WEB PAGE NO 880

FIRST PICTURE:

The building of the Woolworth’s store in Commercial Road in the 1950

SECOND PICTURE:

A look down Commercial Road, Portsmouth again in the 1950’s this time the late 50’s and the new Woolworth’s store can easily be seen on the right.

Re-building Portsmouth

Most of us are of a funny age!! I know getting old! We are too young to remember the war but are old enough to remember the aftermath of it, ie bomb sites, gun emplacements, rationing and the austerity of the time.

What we did not realise as we grew up was that after the war the most pressing need was in Portsmouth was for new housing. During the War 930 people were killed in Portsmouth by bombing, also 6,625 houses were destroyed (which was nearly 10% of the total) and a further 6,549 were severely damaged. At first the council erected prefabs which were supplied throughout the country from a central depot somewhere. Some of the prefabs were erected on bomb sites. Others were erected on the slopes of Portsdown hill, on the left hand side as you travelled up the A3 above Cosham. But some where put up in King George V’s playing fields where the Income Tax office of Lynx House is today. Some went to a site at the end of the Highbury estate, I understand that Griff lived here for a time. In fact more than 700 prefab houses were built in 1945-47.

In February 1946 the council began to build more permanent houses, most of them were built off of Portsea Island. A new estate was built at Paulsgrove and the first houses being built in 1946. The estate was complete by 1953. The population of Paulsgrove now stands well in excess of 15,000.

Another estate was built at Leigh Park. The first houses here were ready in 1949 but building went on until 1974. By then the population of Leigh Park had risen to 40,000 and West Leigh had not even been thought of then.

Apart from wartime bombing another reason for building new houses on Portsea Island was slum clearance. In 1955 a Council survey showed that over 7,000 houses in Portsmouth were classed as being unfit for human habitation. In the 1960's and early 1970's the whole section of central Portsmouth was rebuilt including areas such as Landport, Somerstown and Buckland. As well as demolishing slums the council gave people grants to improve their homes if they were of a reasonable basic standard.
Several new council estates were built in the early 1970's. The worst of these being Portsdown Park, a mixture of flats and houses built on Portsdown Hill above Cosham. But Portsdown Park soon began to suffer terribly from the ingestion of damp. Efforts to cure the damp failed and in 1987 the estate was demolished. It was replaced by private housing. Other council houses were built some miles north of the city at Crookhorn and Wecock Farm.

From the late 1970's many new private houses were built in Portsmouth. An estate was built at Gatcombe Park in Hilsea ( we had our wedding reception here in 1967 Gatcombe House which was the official home of the Commanding Officer who was a friend of my father in law). In the 1980's a another estate was built at Anchorage Park on the North East corner of Portsea Island. In the 1990's a new estate and marina was built at Port Solent North West of Portsea Island. In the 1980's shopping malls were built, the Bridge Centre in Fratton and the Cascades Centre in Commercial Road which meant the loss of Charlotte Street market after centuries of trading.
In the early 20th century the main employer in Portsmouth was the dockyard. It employed 8,000 men in 1900. During the First World War the number rose to 23,000 but it fell to 9,000 when the war ended. From the 1930's the threat of another war led to an expansion of the dockyard workforce. Meanwhile other industries like brewing and corset making prospered. A new employer was the Airspeed factory, which made parts for aircraft. It opened in the North East of Portsea Island on the airfield.
After World War II the city council tried to diversify industry in Portsmouth. An industrial estate was built in Fratton in 1946-48. Other industrial estates were built in the 1950's at Paulsgrove and Farlington. In the 1960's a new industrial estate began at Hilsea north of Burrfields Road. In the 1980's new industrial estates were built at Cosham and at Hilsea. The pattern of employment in Portsmouth changed rapidly. In 1951 46% of the manufacturing jobs in the city were in shipbuilding. By 1966 this had fallen to only 14%. The dockyard workforce was drastically reduced.

Traditional industries like brewing and corset making vanished but electrical and electronic engineering became a major employer. There was also a large increase in the number of jobs in service industries. In 1968 Zurich insurance moved their headquarters to Portsmouth. In 1979 IBM UK moved their headquarters to the city. Both have since moved again!

