The Long Walk Home

A Memory of Uxbridge.

I remember going to the Savoy Cinema that you can see on the corner of the High Street and Vine Street. This was about 1953, I was seven and went with my brother who was twelve. I had never been to the pictures without an adult before. I can’t remember the title of the film, but I know it had millions of ants on the move and eating everything in their path. There is a lock keeper who was supposed to open the lock gates to flood the area, but he’s fallen asleep so the ants eat him too... In the fifties this must have been a theme for films like this, for next week we saw the same story but with thousands of elephants on the march.

At this time my family had only recently moved to West Drayton, so the area was new to us. This day my brother and I had come to Uxbridge on the 223 bus which takes you up Falling Lane past the Hospital and back on the Uxbridge Road towards Uxbridge, not the most direct route. After paying for the pictures the sweets and ice-cream, we found we didn’t have the bus fare home. We had to walk, but we didn’t know the Cowley Road took us directly to West Drayton. We followed the bus route we came on, making the journey twice as long as it could have been.

There were three cinema in Uxbridge at this time. The Savoy was the first to go, which turned into a bingo hall.