Dave
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Post by Dave on May 23, 2009 23:33:37 GMT
Thinking back to the first few months in the forums life, reminded me of all the posts merse and I made about our childhood memories growing up In newton Abbot.
I learned that Merse lived as a young lad in Keyberry and while out driving around for my company a man who lived in Keyberry and came flooding back to me.
One thing about growing up in the late 50's and early 60's was so many different tradesmen would call at you home. Yes there were milkmen, but you had the breadman, coalman. logman, the provident man or lady( the only credit available to most in those days) and Johnny the shoe repair man.
He had a face you would never forget and was always dressed in such plain looking clothes and always wore a tie and had those bicycle trouser clips on as he only had a push bike and would go out calling at peoples homes to collect any shoes needing repair.
The repairs were the best job you would ever get done and at a price people in newton could afford, after collecting what shoes he could carry on his bike, he went home and had a shed in the garden where he did all the shoe repairs.
How many times did my mum send me to his house as he was not due to call for a few days and a pair of shoes was needed in a hurry. It could be my mum had to go out to a dance, or I needed them for school on the Monday. You may have had only one pair of good shoes in those days, but they were proper shoes and it was never the case you wore down the heels and then threw them away.
Another well know man who called at your house was Mr Johns the fruit and veg man, he had a Bedford van he came around in and I spent many summer school holidays helping him on his rounds.
He gave credit to most of his customers as it was the only way many would have been able to get veg for their Sunday dinners.He lived near Ogwell Cross and kept pigs and turkeys on a small holding next to his bungalow.
One day while helping him we had to dash back to his home. a very old and large sow was dying and he needed to get it to the slaughter house up at milber before it died. They would not take it if it was dead, we got to his home but no one else was there.
So it was him and me the small kid both trying to move a half dead sow into a trailer to get him to the slaughter house. We battled for nearly an hour and finally won and drove off as fast as that old Bedford would go.
The sow was still breathing and we thought we would make it, only for the daft thing to give out the loudest sigh as we got to the gates of the slaughter house and stopped breathing. We had to take him back to Ogwell and maybe that was the reason Mr Johns was selling cheap pork joints the following week.
I also helped him one Christmas but made my mind up there and then never to offer to help at Christmas ever again. It was to kill and then pluck his turkeys. what a job that was and It was in my mind very cruel. Something I never was as I hate anything to have to suffer and I only made their suffering worse than it should have been.
After catching them you had to put them in a sack with a hole in the end for their heads to poke through. Then hang then upside down and whacked then on the head with a large wooden handle. I was a crap shot and when I hit them they were not killed. only going mad inside the sack, making the chance to wack them again almost impossible.
Another famous Newton trader was Mark, he had a van that was always parked near the Alexandra picture house. he walked with a stick and always wore a hat. Crowds would gather at his van and I remember my mum buying a set of bird figures from him.
He was a good old fashioned market trader but I expect he has been dead for years now.
