into Gold Street. This was quite a feature of our hamlet then and was always well tended and kept full of water. There was another smaller pond, on the corner of Manor Road opposite the Baldocks Transport yard. I have memories from those early years of Road Locomotives (Traction Engines) with a threshing machine, the drivers caravan and a water bowser on tow, stopping at these ponds to refill their boilers and water tanks. Steam Rollers with the drivers caravan and a water bowser, were also a fairly common sight during my early years at Sole Street.
I recall my father coming home one Friday evening a bit stressed after the long drive from West Houghton, one of the various mines, factories and depots that were in his charge. Others were at Carlisle, Peter Lee, Bolton, Uttoxeter, Tewksbury, Melton Mowbray, Rochester and Robertsbridge. Me coming in from the shed beside the house, with an old sack. "Don't bring that dirty ole sack in ere" from dad, mum going off at dad for dropping his aitches and me in tears from the harsh words.
Public Transport.
I do not remember going further a’field by public transport much while we lived in Sole Street, though there were occasional trips to Gravesend, the nearest large town by bus and Meopham by train and as a special treat, a couple of trips to Rochester for shopping in Leonards the big department store in the High Street and to the Castle in the summer of 1950.
All the rail services were then steam locomotive hauled, the signals were all manually operated from an immaculate signal box full of gleaming silver handled levers and polished brass instruments and bells at the end of the ‘Down’ platform and the lights were all gas powered on the platforms and in the waiting rooms and paraffin on the locos and signals. These were still in use on the signals, when I was going to Maritime College from Meopham Station in 1965 and I can still recall that slightly sweet, warm and rather pleasant smell given off by the paraffin wick lanterns. The station platforms and waiting rooms were still lit by gas and there was always a roaring coal fire in the waiting room, during the winter months.
Meopham Station was quite an important freight interchange then and had extensive sidings where several firms had their business premises, including a large coal merchants. Off nearby Norwood Lane which flanked the railway line, there was a large nursery and market garden. They grew Tomatoes, Celery, Strawberries, Chrysanthemums and Carnations commercially under acres of large glass houses, which were sent by rail to Covent Garden Vegetable and Flower Market in London on a regular daily basis. The company closed in the late fifties and the extensive site, after standing derelict for several years, became a very large private housing estate in the mid sixties.
Sole Street was not such an important station as Meopham, but it did have sidings on the ‘Down’ Manor Road side of the line. The Blacks had their coal yard and depot there and there was a small factory at the end of Manor Road that for years had made specialist paint coatings and treatments.
Fawkham Station renamed Longfield after the second war the next station ‘Up’ the line from Meopham towards London, was then another important interchange that had large areas of sidings. Half a mile further up the line was Pinden junction, where the branch line that went to Gravesend via Longfield Halt, Betsom Halt, Southfleet Station then over the A2 trunk road at Springhead to Rosherville Halt and to the line terminus at the old rail/steamer interchange at Gravesend West Station near the Victorian Pier on the River Thames joined the main Victoria line, which closed to passenger service on 5th August 1953.
The garage, where dad kept his car was in Blacks the coal merchants yard, which was a pleasant wooded glade with several old wooden sheds and bays for the various solid fuels made from old railway sleepers off Manor Road, that was a very sparsely populated and rutted unadopted track at the time that lead to the small Sole Street railway sidings a specialist paint manufacturer and the extensive woods at its end. Going there one day and finding a rabbit, Blackie that had been put there earlier for me to find, by my parents and taking it home to a ready built hutch.
One evening, having gone to bed, hearing a van driving up the track beside the house that went to the Smiths bungalow. A big flash of flame, as Billy Wrights old Fordson van, caught fire under the bonnet. He lived in the next house up the road and was later to take over Wrights Coachworks the family business in Strood.
The sound of the wind in the many telephone wires making them hum. We were on the telephone at Sole Street, our number Cobham 364. But it was an all operator service, the telephone receiver having a blank faceplate and when the handset was lifted it called the exchange in Cobham Village and I recall mum often having quite long conversations with the various operators, before they made her connection.
Saturday morning drives with dad around the local area to Luddesdown, Great Buckland and Harvel. These drives were to an extent an excuse for my father to visit his friend and work colleague Ken Briggs, who lived in a cottage in Harvel. We would always go there via The Golden Lion Inn at Luddesdown then up Cutter Ridge Road past the little isolated gamekeepers cottage set in the open fields, join Buckland Road and turn right, pass the ancient Dode Church and climb the steep hill past Horseholders Wood into Harvel.
I recall the time we found the major part of a Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle, dumped in the woods at Harvel and I can distinctly remember the reversed control levers on the handlebars, the twin fillers on the chrome plated petrol tank and the twin stacked fish tail exhaust system, all that was missing were the wheels and the big 1000 cc JAP V Twin engine.
At this time, there were several families living in old railway carriages and buses in the Harvel Woods. Today, they would be scathingly called new age travellers, but then they had no alternative, as they were unable to afford the rents on brick built property, which at the time was very scarce in the area. One of the buses was a six-wheeled Thorneycroft of 1930s vintage. It had a wonderful outside curving and sweeping staircase, at the back to the upper deck and would be worth a fortune today.