Tourism also became a major industry. The Mary Rose was raised from the seabed in 1982 and became a museum and compliments HMS Victory. The D Day museum opened in 1984 and in 1987 HMS Warrior, Britain’s first iron warship, was moved to Portsmouth.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg as to what has happened in Portsmouth during our life times!!!

Take care
Yours

Peter

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

Mary Writes:

On the subject of washing up could it be Sunlight soap? I remember my inlaws had an Anderson shelter in their back garden. It was still in use in 1985 as a garden shed, and in perfect condition. I wonder if it`s still there, in Shirley Avenue, Milton.

News and Views:

It has been released that David Essex was secretly married under his real name of David Cook Monday on September 20th at a church in Bangor, North Wales. He met his bride when they appeared in the West End stage musical production of "All The Fun Of The Fair" two years ago and were engaged at Christmas. It's David's third marriage. He's 63. She's 37.

On this day 17th October 1960-1965

On 17/10/1960 the number one single was Tell Laura I Love Her - Ricky Valance and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. 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 17/10/1961 the number one single was Michael - The Highwaymen and the number one album was The Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV) 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 17/10/1962 the number one single was Telstar - The Tornadoes 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. The big news story of the day was Hyde Park Underpass opens.

On 17/10/1963 the number one single was Do You Love Me? - Brian Poole & the Tremoloes 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. The big news story of the day was Macmillan resigns as Prime Minister.

On 17/10/1964 the number one single was Oh Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison 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. The big news story of the day was Brezhnev replaces Krushchev.

On 17/10/1965 the number one single was Tears - Ken Dodd and the number one album was The Sound of Music Soundtrack. 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. The big news story of the day was Lesley Ann Downey's body found on Pennines.

Web Page: No 878

Top Picture:

The motorcycle set, The Rockers.

Bottom Picture:

Cosham railway gates in 1959 showing the concrete tank traps still in place.

This week we welcome Dave Milton into our little group. Also this weekend I retired and celebrated our 43rd wedding anniversary, I really must be getting old!!!

Post War

When I look around I cannot help but wonder just how much longer will they last. What am I talking about? The relics of the last war which are still around on our streets if we look carefully even though it is over 65 years since the end of hostilities.

For example very near to my sons house is an almost perfect Anderson Air Raid Shelter. It is painted dark green and has doors attached to each end and is actually in superb condition. It looks as though at one time it was used as a garage for a very small car but is now in service as a garden shed. This is a remarkable survival if you take into account its history. In November 1938, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, placed Sir John Anderson in charge of Air Raid Precautions. He immediately commissioned the engineer, William Patterson, to design a small and cheap shelter that could be erected in people's gardens. Within a few months nearly one and a half million of what became known as Anderson shelters were distributed to people living in areas that expected to be bombed. Made from six curved sheets of corrugated iron bolted together at the top, with steel plates at either end and measuring 6ft 6in by 4ft 6in the shelter could accommodate six people. These shelters were half buried in the ground with earth heaped on top. The entrance was protected by a steel shield and an earthen blast wall. Anderson shelters were given free to the poor but men who earned more than £5 a week could buy one for £7 but whether bought or given the householder had to erect the shelter themselves. By the time of the coming of the Blitz two and a quarter million shelters had been built. They were dark and damp usually with a pool of muddy water in the bottom and people were reluctant to use them at night and in low-lying areas they tended to flood badly and sleeping was difficult, so the survival of this one is all the more remarkable. But as kids we had a great time playing in them.

Elsewhere on the streets other wartime items can still be found. For example in several place in Portsmouth on houses and walls can still faintly be seen painted letters SWS with an arrow and a distance painted in on them. These were the signs to direct the fire service to the specially built Static Water Supply. These large temporary water tanks were erected on any area of open space and were specifically for providing a constant supply of water to fight the fires caused by the bombing. The surviving signs are normally found on north facing walls where they did not fade in the sun light.

So many other little things are left around; on the hill we can still see pillboxes and gun emplacements and Deadmans Wood, whilst on the Marshes and along Portscreek bits and pieces from Operation Starfish and other defences are still evident. During the blackout many of the lampposts and other street furniture were painted with horizontal white strpies so they could be seen in the dark. This practice continued way into the 1960’s and I expect we can all remember the posts of Zebra Crossings and Traffic Lights having these stripes on them.

