Middlesex Days

A Memory of Stanwell.

Born in Wrens Ave, Ashford we moved to Lauser Road Stanwell in 1959 I attended Town Farm School but spent a year at the old village school Lord Knyvett's which had shelters in the playground and other kids used to say their were dead pigs inside, why? Like many here I used to watch the horses being shod at the blacksmiths next to the village hall. I used to go to the twin rivers to fish for sticklebacks and one of my mates Dave Webster features in your picture taken there of the Rising Sun pub (S588009). There was lot of building going on at the time to house the people from the prefabs that used to be where the village pond originally was. They were mainly from London. During the hot summers you would see RAF Westland helicopters come over spraying Kerosene on the reservoir to kill the mozzies, they didn't need to when jet aircraft came along because of all rubbish they used to dump in the air.

One afternoon in autumn 1962 coming home from Lord Knyvett's in the village I remember people walking in front of their cars with torches trying to see the white lines in the road because it was the last pea souper (smog) they had in London. I had the misfortune of walking into an item of street furniture outside Lauser recreation ground and my mother putting a plate of ammonia under the open windows because it was said that in 1952 in the big London smog cows at Smithfield market weren't affected by the smog because of the ammonia in their urea which had soaked into their straw bedding.

They were great times, I attended Abbotsford Secondary Modern and when older dances at the Ashford hospital club, the Atlanta ballroom Woking, Kenilworth Road Youth Club, Streatham and Richmond Lacarno and Centre 69, Shepperton. Clare Road was the hub where you shopped and every Friday when young I would go with my mum to get fish and chips there.