A ritual during the late summer, was to walk through Cobham Village and opposite the main entrance to Cobham Hall near the Shorne crossroads on the A2 London/Dover trunk road enter Ashenbank Woods to our left, where we would walk down the long ashfelt surfaced track past the old trial gypsum mine now a coal mine, that my father had been involved with on behalf of the Darnley Estate, to the large pond that my mother had painted in her twenties and entitled ‘Nocturne’ and climb up onto the open heathy area, where lush blackberry bushes grew in profusion. A days blackberry picking there would see us returning home loaded with bags of lovely fruit.
I recall the Smiths, who lived in a bungalow in the cherry orchards behind our large back garden showing me their Primus stoves with silent burners, which fascinated me. These were their favoured form of cooking during the summer months, when they let their Rayburn solid fuel cooker go out, as it made their little bungalow too hot.
The Baldocks ran the small general shop in Sole Street and operated a transport business that had several Albion and Leyland flat-bed lorries and a couple of tippers. Their son David was the same age as me and in later life we were to meet again, as he had an interest in old cars like me and did a bit of dealing. Subsequently he was to own a garage in Goudhurst that was dedicated to the restoration and sale of pre-war vehicles, but I understand that this venture failed due to compulsory purchase and redevelopment of his site in the mid nineteen eighties.
Even at my early age when at Sole Street, I was aware that mum had her strange side. She certainly had friends and enemies and there was nothing in between, she either liked, in some cases loved, or hated vehemently! She was most outspoken in her likes and dislikes and I can remember my father often being embarrassed by her outbursts. I have mentioned her liking for rubberized materials and the number of mackintosh garments that she had. In my youth she confined her interest to wearing her macks and capes, but I know from later conversations with her older sister Rita, that before the war she had worn other more outrageous rubberized clothing.
In May 1950 my parents got Julie a young pedigree St Bernard bitch from a kennels near Dode Church in Great Buckland, as a replacement for mothers Sealyham Nibby who had died the previous Christmas. I am sure that my mother was the bigger dog lover of my parents, for I am certain all the dogs were around before my father came on the scene.
Julie, lived in the sack shed and one morning going to let her out, I found that she was in an awful state, covered in mess. Looking back now, I do not think that poor Julie was a very healthy dog. I have vague memories of her being violently sick on several occasions and I am sure one morning during a walk she suffered a seizure.
My first holiday to Greatstone October 1950.
My first holiday was taken in October 1950 and spent in a bungalow named Sealure at New Romney near the great expanses of sandy beaches of St Marys Bay Greatstone. Here I was introduced to the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, which I found fascinating, spending many hours riding on the fifteen inch gauge steam locomotive hauled trains. There was a little museum at New Romney, where I spent many happy hours putting hap'ney's and pennies into the coin slots of the many powered exhibits and I found the old engine sheds nearby were very interesting.
On the main line sidings there was a very old, open foot-plate, 2-4-0 tank engine named the Dun Robin, which had been built for the long defunct London, Southeast and Chatham Railway Company. It had a huge copper steam dome, tall black brass bound smoke stack, open footplate and a three axle tender, it was all finished in light green and black with gold coach lining and a red chassis. We often went on the little train and one time I remember being with mum on the train, while dad was pacing us on the road from the old Dungeness Lighthouse. He was distracted by waving to us and drove off the road into the soft shingle and got stuck.
Medicines.
I was quite a healthy kid only getting the odd head cold, cough and rare tummy upset that I am sure all young people go through. The cold remedy of the day was fresh hot lemon made with sugar and boiling water and black gums called ‘Victory Vee’ helped ease congestion, as they were very potent. Cough syrup was I think ‘Ipicacuanna’ and Vic Vapour Rub was applied to ones chest. The stomach settler was Kaolin and Morphine known as Chlorodin Mixture, a brown muddy looking mixture, which I recall tasted rather nice and Milk of Magnesia a thickish white liquid, which came in a dark blue bottle. For burns and abrasions there was Acriflavine, a bright yellow paste developed during the war to help burns victims, which was very good and Calamine Lotion was used as an ease-all.
There were many telegrams of congratulation including those from my fathers parents, his younger brother Tony, Auntie Belle his mothers sister and husband Uncle Jimmy, mothers sister Rita and husband Rennie, half-sisters Joy, Betty, Peggy, Norma and half-brother Bill, their respective husbands and wives and several friends and work colleagues.
In those first years after the Second World War, few people in our small hamlet of Sole Street near Cobham in Kent had a private car, though a number had a motorcycle or a motorcycle and sidecar. The majority of people used a push bike or walked and there was no bus service in Sole Street, the nearest service being in Cobham or Meopham, with regular buses to Gravesend our nearest large town. There was a regular steam train passenger service from Sole Street to London Victoria, which was used by the few locals who had jobs in the City and it was a means of getting to the large towns of Rochester and Chatham, which were about twelve miles away to the east.
A taxi, wedding and funeral service was operated by a small Company based in Cobham and we used the services of Mr George Mungeam and his pre-war Austin Sixteen with division quite often. We made shopping trips to Gravesend every other month and the Medway Towns were visited perhaps twice a year. A visit to London was a very special event made only once a year generally just before Christmas, to window-shop in Gamages and Harrods and see the Christmas tree and lights in Trafalgar Square then a major event!
Dress was generally more formal than it is today and most people wore suits with waistcoats, jackets, overcoats and the ubiquitous hat. No man then ever set foot outside without his hat, gloves and often a scarf. The well to do with large houses, still had live-in domestic staff, but there were not so many servants as in the pre-war days. A lot of families still had a nanny for the children, though the task was often now covered by the lady of the house’s mother.
