Thursday 23 January 2014

Growing up in Sheppey - Part 3

In 1958/9, I'm not sure of the actual year, we finally moved from our very basic surroundings in Unity Street to what seemed to us, the sheer luxury of a three bed-roomed, semi-detached council house in St. Agnes Gardens, Sheerness. By the time that we moved there were four of us children, with me as the eldest, and a fifth joined us not long after.


The houses weren't brand new but they were certainly modern and had everything we could dream of, including a large, although overgrown garden. It's hard these days, to describe the sensation of moving from a tiny house with one gas lamp and a cold tap to what we had gone to. Down stairs there was a hallway with an inside toilet, which led into a kitchen with cupboards and a sink with hot and cold water taps! The two other downstairs rooms were a front lounge and a back dining room, open to each other except for a half dividing wall that contained a coal fire in the lounge and a cooking range in the dining room. We never, ever used that range because we always had a gas cooker in the kitchen.
Up the wide stairs there were two large bedrooms and a small box bedroom and the one thing that meant the most to us all, a bathroom with a second toilet and a fitted bath with real hot water that came out at the turn of a tap. I must of been the cleanest boy in my class until the novelty wore off!
And then of course, there was that one last thing that I found truly amazing, being able to go into a room and light it up my flicking on a light switch, gaslight and candle light seemed another world away! Downstairs in the lounge there was a fascinating piece of decorating that had been created by the son of the previous owner. Each of the three and a half walls had all been painted from floor to ceiling to show the views out of a window in three directions. This meant that by sitting in the armchair you could look at a village cricket match taking place in one direction and a village street in another, it was was a clever and artistic piece of work but unfortunately my father didn't agree and soon had that covered in some pretty boring wallpaper.

Eventually, after we had been there a year or so, the next piece of wonderment arrived. My father had been to the local rental shop and a second hand, black and white television arrived. Imagine, in the space of a year we had gone from listening in the evenings to a wireless powered by an accumulator, to a real television - the whole outside world had come into our lounge at the flick of a switch!

Outside in the garden, there was much to do, grass to clear and vegetable beds to be dug but that came later. In the meantime I revelled in the wide-openness of our new world, the sun beamed down and into our house at last, there were large skies and no more the closed in and permanent shade of the narrow streets that we'd come from. The Sheerness canal and marshes were only a row of houses away and Skylarks sand and Marsh Frogs croaked all night, I could here them from my bedroom. In Vincent Gardens, a few hundred yards away, there was the large community of well kept Pre-fab houses to explore and just through a short alley, Southview Gardens, the one-sided road of houses that had across the road the grassy banks of the canal. I grew to know every inch of the canal, it's wide and shallow waters that dried up one drought summer and it's coots and moorhens and reed beds. The year that it dried up it went through the wet mud stage first and in that mud to the delight of us local kids, were hundreds of eels. We spent countless hours getting plastered in that foul smelling mud, with buckets and baths gradually filling with the eels that we scooped up and hoped to sell locally.

My father too had needed to find a pub close by and the nearest was The Nore, in St Georges Avenue and there he joined the darts team and spent the last ten years of his life before dying in 1969, aged just 50. The Nore was alongside the football ground of Sheppey United who still gave their address as Botany Road, the name before St. Georges, and whenever there was a home match the roar of the crowd and the referee's whistle could be heard quite clearly from our garden, a few streets away. I recall that if I was still up when my father came home after closing time at the pub, he would often let me share his favourite supper, cold pig's trotters and bread. I'm not sure that I could nibble round the toes and toe nails of those trotters these days but at the time they were normal and tasty food, just as toast and dripping was. We still had the traditional Sunday lunch time roast dinners in those days, cooked and eaten to the accompaniment on the radio of Jean Metcalf and Two-way Family Favourites, followed by the Billy Cotton Band Show. Part of the roast dinner was a suet pudding, cooked each week in the same old pudding cloth and tied up with string. Half of the pudding was sliced and put with our roast and the other half was saved as our "afters", and eaten with sugar, jam or treacle on it, no fancy yoghurts or cheesecakes in those days. Rice pudding with sultanas in it was another favourite "afters", with my sister and I fighting over who was going to have the brown skin off the top.
It was whole new world around us then but so many places have now gone. The pre-fabs were demolished and the site became half Old People's Home and half a grassed play area. The allotments between The Nore and Granville Road were built on. The Co-op supermarket in Victoria Street was eventually closed, as was the school Dental Clinic on the corner of the High street and Vincent Gardens, a real torture chamber of a place that was.

