Tag Archives: Fort Victoria

Les Turner: Harbour, 1970s

I shall never forget the day we had to deal with a fifty foot sort of Edwardian steam yacht.  Apparently they’d gone out the harbour and something had fallen off – I think it was a clock or the barometer. The husband and wife were having a bloody good old argument about it and they hit the Admiralty buoy out there, and so they comes in screaming and shouting.
We managed to get a line. They got the bow to about here, and of course the tide was  going out and I managed to put a line on there on to the quay.  People with pumps came from everywhere. They even got the Fire Brigade down here.   Poor old Bob Woodford went and got this pump off Vic. He went running down this little slip. Course he forgot the bloody thing ended, and the people on the boat just managed to grab hold the pump before Bob disappeared off the end.

Yarmouth Harbour 1960s

Yarmouth Harbour 1960s

That’s where Cecil Doe, George Weston and Jack Harwood used to keep their sailing dinghies, their Enterprises, GP14s and stuff. We used to go down there lots of times, find a dinghy with an oar, scull up to the top of the quay or up the top of the harbour if there was westerly wind blowing, and either Al or myself would stand up with our jackets wide open, and one of us would steer with the oar while the other one stood with their jacket and sail down the harbour.  Les Turner  b 1944

 

Pat Burt: The army children from Fort Victoria

The children from Fort Victoria were very poor, and we were scared of them; they were army children. We were poor but we were dressed all right. They used to have sticks and hit everybody. They were tough, we didn’t like them. They used to walk all the way from Fort Victoria in the morning and then go home at lunchtime, and back again for the afternoon session.

I used to wonder how they got home in time to have their lunch and get back in time for school. We could go home for lunch, not far to go, a couple of hundred yards.
Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929

Palma Ault : 1920s, Mill Terrace

I was born in Cadnam and came to Island in 1933 and lived at No. 1 Fort Victoria Cottages. Then we moved to No 10 Mill Terrace in 1939, – I’ve still got the rent book.
All 3 girls shared the front bedroom, parents were in the middle and Stuart in the back bedroom. We used to have to throw buckets of water down the toilet. There was no electric in Mill Terrace until after the War and then you were allowed 2 lights – we had a light in the two living rooms.
Daisy Pitman used to take in washing and put it out on the marsh. She couldn’t get it in when it was high tide and us children were told to keep away from it.

Washing out behind Mill Terrace, with Daisy Pitman in boat

Washing out behind Mill Terrace, with Daisy Pitman in boat