Church Road

A Memory of Laindon.

To the left of the picture just out of sight was a bungalow converted into a shop ran by a Mrs.Cooper. The slim white line you see on the right of the picture was a concrete drive over a ditch leading to a butchers, who would sell the lard for cooking and the dripping separately for putting on bread. There is a gap betwen the semi-detached bungalows showing a gable end, this was lived in by Mr. & Mrs Braithwaite, attached to one lived in by Mr. & Mrs. Mason. The next one away from the view down the road, was called "Sylvane", we did not have numbers, only names, and I was born in the front bedroom 28/05/48 at about midday.The house this side of the gap was lived in by a family called Travis. The local single decker bus would drive up Church Road, at the end of its run, turn around in the foreground space and wait at the bus stop outside "Coopers" shop. Mrs Percival had a sewing machine and would make clothes, and my mother would bring children into the world, and lay out and wash people who died. We never locked our doors, and we would bring each others washing in if it rained. Looking down this view, futher down on the left was a short unmade road where a friend of mine, lived in a bungalow where the bedrooom walls were made of sheets of asbestos.

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