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merse
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Post by merse on May 24, 2009 11:26:53 GMT
 On a point of accuracy, from the age of four I was actually brought up as a kid in St Lukes Road Aller Park which at the time backed right onto Aller Brake and Milber Woods and all those wonderful places for a kid to run wild and free. Keyberry was my first marital home until we moved into my parents old home in St Lukes Road until we could afford a first house of our own in Netley Road where the paternal relative I eventually sold to (Ronnie Ellis) STILL lives to this very day! NA certainly WAS full of characters in our childhood days Dave, I well remember "Shoe Mender Johnnie" ~ I always reckoned he had a face like a horse (poor guy), and in addition there was Reg Ryan the fishmonger with his little motor tricycle van, The horse drawn Fruit & Veg man with his fine Shire horse steed "Chocolate" pulling him round................my dad used to send me out after them with a bucket and shovel to collect "Chocolate's dumps" for his garden manure! There was Les Robinson the Gas Board maintenance man who used to shin up the gas lit lamp posts without the incumbency of any ladder so fit was he! Trevor Field and his dad the mobile milkies who later started security firm "Marfield" was it? They used to call at ten thirty pm around our house at the start of their round! There was a bike riding knife sharpener, and "Onion Johhnie" from Brittany who used to come over on the trawlers from St Malo to Plymouth and keep tons of onions in a shed in Plymouth, then string 'em onto his heavy old bike and ride all around South Devon selling his produce through the late summer and early Autumn............great hard working characters who earned our respect through their reliability and value for money ethics. In the case of "Onion Johnnie" we never knew exactly which week he would come, only that he would eventually appear and my gran swore by his chalottes for her pickled onions which she made by the score and stored for sale terra cotta jars full with brown paper covering the top held on with string. There was also a CO-OP travelling "shop" that was some sort of converted coach serving the outlying parts of NA and the villages and who remembers the old CO-OP store in Bank Street complete with it's sawdust on the floor, little wooden chairs for the old dears to rest on and the fantastic catapult container that the counter assistant would put the cash and bill in before whizzing it off to the cash booth with a pull of a sort of "toilet handle", and then it would come hurtling back with the change for mum? Only fifty years ago but it seems like another century now (Christ it WAS another century!  ) I remember gran holding court one day and telling us kids that a firm she called "Trescos" was opening up one of these new fangled supermarkets down by St Leonards Tower and how it would be the end of the shops in Newton as we knew them ~ she knew a thing or two did gran  Some of the old businesses hung on around there though, like Tower Cycles where my Uncle Freddie Byrne ran things in his forever greasy boiler suit amidst apparent chaos and confusion; but he could get a stricken racing bike back back on the road in seconds for the "Mid Devon" when out on the service motor bike hurtling around behind the peleton like a demented lunatic resplendent in goggles and back to front cap on Sunday mornings could Uncle Freddie! ;D Those early gorse blossom days with the buzzing of the bees out at Liverton and Knighton Heath at the height of summer planted a love of cycle racing in my heart that remain to this day. How about Bulpin's Garage that always seemed to feature one of old Mr Bulpin's vintage Bentley's in the showroom window? His primrose coloured Bentley "Blower" was my particular favourite as I was lucky enough to be given a lift in it to Newton Races one fine Autumn morning by Mr Bulpin's Chauffeur ~ Les Kennard, and I sat in the back like Little Lord Fauntelroy....................I wonder if Mr Kennard had to honk the hand held horn to get any grubby little urchins like you Dave out of the way as we made our stately progress down Wolborough Street and past the tower?  ..................and so to "Mark" with his side opening van parked up beside the Alexandra opposite the old fire station, sporting that "halo" the remains of an old straw hat he had and full of the old tat only your barmy aunt would buy for her sitting room; he mad a mint from locals and grockles alike but particularly the once a week visitors who bussed in from places like Liverton, Huxnor Cross and Holne ~ little communities only a few miles out of town but because of the restraints of late fifties and early sixties transport (one bus a week on Market Day and one of Saturday) already living in a different age than up town, buzzing and humming market day NA with it's bleating of sheep, mooing of cattle and the cacophony of the auctioneers as background noise.
