Old Byfleet

A Memory of Byfleet.

I was born in 1944. My father was the village doctor as his father had been before. We lived in Granville House, which formed one junction of the road with Clock House and the Blue Anchor, famous for the murder of the landlord some years before. My grandfather had lived at Old Lodge and my cousins the Goodwins lived in Chelsea Cottage, opposite us in Rectory Lane. When my grandparents first lived there in the early 1930s, it was a quiet village of 800 people but when Brooklands was converted to Vickers Armstrongs main aircraft factory, the population exploded.
Of the shops near our home, there was a green grocers, whose name I forget, then Elkins the tobacconist, and a cafe on the corner; the general grocer Digby's stores (where the payments used to be paid at a little kiosk at the end of the shop), Byfleet Motors weher we used to get the accumulator recharged for our wireless so we could listen to Dick Barton, and beyond that the Post Office opposite Derisley's farm.
Further along there was a Chemist and a hardware store on Oyster Road and there had been a large hotel opposite which was pulled down about 1950. Then Tylers where my father restocked with gin, Venn's the butcher, and a funeral director on the corner opposite the Village School next the Fire Station. Next to Lloyds Bank, Douglas Hamilton the famous racing driver had his garage.
My father used to play cricket every week, while we used to play in the field next to it where the M25 now runs.
Anything I've missed?

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