Phil Munton
A Memory of Selsdon.
Hi, I've recently discovered this while doing research on a book I am writing and was interested to hear how many people from Selsdon remember their childhood and, in most cases, enjoyed the village as I knew it as a good place to grow up. I was born in 1948 and lived at 21 ( later changed to 41 ) Ingham Road from then until 1967 when I left for university and never really returned except to visit my Mum who lived in the same house until her death in 1994.
My parents moved in after their marriage in 1939 a month before the outbreak of war but were briefly rehomed when a V1 destroyed the house shortly after the birth of my older sister Mary in 1944. The crater from bomb remained on the present sites of 43 and 44 Ingham Road and I remember using this as a playground even when 41 and 42 were being built there in the fifties. With few cars in those days the kids in the road had a great place to play all the usual
games - football, cricket and 'tin can Tommy', when one person had to guard the can which represented base and had to find and see the other participants before they could run and touch the can before the 'guard!
The other place for us kids to enjoy were the woods, part of Littleheath Woods, which backed on to the houses on our side of the road and could be accessed at the cul de sac at the top of the road. During school holidays in particular we would spend hours in these woods and the two fields - the fallen oak field and Brent Field which was on the far side bordering
Littleheath Road itself. Often during summer we would take picnics with us and stay out from breakfast until teatime!
The top of the road was also a good place to start our sledges during periods of snow (particularly 1963) when starting, just inside the tree line you could get a good speed up, dodging any cars, and making sure you could stop before the
main road at the bottom!
The Primary School backed on the left hand side of the road and I can remember most of my
time there - I broke my leg in a play ground accident when I was 6 - and my class teachers Miss Mcdonald, Mrs Carr , Mrs Sully, Miss Williams and Mr Younghusband who took us for football and made me one of the captains of the school team. Also Miss Bjork, a rather stern and frightening headmistress who I got in trouble with for throwing stones at a group of girls! I can remember a lot of names from my year Andrew Woods, Michael Sycamore, Simon
Noakes, the twins David and John White, Nicholas Holt , Geoffrey Featherstone ( who left for Hong Kong ) and John Brumell - and a few of the girls Jill Percival who was very tall, Lorna Chessum? and Sally Hughes who was my first 'girlfriend' and who I once kissed when we went for a walk in the woods!
As for Selsdon itself I can remember most of the original stores - starting from the garage, the wool shop, tudor library the newsagents , Monty's the bakers , a wet fish shop up to Sainsburys , Woolworths , Broomfields , Barclays Bank, an estate agent , a hair salon , a flower shop right up to the Co-op a barbers and the Victoria Wine shop. Then on the other side the united dairy the Post Office in a ladies clothes shop, the chippy Nashes green grocery on the parade and then among others a gift shop ( Carl ? a pianist) down to another bank, an electrical
store, another estate agent Bakers Stores where you got your groceries before Budgens and more recent supermarkets, a menswear outfitter , Hubbards the ironmongers, the village club and the Baptist Church. I have missed out some but can remember most through walking up most days of the week including going to cubs and scouts behind St Johns Church on the Upper Selsdon Road.
I can remember a lot more of my childhood and may in the future revisit this site to share more memories but if there is anyone out there who can remember me or any of the people or things I have mentioned please get in touch.
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Like you I have many memories of Selsdon. I lived in Abbey Rd from late 1939 until 1963.
Of the names of people that you remember, the only one I know is Simon Noakes. He lived next door to me but later moved to Sanderstead. His mother was a nurse and my Mum used to do baby sitting with both Simon and his younger brother.
The Noakes were an affluent family and were the first persons in our area (Abbey Rd/Greville Ave) to have a TV. There living room was standing room only as every one piled in to watch the Coronation in 1953!
Mr Noakes was an Army Captain during WW2 and spent many years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. His souvenir of those times was a Japanese sword.
Like you I remember sledging down Ingham Rd in the severe winter of 1963. I still have a scar from a sledging accident in Littleheath Woods. It was a very deep gash but it was so cold that it did not bleed!
I have just recently started writing about some of my memories of Selsdon for the Selsdon Gazette. This local magazine has just gone on line, so check out my first to write ups at
https://selsdon-residents.co.uk/resources/Gazette%20October%202018.pdf and
https://selsdon-residents.co.uk/resources/Gazette%20November%202018.pdf
Des Donohoe
as me - Wallington County Grammar and I used to play with Richard for Selsdon Cricket Club, his
father was captain of one of the teams(the Sunday XI I think) and also for the football team we formed -. Kingswood-based at Sanderstead Rec. My violin teacher lived on Abbey Road and we must have seen each other on Ingham Rd sledging during 1963 - half the village used our road! Phil.
