Pitt Crescent Durnsford Road Sw19

A Memory of Wimbledon.

I was brought in council flats overlooking Wimbledon train depot and Gap Road Cemetery. It was grim but being young we saw the paved area in the "front" of the flats as a football stadium and cricket field in the summer...Down the road by Durnsford Road Bridge was The Dump, a wasteland of fly-tipping, choking weeds, railway rats, and rusty metal. To us boys it was land to explore right back to the banks of the River Wandle. It was part of growing up in those days. As was crossing mainline railway tracks clinging onto the outside of Durnsford Road Bridge -one slip and we were dead or seriously injured...but we did it for dares as kids used to do.
What with constant steam trains roaring by there was a perminant smell of soot and sulphur, an a breeze would whip up the dust and grit left by the trains. Mum used to complain that the washing she hung out to dry was always grey, instead of white...Far off days.