Feather Bed Lane

A Memory of New Addington.

Yes that's right. On a big corner turning from the London/Croydon Road. Feather Bed Lane seems to have ben so called as there were a number of poultry people along there. Mainly.. dreaded Geese!
An Uncle, Aunt and cousin with whom I spent many holidays and other times, had a poultry/orchard smallholding, high upon on a steeply sloped property, above that turning. I see from googlemaps that it has probably been re-developed.
My cousin Stephen & I had all kinds of adventures on that place, and I recall our trips down the lane to the big Yew Tree woods at the far end of the lane.
I had a tricycle with the rigid, solid wheels - most unsafe and scarey fun from the top of the property by the house, doooowwwn to the curve of the gateway!! Well I sometimes went by trike, at all of 4 or 5years of age, along the lane past the biggest Goose farm.Boy would they rush out and at you.
It was a big thing to get past them on the way to the wood and then back again.
The phone numbers for the area were 'Sanderstead...' and I can still see their light grey notepaper (half size for post war economy) with the neat heading of the property and phone number.
Of course phones weren't all that common, not everyone had them at all. So Stephen and I made our own from cocoa tins and wire leads...amazingly you could speak through walls with them and pick up other sounds.
That's how you learned basic physics and chemistry, biology and botany...by doing and experimenting. Not all experiments were safe nor successful though :-)