Reader’s memories of growing up in Southfield Road

I was born in Southfield Road in 1928, my late brother in 1923. I lived there until I got married in 1950.

My brother, apart from war service, lived there for all of his life, which would have been 85 years, a record I think.

I could see our house in your photograph, outwardly it hasn’t changed, but inside the houses are unrecognisable from the 1930s.

We still had a front room, only used on high days and holidays.

The middle room had the black kitchener, our main source of heating, polished with black lead.

The kettle was boiled on it, the flat irons were heated on it, jacket potatoes sometimes baked in the oven.

We had no electricity in the thirties, gas lighting and outside loo.

The bedrooms were freezing as your writer said, on saying all that we grew up healthily, you had to be really ill to see the doctor as no NHS, you had to pay.

They were happy days growing up in Southfield Road.

We had what so many children don’t have today and that was freedom.

Playing in the street, playing hopscotch or marbles in the gutter.

Everyone knew each other, no locked doors.

Most of us went to Dominion Road, now Downsbrook, school from age 5 to 11. There wasn’t any Whytemead then.

I remember Highfield and Oakland dairies. They used to deliver by horse and cart. When they had gone by, some women used to go out with a bucket and spade for the manure to put on their gardens.

The shops, Mr and Mrs Keen had the grocers on the north side of the road. I used to stand in the shop and listen to their son, Ron, playing the piano. I thought it was great.

On the other corner was Mr Buswells hardware shop, which sold many things. We used to go there for paraffin.