STREETLY,
STAFFORDSHIRE MEMORIES
(1936
- 1961)
A WALK UP
THE CHESTER ROAD
(August 1944)
5.
Up to the Brow of the Hill
and
More about
the Traffic
by Chris Myers
|
5. Up to the Brow of the Hill
and More about the Traffic
We’ll carry on up
the main road and leave the cart track behind. The houses on the left hand side,
looking out over the wood and the track, aren't all
that old. Perhaps ten or fifteen years, rather like
ours. I don’t know a lot about them. But Dad and Mum
have some friends there, Mr and Mrs
Hall. He
works at the
G.E.C. at
Witton and he's in the Home
Guard, like Dad. And there's another house where a
lady used to live who is my sister's godmother –
Mrs
Wassell. She has got twin daughters but I don’t
know where they all live now.
In front of all
these houses there is now a pavement and we could
cross over, but we won't.
On our side of
the road, just about here, I’ll tell you something
which happened to me here a couple of years ago when
I was six. I had just been given a fairy cycle for
my birthday. I was pretty good at riding it and
could pedal around on it at high speed. Mum and our
neighbour Mrs.
Bacon
were going for a walk and, of course I went with
them. I was allowed to take my bike. They were
walking ever so slowly because they were busy
nattering and so I zoomed way ahead of them, down
the hill. I knew exactly what I was doing. But Mum
started to call to me to tell me something. I
couldn’t hear very well and so I tried to turn my
head round to listen to her. Over one shoulder. And
then the other. Of course, off I came and slid for
yards. Along the gritty pavement. No long trousers
for me, naturally - boys don't go into those until
they are nearly grown up. So I took all the skin off
my knees. I lay there feeling very sorry for myself.
Mum came rushing up to help me and I found out
finally what she had been shouting at me. "Don’t
ride too fast, or you’ll fall off".
Mums! They are
very kind and will do everything for you. But, oh
dear, oh dear, sometimes.......!
But no bandages
on my knees today. And no bike. I've grown out of
it, anyway. All the houses I'm looking at on our
side of the road are about the same age and type.
Detached and semi-detached. I'm starting to know the
names of a few people who live in them. There are a
lot of gaps in between where nothing has been built.
And certainly won't be for a long time, probably not
until the war is over and they start building again.
Or possibly not even ever. After one gap is no. 69,
a detached house. I think Mr. and Mrs.
Parker
live there. Further on - I don't know which house -
Mrs. M. and her little boy Andrew live. She's a
neat, sad-looking lady with gingerish hair. We
sometimes see her leaning on the pushchair as she
pushes Andrew up the hill to the shops and Mum often
has a chat with her. Mr. M. won't be coming home. He
has been killed in an accident on the aerodrome
where he serves in the RAF. Everyone feels very
sorry for her and for the little boy who doesn't
have a father any more.
As we get almost
to the top of the hill and the road starts to level
out we come to the bit which I know very well
indeed. It’s where we live. It's almost the ridge.
That's why Mum and Dad called their new house
"Windyridge".
We live on the right hand side of the road, the side
we’re walking on. On the other side of the road the
newer houses have stopped for a moment and there's a
single, bigger detached house there. It looks a bit
older and grander. It belongs to a family called
Brain.
I don't know whether they are especially clever! The
house is called
"Waratah". I don't
know what that means or why someone might choose it
as a name. I think it's an Australian word. Funny
it's used for a house in Streetly. (I know of
another Australian name in Streetly:
Coogee School
in Burnett Road).
I think Mr. Brain might own the
Avion Cinema
in Aldridge,
but I'm not sure.
On our side, I
know most of these houses, now, and who lives in
them. Between two of them there’s another grassy
track leading off from the main road, this one at
right angles to it. (But from our side of the road,
this time). Just before you get to it is a house
where a family called
Darlington
live. It's probably
no. 91.
Or something close to that. The daughter is, I
think, Mrs Coates
and she lives there with her parents. Mr Coates is
away fighting and has not been home for years. I
think he’s in Burma. There's also a girl a bit
younger than me who lives there as well. Or I think
she does. I'm a bit muddled about that because
her surname is
Bullock and so
that doesn't fit in at all. Life can be so
confusing, can't it! And perhaps it doesn't matter
all that much, anyway, so I'm not going to worry if
I've got it wrong. But the Darlingtons definitely
live there, at no. 91.
