Creasey's Coachworks At South Norwood

A Memory of South Norwood.

My Grandad, George Creasey Allen, and my Nana Allen married and settled in South Norwood in 1899. They lived at Addison Road before renting a house at 32 Apsley Road. Grandad got a job at Creasey's coachworks straight from school and worked there all his working life. He stayed working there through the First World War even though he might have got more money working with munitions, as he needed to make sure he would have a job to support his family after the war ended. To start with he worked in the woodshed. Ernest Creasey managed the Creasey Wheelwrights business. My Grandad started work for Ernest when he left school at 12 or 13. Ernest Creasey himself didn't start the business as it was previously run by his father and grandfather before him. The business was in Pembury Road. Before the First World War my mother's brothers and sisters would go along to the workshops on a bank holiday and look around and play there. Apparently it was fun according to my mother's sister, Auntie Dorrie. Auntie told me that she really fancied Ernest Creasey's son. He married an ordinary girl and went to live in Australia much to my aunt's surprise as she thought that Ernest could never fancy Dorrie herself for being ordinary! The Creaseys lived in or near Portland Road next door to the little Congregational Church. My aunt described Ernest Creasey as quite nice, a short stocky man. His business employed a lot of workmen. There was a paint shop and a finishing shop and her Dad (my Grandad) was eventually in charge of all of it. He became a skilled wheelwright but eventually was forced to retire early (in his late fifties?) because of his arthritis. He received a cash pension payment of 1 each week which he collected in cash! Auntie thinks this was charity rather than a pension. I remember Grandad's house in Apsley Road and I still have photographs and newspaper cuttings about their Golden Wedding celebrations which I went to in 1949 in their house in Apsley Road. As Grandad became very old and frail he used the 'front parlour' as his bedroom and when I visited we would sit in this room at a folding card table and talk. He was a lovely old man and I was immensely proud that many years later I inherited some of his woodworking tools. I still use his coachmaker's axe now in 2008 which is quite amazing when I think that he held it in his own hand working in Creasey's coachmakers workshops before the First World War!