Going Down The End Of The Road !

A Memory of Hornchurch.

I have quite vivid memories from the late 1950's of Woodhall Parade or "The End of the Road" as those in Woodhall Crescent called it. Harry Skeeles the cockney greengrocer, always with his hat on and mostly with a fag in the corner of his mouth as well! His wife and later on their two daughters (?) ... and his very old mother, who used to perch on a stool by the till. Burgess the butcher next door... Greens the posh grocer... walls covered with goods and a long counter with boxes of biscuits, dried fruit etc along the counter at customer waist level. My best friends' mother used to send the pair of us to us to Greens to buy spam! The Coop, the cheaper store (where our family went for the divi!) where the uniformed assitant would slice bacon on one of those old slicing machines, and then write down on the side of the paper, she had wrapped the bacon in, the cost of all the different goods you had bought... she would then add it up manually... but my father always did if for her first! Lings, the sweet shop , where I was taken to buy sweets! (Fruit Salads, Black Jacks, Sherbert dips...(horror!) Draytons the sweet shop next door ... rather cold and austere... and the mysterious off licence at the end of the row of shops, where we never went! The "road" infront of the Parade was not made up or anything and always full of pot holes, with wasteland between it and Wingletye Lane. ... and yes the Pig Farm over the road by the bridge... where you could also buy eggs.

Childhood memories, and it all looks so familiar !!