Memories of Aldershot

Talavera Junior School.

I too have very happy memories of Talavera Junior School. I was a pupil there in the late 1960s, having moved up from Marlborough Lines Infants School. I now live in Essex, but over the years on my travels, I have visited these old schools. Does anyone remember the cats' masks in Talavera Junior playground? I also remember that on a Monday, the shield for the winning house (Wolf, Wellington, Clive or Gordon) was announced to the children. As previously asked by someone, I believe that the head of Marlborough Lines was a Mrs Searle, and my teacher at Talavera was Miss Milton. I too also lived in Ramillies Park, although thankfully these terrible looking boxes have now gone. Who on earth was responsible for designing those places?!
Julie Barker (nee Wilkes).

Talavera Junior

Happy memories indeed! I have many of those both from Marlborough Lines Primary and Talavera Junior...marbles, hopscotch, Shirley Temple and all the games we played in those days and reading Beano comics when it was pouring down with rain! Does anybody remember any of the Talavera teachers 1968-1970? Or the headmistress of Marlborough Lines School? I lived in Ramalies Park, Army Quarters until 1972. Did anybody else live there?

Tonsils!

I had my tonsils removed here in 1955 or maybe 1956, found my first boyfriend named Gregory who brought me so many games, toys etc. the nurses complained!
I remember eating jam sandwiches and maybe ice cream, but not much else. I was only eleven!
The next time I was there was for the birth of my first daughter in 1968. My husband was not allowed to stay for the birth, not the done thing even in 1968.
Not particularly bad memories of the old place.

Hiking in the 1970s at the Cambridge

I began my pupil nurse training at the Cambridge in 1970. I enjoyed my time there. I remember the corridors, indeed they were very long, some say a quarter of a mile lonf, and some say nearly a mile. I think I would say the latter. I was posted to Hong Kong in November 1970 and went back there in 1972.

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!

One of my earliest memories . . .

was walking through Manor Park where it was a common occurrence to see red squirrels right next to the main entrance. We often walked through the park on our way to the swimming pool which was quite a distance after leaving the park.

Ducks swam on the pond in the picture above; they were mainly mallards and frequently we took bread to feed them. I think that Manor Park was my introduction to the British wildlife in which I have had a keen interest as long as I can remember.

Manor Park was the venue where the annual fun fairs put up their stalls, and many a time I attended the circuses that put up in the park too. There wasn't all the fuss then that there is now about animals in circuses and I remember being frightened and thrilled at the same time when watching the big cats and being quite close to the elephants when we had front seats. Those were the days . . . !

Talavera Junior School

I went to this School from 1968 to 1970 and have such happy memories! I remember lots of school friends and teachers too...especially a Canadian teacher we used to have.....

I was born here...

I was born in this hospital in 1973 - don't remember much about it to be honest! LOL!

It's long gone now.

To North Town

I'd get the number 11 or 12 bus (I think?) religiously for 3 years, every day after school, having gone across the railway bridge at the station, from the now defunct St. Joseph's Primary. Sometimes it would go via the military area up by Alamein Rd, and sometimes it would go via Redan Hill, past the footy ground. I never knew why?
The waiting bay at the station was home to several thousand pigeons. We used to try and feed them Space-Dust!

Memories of Aldershot Hospital

I remember going here to have my tonsils out at the age of 7, and I was in hospital when President Kennedy was assassinated!

Talavera Junior School 1970

Talavera Junior School is still standing and used, whereas Aldershot Manor School is now no more.  I went to both - living for a while just outside the gates of Talavera Junior.

St Michael's Church

I was christened in this church in 1949, both my sons were christened and married in St Michael's. I went to Sunday school there and also I was confirmed there.

Aldershot Lido

As kids my brother Ray and my sister Jan and myself spent every weekend and all the summer holidays at the lido, we used to take our food and stay for the day. We had season tickets and I must admit the summers seemed warmer.  Sue Marriott (Crockford).

Bus Journeys!

I used to catch the bus every day to go to school in Weybourne from Cove. It seemed to take ages waiting in the rain for the Cove Bus. If I missed the bus to All Hallows School in Weybourne I had to walk all the way instead!

Aldershot Hospital

I was born at the Aldershot Hospital but I don't know if its this one. It was in St Josephs Road near the Catholic St Josephs School. I was born there with my twin sister in June 1956 and had my tonsils out there too!! very painful!

Swimming lessons

I learnt to swim at the "command baths" in Aldershot in the 1960s. It was a very old building and very cold. I hated the lessons as the instructors used to have a long stick to push you back into centre of the pool. I now know why I hate swimming!

Aldershot Swimming Pool

I remember being thrown in the deep end by some other kids. We used to go there lots of times when I was a kid. I was born in 1956 and lived in Aldershot until I was 11 years old. Don't know if its still open anymore? Summer at the pool was lovely when it was very hot - not like our summers now!