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Dave
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Post by Dave on May 24, 2009 18:30:18 GMT
Are you sure you have put your correct age when you signed up to join the forum merse? gas street lamps? I would love to know on what streets you remember them. I grew up in Oakland Road and I'm sure the street lights were all electric. I did grow up believing that Oakland Road was built by prisoners of war, but I really don't know if that was true or not. Bulpins Garage who could forget it and I would love to know if you ever bought a bike from inside Tower Cycles. I only ask as I could only ever look at the ones outside in the lane beside the shop, those were all the second hand bikes.I thought you might have mentioned the very best shop that was near the clock tower. I can't remember what it was called( was it Tower Handycraft?)but it was my must go to and go in shop. There were two men who ran it I believe, dressed in suits? but you went there to buy your airfix kits, model airplanes and trick cigarettes. Mind you all those great little shops are now gone and the whole place is pedestrianised, even Bank Street and Courtney Street, all around the tower and the street outside Austins. Mind you Austins seems to have taken over half the town up that end and I never understood why the once great Globe Hotel closed down. I was in Newton a few weeks ago near Bank Street and one thing that I saw made me happy. As you will know Asda has a large store there now and the Odeon Picture house has long been gone, but do you remember that very small stone arched footbridge that was behind the odeon? well its still there and I just had to walk over it. While I was waiting at the town hall in Torquay for our team to arrive on the bus, I was fascinated to hear what must have been to old Newton Men were talking about. One thing they one did say was that he had been to Brinstons to get his hair cut, but it was not the same these days he claimed as its the sons who now run it. I think we all went there for our haircuts. Mind you if you were brave you could have gone to Tommy's In Courtney Street, I never did after hearing so many tales how he would drop the scissors in your lap and then take for ever to retrieve them  Going back to Aller it was a sad day when the Common was lost to housing, it was a place I loved to go as a child and then play in Milber woods. At the party on Friday I got to see Mello yello again, I love talking to her husband not only because he is a hotrod driver, but more because who is father was. He was the one and only PC Loram, he was one policeman you never gave any lip too. Brian the son claims his dad has said he never clipped any kids around the ears, sorry Brian I got plenty from him, mind you they were the days policemen got respect, but even I find it hard to give any to many of todays policemen. One final thing about market day, it was the only day pubs were allowed to open all day, unlike today when the can everyday. I loved market day as then there was no ugly carpark built over it and you would go there ready with your stick in hand. Waiting for a Lorry to pull in and load up the pigs or sheep. You would be in there getting them out of the pens and driving them toward the ramp at the back of the lorry. You would not even be allowed to that these days with all the health and safety nonsense, still I'm glad I grew up then as life really was in my view so much better in many respects. Kids being happy with what they got and at Xmas it was small gifts but they were bought with love and real thought, now unless it costs £100 the kid will chucked it back at you. Values and principles were important then and its those two things that now seem lost in so many are something that should be installed to todays children at birth. |
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Dave
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Post by Dave on May 24, 2009 18:40:21 GMT
Forgot to say about Marfield security, it was started by Mr Field but he had a partner who was called Morris ? the name I understood was Mar for Morris and Field The man morris was always at my house as he seemed to be a good friend of my mother, well thats what she told me |
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merse
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Post by merse on May 24, 2009 20:04:33 GMT
Are you sure you have put your correct age when you signed up to join the forum merse? gas street lamps? I would love to know on what streets you remember them.................... and I would love to know if you ever bought a bike from inside Tower Cycles. .......................One thing they one did say was that he had been to Brinstons to get his hair cut, but it was not the same these days he claimed as its the sons who now run it. I think we all went there for our haircuts. At the party on Friday I got to see Mello yello again, I love talking to her husband not only because he is a hotrod driver, but more because who is father was. He was the one and only PC Loram, he was one policeman you never gave any lip too. Brian the son claims his dad has said he never clipped any kids around the ears, sorry Brian I got plenty from him, mind you they were the days policemen got respect, but even I find it hard to give any to many of todays policemen. I swear to you the original lights up in St Lukes Road as well as all the Milber Estate were gas powered in the