Web Page 874

Top Picture: The Singing Postman, Allan Smethurst






Bottom Picture: The top of a Court Lane School Report Sheet. I had not realized that when we moved to Manor Court we took the motto with us.

Allan Smethurst

The early 1960’s was a strange time for the music industry. Roll & Roll was still hanging on and the Liverpool Sound was up and running and colouring everything in sight. But from this mish mash of music somehow the comedy record still had a place. Charley Drake had several comedy hits as did Bernard Breslaw and believe it of not Arthur Mullard, but one of our home grown talents who was a cross between a folk singer, a comedy performer and a pop star was The Singing Postman, Allan Smethurst.


The Singing Postman came to fame for a short time in the early 1960’s as a novelty pop star with songs like the 1965 hit ‘Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy?’, which won an Ivor Novello award for best novelty song in 1966. Allan Smethurst recorded some 80 songs, all in his broad Norfolk dialect, including ‘I Miss My Miss from Diss’ and ‘Oi Can't Get A Noice Loaf of Bread’.

He was actually born in Bury in Lancashire on November 18th, 1927 - but at the age of two his family moved to Sheringham in North Norfolk, his mother was a Norfolk lass and so he grew up in the area and developed a broad Norfolk accent. In 1953 he joined the Post Office as a postman a position he held for twelve years. He had no musical training and was often to be heard out on his rounds singing to himself. Musically he was inspired by the likes of George Formby and Jimmie Rodgers but it wasn't until he was over 21 that he decided to teach himself to play the guitar.
Having mastered the guitar an written a few songs he sent a demo tape to Ralph Tuck who, at that time, compered a regional radio programme called 'Wednesday Morning'. This was fortunate for Allan Smethurst as within a short space of time Ralph Tuck set up his own recording company and produced Allan Smethurst's first record - which appeared in 1964.

That song was ‘Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy?’ and on it’s release it rose to number 7 in the national charts and for a brief period the Singing Postman was outselling both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

In 1965 he gave up his day job at the Post Office (earning £12 a week) and embarked on a full time musical career. He always performed in his Royal Mail uniform and in fact the Royal Mail objected to him doing this and after he left their service, they demanded their uniform back so he had to have one especially made. At the height of his fame he appeared on the same edition of Top of the Pops as the Rolling Stones. But his let down was that he suffered badly from stage fright and could not cope with fame, he began to rely on drink and eventually became an alcoholic and appeared regularly in the local courts.

He never defeated his alcoholism and in fact spent the last 20 years of his life in a Salvation Army hostel in Grimsby.
By 1970 he was on the dole and said of his showbiz earnings: "I've been foolish and spent the lot. It's gone on hotel bills, travelling, entertaining and a few pints here and there." By this time he was also suffered from arthritis which stopped him playing the guitar.

There were several promises of a comeback but the closest he came to the limelight was when ‘Hev Yew Gorra Loight Boy?’ was used as on a TV commercial for Ovaltine in 1994, which for a time game him a small amount of royalties. Rolf Harris had recorded some ofhis songs and on hearing of the situation that Alan Smethurst was in, started to visit him but he broke his hip in a fall in 2000 and his health rapidly deteriorated and he died just before Christmas 2000.

The woman who was the inspiration behind one of his most famous characters said she was saddened by news of his death although she had not seen him for years. Mollie (Windley) Bayfield was immortalised in the song ‘Hev Yew Gorra Loight Boy?’, she was the chain-smoking Norfolk girl, if you remember the words of the song they went ‘Mollie Windley, she smoked like a chimney, but she’s my little nicotine gal’ .
But there is no denying that the Singing Postman was most certainly a one off; and one of those glorious British eccentrics which make life interesting as can be seen from the list of song titles below:-

Bin Born A Long Time
I Wear Horn Rimmed Glasses
When The Moon Peeps O'er The Hill
Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy?
Followin' Th' Binder Round
The Devil's Hoofprints
Miss From Diss
Moind Yer Head, Boy
You'll Hatta Come Along a Me
Ha' Yer Fa'er Got a Dickey, Boy?
And

Oi Shot a Rabbit Up a Tree

They don’t write songs like that any more !!!!!!!!