**********
Down the grassy track
I'll take you
down that grassy track for a couple of minutes
although of course we don't really need to go down
there today, on our way home. It's green and leafy,
just like being in the depths of the country. I love
it. At the entrance there's a sign, nailed to a big
oak tree, which says "Trespassers will be
Prosecuted". Dad once explained to me what it meant
but told me not to worry about it too much. The
track goes down between two hedges. There are
gardens beyond each side of them, the Darlingtons on
the right, and Richardses on the left. I'll tell you
about Mr and Mrs
Richards in a
moment. The Darlingtons' garden is long, but it's
the shorter of the two. It peters out first. Then,
you can see that at the end of their garden lies a
huge field, all grass. And empty. This stretches
right down to the back gardens of the big houses
along Thornhill
Road.
We carry on a few
more yards down the track. It's still the Richards
garden on the left. Just through a gap in their hedge
you can see a very old car. It's a Citroen, probably
about a 1923 model. Mr Richards parked it there many
years ago. He uses it to have a nap in on a summer's
afternoon. There are raspberry canes there too. I
have to confess that I have pinched a few of the
raspberries, from time to time. It's all very
overgrown and you can't be seen from the house which
is miles away. You just have to be careful that Mr
Richards isn't there, having a snooze in the back of
the car. I don't feel too guilty, to be honest. Of
course, I should. But I would hate the shame of
being caught because I know it's wrong. I don't
mention any of this to Mum as we walk past.
Finally we come
to the end of that garden. Ahead of us on the
track, straight on, is a field, all blocked off by a
tall hawthorn hedge and bits of fencing and probably
an old farm gate you can hardly see any more. Beautiful
brown horses are munching on the grass on the other
side of it, swishing their tails and now and again
lifting their heads to glance at us. It's what we
call The Riding
School Field and
it goes down to Thornhill Road as well, like the one
we've just seen. Our track swings to the left, round
the end of Mr Richards's garden and immediately
opens out into a field. We are now looking all along
the bottom of it, along the length of that hawthorn
hedge. This field lies directly behind our own
house. At the top of it, in the distance and into
the sun, is the end of our garden. Here, at the
bottom, is the hawthorn hedge.
You can see all
this in a photograph taken from a bedroom window of
our house, but it's all the other way around. The
picture is an old one, taken in the year I was born,
1936, eight years ago. But it still looks exactly
the same now. Nothing much ever changes.
I'm going to
explain what that photo tells us. At the end of our
garden, past the swing and my sister's Wendy House,
is the field behind us, stretching down to the
hawthorn hedge at the bottom. And in the far, right
hand corner which you can't see very well, there's
the little track I've been talking about which curls around the end of Mr
Richards's long garden and takes you back to the
Chester Road. That's where we are standing at the
moment, looking along the length of that tall,
hawthorn hedge. Behind the hedge are all the
horses. Then the houses in Thornhill Road,
which you can just make out, and, beyond
them, Sutton Park which stretches away as far as you
can see. I hope you can work all that out!
That last bit of
the track from the Chester Road, where it curls around and opens up into
our field, is one of my favourite spots in the whole
world. In the summer the grass is thick and lush,
the birds sing, you can't hear anything else at all.
You can lie down and read a book, or just sit there
and enjoy it, or natter to your friends if you
aren't alone. It's a sort of paradise. I hope it
never changes.
We had better be
getting back up the track to the main road. Past
that field behind the Darlingtons. Before we go,
I'll tell you a little story about it. Last April,
when I had my birthday party, it was a nice day and
my friends and I decided we would have a game of
cricket. The problem was, where was there enough
space and where was a decent bit of grass? Our back
lawn was too small. So we picked up the stumps, a
bat and a ball and marched off. Into the field
behind us, round the edge to avoid treading on the
spring wheat, down to the bottom right hand corner,
on to my track. Came to this other field behind the
Darlingtons, ducked
under the bit of barbed wire and set up out the
stumps here in the corner of it. We had a jolly good
game for a while. Then a whole lot of yelling from
the Thornhill Road end. Right in the far distance.
They sounded quite cross. A bit like golfers, even.
We didn't wait to find out for sure. We yanked up
the stumps and scarpered. Half way back to our house
I realised I was missing my school cap. You never go
anywhere without that, do you? Not even during your
birthday party. And what was worse was that my cap
would have my name in it, carefully written there in
Indian ink by my mum.
Only one option, go back
and get it. I ran back, got to the barbed wire and
saw the grown-ups had beaten me to it, had finished
their examination of all the damage they suspected
we had done and were now looking straight at me. And
between them and me, my cap lying on the grass. No
option, duck under, retrieve it, face the music.
Eventually I went back to rejoin my mates. At that
moment I felt very relieved. I hadn't had a clip
around the ear. The telling-off wasn't too bad,
considering. They weren't promising to come and have
a word with Dad. But now, months later, I just think
- you miserable, miserable blighters! What harm do
you think we were doing? Enough to make it
worthwhile to run a couple of hundred yards up a
huge field, just to see what had been going on? I
BET they play golf.