Sole Street was predominately a rural farming community and a great number of the locals were in some way connected to the two large farm complexes which dominated the area, both being owned and run by the titled Darnley family who lived in nearby Cobham Hall. There were also a couple of large market gardens, which grew salad vegetables and flowers on a grand scale for the large vegetable and flower markets of Covent Garden in London and their produce was shipped out on a daily basis from both Sole Street and Meopham Railway Stations.
My first memories.
My first real memories are of mother and Nanna taking me out in my pram in the snows of early 1947. Our small hamlet of Sole Street was completely cut off by the snowdrifts that were in excess of five feet deep in many places. To this day I can remember my mother and Nanna struggling to push my big pram along the lanes and due to the depth of the compacted snow filling them to almost hedge top height and being able to see over into the fields, which resembled a classic scene from a Christmas Card.
From a very early age I can remember the subtle fragrance of wallflowers, lupines and apple blossom from the big trees in our back garden, which I still love and to smell their delicate perfume now, can easily transport me back to my carefree childhood days. Nanna singing, 'Twinkle, twinkle little star', 'Babe of Mine' from the film ‘Dumbo’ and Paul Robeson’s 'Lull a Bye, Bye' to me.
Some of the favourite songs of the time were 'When Lilacs bloom Again', 'This is my lovely Day', 'Martyr witch of the wild Wood', 'Remember, Remember' or perhaps it was called 'One day when we were Young' from the 1939 MGM musical 'The Great Waltz', the anglicized and popular song version of a duet adapted from I think a German operetta by Johan Strauss. "One day when we were young that wonderful morning in May. Remember, remember how we were young that day," 'I'll be loving you Always' and 'Springtime' from Sigmund Rombergs 1917 operetta, which became the 1937 MGM musical 'May-time', which I have always thought in error was from Noel Cowards musical 'Bitter Sweet'.
"Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart I will love you ever.---My darling I will remember that time ever after, love time, springtime, May". My mothers favourite singer was the exiled German tenor Richard Tauber, who I believe had made his home in the UK and died from cancer in 1948 and I can remember his lovely rich, rounded and unmistakable voice often coming from the old radiogram in the hall.
Mother made me an elephant Dumbo, a deer Bambie and a rabbit Binnie, my corruption of Bunny, which stuck from chamois leather. This must have been quite costly both in time and materials, which were on ration then. I loved Binnie, who was my confidante for many years of my childhood. Bambie was all right, but I preferred the Walt Disney cartoon book, which to this day can make me cry, as can the cartoon film 'Dumbo'.
Thinking back deeply to these times has been quite a revelation, for I have realized with quite a shock that I had never actually seen the film, my first viewing of it being in early 2009 sixty-one years on, though my memories of 'Dumbo' are a very vivid recollection from my very early days. It is not possible that at the age of one or two I saw the film and we did not have a television until the early fifties and I would not have understood it, if I had seen it! I must assume that my memory is from what mother and Nanna told me and from the books, mainly picture, of both 'Dumbo' and 'Bambi' that I had at the time.
These books along with one of 'Snow White', must have been compiled from the Walt Disney cartoon drawings. For I have vivid memories of the wheeled and barred wagon, which features in the film 'Dumbo' that the disgraced mother elephant was contained in and the sign upon it 'Mad Elephant'. I also remember very strongly the mother and Dumbos trunks reaching for each other and the mother cradling her baby in her trunk and rocking him gently, while she sang 'Babe of Mine' to him. The whole film depicts ridicule, victimisation and humiliation and like some scenes in the film 'Bambie' and the later epic 'Ben Hur', which my longest known friend Tony Pickles and I were taken to London to see by his Gran in the autumn of 1959, can still bring the tears to my eyes.
For some inexplicable reason I hated poor Dumbo and his trunk and ears soon got torn off. I remember mum carefully sewing them back on many, many times, to the extent that the soft chamois leather became very holed from her repeated sewing. Perhaps this is an early manifestation of my unreasoned dislike for things that are considered a little out of the ordinary to my strange eyes. Through-out my life, I have had problems coming to terms with changes and I do not like change, or change of routine, it phases me badly and though until very recently I have never met the phenomena, I find sudden spring-cleaning and total change arounds in the home very, very disorientating and annoying. For my way of dealing with things is to work to a mental map, which tells me where everything is. My treatment of Dumbo, which I still have, along with all the others and now treasure greatly, as they hold so many memories of happy and carefree childhood days makes me feel very sad now, as my abuse of poor Dumbo must have hurt mum a lot, as she had obviously put so much love and care into making it for me.
My mother really doted on me, as did my Nanna, to the extent that I in later life became almost smothered by their love and had quite a job coping with it. Sadly like my mother, I also have a very long memory and at times I could not help recalling the profound shock that I had experienced the time mother screamed at me "You filthy little boy!" In the end I had to shut off and get away and I was often short and sadly at times downright rude, when the all smothering, love and affection was poured on. It was to a similar extent carried out with food and mum realising that I was a greedy kid, exploited this outlet for her affection in plying me with food, which was not, like her physical affection rejected.
My father was quite distant and it is probably a direct result of his very severe Victorian upbringing. He was unable to show his true feelings towards me and sadly we never did become at all close. He was very critical of my at times somewhat Cavalier attitude and mother would often go deliberately against his judgment, which often resulted in bitter and heated arguments. But I was lucky being quite quick witted and intelligent and able to cram and scrape through tests, provided that there was not too much hype placed on them, if I wanted to! When they were presented.