While Allan Smethurst was afraid he would be remembered for just the one song, like the man himself it has become a metaphor for a fast disappearing way of life.

Keep in touch

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.co.uk


Sad News from Gill:

Hi Peter Just want to say I lost my husband a few weeks ago to a massive brain haemorrhage, the cancer had spread to his spine but I am in total shock, one day at Farnborough and next night gone. Still enjoying the website and have contacted a few people don’t mind if you put it on the School site, kind regards Gill(brewer).

Keith Writes:

By way of reply to your "Who remembers Fishy Frances' Chip shop".
In my last year at Court Lane before going to Manor Court I well remember sitting on the wall outside that shop eating a penny (1d) bag of chips, while my parents spent an hour or so in the New Inn.
Does anybody know what happened to Michael Harrison, Richard Coppin, Keith Ware or Brian Longland (4th year, Court Lane, 1961). They were in Mr. Sterries (? spelling) class with me, a rather unpleasant teacher if memory serves me well. I seem to recall we had some occasional lessons with Mr. Tennouth (again ? spelling), we called him 'Tin Tack'.
Court Lane head, Miss Henderson, started to 'lose her marbles' while I was there. She was regularly found at night by the police, wandering the streets in her nightdress!

News and Views:

A rediscovered haul of television dramas that has been lost for 40 years is set to change the way we think about many of Britain's biggest acting stars. The extraordinary cache of televised plays –features performances from John Gielgud, Sean Connery, Gemma Jones, Dorothy Tutin, Robert Stephens, Susannah York, John Le Mesurier, Peggy Ashcroft, Patrick Troughton, David Hemmings, Leonard Rossiter, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith and Jane Asher. The tapes have been unearthed in the Library of Congress in Washington DC. After months of negotiation, the library and the New York-based television station WNET have agreed to allow the British Film Institute in London to showcase the highlights in November. The tapes are understood to have been sent out to WNET for broadcast and later stored in the TV station's collection inside the Library of Congress, where they were recently catalogued. They were originally broadcast between 1957 and 1970.

Jane Asher appears in a 1962 schools production of Romeo and Juliet, along with another 1967 Play of The Month staging of the same Shakespeare play, starring Kika Markham as Juliet, Hywel Bennett as Romeo and John Gielgud as the chorus. Among the bit players are Thora Hird and Michael Gambon, while Ronald Pickup plays Mercutio.

On this day 25th September 1960-1965.

On 25/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was The Army Game (Granada) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions

On 25/09/1961 the number one single was Reach for the Stars / Climb Ev'ry Mountain - Shirley Bassey and the number one album was The Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/09/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Best of Ball Barber & Bilk. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/09/1964 the number one single was I'm Into Something Good - Herman's Hermits and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 25/09/1965 the number one single was Make It Easy On Yourself - Walker Brothers and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions

Web Page 872

The School is 50 years old this month, see the News and Views section.

Top Picture:

A 1950’s Dinky Collection

Bottom Picture:

An Ian Allan Combined Region train spotters Companion

Collections

Now lads this is a page for you, I expect most of you will remember some of the items mentioned below from the days of your youth. What is it about boys, I wonder, that make them collect so many different things?

So here are just a few of the things that I and other boys can remember collecting when we were lads.

In junior school, come the Autumn, conkers was the great thing and here I was lucky as in the garden next door, and overhanging into my garden, was a massive conker tree. So, as you can imagine, when the conker season came round I was never short of conkers in fact I remember bagging them up and taking them to school and selling them until Mr Hawkins the headmaster at Solent Road Junior School heard about this bit of trade and stopped me. Do you remember all the various schemes for making you conker harder? Pickling it in vinegar was one and baking it in an oven was another, but whenever I tried to do this the first method gave me a soggy conker and the second make the item so brittle that it shattered at the first blow!

