ST CEDD`S CHURCH
PARISHONERS` MEMORIES


My thanks to Geoff Pettit and Richard Cooper, the authors of the book, published in October 1998, "Shrub End Looking Back", for being able to use material from their publication.

Miss Ella Warren who lives in Shrub End Road was the first headmistress of King's Ford Infants School on the Shrub End Estate. She remembers the opening day of the school on January 7th 1954 when there were 48 children on the roll. It was a bitterly cold winter's and since Christmas Mr Teggin, the school caretaker, together with the school secretary, a Mrs Hislop, and Miss Warren worked hard unpacking books and equipment for this day. By the Christmas of that year there were 327 pupils in the school which was built for 240. Parties and a simple Nativity Play marked the beginning or the Christmas traditions. The Reverend Dick Darby was the first Father Christmas and as he handed out little Presents, one sceptical seven year old shouted "That's not Father Christmas, its the Vicar, he's got his trousers on". Miss Warren was glad thet he had. So this ended their first year of the school which proved to Miss Warren that King's Ford Infants School was, indeed, a Rainbow School.

Geoff Pettit - Memories of Moving to Shrub End. In early March 1951, my parents received notification that their application for a council house was now successful and that Number 6 Eldred Avenue on the new Shrub End estate had been reserved for them and their five sons. We had for the last four years been living in a two-bedroom house in West Stockwell Street; it actually only had one bedroom, the other was a very large landing. The house had been a sixteenth century public house called The Victoria and after it ceased trading as a pub in 1911 (apparently as a soldier had been killed by a bucket) it was converted into two houses. There was no bathroom and the toilet was outside across the yard. On March 21st 1951 we moved into our new luxurious (to us,anyway) four-bedroom house that not only had an outside toilet but an inside one along with a bath. There was an entrance hall, two rooms and a kitchen which included a coke boiler for hot water, a gas copper and a pantry. Upstairs - four bedrooms, two large and two smaller. On the landing was a built-in wardrobe. an airing cupboard and a bathroom/toilet. To both my mum's and dad's delight there was also a fair-sized garden, about 120-ft. deep, and to David`s and Gerry's delight (my two younger brothers), a large old oak tree at the bottom which they and their friends were to spend many happy hours playing in and climbing up; dad even put a swing on one of the strong branches. Built separate from the main house, which was the second in from the end of a terrace, was a nice-sized brick built shed, a coal shed and a toilet. Each house had its own back entrance down a passage at the side of the house and, to finish it off, a small front garden. There was even an attempt at central heating. it was said to be possible to close down the fire in the front room at night and keep it in and this was done by closing an iron cover over the glowing fire last thing at night. There were hot air vents coming from the chimney in the back room and the two bedrooms directly above. The smoke, of course, was not able to come through and nor did much heat from what I remember. On frosty mornings you still had to scrape the ice off the inside of windows. In spite of the much improved comfort, and not to mention extra room, mum was not really happy there for where we had lived before it was a much more of a close knit community, the houses being closer together, she missed that and the friends she made. Another thing that upset her was that only strands of wire divided the back gardens and all the neighbours kids and dogs could and did run straight across, often damaging crops and flowers she was growing. The rest of us settled in O.K. David and Gerry made new friends and after a year or two, I went to sea and, therefore, spent little time there until the early 1960's when we moved from there in 1963 to our own place in Fitzgilbert Road.

Many of the curates who have lived in St. Cedd's House have been very much involved with the Youth Club, Chris Bolton and David Streeter in particular. Chris Bolton left to become vicar of Great Bentley and David Streeter to Rayne, near Braintree and is now vicar of Stradishall in Suffolk. He has appeared many times on the local television and quite recently was depicted as the vicar on roller-skates. Arthur Jones remembers when he helped with the Youth Club and used to arrange for local bands and groups to give free time to play for the young people in return for their using the hall for practice. He said that they would often have over 200 youngsters there at any one time. The condensation was so great that Vera Curnow and her daughter, who also helped with the Club, had to wash the floor and walls over at the end of each evening. On one occasion when there was so many people there, all the clothes pegs in the cloakrooms were full and the girls just piled their coats on the floor. During the evening a young lad came to Arthur and told him that someone had sprayed the fire extinguisher all over the girls' coats. After a week of trying to find the culprit to no avail, another boy came to Arthur and told him that the boy who had first reported the incident was, in fact, the one who had carried out the crime. Shops started to arrive on the Shrub End estate in 1955 and Joan Reynolds remembers the Co-op used to send a caravan there twice a week until it opened its two shops, one was a butcher's and one a grocer's situated in Iceni Square. Other shops at that time were Rothers, Baldwins, Sheppards, Hutts the Chemists and Chesters the Newsagents. People living at the Shrub End estate at that time remember that it was still very much a building site with a considerable number of houses unfinished and in the course of construction. Many of the pavements and pathways were not made up and, therefore, they had very dirty shoes before getting to the bus stop on their way to work. (There were no hedges for them to leave their dirty shoes until they came home as Lily and Ethel Carter did, way back in the 1920's and 30's)




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