Temperley The Street. Sole Street near Cobham. Kent. (March 9th 1946 to January 2nd 1951)
My memories of my first family home, a medium sized bungalow on the main street through the then small country hamlet of Sole Street are as follows. The kitchen was a long room on the left side of the property with a separate pantry, there was a door at the side to the back garden and another door that gave entry to the large central hall. Off the hall were the bathroom and my bedroom at the back of the house and a sitting room and the main bedroom to the front. The loggia was a glass and timber two roomed extension built across the front of the house and was where my Nanna lived during the time she was with us.
The front garden was quite small and was set below road level behind a tall and thick privet hedge. Flowerbeds containing the wonderful tall straight lupines and wallflowers were at each side of the central path and a rose arbour screened the house. The back garden had a big lawn, to the left of which was a sunken area, with lots of ferns and shade loving plants. A large plum tree was at the back of the lawn, which was flanked by a vegetable garden that was bordered by the big wooden shed where my father tried to grow mushrooms commercially. At the left side of the house there was a path from the front garden that passed the kitchen window and on the other side that flanked the lane that went to the Smiths orchard and bungalow, there was a small garden shed behind a high privet hedge, where Julie the dog and others before her had lived. High damson hedges flanked the whole rear garden.
I can remember a time sitting in the kitchen playing with my cuddly toy rabbit Binnie, while my mother washed up at the sink, which was below the window on the sidewall facing our neighbour Mr. Guest. My attention was drawn to something that I thought was a leaf that kept appearing at the pantry door. I drew my mothers attention to it and she said not to be so silly, it was nothing. A little later a large mouse came into the kitchen from behind the pantry door and this time my mum saw it and dealt with it by trapping it in a dishcloth and putting it outside.
My fathers car at the time was a pre-war Morris Series E saloon and I recall quite a few drives around our local area at weekends with dad, mum and Nanna in the Morris, soon to be replaced with his first Company car, a 1948 Hillman Minx saloon. I remember on several occasions dad parking on the various railway bridges in our area, opening the sliding sun roof so that I could sit on the roof and watch the steam trains go hurtling by below us. Occasionally during the hard winter months, mum and Nanna would call on the services of George Mungeam and his car to go to Cobham shopping. George Mungeam was the local Taxi, Wedding and Funeral car driver, his car was a 1936 Austin Sixteen with division and he was a very softly spoken man in his sixties, who had seen terrible action in the First World War, having been gassed and was always very nice to me.
Piggyback rides on mum’s back down to Baldocks shop that was opposite the end of Manor Road and the small pond then in front of the little chapel, she often dressed in one of her macks. The strong rubbery smell of her many mackintosh clothes, her cape and the mackintosh sheets of various colours that were in one of the cupboards in the hall, said to be blackout curtains from the war, but there were very many more than was required to cover the small number of windows that the house had! I was encouraged to use these, her macks and cape to make camps in the house by mum. Often at night, she would come into my bedroom, with one of her macks or the cape and wrap me in it. I found this very comforting and many is the morning, that I have woken in the warm rubbery smell and soft smooth feel of one of her macks.
In my first few years the dogs Nibby, a white Sealyham, rather a fashion statement at the time and two other dark coloured longhaired terrier types Peter and Jack, were always gambolling around my pushchair. All these dogs were elderly and died off, Nibby being the last in late 1949, long before I really understood the finality of death.
Nanna holding me in a shawl and walking me around the garden, I remember being fascinated by and pointing to daffodils, but not liking the sour smell of them much. Later I can remember the heady scent of the many lupines that grew straight and tall in the front garden, they would have won at any flower show and the massed clumps of strong smelling wallflowers, the perfume of which I love to this day.
Mr. Guest, our next-door neighbour calling me his Golden Boy, I went blond shortly after my birth and had golden curls until I was about two. Mr. Guest is the person who physically goes back the farthest in time of all the people I have met during my life, as he had been born in the mid eighteen-hundreds. He often told me of times when he was a boy walking almost everywhere and sometimes riding on horseback, in carts and gigs and once in a coach and four. He could vividly remember the first time he had seen a motorcar in the early nineteen hundreds, which he said had frightened the life out of him. He had seen service with the Army in the Boer War, Crimea and First World War as a Major in intelligence. After his death aged ninety-six from yellow jaundice in 1949, a couple of schoolteachers the Cools moved in, they were not liked by mum for some reason, they probably tried to be friendly!
There was water under the house. This could be seen glinting through cracks in the floorboards especially on moonlit nights, when the moonbeams passed through the ventilator grille in the wall below my bedroom window. One day the old pre-war, wooden cased radiogram that we had in the hall, catching fire and mum rushing in and tipping a jug of water into it, after ripping the flex from the wall socket. I remember to this day the huge cracklings and great amounts of steam that very effectively said its life was over.
At the time I was fed a lot of rabbit, something that I no longer care for and fish. The Fishman was a regular on Fridays and I remember Huss being a favourite, again though I do like some fish still, Huss (Dog fish or Rock Salmon) is not one of my favourites now. Another monthly visitor was the Sleep-Easy man who was I think a travelling salesman for a bed company who sold new beds on tick, quite a common practice in those days. There was also Mr Griggs the insurance man, who had a badly injured left hand from an old injury sustained when he was an apprentice carpenter and had put his hand through a circular saw. He came on his old motorbike once a month to collect my parents subscription to their house insurance he visited us regularly well into the sixties after we had moved to the Tollgate near Gravesend and had a penchant for telling the most boring monologues. When Nanna lived with us, her rooms were in the loggia, a half-timbered and glazed compartmented room built across the front of the house. This was always a very cold area, especially in the winter and it cannot have done the old girls bronchitis much good.
