Eastleigh Memories

Leigh Road 1951
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All the pictures have such lasting memories. I was born on Nutbeem Road in 1935 and attended Chamberlayne Road Boys School and Barton Peverill Grammar School. Three of us, Dave Gardner, John Young and myself, started at the same time at Chamberlayne Road school at the outbreak of WWII in September 1939 and, amazingly, we are still in constant contact with each other - Dave still lives in England while John and I now live in Southern California. John and I are also still in touch with many of our Old Bartonian friends from the football team of the 1950s. My wife, Sylvia (nee Standley), now sadly deceased, lived on Desborough Road with her brothers John, Allen and Tony and sister Barbara. I had cousins, the Hoffmans and the Greens who also lived in Eastleigh. I well remember the swimming pool (us boys would access it surreptitiously from the adjacent Boys Club!), the airport when it had only a grass runway (Sylvia and I flew from there on a DC3 to Jersey for our honeymoon in 1958), Leigh Road, Market and High Streets (our circuit when we went "up the street"!), the Saturday night dances at the Town Hall, Fleming Park with its tennis courts, bowling green, football, cricket, rugby and hockey fields, as well as its putting greens - all overseen in those days by Mr. Thornton. Also there was the Cosmo cafe and the Station Cafe where we would stop for a cup of tea during our strolls around town. Sadly, the shops we knew growing up are largely gone now, but the last time I was back a few remain in the same locations - Wainwrights, the chemists, (also Boots farther along the street), Burtons, the mens shop - and I daresay a few others. It all brings back so many memories. When John Young and his wife, Hazel (nee Dickie) and Dave Gardner and his wife Pat (nee Jetton) get together we reminisce about the "good old days" of our youth - growing up during the war and the austere post war period. I could write a book, but that has already been ably accomplished by Mr. Gordon Cox, my former French teacher at Barton Peverill.