Claybury Memories.

A Memory of Woodford Bridge.

Both my parents were nurses at Claybury during the 1950s. My dad worked days and my mum worked nights. I can remember her telling me that when she did 'the rounds' during the night she used to ride her bike through the dark corridors crunching over cockroaches! Dad was umpire for the Clabury cricket  team and my brother and I spent many a warm sunny Sunday playing in the grounds of the hospital while Mum sat in her deck chair knitting and watching the cricket. I never had the opportunity to see inside the hospital but I was always intrigued by the big tower. I think it was a water tower. The Claybury I remember was much bigger than the picture shown, it had impressive gates with lodge houses on each side. As children, my brother and I and all our friends would go to Toms Wood to pick blackberries, we were always on the look out for 'escaped patients' and imagined anybody we saw was an inmate!  Many a full bowl of blackberries was lost in our haste to run home!


Added 03 August 2009

#225479

Comments & Feedback

You are right Hilary, it did have large gates with a lodge. I can remember Dan, Dan the railway man delivering parcels there that came to Woodford Station at Snakes Lane. I lived in the Estate agents that my mother ran of R.Cheeke & Co. next to the chemist and can remember patients calling in to rent houses.
Toms Wood is where we played in an old hollow oak tree that we called "A Bus Tree"
Half way up Manor Road towards Claybury was Dr. Banardo's boys home where we used to go scrumping. Those were the days........................ Norman

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