It's Not How It Was Back Then... Some Nostalgia For The Fifties And Early Sixties.

A Memory of Broadstone.

My parents ran a shop on the Broadway from the late nineteen forties until the early fifties, I think. It was a general store and – as far as I know – a seed merchant’s. I was born in 1950, but Heather, my older sister, would probably know more - I must ask her. The business failed when the manager of Dad’s ambitious second branch in Kinson ( I think) decided (unilaterally) to increase his wages - without telling anyone, especially my Dad. We moved to Dorchester for a year or so (having let out our house in Albert Road, Corfe Mullen to a family called (if memory serves) Murgatroyd) until my father’s new business in Poole got off the ground. Broadstone County Primary School turned out to be a vast improvement (as far as I was concerned) over the Catholic kindergarten I went to in Dorchester. Mr. Smith, the Head, was a kind and fair man who rarely - if ever- caned the children. (Mis Gale, who taught me in my third year there, had no qualms about smiting naughty boys hard on the back of the leg.) The Broadway remained our principal shopping centre; Mr. Watkins’ shop (which always smelt deliciously of freshly-ground coffee) supplied most of our groceries, while Mr. Rideout provided us with meat and poultry. Mr. Davies was our local pharmacist (and his daughter, Cynthia a friend of my sister’s), and Mr. Soaf (I’m probably mis-spelling that - if so, then my apologies to any of his relations reading this) supplied and maintained our radio and television set ; I will never forget the day he came to install a new coil in our TV, enabling us to receive the relatively new Independent Television Service and thus to watch (inter alia) ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’ at 5.25 pm on weekdays.
Train-spotting at the station in York Road was a brief enthusiasm, but to reach it I had to pass a superb cake shop; alas, I never had enough money to purchase any of its delights. Ditto the toy shop opposite Harry J Palmer’s offices on the corner of Station Approach and Dunyeats Road. Then there was the Rec - still there, and as far as I know largely unchanged, even to the cricket pavilion where in my last year at Broadstone CPS I was sometimes entrusted with the task of keeping score when we played other local schools. I loved the Rec, especially the roundabout in the playground (but not the slide; I have never had a head for heights!) and would often cycle there. In those days (before paedophiles were known to lurk behind every tree ) kids were taught the rudiments of road safety and parents would allow them to venture more than fifty yards from home and not be seen for several hours before raising any sort of hue and cry.
Sadly, we had to move away from Broadstone and I lost touch with my old school friends. I often wonder how things turned out for them - if any of them read this and remember me I’d be glad to hear from them. I’m now nearly 72, so don’t expect me to cycle to the Rec to meet up, though!

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