Post War Tooting

A Memory of Tooting.

I was born in Dorset in 1940, my mother living there as an army wife. My name then was Gorringe. We returned to my grandmother's house in Freshwater Road at the end of the war. We visited Tooting many times during the war, and I remember the bombing, which my family made quite fun to stop me being scared. I was in Tooting the day a bomb dropped in Southcroft Road. Our house was shaken, but the only casualty was my china doll, which fell out of the cupboard and landed on the floor with my grandmother's hat on it's head. I well remember the Street Party in 1945 and have a lovely photograph of that. I went to Furzedown Primary School and then to Rosa Bassett Grammar, where I stayed until 1957. I remember being sent to the shops at Amen Corner to queue for groceries. My gran, mother and myself would each stand in separate queues. We then bought a block of Walls Ice Cream as a treat. My aunt worked at Upper Tooting at Chaplin's of Tooting. These days it would be called a Boutique, but then it sold hats (my aunt was a milliner) and later moved on to clothes. I was sometimes allowed to work there on Saturdays. We went to Saturday Morning Pictures at the Granada, and also watched films at the Astoria and Mayfair. I have not been back to Tooting since my mother moved in the early 80's, so have no idea how things have changed since then.

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