Wilton Memories

A Memory of Hornchurch.

Like Gloria Friend, I spent a happy childhood in Hornchurch, attending Suttons Primary School where my mother (Mrs Wilton) was deputy head and Mr Occomore our headmaster. We were carefully drilled in our tables, phonics and acceptable social behaviour like never dropping litter nor biting our nails and keeping our bikes in good working order. My favourite teacher (not counting my mum!) was Mr Moore who loved natural history and was a good artist. I also remember Mr and Mrs Thomas, Mrs Pharoah and Mrs Croxford. Mrs Croxford was my very first teacher and we would be given small balls of rather grubby plasticine and expected to roll it out and play with it (always staying in our seats) for quite long periods of time along with probably forty other small children, some of whom were crying as they missed home. There were no induction courses for reception class children in those days nor toys, though there were percussion instruments which we were allowed to play when we reached Miss Davies's class. Soon we were reading a Beacon reading primer called 'Old Lob' about a farmer and his animals which included Percy The Bad Chick and a goat called Mr Grumps. We all read together en masse, following the words with our fingers as best we could. Milk came round in small bottles and we also received rations of malt which I suppose were intended to nourish small children in the post-war period.

During the Second World War, we watched bombers setting off from Hornchurch aerodrome on their way to Germany, streaming across the sky on raids, like flocks of starlings. Once I saw a German plane (with a tattered parachute still attached) which had crashed down nearly opposite the Railway Hotel. The German bombers used to follow the District Line railway tracks on their way to bomb the East End of London and the warning sirens and all clear calls would be sounded regularly from the top of Hornchurch olice station. Most people had shelters, either in their gardens or (when the metal box type shelters arrived) inside their houses.

In those days, we referred to the main shopping area as 'The Village' where you could find the 'The Green Lantern' restaurant, Fentimans (a florist) and Woolworths where I loved spending my 6d pocket money. Many goods were collected or delivered by delivery boys on bikes or by horse and cart and I especially remember the milkman with his horse and cart, making his way along Ravenscourt Grove with people going out to collect manure for their vegetable gardens.

St Andrew's Church was an important part of our lives and my twin sister and I were both baptised (1942), confirmed (1958) and married there. We too - like Gloria Friend - would walk around the lovely old church on Mothering Sunday to 'hug' mother church, as well as our own mothers. I especially loved Easter services, singing those lovely Easter hymns like 'There is a Green Hill Far Away', smelling the scent of primroses and feeling the promise of warmer weather ahead, sensing, as much as a little child can, the spiritual significance of Holy Week.

One day when I was about seven, Queen Elizabeth and George V1 drove past St Andrew's in an open car as part of a visit to the area and we were given a day off school to see them. Old Canon Courthope, the incumbent, stood outside, his white robes flowing in the breeze, pointing up to the old stone horned head high on the church. My dear father was churchwarden and a stalwart worker at St Andrew's for many years.
Happy days ... in what was then a comparatively undeveloped place, surrounded by allotments and within easy reach of countryside.