Walking in the woods at the bottom of Manor Road, then a rutted unsurfaced unadopted muddy track, mum almost always dressed in one of her many mack’s and taking Edna’s big Collie dog, Buster with us. My first experience of a wasp sting, one that I did not enjoy at all occurred in the bomb crater in the these woods at the age of about two and a half.
In what was probably the spring of 1949, I was in the woods at the bottom of Manor Road picking Primroses with mum and Nanna. I became separated from my mother and grandmother and all of a sudden bumped into an old dishevelled woman, dressed in a long pale blue skirt with a dark shawl about her shoulders. I was terrified and fled from her, soon bumping into my mother and being very comforted by her and the familiar smell and soft feel of her mackintosh. I was convinced that the old woman was a Witch, which she may well have been, but it is far more likely that she was a Gipsy. My unreasoned fear of witches stayed with me through my early childhood and this may well have heightened my psychic awareness.
There was a big old wooden shed at the bottom of the garden, where dad tried to grow mushrooms commercially. I remember the warm dark interior and the sweet smelling deep fertilized beds and several paraffin heaters in the main isle between the mushroom beds and red paraffin lamps hung from the rafters. This venture was sadly an expensive failure.
The green wooden lorry made for me by Mr. Leak, the Stationmaster of Sole Street Railway Station for my second birthday. He also made me a large sit in, wooden railway locomotive, but being unable to pedal or steer either of them, I very quickly lost interest, though both were very nicely made things.
Playing with the Belfors or Belpers children whose parents ran The Railway Inn, which was at the head of the approach road to the station forecourt on the ‘Up’ side of the line. They had a big sandpit, a slide and a complicated double swing set up in their large garden.
Nanna eating plums from the big tree in our back garden, giving me one and me coming up in a rash, choking and nearly passing out. I have never been able to eat raw plums since.
Another ritual in the early spring was to walk to Rookery Corner, usually on a trip to Cobham shopping and look at the massed snowdrops in the gardens of the big house Owletts
Nanna, mum and I waiting at the farmyard at Rookery Corner, which was our nearest bus stop, where the Maidstone and District Motor Services bus Number 23 to Gravesend stopped on The Street opposite the big house called Owletts. Nanna looking up to watch the rooks wheeling around the treetops and while pointing them out to me, getting a great dob of bird mess right in the eye.
There were generally very few private vehicles of any sort on the roads in our area and only a few of the locals had a car, van or a motorcycle. Mostly people walked or rode bicycles to get about and Sole Street had no bus service. Our nearest bus stop was either in Meopham at the bottom of Norwood Lane or Cobham at Rookery Corner. My mother and Nanna walked miles in my early years, at first with me in my pram, then a pushchair. I was quick to learn to walk and talk and I was soon making the long walk to Cobham village and back with them. This could well be why in later life I was never very keen on walking, though I have walked many miles in my life due to my hobbies of shooting and bug-hunting.
The lady in Camer Lodge, showing me her many oil lamps, at this time her only form of lighting. This was probably around 1948/9 and she was a tenant of the titled Darnley family from nearby Cobham Hall who were the major landowners in the area, owned Camer Park and its big model farm, nearby Nursted Court and a great deal of land around Cobham, Sole Street, Luddesdown and Harvel.
It was quite a ritual in the spring to walk through Cobham village and out on the road to Shorne that passed the daffodil fields of Cobham Hall, where the massed blooms were quite a sight. The titled Darnley family had dabbled in the growing of daffodils commercially before the war.
The tree washing machine that mum called the “Sinka Sinka Chain Engine”, a very apt description of the noise it made. This was a large tank/chassis mounted on spoked iron wheels, with a big triple plunger pump at one end driven with the aid of a long open link chain, by a bright red, hit and miss, horizontal, open crankshaft, twin flywheel, hopper cooled, single cylinder engine that was probably an Amanco. I remember being enthralled by this piece of equipment as it whirred, clanked and spat away to itself, as the farm workers used it for high volume tree washing in the local orchards. This machine was usually towed about with the aid of a Standard Fordson tractor. The whole thing would have given todays health and safety inspectors apoplexy!
I have treasured and lasting memories to this day, of happy late spring hours spent with mum and Nanna sitting on the lush grass under the huge stately Napoleon, Rivers and Gaucher cherry trees, all clothed in massed white blossoms and full of the sound of countless bees buzzing away. Walking in the local apple orchards under the trees that were covered in delicate pink sweet smelling blossom, while listening to the liquid trills of the Skylarks high in the sky above us, the mournful ‘peewit’ call of the Green Plovers and the strange croak of the Corncrakes in the golden fields of corn. Fields were generally much smaller than they are today and had thick boundary hedges that were alive with small mammals, birds, butterflies, many other insects and countless wild flowers. There were many more hedge row trees and the individual stately old English Elm trees gave an unmistakable rich dark green and very typical silhouette of Southern Englands landscape to the distant horizon.
