Food Outlets
I can remember the suppliers of food and the taxi rank on the island at the Clock Tower - their pies were particularly nice and the taxi drivers very friendly. At the same place the freshly loaded coal wagons used to park whilst there drivers bought a pie - their horses were enormous - at least to me as a little boy. Thinking about it I think there was also a drinking fountain for us kids etc and a trough for the horses. They were loaded up in the coaling department of Thornton Heath Station Goods department. In my day - as a child - I used to go to the bridge a little way down the line and sit on the wall overlooking the rail-lines and watch the steam trains shunting the wagons. The wall was about six feet high and made of blue bricks - it was scary fun to walk on the top - especially over the bridge. I have checked Google Maps - and the wall is still there - though there is a fence to stop adventurous kids like me climbing. I was also sent - as a child - to a faggot and mash shop that was - if I remember correctly - in the High Street - you had to supply your own basin.
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RE: RE: Food Outlets
During the mid fifties, the grease, oil and sand put on the road where the 159 buses parked at the clock tower, the coal horses stopping at the water trough by the clock after hauling their loads up the gradient from the coal yard. I lived in Bulganak Road off Parchmore Road and the house garden backed on to the coal yard, after school we would scramble down the embankment and play among the coal wagons and shunting engines until we were spotted by staff at the station and chased off. I also remember Sunday evenings listening to the Salvation Army band playing by the clock tower. One of my friends Tony Hunt lived in the High Street above a shop and his gran used to run the jellied eel stall outside the Prince of Wales public house. It was an ideal place to grow up, I wouldn't have missed it for the world, scrumping, soap box trollies, youth clubs mmmmmm....
Comment from Kenneth Downes on Wednesday, 25th May 2011.