Wood End

A Memory of Northolt.

I lived in Wood End Lane (no. 9), from 1941 from the age of six months, until 1948 when I moved to the new council houses at Newnham Close, locally known as Tintown, because it had steel framed walls on the upper storey.

No. 9 was a ground- floor flat with two bedrooms and my sister Joyce and I shared the back bedroom. After the war we used to play in the Wireless Field, as it was called by the locals. We went blackberrying in the fields.

I too went to Wood End nursery and primary schools, and am still in touch with two fellow pupils, one of whom I went to nursery with at the age of four. 75 years of friendship! At Wood End, my mother was a dinner lady and one of her colleagues was the mother of Rick Wakeman, who lived locally.

I was in the Cubs and Scouts at St Barnabas in the Fairway and was in the Raglan Players, a drama group. I still meet up with four of the group, about three times a year.

I went to Latymer Upper school in Hammersmith and used to take the 187 bus to South Harrow station to board the Picadilly Line. There I acted in school plays with another man named Rick, Alan Rickman!

I used to have a small job helping the milkman in Wood End Lane, riding in his electric milk float. Opposite our flat was a small wood and a service road for the houses opposite. Some of the houses still have patched roofs from incendiary bombs intended for the wirless station.

I had holiday jobs - one at Woolworths in Sudbury Hill, and another in a factory next to the Black Horse pub on the canal near Greenford Station. The pub was owned by the parents of Pam Ferris, the actress.

I lived with my parents in Newnham Close until I went to university at the age of nineteen, but returned later when I got married at St Mary's church in Northolt and was waiting to move into a house in Sudbury Hill.

I do visit the area from time to time and nostalgia is a powerful emotion!