My Apprentice Days With Northmet Electricity (Eeb)
A Memory of Kenton.
I was born in Elmgrove Crescent Harrow in 1933 and lived in Pinner Road North Harrow, moving to Wealdstone in 1934. I started at Bridge Scool in 1938 and followed on to Belmont Sec. Modern School until leaving in August 1948 and started training as an electrician with Northmet Electricity at 4 College Road Harrow.
I was attached to the Kenton branch showrooms and depot in Kenton Road, the front of the showroom is visible in the Bottom Right of Frith Picture ref:K151009.
There was a rear access along the back of these premises to our workshops and stores, we used bicycles to cover our work area between Edgware in the East, down to South Harrow in the West, and to Bushey in the North.
Along the access road was Reg's Cafe where we took our early tea break before setting out to our jobs for the day.
Happy Memories.
Brian Grainge. now aged 77 retired in Suffolk.
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The cafe utilised an old wooden garage block, which would never pass muster with the health people today.
There was a rare pinball machine within, which was popular with local youth amongst whom, it is said, included a young Keith Moon (later drummer with The Who) who was a local boy from Wembley.
the electricity showrooms as lorry driver, I was apprentice Electrician at the time but enjoyed occasional trips with him
until called for National Service R.A.F.
Cheers. Brian Grainge.
I remember the electricity showroom where you worked. It later became the offices for The Gramophone magazine. Currently, it's an Asian bar/bistro (actually, I notice that this is also now closed and boarded up.)
Further along that parade, there was a Hi-Fi store (Green & Cooper's). I think that it was this shop that had a door entry buzzer operated by an electric eye. Naturally, it acted like a magnet to local kids and must have been the bane of the shop staff's lives. Actually, on reconsideration, I think that it was one of the shops on the bridge.
I think that other shops in that parade included a butcher's (Murray's?) and the old post office. There used to be a police box on the pavement outside it. There was a bank at the end on the corner of Draycott Avenue (Westminster Bank?)
Just up and around the corner from the showroom, there was another alleyway, which led to the railway goods yard and some curious old railway cottages (long gone.) It was one of the places where I delivered newspapers on my paper round.
Further up the bridge, there were those old hut shops on the bridge (probably leased out by British Railways). The first one was a coal merchant (Wallace Spiers?). They had a huge lump of coal as a display outside the shop. It gradually got hacked away over the years, especially, no doubt, during the winter of '62/'63. Eventually it disappeared altogether.
Other shops there were a dressmaker's and a place called The House of Cards, which sold toys and nick-nacks. I think that there might have been a watchmaker's shop as well. These shops were all swept away at the time that they changed the road layout when they built the new Sainsbury's store in the railway yard. The old Sainsbury's was in a double-fronted shop opposite your old showroom. There was a gap of many years between the old one closing and the new one being built.
Apart from that, the buildings in that part of Kenton are very much as they were, albeit the occupants of the shops would bear absolutely no relation to those of your memory. I moved away more than thirty years ago. Everything seems a lot more dowdy and run down now.
The only shop left that I remember of old is Hart's, the watchmakers who still work from a shop in the parade next to what used to be the Odeon Cinema and the Northwick Tearooms.