STREETLY,
STAFFORDSHIRE MEMORIES
(1936
- 1961)
A WALK UP
THE CHESTER ROAD (August 1944)
6. On
to Manor Road and Bridle Lane and Back
to Home
by Chris Myers
|
6. On to
Manor Road and Bridle Lane and Back to Home
As you carry
on along the road on our side, towards Manor Road,
there are other families. Mr and Mrs Lyon at 105.
They are very old. They must be at least 60. Mr Lyon
has retired after working in a shop in one of the
Birmingham arcades for years and he now has a market
garden in his huge garden which stretches for
probably 200 yards, right down to the hawthorn
hedge.
I'll show this
picture again because you can just see his land. (It
was taken from a bedroom window of our house in
1936).
Mr. Lyon's garden stretches all the way down
the left hand side of the field, right down to the
far hedge. Right on the very left-hand edge of the
picture you can see his hen-houses. They are
very rickety and get battered and half blown down if
there's a strong wind. Beyond his land one or two
private gardens are just as long (like Mr Richards's
which is on the far right of this picture). I have
never been in them and don't know what people do
with all that space. You can't grow vegetables on
all of it. Unless you are like Mr Lyon.
Between Mr. Lyon and us is the garden at no. 103
I don't think anyone was living in the house then.
Their garden is what ours must have been like until
Dad got to work.
Mr Lyon supplies vegetables, eggs and probably
chickens to people like Roses who are greengrocers
in Kingstanding. I help him a lot. Taking out a
water container which runs on wheels and topping up
the drinking water for the chickens. Collecting
eggs. Running errands. All sorts of things like
that. I think I’m very helpful. At least he never
tells me to buzz off, so I must be of some use.
Either that or he is just a very kind old gentleman.
I helped him load some of his vegetables one day,
into big square empty baskets which had come from
Roses. It was a horrid job because the baskets stank
so much it made me feel sick. When I peered over the
edge into one, I saw why. The last time they had
been used it was to carry gutted rabbits. The
weather was hot and the baskets hadn't been cleaned
out very well. Or probably not at all.
Whenever we went into Roses after that, I looked at
their nice fresh veg. in a different way.
All sorts of interesting things happen. I don’t
really like the way he kills chickens or ducks. He
uses a very old and rusty pen knife to chop off
their heads. What was much
more fun, and really interesting, was the day he
caught a rat and promised me that we would drown it
in the water carrier. I nagged him for hours until
he got around to doing the deed. And I have to say
that in the end I felt really sorry for the poor
creature as it frantically swam around in its metal
cage trying to find a way out before it finally gave
up its efforts and was still. I think that probably,
as you get older, you don’t like things like that
quite as much as you do when you are six or seven.
I spend quite
a lot of time with Mr and Mrs Lyon. Sometimes we
even play cards in the evening. It’s ever so funny.
If Mr Lyon trumps Mrs Lyon she shouts at him and
calls him a miserable old bugger. Even Mum, who
doesn't like bad language, has to laugh. Dad and Mum
never say anything worse than damn and blast at
home. We play these games by gaslight. Mr and Mrs
Lyon don’t have electricity. The light in the living
room comes from a fitting in the middle of the
ceiling with something called a gas mantle which you
have to light with a match. It glows white hot and
lights up the whole room. And then, when you turn it
off, it goes a loud "pop". I expect they use a lot
of candles as well. And oil lamps when they go to
bed. Because there’s no electricity they have a
wireless set which runs on batteries. Two of them.
One is a dry one like a huge version of the one you
put in a torch. The other one is called an
accumulator and every now and again Mr Lyon has to
take it up the road to get it charged. You just have
to have a wireless set as otherwise you have no idea
what is happening in the war. And there's music and
comedy programmes. My favourite is Tommy
Handley who is ever so funny. His programme is
called ITMA. That's short for "It's That Man Again".
I think that Mr and
Mrs Lyon's house is the only one around here without
electricity. Perhaps it was built a bit before the
others. Out in the country I have been to other
houses that use oil lamps and candles. Farmhouses
and cottages and things. But not around here where
most of the houses are fairly new and were built
with electricity in them. I sometimes go to bed with
a candle or a nightlight in a saucer even though we
have electric light. I like a bit of light to go to
sleep by. But I don't like the flickering too much
and it used to frighten me when I was just a little
boy.
