Tuesday 17th September 2019

Tuesday 17th September 2019 - Number 5913

Welcome to the Laws Family Register

We reach out to all, regardless of Race, Colour, Creed, Gender, Orientation, or National Origin, offering support for researching family history and documenting cultural inheritance.

Robert Henry Laws

1828-1881

Captain of the Barque 'Woolhampton'

my paternal Great Grandfather

This is Robert Henry's Wife

Sarah Ann Laws, formerly Fuller

My paternal Great Grandmother

1846-1924

R I P

Gone but not forgotten, this blog is dedicated

to all those who have borne our illustrious

surnames LAWS and LAWES Worldwide

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John P Laws

'The Registrar'

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A Child of the Twenties

A suburban childhood of the Twenties

seen from the Nineteen Nineties

by my late father

John Robert Laws 1921-2008

Part 16.

Holidays 1,

Holidays at that time meant the seaside, and the seaside meant the East Coast, Sunshine, East winds sand, and an icy grey sea.

June was the preferred month until school became important enough to interfere. My mother packed vast quantities of clothing in a big cabin trunk, which must have gone on ahead; it certainly didn’t come in the car with us. It took a good three hours to cover seventy-odd miles to the coast.

Bypass was an almost unknown word and certainly wasn’t applicable to even the Essex county town of Colchester, the first time of two, that we went that way. One was built in the next couple of years but now some sixty-odd years later has been virtually absorbed into the town to be replaced by the (now hardly adequate) A12.

We went to Clacton on the first holiday I remember, and the sand and the seafront were the attractions. The next year it was Little Holland (Now Holland on Sea) where there was more sand, and no seafront and I spent the whole holiday on the beach. After that, it was always Walton on the Naze.

Here we would have some rooms, or latterly a house, and we would stay for a month, though my father had only a fortnight of holiday, and was only with us at weekends the rest of the time. We used to have a beach hut near the pier and would swim in the icy North Sea in blazing sunshine. It must have been here that I learnt to swim, taught by my mother, tuition later reinforced and widened by lessons at school.

There was a stone-built breakwater in front of the beach huts and with the run of the tide along the coast, there was deep water on one side and sand at the water’s edge on the other. Facing the deep side was a platform diving board and a springboard where one could display a considerable lack of skill combined with great enjoyment.

The deepwater was only there at the high tide of course and so the tides controlled the way the day was spent. In the youngest bucket and spade days, low water was in demand but once I could swim strongly it had to be high tide. Not far from the diving boards, rafts were anchored to give a point to swim to and even sit on, The young cannot sit still however and so it was climbing out and dive back in again and swim back to base to start again.

It was never crowded at Walton. Holidaymakers were squeezed off most of the beaches at high tide but there were soon big stretches of smooth virgin sand again and on one of these, a beach artist would claim a large pitch well overlooked from the promenade. He would draw his pictures on the hard damp sand and set his hat to catch the pennies thrown from the prom. Perhaps he doubled as a pavement artist in the winter.

The un-crowded beaches were ideal for flying kites and even permitted the continuous swinging of a tethered tennis ball hung on long elastic between a pair of poles. On one holiday I remember a less space-consuming toy was rampant, the yoyo, and these spinning discs on strings were in every hand rising and falling, spinning and circling to show off the skill of the owner.

South of the pier was the sunniest part of the cliffs and here and there, were tiers of beach huts rising behind the prom from which one could watch the world go by or change for a swim. The beach hut was not only for swimming from but also for sitting in the sun sheltered from the east coast wind, very rarely for sheltering from the rain, and for making tea and eating snacks and ice cream.

I was much better at eating than the sitting but would sometimes stay and watch the sailing barges gliding serenely along the coast, their big red sails filled with the east wind. It was not so funny for them when it really blew hard. Distress flares would go up with a noisy boom and the lifeboat went out from its anchorage by the end of the pier. Even in the summer of holiday time, this was not all that unusual.

Thames Sailing Barge - Canthusus

Clacton Queen 1890-1937

As well as sailing barges there were paddle steamers which called at the end of the pier. These came from Tower Bridge by way of Southend-on-Sea and then sailed away into the far distance north to unknown Yarmouth perhaps. These were best watched from the end of the pier itself where the bump could be felt as ropes were thrown and contact made with the big paddle wheels churning in reverse. On the pier too there was entertainment. The man who rode a bike off the high diving board was always worth watching, but the children’s concerts were pretty corny, even for kids.

to be continued tomorrow

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