I started work at Mills in 1934, as soon as I left school.
The first job you had, if you went there as a nipper, was as an errand boy. They had a pair of trucks and you went round and collected up the empty beer bottles. You went round with the empty truck first thing Monday morning to collect up all the empty beer bottles from various people who you knew had bought the beer; that was the first job. Phil Kelsey b 1920
Advertisement for Mills grocers, 1920s, 1930s
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
Advertisement for Kelseys Confectioners in the Square, 1920s, 1930s
Laurie Kelsey was in charge. Laurie, we didn’t know her by that. We used to call her Aunt Annie. She was nice, she was deaf, wasn’t she. She used to have long tray of sweets uncovered, with a glass top on and she always had a chair in the corner for us little’uns to get up on to so we could have a good look to see what sweets she’d got. She sold toys and all. Next to that was Saxbury’s souvenirs, postcards, mostly things about the Island, Yarmouth and all that. Phil Kelsey b 1920
We used to run into Kelsey’s, stand on the chair they had and choose our sweets from the big glass jars. We couldn’t see over the counter. Pat Burt nee Adams b 1929 and Annette Haynes nee Holloway b 1929
b 1929
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
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
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