Probably one of the most numerous reminders of wartime are the many War Graves that are around, there is at least one in each cemetery in town and in the graveyard at Christchurch, on top of the hill, there is a whole section of War Graves of about one acre which is managed by the War Graves Commission. And of course there are the many War Memorials and Tablets within the City.

Other things really have to be searched out, in some areas one can spot an isolated post about 20 ft tall serving no useful purpose at all; these were the support posts for the Air Raid Sirens. I remember the one behind the New Inn on the Havant Road in Drayton and here in Gosport the last remaining one was only dismantled two years ago.
Looking around in central Portsmouth the route of the old Dockyard Branch railway from Portsmouth High Level station and along Edinburgh Road, although long gone, is still very much in evidence. It was along this line that much of the essential freight and personnel travelled into the Naval Base during the wartime period. One amusing tale relating to the movement of sailors, especially new recruits during the wartime period is that fact that they were locked in until they could be processed. The section of track along side Edinburgh Road approaching Unicorn Gate was walled in on both side with a platform built on the wall attached to the barracks. This section of line had tall grey lockable wooden gates at each end effectively isolating this part of the line. When a troop train arrived it was parked between the two sets of gates and the gates both ends were locked before the sailors were let out of the carriages. The drill then was for them to line up on the platform, undertake the joining paperwork and when all this was done the gates at Unicorn gate end were unlocked and the men marched directly into the Dockyard. There was no escape!!!

So much for memory.

Keep in touch

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

You Write:

I write or ask: What did our mothers washup in before Fairy Liquid or Squezy?

News and Views:

Sad to see the death of Sir Norman Wisdom at the age of 95 a real icon from the past.

Singer Eddie Fisher, one-time husband to Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens and Elizabeth Taylor, who charted 60 times from 1948 to 1967, died on Wednesday September 22 of complications from hip surgery at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 82. He married Debbie Reynolds (his co-star in the movie, "Bundle Of Joy") in 1955 but scandalously dumped her for the newly-widowed Elizabeth Taylor in 1958. That led to the cancellation of his two year-old NBC-TV series. He was dropped from RCA a year later (though he returned in 1966) and never had another top 40 hit. In 1967 he married Connie Stevens. The marriage lasted but two years, but produced two daughters-- actresses Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. Eddie wrote two autobiographies.

On this day 9th October 1960-1965.

On 09/10/1960 the number one single was Tell Laura I Love Her - Ricky Valance and the number one album was Tottenham Hotspur. The top rated TV show was Bootsie & Snudge (Granada) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68. Worst flooding in Southern England since 1953. The big news story of the day was No Hiding Place (AR).

On 09/10/1961 the number one single was Kon-Tiki - The Shadows and the number one album was The Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV) 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 09/10/1962 the number one single was Telstar - The Tornadoes 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 09/10/1963 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. The big news story of the day was Dam malfunction kills 2000 in Italian flood

On 09/10/1964 the number one single was Oh Pretty Woman - Roy Orbison 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 09/10/1965 the number one single was Tears - Ken Dodd 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: 876

Top Picture:

Every boy’s dream a Meccano Set

Bottom Picture:

The BSA Bantam, an underpowered, uncomfortable machine much beloved by the GPO for putting Telegram Boys on.






Firstly a big welcome to Richard from Craven Arms, he is not an old school mate but loves Nostalgia.

Play and Present

When we were kids there were two distinctive forms of play, In doors and Out doors and very often those friends that you played with in doors were different from the friends you played with out doors.

INDOORS

For us toys were something you got at Christmas and on your Birthday, possibly when you were ill or had done something really good or maybe when a relation came to stay and that was it. These presents were often treasured items, which you would carefully look after as if life itself depended on it!

As a lad I remember playing with toy soldiers or model cowboys. I would scrounge an old Corn Flakes Box from my Mum and cut out a few turrets and towers I would then stack cushions all around this homemade cardboard fort to represent hills and valleys and I would play like that for hour after hour.

