We thought this was an evocative memory of a walk in Brentford in the 1950s, told by Ian Ashton who was then a boy.
I was born and brought up in Brentford. Until I left home I lived in Orchard Road, backing onto what was then called Brentford Central station. It would have been the very late 1950s and early 60s when my father used to take us for walks through Syon Park down to Old Isleworth by the London Apprentice where we would have a look at the river and wonder why they did not still run a ferry over to the other side. Through Syon Park we would watch the sows with their piglets. The enclosure was in front of the wall surrounding the house proper and all that separated us from the pigs was an iron fence through which the piglets could have easily scampered, although they never did.
We would walk back along the London Road, past Coty’s offices as were there then, and under the little yellow railway bridge where sometimes there would be the excitement of a train chugging into the docks. We were too little to see very much more than a funnel and the top of a black driving cab, and a little later the top of a guard’s van rattling overhead, but it had an air of mystery of where it was going and from where it had come, and of course great clouds of dirty smoke which added to the fun.
We would cross the old Brentford bridge and, although we already had had a clear view of everything from the side leading down to the towing path we insisted our father would lift us up so that we could look into the mysterious world below of barges sitting in the black water and the lock where the gates never seemed to be shut.
On the High Street side was a little wooden shop, just a single room really, jutting out over the water itself, where mother would buy knitting wool. Inside was boring for little boys but there was the excitement of expecting at any moment the shop would slide from its perch into the oily canal below. Needless to say back then nothing lived in the water and everyone knew that if you fell in you were shipped off to Wed Mid (West Middlesex Hospital) to have your stomach pumped out. At least that was received wisdom.
We would set off back to Orchard Road and wonder at the grave yard of Saint Lawrence’s Church, which was still open then. If we were thirsty there was a drinking fountain in the wall but we never really fancied drinking from it because it seemed logical to our childish minds that the water must have run over all the dead bodies in their graves.
The shops on the north side of the road, even then, gave the air of being closed, except one, which was an antique, probably junk really, shop with never a sign of a customer but always a fencing mask and foil in the window for some reason.
It seemed a long way to little legs, getting tired by this time, to the court and a duck through the Butts, which even then was a car park, with the Seamen’s mission below you, the river Brent at its back and wide expanse of lawn to its front, on which we were never allowed to run. Through the Upper Butts with the high, brick walls to their gardens which seemed to bulge at the bottom on the river side of the road, as if they were about to collapse and the double fronted house on the right hand side where someone had model second world war airplanes hanging from the ceiling. We always paused to look at them and envy whoever it was.
There were two ways to go from Somerset Road, either straight out to opposite the library or down Church Walk. Church walk had the novelty of the little wooden bridge over the railway line and a view along the straight. Back then there were still trains going into the distillery sidings and you could see clear down to Syon Lane. The alternative was to go into Boston Manor Road where there was the thrill of the Cottage Hospital. On the Half Acre side was a sort of conservatory with frosted glass. Every one said that they did operations in that room and you could see them cutting up the patients. It may or not have been true but I must have passed a thousand times and never once saw any taking place. That didn’t stop me from believing it to be gospel truth.
Too little to see over the bridge onto the railway line but you could pull yourself up on the brick wall of the bridge and peek through one of the small holes in the wooden fence on top, to let the smoke out from the trains we were told, and get a view of nothing much. Still you had to look. There was a row of sycamore trees on the down slope from the bridge, fenced off from the roads, which was universally called “The Fields” and we were allowed to drop through the three bar iron fence to walk behind the advertising hoardings to the other side by the double tree whose trunk split halfway up and was known as “The Catapult”. The fields were split into one long piece and two smaller pieces opposite the King’s Arms pub, but the smaller pieces held no interest to us and consequently had no name. There were green, wooden bollards at the top of the steps and it was obligatory to put a hand on each one and swing back and forth before scurrying down them. The kerb of the road to what was then the goods yard, which also served as a cricket pitch where the stumps we chalked on the wall remained for decades, was made of a single piece of railway track and we were convinced that it was the remains of a branch line. That was it then. We were back home and pretty much worn out for the rest of the day.
Another memory of old Brentford in the 1920-30s is part the story in the novel, 'The Rising of the Moon' (1945) by Brentford author Gladys Mitchell book. See our review.
If you would like to add to, or comment on our articles, please use our Comment Form, so we can share them.