When the conker season was done it was then time for marbles and we all had our own little bag in our pockets with a dozen or so marbles in it, some small and some large glass alleys. These were collected and swapped with great seriousness in case you swapped away a good one by mistake. I seem to remember that we used to buy our marbles from the strange tuck shop run in the back of his house by Mr Shaw. The shop was actually a version of Arkwrights and was opposite Solent Road School on the corner of Solent Road and Highlands Road.

Once we got tired of marbles it was the season for Dinky Cars. Those were the days when you had to have a racing car in British Racing Green, ‘cos they were the best. Who would have thought that the cars we used to collect, race across the playground and down the pavement and swap are now worth in excess of £250 each if they are in good condition. Mind you if you were lucky enough to have kept certain Army Tanks or a Tank Transporter it would probably be worth well over £1250 by now!!!!!

Back to more mundane things, Chewing Gum Cards. These cards featured scenes from popular films Quo Vardis with Charlton Heston or any of the John Wayne classics. There was also a series I remember featuring female film stars and it was nothing to hear two boys deep in conversation, ‘I will swap you one Kim Novak and one Sophia Loran for one Diana Dors’, If only it were true!!! I never collected cigarette cards they were too early for me but I did collect the cards which came with the packets of Brooke Bond Tea and I had quite a collection of completed albums. I found out after he had died that my father kept my collection of Tea Card Albums for some reason, I am grateful he did otherwise they would have been lost like so many other things.

Most of us collected stamps of some description, this was in the days before the First Day Cover market, we all got our stamps in little Stanley Gibbons packets that we bought, along with the hinges, in the tuck shop or via the system of approvals. Stamp approvals were strange as they enabled us to see a choice of stamps at home with no obligation to buy. I understand the system still carries on to this day.
One of the main hobbies for boys was train spotting. There were always a group of boys hanging around Cosham station and the local footbridges. They all carried notebooks and a copy of the Ian Allan ABC Spotters Companion for the Southern Region and some also carried a copy of the Western Region version as two GWR locomotives ran through each day. There was much excitement if a locomotive with a name came through, if a King Arthur or Lord Nelson was spotted great joy ensued but gloom and doom was the order of the day when a West Country Class turned out to be Bodmin or Ottery St Mary yet again.

With the Ian Allan train-spotting books came the membership of the Ian Allan Train Spotters Club, which entitled one to wear a special button badge. Now badges were another thing that was avidly collected and they varied from the Tufty Road Safety Club to Golly badges and everything in between. It seemed to me that practically every product was happy to give away badges in those days.

Some boys would meet on top of Portsdown Hill on a fine day and collect the names on the sides of the coaches as they brought the excursion day trippers into town. Other items of collecting mania were matchbox labels, toy soldiers, cowboy comics and allsorts of items that to a young boy were very important treasurers.

Well I suppose I must admit it, I was a train spotter, did collect coach names, had a stamp collection and a lapel full of button badges but I did not collect Cowboy Comics!

Hey! How about one of you girls writing about the things you collected?


Ah well back to today,

Keep in touch

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.co.uk

You Write:

Peter B writes:-

The School Motto "Truth is Strength" was always the Motto of Court Lane School as long as I was there and I think the school badge was the same as at the top of your blog. I don't know where it came from but to my knowledge, "Truth is Strength" was a well known phrase or saying.

School News and Views:

A few memories of the opening of the School
I remember that in the first week of the life of Manor Court,(which was originally going to be called Court Manor but had the name reversed at the last minute as the senior Maths master Norman Folland pointed out that Manor Court flowed better) we spent a lot of time manhandling desks, chairs and cupboards( Child Labour?) along the roads on flat trolleys from Court Lane to Manor Court. We then had to haul the furniture into the classrooms. In fact the whole school did not open in September 1960 as the week before the official opening date the building was vandalised (there is nothing new in his world is there?) and the hall and some of the classrooms were damaged. As far as I remember it was just the 'A' streams that moved in first as they were starting on their GCE courses and the other classes moved in some five weeks later. However whilst I was there the metalwork, woodwork and domestic science classrooms remained at Court Lane so it meant a wander from one building to another which was always fun. We also had our own playing fields so the dreaded bus journey to Farlington came to an end.
Where did the name come from? Again my source of information was the late Norman Folland and his explanation was this:- the powers that be wanted to include the name of the previous school in the title of the new school so that is where Court came from. Manor referred to the manor house which lay just off Lower Drayton Lane and so Court Manor or later Manor Court !!!