Around the mid 1950's I was given my first Meccano Set as a Christmas present. I cannot remember the size or number set it was but I do know that it was a large enough to build a crane with working lifting gear and a bucket.

For Christmas one year I had a clockwork Hornby Train Set with two locomotives, one green and one black but both always seemed to go so fast they kept coming off the tracks. I also remember that someone, an uncle I think, at sometime bought me an electric train set that ran on batteries with screw terminals on the top of them. This set had a London Underground profile so that once the line was laid and working enormously elaborate tunnels made out of books had to be constructed.

I had a bay window to play in the front room at home. There was space enough between the sofa and window big enough for me to manoeuvre myself around in quite easily. This area kept me occupied for ages. It became my ship’s bridge, the cockpit of a spacecraft or an international space station or even a pirate ship sailing the Spanish Maine. Most of us around that period of time simply didn't have the distractions of the other things that are around today TV, electronic games etc, We had fewer toys but a lot more imagination!

OUTDOORS

Outdoors, whether it was your own garden, someone else’s or a piece of common land just down the road, consisted of an endless list of play things. The tree's in my own garden were about the best thing for me. They became houses, mountains, castle's and hideouts and dens. The other, most important, thing was that they became the supplier of twigs in the shape of a Colt revolver or a bow to fight off the nasty Sheriff of Nottingham's men, a stave for Little John, or even the basis for a catapult. Sometimes if we could find a piece of wood and some old rope we would make a swing! And there was always conkers, sticky buds and apples and pears to scrump.
Normal things became, by necessity something else; the wheelbarrow was the 31 bus to Brighton or a massive steam locomotive speeding it's way from Portsmouth to Plymouth. Yes, the wheelbarrow could be transformed into almost any thing!
As the 50's progressed I, and my contemporary’s ,started to get fewer and fewer smaller presents but these were swapped for a few 'larger presents'. My first bicycle being one. This was a Royal Enfield Bermuda which was purchased from the toy and bicycle shop run by Mr Wynn in Drayton. This was a prized possession and was something I cleaned once a week or got my ears clipped. This substituted the Wheelbarrow and before long the imaginary journey's of the garden were transferred to the pavement.

Every Christmas and Birthday wish was for quite some time was for something new to do with the aforementioned train set or bike although Airfix Kits were popular and I soon built up a collection of aircraft, ships, car and buildings.
The 1950's were hard years for our parents, we knew little of their struggles, they had come out of a War in which they lost some of the most important years of their life and it couldn't have been easy for them.
But, as we found out as kids if you couldn't find happiness in reality, you could in your imagination!

Keep in touch

Peter

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

Martin Writes:

To answer Keith's (actually his name was Chris, my mistake last week, Peter) question.........His name was William (Bill) Ternouth..........and Tin Tack was his nom de plume......he was well known by the the lads in Court Lane......any infringement he would haul us to the front of the class take an open palm hand in his left and bring down his right hand on it........at some point (when we all had Dinky Toy race cars in our pockets) we would cover our palm with 3 in one oil....Thought we had him........ but the oil only made the sting harder......and he sent us off to wash our hands..........Ken Milne hated him He actually was a good hearted soul....He drove and upright Green Ford Prefect and moved his wife and two kids into a new housing development off of Court Lane........as I recall that street was fairly close to Stephen Long's house..............Whenever we saw him out and about he would always say hello Vale and shake hands with my Mum and Dad........I had no idea dear old Florence lost it in her later years........I still have crystal clear visions of her walking around the school corridors and classrooms in the summer with our family pet cat (Rosalind) under her arm............Perhaps that was the writing on the wall........



News and Views:

A London judge ruled that Gary Glitter still poses a "significant danger to children here and abroad" and extended the ban on Gary travelling from England for another year. Gary was deported from Vietnam to England two years ago after serving three years in prison for child molestation.




On this day 2nd October 1960-1965.

On 02/10/1960 the number one single was Tell Laura I Love Her - Ricky Valance 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 02/10/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton. 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 Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV)".

On 02/10/1962 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 02/10/1963 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.The big news story of the day was US predicts Vietnam victory by 1965.

