Notes on “The Journey from Bexley”
Looking through these photographs again, I found myself remembering quite a lot more than what I sent in after first seeing them. I apologise for the one or two items I have repeated, but hope the stories add to the most interesting accounts I have read so far. I have listed the relevant photos in the order in which they appear before each paragraph.
1 I often walked my two cairn terriers, Mac and Susie, across the fields here and also sinfully crossed the field on the right on horseback, returning to the stables at Eltham by way of the A2, after an eventful ride on Dartford Heath. My grandparents are buried in the churchyard at St. Mary’s in the background, but overcrowding has made it very difficult to find the plot.
2, 3&4 No more farming takes place here I see.
5&6 I had no name for the rough path to Wansunt Road, but I remember Dorothy Squires, the singer, who lived near the end of it and owned two giant poodles. She took them to swim in Chislehurst ponds and would then bring them to the kennels shop for a bath and trim. This was my pocket-money job and I also exercised the kennels dogs for the owner, Mary Porterfield, from Maryfield in Joydens Wood Road, from where I learned a number of interesting routes across Dartford Heath. The little shop was once a shoe menders, nearly opposite St. Mary’s, at the start of North Cray Road. I had a couple of school-friends in Baldwins Park, Summerhouse Drive. There was Clare Hayes whose bicycle was the first I fell off and Sylvia Gyselman (not sure about the spelling) in whose house we held a school class when there were too many children evacuated to open the Maypole School. The path to Coldblow we called the Tinkly Path because of the metallic echo from footsteps.
7 Hill Crescent – the house on the left was demolished by a high explosive bomb around 1940. Another school friend, Helen Bower (who became a doctor) lived further along on the right.
8,9,10,11 I think the house (Mount Eagle) was also demolished, this time by a flying bomb (V2). I’m amazed the wall survived. Luckily I believe no-one was hurt in either incident. My friend in Wansunt Road was Megan Foster.
14 The Dip and another wartime memory. “One of ours” was shot down and crashed into the front garden of a house on the left at the top of the hill, almost opposite Michael Walker’s house. The plane damaged the house a bit where it landed, but it was repaired. The pilot parachuted into Joydens Wood – it was said he was caught up in a tree. For some reason I used to have recurrent nightmares about this spot except there was also a train running down the road!
15&16 On the right behind the fence was a sweet chestnut tree. We used to get through the fence for the nuts. There was a serious accident on the Maypole side at the top of the hill, when a wheel came off a tractor and hit a passer by.
Audrey Hughes (Jacko at that time)