Pop News:

Reg Presley, lead singer with The Troggs, has suffered a stroke.His family said Reg, 68, was playing with his grandchildren on holiday in Spain when he had to be taken to hospital in Malaga. Brenda, his wife for 48 years, said: "It was very frightening. He had a serious stroke and was in hospital for a week.He is recuperating and is back in our house in Spain, but he won't be back in the UK for a while. "Reg is still very unsteady on his feet and he has double vision and his speech is still a bit slurred. We are taking one day at a time." Reg, whose biggest hits with The Troggs were Wild Thing and Love Is All Around, was still active with the band. A gig scheduled for a few weeks' time at Liskeard, Cornwall, has been cancelled.

On this day 18th September 1960-1965.

On 18/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/09/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was Ipswich Town. The top rated TV show was "Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 UN Sec General killed in plane crash. The big news story of the day was Take Your Pick (AR)".

On 18/09/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was West Side Story Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/09/1964 the number one single was You Really Got Me - Kinks and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/09/1965 the number one single was (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page 870

Top Picture: Handbill for the Beat Championships at the Savoy Ballroom, mind you 5/- does seem a bit expensive!








Bottom Picture: A Southdown Leyland Tiger Cub rests in the coach park after bringing and excursion into Southsea.






Fifty Years

Do you realise that when we went back to school in September 1960 some of us started at the new Manor Court building whilst others did not move in until one or two months later. This makes the old school 50 years old this month, maybe they should have a party? For those of you who do not remember or maybe did not know the population of the school was in stages, the senior classes moving first having physically moved chairs, desks, books etc on trolleys from one school to the other. However the complete opening being delayed by some form of vandalism in the main hall I cannot remember what it was.

One small aside; how many of you know where the name Manor Court came from? Well the original plan was to call the school Court Manor School being taken from Court Lane and Old Manor Way but at a Governors meeting Councillor Mrs Kerr and Norman Folland persuaded the meeting that Manor Court would sound far better, and so the school was named. Mind you where the name Springfield came from I have no idea, it was certainly built on a field but I know of no spring in the immediate area, maybe someone can enlighten me. The school badge was based on the old road traffic sign for a school, a flaming torch, but again I have no idea where the motto ‘Truth is strength’ came from!

Now lets really put the memory banks on rewind. What was on the site before the school was built? When we were kids the area was a large plot of wild ground covered with undergrowth and brambles, with an old abandoned Civil Defence building at the bottom on Old Manor Way. There was a large area of neglected allotments which were left over from the wartime “dig for victory” campaign and some iron rings which were cemented into the ground; these were the tethering points used for the barrage balloons which were flown from here during the wartime air raids.

The area was a great play ground of all the local children with many paths and tracks leading all over the site it could accommodate lots of groups of children in little independent areas. Many of us lads spent hours and hours on our bikes dirt tracking around the site. Most of us had more than one bike in those days; one decent one for school and proper cycling and another hand built one for dirt track racing. I know I had two tracking bikes, one dark gray and one dark blue both were stripped to the bare minimum with no mud guards and with having fixed wheels with different combinations of sockets and cogs for different conditions it meant that they only had to have affront brake, so saving even more weight.

The actual field was rather rough underfoot and most of it was definitely not suitable for the odd romantic meeting but I have been made aware of one quiet area which one couple from the Twilfit corset factory down the road used most lunchtimes for what is euphemistically known as horizontal recreation. Little did they know that they were regularly watched by two of the local 13 year olds!!!!

The strange thing about this new school is that it just seemed to appear. No one that I have spoken to can remember the place being built, no one remembers lorries with building materials moving on and off the site and no one can remember being thrown off the site with our dirt track bikes ( now you would have thought that would have made an impression). But I cannot help but wonder what happened to the lunchtime couple fro Twilfits!!!