On 02/10/1964 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 02/10/1965 the number one single was Tears - Ken Dodd 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 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.

Web Page No 866

The final three from the Barlow Family Album, all showing Cosham High Street, see if you can spot where the Building School was and where Tesco’s is now!!!

When Peter sent me these photographs he asked why I did not talk about Court Lane Secondary School, so here goes.

But first a welcome to two new old school pals John Lockwood and Phil Wheaton who tells me that he still has an outstanding detention to serve for Reg Davis !!!!

Court Lane School

I suppose that I was like most children in the late 1950’s I thought that if I did not get into one of the Grammar Schools or the Tech. I had failed the 11+ and was doomed to a life at Court Lane.

But once I got over the nervousness of going to a new school, wearing an overlarge new school uniform (it’s got to do you for at least two years dear, I was told), I slowly began to enjoy ‘big school’.

To start with the new school was a bus ride away and if you were crafty you could run down the stairs of the bus and off the platform without paying and so manage to gain extra money in your pocket. The other way was to walk the couple of miles or so, this was fun with your mates on a fine day but I have to admit that on a wet and windy day we resorted to the bus unless there was a cute little lass that you wanted to talk to on your own!!!

Court Lane itself was a bit of a shock. One long corridor with classrooms off, and a two storey building In the middle which housed the headmasters office, his secretary and the holy of holies, the Staff Room. Talking of the Headmaster, he was Wally Dunstan and if you look lower down on the side bar of this blog you will see a photograph of Anida Folland presenting Wally and his wife with a leaving gift. The one thing I cannot remember is his Secretary’s name. Can anyone help?

That long corridor was quite daunting at the east end the first class room was that of Miss Curtis, Flossy as she was known to us! Moving down there was Harry Harrison, Miss Fields a motorcycle riding science terror that we were all terrified of. The George Pledger, the technical drawing expeteacherrt how he ever managed to make such neat drawing on the blackboard with those enormous set squares and rulers I will never know. Further along came June Blitz and her French class, then Ray Dopson who taught English, and finally Mick (Chalky) White another English teacher. Now who remembers these last two collecting the little plastic guards bandsmen from the Corn Flake packets? They encouraged us all to bring in ours from home so that they could race to see who could get a full band first! These were the classrooms where our drama presentations were planned, see the side bar for a programme of three plays from that period. These were the rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms and props rooms whilst the main hall in the Junior School was used as the theatre.

Opposite the headmasters block was the main hall with its two separate entries from that long corridor. Oh, how I remember sitting on the floor in there on my first day as we nervously waited to hear to which classes we were assigned. This hall, as most school halls at the time doubled as a gym hall and a dining hall, I experienced the first but never the second. Off this hall were two classrooms one the music room ruled over by Mr John Stephens, what a production the Messiah was a few years later in Manor Court! The other room was the domain of Bob Coulthard and his Geography students.

Over the years the school had grown and outer building were added, again see the side bar. Here on the east end of the site was the Domestic Science Room of Enid Tuffin and the Needlework room of Miss Crocker. ( I remember Anida telling me that she was never very good at needlework and one day Miss Crocker said in a loud voice Anida Folland I am sure that I would be able to see those stitches from the top of Portsdown Hill. Some eyesight Ehh!!!). Right down by the school fence were the two workshops , the metalwork room of Ken Wells who only passed away in the last couple of years and the woodwork shop of Harold Bennett, I do have to say that I never did well in either of those workshops.

I have left the double ended hut at the west end of the site to last as that is where any red blooded boy really wanted to go as in one end was the class room of Miss Burden and the other the room of Jill Coggan, both well worth staring at for a complete lesson!!

Finally we did not have any playing fields so on sports afternoon it was time to crowd onto a double decker bus as it made its way to the playing fields at East Lodge. The worse thing was there was no time to change before we left either end so we had to change on the bus, very unhygienic. The other sports trip we had was to the original Victoria swimming baths which were right next to the City Mortuary (bet you did not know that!). This was even worse changing wise as three of us had to crowd into a poolside booth and attempt to either put on a woollen bathing costume or afterwards trying to get socks onto damp feet.

On reflection I enjoyed myself at Court Lane with its big playground out the front and what we all thought of as old buildings 53 years ago and they are still going strong!

