Author Archives: Jill Cowley

Serena Dias de Deus: Early Years

I was born in South Street in 1939 in an old house, Grove Cottage, next to Grove House. We had no bathroom so it was washing in a bowl daily and a bath in a large tin bath dragged into the warm kitchen on Saturday night.

Those were the days when we knew all our neighbours and helped each other out in hard times. I remember many a delicious chocolate cake being passed over the wall of Grove House by Mrs Ablitt, – the Ablitts owned the butchers shop in the High Street and were Mollie Mallett’s parents.

One of my very early memories was of Mrs Lansdowne on the other side making me a cardboard Snowman covered in cotton wool full of tiny little gifts all individually wrapped.

Serena nee Hunt b 1939

South St. 2013

Carol Corbett: Early Days

Ommanney Road, looking towards South Street, decorated for Coronation of King George VI in 1937

Ommanney Road then was permanent housing and everybody knew everybody else. As a small child, there seemed to me to be a lot of ‘old salts’, who wore sailor type caps, living in the road. Bern Haward had a huge workshop as a boat store, I guess he repaired boats as well, on one side, and Mr May, the undertaker, was on the other side of the road. Bern was always very nice to me. He had a brother, Gerry, who lived up the road and always wore a sailor’s cap, and there was Nip Chambers, he wore a cap too. There was an elderly gentleman, a small man with a big beard, he wore a flat white cap. He was Nip’s father, a real old salt who had been a sea captain.
Mr Feaver and Mr Hopkins both had taxi businesses in opposition. Mr Feaver had a garage up the road for his taxis.
We constantly played ball games, in the middle of the road and wore the pavements out roller skating. George Warder, the milkman, delivered the milk with a pull along float up and down the road. I can remember ‘Johnny Onions’ from Brittany peddling his strings of onions. My dad always bought a string, always invited him in for a cup of tea. I don’t know how my mother got on because she wasn’t such an adventurous person. We had numerous stews and lots of rabbit stew in those days.
I can remember the man with his barrel organ and a monkey on his shoulder. Why did he come – was he sharpening knives?
The High Street was busier as all the traffic, buses included, went up the street, and both ways at the top of the High Street. We used to sit on the wall at Basketts Lane with pen and paper, taking down number plates as a hobby. Carol Corbett nee Cotton b 1946

Brian Pomry: Early Days, 1940s, 1950s

Simmonds built boats up Ommanney Road. They built a boat that was too big to get out. Bloody hell it came down that ramp, it was going! I thought it was going in the old funeral parlour, but Jim managed to hold it and Ray, John and Harry put blocks of wood under the wheels to stop it. They went down the High Street with it, and couldn’t turn at the Town Hall. Brian Pomroy b 1937

High Street to Town Hall

Nick Chandler: Early Days in Ommanney Road

Ommanney Road

There were some interesting people lived in Ommanney Road when I was growing up. Next door to me was old Bill Smith, the Foreman Ganger building the Railway down here; next door to him was Captain Chambers who was a Tea Clipper Captain. He was only a little old chap, lovely little old chap. Opposite was Mr Penny the postman, he was in the Home Guard. The times he tore out the house and then went back again because he had forgotten his rifle! Next door to him was a chap called Albert Fenton who used to sit on the front doorstep all day playing the penny whistle.
Have you heard of Alf Plumbley lived up at Yew Trees? He saved old Mr Higginbotham’s life in the First World War. Mr Higginbotham had his leg blown off and he was left for dead. Alf Plumbley found him, saw to him, and dragged him in, saved his life.
Nick Chandler b 1937

Pat Burt :Early Days living in ‘Kevack’

When we lived in Kevack in the High Street, we had an outdoor loo. You went across a small yard, and there were 2 loos side by side. One belonged to our next door neighbour, Mr King, the head gardener at The Mount, and he had to walk through the bottom of our yard to get to his loo. They could be sat in theirs, right next to us, – but they were flush, those loos.

