Nostalgic memories of Dovercourt's local history

Share your own memories of Dovercourt and read what others have said

For many years now, we've been inviting visitors to our web site to add their own memories to share their experiences of life as it was when the photographs in our archive were taken. From brief one-liners explaining a little bit more about the image depicted, to great, in-depth accounts of a childhood when things were rather different than today (and everything inbetween!). We've had many contributors recognising themselves or loved ones in our photographs.

Why not add your memory today and become part of our Memories Community to help others in the future delve back into their past.

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Displaying Memories 11 - 19 of 19 in total

I went to Dovercourt Convent in 1953, I can remember it very clearly my first day there. My dad took me and I was very sad when he left. There was a very big tree in the garden and a wall we used to run up to have a look over the wall to see what was on the other side. When we went back to England in 1979 we managed to find the convent and the wall was not very high at all. I wish I could remember the name ...see more
Dovercourt was my childhood/boyhood home from my birth (well, almost - that momentous event actually took place in an Ipswich nursing home!) in 1937, until we moved as a family to Worthing around 1952. I attended the Hill School (I remember Miss Best, the infants' headmistress, and my class teacher Miss Rowntree) until I went to boarding school (Culford, near Bury St. Edmunds) in 1945. My father, the late ...see more
I used to stay at Greenacres site with my partner who unfortunatly is now dead, and had many happy holidays there. We stayed in our friends caravan who sometimes came on holiday with us. Is the site still there. We also went on a tour of the Warners camp where they filmed Hi De Hi.
Teresa Clarke's memory reminded me of the flooding of Jan. 1953. I was 9 years old and living in Gwynne Road with my folks. We were boarding at No 44, owned by Mr and Mrs. Carr. They played Crib and he polished the brass in the house every Saturday morning. (A memory from a 9 year old - I also remember having baths in a tin bath in front of the coal range in the kitchen, filled with hot water in a kettle from the ...see more
I was 5 years old when I remember looking out of the large window of my mother and father's bedroom in Waddesdon Road and seeing the old schoolyard under water. I remember not being able to go downstairs as the threat of water was too great. I remember two people being taken in by my parents as they had been flooded out on the Bathside which if you know the area was the worst affected place. I remember not having to go ...see more
I was born in Dovercourt in 1946, and lived there until 1957. My father, too, worked on Parkeston Quay, but moved to New England depot in Peterborough in 1956 - mother and I followed once I had taken my 11-Plus exam. My mother was from Waddesdon Road, opposite the old school which had by then become the library. My father met my mother during the war when he was posted to Dovercourt. Although we ...see more
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 ...see more
My father was inducted as the new vicar on 31st December 1949 at All Saints Church. I was just nine at the time but I retain some dim memories of a packed church! My dad stayed at Dovercourt until his retirement in 1976. I have many memories of Dovercourt for that period. I loved the West beach where I often used to take the dog on long muddy walks. Often as kids we would walk 'down town' to Woolworths ...see more
I was brought up in a Convent in Orwell Road between the years 1947 and 1954. The Convent was vacated in the summer of 1954 and moved to Hastings a year after the sea wall broke which demolished the old school in Harwich. When I visited the convent again in 1980 it was still there, only standing derelict. I wondered if the building was still standing. Ruth Wright