Church Path, Mitcham And The People That Lived There

A Memory of Mitcham.

I was born in Collierswood Maternity Home, a very short time before it was bombed during the Second World War. The year was 1944. My family being homeless were housed in requisitioned properties in Mitcham. We were among the many poor families that seemed to have been moved from one house to another. We finally found ourselves, unknown to us, entering the last house we were ever to occupy in Mitcham. We were to remain there for over twenty years. As luck would have it, the council had found us a house in Church Path, the London Road end. Because the street was a cul- de-sac we seemed to have adopted  a very close knit society, both parents and children. As I continue to write this, the memories simply come flooding back, including the names of the children I grew up with: Heather and Gilbert Allen, Mary and Tommy Sommerford, Lilly and Sidney Parker. Then came the kids from Broadway Gardens, Ian Robinson, Franky Fyfoot (Nobber) and his younger brother Johnny, and their sister Margeret, Peter Meres with his younger brother Christopher, and two very special boys, Raymond Giuter and Derek Nicolson.
At the age of five I began my school years at the Star School, for infants and juniors. I am not proud to admit this, but my first day meant the first day away from my mother, and I cried like a five year old. Only to be expected I suppose. New friendships were born, some were to last over ten years.
Across from the school lay the Wandgas sports ground where we would all run around, jumping and skipping, as if we knew what we were doing, the teachers called it the 'Sports Day'. To us though, it was a day free from the classrooms, giving us the chance to roll on the grass and play in the sunshine. Even then time seemed to pass so quickly.
King George VI died, and Princess Elizabeth was crowned Queen. Church Path and its occupants rose to the occasion and filled the street with tables and chairs. Bottles of Tizer, R White's lemonade, icecream and cakes were all on the menu. All the children received a mug celebrating the coronation.
There were so many special times of the year that seemed to bring all our neighbours out in the street, one of them being the fifth of November. The whole street gathered things to burn, and low and behold after a week or so, there stood this magnificent bonfire, sadly though not very much money was available for fireworks in those days. My sister and me however had made some money the previous weeks, collecting 'A Penny for the Guy'. We would stand outside Mitcham Station and Mitcham Junction. My mother thought it was begging, we thought it was fun, until one night someone, remarked on how good they thought the Guy was, and poked it with their finger. I caught it straight in the ribs and cried out, to the great shock of the person with the finger! Needless to say we were removed, and told quite clearly never to return. The evening of the fifth brought people from other parts of Mitcham, to let off their fireworks around our fire, and generally have a good time. The reason for this being that Church Path was not only a cul-de-sac, it was also an unmade road, nothing but an open space of ash. I, being a boy, spent all my money on Paines Fireworks, made in Mitcham, I bought them from the tobaconist-sweetshop, just across the London Road, Hayms was the name and penny bangers was the game. As the fire burned down people returned to their homes, but the children of Church Path went to bed with two things on their mind - first, that first light on the sixth would give them the opportunity to find unexploded fireworks, and the second of course was to find the jacket potatoes that had been laid in the dying embers of the grand fire the night before. Like the Indians of North America, the fire had given us warmth, entertainment and now would slowly cook our spuds through the night. What more could you wish for? I would walk to school on a cold November morning, carrying a hot potato in one pocket and having removed the gray ash from the other, contemplated the first bite of my warm breakfast. These were simple pleasures, enjoyed in simple times.
I failed the eleven plus, which would have, if I had passed, taken me to the Mitcham Grammer School for Boys. Instead I followed another path, one which led me to The Western Road Secondary School for Boys. It was not co-ed then, the upper half of the school was for the boys, and the lower half... you guessed it, the girls. Sad to say, but I cannot remember all the boys names, I spent the next four years with, but here are a few: Peter Ballard, David Grayston, David Court, David Cook, Allen Mead, Brian Nightengale, Ian Weir, Micheal Stone, Victor Hilton, Allen Bowdery, Clive Ried, George Gould, Christopher Aldious, Graham Lavel, Peter Brunton, Derek Potter, David Saunders, John Higgins, John Higginson, Alan Adaway, Billy Stringer, Colin Russel, Anthony Thomson, Peter Townsend, Micheal Chadwick, Micky Reilly, Billy King.  Some I have named are no longer with us, but I suppose as we grow older, this is to be expected. I no longer live in Mitcham, in fact I no longer live in England. All my family, those that I have left, live in Kent.
I would like to thank all of you, that have taken the time to put your memories on this site, it has given me so much pleasure. It is nice to know that I was not the only one to remember Mitcham in a loving way.