Nanna leaving us in the late summer of 1949 and going to live with her son Billy Birchley and his family at Number 57 St Albans Close Valley Drive in Gravesend, which devastated me, for I was very attached to my Nanna and loved her very much. This move I think was instigated partly by my father, as he like I am nowadays, was not too keen on other people in his house on a long term or permanent basis.
For my third birthday, my major present was a pedal powered Jeep finished in creamy yellow with red wheels and folding windscreen frame. I loved this car and got a huge amount of use and enjoyment from it. It went to Watling Bank with us and became a favourite of my friend Tony’s too!
Long walks were made at the weekends across the fields behind our house, over to Great Buckland with dad and later our St Bernard Julie. Often my treat was either a bag of Smiths Crisps or a Mars Bar from Baldocks Stores, where old Nellie Smith worked. I often went off with my mum for a shorter walk into the fields behind the Smiths orchard, usually ending up at the old light blue painted, latticed iron footbridge over the railway line that was in a deep cutting through the fields at Luddesdown near The Cock Inn.
Many hours were spent here waiting for the bright, malachite green painted Merchant Navy Class, known derogatively as 'Spam Cans', Bullied steam locomotive hauled, Golden Arrow boat/train to hurtle down the deep cutting on its way from Victoria Station in London to the steamer docks at Folkestone and Dover. Julie the dog would often disappear into the tall corn much to my delight. I remember far more butterflies on the wing during the long sunny and warm summer months than there are these days and lots of flax being grown by the farmers then, with its delicate massed pale blue flowers.
Baldocks General Stores the only shop in Sole Street, had a very meagre selection of sweets that included Humbugs, Imperial Mints, Jelly Babies, Bulls Eye Toffees, Brazil nuts coated in butterscotch toffee, Banana Whorls and Toffee Apples, most of which were sold loose from big glass display jars and after weighing out, were handed over in small white paper bags. There were very few pre-packed things then, some of these were Smiths Crisps in white, red and blue greaseproof paper bags, with a small amount of salt inside in a twist of blue paper, Mars bars and small bars of Cadburys plain and milk chocolate. 3d, 5d and 6d respectively, at the time when there were two hundred and forty pennies in the pound, in todays money 1.2p 2.0p and 2.5p! They also sold biscuits, McVities Rich Tea, Plain and Chocolate Digestive mostly loose and again from big square clear glass storage jars, fresh bread on Tuesdays and Thursdays, sugar, flour, cornflakes, porridge oats, cigarettes Players, Woodbines and Craven A, which mother smoked 3s 6p (17.5p) for twenty, a small selection of seasonal vegetables and some newspapers.
All sweets and cigarettes were then on ration still and one of the first things to come off rationing was outer clothing and mackintoshes, which pleased my mother an average mackintosh then cost about thirty shillings and a good quality ladies fashion mack about £5.
Our coinage then was very different to what it is today. The smallest coin was the Farthing, a quarter of a penny and nine hundred and sixty to the pound. The Ha'pney, half a penny and four hundred and eighty to the pound. Penny two hundred and forty to the pound. Threep'ney bit, a nine sided bronze coin, worth three pence and eighty to the pound. The Sixpence, forty to the pound. Shilling, twenty to the pound. Two shilling, ten to the pound and Half-crown, eight to the pound Crown, minted on special occasions like the Coronation, four to the pound were all silver coins and notes were Ten shilling, brown. One pound, green. Five pound, blue. Ten pound, red. Twenty pound, gold and Fifty pound, pinky/red. Though the larger Twenty and Fifty pound notes were rarely seen, as fifty pounds then was a huge sum! Representing in excess of a months average wage.
Gander’s Stores in Cobham.
Gander’s the grocers and general stores in Cobham, where my mother did her main shopping, was a wonderful big shop full of the most exotic smells. Eric the son was the same age as me, his father George had taken over the business from his parents, who lived in a small bungalow at the back of the shop. Our groceries and provisions were always delivered on Wednesdays, with the aid of an old 1930s long-front Morris Commercial box van.
The shop was quite large and held a wide variety of provisions. There were many large hams and sides of bacon hanging from big hooks in the ceiling of the cured meats section, which had a huge gleaming red and chromium plated bacon-slicer on the counter. There were a great number of large Hessian sacks on the wooden boarded floor that contained dried mixed fruit, apple rings, prunes and many types of split dried peas, beans, lentils and various nuts. The cheese and butter counter was always piled high with huge round cylinders of various mature English cheeses wrapped in muslin and the butter was in big salt encrusted wood chip boxes.
The cheese was cut into wedges with a thin wire with handles at each end over a wooden structure with marble surfaces and a gap through which the wire was pulled and then wrapped in grease-proof paper, butter was scooped out of the tubs and then weighed with the aid of a set of small platform scales with varying sized brass weights, patted into shape with a pair of wooden bats on a marble slab, wrapped in grease-proof paper and handed over the counter.
There was also a section of the shop devoted to kitchen goods and utensils, ironmongery, paint, paraffin and creosote, lamp wicks and chimneys, Primus stoves, Aladdin heaters and Valour stoves and ovens. Various oil and petrol lamps, including the American made Miller petrol vapour, mantle lamps, Petromax petrol pressure mantle lamps and Aladdin paraffin pressure mantle, wick and mantle and plain wick lamps. After our move to the Tollgate, we remained a customer of Ganders and they still delivered our groceries every week for many years until my family moved to Lower Halstow. The old van had by then been replaced with a brand new Morris Commercial flat-front van, the vehicle with the inverted heart shaped grill, which I have always though was the most miserable looking vehicle ever produced.