My mother was cook to the Hamiltons in the Wight/White House for some years until she was taken very ill. When I was very small, I used to have to go with my mother when she went to work while she was cooking in the kitchen. I always remember the smell of the lovely rubbery green staircase they had. Instead of carpet the stairs were covered in this lovely pale green rubber and it smelt beautiful.

I was knocked down by a car, when I was 7 and there were very few cars about. I was running home from school for lunch. It was a very rough day and I could see the sea blowing up at the end of Pier Shore Lane down between the Yacht Club and The Towers. I was coming along South Street and I ran straight across the High Street. Of course the High Street was a main road then, and there was a car coming, driven by one of the Miss Creagh Osbornes and it hit me. Luckily it didn’t hurt me much, just my ankle. It was my own fault , I was so excited, I wanted to see the rough sea. I didn’t go back to school that day, and later Miss Creagh Osborne knocked on the door and brought me a black and white china dog as a present. Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929

Joan Cokes: Early Days

My father was employed as a gardener and worked in several different places. He worked for The Pier Hotel (now the George Hotel), in the garden opposite the school. In Ommanney Road, there was a garden owned by the Bugle where he also worked. That was next to a vegetable garden for The Towers. He grew the vegetables for his own family in an allotment at the top of Victoria Road.

The bridge was a toll bridge and regular users got a weekly ticket. Dad worked for the Tophams over in Norton as a gardener, and so had a weekly ticket. We children used to sneak behind a charabanc to get over the bridge without paying.

I can remember getting winkles from Pier Shore and the Common up to Bouldnor as far as Stone Pier, and prawning off the Common – I remember seeing seahorses there.
Joan Cokes nee Cooper b1918

Jean Maitland: 1930s, The Mount, Dashwoods

The Mount seen fom the marsh

We used to go scrumping apples at The Mount. We used to go through the bottom of the Rec. and fill our knickers with the apples, them knickers that had pockets in. The boys used to dare us.
When anybody had a baby they used to take them down one rose, Cuthbert, Caroline, and Miss Constance, the Dashwood family.
Miss Constance was the last one left of the Dashwoods. She left me a book when she died. Jean Maitland nee Levey b 1928

Annette Haynes: Early Days 1930s

Alma Place 2013

Pat and I both started off in Alma Place . We’ve known each other since we were three. My parents brought me to the Island because my brother and I were both so poorly the doctor said we had to live by the sea. For a year or so my dad used to cycle to Havenstreet to visit my brother in the hospital, but then my mother said, ‘If he’s going to die, bring him home’. He’s still going strong, nearly 90.

From Alma Place we moved to Coastguard Cottages. I remember we had an outside pump for water there. We moved once from Coastguard Cottages to a bigger house in South Street. We moved in one day and moved out the next because my mother saw mice and she wouldn’t stay there, so we moved back to our old house. Annette Haynes nee Holloway b 1929

Coastguard cottages 2013

Jean Maitland: Early Days playing at the Castle

Wheatsheaf Lane 1930s

My mother used to do the washing for the Simpsons at North House and I used to have to take the washing back down the steps to the big kitchen.

When I lived in the Square we used to play up the Castle and in Wheatsheaf Lane; that was our play area because there were no cars or anything like that. You could go up to the Castle anywhen you liked. We used to love going up there because you could frighten one another to death in the dungeons, and if anyone shut the door you could hear them scream right across the town.
Jean Maitland nee Levey b 1928

Colin Smith: Early Days

I started off in Quay Street in a house in one of those little passages that go across. Then we went to live in the harbour aboard a boat called ‘ The Tina’, a sixty footer, and whether that caused my mother to be poorly I don’t know. She went into Havenstreet for a while with ‘consumption’ as it was known in those days, and then up to Scotland, and I, being the youngest of the brood, I went up there with her and attended school up there for a while. That was a sad business, but there it was. Colin Smith b 1922

Yarmouth and Thorley Voices

Learn about the history of Yarmouth and Thorley from the people who have lived it