Triggered A Few More Memories

A Memory of Waterloo.

Waterloo in the 1940s to 1950s

My early memories are of Waterloo where I used to live at Winchester Avenue until 1958. My father died there in 1989. On College Road there were air raid shelters which me and other kids played in after the war until they were demolished, probably late 1940s. One of the concrete pillars collapsed on me and trapped me against a wall for a little while. I wasn't hurt but it scared the living daylights out of me. Still on College Road, a shop I will never forget was Prichard's Cooked Meat Shop. Their Eccles cakes were second to none. The same with their pies. Another time I remember see a German plane circling above us in Waterloo, smoke coming from it. As it started descending I and a couple of others jumped on our bikes and followed it as best we could. It appeared to have crashed landed in Marine Crescent (I think), a park along the sea front near Blucher Street, where my grandmother lived. As we got there the pilot was being taken off by a few soldiers, possibly Home Guard. Sniggery Woods was another stamping ground I used to visit quite often on my bike and go haring along the muddy tracks. It's also where I found a Butterfly Bomb hanging from a tree. When I was a young teenager I and a crowd of boys and girls often used to meet in the evenings at a little cafe called The Cabin which was run by a couple old dears. We used to make a cup of coffee last all evening. Another place we used to go quite often on Saturday afternoons for coffee was a cafe in South Road, on the same side of Woolworths (then) but lower down. I used to go to St Mary's College (enough said about that!) and left there in 1952. I am now living in Devon. I had a lot of fond memories of Waterloo and Burbobank Road (Black Rocks). After living here in Devon, I still refer to Waterloo as 'home'. 11 September 2009

On browsing through some ‘memories’, especially Charles Hegarty’s Memories of Merseyside, Days Gone By, it struck a chord about the ‘loss’ of the Overhead Railway. I often looked forwarded my Mother taking me to Dingle so I could look down on the Docks which were a hive of industry then.

There was the Empress of Canada which caught alight (1953 I think) which was mentioned on the Evening News on the radio. It gave me quite a shock at the time as I used to work for a shipping agents in Liverpool and earlier on, on that day I was sent to that ship to deliver two mink coats. I was walking around the ship looking for someone to give the mink coats to. The ship seemed deserted, couldn’t find anyone. I did eventually find 3 chaps in a tiny little room, up at the ‘sharp end’, playing cards and they took charge of the mink coats. As Charles Hegarty said, you could almost just walk on any ship docked there.
I and a friend whose Father was one of the Dock Police on Gladstone Dock took us aboard the HMS Amethyst for a tour around. He just took us aboard and we just ambled around and no one even questioned us.


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