Childhood in Little Ealing

Mrs Pat Bailey wrote with some memories of her childhood.

We all grew up in Murray Road - I was born in May 1939, when the war started I was just a couple of months old. My brother was 7 years older than me and went to Little Ealing School. We were evacuated with our mother down to the West Country to get away from the bombings but my mother didn't like it so we returned. My brother and another boy went to Derby and I joined them when I was about three and returned when I was six. I started school in Derby and then went to Little Ealing for a year when I returned, until a place could be found for me at St.Anne's Convent in Little Ealing Lane. I was there from age 7/8 years until I was 15.

I knew most of the history of the convent but you have much more detail than I knew and it is so interesting.

I lived in Murray Road until I was 21 and moved to Hanworth when I got married. Have lived in this house on Hounslow/Whitton borders for 37 years.

She had some wonderful stories to tell about the area, so did my mother who died nine years ago at the age of 84. she always told me about the fields and country lanes up to Boston Manor through the Ride, and Northfields - just like the description on pages 6 and 7.

Chris Hazell, now living in Devon, also wrote.

I was born on 5 November 1944, apparently in the middle of an air raid, and put under the bed for safety. I lived at 11 Bramley Road until 1958 when we moved to Buckinghamshire. I attended Little Ealing Primary School, and then Walpole Grammar School.

Numbers 9 and 11 did in fact have a Bramley apple tree in the garden, and I have always thought that the houses may have been built on the site of an orchard.

Bramley Road was a very peaceful place in those times. Very few people in the street owned cars. My dad was a mechanic at Perivale Motors, and so we were the exception.The road was however very dangerous, as the crossroads near us had no road markings whatsoever, and there were some serious accidents there. One particular hazard was the laundry vans driven at high speed up and down the road by Teddy Boys.

My childhood was spent in the parks, or playing on the street, using the 'rat runs' created by the maze of alleyways, which we of course knew like the backs of our hands.