4 Prospect Cottages Pratts Bottom

A Memory of Pratt's Bottom.

I was conceived in 4 Prospect Cottages, in 1931, the Clutterbuck family home. The cottages are still there I think and are just to the right in the photo of the cross roads. The land opposite the cottages was a council tip in the 1930s. I was actually born in Farnborough Hospital and we lived variously in farm cottages between Pratts Bottom and Green St Green, STG itself and later in Orpington. The view is along the main road towards Knockholt Station, Pol Hill, etc. The hill to the left led up past a duck-pond to Old Chelsfield and the church, where many of my family are buried. One of my father's sisters married Doug Parkes, one-time landlord of The Five Bells. Another of his sisters married Percy Kerridge and that family lived further up past Prospect Cottages, a few doors along from a Primary School. That road led to Halstead. Also to the left of Chelsfield Hill, there was a petrol station. This was some sort of factory during the war, and I used to filch rock sulphur from open sacks outside, mixed with carbon (soot) and saltpetre, I risked life and limb making explosives. I never actually got beyond a fierce fire, because luckily for me I did not realise that one had to compress the powder in order to make it explode! I remember No 4 having an earth closet at the bottom of the garden, later mains drainage was installed with the toilet housed just outside the back door. The cottages were lit by gas in the 1930s, whilst the radio was run on a " wet " battery housed in a glass bottle and re-charged at the rear of a shop on the cross-roads. That was the radio on which we listened to Chamberlain's speech announcing the Declaration of War, the event that was to radically change my life. My father was called up, my mother worked in a war factory, whilst my sister and I were evacuated - twice !