1950s Rosenau Rd.

A Memory of Battersea.

Hi, I was born in 1946 at the South London Hospital for Women and lived for a while at 15 Etruria St. Battersea, it was near Dogs Home Bridge and Battersea Power Station, where my dad, Charlie Jones worked.
Soon we moved to 29 Anhalt Rd. near Albert Bridge. While living in Anhalt Rd. and at the tender age of four or five, I made my way back to Battersea Park funfair where I'd been taken earlier that day. I must have found it really exciting to make it back there on my own and get lost in the crowds. While at the funfair I was asked by some well meaning soul "have you lost your mum, do you know where you live"....etc, at this I was struck dumb, it wasn't only the woman in the ice block that froze. To cut a longish story short I was delivered home by the police.
My brother was born in 1950 and it was shortly after this that we moved to just down the road to 65 Rosenau Rd. This where I spent my free and easy life.
Battersea Park was a place I knew well and spent a lot of my time there with friends, all of which I only have a distant memory now. I lost touch with them when we had to move due to redevelopment that started in the 60's. All the streets around there have changed and some have completely gone along with the people, no more prefabs, they have gone and as far as I can tell most of the houses, my old house included. The memory of the freedom we had then, I can't recall how many times we been to the Antiviv, then called Battersea General (the old name stuck) to be
patched up after minor injures, a brick on the head! We were meant to be flicking bits of fibreboard torn from the base of prefabs but one clown thought it'd be funny to toss a half brick, it cost me five stitches. On another occasion in Battersea Park someone ended up with an arrow in their leg, that someone I can't recall who but it was another trip to the Antiviv. At other times just cuts and bruises to be dealt with. I don't recall ever being asked any awkward questions about how these thing happened, "so tell me, how did he get this hole in his leg" or "how did Alan fall out of the tree and break his arm" and so on. My brother Ian reminded me a while back that I' had taken him to the Antiviv. If we got locked out of the house at any time, you could use a penknife to slip the centre catch on the front room window. However, my bro., being four years my junior had got the penknife the wrong way round and managed to put a nasty gash in his thumb - lucky I'd just arrived home and took him to have it stitched - no questions asked. Funny thing, I have trouble recalling what parents said or asked about us kids returning home with stitches, arms in plaster and neat round hole in the leg? I don't think I'll ever know now..............unless one of the people in question reads this and goes "oh my god, I'd forgotten all about that" and leaves a note.
The thing about my memories of Battersea life is remembering peoples names,. I can only name seven of the dozens of people from back then, but the one that is most annoying is the girl who I knew well and lived just over the road in a prefab, No 68. (have just looked her up on ancestry, Barbara Smith). In one of the prefabs, along the lane opposite my home, lived a lad named Lawrence (we went to the same school, Bolingbroke) and during the summer hols. he and his elder brother put on puppet shows and served up fizzy drinks, I remember him telling us that his parents had given him his name because it couldn't be shortened.

There was one time I recall sitting on the steps of 65 talking with about five others and the conversation turned to what you would like to have been called, most seemed to like the name that they had been given but one girl said she wished she had been called Rose, it stuck me at the time a little odd but then I thought my name wouldn't suit me as an adult.

Having read some of the blogs of the surrounding area it struck me that they didn't seem to reflect the street life I recall back in the 50s, some examples of Rosenau Rd street life: One of the games we dreamt up involved the four pillars, two at the front of the house I lived in, two at the bottom of the stairs leading to the first floor - the first two fronting the pavement, so in a square. The pillars were about a 3 to 3.5ft apart I guess. The game was to have one of us standing on each pillar, then someone would say go and you have to leap to the next pillar, the one that had just been vacated (you hoped), and around we went until we'd all change direction and go back the other way at someone's command. The drops either side varied from 5ft to the pavement to about 15ft into the sub-basements. Looking back it it seems a little suicidal and it wasn't the only suicidal stunt that we got up to. There was a house at the corner of Ethelburga and Albert bridge Rd, 75 Albert Bridge Rd. that had been left empty for a while and being kids we used it as a playground. One fine summer's day we went out onto the roof though a skylight, "to take the view" (just kidding), anyway, for the life of me I don't know how it came about but we ended up playing 'it' (tag) on the slate roof, until that is we spotted a beat copper and left the roof to hide in one of the rooms that we could lock with the door handle and shaft which we'd removed from all the internal doors. The officer did come and check out the rooms, but finding no one he left. After leaving a good while (hoping he gone) we took the long way home around the block to avoid being seen coming from the house. All safe we thought, but not so, someone had spread the word of our antics and our parents got wind of it and it being the fifty’s, we all got a good whopping, not sure if it was given for playing on the roof or nearly bringing the police to the door. Once by the age of ten was enough. You can see a photo of this house in various states while being pulled down. On more sensible days we stuck to hop-scotch or doing handstands and on the odd occasion skipping, no not just a girl thing, us boys would join in too.
Not only was life freer back then but adults seemed much more tolerant and accepting of kids being a little wild and in places they weren't meant to be, but not always of course.

For anyone who maybe interested, The bomb-site between Juer St. and Worfield St. was the site of Ethelburga Street School - 1922 to 1939