Lymington In The 1940s

A Memory of Lymington.

My maternal grandmother and mother were both born in Lymington, my mother attending the grammar school in Brockenhurst (I remember as a small boy her pointing it out to me from the train) In 1944, when the V1 'doodlebugs' started falling, it was decided that my mother, my sister and I should leave our home in London to join my grandmother in Lymington. It was a turbulent time in southern England, particularly as American army personnel were quartered on the other side of the Lymington River in Boldre massing for D-Day. (One advantage of this for a local youngster was the generous nature of the GIs who were always ready to hand out a stick of gum, or a doughnut to a hungry kid!). For about six months I went to school at the little, redbrick C of E school that backed on to Pragnell's Garage in Emsworth Road. It had a huge, gravel playground as an alternative to the 'rec', a short distance away next to the churchyard that had a couple of bomb-shelters, swings and a slide (on which I regularly ripped my trousers...). The parish hall nearby was always jumping on Saturday nights to the big-band sounds of Glenn Miller although, as there was of course no 'colour bar' in Great Britain, I recall that things occasionally got a little tense at these dances...

My earliest memories date from about 1939 from the age of 7 when my family lived there for the early months of the war before moving to London and, even as a kid, I felt the tension of a threatened invasion. I can still name most of the hotels, businesses and stores in the High Street from that time - many of which have surely long since disappeared, edged out by big chains like Tesco, Boots and HMV; among them, Timothy Whites the chemist, Plumley's the grocer, Weekes for hunting and fishing requisites, Figgures Cycle Shop, the Angel and the Londesborough hotel (behind which the Hants and Dorset bus depot was located), Klitz's music store and, just past it, the Bugle pub, a car dealership, and the Old Bank House restaurant, with its hanging sign of a snooty-looking footman holding a tray with a steaming roast turkey and a small dog looking up expectantly; then there was the ivy-covered solicitors' office building of D'Angibau and Malim, where one of my cousins was a legal secretary, adjoining the churchyard of beautiful St Thomas's Church.

What a treasure-trove the churchyard was for a youngster then! Some of the gravestones dated from the early and mid-1700s and one in particular just behind the church had a skull and crossbones on it, evoking fantasies of a buried pirate in my boyish mind! Then there were the eminently climbable linden trees that always harboured a large number of birds' nests in the spring...

The Lyric cinema - long since converted into a supermarket, I believe - was an important entity in the community, showing, of course, mainly the patriotic war films of the era (I recall seeing 'Ships with Wings' and 'Lifeboat' there). Another of my cousins was a secretary at Wellworthy, a supplier of piston rings for the war effort and one of the area's main employers, a little out of the town centre on the way to Pennington. I remember how the smell of machined metal always hung in the air around the factory. An uncle and aunt lived over a dentist's which later became a shop called, 'The Spinning Wheel' in the High Street.

My grandmother lived in Shrubbs Avenue, a little farther on from Cannon Lane where, as kid, I used to climb about on the WWI cannon memorial at the intersection. On the corner was Diamond and Sons, the undertakers, and farther on was the Hilltop grocery store and, opposite it, Topp's the butcher's (Mr Topp was very jovial and had a huge handlebar moustache). Back towards town on the right at the corner of Emsworth Road was the depository (originally owned by Ford Furniture and Upholsterers, but it changed hands, I think around the late Forties, to E R Badcock & Sons).

Quay Hill, the Quay itself and 'the banks' were a magnet for us kids! Armed with a meatbone from the butcher's and a length of string, we'd go 'crabbing' down by the Ship Inn on the wooden jetty. On hot summer days, the swimming baths - with real salt water! - beckoned, while there was an oval paddling pool with a grassy centre island for younger children in front of the Royal Lymington Yachting Club. There was also Renouf's Fish and Chip shop just above the old customs house on the Quay Hill, where 'thruppence' would buy you a generous helping of chips. On the other side of the river was Lymington Pier railway station with the ferry boat - affectionately called, 'The Crab' by locals - to the Isle of Wight.

A sadly very brief visit in 1988 showed that a lot had changed indeed. The tiny, almost tumbledown houses on Quay Hill, had been bought up and reconfigured into upscale flats and condos, owned mainly, we learned, by the weekend yachting folk.

Out of town and taking the Banks Road, you came to a beautiful botanical park -Howlett's Gardens - where we would walk as a family on summer Sunday evenings. A massive and very ancient tree trunk lay there that was great for clambering about on.

These are some of the recollections I have of the Lymington of yesteryear that will, I hope, strike a responsive chord with people of my age who have had the good fortune to experience Lymington in their younger days!