Beverley Gardens, Western Avenue.

A Memory of Perivale.

I was born in a masonette in Beverley Gardens, Western Avenue, in the middle of an air raid in 1943.
Yes, I do rememebr buying an ice cream from Creamery Fare in Greenford.
My local shops were across the road in Medway Drive and included, Pearks the grocers, Edgars the greengrocers, Wymans the newsagents, Felts half shop the grocers where you could buy products on tick, Macs, another half shop next to Felts where you could buy sweets, small toys. Macs also had a small lending library. There was also Mac Fisheries with a fish & chip shop a couple of shops away, Medway Motors and a local Co-op.
When the A40 Western Avenue, was widened to become a dual carriageway in the 1950s a single concrete carriageway was built for the traffic to pass by on. At the the the street lights were not available so the old oil lanterns were perched on top of 50 gallon oil drums. Later on, when the road had been rebuilt, the bus layby for the 105 and 79A was right in front of our home.
Our next door neighbours were the Tanners and the Bartletts, both of whom had lived there from the outset.
I attended Selborne Junior and secondary modern schools before going to Acton Technical School from 1957 to 1959.
At the west end of Beverley Gardens was Perival Maternity Hospital; to the east were the Acton Playing fields on which I played football and cricket whilst attending the technical school.
I was a member of the 6th Ealing (fromerly 26th West Middlesex) Boys' Brigade Company until approximately 1962 whien I transferred to the 51st London in Hammersmith as a Warrant Officer.
The 6th Ealing was based at Perivale Park Free (Congregational) Church, which is now a United Reformed Church.
Between May and July of each year the Boys Brigade company would play cricket in Perival/Greenford Park on Thursday evenings prior to embarking on the summer camp.
During the London bus strike of 1958, I had to catch the Push & Pull from South Greenford Halt to Ealing Broadway, and then another steam train to Acton Mainline station in order to walk down Horn Lane to the technical school/college buildings behind Acton High Street, but twice a week had to take the Central Line to North Acton to attend a branch of the technical school based in the top floor of a junior school in School Road, London NW10.
Because of the location of the junior school, my friend Andre and I were able to spend our lunch time at Park Royal Vehicles and see the Routemasters being built for London as well as the Regent Vs for Tehran.
All of the routemasters went past our home travelling between Park Royal Vehicles and the AEC works in Southall, irrespective of whether they had been built by AEC/PRV or Leyland.
My father wanted to see President Eisenhower go past from Northolt Airport in a specially borrowed Rolls Royce with the registration mark USA 2 (USA 1) did not exist).
We also saw on a number of occasions, Lady Dockers' gold plated Rolls Royce go by.
We had a tallyman called Mr East call once a week, from whom my parents used to buy furniture and the like. A very pleasant man he was.
Regretfully, from what I have been led to believe, most of my schoolfriends at the time are now deceased.
Can you remember the peasouper fogs? On one Saturday the family embarked on a bright and shiny morning to travel by undergound to Dagenham to visit some family friends. When we got to Dagenham, we had to turn back because the peasouper was so dense and yellowy that we could not see our fingers in front of our noses.