Tag Archives: Ommanney Road

Phil Kelsey: St. James Church 1920s,1930s

St James Church: photo Brenda Garlick

All the kids went to church. If you were a server you had to go to church without any breakfast. You went to church at 8 o’clock in the morning with the parson, and then when it was all over you went along to the rectory for breakfast. You used to do all right there because Vi White, she’d be there, and she used to lash us up with a bloody good breakfast, sausages or something or other, porridge, she always had a good breakfast for you.

In the church when you was in the choir, at Christmas and Easter you got two bob – the parson used to give you two bob. Then a bit later, when you got a bit older and you went on to be a server and had the red cassock, you got half a crown at Easter and Christmas.

from St. James Parish magazine: report of servers outing 1920s to Alum Bay

On Good Friday they used to have a procession around the town. They used to come out of church and went up the High Street and down Ommanney Road. I think we turned left and come back round to the church that way. Phil Kelsey b 1920

Betty Coates-Evans: WWII Evacuees 1940s

We had a Morrison shelter in the living room. I liked it, it was good fun to make a den and play in.
My mother was in the WRVS and we had a spare room so we took in evacuees – a mother and daughter about my age, from Plymouth. The father was in the Navy, on convoys, and used to call in when his ship docked in Portsmouth. Sadly, he didn’t return from the final convoy. When the mother and daughter went back to Plymouth, blankets and my mother’s prized cottage china tea set disappeared with them. Betty Coates Evans nee Lock b 1938

Peter Smith, Robert May: Services, Undertaker, 1950s

Robert May, carpenter, joiner and undertaker outside his workshop in Ommanney Road.

My great granddad Robert (Bob) May ran a carpenter’s and undertaker’s business from his large workshop alongside Fernside in Ommanney Road. His son-in-law, my uncle Ted, also worked there. In the school holidays my cousin David and I would be encouraged to make things in the workshop, and as there were always lots of off-cuts we invented all sorts of things. Mostly though we used some very nicely shaped triangular pieces about 18”long and 6”wide to make boats and built upper decks and funnels and gun turrets etc. It was some time before we realised where the triangular pieces had come from; they were off-cuts from the coffins that granddad and Uncle Ted made!

I’ve seen Uncle Ted on many occasions finishing off a coffin by heating a saucepan of pitch on the tortoise stove in the workshop and running the molten pitch all round the coffin corners by standing it up and moving it around to ensure all the joints were sealed. Peter Smith b 1946

Eileen Smith: Events, Coronation Elizabeth II

2, Mill Terrace decorated for coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953

Coronation Day June 3^rd 1953 The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

My grandad Robert May hired in a television, a little 12 inch one. Everyone in the family came to his house in Ommanney Road, with piles of sandwiches, and we watched the television all day. It’s what the children remember most – watching the little black and white television. They had a ticket for a free packet of chips from the little fish and chip shop in the bungalow on the corner of South Street opposite Sixpenny Corner. Eileen Smith nee Lansdowne b 1921

Alec Cokes: Free Time 1950s

‘ Brimmo’ – he was one of the gang leaders and his sort of base was in this builder’s yard just down the bottom of the garden. We had our Dinky toys and all the rest of it in the yard. There were several of those little cannons about – they were yacht race cannons really for starting races. They used to take them on their boats and fire them off. They weren’t very big, only about nine inches or a foot long. There was no gun carriage, it didn’t look like a little gun, it was just a brass pipe basically. It wasn’t a miniature cannon but it made a bang when you fired it. In those days everybody used to load their own shot gun cartridges, so everybody had shot and wadding, it was in every back garden shed.

This toad hopped out of the water butt – somebody fired at it with a catapult and missed it. The suggestion came up that we get this cannon and trig it up, and we’ll get this toad. We went indoors, got the cannon set up on a couple of bricks with a couple of bricks holding it down, rammed it and all the rest of it, lit the touch hole and all retired round the next pile of bricks. We were all cowering behind the bricks and – nothing.
Everybody said, ‘ Well, what are we going to do then?’
Dicky in the end went out round and kicked it, and it went off. Of course, it fell off the bricks and he got one of the pellets lodged in his eye. He went home because he only lived in Ommanney Road, and didn’t tell his mum. The next day at breakfast, she said, ‘What’s wrong with your eye, Nipper?’ And he said, ‘I’ve got something in it.’
I think it was the lead poisoning that caused him to lose his eye rather than the impact. Alec Cokes b 1945

Margaret Scott: Free Time 1950s

When we lived in Ommanney Road, I had pair of rollerskates for Christmas. I loved my skates and spent many happy hours going up and down the road with my friends. Mr Egan’s garage on one side of the road had a nice slope in front of it, and towards the top on the other side was Bern Haward’s shed with an even bigger slope. I remember Lou Pitman coming out of her front door one day, shouting at me that if I went past her house again she would throw a bucket of water over me. I expect I stayed on my side of the road for a while after that.

Me and My Bike

b 1949

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

Yarmouth and Thorley Voices

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