I also remember the move from Court Lane to the brand new Manor Court, did you know it was originally going to be called Court Manor, doesn’t have the same ring does it? I also remember at the end of the Summer Term of 1960 pushing several four wheeled trolleys loaded with chairs and desks from one school to another, Ah well So much for memory.

Keep in touch

Peter

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

You Write:

John Asks:-

The 4 distinct different area's that Manor Court pupils came from in the Schools catchment area were
· Highbury
· East Cosham
· Drayton
· Farlington
Was there any rivalry, did some kids look down on some of the others, I think they did and I was aware of a few fights and stand off between these groups. Hopefully things have changed since them times or have they?

News and Views:

Jack Parnell the man who provided the music for shows such as Sunday Night At The London Palladium and wrote the theme tunes to programmes including The Golden Shot during his time as musical director at ATV died a couple of days after his 87th birthday. In 1951 left the Ted Heath band to lead 12-piece and then a 16-piece band. When ITV launched, he landed the role of musical director for ATV. During his decades at the broadcaster, he worked with legends such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr, Lena Horne and Nat King Cole. He also made series with Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, acted as a panellist on TV talent show New Faces and was musical director for programmes such as The Benny Hill Show and a production of Peter Pan starring Mia Farrow, Sir John Gielgud and Danny Kaye. He also composed signature tunes for programmes such as Family Fortunes. In the late 1970s he began his association with The Muppet Show, for which he conducted the orchestra and frequently appeared on screen. He retired from ATV in 1982, when it became Central Television, moving to Southwold but continuing to perform with the all-star veterans group Best Of British Jazz with trumpeter Kenny Baker and trombonist Don Lusher. He also played with his small group for weekly shows at the Green Man in Rackheath. Jack Parnell died

On this day 28th August 1960-1965.

On 28/08/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. 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 28/08/1961 the number one single was You Don't Know - Helen Shapiro and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Blackpool Tower Circus (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 28/08/1962 the number one single was I Remember You - Frank Ifield 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 28/08/1963 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. The big news story of the day was Martin Luther King gives I Have A Dream speech

On 28/08/1964 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 Labour Party Political Broadcast (all channels) 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 28/08/1965 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.

Web Page No 864

First Picture:

Norman Folland at Court Lane in the 1950’s

Second Picture:

The other end of the motorcycle world the AA bike



This week’s page comes from Steve Timms and in the News and Views section a suggestion from Griff about our corporate 65th birthdays. See what you think and let me know.

Rockers’ Revenge_

‘Dixon of Dock Green’ wasn’t exactly ‘The Wire’. But, back in the fifties, a big percentage of Britain’s population would tune in each week to see wrongs righted and bad ‘uns brought to justice.

One episode concerned itself with the menace of tearaway teens taking to the newly-built bypasses on powerful motor­cycles and treating them like their own private racetrack. These delinquent youths clad in the rebel uniform of blue jeans, boots and black leather jacket, would gather at transport cafes where the neon lights never went out and a truck driver headed north could fill his fuel tank and his belly and perhaps satisfy less salubrious desires any hour of the day or night. As well as a relaxed attitude towards the age and attire of their clientele and their geographic location, most often out-of-town, at the end of invitingly fast and open arterial roads.

One other fixture made the 24hrs transport caffs the spiritual home of the café racers; the jukebox in the corner blaring non-stop raucous rock n roll. It was the jukebox that formed an essential part of the plot, someone would stick a sixpence in the slot and the second the hiss of needle on vinyl came out the speaker, boots would scuffle on linoleum in a mad scramble for the door. The bikes would be quickly kicked into life and roar off into the night headed for a prearranged turning point a market square statue, a bridge or a boozer then it was the speed thrill of a flat to the tank, hell for leather tilt to get back to the caff before the music died .

The programme illustrated with perhaps more melodrama than was necessary the inevitable consequences of such reckless bravado acted out within the confines of the Queen’s Highway. Broken bones, mangled motor­cycles, a young life snuffed out too soon and a heartfelt homily from the silver haired Sergeant on the foolhardiness of youth.

