Wartime Childhood In Tooting

A Memory of Tooting.

Upper Tooting Road 1950
(ref: T201002) Year: 1943 Wartime Tooting
The picture of Upper Tooting Rd showing the Mayfair Cinema, and on the left hand side of the street, the RACS shop (Royal Arsenal Co-Operative Society), the dividend was paid with some sort of tin token and the cash was collected from the customer and sent to the cashier via a complex system of screw lidded recepticle sent rattling along a system of cables, the change would come back to the customer in the same way!
The memories come flooding back, we lived in Beeches Rd having been bombed out (1 Rudloe Rd) in 1941? Not sure as I was only five then!
Mum worked as an usherette in the Mayfair, Dad was in Africa and later Normandy with the RA. I saw my first 'weepy' movie around this time, Walt Disneys 'Bambi' showing at the Granada, Tooting, it made a lasting impression on me.
1944, Ansell Rd took a hit from either a V1 or V2, causing massive damage, that was enough for Mum, She took my sister and I and all the lifes' necessities that she could pack in a couple of suit cases and joined the shortest queue out of Waterloo, ending up in glorious, wonderful green Ilfracombe in N.Devon. Oh how friendly those lovely folk were to us, such sweet memories, When Dad was demobbed, he joined us there. I'm 71 now and have lived in the West Country since then. I think there is nowhere on Earth that I would rather be, but I am currently researching my family history and will possibly be visiting Brixton/Lambeth areas just to see my (wryly smiling) ancestral home!
Posted: 05/01/2008 22:11:51 - By Mike Dennis
Since writing this I have learned that the 'Mayfair' is now a Mosque and that the Granada has been razed, something the jerry didn't succeed with!