This is bit of an experimental posting. The original intention was to depict my housing ladder, right from childhood. It seems at risk of becoming an autobiography, which will be as dull as dishwater to too many Blog readers. I may abandon the idea as irrelevant to the water tower or may keep it simply to depict one man's living quarters over a lifetime. I'll see how it shapes up so bear with me.
-Mark R&
Our first house was in Rowly Drive, Cranleigh where I spent most of my babyhood - apart from some time in Shropshire as an evacuee. I have found it on Google Street View but cannot copy it, infuriatingly. But here is a picture of a house on Rowly Drive which looks very much like the other half of our semi:
This one has clearly had a side extension built onto it. Mentally delete the extension and you have our small semi. It had a huge rear garden and a very wide green was in front, typical of Surrey at that time. Its problem was that nearby was RAF Dunsfold* which 'the Gerries were after'. The home counties airfields south of London were fair game - hence the evacuation of baby Mark.
I do however remember air raid sirens - absolutely terrifying for a baby - or for grown-ups for that matter. My only memory was being put into a one-piece garment called a siren suit, then into a baby gas mask and finally being shoved under the dining room table where I can vividly remember a cross underneath - presumably where the varnish / stainer had dried off his brush. I can see that now and can smell the sickly rubber of the gas mask:
That baby in an obviously posed wartime propaganda picture looks content enough but can you imagine the sheer terror of being put in those things whilst the grown-ups (mother and grandma) panicked and donned their masks as the sirens wailed?
After the war I remember playing with (and destroying in the process) those dreadful things, along with lots of other wartime bits and pieces which would nowadays fetch a fortune on EBay.
* Dunsfold aerodrome is still there and is (or was) where BBC Top Gear was filmed.
ooOOOo
Then it was Beckingham Road Guildford. Cannot say if this was ours on the right but very similar:
Not here for long as father, who worked at Lloyds Bank on Guildford High Street got posted to Leeds. This was a culture shock but it did involve me in Pullman travel from Kings Cross to Leeds on trains with magical names which have, alas gone. The White Rose, The Yorkshire Pullman and, the best of all, The Queen of Scots:
I was always disappointed when it was hauled by a humble 'blinker' as above (Roaring Through Retford by artist Philip D Hawkins). I much preferred it to be a 'streak':
click to enlarge
There was a Pullman surcharge, doubtless paid by Lloyds Bank, but boy, was it worth it. My first experience of mint sauce was on the Queen of Scots.
ooOOOo
This is where I grew up through teenage (though some might say I never have grown up), from about 1954
- 7 Morritt Avenue, Leeds 15
click to enlarge
A road of enormous three tier Victorian semi detached houses. Ours was the first house on the left. The top two floors have had their frontages cement rendered, covering what I remember to be black and white half timbering, sadly. The front door has acquired a brick box of a porch.
Here it is from the other direction, ours the second one in on the right:
When first built Morritt Avenue stood in splendid isolation in open countryside:
The pair of gateway houses were magnificent
I guess these were High Victorian in style and were becoming quite unfashionable in the 1950s.
Good to see that Morritt Avenue at least survived the wholesale demolition of such places in Leeds and elsewhere in the UK.
Just as I was doing my A levels my father got posted to Bournemouth. It was deemed, wrongly, that I was mature enough to look after myself in Leeds. I got a place at Leeds University to read medicine. That's a whole 'nother story for another time. After a couple of sets of digs with landladies I laid my head at Boddington Hall of residence - in Grant Hall, on the right of this picture:
1960's architecture but still going strong on the evidence of this 2011 view. I restored a 1930's Austin 7 Nippy in the car park when I should really have been stuck into Grant's Anatomy (a modern version of the classic Grey's). I actually passed anatomy (of which I am very proud) and physiology but failed biochemistry. So, out. Poverty, parental disappointment and general w.t.f. ensued so I hit rock bottom residence-wise. An attic in Kelso Road, Leeds' student / dosser land:
Eight bedroom terraced houses. Think Rising Damp & Rigsby.
Matrimony rescued me from destitution or Lord knows what. I got a job with drug giant Pfizer as a rep - calling on doctors to persuade them to use Pfizer drugs. Here is our first matrimonial home, on West View Avenue, Wrose, Shipley:
It looks OK in this sunlit picture but it was a disaster. It was built on a severe slope and could only be accessed by an external flight of stairs - now enclosed on the left. It has gained Georgian windows and a bedroom in the roof. It was the best we could (almost) afford in ? 1961 - ish.
The views from the back of it were to die for but that was all. It was on the edge of a precipice and there was a maggot farm alongside. The resultant bluebottles were impressive. There was no central heating and the wind blew hard. It was brand new so we were on a building site with no topsoil to speak of.
After a month or two a huge vertical crack appeared in the main living room which just got wider and wider - over an inch wide and increasing, Not just that, the ridge of the roof was showing a distinct bend.
It just happened that the Ordnance Survey had an office in Shipley. Heaven knows why but there it was - fortunately. I went along to see if they had large scale map of the land on which our new home had been built. They could not have been more helpful. On their colossal scale map we superimposed the house. It had been built right over a filled-in quarry edge, the line of which coincided precisely with our fearsome crack.
Armed with this evidence, and by now a police constable I confronted the builders - not a big firm by any means - but honourable people. They recognised our situation and without hesitation agreed to offer us another house on a site they were building in Bingley - with three bedrooms rather than two. We accepted with great relief!
