Boyhood Memories of Hilly Fields Crescent – David Rayner June 2009

Although I was born in Romford, in December 1945, my first permanent home was No. 2, Hilly Fields Crescent. The house, which belonged to my grandmother, was badly damaged by a V1 which exploded nearby in July 1944. Once repaired it provided a home for my parents and myself upstairs, my Uncle and Aunt downstairs on one side of the hall, and my grandmother had the two rooms on the other side.

My Great-grandfather and his family had moved to Brockley from Sutton in the 1890s. They lived first in Manor Avenue (then called Manor Road) and later moved to Shell Road. My grandfather rented a house (166 Algernon Road) where my father and his brother and sister lived until my grandfather’s suicide in 1925. His widow bought 2 Hilly Fields Crescent in the late 1930s.

From the balcony outside our bedroom we could look out over the roofs of the prefabs opposite to the expanse of green that is Hilly Fields. In the corner, opposite Tyrwhitt Road, was the bowling green, surrounded by tall privet hedges. My father had an allotment somewhere on Hilly Fields, and I remember a bombsite which could provide the stage for any of the fantasy games we used to play.

Hilly Fields had its staff of Park Keepers, who wore a distinctive chestnut brown uniform with a kind of brown fedora. They kept the paths swept and the hedges clipped, and made sure everything was kept in order. We children always felt they viewed us with suspicion, and we tended to give them a wide berth.

In autumn there were heaps of dead leaves from the plane trees to kick our way through – provided the Keepers, who had swept them into neat piles, weren’t anywhere near.

In winter the frost formed patterns on the windows, and if it snowed we could go across to Hilly Fields and have snowball fights, or, if you were lucky enough to have a sled, toboggan down the slope. If the snow laid for a few days, it acquired a dusting of black specks from the soot carried in the London air. Then there were the smogs, thick, yellowish fogs which lasted for days. The prefabs across the street disappeared, and traffic inched its way up Loampit Vale.

I joined Gordonbrock Primary School in 1950. My mother would take me, pushing my sister in her pram across Hilly Fields to Adelaide Avenue then to Ladywell Road and the school.

After only a few weeks I was moved out of the ‘babies’ class, which was light and cheerful, into the infant school which had deep brown tiles up the walls and wire mesh over the windows. I took violent exception to this move and remember being pinned down on a desk kicking and fighting. We were given slates and chalk to write with, and I remember coming back after lunch one afternoon to find all the dusters had been gathered up and stuffed down between the window and the wire mesh. The culprit was easily identified by the chalk dust all over his black school blazer – he could have been a character from a comic, keeping us entertained with his mischief. He once spent an art lesson painting the face and hands of a classmate bright blue.

The school was gas-lit in those days, and the hissing of the gaslights above our desks was a feature of winter afternoons.

I remember the new classrooms being built (they’re still there) and how we children loved having lessons in these light, cheerful rooms.

I heard about the death of King George VI when one of the boys in the class came in after lunch and told us. “Yeah,” said another, “a knight stabbed him in the back.”

School dinners, incidentally, were delivered from a central kitchen and were served in the school hall. They were pretty awful, except for the Irish stew, complete with pearl barley, which I particularly enjoyed.

The shops in Brookbank Road were convenient for day to day needs; otherwise we walked down to Lewisham High Street, where my mother shopped at C & A or Chiesman’s. Fruit and veg was bought at the market. I have always remembered the man selling greaseproof paper in Lewisham market. He stood in the same spot, a sheaf of the paper over his arm, his call “Grease proof paper!” repeated over and over again. I remember the dull-coloured Ration books – my cousin was given his family’s books to look after while my aunt posted a letter in the pillar box. Reaching down from his push-chair to the gutter, he posted each of the books down the drain.

On other occasions we walked up Lewisham Way to Pyne Brothers.

Sometimes, when the weather was fine we would walk up onto Blackheath, where I would sail my model yacht on the round pond. On one fateful occasion, I reached out to grab the yacht and fell in. The day’s outing for the family abruptly over, I trudged home in wet clothes. A few days later I fell ill. The doctor was called, the diagnosis was – scarlet fever! I was taken to an isolation ward in Hither Green Hospital, and, much to my mother’s embarrasment, the fumigation unit came round to 2 Hilly Fields Crescent.

During the summer holidays free children’s film shows were given in Hilly Fields. A large grey L.C.C. van would arrive, and park on the grass. We would gather around the back of the van, which was opened out to reveal a screen. We sat on the grass, eagerly waiting for the film to start. I can’t remember anything about the films – after the show the back was folded up and the van drove off. The odd thing is I can never remember seeing anybody get out of the van, and nobody came to introduce the films to us.

In the early 1950s the first immigrants from the Caribbean began to move into the area, mostly in Tyrwhitt Road. To a Brockley still drab and dreary through post-war austerity they brought colour and vivaciousness; the sound of steel bands could be heard regularly, late into the night.

“Hark at them,” my mother would say, “banging those dustbins again.”

Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation was eagerly anticipated, and on the great day I went round to John Fothergill’s house in Cliffview Road to watch the event on television. We enjoyed seeing the procession to the Abbey, but the actual ceremony seemed to drag on for hours. Bored, we went up to Hilly Fields, and played in the bombsite.

Later in the day, back at Hilly Fields Crescent we stood on the balcony and watched the flypast, much as the new Queen and her family were watching it from their balcony!

The following day, a letter arrived, confirming the purchase of our new home in Orpington. In six months’ time we were to move to a brand new house, my sister and I would each have our own bedrooms, and we had hot running water!

But we wouldn’t have Hilly Fields across the street, our playing field or our bombsite, or those familiar plane trees with their flaky bark and spiky seed balls, or the L.C.C. Park Keepers in their tweedy brown uniforms.