Growing Up In Enfield

A Memory of Enfield.

I remember the pool very well, I attended Suffolks Secondary Modern School in Brick Lane, just off the Great Cambridge Road, we walked to the pool for swimming lessons but if you could not swim the teachers did not bother to try teach you. One day my friend Doreen Banks told our parents we were going swimming but in reality we went to see a Mario Lanza film at the Savoy. The boys we went with wet our swimming costumes under the tap for us on the way home! I wrote a critique of the film for an English lesson, this was displayed on the wall for parents' day, luckily my stepmother did not come. I also remember playing in Hilly Fields, also going to the 'Bughutch'. I lived near Enfield Wash, not in the town, Hoe Lane was where I lived, right next to the railway line. I was mad about dancing, went 3 times a week, first learned to dance at 'Dinah's dance class, she lived in Crest Drive and taught us to dance in a shed at the bottom of her garden on Fridays. Dinah was also the local Brownie leader. On Wednesdays we went to a club next to the large Co-op deptartment store near Ordnance Road. I remember going to all the cinemas mentioned on this site. I caught Polio in September 1952 and spent a year in various hospitals, then 2 years at home unable to go out, in 1955 I was issued with what was known as an invalid trycicle. The world was then my oyster. We went everywhere in our 'trikes', at a time when ordinary teenagers had no transport I was lucky. The 'trikes had a 197 Villiers engine on the side. I worked at Sangamo Weston on the Great Camdbrige Road, I went to St James junior school on Enfield Highway, we had to wqlk a mile to the annex next to St James's church near Green Street, I eventually got married in this church 1964. It would be lovely to hear from anyone who remembers me. Dorothy Stokes.