I can find no photographs of the site before it was built on and likewise I can find now pictures of the building of the school but I do know that the opening featured in a nation newspaper at the time and there were pictures taken when the new science wing was opened.

One of the things that really amazed us when we moved into the school was that the school caretaker, Bill Foster, have his own house built just inside the school gates on Scholars Walk. Then almost behind this house a few months later the original Manor Court Clubhouse was built and for picture of the opening night just take a look at the side bar of this blog.

Ah well! 50 years ago and in some ways it only seems 10 years since we knew the school, we must all be getting old!!!

Keep in touch

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.co.uk

You Write:

I Write:

Having read Griff’s piece about handicrafts, I have to say that I too have still got something from Harold Bennetts woodwork classes and that is my wooden coffee table. It resides in the loft as I cannot bring myself to throw it away. I have never been clever with my hands which is why I am not publishing a photograph of the table, but it’s mine and I’m keeping it, warts and all!!!



News and Views:

The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame have announced their 2010 inductees. Steve Cropper was a member of Booker T & the MGs and co-writer of such hits as "Green Onions," "Dock Of The Bay," "Knock On Wood" and "In The Midnight Hour.

On this day 11th September 1960-1965.


On 11/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/09/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was First Mothercare shop opens in Surrey and Manor Court School opens.

On 11/09/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Pot Luck - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/09/1964 the number one single was You Really Got Me - Kinks and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 11/09/1965 the number one single was (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page 868

Top Picture: Griff’s Coffee Table, see the You Write section













Bottom Picture: The Great Train Robbery robbers.


The Great Train Robbery 1963

In the year that saw Kennedy assassinated, the birth of The Beatles, Martin Luther King deliver his ‘I have a dream’ speech and British politics rocked by the Perfumo affair it was going to take a big crime to steal the headlines.

At 6:50 p.m. on Wednesday 7 August 1963 the Travelling Post Office "Up Special" train left Glasgow en route to Euston. The train consisted of 12 carriages and carried 72 Post Office staff who sorted mail.The mail was loaded on the train at Glasgow and at stops en-route, as well as from line side collection points. The second carriage behind the engine was known as the HVP (High Value Package Coach) where registered mail was sorted and this contained valuables including large quantities of money, registered parcels and packages. Usually the value of these items would have been in the region of £300,000, but because there had been a Bank Holiday weekend in Scotland, the total on the day of the robbery was £2.6 million -- worth a little over £40 million in 2010.

At just after 3 a.m. driver Jack Mills stopped the train at a red signal at Ledburn, at 'Sears Crossing'. However, unknown to him, the signalling equipment had been tampered with by members of the 15 strong gang of robbers from London led by Bruce Reynolds and included Ronnie Biggs, Ronald ‘Buster’ Edwards, Gordon Goody, Jimmy Hussey, Roy James, Jimmy White, Charlie Wilson and Tommy Wisbey. The robbers had covered the green signal light and connected a six-volt battery to power the red signal light. The locomotive's second man, 26-year-old David Whitby climbed down from the cab to call the signalman from a signal-post telephone, only to find the cables had been cut. Upon returning to the train, he was thrown down the embankment of the railway track. The five postal workers in the HVP carriage were tied up and detained in a corner of the carriage.

The robbers now encountered a problem. They needed to move the train to a location where they could load their ex-army dropside truck with the money and had decided to do so at Bridego Bridge approximately half a mile further along the track. One of the robbers had spent months befriending railway staff and familiarising himself with the layout and operation, but it was decided instead to use an experienced train driver to move the train from the signals to the bridge after uncoupling the unnecessary carriages. However, the person they selected was unable to operate this type of locomotive as he only drove shunting locomotives. It was decided that the original driver Jack Mills should move the train to the stopping point near the bridge which was indicated by a white sheet stretched between poles on the track. Mills was initially reluctant to move the train so one of the gang struck him on the head.

