Pantiles, Bexleyheath

A Memory of Bexleyheath.

,I must have been about six years old when we moved from Gypsey Road in Welling, to a new house in Hurlingham Road, Number 40, by the Pantiles. A year later WW11 started, and we spent our nights in the damp Anderson shelter in the garden. I remember a big crater outside the fish and chip shop down the road where a bomb had landed, and the underground shelters where the whole neighbourhood spent nights, covered over in grass, and I believe are still buried there! Dad was transferred from Woolwich Arsenal to a bomb making factory in Lancashire, so we had to go there, came back in 1945,and reclaimed our house back which was in a sorry state, badly neglected by the woman who was put in there. I was 13 then, and went back to Brampton College, run by the Kent family,where I had started as a four year old. I was only there for a year, as I Started work at 14 in Jones and Higgins in Peckham. Married at 23, moved to Strood, back to Erith for 31 years, on to Cornwall, then Devon, now ending my days in Uxbridge. Reading through stories from others, I noticed the name Barry Hullett, I knew Barry, he was married to Eileen, first met him in the Earl Haig at the Pantiles, he was playing a little ukulele banjo, and very good at it ! I have many fond memories
Of Bexleyheath, Welling, and Woolwich, I was born in St.Nicks hospital, I could go on for ever, I am 83 now, and think I may have outlived a lot of those I grew up with !! We were the Fryett family of Hurlingham Road!