Raynes Park, Grand Drive c1950

Motspur Park

I lived in Seaforth Avenue on and off with my nan and grandad, they were called Annie and Albert, if anyone remembers then please get in touch.
What I loved about Motspur Park was it felt like a village to me. The library was on the corner, it felt so small in there. I used to be taken to the Earl Beatty pub with my parents and brothers and sit outside and enjoy a packet of crisps and a ginger beer. I remember the corner shop in Seaforth Avenue, it was always full to the brin with things. It felt so safe in those days to play in the street and I loved going to the park, also I went into Carters Tested Seeds a lot after coming out of Bushey School and loving the smell in there, can't remember what is was of but I liked it.
Happy dayes were had then. By the way, my grandparents' surname was Ireland.

    
                          

RN Off No.

I lived in Seaforth Avenue for many years living opposite the Elim Gospel Hall. I worked at Chessington Zoo for a while after leaving Beverley Central School, then worked at Carters Tested Seeds in the small seeds lab dept before joining the Royal Navy in 1949. The family left the area some years later for Shoeburyness/Chelmsford where some of them are still located. I am trying to obtain photos of Carters, a magnificent building (if only a facade) but have had no success so far. Any offers out there - would appreciate a contact. Names from the past:- Mickey Milton Janitor of Beverley Brook School, Les Biggs from Carters (who also joined the RN, a joint suicide effort!!). Was a newspaper boy for Melumids paper shop in Raynes Park. Spent happy winter days sledging down the bank at the white bridge near Carters.
Also spent cold winter Saturdays during the war on my dads allotment in Motspur Park "Digging for victory" as it was called then - hated it!! Frozen to the core. Used to push a pram to the railways sidings in New Malden for coal from Francis coal merchants, a long trek for me and my wee brothers. Spent many a scary night in our Anderson Shelter when the bombs were falling all around us. What a pity the lovely little church in Douglas Avenue was hit and partially destroyed. Saturday morning pictures in the Odeon at Shannon Corner was a weekly treat, singing along with the bouncing ball plus the westerns. Buying those lovely meat pies from the "Whato" transport cafe on the Kingston By-Pass was divine, it has all gone now presumably. I am now living in the Orkney Islands having travelled around the world in different guises for many years. Quite a contrast from my early days of suburbia, hustle and bustle to what is now a sublime way of life, back to nature if you will and loving every minute of it - but not forgetting a very happy and interesting time growing up in Seaforth Avenue, despite the war and the bombings. So - how about a photo or two of Carters somebody, there must be some somewhere though I have drawn a blank in semi-official sources.

How lucky I am

I moved to Motpur Park when I was 4 years old, living opposite Beverley Brook in West Barnes Lane. This was 1951. I have absolutely great memories: friends calling on your door asking your parents "Can Keith come out to play?". Think about it, a sandpit at Robin Hood Park was all that was on offer for the kids. Yeah Red School, cane across the fingers. White School, cane across your bum and with venom. We were not all perfect kids. Yup, I had two brothers and luckily enough all three of us got into enough mischief that Mum and Dad had a dream of a better place to live out their lives. Us bro's now live in New Zealand and Australia. My family left England in 1964 and we are so lucky.