Now, out of the grassy lane. I turn and look
back down it, past the old oak tree with the notice
nailed to it.
(Perhaps I ask myself, just for a moment,
what it might look like far into the future. Like
eighty years on when it will be a different world?
Will it have stayed the same? Might it even have
been given a name? Something funny which sounds nice
but doesn't really tell you anything - which
"Chester Road" does? Let's say something like
"Kingscroft Road". But it's daft thinking things
like that. No one can ever tell. So let's get on).
**********
Back on to the Chester Road
We turn right and carry on up the Chester Road, to
its brow. The next house belongs to Mr and Mrs
Richards as I've just told you. I think it's
no. 93. Mr
Richards drives an old car with a long bonnet which sounds like a busy,
noisy insect and has wire wheels and the spare
attached to the back of it. I don't know what make
it is. I don't know why I don't because I'm very
interested in cars. Perhaps the badge has dropped
off or I've never been close enough to look at it.
He’s quite old. Like his car. And he has a waxed
moustache and looks a bit fierce. Although I don't
know if he is. Mrs Richards is always known as
Nurse
Richards and does good work in Streetly although I
don't know exactly what. She always wears a grey
uniform and looks smart and neat and talks to Mum
when they see each other. I think she’s quite a bit
older, though. But still a lot younger than Mr.
Richards.
Then more houses.
Mrs
Farrington
lives in one, no.
95. I think that
Mr Farrington died in Egypt or somewhere at the very
beginning of the war. I think he was ill or
something on a business trip. Not in the Army. I
don’t remember ever seeing him. But we had to be
very quiet at that time if we played in the field
behind their house. Out of respect, Mum said,
because Mrs Farrington was probably very sad. In
front of her house, on the grass verge, are the pig
bins. They look like ordinary dustbins but you put
all your food scraps in them. You mustn't waste
anything. The only thing you can't put in them is
peapods. Those aren't good for pigs. I don't know
why. The bins are emptied every few days.
Then Mr and Mrs
Holt and their daughter Wendy at
no. 97. I can't
remember who was there before they bought it. It
might have been somebody called
Jessop. Or there
might have been someone in between. The reason why I
know about the Jessops is that between 97 and 99
there's a wonderful, tall, dividing wall which
stretches from the houses half way down the two
gardens. It's made of big, round stones, held
together with concrete. And it's admired and talked
about by everyone. One of the wonders of it is that
it was built by Mrs. Jessop with her own hands.
Ladies are not supposed to do that sort of thing,
even if they know how to do it. It's always man's
work. I expect it was a way of using up all the
stones which had been raked up when the garden was
first being made out of the ploughed field. I think
the land here is quite stony. I don't know what Dad
did with all ours. Probably used them for
foundations or something. But certainly not a wall,
like Mrs Jessop did. It still stands, years later.
It comes to an end halfway down. There it tapers
off. Like it has petered out. Perhaps she lost
interest after a while. Or ran out of stones. Or
perhaps she just moved away before it was finished.
I never knew her, I don't think, but she has
certainly left something to be remembered by. I
wonder how long it will stand there for.
After that Mr and Mrs
Behague
at no. 99. They’re always very nice to me. Here's
me, helping Mrs. Behague to
mow her front lawn, probably three years ago in
1941. I can remember the house being empty and the
day they moved in, in 1939 or 1940. But not the
people who lived there before them. Mr and Mrs
Kendall,
perhaps? Mr Behague is a fireman in the
NFS.
That stands for National Fire Service. He has fought
a lot of fires in Birmingham and has also travelled
to other cities when they were being blitzed. I saw
him in action once. Mum was in a panic one day. She
saw smoke coming up from under the floorboards in
front of our lounge fire. Fortunately Mr Behague was
at home and he was even in uniform, ready to go on
duty. He quickly tore the floorboards up and
investigated the problem. Mum was hovering there,
holding a full kettle of water, all ready. It was a
floor joist which was smouldering. It had never been
cut off when the house was being built and was too
close to the fire. Mr Behague quickly dealt with it.
The room was quite a mess after that. I was a bit
surprised when he got up off his knees, Mum thanked
him very much and off he went, without putting the
floorboards back. I thought that was a bit rude. But
now I'm older and know about such things, I know
that he left it like that, all open, just to make
sure the fire was properly out. Dad put everything
back as it should be when he got home from work. It's
jolly useful, having a fireman living next door to
you.
Then there is us,
at no. 101, the house I was born in and we all still
live in - Mum, Dad and my older sister,
Sheila.
My brother Graham has now been away for more than
two years, first of all in North Africa, then in
Sicily and now in
Italy, as I told
you earlier. I’m starting to forget what he looks
like and I’m looking forward to the day he comes
home safely. Then we shall be five again. I hope for
ever.
