Worcester Park, Central Road c1950

Houses in The Avenue

I lived in Woodlands Avenue and used to walk down The Avenue every day in term time to catch the bus to Kingston. At that time many of the big houses were still standing but one by one, probably as the owners died or they became too much for them, they were demolished and flats built. Even today there are some big houses still standing, mainly towards to top of The Avenue as you approach the church. It holds many happy memories for me and now it's all on Google Street View. I often browse the roads which were my playground.

Morley's bakery

Morley was a funny old chap, he ran a top bakery but was rather miffed when 'these 'ere new fangled electric vehicles' started being used for home deliveries ... his response was as the previous poster related - to pull his wooden delivery carts to the top of the steep Central Road hill behind his car and let his delivery men continue through the higher streets pulling their vehicles behind them. It was a 'Canute' effort I'm afraid - doomed to failure.   He was an enthusiastic gambler on the horses and would back every animal in the Derby each year with a convoluted system designed to guarantee a successful financial outcome - he would boast 'I always back every horse running'.
On a different topic, does anyone recall those huge houses in The Avenue (seemingly mentioned in one of H G Wells's books) - I seem to remember them being 5 or 6 stories high - what happened to them?

Pam Cook and Mr Morley the baker

Pam lived with her family in Washington Road and on leaving school at  first worked with Mr Morely the baker in his Longfellow Road shop, helping to keep the books and doing counter work.
Years later when Pam was 24 we were married in St Philip's Church - now no longer there.

Worcester Park, Central Road

The concrete streetlamps only appeared in the mid-1950s. Before then, the street lights were puny strutures housing ONE electric bulb. Everything was very dark at night. You would think that all the motorists would drive around on dipped beams, but no...Everyone drove on sidelights as use of headlamps was thought to induce glare. Motorists who used their headlamps were much disliked.

When the new lamps were installed they contained state-of-the-art sodium bulbs. At first they were disliked because the lamp posts were considered ugly, and because the yellow light was revolutionary. As a young boy, I thought to myself "Yeah, but at least you can see where you're going now."

Then there were the pre-war-built 213 buses - awful vehicles. They used to struggle up the hill, engines wheezing and grating their gearboxes. They frequently broke down and I can remember one bus that had struggled to the top of Coombe Hill actually caught fire!

Last memory of this part of the world was a jumble sale organised by the Epsom & Ewell Ratepayers Association. For some reason they held it in a hall in (I think) Caldbeck Road. Deep inside Sutton & Cheam territory, the local inhabitants had little regard for the interlopers from over the tracks. Heavily outnumbered, the Epsom and Ewell organisers lost most of the stock to pilfering and never again did they mount a similar venture.

The Bakers

I remember Mr Morley, who owned the bakers at the corner of Longfellow Road, roping the bread delivery cart , fully loaded, to the back of his old Ford car and pulling it up the hill to his shop at the top , with the delivery man, who only had part of one arm, swinging between the shafts of the cart. The poor old delivery man's feet barely touched the ground with the rear metal support wheels striking sparks from the road every time the cart lurched back onto the wheels. If the rope had given way, the cart plus the dangling delivery man would have gone backwards down the hill! Health and safety was not the same in those days.