Web Page 3083 30th June 2023 First Picture: Drayton Manor

Second Picture: Farlington station

Third Picture: Cosham station 1966

Forth Picture: St Philips Highbury

Richard Newman’s Drayton Memories Part One Homelife and Schooldays My parents purchased what was to become the family home in Dysart Avenue for £325 in 1939. The houses on the north side were built in 1938 but our property was not completed until 1940 because of wartime building materials shortages. The Dye (Ernie was the father) constructed these houses which was part of the Drayton Manor Estate – a name only used in the planning stages They rented out a number of houses in the road retaining ownership until the last 1960’s .My parents had married in 1939 so had to live with my grandfather in North End until their house was ready for occupation, although my father, working for the Admiralty in Southampton rented in Portswood because the train services were frequently disrupted by air raids. When built, the houses in Dysart Avenue had an uninterrupted view across undeveloped land to the railway line (between Cosham Junction and Farlington Junction) and my father had an allotment on the land later developed as Braemar Avenue. A bomb dropped near the railway and the blast blew in the French Doors and at the back of the house and blew out the front door. The bathroom wash basin was broken by a stone hot water bottle being blown into it. The only other incident recollected by my parents was the dropping of an incendiary onto the flat veranda of the house next door but one. My father and his neighbours, fire watching, managed to extinguish the fire before it got control. I was born in 1948 and grew up in Dysart Avenue. By then the wartime Andersen shelter had been removed but a slight dip in the back garden lawn indicated where it had been. In those days a trip to Drayton shops necessitated walking via Tregaron Avenue and the Havant Road as access was not permitted through the grounds of the empty Drayton Manor which had bee requisitioned during the war. In the early 1950’s part of the manor was demolished (creating a woodworm problem elsewhere) and the main house and stables became inhabited again. New houses were built in the grounds and Dysart Avenue extended into Lower Drayton Lane with the removal of some lofty trees. A regular Sunday walk was to see the electric trains from the wartime girder bridge spanning the tracks at the site of (closed in 1937)/ En route we would follow the lane passing the derelict Flint House and on the other side the Coop Sports Ground behind the Bakery complex. Plenty of blackberries could be found in the lane come autumn. In later years I watched the trains, with school friends from Cosham Junction (opposite St Phillips church) from the scrubland behind Kinross Crescent. I started school in April 1953 installed in the old chapel at the end of Mulberry Path but in the next academic year I was one of the first pupils in the new infants school constructed at the junction of Court Lane and Hilary Avenue (then unadopted and full of potholes). The teachers at the chapel were Mrs Pattern, Miss Box and Miss Habershaw-the latter could be slightly frighting to a five year old but we contributed to her retirement gift of an umbrella. Miss Waters, who lived in Carnarvon Avenue, was the headmistress of the new school, T the age of seven I moved to the junior school which was situated in the prewar buildings further down Hilary Avenue. However during the first year we occupied an overflow annex in the Goodwyns Youth Club near the Old Lamplighters’ cottage at the end of Salisbury Road. Form 1 boys was a happy class taught by Mr Jones an accomplished artist who was eager to encourage and educate his pupils. The building was adjacent to the railway line and Mr Jones raise no objection if we looked out of the window at the trains during class. We moved back to the main school for the next three educational years and were well taught by Messrs. Butler, Woodall and Ternooth. Next time shopping in Drayton Richard Newman’s Drayton Memories Part Two Shopping in Drayton