Fishing Tackle Shop

The fishing shop that you are referring to was Pikes. I too purchase a two piece bamboo rod that had a wooden handle, I believe that it cost 5 shillings and six pence, not totally sure however I did not have enough money to purchase a reel and had to make do with a cotton reel screwed int the handle. Like you, I used to fish in the Darent river at Horton Kirby also in Dartford Park. Minnows were the regular catch and on occasions the odd gudgeon or perch. Happy Days!

I well remember the wall of the elevator factory in Westgate Road, Dartford. The name of the works was J & E Hall (no relationship!) . It had the fading outlines of false windows and doors painted all along it which were the remains of wartime camouflage. Across the road was Fisher's, a wholesale stationers. I used to go fishing at Horton Kirby too. The buses to catch were the 467 or 491 or - if you were prepared to walk down from the railway bridge at Sutton - the 401. The River Darent as always teaming with minnows. I generally used a catch bottle instead of a line. My aunt lived at Horton Kirby and so I used to have long, happy holidays there in what appeared to me at the time to be the middle of the countryside. I live in Northamptonshire now but having returned for a nostalgic trip last year, little has changed apart from the mill having been demolished and the site having been developed for housing. Westminster Fields are much as I remember them as is the lovely riverside walk almost to Farningham