More Of The 50's/60's

A Memory of Uxbridge.

Philip Cousins has jogged my memory yet again. The butcher he spoke of, Nicholls in Rockingham Road, was our local butcher as we lived in Rockingham Parade. I remember the rabbits, pheasants, turkeys and pigs hanging by metal hooks both inside and outside the shop. The floor underneath these was covered in sawdust to soak up the blood - unheard of in these' hygiene obsessed' days. The other butcher we used was in Cowley Road next to the school canteen. I clearly remember going in there with my mum and being morbidly interested in the hanging pigs behind the counter. The butcher gave me one of the pigs eyes which I took home and tried to dissect with no luck. My dad had bought me a microscope from the Army and Navy store which was opposite the Butchers shop in Rockingham Road. Being a 'tomboy' I loved looking in their shop window as there was camping stuff, knives, binoculars and camouflage gear. I too, remember the Rest Garden in front of Cross Street, my best friend's mother had her own flower shop in one of those old buildings and there was a secret passage upstairs which ran along the top of her shop and one other. I remember there was also a memorial stone in that garden to three martyrs who had been burned at the stake on that spot, a hark back to more morbid times in Uxbridge. I was very sad to go back there many years later to see that all those shops had been knocked down to make way for a huge, horrible ring road around around Uxbridge. At least they left the garden but it looks a bit out of place now. The Railway Arms was also knocked down in that process and I had fond memories of playing in there with my friend, Sylvia Miller, whose parents ran the pub during the time I was at Whitehall School with her. I had my first wedding reception in that pub too some years later. I too, remember the lovely small shops all the way up Windsor Street, the fishing tackle shop opposite the old post office where I bought all my fishing gear (and maggots). The lovely old barbers shop near that where my dad got his hair cut. The old antique shop on the left past the post office that sold lovely second hand jewellery (quite a few bits purchased there). The fishmongers who, as stated previously, had large open tin containers with live eels thrashing about. My favourite record shop where I bought my first single (Walking back to Happiness) after listening to it in the booth first. I was married for the first time in St Andrews church at the top of the town, a lovely church in a lovely setting. Everyone has memories of their childhood which they think are good but I have to say that growing up in the 50's/60's in Uxbridge was a pleasure compared to how it looks now - a free and innocent time.