I loved our visits to Love Shore once or twice a week.
I cant imagine how from a safety point of view that could happen today.
I learned to swim quite quickly (no armbands etc) and ended up with a silver medal in 1934 for swimming a mile, from Eastmore, Bouldnor, to the Pier at Yarmouth accompanied by a rowing boat.
Florrie Sloper nee Knee b 1922
Yarmouth School Mile Swimming Medal, other side engraved with name Eileen Lansdowne 1932
All of us children learnt to swim at Love Shore or Pier Shore, down the lane opposite Basketts Lane. The boys swam off Love Shore; the girls swam nearer the pier.
We went swimming twice a week in the summer, from the end of May, supervised by Mr. Stanway and Miss White ( who was later Mrs. H Hayles). According to tides, we went swimming at 11.30 in the morning or 3.30 in the afternoon. We used to nip back home to change and run down to Love Shore with a towel round us. No one taught us proper strokes, we just learnt to swim. In September we swam for our certificates – 20 yards, 40 yards, and 100 yards. In 1933 some of us swam a mile from Eastmore to the pier for which we received a medal – I’ve still got mine.
I only swam once in the competition against other schools. I hated it. The private schools had all been taught proper strokes – crawl – and we’d just learnt to swim along.
Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921
Swimming Medal awarded for One Mile
The recreation field was where I learnt to ride my first bicycle. I can remember my dad taking me up there and saying, ‘Right, now go off!’ – and me falling off several times. It was always full of children playing and Saturday was football matches with lots of people watching and lots of noise. Carol Corbett nee Cotton b 1946
Football at the Rec.1950s
The Towers had no heating – there were those ‘Cozy Stoves’ and it was my job to carry the coal in scuttles to which ever room we were using.
I remember going to buy chews – Black Jack and Fruit salad- from Higginbothams in the High Street.
In the early days I went to Freshwater to school, to Miss Gloyn’s with Graeme Dillon – still my friend. Beryl Kearns used to drive us. I had to sit in the front with Beryl; she said it was just not possible to drive us if we were sitting together in the back of the car.
Early Days: John Caulcutt with Charlie Attrill, boatman
Do you remember Charlie Attrill, the boatman here at the Yacht Club?
I used to spend all day with him in his launch. He’d normally have a few lobster pots off here so we’d go potting at 6, and I’d spend all day with him, taking people out. He taught me a lot about small boat handling. It was a happy upbringing if you like small boats, which by God, I did. If you get salt water in your veins at an early age it’s a dangerous thing. I loved every minute of it; just couldn’t fault it.
John Caulcutt. b 1947
I remember Billy Doe used to walk by our house at 5.30 every night with a gun under his arm to shoot pigeons to eat. Brian Pomroy b 1937
Yarmouth harbour showing Bridge House on the old bridge 1930s
Doe family at Bridge House
I can remember as a toddler going to visit my grandparents when they were living in Bridge House, and standing on a table to look up the river. The top storey burnt down when someone was doing some decorating and using a blow torch, then it was used as a Customs House, and later still the Sailing Club.
The Harbour Commissioners gave my grandfather, ‘Pop’ a nice present when he retired – a launch. When I was young I used to go out with him over to Key Haven collecting seagulls eggs. We used to bring them back and eat them, they were quite strong, but nice. We used to go out winkling and prawning, and cook and eat those. I used to go with him, pigeon shooting up the railway line.
I had my first dinghy at 8, before that I used to borrow Pop’s. I suppose it was a bit unusual, there were hardly any others moored up the river where I kept mine. I always enjoyed small boats. Janet Hopkins b 1947
The thing I remember about grandfather, he came from a time when food was hard to come by. When we used to go occasionally to dinner at Granny’s, they were much into greens. Kids don’t like greens do they? The greens they ate were just so green, bitter. They used to have curly kale and leave it in the ground for about two years and you would strip the stalks off and it would put out little shoots and they’d go along and rub the shoots off. It was gritty. No doubt it was good for you if you’ve got nothing else.
The nicest thing we had in those days, in the fifties, when we were small…At the back of the railway station was a siding and sugar beet there in trucks. We used to go down there and lift a few sugar beet. If you cut them up they’re quite nice. You didn’t eat it, you just sucked the sugar out and left the fibre bit behind.
Alec Cokes b 1945
When I was a baby we lived on a boat called ‘Westo’ in the harbour opposite the Boatyard.
When Mary was old enough to go to school we moved to Fernlea in Mill Road and there we stayed until I was about 20. I remember our friends used to come for their baths as we had a large cast iron one and they didn’t have one in their houses. Sue Russell nee Hayles b 1940
Harbour withSandhouse in foreground, and Harold Hayles boatyard
The vicar, Revd. Woodin, had a bit of a temper. I remember once when he thought there weren’t enough people in church, he leaned forward and banged and banged on the pulpit. Gerry Sheldon nee Haward b1924
Before the new road was built, Tennyson Road, led to ‘Back Lane’ which was not a thoroughfare.
War brought my father here, Royal Corps of Signal. My grandfather came here as a Royal Engineer in the first war – so I’ve got some fresh blood. At the end of WWI he married my grandmother. She was a soldier – I’ve got a picture of her in uniform – I think she was quite a radical actually, a typical Methodist radical. They then moved away from Yarmouth because he was in the Army and my mother, being the eldest, was sent back to live with her grandmother, my great grandmother. My great grandma to me was like my grandma, and she was born in 1866. I called her ‘Gran’.
My father was away at war, so we all lived with, ‘Gran’ in Field Cottages on Tennyson Road. They were pretty cramped and small – two up, two down, with no hot and cold running water. The toilets were at the end of the garden. Of course the road didn’t go anywhere then, just up to Back Lane so it was much quieter, we could play in the road. Rod Corbett b 1943