fifties. As for getting a new bike from Tower Cycles ~ no way I'm afraid my parents finances never ran to that and it was one of those you mention out in the lane at the back for me, ably reconditioned and maintained by Uncle Freddie. For haircuts it was Percy Sanders in East Street who was a dab hand at clipping the top of your ear off each time you went, which seemed to be every other week or perhaps that's why I only ever had one brother due to my Dad's frequency of visiting "just before the weekend" if you know what I mean Later when Percy retired, it was Roy Hambley who opened a shop just down Queen Street round about where the takeaways are all now..................his son Dave was a Newton Spurs compatriot of Pete Godfrey for sure and someone I occasionally bump into at away games with the Gulls these days..............yeah, yeah, yeah; I knew all about Tommy but that sort of thing wasn't for me if you please; but wasn't he in Sherborne Road not Courtenay Street? Bert Loram was our local copper and his son Michael and of course younger son Brian went to Decoy School with me. Bert was a great guy whom we all respected and I well remember his party piece where he would stand back to the living room wall and make his helmet "rise up" apparently unaided. I knew Bert originated from Brixham and am pretty sure he was related to Mark Loram's dad Billy. Dunno about getting any clips round the ear but I DO remember when he cuaght me running accross the railway tracks as a short cut home from school and marching me back to the main Torquay Road and up the flight of steps to my mum's home clutching my ear between his finger and thumb. I was absolutely crapping myself ~ not because of him but for the beating I knew was coming once me and mum were left alone! I knew the Brimson's well and I guess the ones carrying on the business now are the grand sons of the founder who started the business in the early sixties. |
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2009 21:29:58 GMT
Newton Abbot gas lit in the 1950s? Well, I stayed in a gas lit pub in Bradford as recently as 2005, the night before Dickie Hancox put in that infamous substitute appearance at Rochdale. The New Beehive Inn is pretty close to Manningham Lane which had a lovely atmosphere as Friday prayers co-incided with with a tasty affair between Bradford City and Chesterfield. I'm not sure it can always offer a similar package but I had full-volume music from a nearby venue until 3am, a fire alarm and breakfast served by African women in African dress.  |
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Dave
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Post by Dave on May 24, 2009 22:02:48 GMT
Merse you and your gas lamps ;D you will be telling me next there once was a boy who pushed a bike up Buckland Break with a basket on the front full of hovis bread.
Your memory has failed you for once dear man, as Tommy's barbers was above a shop in Courtney street, probably close to where the new market walk was built.He would come out and take his dog for a walk at 1pm when the one o'clock hooter went off.
For those who do not know what the hooter was, it went of every day in Newton at 1pm and could be heard all over the town. Was it just to let people know it was dinner time? I would love to find out when it was stopped and where it was as I never knew.
There was and still is I believe a barbers in Sherborne Road and we just called it Highweek barbers, it was close to the Torbay fish and chip shop. I often had my hair cut there as a small boy as my auntie lived in Sherborne Road. She had a house that was opposite what is now Bridge House, in those days there was only a wall there and you could look over and see the river lemon, much like you could where the bus station once was.
Next to my aunties house was a small lane and down there was the Pentecostal church, I did go in once and I loved the singing and all the hallelujahs. As a small boy I hated what happen to all the kittens born back then, those houses had very dark and scary cellars in them and were full of rats from the river.
So cats were always kept down there to try and keep the rats numbers down. But many kittens were born ever year and while still blind they were put in sacks and thrown over the wall into the river, where was the RSPCA in those days?
Talking of fish and chip shops, you must have gone into Will's ( not sure I have spelt that correctly) as it was just down from the grammar school and next to that very old building St Marys? only a small cobbled lane separated them and that lane led up to Abbotsbury church.
Across the road was the Seven Stars Pub, that is one part of Newton that has really changed over the years. The old narrow lane behind the cattle market and where the RAOB club once was is now a main road and many blocks of flats are there.
I was once laid out unconscious in Will's chip shop and I only had myself to blame for it. At seventeen I had bought a scooter and became a Mod, yet since the age of 14 I had been a skinhead.
I will never forget the trouble Me, Roy Trays and Charlie Caunter got in when we turned up at Highweeks boy school with a number one haircut.We were banned from all school trips and how strange as in the past haircuts like those were given to kids to rid them of nits, not that we had them mind.
I loved the clothes as a skinhead, you normal wear would be jeans with big turn-ups so all could see your doc martin bover boots, a checked shirt and braces.
