The Winter Of 1963 4 When Petts Wood Was Cut Off By Floods

A Memory of Petts Wood.

I lived in Town Court Crescent with my parents, Norman and 'Babs' Treliving, from 1957 until 1974. The house was one of many designed by the architect Basil Scruby, whose name was carved in the wall at the back, facing onto the raised terrace. In the winter of 1963 we had severe snow, which was great fun for my friends and I, in our early teens, tobogganing down the hill to the bottom where it meets the junction of Birchwood Road and Hazelmere Road.

At the time, I had three 'male' guinea pigs. One morning I trudged out through the snow to their hutch to feed them and thought there were rats inside! It transpired there were two females and a male - and we had some difficulty discovering which was which, in order to separate the male. The females had given birth to a number of young and, had they all lived, we would have had 21 guinea pigs! Unfortunately many died, including one of the mothers, but we found good homes for all the remaining babies, keeping the original adults and one of the babies.

When the thaw came, the stream running across and into the woods at the bottom of the road overflowed and houses at the lower end of Birchwood and Hazelmere Roads were flooded. There was so much water that Petts Wood was impassable in all directions for some days and I was unable to travel into school in Bromley.