Longley Road, Tooting 1950

A Memory of Tooting.

Hi. I lived in Longley Road, Tooting opposite the bus station at the Tooting Junction end of Longley Road from 1950.
We lived in a flat above Cussons grocery store until the site was bought and demolished by the council, for houses in the 1970's.
As well as groceries they also had a meat counter. For many years they employed a grocer's boy with a black bike and large wicker basket to deliver shopping.
Alongside the grocers they had various other shops which included an off-licence, sweet shop and my grandfather's cobblers shop. I don't know if anyone remembers having their shoes repaired by Mr Mann but he had been trained to be a Cobbler and not someone who just knocked in a few tacks to hold the sole on. He could repair, stitch or tackle any repair that we would now consider beyond repair and even made my first pair of ballet shoes.
For company he always had a rescue greyhound which slept contentedly under his work bench.
I also remember seeing, what must have been one of the last lamp lighters , from my bedroom window. He used to ride with a ladder strapped to his bike and light the gas lamp that illuminated the path that led to the footbridge that went over the railway line near Tooting Junction station.
At the top of Longley Road there was Kings the Newsagents. Opposite side of Longley Road on the corner was an estate agents and next door to them was a barbers shop.
Across the zebra crossing was the train station, pub, post office and bakers shop and opposite that was a coal ordering office, my mother worked in there for a few years, a jewellers, a chemist shop and a large toy shop.
Going down the hill from Kings Newsagents was a pub, dairy, butchers, men's clothing shop, greengrocers and a large Cooperative supermarket that was next door to the Police Station.
I found this site after researching old shoe shops that I had remembered from my childhood, Freeman Hardy and Willis . I knew there was a shoe shop next door to the Cooperative store and in researching Dolcis, Mansfields and Trumans, I found this site.
I also went to Sellingcourt school from 1955 and remember spending my pocket money, thrupenny piece , in the dairy near the school. The only teacher's name that I can remember was Miss Gatton who taught the fourth year in the Junior school.
Other school friends were Louise Pasco, Barbara Gilbert, Deborah White. Wish I could remember more names but unfortunately time clouds memories.
I got married and moved away many years ago and on returning recently I could not believe the changes in the area.
The historic Tooting Brloadway Market comes to mind. When I was a child there was an Eel lady who sold fresh, squirming eels from large metal containers and jellieed eels you could eat at the back sitting on stools . You could buy almost anything in the market in the 50 and 60s.
At the rear of one of the markets in Totterdown Road there used to be a butchers who auctioned pieces of meat on a late Saturday evening. I can remember being very small and having all these towering adults looming over me while my mother waited to bid for a piece of meat for the Sunday lunch. How things have changed.

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