The thing about record racing was that no one could actually remember it actually happening before that broadcast. Because of course it was an invention of the scriptwriters.

There may have been no account of it before but there was certainly plenty of it afterwards. Life imitated art and the consequences were quite often, death. ‘Suicide Club!’ screamed ‘The Daily Mirror’ on its front page and accompanied it with a fantastic photograph of one of these ‘Coffee Bar Cowboys’. He’s cornering hard on a big, British twin-cylinder motor­cycle, urging it on to 100mph the mythical ‘ton’ and looking very cool indeed in a road racer’s crash helmet, skin-tight black leathers and a white silk scarf fluttering like a pirate flag in his wake.

The fastest and best-looking bikes had always been British bikes. Methanol burning Matchless V-twin racers had thrilled and terrified audiences. Between the wars and for a decade after the second great conflict the peerless Brough Superior and then the invincible Vincent had ruled the roads. But these were thoroughbred motor­cycles intended for adventurous chaps of independent means. An ordinary working man might as well have aspired to an invite for cocktails at the Savoy with Noel Coward. Anyway it wasn’t just that the purchase price was beyond the means of those who had to actually work for a living. There was also the small matter of coming up with the full amount upon delivery. Hire Purchase had been around since before the war but it was Harold Macmillan’s Tory govt. that really encouraged it in the late fifties. ‘You never had it so good’ said Macmillan. The truth for most ordinary working people was that they’d never had it all. Never mind so good.

Britain embraced ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ with gusto. Now Dad could have the Ford Anglia he’d lusted after (yes, people really did lust after Ford Anglias) Mum could trade her Eubank for a Hoover. And, if he was in work and could persuade his parents to sign the papers, then perhaps their teenage son could get himself a Triumph Bonneville or a BSA Gold Star. Both had been designed to separate cash rich North American buyers from their dollars. So lashings of chrome plating, two-tone paintwork and hand painted pinstripes replaced the staid livery that most British built motor­cycles had been previously offered in. But that wasn’t enough for the Café Racers. They modified their machines so that they would take on the long and low look the race bikes they saw parked up still steaming in the paddock after a thrash around Brands Hatch.

Race bikes were built with a single purpose speed. Riders were laid out along the bike to spread their weight and present a low profile to cut through the air. To achieve this racing stance foot pegs were shifted right back along the bike and the handlebars were either lowered or dispensed with altogether in favour of lightweight ‘clip-ons’ that attached directly to the front forks. A tiny fairing might be fitted for the rider to tuck in behind. Anything designed with comfort or weather protection in mind was either got rid of or cut back to a bare minimum. Essential items like frames or foot pegs were drilled full of holes to reduce weight (it also looked good) and big comfy saddles were replaced by Spartan racing perches, which had the added advantage of enforcing intimacy with any female brave enough to ask for a lift home from the caff. Lightweight alloys replaced heavyweight steel where possible. Although a long range endurance racing fuel tank would often actually weigh quite a bit more than the item fitted at the factory but with a its quick release strap fixing and pop off fuel cap it didn’t ‘arf look fast. Before the war German race car engineers had scraped the paint from their cars to reduce weight. Or so the story went. Shame it’s not true. But keen to incorporate any performance enhancing modification in their machines café racers stripped away the paint and polished parts to within an inch of their existence… It may not have made their bikes go faster. But….yes, that’s right, you’ve got it, it made them look faster.

The ultimate Café Racer was the Triton. It was a hybrid, but not in the modern sense. Those who built and owned Tritons were more interested in ruling the road than saving the planet. So they took the rather under powered engines out of Norton motor­cycles famed for their road holding and handling of rigid chassis nicknamed ‘The Featherbed’ for reasons that have never really made much sense and inserted the twin cylinder and twin carburettor motor from a Triumph Bonneville. Best not to ask where so many Triumphs willing to donate their engines came from.