Then the
Morgans. At 107. Mr Morgan is a plumber. It's
wonderful to watch him as he repairs a lead pipe
with his blowtorch and to see how the metal melts
and flows where he wants it to go, all silvery and
shiny. Mr and Mrs Morgan have a son, Eric. Eric is
14 or 15. And he has an air rifle. Now, my own Dad
spends half his life surrounded by all sorts of
dangerous things like rifles, grenades, pistols and
bombs. He is in the Home Guard. There are three
rifles in the wardrobe and I know he has a revolver
and ammunition in the drawer where he keeps his vests
and starched collars. But he gets very worried when
there’s a teenager living next-door-but-two who
spends a lot of his time shooting off an air rifle
in his back garden. Nothing has happened so far and
so let’s hope it never will.
As we go
further on up the road, the other families who are
there I don’t know quite so well. The Allums, the
Caultons and also the Markwicks. Mr Markwick is our
local air raid warden. His job is to make sure we
don’t have any lights showing. Once or twice he’s
suddenly appeared out of the darkness in his uniform
and tin hat with ARP painted on it and given my
mother a gentle ticking off for having a torch which
is too bright. He does it very nicely and she
doesn’t get upset over it. I’m not sure whether she
realises or not but I know exactly what she does to
avoid this. She tears off a little piece of
newspaper, probably about an inch round, unscrews
the lens of her torch and sticks the paper on top of
the bulb. This reduces the light a lot. Now, what I
like to do, when she’s not looking, is to find the
torch, unscrew the lens again and take the bit of
paper out. Probably that’s when she gets caught by
Mr Markwick. I don’t know whether she knows what's
going on but she’s not said anything, at least not
yet. I think it is rather a good joke. She might
not, though.
As we get
nearer to Manor Road there are more gaps between the
houses. One's another cart track. There's a cottage on the right hand side of it, at right
angles to the Chester Road. I think a family called
Heaton live in it. And I think it's called Rose
Cottage. Beyond those buildings,
down the track, you get to a gate which opens up on
to the Riding School Field again. (The main entrance
is at the bottom of Manor Road).
Then a couple
of older houses, a wide gap and finally the row of
shops lying at a slight angle to the main road with
an area of rough grass and a sandy surface in front
of them where cars can park. There’s a butcher's
there, a draper's called Terry although the lady who
runs it is called Mrs Moore, Baileys which I think
is a dairy where they sell milk and sweets and
things, and one or two other shops. There's a lady
called Joan who lives in an upstairs flat there who
cuts my hair. That's if I can't get out of it. I
HATE it.
The far side
of Manor Road is a triangle of rough grass in front
of the houses there which are set at an angle, like
the shops. On this grass they built a huge
black-painted tank. It’s a water tank for
firefighting. A nasty ugly thing with mesh on the
top to stop children like me falling in although it
would be quite difficult to climb up high enough to
get on top of it. It’s not had to be used yet. And
possibly won’t be, now. We haven’t had an air raid
for a long, long time.
We won’t walk
any further along the road. That's for another
day. Time to get back home, now.
As we turn,
let’s just look out, over the crossroads, towards
the far corner where Bridle Lane joins the main
road. On that corner is Puddepha's. This is a little
corner shop which sells tobacco and sweets and
things. Here is Mr Puddepha who owns it. He's in the
Home Guard with Dad. I visit his shop quite often.
Sometimes by myself and I’m always told to be very,
very careful as I cross the main road. I go there
when Dad needs some more Navy Cut for his pipe or
Mum has run out of her Players cigarettes. A granite
floor and a high counter. Shelves beyond with big
sweet jars and other stuff like that. And in front
of them stands Mr Puddepha in his light brown coat
who hands me the tobacco and takes the half-crown,
or whatever it is.
On the other
corner of Bridle Lane, nearer to us, there is a very
tall, wide hedge which doesn’t look as if it gets
cut very often. Behind it is a row of old cottages
but you can hardly see them and I've never seen
anyone who lives in them.
We haven't
crossed over. We are now going back the way we have
come. And looking over the road at that big, wild,
privet hedge. As we walk back, there is an unbroken
row of houses on the other side. One or two of them
are identical to ours. I think they must have been
built by the same builder. Mr. Brockington. And
probably at the same time. In another of the houses
there, Mr Horton lives. He has a grand-daughter who
I think lives there as well. Her name is Evelyn.
Evelyn Ball. She's a good friend of my sister. They
probably went to school together. That's Sandwell
School which I've mentioned before. The reason why I
know Mr Horton is that he repairs our shoes for us.
