Further Memories Of Barking

A Memory of Barking.

My earliest memories are during the war of hiding down the Andersen garden shelters in King Edwards Saturday Road and St Erkenwald Road with my parents and brothers listening to the shrapnel pinging around us as the incendiary bombs dropped around us and watching from the open doorway as the doodlebugs flew over at rooftop height. One landed in St Awdreys Road demolishing a row of houses and another on St Pauls Church at the corner of St Erkenwald Road and Ripple Road. On this Sunday Morning my elder brother was due to go to the morning service with his friend but as luck would have it decided on this occasion not to attend. Also when word spread that the greengrocer was having a delivery of oranges or bananas or other fruit my brother and I had to run to Sucklings in Ripple Road and join the queue until mum arrived with bag and money.
Since turning to adults the shop names so memorable to us as children and then teenagers have all but gone except for shops like Markss and Spencer and of course Sainsburys. Names like Home & Colomial, Pearks, and Liptons where butter was bought loose and patted into shape with paddles and biscuits were in big square tins laid at an angle where you could go along the line and choose which and how many you wanted then to be weighed at the counter. Barking had all these wonderful shops but by the time I was adult all had disappeared. Sneidermans the shoes shop as well as Goodings the barbers both in North Street. How I remember my mates and I going to Goodings on a
Saturday morning and having to wait for our favourite barber to have a Boston or a Tony Curtis or even a D A haircut which were all the rage then.
Then to Barking Park to chat the girls or spend an hour on the putting green or even a canoe or skiff ride on the lake. Later we would go to he rear of the park where Barking had its own cycle speedway track where we world shout on the home team who rode against teams from all areas around Barking.
My twin bother and I left Barking in our early 20#'s after we both got married at St Margarets Abbey by the then Bishop of Barking The Very Rev Chadwick., Sadly in my case it all went pear shaped and ended after 11 years.
Nevertheless I would not swap my Barking memories for anything.
Clifford J Smith.
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