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Aldershot
Aldershot maps
Historic maps of Aldershot and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Aldershot maps
Aldershot area books
Displaying 1 of 22 books about Aldershot and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Aldershot
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Aldershot.
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An ACC Cook
The winter and spring of 1958 I was an ACC cook in the hospital kitchen. On one night duty I contracted tonsillitis and was put in the ward upstairs where the ghost of 'Sister Aggie', as she was known to us, was supposed to haunt and give comfort at their bedside of those who were about to slip away. She did not appear to me as I was not about to die. I had to sample our food which was sent up from the kitchen in heated trolleys. It was not too bad when it left the kitchen, but the time it got on to the plate in bed on the ward it was pretty grim stuff that would just about finish anybody off. Someone the Victorian ghost nurse might have appeared to was a young soldier who was put in a special private ward reserved for those who had not long to live. I was detailed one morning to go and offer him the... Read more
Wrinkled Fingers And Toes
From Chrismas Avenue to the bathing pool, come rain or come shine, every day of the summer was bathing pool fun time for us lads. With our towels rolled up and tucked under our arms and our costumes on to save time, a bag of sandwiches and your entrance money if you were lucky... otherwise it was over the fence. On arrival it was through the turnstile and with a quick glance at the water degree board straight in at the deep end. The pool was nature's babysitters from morning till night, seven days a week The pools in those days were full of servicemen American, Canadian and many others stationed, passing though, or just plain taking a hard earned rest from terrors of war, and I can describe them in one word, "boisterous", but glad to be alive and they showed it... A lot of them were missing their familes far away and latched on to the local children, be it in the town, or at the pool. Many a time with... Read more
Dancing Lessons
It was 1952 and the NAAFI Club held dancing lessons. Now, trying to learn to dance in hobnailed Army boots was impossible, but I did chat up a NAAFI girl and arranged to meet her after her work, which I did. She had, to me, an exotic name and was Finnish. When I arrived back at Baadjos Barracks the Intelligence Corps awaited me. I was taken to their HQ near Tunbridge Wells and quizzed overnight. Apparently they thought she was a Soviet spy and had been placed there to quiz solidiers about their regiments. I was so innocent then, but was angry when they refused me transport back to Aldershot. I had to phone the RSM who reluctantly sent a PU vehicle for me to return to Aldershot and my RASC unit. Being the RSM he really tore me off a strip - as RSMs do, of course. As he dismissed me with an angry warning about chatting up foreign girls, and wasting his time, he winked.... Read more
Wellington Monument
As a kid in the eighties, I used to mess around by the Wellington Monument, back then it was like a jungle all around it, and you couldn't really see it properly unless you were right in front of it. A group of volunteers did a brilliant job of clearing a lot of the bushes back, so now you can see it better from a distance which I think is how it should be seen. We were told as kids that a workman accidently dropped his lunch into the monument when it was being built!
War Years
For two-and-a-half dreadful years, from July 1942 to October 1944, my parents and I survived in three rooms at the top of number 40, Victoria Road, rented from a Mrs Pither. Only the front two rooms, overlooking the street, were habitable and the back room my father used as a sort of workshop. Water was from a tap, a few inches off the floor beside the loo, in a small closet at the top of the stairs. Hot water was boiled in a teakettle on an old gas stove in the ‘kitchen’. Washing was done in an enamel basin and the dirty water was carried out and flushed down the toilet. One of my earliest memories is of going to get water and getting confused with the tap. I couldn’t make the water turn off, the pot overflowed and, by the time my mother came to the rescue, the floor was flooded and water was dripping through the ceiling at the bottom of the stairs. Mrs Pither was not amused!... Read more
The Cambridge Ghost
The Cambridge Military Hospital was apparently founded as part of the initiative begun by Florence Nightingale after the Crimean War to improve medical facilities for the Army. It was built on a grand, traditionally solid Victorian scale, and as I remember, had very long corridors, which seemed to be about a quarter of a mile long! At least, it seemed, standing at one end, the roof and floor met at the other.
In February 1969 as a cadet at the nearby Sandhurst, I had an accident on the assault course, twisting my knee badly on the frozen ground. The injury was quite severe and I was required to have an operation and physiotherapy as an in-patient, so I spent several months in Ward 7. At this time, Northern Ireland had only just started up and there weren't many major military campaigns underway around the world, and so the hospital was not full of military patients. It was the policy then to take in overflows from NHS hospitals and so... Read more
Aldershot Lido
I used to swim here every summer, one of my best memories of relaxed swimming, the 'Slippery dip' slide and sun bathing. I remember there was a canteen where we used to buy icecreams and wandering around the grassey grounds - This made the 70s summer for me!
Lane's Ice Cream
Does anyone remember Lane's ice cream shop? They sold sweets amd home made ice cream; absolutely gorgeous!