Saturday morning pictures

The ABC song certainly brought back memories of my regular Saturday morning trips to the pictures in the late 1940s and early 50s. In Aldershot we were lucky that the ABC – the Ritz, and the Empire – an Odeon cinema, were situated right next to each other. We looked at each programme displayed and, depending on which film we fancied, chose the one we wanted to see. It certainly gave our mums an hour or so without having to amuse their kids at weekends!

My most vivid memories are of the huge ruched curtains which went up at the start of the show and of horrid boys who kept clambering over the seats or threw their sweet wrappers at us girls. Imagine the despair if we were too ill to attend one week and had to miss the next exciting episode of Flash Gordon or other gripping serial instalments.

Here is the kids’ Odeon song we used to sing at the beginning – as loud as we could – and the noise would be deafening!

We come along on Saturday morning
Greeting everybody with a smile,
We come along on Saturday morning,
Knowing it's well worthwhile,
As members of the Odeon club,
We all intend to be,
Good citizens when we grow up,
And champions of the free,
We come along on Saturday morning,
Greeting everybody with a smile, smile, smile,
Greeting everybody with a smile.

Diana Lawer

1st child christened

My first born was christened here 1992 and my second child 1995.

Ist Job

My first full time job, Woolworths, Union Road, what a job that was.

Aldershot cottage hospital - I was born here

Don't remember too much but I was born here 07/1968, now forty years on I still talk about where I was born. Jacki

The Queen Hotel

I used to work in this pub with my sister. It's 4 walls have set the scene for many a drama! It was a great pub back in the day - and excellent fun on Airborne Forces Weekend (not so much fun for out of towners, I'd imagine!) LOL!

My stay at the Cambridge Military Hospital

I had my tonsils removed at the Cambridge Miltary Hospital in 1981 (aged 8).  The only memory I have of this time is of a little girl named Yvonne Cherry who stayed in the bed next to mine, she never had any visitors and spent the majority of her time looking in my locker.

My father, Eric James was an ambulance driver for the Cambridge Hospital for many years.  It's a beautiful building and it is heartbreaking to think of it standing with empty corridors and dusty old cobwebs.

I met my wife-to-be on the firing ranges at Aldershot!

I met Elizabeth Sewell while we were both on a Territorial Army training exercise at Aldershot. We were both serving with 39 Signal Regiment. It was April 1970 and I first saw her in her WRAC uniform, green beret and brown boots! Very nice too!
I managed to sit next to her in the back of a three tonner on the way back to our barracks and we talked all the way.
We arranged a date for that evening and slipped out of the barracks to visit a pub. We have now been married for 37 years!

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!

The top three windows to the right of the lamp pole in the picture are about in the right place to belong to number 40. The window closest to the pole lit the small room with the gas stove and the kitchen table. The other two were in a bedroom just big enough for my parents’ double bed with my bed at right angles to it. The only heat was a two bar electric fire.

In September 1942, I was enrolled as a pupil at Stanley House School, a private school. It was on St. Michael’s Road, just round the corner, under the railway bridge by the football ground, and up the hill. I was only four-and-a-half years old but going to school got me out of my mother’s way. Miss L. D. Elliff was the school principal. That first term cost three pounds and six pence which was quite a chunk of money considering that my father was making only thirty bob a week working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

The school’s air-raid shelter was comprised of two large steel boxes stacked, on their sides, one on top of the other in the garage. All the pupils were crammed in and a wire mesh was put up to stop them falling back out. I remember a doodle-bug going over and the teachers standing watching in the open garage doorway. The bomb missed us and landed on another school not far away. My mother arrived shortly after in a dreadful state, she having heard that a school had been hit.

If the school’s air raid arrangements seem a little primitive, they were perhaps better that what there was at home. When the warning siren started wailing, my mother and I would go and sit under the kitchen table. Being under a table in front of a window on the top floor of an old Victorian building at least ensured a quick exit.

Somewhere in all this I developed swollen adenoids. The standard practice then was to operate and: “we might as well take out his tonsils too, they don’t do anything anyway.” So I spent a few days in the children’s ward of Aldershot cottage hospital. My parents visited daily and once brought their ration of eggs. They seemed quite annoyed that I didn’t want to eat them. I didn’t care about not eating but do I remember complaining about some kid who kept crying all night and kept me awake.

For me all this, the way of life with rationing, the blackout and the home-guard rifle to play with, was perfectly normal, but those years must have been very unpleasant for my parents.

The Odeon cinema

I started working at the Odeon in 1967 as a projectionist, and the first film I showed there was the original Casino Royale. The screen curtains were made of a heavy velvet with weights at the bottom, but with the lilac coloured spot lights on them, they looked like silk as they opened and closed.It was always a lovely building, and it looks even more beautiful today as The Kings Centre.