At the bridge the robbers removed 124 sacks which they transferred from the HVP to the truck by forming a human chain. The gang left 30 minutes after the robbery had begun they then headed along back roads listening for police broadcasts on a VHF radio and arrived at Leatherslade Farm a run down farm 27 miles from the crime scene that they had bought two months earlier as their hideout. There they began counting the proceeds of the robbery. £2.6 million was stolen in used £1, £5 and £10 notes.
The robbers had cut all the telephone lines in the vicinity, but a trainman caught a slow train to Cheddington, which he reached at 4:30 a.m. to raise the alarm. At 5 a.m. the Buckinghamshire Police arrived at the crime scene where evidence wasgathered and statements taken from the driver and postal workers. One member of the gang had made the mistake of telling the postal staff not to move for half an hour and this suggested to the police that their hideout could not be more than 35 miles away.

The Postmaster General offered a £10,000 reward to "the first person giving information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the persons responsible for the robbery" and following a tip-off from a herdsman who used a field adjacent to Leatherslade Farm, a police sergeant and constable called there five days after the robbery. The farm was deserted but they found the truck used by the robbers which had been hastily painted yellow, the Land Rovers, a large quantity of food, bedding, sleeping bags, Post Office sacks, registered mail packages, bank note wrappers and fingerprints of the robbers.

The first gang member to be caught was Roger Cordrey and his friend, William Boal, who had helped him to conceal his share of the stolen money. They were lying low in a rented furnished flat above a florist shop in Wimborne Road, Moordown, Bournemouth. The CID were tipped off by police widow Ethel Clark, when Boal and Cordey paid rent for a garage, three months' up-front, all in used 10 shilling notes.Other arrests soon followed and thirteen of the gang members were caught and the rest is history.

Keep in touch

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.co.uk

You Write:

Griff Writes:

Peter has reminded me in his last piece of the woodworking and metalworking classes in the outer temporary buildings at Court Lane. Ken Wells metalworking class was a new class opportunity and if you recall correctly we had the choice of dropping woodwork and starting metalwork classes and as I remember quite a few of us did just that after 2 years with Mr Bennett. I have to say though that I do quite a bit of woodworking and carpentry in my renovation business and I don't know whether anyone else gets the same feeling but I can feel Mr Bennett sitting on my shoulder and watching me which is not a bad thing really I might add. Remember what he was always saying? Measure twice.....Cut once Boys! What Mr Bennett taught us still carries with me to this day.

The only boy I know who went on to become a fully employed carpenter, as far as I know, was John ( Patrick ) Wilson who lived on the Highbury Estate. I met him at the school reunion we held and he was still working as a carpenter in Portsmouth. If anyone knows where he is can they get in touch with me please.

I actually enjoyed metalwork more than woodwork and I still have my coffee table that we all built circa. 1961/62 and it is still used as well as a platform table for my 3 Granddaughter's Doll House because it is just the right height for them to play with the furniture. I have put up a photo of the coffeee table now 50 years old!.. amazing!

Didn't we all go on to make a model steam engine with Mr. Wells? I'm sure I finished mine but can't remember what happened to it......or did we run out of building time at the end of our 5th year at school?
I bet Melvyn Bridger still has his steam engine.....lol

Regards To Everyone.....Melvyn ( Griff ) Griffiths.



News and Views:

George David Weiss, who co-wrote the Elvis Presley standard, "Can't Help Falling In Love," Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World," Kay Starr's "Wheel Of Fortune" and adapted "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" from the South African tune "Wimoweh," died at his home in Oldwick, New Jersey. He was 89. George also was responsible for Broadway productions like "Mr. Wonderful" with Sammy Davis, Jr. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984.



On this day 4th September 1960-1965.

On 04/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Rawhide (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 04/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Rawhide (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho.
A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 04/09/1962 the number one single was I Remember You - Frank Ifield and the number one album was West Side Story Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 04/09/1963 the number one single was Bad to Me - Billy J Kramer and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 04/09/1964 the number one single was Have I the Right? - Honeycombs and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 04/09/1965 the number one single was I Got You Babe - Sonny and Cher and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.