Your smart gear was a checked shirt, two tone trousers, a pair of Loafers and your smart crombie coat. Mind you as a mod I did not wear a parker, instead I had a American air force trench coat that was so big on me it came down to my ankles. Bought in the army and navy surplus store in lower Queen Street.
I had been to a dance in the Catholic primary school above what was then Highweek girls school. All night I had been cheeking a group of rockers and had pushed my luck but nothing happen and when it finished I went to Wills to get some chips.
I was sat outside on my scooter with three young girls talking to me, when three motorbikes pulled up. Their leader the one I had cheeked the most came up and said to me If I had any sense I should just ride of into the night right now.
Well I had the three girls close by me and I said to him I move for no one, the next thing I remember was coming around on the tables in Wills chip shop, I could not believe next morning just how bad my face was smashed up.
Did you ever go to the den we had, I'm sure Cameron and Spratty were always there with us. It was in an old building in Bearnes lane just down from the post office on the left. You went over a wall and into a courtyard, this had stables in it and upstairs it was all empty the only thing there was an old safe.
We would put our secret documents in there as we played as being secret agents, you could walk along the floors all the way to the end shop that fronted the market, only it was in use and you had to be very quite up that end.
I do not know Roy Hambley but know is son very well, he is older than me and a very keen TUFC fan, I did work with him about eight years ago at a company called DSS, I was a driver he was the sales manager and had a very smart office.
The company got into trouble and is gone now, Dave now does parcel deliveries in his car, before Toolfix moved to our new home Dave went into the unit next door to collect his parcels. His son also does the same job. We have had many great talks about TUFC over the last few years, but I don't see him now.
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merse
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Post by merse on May 25, 2009 3:28:42 GMT
Merse you and your gas lamps ;D you will be telling me next there once was a boy who pushed a bike up Buckland Break with a basket on the front full of hovis bread. Well I used to push a bike load of newspapers up the Brake every day....................I did the papers for the newsagent in the Queensway shops with my good mate Rob Hewings who lived in Penn Inn Close. If I was bunking off to watch football on the road though I used to get cover for myself ~ often Rob and come to think of it, if you had a paper from there; I was probably your paper boy! My Great Aunt and uncle had a gas lit house until the day they moved out in very old age (around the eighties) and it was in Highweek Road next door but three to the Heavitree Arms. The old place had seen better times and they basically lived in one of the two kitchens and the old servants' room which had an array of bells along one wall which could be rung from all the other rooms in the house by pulling on velvet bell cords. My Auntie Gertie used to have me at her house every Tuesday and I would drive her mental running round the decrepit old place like a little rat pulling on those cords and playing "Hallelujah" on the bells!  One of the kitchens had a cobbled floor with a well in the middle and the other kitchen had a hole in the ceiling right over the cooker so that I could drop a piece of masonry right into the cooking pot from upstairs when she wasn't looking! Most of her cooking though was done in a range built into the fire place in the servant's room where her and my uncle would copiously rig their "wireless" up to an old car battery at 4.30 pm every day to get the racing results and if I made a noise that would disturb them they would admonish me with calls of "''ark,'ark" in their old Deb'nshire dialect. One by one, the old gas mantles were crumbling away and so, they used to carry an old oil lamp from room to room and hang it on ceiling hooks from where it spread an eery and waxy light. If you went into the front room the whole place used to shudder from the vibrations of the lorries passing up and down the Ashburton Road and pieces of ceiling used to regularly fall down!! Old uncle Bert was one of the few survivors of going into battle in the Great War on horse back, but his mounted cavalry soon lost all their horses and he spent the next four years as a mule handler running ammunition through the trenches to the front and he used to regularly regale me with horrific tales of dismemberment and amputation......................not really the politically correct way to treat a young impressionable child especially if he happened to be carving a joint at the time!  