The Real Winters of the 1940s

I recall, with the occasional shudder, the freezing cold winters of the 1940s. I spent Saturday evenings earning a couple of shillings (that's 10p to you youngsters!!) working from 4.30pm to 6.00pm selling newspapers in the centre part of the crossover bridge at Motspur Park railway station. I worked for Berny Bromhead, who had a newspaper kiosk that was situated in the wide pedestrian walkway that led from Claremont Avenue, through to the railway station and the bridge. I wasn't allowed to leave my 'pitch' for the duration of 4.30pm - 6.00pm. If I was getting short of papers, I would shout down to the kiosk and Berny, with his obligatory piece of chewing gum being chewed at a rather sedate pace, accompanied by the largest 'dew drop' you have ever seen hanging from the end of his nose, would bound up the bridge stairway, sniffling and puffing, at a pace that would put some youngsters to shame. Berny at this time was, I think, in his late thirties or early forties and I believe also suffered with flat feet, which made his galloping up the railway bridge even more spectacular. When asked why he ran up the stairs so quickly, his reply was that he didn't want me to run out of papers, as this would make a difference to his profits at the end of the day. After completing my Monday to Friday evening paper round, to enable me to earn a bit more pocket money, Berny asked me if I would 'man' his small kiosk at the front of the Odeon cinema at Shannon's Corner, again selling newspapers.
There used to be three papers on the stall, namely The Evening News, The Star and The Evening Standard. If takings were not to Berny's liking, he would give me a lesson in salesmanship by attending (very briefly) the stall that I manned, stand at the front of the cinema canopy where the stall was situated and bawl, at the top of his lungs: 'NEWS, STAR, STANDARD, CLASSIFIED RESULTS, EVERY ONE A WINNER'. After a couple of Saturdays I had had enough of that particular job, one of the reasons being that on the first Saturday I tried to sell a newspaper to my school headmaster, who just happened to be going to the cinema that evening with his wife (I think it was his wife!!) and who started to ask embarrassing questions regarding my ability to give people the right change, due to my being (in his opinion) a complete flop at school maths!! The second Saturday was the decider. The Shannon Corner Odeon cinema was situated on a major crossroads. One road was Burlington Road, the other was the main A3. Although there wasn't much traffic (including the once-every-quarter-of-an-hour trolley bus going to either Wimbledon Town hall, or in the other direction, to Kingston or Hampton Court), in those long-lost halcyon days of yesteryear the wind, rain and snow would drive under the canopy with a real vengeance, causing a tremendous draught, and one of the obstacles in its way was ME. After being frozen to the bone a couple of times, it was time to say good bye to the lovely old Odeon, my newspaper stand and, of course, another two shillings (10p). I still kept my paper rounds and worked for Berny untill 1950.
I often wonder if Berny (and his assistant) ever made it to the big time and left that kiosk in the pedestrian walkway and did they ever get a PROPER shop? If anybody out there knows the answer, please, let me know. Many thanks.
Neil MacGregor
                                      
                                            

    

Life in Seaforth Avenue

As a youngster I, along with two other brothers, attended the RED school in West Barnes Lane (infants and juniors) and when old enough, I moved over the sports field to the White School (seniors). My brothers moved on to the Beverley School in Blakes Lane, Motspur Park. During the mid 1940s, it was the job of us boys, on a Saturday morning, to take Mum's pram around to Champion's the timber merchants' rear entrance (that was quite near the back of the 'What Oh' transport cafe), get permission from the saw mill foreman to salvage all the off cuts of planks etc and we would then load Mum's pram to overflowing, even jamming pieces of wood down the sides to enable the pram to carry twice it's capacity. When we eventually got home, after pushing the pram and contents along Burlington Road, past Bradbury Wilkinson's printing factory, we would turn right, over the level crossing and then right again into Seaforth Avenue. When we got home, all the bits of wood were stacked away in Dad's lean-to shed, ready for chopping up for the indoors fire. When the pram was emptied, off we would go again, this time to Francis the coal merchant at the bottom of the New Malden High Street (just by the railway bridge).
At times, on the way home, with two one-hundred-weight bags of coal in the pram and being a mighty bit hungry, as we passed the hardware store just up the High Street from Francis's (the name eludes me), we would grab a dog biscuit from the top of the open sacks that were on display at the front of the shop, break it up into edible sizes then eat it on the way home!! Sometimes we were unlucky enough to grab one that was made out of a charcoal substance and it tasted awful, but we still ate it!!  .Perhaps that was our penance for stealing. My family moved away from Seaforth Avenue in 1953 after having been there since 1939. I am now married and live in Chelmsford, Essex and have done so since leaving the Merchant Navy in 1962. I often relate stories to my grandchildren of when I was a 'war baby' and what I got up to when I was younger, but at times I think they find it hard to believe what my brothers and I had to do to assist in the daily life of a family during the dark days of World War Two. Worrying days for Mum and Dad, but wonderful, happy days for us kids!!