Chingford In The 60's
A Memory of Chingford.
Very, very, happy memories of living in Chingford in the 60's. I moved to Westward Road when I was five and I went to Chase Lane School when it still had more or less outside toilets! One of the teachers (I think the maths teacher) still had one of the old fashioned desks with steps that led up to the seat. Saturday was Saturday morning pictures at the Odeon sitting on the handlebars of my dad's bike there and back. Then horse riding first at Barnfields, Sewardstone Road and then when I got bored with it there I went to Pine Lodge at Lippetts Hill. Then onto Walthamstow Market for bargains and pie and mash. Sundays we went for drives in my dad's old Ford Popular to Thaxted or Dobbs Weir and other places in Essex then it was back home after visiting the seafood stall for winkles cockles and whelks. Mum used to do bread and butter and a bowl of vinegar with salt and pepper in to dip the winkles in when we had got them out of the shell with a pin. Sometimes, at weekends in the summer we would drive down to Southend with the whole family; aunties, uncles cousins and grandparents. We used to park my nan in her wheelchair on the front and go off to the pub, Peter Pans playground and amusement arcades! Quite often we used to forget about her and she would be in a right mood when we got back...quite rightly! Trips to Larkswood pool were a regular thing...again with the whole family except nan, who hated it there. Saturday nights of course it was dog racing at the stadium... happy times!
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Well we must be contemporaries. Our families got up to the same things around the same time and I expect we have mutual school friends and acquaintances.
If you remember Saturday morning pictures in the Odeon I expect you will remember Mr. Poole who managed the cinema and was rather strict about the "no running" rule and would drag any poor little kid who ran, up onto the stage and then ceremoniously tear up his membership card in front of everyone and then send him packing.
We used to say "Hello Mr Poole & Mrs Poole - how are all your little puddles" - but never near enough for him to hear it.
After the pictures we would go into Woolworths for stamps for our stamp collections and then Larkswood Pool and the woods nearby in the afternoon. In the late 50s we spent most days of the summer holidays at the pool sometimes sitting on the top diving board playing cards.
People often say the days were always sunny in their youth - but not at Larkswood Pool they weren't - often very poor weather and as for the water temperature - well that was the death of the open-air unheated swimming pools. That didn't stop the school teachers all but pushing the kids into the freezing water. Yes - I remember it alright - and I bear a grudge 60 years on!
Robert