Holes, Hoardings & Hythe Ferry

A Memory of Southampton.

On returning from the Middle East, my family holed up across the water at Fawley. A big city was very exciting for me and after getting off the Hythe Ferry it was all bomb craters up to about the Dolphin. Above Bar was all hoardings around gigantic holes where obviously bombs had fallen and footings were going down for shops etc. Sports meets and hockey matches up by the Common (such a treasure for a town to have). It took a few years for the town to straighten itself out and I remember Mayes, Edwin Jones and Tyrell & Greens, also C&A. The Hants and Dorset buses at the Civic Centre, long dashes to the ferry if we missed the last bus and the one thing I always loved was the aroma of roasting coffee beans which often pervaded the town. The first coffee bars which opened around the Bargate and High St., and my first taste of spag bol and being so sophisticated eating in a coffee bar and discussing poetry with a group of acquaintances. Gee, how quaint that all seems now. Seeing Tommy Steele and later Buddy Holly at the Gaumont (I think!), slumming around the pubs to see how the other half lived. And some of them were really grotty...Horse & Groom, Lord Nelson etc... Loved the little Old Red Lion as the hole in the wall it was back then. Mum often took my young brothers to the dirt track to see Barry Briggs and Ivan Mauger; I think they went most weeks. Later worked for a few months at the Star in the High St before returning back over the water. Later still taking the kids to Southampton Zoo and on the day of the moon landings we took a picnic for a drive out to the zoo where my girls cracked up because a very large chimp (it may have been a gorilla) took a fancy to me and piddled in my shoe. Loved the zoo, loved feeding the giraffes. We left from Southampton Docks in 1973 to sail here to New Zealand and after googling a map of Southampton now, wouldn 't have a clue whereabouts I was..it has all changed so very much. Jeannette Lomas (previousy Lister, nee White).


Added 06 May 2013

#241259

Comments & Feedback

My step father used to ride his bike from Shirley to the docks, catch the Hythe ferry to Fawley where he worked. He'd often see a man fishing on the pier. Dropping a line between the boards, he fished for Flounder. My step father asked him one day if he'd caught any. 'yes' he said 'but when pulled it up and lost it at the planks - this is true

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