The Square, with Bugle Hotel left.
Go in a pub before you was about 20? Blimey no! If they didn’t like the look of you, especially some of the old ones in the Bugle, they’d say, ‘What you doing in ‘ere?’
I suppose the Bugle was the one that was used most by just the local drinkers.
George Cleary’s father was there since the First World War. I don’t know whether young George was born there or where he was born. The old chap had it for years.
Phil Kelsey b 1920
When Yarmouth played West Wight they used to have a couple of hundred, they come down from Freshwater. They used to have to pay to go in then if it was a cup tie. I can remember Dad was always on the gate. He was on the committee. When he finished work he used to go up there marking it out. But oh yes, there used to be some grand scraps between Yarmouth and West Wight.
Football at the Rec pre WWII
The older school kids used to go up there during the winter once a week. We just used the whole pitch, plodding up and down. Anybody who had a football was well in. You’d see two or three go up after school kicking about, shooting in goal, you know, one in goal, and having a tussle. I mean you never see them now. These days, of course there’s not so many children of that age in the town as there used to be.
Phil Kelsey b 1920
Going to school of course was only a quick nip down the road for me, from Mill Terrace. I remember how we used to play football there. On a Monday as soon as one or two got there, two of us would pick a team of what was there, then we’d start and as each one come into the school they went to one team, and the next one went to the other team. It finished up with quite a number of players on each side. In the top half, the old toilet was one goal. Phil Kelsey b 1920
Yarmouth School 2013
The trouble with going to Southampton was, if I remember rightly, the boats packed up early and you couldn’t get out of the ground and catch the train in time to get down for the last boat.
It was quite easy to go to Portsmouth because you could get on the train down here, right through to Ryde, over to Portsmouth and walk up to Fratton Park. We used to do that nearly always on the Bank Holiday.
One the Bank Holiday it was Grimsby Town and they had Tweedy, I can remember him playing in goal, and Glover, the centre forward. Of course Pompey in those days had the outside right Harris, the nippy little outside right. Phil Kelsey b 1920
Sandhard
One of our trips was to go to Sandhard with my mother and the rest of the family. We used to get in the boat down by the Mill.
Sometimes mother got in if it was reasonable but she didn’t often. George and perhaps the rest of the kids rowed over to Sandhard, dumped them off, then rowed back to the bridge. There used to be a landing stage right in the corner there and we used to get Mother in there and take her across. We used to drop her off there because, probably by the time we were coming back, the tide would be gone out. It was awkward to get out down the Mill so we used to drop her off there, and one or two of us used to come and scrabble up over the wall down the bottom. Phil Kelsey b 1920
When I was young, Dad had his boat down the Mill and when I was about ten I used to take it out all day long in the summer. I was up and down the river, I reckon I’d propelled the boat in every little inlet. Once when I was quite small, Dad had taken us over to Sandhard. Coming back, we got alongside to get out and I was just getting out. George was supposed to be helping Dad get me out and there was some swans there suddenly started fighting. They let go of me and dropped me down into the water! Didn’t Mother create when I got home! Phil Kelsey b 1920
Stone Pier with Bun Cotton, Eric Doe, Jim Ryall, George Kelsey and Jack Noyce
Before the Rec. was done, we used to go down and kick about in what now is all brambles, down the Mill. Old Harry Jackman had cows down there then , and he also used to have them out around the copse. Providing they weren’t there for milking, we used to go down there and kick about. It was cut a bit like a field, it was nothing much, it was very rough.
Other than that we used to get messing about in Mill Copse and Thorley Copse, we were always out there.
In those days you couldn’t go over the bridge because you had to pay so we always went towards Bouldnor. We used to try and scrabble along the front – Nicholson’s path – down by what is now Port La Salle. It’s still there now. To save having to come up and go right round there, we used to try and scrabble along there and keep out of sight of the gamekeeper with his dogs. It wasn’t too bad if the tide was out, we used to get by. We used to go right along then as far as the old Stone Pier usually. Of course that’s mostly disappeared, during the war most of it. It’s a pity really that went. Phil Kelsey b1920
The Kelsey children c 1923 behind Mill Terrace.
I was born in 1, Alvina Cottage in Station Road, then we moved down to Mill Terrace. We were in the one where the passage way went through. At that time in Mill Terrace there was a lot of children. There was the Mussells; there were five or six of them, there was Joe – I think he was the youngest one, Ray, Ruby, another gal, and Perce, the eldest one, there was quite a few. And also there was a big family come to live there, Dicksons from Freshwater; there was about twelve of them kids. He used to ride about on a tricycle and do a few odd jobs. We used to try and pinch his tricycle if he left it up on the Common. Phil Kelsey b 1920
When we was kids, we used to go out up the railway line picking blackberries. We used to wait for the train to go, then nip along the line. You couldn’t get off the track very well, it was a bit more wired up to what it is now. You used to have to make a good bit of a dash for it from Barnsfield Creek up to where the next lot of trees were – we used to call it Furze Break because it was all brambles on the right hand side. We used to pick loads of blackberries up there. I’ve even known my mother walk up there and pick them with us. Phil Kelsey b 1920
Yes, we went to London. I shared a room with Ron Pope.
I remember one evening we went to play in one of the parks there and we had a cricket bat. I was the batsman going in and I was knocking out the crease like we used to with the bat, and some bloke come up: ‘Oh’, he says, ‘you mustn’t do that – Jack Hobbs doesn’t do that.’ I said: ‘No, but Phil Mead does’, because I’d been to see Phil Mead by that time, over at Southampton.
Phil Kelsey b 1920