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West Drayton
West Drayton photos
Displaying the first of 3 old photos of West Drayton. View all West Drayton photos
West Drayton maps
Historic maps of West Drayton and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all West Drayton maps
West Drayton area books
Displaying 1 of 13 books about West Drayton and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of West Drayton
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of West Drayton.
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The Guy Outside The Post Office
Opposite the post office at the end of the parade of shops was a dry cleaners owned by what I thought was a rather posh lady who would call me Poppet. My mother cleaned house for them and sometimes I would be taken along to keep me out of mischief. They had two boys that went to private school and were only home for school holidays. Though they were older than me I found they acted a bit young. Her husband was a short stout man dressed in a pin striped suit. He worked in the city and took the train up to London every day. On my birthday the lady said “Poppet I’ve made you a chocolate cake”. I don’t know if eggs were still in short supply but my mother said it was very rich and had five eggs in it. All I can say is that it tasted good.
In the photo there is a service road and shops on the right, back in 1953 this... Read more
Making Our Own Entertainment
Across from The Angler Retreat in Cricket field Lane is the river Coln. Down the lane on your left you pass the West Drayton Cricket Club with the river on your right. Next to the cricket field is The Coln Park Caravan Site where I lived in 1952. After the war accommodation was scarce and many people lived in caravans, these were spread throughout the district on many small privately owned sites where amenities where few or non existent. The council closed these small sites and moved us all to the council owned Coln Park site. This was a great improvement with concrete slabs to park the caravan on. The road was a hard surface and once a year they sprayed tar down and covered it with shingle. To this day if I smell tar I'm mentally transported back to my childhood. We got our water from stand pipes around the site and sewage was collected once a week.
We had come from a site in Longford. Speachley's... Read more
The Railway Bridge
In this picture I can remember that on the left was W H Smith's, a bicycle shop and an Options on the corner of Colham Road. To the right between the two pubs many years earlier was Pat's Garage. In the picture we have the new railway bridge which was a great improvement from the old one. The old bridge was lower, narrower and only had one narrow foot path on the left. The vehicles came so close to you and made so much noise it was scary. The double decker buses could not get under the bridge so would turn round in the station yard and return to Uxbridge. Once a driver forgot what route he was on and got the double decker stuck under the bridge. It was there for ages until someone suggested letting the tyres down a bit and it reversed back out.
Shopping With my Nan And Other Fun Things
When I was a little girl, sometimes I used to stay with my nan in West Drayton on Church Road by the green, and while we went shopping around that quaint little village with about a dozen little stores, I also accompanied nan up to Station Road to the post office (ah, that wonderful post office, there it is on the left of the picture.)
I remember it was a lovely walk up Swan road. (I wonder why they called it Swan road? Is it because there were many swans further down in that little river by the Angler's Retreat?). I used to paddle in the little river across from "the Angler's Retreat" and under that cute little bridge with my brother Bryan and our little friend Barry. The water was so fresh and clear.
It somehow always seemed like a summer's day, is that the way it is when you're little? Always sunny?
Anyway those days were the fifties. Quiet and peaceful (especially after what people put up... Read more
Middlesex memories
We All Bumped Our Heads
At sixteen I owned a three wheeler convertible that with a bit of bending of the law sixteen year olds were allowed to drive. Plus the fact that the coppers didn't know how the law stood exactly. The car was a Powerdrive, coming towards you it looked like a sports car, going away it looked and sounded like a motor boat. It had a twin two stroke engine, chain driven and was too heavy. It should have been called the Under Powerdrive, but it looked good for a sixteen year old to be driving anyway. To make it legal for me to drive it, the car had to weigh under 8 cwt. I took every thing I could of the car, like the spare wheel, bumpers and the bench seat. I drove onto the weigh bridge at Brentford with an empty petrol tank, but it was still over 8 cwt. I explained my predicament to the young feller operating the weigh bridge whose boss was at lunch. No problem he... Read more
St Lawrence Cowley
We went to church here, until we moved to Cornwall, Jen and Rob were christened by lovely Norman Chalk and Peter Grimes ran the Sunday School. The kids bought me a watercolour of the church by Emilia Saunders, it hangs in our bedroom.
Notes From The Frith Files.
The lady walking down the right hand side of the street is Mrs Rose Allcock who lived in Uxbridge nearly all her life.