Many hours were spent at the forge opposite the war memorial, converted into a house in the late fifties and where a friend from my days at St. Andrews School Richard Walker subsequently lived, watching the big Suffolk Punch and Shire farm horses being shod. As most villages did then, Cobham had its own bakery with traditional wood fired brick ovens and the smell of the freshly baked bread was a joy. There was not the huge variety of breads one gets these days, just white, brown, Hovis and sticky malt loaves, either plain or fruit, but I for one would go back to those days when bread tasted of something, like a shot! On Tuesdays and Thursdays it was sweet and savoury baking day respectively with apple pies and turnovers, plain and jam doughnuts, cream slices, horns and ginger cake. Thursdays saw the beef, beef and onion, beef and potato, pork and apple, chicken and chicken and mushroom pies of various sizes being cooked along with Oggies, a local version of Cornish pasties.
Every visit to Cobham, about a mile and a half walk from our home in Sole Street, had to have its ritual pump of the handle on the village pump that was on the opposite side to the Church on the road to Rookery Corner. I never got any water from it! But developed a lasting fascination for pumps and water generally.
The Airedale Terrier dog in Sole Street that unusually, for from a very early age I have always had a deep affinity with animals, especially dogs and cats, I did not get on with. It was a bad tempered creature and to this day, I have never liked the breed.
One day when walking past the ornamental pond, at Sole Street House asking dad if I could walk on the pondweed that completely covered its surface like a green mat and for some stupid reason, not really understanding his reply that it would not take my weight. Our main village pond was near the turning into Gold Street. This was quite a feature of our hamlet then and was always well tended and kept full of water. There was another smaller pond, on the corner of Manor Road opposite the Baldocks Transport yard. I have memories from those early years of Road Locomotives (Traction Engines) with a threshing machine, the drivers caravan and a water bowser on tow, stopping at these ponds to refill their boilers and water tanks. Steam Rollers with the drivers caravan and a water bowser, were also a fairly common sight during my early years at Sole Street.
I recall my father coming home one Friday evening a bit stressed after the long drive from West Houghton, one of the various mines, factories and depots that were in his charge. Others were at Carlisle, Peter Lee, Bolton, Uttoxeter, Tewksbury, Melton Mowbray, Rochester and Robertsbridge. Me coming in from the shed beside the house, with an old sack. "Don't bring that dirty ole sack in ere" from dad, mum going off at dad for dropping his aitches and me in tears from the harsh words.
Public Transport.
I do not remember going further a’field by public transport much while we lived in Sole Street, though there were occasional trips to Gravesend, the nearest large town by bus and Meopham by train and as a special treat, a couple of trips to Rochester for shopping in Leonards the big department store in the High Street and to the Castle in the summer of 1950.
All the rail services were then steam locomotive hauled, the signals were all manually operated from an immaculate signal box full of gleaming silver handled levers and polished brass instruments and bells at the end of the ‘Down’ platform and the lights were all gas powered on the platforms and in the waiting rooms and paraffin on the locos and signals. These were still in use on the signals, when I was going to Maritime College from Meopham Station in 1965 and I can still recall that slightly sweet, warm and rather pleasant smell given off by the paraffin wick lanterns. The station platforms and waiting rooms were still lit by gas and there was always a roaring coal fire in the waiting room, during the winter months.
Meopham Station was quite an important freight interchange then and had extensive sidings where several firms had their business premises, including a large coal merchants. Off nearby Norwood Lane which flanked the railway line, there was a large nursery and market garden. They grew Tomatoes, Celery, Strawberries, Chrysanthemums and Carnations commercially under acres of large glass houses, which were sent by rail to Covent Garden Vegetable and Flower Market in London on a regular daily basis. The company closed in the late fifties and the extensive site, after standing derelict for several years, became a very large private housing estate in the mid sixties.
Sole Street was not such an important station as Meopham, but it did have sidings on the ‘Down’ Manor Road side of the line. The Blacks had their coal yard and depot there and there was a small factory at the end of Manor Road that for years had made specialist paint coatings and treatments.
Fawkham Station renamed Longfield after the second war the next station ‘Up’ the line from Meopham towards London, was then another important interchange that had large areas of sidings. Half a mile further up the line was Pinden junction, where the branch line that went to Gravesend via Longfield Halt, Betsom Halt, Southfleet Station then over the A2 trunk road at Springhead to Rosherville Halt and to the line terminus at the old rail/steamer interchange at Gravesend West Station near the Victorian Pier on the River Thames joined the main Victoria line, which closed to passenger service on 5th August 1953.
The garage, where dad kept his car was in Blacks the coal merchants yard, which was a pleasant wooded glade with several old wooden sheds and bays for the various solid fuels made from old railway sleepers off Manor Road, that was a very sparsely populated and rutted unadopted track at the time that lead to the small Sole Street railway sidings a specialist paint manufacturer and the extensive woods at its end. Going there one day and finding a rabbit, Blackie that had been put there earlier for me to find, by my parents and taking it home to a ready built hutch.
One evening, having gone to bed, hearing a van driving up the track beside the house that went to the Smiths bungalow. A big flash of flame, as Billy Wrights old Fordson van, caught fire under the bonnet. He lived in the next house up the road and was later to take over Wrights Coachworks the family business in Strood.