I had narrowly failed in the 11-plus and instead of the Sheerness Technical School, had ended up at the Boys Secondary School in Jefferson Road, the "Central" as it was known. I soon saw that as a blessing, it had a huge school sports field and only a wire fence through the playground separated us from the Girls Secondary School, something that was a major attraction as teenage hormones began to kick in. Hopefully those teenage years will become Part 4.




12 comments:

  1. "Wakey Wa-a-a-key!" Bringing it all back again Derek !!

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  2. And after Billy Cotton, Mike, there was "Beyond our Ken" to listen too - very happy days.

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  3. Hi Derek,That brings back loads of memories as I lived on St Georges Avenue,attended Jefferson Road school then Sheerness Tech before joining the RAF in 1959.If you can remember the Jefferson Road school Caretaker,. he was my Dad

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  4. I attended Sheerness Secondary School For Boys from 1966 to 1969 (1st to 3rd years) before my Dad moved from being Principal Officer at Eastchurch Prison (At Eastchurch Aerodrome) to Risley Remand Centre near Warrington Cheshire. I was also at Eastchurch Primary School from 1961to 1966. I remember the ^-Day Week Timetable at the Secondary School. I was in my first yearthere when there was the fire and burglary at Christmas and all the boys in the school were fingerprinted, and we had to go to other schools (including old empty ones) for some of the lessons afterwards. Cross country runs along the canal down to Minster and back along the beach were often run and I was in the school team for Cross country running. I remember the woodwork teacher Mr.George. The PE teachers, Mr Eardly and Mr Peglar. The English Teacher Mr. Tucker I was a wek late starting at the school and My class was 1AW with Mr Wale as form teacher. My First Lesson was with Mr Richardson, who within minutes of the lesson starting called me out to the front of the class, slapped me around the face and pushed me against the wall shouting Don't you ever smile in my class again. Mr Smart was Headmaster, I had Mr Thomas as For Master in the second year in 2AT and he taught us science as well. I had Mr White the Geography Teacher as my Form Master in the 3rd year in 3JB. I would be interesting to hear from anyone who was at the school. Robin.

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    1. Hi Robin,
      Like you I attended Eastchurch Primary school,but just for the summer term of 1963. We lived in a chalet in Leysdown after returning to to UK from Norway. Moved to Halfway before starting SSS in September. Remember the cross country runs, rugby, garden plots & school dinners. I suppose it was the school dinners that made me go into catering as a career. Thoroughly enjoyed my time at the school & though I don't live in Kent anymore, still visit the island regularly.

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  5. By the way, although a fence seperated the Girls School Playground from the Boys one, it was only a White Line and Prefects seperated the two sports fields that we could play on in summer..... Robin.

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  6. Hi Robin,
    I can't believe that somebody else remembers these teaches. Mr Wale taught english and would make a big deal marking with a red pen, he was also the choir master at The Holy Trinity Church where he played the organ.
    My love of Geography stated at this school due to Mr White.
    The infamous white painted line dividing the girls from the boys.
    What an incredible sports field when compared to a lot of schools today.
    Thank you for reawakening these memories.
    Roy

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  7. Hi, My aunt lived in St Agnes Gdns too, not sure when she moved in, it was no 68 I think

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  8. Hi Robin and "Unknown".
    Did Mr. Wale have a burned/damaged nose ?

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    1. Yes, I remember that too. I would have never had the courage to ask him how it happened !! He wasa great teacher.

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  9. Hi Derek , I remember you your sister Susan and your lovely mum. Susan was friends with my daughter Julie Wilson. I still live there.

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  10. Hi I'm Clive Mason. Attended Mile Town School, Delamark Road and then Sheerness Country Secondary, Jefferson Road from 1965-1968. Such memories. Came across some old photos of friends and am now on a nostalgia trip. Moved from Minster to Sheerness and lived in Thames Avenue. At Mile Town, I remember a fab teacher, Mr Pegg. At the 'Central', I was in form 1AW with the nice gent Mr Whale as the form teacher. Some names flash to mind: Graham Thwaites, Neville Cutting, Trevor Sewell, Mike Podlasinski (sorry for wrong spelling), Geoff Baker, Peter Firth, Peter/Trevor Dickson, Paul Gisbey (whose parents had a wonderful cobblers shop in town), Gilson, Hancock, Andy (Young?). Summers at the arcade, recs or the canal. Fishing for crab. Great to hear from anyone who remembers me.

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