Author Archives: Jill Cowley

Alec Cokes: Free Time 1950s

‘ Brimmo’  –  he was one of the gang leaders and his sort of base was in this builder’s yard just down the bottom of the garden.  We had our Dinky toys and all the rest of it in the yard.  There were several of those little cannons about – they were yacht race cannons really for starting races. They used to take them on their boats and fire them off. They weren’t very big, only about nine inches or a foot long. There was no gun carriage, it didn’t look like a little gun, it was just a brass pipe basically.  It wasn’t a miniature cannon but it made a bang when you fired it.  In those days everybody used to load their own shot gun cartridges, so everybody had shot and wadding, it was in every back garden shed.

 This toad hopped out of the water butt – somebody fired at it with a catapult and missed it.  The suggestion came up that we get this cannon and trig it up, and we’ll get this toad.  We went indoors, got the cannon set up on a couple of bricks with a couple of bricks holding it down, rammed it and all the rest of it, lit the touch hole and all retired round the next pile of bricks.  We were all cowering behind the bricks and  –  nothing.
Everybody said, ‘ Well, what are we going to do then?’
Dicky in the end went out round and kicked it, and it went off.  Of course, it fell off the bricks and he got one of the pellets lodged in his eye. He went home because he only lived in Ommanney Road, and didn’t tell his mum.  The next day at breakfast, she said, ‘What’s wrong with your eye, Nipper?’   And he said, ‘I’ve got something in it.’
I think it was the lead poisoning that caused him to lose his eye rather than the impact. Alec Cokes b 1945

Mary Lord: Free Time 1950s

Bluebells in Mill Copse 2013

Bluebells in Mill Copse 2013

If we went anywhere, we went by bus  –  train was too expensive  –  but we didn’t go far. Yarmouth was our world. I loved Mill Copse and spent hours there. The bluebells, primroses … I hated it when it was all planted up with conifers. I was a great presser of flowers, had a collection of pressed wild flowers. One year in Mill Copse I found butterfly orchids to press for my collection. In later years I went back to look but never found them again!  Mary Lord nee Hayles b 1936

Alec Cokes: Free Time at the Dump 1950s

The Dump was quite a big thing in our little lives and the dump was always alight.
Do you remember those Kiora bottles with the big clamp?  We used to get those and half fill them with water then put them in the fire and stand around watching – eventually they would just blow to bits because the top wouldn’t come off, and that was another chicken game.  If you were close enough to see it properly you could see it boil and you’d have steam and water but immediately the water disappeared and it became steam, you were out of there, and this glass used to go everywhere!

Yarmouth Quay with the Dump seen burning in background

Yarmouth Quay with the Dump seen burning in background

Alec Cokes b 1945

Eileen Smith: Free Time at Love Shore 1950s

The only problem you had on the beach was the guns going off above you from the sailing.  The West Wight Scows were anchored off Love Shore and Dr Drummond’s, his was white with a red band round it, and was called Pillbox.  They used to race every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon and they had their gun in their little shed at the bottom of the Deacons’  garden. Sometimes they’d never fire the gun, they’d say:  Bang!
They didn’t like us down there because we were shouting and laughing and goodness knows what.  They couldn’t stop us because the lane going down to the shore was a public right of way. We used to walk right through to the next lane, along the stones from Fryer’s Lane right up to the Common. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

 

Eileen Smith: Free Time at Love Shore 1940s

Joy Cotton, Cynthia Lansdowne and Barbara Hayden at Love Shore

Joy Cotton, Cynthia Lansdowne and Barbara Hayden at Love Shore

 In the summer holidays there’d be maybe half a dozen mums with families, my mum, and Mrs Eames, she was the police constable’s wife at Yarmouth, and the Robinsons, down Love Shore, just down the road. We’d pack up picnics and spend all day there. The mums would be down there with their knitting and we’d be down there all the afternoon.  It was a safe beach because you had the jetties there. If you got swept down you went against the jetties. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Margaret Scott: Free Time 1950s

When we lived in Ommanney Road, I had  pair of rollerskates for Christmas.  I loved my skates and spent many happy hours going up and down the road with my friends.  Mr Egan’s garage on one side of the road had a nice slope in front of it, and towards the top on the other side was Bern Haward’s shed with an even bigger slope. I remember Lou Pitman coming out of her front door one day, shouting at me that if I went past her house again she would throw a bucket of water over me.  I expect I stayed on my side of the road for a while after that.

Me and My Bike

Me and My Bike

 b 1949

Les Turner, Alec Cokes: Free Time with Go Karts 1950s

Alec and I would go out after school with one of our karts across to Sandhard or down to Fort Vic. to collect the wood off the beach.   At weekends we sawed it up for firewood.
I remember we used to take turns to ride the Kart down over Fort Vic hill.  The Fort was still manned by the Army then.
It was my turn this particular time.  I went hurtling down over the hill.  All of a sudden this dispatch rider appeared coming  the other way up the hill.  He went in one hedge and I went in the other. Les Turner b 1944

I can remember going over to Fort Vic; it particularly sticks in my mind as I think we brought back a carton of those 7 pound tins of cocoa.  We had about four of them in a box, and we had chocolate cakes for a long time after that, and chocolate puds.  Yeah I can remember doing that one.  Alec Cokes  b1945

Les Turner: Free Time 1950s

As lads we all made ourselves a go-kart with pram wheels from down on the Dump, timber as well. For making the body we would go down and see Mr Harwood and ask him for some large staples to fix the pram wheel axles to the timber body.  A lot of the time he would give them to us or he would charge us a penny for half a dozen.
In the light evenings a gang of us with our go karts would go up to the fire station, go down over the hill to the old railway sta

Yarmouth Station

Yarmouth Station 1950s

tion, through the gate, and if you didn’t steer properly, you’d end up going over the edge of the platform. We’d see how far we could get along the platform, along the old railway bed.  Great fun –  some of the karts had steering wheels.

Rod Corbett: Free Time 1950s

An old lady called Kizzy Butler, who lived at the house that juts out into the Rec. had died, and the Jackman family bought it. She didn’t seem to have had any family so all her stuff was turned out. She had a big collection of stuffed birds all under glass Victorian domes. Nobody wanted things like that then, they were too unfashionable, so they were just thrown out.  A group of us boys, aged about 8 or 9 went and rescued these birds – there were lots of penguins and Arctic birds, and we put them up in the trees in the lane, which must have made people look twice. Eventually when we got bored, we shot the old birds down.

Rod Corbett b 1943

Nick Chandler : Free Time 1940s,

Birds nesting was a favourite in the spring; terrible to think about it now, taking birds eggs.  Another favourite was after the swan had had her young there was always a  couple of addled eggs left in the nest and we used to put them on the railway line. Can you imagine the stench when they took the train back to the shed to clean it at night!  Nick Chandler b 1937