The Fire And Before

The Town Hall 1898
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I was a child at Avondale College at the top of Wilbury Road in 1955 and was 'made' to perform The Teddy Bear's Picnic as a teddy bear (I can still smell the costume!) on the stage of the old Town Hall. In around 1959, I attended a sale of work fair which was opened by the film star Michael Wilding. For a raffle prize I was awarded a stuffed and mounted fox head - a moth eaten old thing which gave my mother kittens when I took it home. From my bedroom at 43 Brunswick Place I could see the tower of the Town Hall clock and on the morning after the fire, woke to hear the news on BBC Light Programme, rushed to the window to see the tower still intact but a vague whisp of smoke. Later on, we went along Church Road to see it but the Police had cordoned off Tisbury Road and Second Avenue. Years later I worked at Gamleys both in the old shop and the new one, this was around 1966.