Kings Builders

A Memory of Smallfield.

I started school in Smallfield in 1934. In those days there were bucket lavatories. The sewer was laid in 1938 and then most of Smallfield was able to do away with the buckets. There were 3 teachers, Miss Kempshall who came from Betchworth on a 250cc Panther, Miss Cottle who had attended the school and became a teacher (she ran the Cubs as well) and Miss Power. There were only about eighty children untill 1939 when lots of evacuees came from London. We were then crowded out and some had to sit on the floor. In 1940 I moved to Horley School. We were taken in a coach, and I remember having to get into the ditch with an air raid going on above.
Alfred King & Son were fairly large building firm in Plough Road, established in 1856 and finished in 1952. Most families had someone who did or had worked for Kings. My grandfather worked as a bricklayer, my father and myself as plumbers. I started there in 1945, having worked at Eades in Horley. Some of the names I remember are Fred Coutes, Bert Howick, Perce Brown, Ron Stiller, carpenters Fred Harman, Rubin Pocock, his son Peter, Stan Jenner, bricklayers Jack Tozer, Gerald Attwater, Tony Harper, myself and father, plumbers Maurice Slater, undertaker Arthur Harman, lorry driver E Wright, H Wright, P Wickens, G Langdridge, A Stringer, G Harris, painters G Shirley, W Northeast, labourers. These are just some of the names I can remember.

Mr Henry King lost his only son after a motor cycle crash in 1931, he had room built on the back of the house and kept him embalmed in there until he died in 1950, then they were both interred in the family vault.

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