Growing Up In Dovercourt

A Memory of Dovercourt.

I have been trying to remember the exact dates when we lived in Dovercourt but I think it was something like 1953-57, while my father worked for the railway at Parkeston Quay. We first rented a place in Shaftesbury Avenue and then bought a house in Main Road. I was interested to see Martin Johnson's post because I was a pupil at the nursery school that his mother used to run at the vicarage. It seemed like a very big place to a small child, with a huge garden that had lots of corners to hide in during break. I also had one term at the primary school in Main Road. I was briefly in the Sea Cubs and can still tie a round turn and two half hitches correctly. My best friends were the sons from Sutherland's pharmacy - they lived in a big house on Fronks Road with a solarium on top. I don't remember a great deal about the shopping except for Bowtells, the grocers, where the bacon was sliced by hand and the butter sold loose. A shop full of evocative smells. I can also remember going for walks along the Hangings - I think this was an old railway line that was full of blackberries and rose hips. My mother kept some wartime habits of thrift and made rose hip jam most years we were there.

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