The neighbour on
the other side of us, at
no. 103, is Mrs
Bacon. She
has a daughter Elizabeth who is a playmate of mine
although she's only four. Mr Bacon has been in
Malta
for years and, like Mr Coates, he hasn’t been home
for almost for as long as I can remember and I don't
think I shall recognise him when he gets back.
Mrs Bacon keeps a photograph of him in uniform on a
shelf though, so I might. He's an
officer in the Royal Artillery. Here's me and
Elizabeth, in the snow last year, in their back
garden. I don't think she remembers him.
**********
A bit more about the traffic we
can see
While we are
here, on the brow of the hill and outside our house,
I'll tell you a bit more about the traffic I see.
There is always something interesting going past.
I've told you already about the Queen Marys and the
Army convoys and tanks and Bren Gun Carriers. Sometimes, on a nice day, I drag our kitchen chair
down the drive and sit outside the front gate,
just to watch what is going past. It's quite safe.
There's not all that much traffic and most of it
doesn't go very fast. It's where we are standing
at the moment.
I saw a steam
lorry once. I don't think that one smelt of speed,
like I've told you before about American cars.
More like a railway engine, really, smelling of
steam and oil and coal. And doing a lot of hissing.
There are plenty of motorbike-and-sidecars but those
aren't very interesting, not like lorries or big
cars. But they do make quite a bit of noise and
sometimes you think something really interesting is
coming, from the direction of the
Hardwick, because
you can hear it. Then it comes into view and you
find out it's not some sort of sports car or
something special like that, it's just a perishing
motor bike. With the passenger in goggles and
huddled up in the side car and wearing one of
those soft leather helmets pulled down over his
head.
It's really very disappointing. But then, to make up
for it, a car comes by which, for once, isn't black.
I saw a pink one once. Dad said they had picked up the
wrong tin of paint.
(Our Ford Prefect
is black. And so was the Ford V8. The Morris Cowley
was as well, and the Morris Major, but I never knew
either of those. Here's the
Morris Cowley
in Erdington at the previous house and my sister
standing by it. It was Dad's very first car.
In 1929 or 1930. That's fourteen or fifteen years
ago, a couple of years before they came to Streetly.
Once upon a time it must have stood in our drive
where I am at the end of now. And every day gone off
down the road with Dad at the wheel on his way to
work. And then back again in the evening, all along
the road where we've just been walking).
Every now and
again a very strange convoy goes past, roaring up
the hill. Always in just the one direction. Out of
Birmingham. The vehicles in it are just lorry
chassis, with an engine to make them go and you can
see that and the gearbox and how it all connects up
with the rear wheels. And there's a muffled-up
figure, hunched up and seated right up high in the
air in the only seat. The man is wearing a thick
coat with a big collar, pulled up. A scarf around
his face and goggles. And huge leather gauntlets
which keep his hands warm as he hangs onto the
steering wheel. Winter and summer you see these. I
think they must be the important parts of a lorry,
perhaps built in Birmingham, and they are on their
way to another factory who will put a body on them.
Perhaps somewhere in Cheshire, or the north-west. I
don't think they can be going to the Liverpool docks, as other
traffic probably is, because they aren't much use to
anybody without their bodies.
The
other things I see go past between about 5 and 7
o'clock in the evening are streams of coaches. Green
Harper's
coaches. Or Happy
Days, with a
picture of the sun and its golden rays on the back
of them. And others. The sort of coaches which used
to take people on their holidays. Now they are all
workers' coaches. They transport hundreds of people
every single day to and from the
Birmingham
factories. Many hundreds of them, men and women. All
building tanks and shells and guns and lorries and
Spitfires and all the bits that go into things like
that. The people all live somewhere further down the
Chester Road. In places like Brownhills and Walsall
Wood and Heath Hayes and Hednesford and Cannock.
Perhaps a few even further away. Every day, summer
and winter. I don't really see them in winter, when
it's dark. Even so, I still think about all those
people, on the way home, tired out, sitting huddled
up all together, every window closed, everyone
puffing away on cigarettes and all of them just
wanting to get back to their firesides and supper.
And then the whole thing starts again tomorrow,
early in the morning. Day after day after day. Month
after month. Year after year.
Please see INDEX page for
main acknowledgements.
This family
and local history
page is hosted by
www.staffshomeguard.co.uk
(The Home Guard of Great Britain, 1940-1944)
All text and images are,
unless otherwise stated, © The Myers Family 2022
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INDEX
Home Guard of
Great Britain
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INDEX
Streetly and Family Memories
1936-61
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L8E
April 2022 Updated November 2024
