The Priory
A Memory of Reigate.
I attended the Priory, as most 'South Parkites' did, I was born and grew up on Lyndhurst Road. There was only two people who owned cars on our street back then, Mr Jeffries a bus driver at Lesbourne Road garage and Mr Sageant a self employed window cleaner. We always had plenty of room to play in the street if we weren't 'up the park'. I have warm memories of growing up in South Park, there was a small parade of shops in Priory Road, grocer, fish shop, greengrocer and butcher, further along there was a baker (Ports) and a newsagent. My father was a milkman with Jersey Dairies, later it became Home Counties Dairies, then much later Unigate. He had a horse and cart until about 1953-54 then a little 3 wheel float. Some of my fondest memories are helping on the round and collecting the money from the shops in Bell Street on a Friday evening (it had to be after he was finished as those shops were at the beginning of his round and they were not yet open when he delivered in the morning). There was a completely self contained pasteurization and bottling plant in Warren Road. Milk was brought in from surrounding farms and bottled, then shipped out to other towns; Redhill, Merstham, Dorking and Guildford. When I grew older I still used to help my father out when I was home on leave from the Army. After his round we'd go to the 'Prince of Wales' pub next to Reigate Station and have a couple of Whiskey Macs and play a game of Bar Billiards. I still enjoy a Whiskey Mac once in a while and always remember my father when I 'try one' as he used to say ..... he was from Barrow Gurney in Somerset. I recently went back to Warren Road to look at the dairy, sadly there was just a pile of rubble behind some security fencing; I took a small piece of brick from there which now sits on my mantelpiece. I guess you just can't go back.
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