A Young Boy In Cranford 1949 1955

A Memory of Cranford.

My name is Michael Mancey. In 1949, when I was four years old, my parents, youngster sister and I, moved to a brand new council house in Windsor Road. Although the postal address was Hounslow West, it was in reality Cranford. I started school at Cranford Infants School a year later in 1950. To get to school I walked across a field and crossed Woodfield Road then went down Byron or Chaucer Avenue. The Parkway hadn’t been built then. My early memories of the school included a pond with goldfish just inside the entrance (I somehow think Health & Safety wouldn’t allow such a thing now), smog, an eclipse of the sun (1954), a siesta on a camp bed after lunch, stories about Fatty and Skinny from Miss Willett and playing on the air raid shelters. The area was still rural. Three sides of the school were fields (we called them the back fields). You could walk out of a small gate to the side of the school then cross the fields to the river Crane. Beyond that were more fields all the way to Hatton Cross where Heathrow Airport started. I remember there was a gate at the entrance to the airport with a policeman on duty. This was where Hatton Cross station is today. Outside of my house were gardens full of buddleia bushes which attracted hundreds of butterflies. A Baxters bakers van delivered our bread. On Sundays, an old man came round ringing a bell, selling crumpets from an old pram. As well, sometimes you could buy a jug of prawns from another street vendor. No-one had a car. We played Tin Can Tommie at the junction of Windsor Road and Stansfield Road. Most families on the estate were poor. There was still some rationing. It was always summer. HAPPY DAYS.