He was a dead ringer for "Albert Steptoe" in fact and the whole house closely resembled the legendary rag and bone men's humble abode in "Oil Drum lane" on the telly. I had another old aunt who lived just down Highweek Road on the other side and she was as mad as a box of frogs that one as she had suffered a total breakdown when the love of her life was lost at sea, sunk with all his mates by a German U Boat in the Second World War. Of course young 'uns like me never grasped the complexities of such suffering and tormented her like hell just to wind her up to do something odd and boy would she do some odd things...................once she fled the house dressed only in her knickers arms folded holding her baps and we thought it was a huge laugh, not knowing the cruelty we were inflicting on the poor old dear. I remember the one o'clock "hooter" well, as well as the fire siren that used to summon the part time fire fighters to their station; the old gas works and the power station and huge cooling tower that dominated the skyline along the banks of the old Templar Canal beside the racecourse in the old days.....................how Newton has changed Dave! Further down was what we called "Treacle Hill" ~ a steep unmade climb up beside the old St Mary's Church that was replaced by the big one in Abbotsbury and indeed "Wills's Chippie"..................Susan, the daughter; went to school with me at the Grammar and I well remember once sneaking out of school with Rob Hewings to go and get some "scribbles" (remember those free handouts?) when we were spied by a teacher who bellowed at us "Merson, Hewings; what are you doing eating chips in the street?..................and with NO caps on!" ::)Well Rob had a "pot" on his fractured wrist at the time and so he smashed the pot on a wall to try and convince the old cnut that we were en route to the hospital for a re-cast and that I was looking after him. It's no wonder they turned out eccentrics like me with such dreadful, old buffers teaching us! |
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merse
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Post by merse on May 25, 2009 3:52:16 GMT
Newton Abbot gas lit in the 1950s? Well, I stayed in a gas lit pub in Bradford as recently as 2005, the night before Dickie Hancox put in that infamous substitute appearance at Rochdale. The New Beehive Inn is pretty close to Manningham Lane which had a lovely atmosphere as Friday prayers co-incided with with a tasty affair between Bradford City and Chesterfield. I'm not sure it can always offer a similar package but I had full-volume music from a nearby venue until 3am, a fire alarm and breakfast served by African women in African dress. [ There's nowhere quite like the Islamic Republic of Bradford to go and watch United on the road next season and if you can only afford one away trip I urge you to go there if you have never done so folks. Surrounded by mosques including one like a huge Kashmir fortress, Valley Parade is tucked into the hillside along Manningham Lane, the red light and poorest part of a non too advantaged city and Bartie's tale is so evocative of the place. The last time we went there, we encountered some mosque elders blocking one of the cobbled side streets with piles of old furniture so that we didn't nick the parking spaces they wanted for their users and when we got back they had set light to the pyre to keep warm! Playing out the closing minutes of a game there as the sun sets with the calls to prayer from the minarets across the valley and the sight of garishly lit mosques in green, pink and lilac are surreal indeed. |
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petef
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Post by petef on May 26, 2009 22:06:20 GMT
Merse
I used to work with a Rob Hewings at WBB , not sure same but moved across to East Anglia at least 25 years a go if not more.
Bruv in law Ronnie still in Netley ( met my sister on the football special train fronm NA to Pymouth around 1969 - 2-1 to us If I remember correctly Alan Welsh scored for us, my first away match) Ive lived in Keyberry Rd for the last 24 years and remember the cobbler who used to repair shoes at a very reasonabl price top job to as my other half used to have her stilletoes re heeled.
Small world aint it!
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petef
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Post by petef on May 26, 2009 22:13:43 GMT
Forgot to say about Marfield security, it was started by Mr Field but he had a partner who was called Morris ? the name I understood was Mar for Morris and Field The man morris was always at my house as he seemed to be a good friend of my mother, well thats what she told me I see Maurice quite regularly as I work on most of his many vehicles. Still has a twinkle in his eye... ;D |
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He was a dead ringer for "Albert Steptoe" in fact and the whole house closely resembled the legendary rag and bone men's humble abode in "Oil Drum lane" on the telly.