Re Cove, Bridge Road (c.172009)

A Memory of Cove.

The photograph of Bridge Road clearly shows The Cove Supply Stores building on the right. My parents ran that shop from about 1936 to 1945. The Bridge Road end of the shop in the photo was the Off-Licence. Opposite the shop on Cove Road was the Ivy Leaf Club. I have such memories of Cove... I attended the Hawley Road Elementary School, and remember one teacher well, a Mr Harold Crapper, who was a devil with the cane! Later I attended the Farnborough Grammar School.

I wonder whether anyone can remember Mr Thornton's menswear shop? (Opposite Mr Munday's.) He used to place an advert in the local paper, always with a little poem referring to "'hornton's Bib-and-Brace'.  Mr Munday's Newsagency was always popular with boys and girls because of the comics he sold. If I remember rightly, there was a battery charging and bicycle shop on the corner of Hazel Avenue run by a Mr Young.

Being 12 years old when we moved to Cove, I cycled everywhere around the place, and through the flood waters covering Hazel Avenue at times! During the war years there was a lot of activity with Canadian soldiers being based just west of Cove.   I can still remember a Mr Jack Lamb (who was in his late 80s) who used to ride a tricycle from somewhere along Minley Road to collect his rations every Saturday. Cove did not escape the war, a bomb fell into the farmlands along Hazel Avenue. Luckily there was no damage, just a large muddy crater in the field.

As mentioned in a previous 'Memory', I too used to check the 'B' button in the public phone box near the Post Office on Bridge Road to see if anyone had forgotten to get their money back - sometimes I was lucky and found tuppence!
Although I cannot place the date, I remember a fatal railway accident at the Bramley Golf Course Halt, where a train ran into some people crossing the line.

On a return visit in the 1980s I found Cove had not changed a great deal from as I remembered it.