Tag Archives: Joan Cooper

Joan Cokes: Swimming 1920s, 1930s

Yarmouth shores High Tide

Yarmouth shores High Tide

When we were at school we went to Love Shore to learn to swim – the boys one side of the jetty, the girls the other side.  I won a cup for swimming a mile. We had to walk from school to Port La Salle (where Johnny Walker, the whisky magnet, had his summer home), then swim to the pier.

Families spent a lot of time at Love Shore in the afternoons.   There was a swimming raft with steps to dive off. We didn’t swim so much at Pier Shore because the tide could sweep you away under the pier.
There were swimming races off the Common with Mr Doe there in his rowing boat for safety.
Joan Cokes nee Cooper b 1918

Joan Cokes: Harbour, rowing 1920s, 1930s

Yacht  and dinghies alongside Quay 1920s. Postcard from Mike Holden

Yacht and dinghies alongside Quay 1920s. Postcard from Mike Holden

My father was employed as a gardener in the Pier Hotel (now the George Hotel).  He bought a boat in Lymington and rowed it back to Yarmouth on a slack tide.
I can remember rowing my father’s boat for him.  He would ask me to take it alongside the harbour at high tide, from the hard by the boatyard – otherwise it would have been high and dry at low tide.  I also used to row my father and a customer to go fishing off Black Rock – but he wouldn’t tell me or show me the fishing ‘marks’. Joan Cokes nee Cooper b 1918

Harbour: Jim Cooper 1920s – 1960s

Coming in to wooden stage at Sandhard to avoid toll

Jim Cooper coming in to wooden stage at Sandhard to avoid toll

It was a basic dinghy shape.  They called it a ‘lanch’ the old boys, so that differentiated it from a rowing boat.  It was bigger and it had a net board in the back.  In the transom, six inches below, there was a net board about two foot wide which we used to lay the net on when we were shooting nets out the back of the transom.  It was a very wide boat and the oars he used were about ten foot long, huge big ash oars, they weighed a ton, I couldn’t lift them.

In those days he made a little bit of a living on pout which these days is much maligned.  ‘Sweet little pout’; my mum still says now, ‘Why can’t you get me a sweet little pout?’
It’s like a mini cod, the same flesh, same family.  He used to catch those.

When we used to go out we used to row down to Fort Vic., go out in the tide. You remember those old iron wheelbarrow wheels with a spike in the middle? He used to have one of those, that was his anchor and a big bit of grass rope and he used to chuck that over and he used to have the oars ready. They’d get to where they wanted to go and drift back, and let a bit more rope out;  so they stopped and then they fished, and all they used was line, about three or four hooks on the bottom and garden worms.  They’d catch a few pout and then they’d run out, or they hadn’t caught one, then they’d trip the killock [small anchor]. Pull the anchor up a little bit, let it go, give it a shear with the oar now and again, and drift in the right direction to another bit of ground.  And they’d do that all the way to Bouldnor. There was about three or four places where they stopped.  And of course by the time you got to Bouldnor inshore, the ebb was down again, so you had the tide back the other way.  Alec Cokes b 1945

Joan Cooper: Shops, the Square 1920s

When I first left school, I worked in the local post office, then moved to Kelsey’s confectioners.  Tobacco was sold there too and Lord Seely would come in to buy his Balkan Soubrani  – insisting on me serving him.  My aunt was Assistant Matron at Cheam School where Lord Seely had been a pupil, –  Prince Phillip went to Cheam School too.
Joan Cokes nee Cooper b 1918

Joan Cokes: School trips 1920s

Yarmouth School trip on the ferry - Panama hats

Yarmouth School trip on the ferry photo contributed by Di Broomfield

I went to Yarmouth School (as did my father, my son and daughter, and my two grandchildren). I remember having to wear a Panama hat on school outings; we bought them from a shop in the High Street. One trip was to Windsor.
Joan Cokes nee Cooper b 1918