Tag Archives: Carol Corbett

Carol Corbett: The Fair, 1950s

Each year the Fair would come to the Rec.  Very exciting.  Half a crown went a long way.  I can remember watching, not riding, the Wall of Death.  There was a man jumping through a hoop of fire into a water tank and my favourite was the flea circus – little fleas in a glass case with pink skirts on pushing prams and wheelbarrows along.  No, I hadn’t been drinking!   I thought it was wonderful – we had to pay extra to go in to watch it but I remember going in with my mother, and then I think my grandmother took me as well. Carol Corbett nee Cotton b 19

Fair 1950s

Fun Fair on the Rec. 1950s:In photo, Jean Maitland, Fay (Faith) Hopkins, photo: Janet Hopkins

 

 

 

Carol Corbett: Harbour, houseboats 1950s

Aerial of harbour showing houseboats 1950s

Aerial of harbour showing houseboats 1950s

A childhood friend, Kay Green, lived on a houseboat moored off Bridge Road. I loved to go there to play  –  it was so wonderfully different. We’d play around the rocks, painting faces on them and using the seaweed for their hair, and being hairdressers.

There was another houseboat moored the other side of the bridge. An old man lived there,maybe Colonel Mitchell, and Kay and I used to take meals to him from Mrs. Green. His boat had boots hanging from the ceiling. Extraordinary!

Carol Corbett : Yarmouth shores

Carol Cottont at Love Shore

Carol Cotton at Love Shore

Love Shore was where we went to swim, Pier Shore was where we went for the rock pools.
I used to go there with my father, Bun Cotton, to collect winkles. He’d bring them home and boil them up and eat them, but not me. I liked collecting them but not eating them.

Your parents would let you go to Love Shore and say, you’re not to swim unless there’s an adult around, and we didn’t, we just played on the beach and in the water.

Carol Corbett b 1946

Carol Corbett : Early Days

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

Football at the Rec.1950s

Carol Corbett: Early Days

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

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