Burnham On Crouch 1948/1973

A Memory of Great Stambridge.

Our family moved to Burnham from Wimbledon, Raynes Park, in late 1948, to 34 Lillian Road when I was 4. We came like pioneers of the west in the back of my father's employer's canvas covered Ford truck; mum & dad in the cab with the baby brother, two elder brothers and me in the back, with two cats. Being Londoners we were not too well liked by the locals, such was attitudes in those days, and life was hard and tough for the first few years. In early '49 I had fight with a boy from Queens Rd on the first playing field, where the fair and circus used to set up. This lad and I went on to become best mates, right up until his death in 2005.
My second eldest brother and me would walk for miles during the summer holidays, either along the river bank to the Marshes, Dammelwick, Flakehouse and across to Stoney Hills via Newman's farm or up stream towards Wickford, stopping at Fanbridge, or cutting over land to Althorne or Southminister and try to thumb a lift from one of the rare cars that were on the roads. I remember one Sunday afternoon my brother and I went swimming on the ebb tide and my brother was swept off the causeway on the New Beach and I stood helpless as I watched him drowning. He had gone down twice, about 100/150 yards from shore, when a Mrs Mary Harding, a local mother of a boy in my class, ran past, dived in, and swam out to him and bringing him back. She had saved his life, and he was a very lucky boy, as the Crouch is a killer as sadly some families can testify. Then, when I were about 10 yrs old, we would work the holidays on Jack Clear's farm at the top of Foundry Lane, then a dirt road lined by trees and hedges one side, and the foundry on the other, and almost everybody in town used to listen for the foundry bell which rang 4 times a day; at start work, 10 O'clock break, dinner start and end, and finish at 17.30. They all worked their days round that bell, you could hear it for miles.
We went to school in Devonshire Rd and I went to the new one in Southminister Rd in 1958 to1959, then on leaving school, working at E.H Bentalls in Heybridge, leaving Burnham at 06.30 and getting home at 19.30, a long day for a 15 year old, but that was what was expected of the young in those days. I used to help the Co-op milkman - a great bloke who taught me to drive in return for my efforts to hinder him. Our house was at the back and side of the co-op and milk was delivered in bulk to their yard where it was loaded on to two floats, and the second half of the round stored in the garage. We would load the 1 ton float and I, as a 14 year old, would drive to the starting point at Creeksea. In Dec 1961 I walked out of my job at Bentalls in a huff and could not get another job, and my father did not carry deadwood so in March 62 I joined the army for 10 years, swapping life in Burnham for Germany and the jungles of Malaya and Borneo. On demob I was a bus driver at Maldon until the death of my father in 1973 and returned to my roots in London with my mother. I have visited Burnham a few times and sadly it is not the laid back serene country town where I spent a happy childhood, but that is the march of time and today there is just one brother and I left. My brother lives in Cambridgeshire in Littleport with his Southminister born wife of over 40 yrs and I in south London with my local wife of 34 years.

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