Hackbridge

The Old Red Lion c1955
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I lived in Orchard Avenue, number 4, when the whole road was mock Tudor exteriors. I had quite a shock to revisit a few years ago to see them all plastered over and looking very tired.  In the l950s and early 1960s when I lived here we had a red phone box and blue police box at the top of the road.  The church was over the road and the rec was at the bottom of Orchard Avenue.  Mullards was the factory whose outside wall backed onto the rec.  We has two swings there and that was all, there was a small entrance leading into Culvers Avenue, leafy and unmade up road, and the entrance into Mullards where our mother worked part time.  During school holidays we waited outside the factory gates for her. The sewage farm at the top (London Road) used to stink to high heaven and I can't imagine what it's like living on the new housing there now. Hackbridge Station was the gateway to freedom, Croydon and Sutton as a teenager.  My old school Elmwood High is no longer there, so different to my wonderful childhood there.  Happy memories.