Mrs Thrift And Also The Red House.

A Memory of St Paul's Cray.

I think about 1955, when I was living in St Pauls Cray on the main road by Hearns Rise, there was a lady who always wore a brown coat and used to spend most of the day walking up and down in front of Orchard Place. I think the ladies name was Thrift or Frith. She was married to a postman I believe and they had an old motorbike and sidecar parked in the small front garden of the end of terrace house. She had been, I was told later, possibly involved in an accident and it affected her mind; she was a kindly soul and offered me an orange when I was quite small. She used to wear an old black hat and the tops of the fence in front of the row of houses became shiny where she walked every day holding on to them to keep her steady. I moved away when I was about ten years old so don't know what happened to the couple, anyone have any memories of them?
Also when I was a young lad we used to play in the grounds of a large red house at the top of the Landway or Chalkpit Avenue, I think it was called. You had to walk up into the fields and there was a large red brick house that was in disrepair with a huge amount of Lupins in the neglected garden.
I believe that Bromley museum know something about the house. Is it now lived in or still empty or even gone?

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