Watermill Way

SALLY

I was born on a bright August morning at 8am in 19** in my great-grandmother’s house, Hanworth Road, Hounslow. The house still stands to this day and is near Powdermill Lane.

I can’t remember how old I was when we moved into the pre-fabs, our address was 77 Hounslow Heath. This is where the flats in Edgar Road and playground now are. I have rather vague memories of living there but do remember we had a chickens and dad would plant vegetables, the war having just finished, most things were still on ration. I remember my first day at school. It was at Heathfields, in Powdermill Lane and the headmistress was Miss Wells. Shortly after starting school my parents were allocated a house on Butts Farm Estate. At that time it was in the process of being built. There were very few houses on the estate and we moved into 8 Watermill Way. The plaster on the walls wasn’t yet dry, that’s how new they were. I think it must have been about 1950 or 51 that we moved there. The roads hadn’t been made up, they were just black ash, waiting for them to be tarmaced over. All around was open fields where the farm had been. I remember taking our dog out and she came back stinking where she’d rolled in the pigs poo. There was plenty of that still there. Back to school I go but this time it’s Crane Infants School. Don’t think the junior one had been built so my older sister still attended Heathfields.

It seemed that the sun always shone. It’s amazing when you’re young how good the weather seemed back then. Christmas was a great time for us children. Dad would be even more of a kid than us. He would get the paper decorations out, very elaborate ones, and iron them so they didn’t have any creases in them. He would then go through all the fairy lights, these were in the shapes of snowmen, father christmas’, robins, acorns. Even though mum changed our sheets on our beds every week, she always changed them on Christmas Eve. It was then a bath and into clean nightwear and off to bed with a pillowcase at the bottom of the bed. Oh how excited we were, wondering when Father Christmas would arrive. Try as we might to stay awake we always fell asleep and woke some hours later, in the dark, to find the pillowcase bulging. Little hands would explore the pillowcase without taking anything out as we were frightened of waking our parents, knowing it was far too early to get up.

June 2^nd 1953 saw us at my aunt’s house in Hereford Road, watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. My aunt was only one of the few who actually had a television. The screen was very small so they had bought a magnifying screen that was strapped over the TV screen to make it bigger. October 1953 and we had a new addition to the family, my brother was born. I didn’t know how babies were born, or even that a baby was in mum’s tummy. How times have changed, my great-grandchild, at the age of four, knowing that his mum had a baby in her tummy.

A few of the names from those living near us on Butts Farm are Durbridge, Pittaway, Walker, Fitzgibbon, Mackay, Tyres, wonder where they all are now. I have managed to make contact with my friend Ann Tyres from all those years ago, although we’ve never met up again.

We moved just around the corner to Saxon Avenue. The winter of 1962/63 was soooo cold. Our pipes in the house had frozen. I got married on 26^th January 1963. On the Sunday my mum had gone to visit her father, who was in hospital, suffering with thrombosis. We hadn’t gone away on a honeymoon as we couldn’t afford it. Thankfully we didn’t. My dad went out to work on the Monday morning and was brought back home by a workmate as he didn’t feel well. Within an hour he had passed away with a heart attack. My granddad passed away eight days later without ever knowing his son-in-law had died. My poor mum had lost her husband and dad in just over a week. They are buried in Feltham Cemetery next to each other. April 1963 saw me leave Butts Farm Estate and go to live in Hounslow Road, Hanworth, where I still live today.