The idea that Rockers were scruffy and didn’t care about how they looked is ridiculous and has been put about by the Mods. Anyone who ever owned a copy of Johnny Stuarts ‘Rockers!’ Which boasted on the cover that it was the most shop lifted book in London could see for themselves. ‘The Look’ was Ashman Gold Top racing boots with white fisherman’s socks tucked in over the top, leather trousers and a black leather jacket the best quality and also the best looking had the distinctive red satin quilted lining synonymous with Lewis Leathers of London. A white silk scarf has always looked rakish. And, if you could afford it, you’d top it off with a crash helmet and goggles. And when I say crash helmet I don’t mean the ridiculous ‘Corkers’ worn by scooter types. Proper ‘Jet’ style helmets as worn by the six-time world champion Geoff Duke. The truth was that Ton up Boys and Café Racers cared about the way they looked as much as any mod.

No modern bike will ever look as good as the Café Racers of the late fifties and early sixties for the same reason that no modern train will ever look as good as Mallard, no plane will ever look as good as Concorde and no car will ever look as good as a ‘55 Mercedes SL, a‘61 E-Type or a ’67 Mustang. The difference between everything else I’ve mentioned is that almost all of us could aspire to a Café Racer. There are modern motor­cycles from the likes of Ducati, Triumph and Moto Guzzi trying to pass themselves off as café racers. But why not go for the genuine article instead? A Gold Star or Bonneville can be had for five grand and I just say an immaculate Triton sell at auction for eight thousand including commission. Go on, you’ve got the leather jacket– now get the bike to go with it.

Keep in touch

Peter

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

You Write:

Colin Writes:-

I left Manor Court (Then Springfield) in 1972. Recently I met up with Andy Spenceley (Classmate from 72) who now resides in Johannesburg. Amazing after 38 years.

News and Views:

Hello Gang!
Well, it won't have escaped your notice I reckon that you have realised that we are all 65 in the early part of next year which is a real milestone birthday and event which should be celebrated if only in the knowledge that we all get a pay rise with the Senior Citizens Pension ( I hate the expression Old Age Pensioner ! ) and a rise in taxable allowances and judging by our present government's intentions we have just clipped in for it as well.
Now personally I am not " retiring" and provided I can remain in good working health I shall carry on until I am around 70 as a self-employed renovator of houses with my own working hours though and still carry on doing something which I actually enjoy doing, in fact, I have taken on another house renovation project right now in order to keep the brain cell occupied and from not seizing up !

So.... here is the important bit coming up..........

The De-Vere hotel in Swindon hold some very good dinner/dance cabaret nights on or around February and March and on my last Birthday I took the family to a Beatles Dinner Night which I have to say was excellent and the food & service was also excellent. We all had a thoroughly good night. Tickets were around £28 each which I thought was good value considering the evening's entertainment and standard of cuisine.

So what I am suggesting is why don't we have own large round table for a suitable venue around that time to celebrate our Birthdays. You may stay at the hotel as well on a big discount for a standard room. On the Sunday everyone can come back to my place in the afternoon for tea, sandwiches and a sticky-bun before departing for home.

I will organise the bookings for the evening dinner dance and enquire about room rates etc. for everyone.
It will require monies up front about 6 weeks prior to the chosen event because these evenings sell out very quickly indeed and you have no chance of booking anything 2-3 weeks before because they are all sold out. You have a choice of menu which is also required from you at the time of paying.
There are quite a few things to do if you make a weekend of it as the De-Vere is situated on an entertainment complex or you might like to visit the Great Western Designer Outlet Village which is about a mile or so away. The ASDA shopping Mall is also directly opposite the De-Vere

To get the ball rolling I will need to know who is up for it (and who is not) and would like to come along so as I can do some planning. So please give me an indication of your intentions as soon as you can.

http://www.devereshawridge.co.uk/index.htm Click on link................

Regards Griff.

On this day 21st August 1960-1965.

On 21/08/1960 the number one single was Please Don't Tease - Cliff Richard & 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 21/08/1961 the number one single was You Don't Know - Helen Shapiro and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. 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 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.



On 21/08/1962 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 21/08/1963 the number one single was Sweets For My Sweet - Searchers 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 21/08/1964 the number one single was Do Wah Diddy Diddy - Manfred Mann and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Conservative Party Political Broadcast (all channels) 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 21/08/1965 the number one single was Help - The Beatles and the number one album was Liverpool. 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 £not very interesting and 11.69 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Riviera Police (AR)".