A Bassaleg Boy

A Memory of Bassaleg.

I was born in Newport in 1942 and after leaving the Nursing Home lived in 6,Garth Hill Bassaleg the home of my paternal grandparents, Oliver and Alice Briney. After a short time my parents (Nellie and Fred Briney) moved to Highfield Villas, an ex-nursing and convalescent home. We lived in one large room on the top floor overlooking Rogerstone, my father had sectioned the room into four or five separate rooms. T'was not easy for my parents, carrying coal up to the top floor of such a tall building. It was here in 1946 my sister Wendy was born. A year later we moved to Highfield Road, being one of the first families to move into the new estate. In January 1948 I started Bassaleg Primary School and I think Merlin Jones was the Headmaster when I started. Memories of this school are still vivid and include Boys and Girls playgrounds, small bottles of milk in the morning, sitting up straight in class in the afternoon hoping to be picked for milk left from the morning, school meals being cooked in the school kitchen and the meals, also cooked there, for Marshfield and Cefn Mabley schools being loaded in a shooting brake for delivery. Memories of walking to school from Highfield Road walking down the gully and coming out opposite the Church Hall, passing the Post Office on down passed the Blacksmith Shop where I saw Les James working, crossing the road to look in Ann Morgan's shop, passed the Garage across Forge Lane and down the hill to the school. Other memories included the death of Canon Picton and The Rev Bartle Jenkins becoming vicar, flooding down to Pye Corner, ringing the bells in St Basils Church and the sitting the 11 plus exam which led me to start in the Grammar School in 1954.
They are a few of early memories of Bassalg.