The sound of the wind in the many telephone wires making them hum. We were on the telephone at Sole Street, our number Cobham 364. But it was an all operator service, the telephone receiver having a blank faceplate and when the handset was lifted it called the exchange in Cobham Village and I recall mum often having quite long conversations with the various operators, before they made her connection.
Saturday morning drives with dad around the local area to Luddesdown, Great Buckland and Harvel. These drives were to an extent an excuse for my father to visit his friend and work colleague Ken Briggs, who lived in a cottage in Harvel. We would always go there via The Golden Lion Inn at Luddesdown then up Cutter Ridge Road past the little isolated gamekeepers cottage set in the open fields, join Buckland Road and turn right, pass the ancient Dode Church and climb the steep hill past Horseholders Wood into Harvel.
I recall the time we found the major part of a Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle, dumped in the woods at Harvel and I can distinctly remember the reversed control levers on the handlebars, the twin fillers on the chrome plated petrol tank and the twin stacked fish tail exhaust system, all that was missing were the wheels and the big 1000 cc JAP V Twin engine.
At this time, there were several families living in old railway carriages and buses in the Harvel Woods. Today, they would be scathingly called new age travellers, but then they had no alternative, as they were unable to afford the rents on brick built property, which at the time was very scarce in the area. One of the buses was a six-wheeled Thorneycroft of 1930s vintage. It had a wonderful outside curving and sweeping staircase, at the back to the upper deck and would be worth a fortune today.
A ritual during the late summer, was to walk through Cobham Village and opposite the main entrance to Cobham Hall near the Shorne crossroads on the A2 London/Dover trunk road enter Ashenbank Woods to our left, where we would walk down the long ashfelt surfaced track past the old trial gypsum mine now a coal mine, that my father had been involved with on behalf of the Darnley Estate, to the large pond that my mother had painted in her twenties and entitled ‘Nocturne’ and climb up onto the open heathy area, where lush blackberry bushes grew in profusion. A days blackberry picking there would see us returning home loaded with bags of lovely fruit.
I recall the Smiths, who lived in a bungalow in the cherry orchards behind our large back garden showing me their Primus stoves with silent burners, which fascinated me. These were their favoured form of cooking during the summer months, when they let their Rayburn solid fuel cooker go out, as it made their little bungalow too hot.
The Baldocks ran the small general shop in Sole Street and operated a transport business that had several Albion and Leyland flat-bed lorries and a couple of tippers. Their son David was the same age as me and in later life we were to meet again, as he had an interest in old cars like me and did a bit of dealing. Subsequently he was to own a garage in Goudhurst that was dedicated to the restoration and sale of pre-war vehicles, but I understand that this venture failed due to compulsory purchase and redevelopment of his site in the mid nineteen eighties.
Even at my early age when at Sole Street, I was aware that mum had her strange side. She certainly had friends and enemies and there was nothing in between, she either liked, in some cases loved, or hated vehemently! She was most outspoken in her likes and dislikes and I can remember my father often being embarrassed by her outbursts. I have mentioned her liking for rubberized materials and the number of mackintosh garments that she had. In my youth she confined her interest to wearing her macks and capes, but I know from later conversations with her older sister Rita, that before the war she had worn other more outrageous rubberized clothing.
In May 1950 my parents got Julie a young pedigree St Bernard bitch from a kennels near Dode Church in Great Buckland, as a replacement for mothers Sealyham Nibby who had died the previous Christmas. I am sure that my mother was the bigger dog lover of my parents, for I am certain all the dogs were around before my father came on the scene.
Julie, lived in the sack shed and one morning going to let her out, I found that she was in an awful state, covered in mess. Looking back now, I do not think that poor Julie was a very healthy dog. I have vague memories of her being violently sick on several occasions and I am sure one morning during a walk she suffered a seizure.
My first holiday to Greatstone October 1950.
My first holiday was taken in October 1950 and spent in a bungalow named Sealure at New Romney near the great expanses of sandy beaches of St Marys Bay Greatstone. Here I was introduced to the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, which I found fascinating, spending many hours riding on the fifteen inch gauge steam locomotive hauled trains. There was a little museum at New Romney, where I spent many happy hours putting hap'ney's and pennies into the coin slots of the many powered exhibits and I found the old engine sheds nearby were very interesting.
On the main line sidings there was a very old, open foot-plate, 2-4-0 tank engine named the Dun Robin, which had been built for the long defunct London, Southeast and Chatham Railway Company. It had a huge copper steam dome, tall black brass bound smoke stack, open footplate and a three axle tender, it was all finished in light green and black with gold coach lining and a red chassis. We often went on the little train and one time I remember being with mum on the train, while dad was pacing us on the road from the old Dungeness Lighthouse. He was distracted by waving to us and drove off the road into the soft shingle and got stuck.
Medicines.
I was quite a healthy kid only getting the odd head cold, cough and rare tummy upset that I am sure all young people go through. The cold remedy of the day was fresh hot lemon made with sugar and boiling water and black gums called ‘Victory Vee’ helped ease congestion, as they were very potent. Cough syrup was I think ‘Ipicacuanna’ and Vic Vapour Rub was applied to ones chest. The stomach settler was Kaolin and Morphine known as Chlorodin Mixture, a brown muddy looking mixture, which I recall tasted rather nice and Milk of Magnesia a thickish white liquid, which came in a dark blue bottle. For burns and abrasions there was Acriflavine, a bright yellow paste developed during the war to help burns victims, which was very good and Calamine Lotion was used as an ease-all.
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