Ealing 1948 1971

A Memory of Ealing.

When I was born, in 1948, my parents lived in Mount Park Road. My father, who was chairman of the Ealing Rotary Club (at least twice that I remember), was a solicitor and his firm 'Machin-Smith & Brown' had two offices. One was on New Broadway above a bank between the Town Hall and St Mary's church (this was my father's office), and one in West Ealing (Mr Brown's office). I lived at 9 Westbury Road from 1953 - 1971 and attended Notting Hill and Ealing High School, as did my sister, Anna. Both my parents volunteered their time at hospitals, driving the blind and at old folk's homes. I remember taking elocution lessons from a Miss Turner on the Broadway and attending my first public dance at the Town Hall - also giving a speech there for a Debating Society when I was about 16. I remember Ealing with enormous fondness. The Ealing Cricket Club was at the top of our road and we used to watch matches there. I also spent many teenage hours strolling the streets and composing poetry! Often we walked up to Hangar Hill park by the reservoir at the top of Corfton Road, where we also went tobogganing when it snowed. In the 1960's Ealing was a safe and rather quiet place to live with mostly single family homes. There was a little shop on Haven Lane where we would buy cigarettes (for my father) and ice cream. My mother would take us out to tea at a little tea room on Madeley Road at the corner before Haven Green. There was always a Christmas tree (rotary I think) on Haven Green at Christmas. Bentalls and Sanders were the two big shops. I had a job one Christmas in the hosiery department at Bentalls in the days before tights! I often enjoyed walking to school through the back roads to the top of Castlebar, when I wasn't taking the 65 bus. There was a children's home on Westbury Road and Anton Rogers, the actor, lived two houses down from us. Next door to us was a wonderful mystery. The house was owned by a Mr Spaulding, I believe. He had lost his sister during the war (went the story), and had left up the blackout curtains ever since, he rarely ventured out. When he did, he was in an old filthy raincoat with a leather flight cap and he horrified my mother by picking things up out of the gutter. His house and garden were completely neglected, looking like something out of a Dickens novel. We had enormous fun climbing over the wall and imagining that he was coming after us, although, in truth, the blackberries were much too high for anyone to get farther than a few feet. It was a far cry from our immaculate garden! Eventually he died and was found on a bare mattress surrounded by newspapers and toffee wrappers, but it transpired that he actually owned much of Ealing! My father wrote to him once about falling slates from the roof and he replied in a very gentlemanly manner and actually had the roof mended. On the other side of us were the Lazenbys and I remember Mrs Lazenby had a rose named after her! Our house had a big pear tree in the garden which we loved to climb. I have far too many memories to write down here, but nearly all of them are very happy ones. It was a lovely time and place to grow up and I am very grateful for those years. I left in 1971 and now live on an island off the Canadian/US coast.