The Cambridge Ghost

See my memory regarding this wonderful old bit of Victorian architecture, linked to the 1891 photograph of the Cambridge. In my day, 1969, it was mostly full of civilian patients although there was a fair sprinkling of families, car accident victims and some military having tatoos removed (one having 'hate' removed from his knuckles before enlisting in the police force). Others I recall from my ward (Ward 7) on the ground floor, had been e.g. victims of petroleum fires in depots with severely burnt arms (as walking wounded, we had to feed them and take them to the bathroom etc) and on one occasion a large number of paratroopers injured during a large scale parachute exercise over the nearby training area. Most were casualties of twisted lines, deflated chutes, mid-air and on the ground collisions etc. One never hears about the numbers of casualties in those kind of intensive exercises, although I think nowadays with the many rounds of Defence cuts, I think only one battalion at a time actually has parachutes!
Treatment was always excellent and the QA and RAMC male and female nurses were first class, always cheerful, wise-cracking and efficient. I never heard of MRSA in those days, when military Matrons were firmly in charge!

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 there were a number of wards of civilians, including a ward for terminally ill patients and another for children. A young QARANC sister, Lt Collinson came to Ward 7, and as a long-term but 'walking wounded' patient, we became friendly and had a chat from time to time. On one occasion, having just finished a stint as the hospital duty night sister, she came and told me the following story (as I recall it):
The ward, consisting primarily of separate rooms and cubicles, for the very, seriously and terminally ill patients was on the ground floor and the children's ward was on the second. Sister Collinson doing her rounds, was visiting the children's ward in the early hours of the morning, when there appeared to be a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature, to the point where breath could be seen. It was a passing phenomenon, and although remarkable, might perhaps have been passed off as a cold March draught in an old hospital. Later, she toured the terminally ill ward and came to the bed of an elderly woman, who was still awake. Beside her bed stood an empty glass that seemed to have contained milk. Sister Collinson, noting this and knowing that milk wasn't available, asked the woman where it had come from. The woman told her that she'd woken, feeling thirsty, and had been approached by 'another sister' wearing the usual QA sister's uniform of grey/blue dress and bright red cape, who'd given her the milk. The sister hadn't spoken, and had quickly gone, but the woman noted that the sister's dress had been unnaturally long, almost down to her ankles. Sister Collinson thought that the woman, being so seriously ill had perhaps been a bit delirious, but checking with the nurses on the ward found that there had been no other sister around and that no-one had given the patient a drink. The woman died a few hours later.
Intrigued, Sister Collinson had asked around and was told of the hospital ghost, who had been quite regularly sighted, although usually at a distance. Apparently, the story went, a young QA sister had worked in the hospital during the First World War when the hospital had been full of wounded soldiers evacuated from the front in France. Following one of the offensives, the hospital had filled with wounded soldiers, many seriously, and the staff were under considerable pressure, tired, stressed and overworked. One day, a new intake of wounded soldiers arrived, one of whom was a young officer, the seriously wounded fiance of the sister, who, coincidentally was assigned to deal with him. On seeing her fiance, she had panicked and accidentally gave him an overdose of an anaesthetic or drug, from which he shortly afterwards died. Full of remorse, and depressed, the sister committed suicide. From that time on, she was occasionally encountered in the long corridors, mostly around that part of the hospital where her fiance had been admitted and had himself died.
Thinking back, Sister Collinson realised that the approximate time that the milk had been given to the dying woman, had been just the moment when she had been in the children's ward, which she also realised, was almost immediately above the terminally ill ward.
It is said that intense cold often accompanies spiritual visitations, but perhaps it had just been an unusual draft and a delirious old lady, but - perhaps it hadn't.

Anyway, that was my abiding memory of the old Cambridge hospital, when in the 'good old days' before NHS and MOD reorganisations, there had still been an adequate system to treat the Armed Forces.

Hospital Stay

My son Thor had a branchial cyst removed when he was about 20 months old. The staff were wonderful. I stayed in the hospital all the time and beds were made available for the mums. For our meals we would cross over the road to go to the army canteen and the food was incredible. My son soon made a speedy recovery.

Aldershot Cottage Hospital

How could I forget the Cottage Hospital?  I had my tonsils out here!  Strangely enough, after all these years I can still picture parts of the Children's Ward, one or two of the nurses, and the bed that I was in.  Hospital is never the most pleasant place to be but, if I remember correctly (and I am sure that I do), the worst part of my stay was "Nil By Mouth" after the operation!

Place of marriage

My wife and I were married here in August 1962.

Aldershot Swimming Pool

I remember learning to swim in this pool. Once a week we would be taken from school. After our lessons we always had some sandwiches which our mothers sent with us. I always had lettuce and marmite sandwiches. To this day when I have the same sandwiches I can see and smell the swimming pool!