I used to help the Express Dairy milkman, Nobby Clark, and Ingham Rd was on the round. Poor old Emily the horse could not maske it up the last steep bit. But she could get a fair old speed going back down!
I had a friend, Terry Robertson who lived in Ingham Rd. He moved there from north London in about 1949. He took over from me as helper to the milkman, and when he left Selsdon Senior School became a milkman himself. You might know him as he lived in Ingham for at least several years. He was cricket mad and I went withhim, a few times by bus, to Lords to watch matches.
Like you I could write a book about my time in Selsdon, but am doing it as a series of articles for the Selsdon Gazette. One item that I have already written but not yet in a Gazette includes my first TV viewing., the Coronation in the Noakes house.
Des .
.
and we used to point out to sea pretending we could see something sensational. After walking on
we would turn round to see others trying to see what we had been 'looking at! Even more co-inci-
dentally, I also became Nobby Clark's helper - I remember Emily but sadly she broke a leg when
she went back down the road too fast and had to be put down. By the time I was helping Nobby
his horse was Duchess. I used to come home for lunch from Selsdon Primary at exactly the time
Nobby turned into the road and I helped with all the deliveries in the Road and the Close. Duchess couldn't make the steep bit either and I was useful for all the posher houses at the top
of the road - I can still remember most of the names of people who lived in the road. By the way
my 'pay' was a bottle of orange juice but I would have done it for nothing just for the ride on the
float! - no health and safety then!
When Terry came back from National Service and he joined the Dairy the floats had become elec-
tric and he became interested in champ jeeps that he had driven in the army and then London Buses one of which - an RT he bought and renovated - I think he may have had more than one! The last co-
incidence is that we have a Mccarthy and Stone flat in Dumfries and when we come down to visit family
we stay at the M&S development in Sanderstead right next to Waitrose where the express dairy used to
be! - Small world eh! Phil
I knew that Len was a step dad (I remember that he had only one lung - lung cancer perhaps?).but assumed that he was Mr Robinson (or was it RobERTson?) so when you wrote about Mrs Wenborn it took me some time to work out who she was!
Terry and I used to go to each others houses for tea and I always called her Mrs Robinson and was never corrected.
In 1951 I passed the scholarship and went to St Joseph's College at Upper Norwood and so lost track of most of my friends from Selsdon School, including Terry. He must have been a bit older than me, I did not have to do National Service because it ceased just before I was due to go.
When I first started to help Nobby Clark ( before I even started school) I got a half pint of milk. Later my pay increased and I got a silver thrupenny piece. When these went out of circulation my pay doubled to sixpence! A few years later I changed jobs, or rather employers, I then helped Sid, the Coop milkman who paid half a crown! And he had a petrol driven van with a much longer round but fewer customers. I spent most of my time then, being driven around, and for much more money!
Des
took me to an Arsenal match - he was a fan - I remember not daring to say I was a Crystal Palace
fan - a team I had a trial for at the same time as Steve Kember and when Roy Hodgson was therat the same time! Len did have only one lung but he still smoked even though he was always out of
breath. By the way, another co-incidence - even though most of Ingham Road got milk from Express Dairy we got ours from the co-op - their motor vans were red I seem to remember. What I definitely remember is our divi number which my Mum drilled in to me if she left me to pay if she was not at home - it was 147863 - I can remember that after sixty years plus and still forget where I put my car keys or what I did yesterday! Thats age for you - Take care - Phil.
I wasn't born at that time but my sister was. My mother was in the habit of leaving her in the pram in
the garden but for some reason she didn't that day. Had she done so I probably wouldn't be here as
she would certainly run out on hearing the engine cut out on the V1! As it was she was able to get
herself and my sister into the Morrison shelter in the dining room at the back of the house which nevertheless had the rear section completely destroyed together with the whole of the adjoining house which was slightly nearer the blast. The two houses further down the road were completely destroyed and remained a bombsite well into the 1950's. My father didn't know about the incident until he came home from work! Talking about my Dad - he was in the ARP based at the place you mentioned in the magazine. He told us stories about some of his duties there and the one I remember in particular was when on fire watch they worked in pairs with high tech equipment consisting of a bucket and a stirrup pump which they carried between them. The trouble was that if they didn't stick side by side they couldn't deploy the small amount of water they had if, as invariably happened they lost each other in the blackout! Sounds a bit like Dad's Army.Merry Christmas.
me copies of the photographs taken of our house in Ingham Road after the flying bomb you refer to
hit the garden ground behind two houses that were to the right of the semis as you look at them from
the front. They were destroyed and had to be completely rebuilt in the 1950's. We used to play in the
crater left as children and incurred the wrath of the builders by mucking about in the new houses as they were being built. The bomb hit sometime in August - 1944 of course. I will send images of
the pictures when i have worked out how to do so! Phil Munton.