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I was born in Pall Mall, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, just after midnight in 1932; a good year, an Olympic Year and the same year as Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Dores. Leigh has a shrimp & shellfish fishing fleet in the old town, situated up a creak on the north side of the River Thames in Essex

My Father was a Police Officer, born during 1900. He had been a Shipwright in the First World War, at Chatham Dockyard, Kent. He crossed over the River Thames to Essex in the depression of 1926 and joined the Southend on Sea Police Force. Neither of my Grandfathers served in the forces in the first World War, and my Father did not get called up in Second World War; being 45 years old at the wars end and a member of the Police force. Being a bit artistic he volunteered to do a large local street map of Leigh, sized about 4' (1.2m) x 2' (61mm) showing all the fire points, water hydrants and water storage points, which were often metal tanks above ground holding 1,000s of gallons of water, dotted around town.

I started school in 1937 at the age of 5 at North Street Infants School. The Junior School backed onto the Infants and also backed on to Pall Mall and the Police Station at end of Pall Mall; both were handy. Our house was No. 142 and one of four Victorian terrace type houses built for shops, but only one was a shop a grocers. These were sandwiched between on the right a pair of modem two tier flats and a private school with a sports hall on the left making up the block.

The War started when I was 7 years old, I remember dancing around the Maypole on Empire Day in the playground with my sister June, but sometime afterwards we were all lined up in the playground with our small cases and gas masks, (which I still have) ready to board a bus to take us to Southend-on-Sea railway station. This was in June 1940 where we boarded a train for London. My best friend's mother (John Shorey) was one of the helpers travelling with us. John's father was a sergeant in the Home Guard. We changed to the Northern Line train in London, and this was all an adventure for us kids. I do not remember how we were fed but my sister and I eventually arrived at New Mills in Derbyshire.

We left the train and lost sight of John and his mother, who I believe went on to another town. June and I ended up at a large house in its own grounds with a lake called ‘Watford Mount’. I remember we were in an upstairs room on camp beds. The local people came around and picked out which children they wanted to foster. I was taken by a childless couple who lived nearly next door, I played up so much that they had to go back for my sister June, we then left through a hole in the hedge to a block of three farm cottages next door, ours was number 3, on the right. Mr and Mrs Garside and her brother had a nice two story cottage with fields on two sides where cows were grazing, and a nice long front garden sloping down to the road which was like an allotment with rows of vegetables. I had my 8th. Birthday with them, I remember having a football, which Mr Garside took away because I was kicking it too near the windows. We went to a school about quarter of a mile away on a hill. There was a mill near by and a pond across the road. One event which will always live in my mind was a swarm of frogs which came out of the pond in their tens of thousands. They were around an inch in size and came right up to our back door, you could not step out without sweeping them away.

Our next move was when my Mother came to join us with my aunty Anne (my dad's sister), from Kent, and her two young daughters aged about 3 and 4 years. We all moved into rented accommodation, in a Farm House on the top of a hill, with a Mrs Winterbottom. The farmer, a Mr Thorpe, ran a Butcher's Shop down the hill, where he lived. Although the farm had a herd of cows, some pigs and many chickens; it also grew many crops.

Our time there, although not very long was very pleasant and educating. We went to Springbank school at the bottom of hill across the fields. We had to go through a herd of cows if they were in that area.

The school was opposite a Slaughter House and the animals were penned in at the back. One event I remember; we pinched some bits of card-ice from the slaughter house and put them in our in ink-wells at school which made them smoke with a white haze. We soon got used to the animals, I used to help with the milking, getting the milking machines ready and I also remember chasing the pigs around the farm and collecting the chicken eggs which they laid all over the place. I had a local school friend Jack at this time about my age. He was the son of one of the farm workers, who lived in a cottage across the road from the farmhouse. One cold day we went out with the farm wagon to cut kale, a form of greens. I got heat-burn and when I got home I put my hands in front of the fire witch made it worse. Another day Jack and I had to take two large horses to a nearby farm, the two cart-horses feet were rather large for an eight year old and I let the rope go, it was all right because one horse followed the other down the lane. Mrs Winterbottom conned us children to weed the flower beds, she said she had buried some 2/- (10p) coins in the earth in the flowerbeds, but we found nothing. I also remember there were Jigsaw Puzzles as pictures on her walls. My father came to visit us and did some sketches through the upstairs window (we still have one somewhere).

The farmhouse is still there and is now a riding stables run by Mr Thorpe's granddaughter. His daughter lives in a bungalow at the entrance to the farm complex. I have visited the area a few times over the years; the first time was when I was 21 and doing my stint, in the National Service in the Royal Air Force at Padgate, not too far away. I went to New Mills on a weekend pass, while my fellow mates went to Blackpool to rough-it for the night. I stayed the night with Mr and Mrs Garside who were surprised to see me after a twelve year gap. I remembered the layout of the town but not the ups and downs of the hills.

For the last 50 odd years I have lived at Grimsby, Lincolnshire (where I met and married Brenda and settled down.) It is a lot nearer to New Mills than Southend-on-Sea! I worked 27 years for Unilever Corn Ltd., at Birds Eye foods and Mac Fisheries. My last visit to New Mills was in 2004 while returning from taking my youngest, 22 year old Granddaughter Gillion, to University near Crew, Manchester. The actual farmhouse had just changed hands, the owner a retired school teacher (who had taught at the school on a hill, the same school we had gone to, all those years ago when first at New Mills). She kindly showed me around the old farm house and it was the first time I had been upstairs in the room we had rented since I was 8 years old.

The War hardly touched New Mills, one night a German plan was heard over-head and every one ran for the shelters, we did not feel much danger.
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Added by: Alan Brigham - www.hullwebs.co.uk

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