Living In New Haw Until 1968

A Memory of New Haw.

I was born in Farleigh Road in New Haw in 1945. My dad, John, worked at Vickers Armstrongs as did many other parents and my Mum, Grace, had also worked there during the war before she had children. She and my elder brother, John, were evacuated to Scotland at one time because of the bombing of the factory.
After the war I went to West Byfleet Primary School, as did my three brothers, twins Peter and Paul completed the family. Mrs. Crab was my first teacher and we also had Miss Rose who, I think, went off to India to teach children there. At one time we had an Indian male teacher. I was playing the part of an Indian girl who was being told the story of the nativity by two English children. The Indian teacher helped to dress me in a sari, suitably chaperoned by Miss Hey, the headmistress. We performed the play in St. John's church and afterwards I kept my brown make-up on and walked home jabbering away, thinking I was convincing passers-by that I was a foreign child!
We all walked to school , back home for dinner, back to school and back home again. We went over Scotland Bridge with strict instructions not to go down to the canal, or to cross the road to jump ditches. Sometimes we did and I remember going home in tears because I had jumped a ditch and my sandal had come off and got wet. I think my brother got the telling off for that !
We were also banned from coming home from school via the bridge at West Byfleet and through the fields where later Fullbrook School was built.
Happy memories of playing on the pavements and in the road, more children than cars in those days. Youth club at West Byfleet with dances, quizzes, pantomimes and youth hostelling.
I went on to Woking Girls' Grammar School travelling by bus to the old site and then to the new school at Maybury.
My first job was at the Vet Lab. in New Haw and I worked there until I met and married my first husband, an Aussie who worked for Jack Brabham at MRD, just over the bridge at the White Hart.
I, too, remember Mr. Hunt's sweets and broken biscuits shop and also buying wallpaper there in later years.
Lots of happy memories.

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