Milk Deliveries By Handcart

A Memory of Gillingham.

I spent the first ten years of my life living in Osborne Road and Stevens Dairy was at the end of the road. Mr Stevens used to deliver milk on a three wheeled handcart - customers would take out a jug and he would ladle the milk from a big churn. The orchard and dairy was used as a short cut by anyone wanting to get to the shops in Duncan road - Twiggs the tobacconist, Mortons? was what we would now call a delicatessen, Roes the bakers, the post office in Trafalgar Street and the Doctor surgery on the corner of Gillingham Road opposite the bus station. I also used it as a short cut on my way to school - Napier Infants and later Barnsole Road Junior.
As kids we happily played in the streets around and had a whale of a time when they were building the Congregational Church in Balmoral Road - no health and safety regulations in those days!. I was a very reluctant pupil at St Marks Sunday School, my memories of which are of elderly ladies, in their Sunday best, all smelling of moth balls or lavender.When the war began I stopped going to St Marks and went to the Congregational just around the corner - where everyone seemed much more relaxed and friendly.
We used to go scrimping in Stevens orchard and got a right telling off if we got caught!