Wednesday 18th September 2019

Wednesday 18th September 2019 - Number 5914

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 18

SOUTHGATE

Before the building boom, Southgate was largely an area of large mansions set in their own parks among farmland with a village of cottages and small shops where the new Underground station was now inserted.

Southgate Underground Station

It has been well documented by local historians and was in the final stages of suburbanisation when we moved there. I scarcely knew the area before moving there, but on at least one occasion had investigated the blackberries growing in the hedges of Osidge Lane at the bottom of which Pymmes brook was still a little stream edged with overgrown hawthorn.

There was a little farm in a small gentle valley opposite our new house, but within months the farm had become a large housing estate and, passing through the stages of a sea of mud became quite a pleasant suburban area.

A house got put up about once every three weeks, with very little mechanical assistance, those houses were sold for about five or six hundred pounds, not cheap. A new house could be bought for a little as three hundred and seventy-five pounds all around London.

Most houses were being built without garages but ours was one of a small development of half a dozen with a garage built-in. Builders had not yet really

decided that a garage was an integral part of a house, so there was no upper storey over it. Our enterprising builder had even put a radiator in the garage and this, together with a radiator in the hall and a towel rail in the bathroom made up his attempt at central heating. It was too bad that his knowledge of gravity circulation was weak and the garage was a bit lower than the rest of the house so that its radiator was below the level of the ‘Ideal’ boiler in the kitchen and remained forever stone cold.

The kitchen in the new house was a real update on what had gone before. There was still a built-in dresser for the china with upper grooved shelves to stand up the dinner plates but the top was enclosed by doors, albeit painted a darkish brown. The larder alongside it, was deep, giving a lot of space but difficult to access.

For the first time, there was a Refrigerator, a monstrous thing on legs with a big round cooling coil on top to collect the dust where you could see it. It was however finished in white enamel and built like a tank. The black iron gas cooker was left behind and the new one was finished in mottled green vitreous enamel, all very solid. We still had a deep white stoneware sink with a wooden draining board. The kitchen was, of course, a lot smaller than before and the old deal table used up a lot of the space so that there was little room to eat there. A breakfast room lay alongside to eat in and this arrangement was a bit of a curate’s egg, handy when you needed an extra room but not so handy at breakfast time.

We were about half a mile from the new underground railway station, our move to the new house had been held back until it was completed. A bus route with single-decker buses ran down the road as far as the Chase Side Tavern. The bus stopped within a few yards of us on its way back and it cost a penny for the ride up the easy slope half a mile to the station. I had to be very behind-hand and actually see the bus coming before the money could be wasted in this profligate way.

The shops in Southgate were at that time in course of changing over from village to suburbia, a change which had been made in nearby Palmers Green a generation earlier probably when the railway arrived. The new tube station had a few new shops built around it but the old ones survived just a little longer, a tiny sweet shop run by a tiny old lady on the corner of Chase Side opposite the ‘Bell’ Public House and a barbers beside the Bell, where boys got their hair cut for threepence.

Next to that going north along Chase Side, Lees Stores survived a long time although the first moves towards supermarkets shoed themselves in shops where you had to go from one counter to another to get your various goods instead of shop assistant fetching it all from far of places and piling it on the counter in front of you, before asking whether you would like it delivered. Next to Lee’s was the paper shop and then an ancient toy shop which didn’t last long.

The bike, and perhaps motorbike, repair shop was a hundred yards further on, more a single storey brick shed with a shopfront than anything, but it survived some years standing well proud of the new parade of shops built beside it which was set well back from the road with a very wide pavement. Opposite was Collins the butchers, a purveyor of choice meat, complete with a slaughterhouse in the rear. Here Sam and his dad presided, with straw hats and blue and white aprons and, would chop away on their big wooden block to produce the chump chop you wanted out of half a sheep.

They too would deliver if you liked, in a little brown van, well known in the Southgate streets. No doubt you paid for the service within the prices, but you still could buy a nice pork chop for fourpence.

There were two garages locally, petrol cost the equivalent of six or seven new pence a gallon and you could buy a brand new Austin Seven for one hundred and five pounds if you were lucky enough to scrape that much together.

Austin 7

My dad got a Chrysler saloon in place of the old bull-nosed Morris but didn’t have it long as he was neither the first or the last to drive straight on at one of the right-angled Essex lanes. I didn’t ride in it much anyway as he had given me a new bike which I liked much better. After the demise of the Chrysler came a much more sedate Hillman which I feel nobody loved very much.

To be continued tomorrow

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