Manor Park

A Memory of Aldershot.

How many happy hours I spent in this park as a child, teenager and young woman. The gardens by the tennis courts were so well kept and I remember sitting on the benches there with my mother when we walked back from town. I remember hiring the clubs from the greenhouse keeper to play miniature golf on summer evenings, the duckpond too, although by then it had a railing round it, the wonderful huge oaks and beeches, and the building of the War Memorial. We used the playground and sandpit as children. We roller skated down the hill. The Welfare Clinic where as a young mother I got the free orange juice issue, the scout hut, and the creepy secluded ladies toilets - so many memories really of that place. I used to love going to Saturday morning pictures at the Odeon too.

I went back there recently - the War Memorial despoiled by graffiti, the nose of the statue of Christ broken off, the memorial city stones gone, no more golf or duckpond, the tennis courts green, the huge trees felled and the pristine gardens no longer maintained. Best it lives in these lovely old pictures.