If you are a customer, you go down the side of his
house and he has a little workshop there, with all
his tools and a special thing called a last which he
puts a shoe on to before he starts hammering away at
it. And pieces of leather everywhere. When you go in
the smell of leather hits you. It's nice. And it's
different from the smell you get when you poke your
nose into an American car. As I have told you
before, that's the smell of speed. Not leather.
As you get
closer back to no. 101, where we live on this side,
and you keep looking over the road, you see the
houses where I know more of the people. Mr and Mrs
Grey. Then Mr and Mrs Price at no. 150, another old
couple with a married daughter who lives up the road
just by the water tank I was talking about. I think
Mr Price is probably Welsh. Very occasionally he
uses our telephone. He speaks very precisely.
("Hello, this is PRICE here" he says, loudly and
clearly, to introduce himself. There's no doubt as
to who he is). He's a nice old gentleman.
I ought to
say here that most of our neighbours don't have
telephones. I'm not sure who does. Mum has an
arrangement with our neighbour, Mrs Bacon - whom she
calls Dot - who lives in the other half of our semi.
Sometimes there is a call for Mrs Bacon, perhaps
from one of her sisters. Mum picks up the phone and
says "Hello...oh, right ho...I'll get her". Then she
walks out of the hall into the lounge and picks up a
clothes brush which lives on top of the piano. She
then uses the hard, wooden back of that to make four
or five really hard raps on the wall behind. Then
looks out of the front window and, lo and behold, after a
few seconds, hurrying through a gap in the hedge
comes Dot who is let in through the front door and
then left in private to conduct her family business.
This arrangement works regularly and well. Mum is
kind and patient. The only time when she does get a
bit fed up, sometimes, is when Aunty Helen phones to
speak to her sister. Aunty Helen is a tiny bit posh.
She wears pearls and things. She doesn't mean to,
I'm sure, but she sometimes makes Mum feel a bit
like a maidservant, being instructed to summon her
mistress to the telephone. But nobody has fallen out
with anyone yet. Mum is quite patient. Even with me.
But back to
the other side of the road.
On the grass
verge outside Mr and Mrs Price's house is a post,
not very tall, and on top of it is a board, about 18
inches square and facing upwards, at a bit of an
angle so that the rain can run off it easily. It's
painted a funny greeny-grey colour. I keep an eye on
it. It's been there for as long as I can remember.
Dad told me that if it changes colour, that means
the Germans are attacking us with gas. I don't know
what colour it changes to and I hope I shall
recognise it when it does. But people don't seem to
worry too much about all that now. I think they've
decided that it's probably not going to happen. You
sometimes see the same sort of paint on the top of
pillar boxes.
Then the
Milnes at 148, right opposite our house. Three
children - Jennifer of about my age, Ian and little
Keith. The Georges, another plumber like Mr Morgan.
Next, Mrs Woodward, a smart and elegant lady whose
husband is away in the Royal Navy and I don’t think
I’ve ever seen him. And then the Brains who have two
teenage boys who my father thinks are a bit mad and
so I think the same. Naturally. I’m not sure but I
think that Mr Brain owns the Avion Cinema in
Aldridge where we go very regularly on our bikes to
see all sorts of films. Some of them I like and some
of them frighten me.
Talking of going
to the pictures reminds me of what Mum very often
says to me when we have been sitting there for a
long time. We have seen the second half of the main
film, then a short
interval, then the adverts,
then the newsreel, then
the B-film. And finally the beginning of the main
film. After about half an hour of that, that's when
she leans across to me and whispers:
"I think this
is where we came in, dear".
And up we get
and off we go. (I hate that, really. I want to see a
story all the way through. Not see the end first and
then afterwards find out what had happened before).
And so, now we've come back at our destination
and as we look across at these houses, on the other
side of the road and at the very top of the hill,
where the Brains live, I can say to you:
"I think this
is where we came in".
Thank you for
walking with me up the Chester Road, from the Park
entrance all the way up the hill to where we live.
And a bit beyond and back again. We'll open the
front gate at the end of our drive and walk through
it and up to the house where we'll let ourselves in.
Perhaps Mum will make us a nice cup of tea when
she's got her breath back. There might even be a
biscuit. Just the one.
We need a cuppa,
don't we, after all that walking and all that
talking.
This family
and local history
page is hosted by
www.staffshomeguard.co.uk
(The Home Guard of Great Britain, 1940-1944)
Please see INDEX page for acknowledgements.
All text and images are,
unless otherwise stated, © The Myers Family 2022
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Streetly and Family Memories 1936-61
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L8F
April 2022