Not Easy to Smile

This Friday and Saturday is the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe, in the closing stages of the Second World War.  8th May for most of us, but we should remember that the communities in the Channel Islands would have to wait a further 24 hours before being freed from enemy control on the 9th; every year since the islands have commemorated Liberation Day.

Preparing for VE Day at Pageant Road
COURTESY ANGELA EMERY

We had all been anticipating this date;  a similar experience every young child has from early December, waiting impatiently for Christmas to arrive.  With many staple foods in short supply householders had been saving a little at a time against the ration, and food and drink which would last for a long time, tins, powders, drink would be brought out in readiness for a celebration on the day. 

VJ Day street party in Elm Drive
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

Most of the surviving film we will see on television this week  focused on the mass gatherings in city centres, but more people enjoyed themselves in their localities with their families and  children at street parties.  We know of such parties in Burnham Road, Castle Road, Woodland Drive, Cavendish Road and Longacres, but there are also likely to have been others.  Pianos, wireless radios and gramophones to provide music, chairs and tables borrowed from homes, local churches, and schools and other community buildings; food and drink pooled from home kitchens and brought to the centre of the parties in closed roads; and whatever decorations, bunting and messages could be mustered in the hours beforehand.

These were the brief days of huge relief after six years of everyone's world being turned upside down.  Men serving in the forces, many of whom not returning, families sent to where the war-footing work was; families broken with children evacuated – mums too;  shortage of most materials, including food, and therefore ongoing management of ration books and points.  Many contended with other adults or children billeted in our homes; the frequent fear of being bombed and alerted perhaps in the middle of the night by sirens; living a transient life in shelters.

Bomb damage Selwyn Estate 1944
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

On VE Day the over-riding feeling was relief, all of that was now in the past.  It was over.  Except that it wasn't.  Life wasn't going to return to the peaceful and normal pre-war days.  Rationing would continue until 1954; troops would only return gradually, battles had still to be fought,  the economy was bankrupt, we were persuaded to save everything we could.  Bombed out towns and cities had to be re-built, housing was in acutely short supply, and most products from factories were reserved for export.

Yes, over time, our lives did improve and there was a new normal, moulded gradually over a generation.  On May 8th and 9th 1945 we could relax and look forward, although tens of thousands of families would be commemorating a loved one lost, perhaps with a candle in the window.  It was a brief interval before preparing ourselves for repairing and moving on.

This is a story for our times too; we are again looking forward to that brief interlude, a candle-lighting moment, before preparing ourselves for repairing and moving on.  May 8th and 9th will have more resonance to us this year than on any previous occasion.

Getting Noticed

Our enforced change in routines recently has been encouraging us to take more notice of our surroundings while we take our daily exercise walks.  Observations and inquiries have been received on matters such as the lettering on boundary posts, how buildings sit on their plots, the age of trees, houses which stand out, typefaces on street plates, and so on.  

One walker observed a house of post-war red-brick design among a pre-war pebbledash row in Hazelwood Drive.  To be clear, Hazelwood Drive south.  As with many homes in Beechwood Avenue south and all of Woodland Drive south this 1930s development was the preserve of builder A A Welch.  He had completed Woodland Drive south, both sides, and the odds of Hazelwood Drive south, temporarily reserving plots in each road for a work site which today would be called a compound.  A wedge shape at 1 and 3 Woodland Drive and a larger rectangle between 1 and 11 Hazelwood Drive.

Hazelwood Drive south - a post-war house nestles among the Welch-built
1930s homes; a former builders' compound.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

Having completed all of the odds – but just four pairs on the opposite side – Welch began filling his compound with numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7.  That is as far as was possible before all work stopped for the war.  The sideways between the homes were shared, but the owners of 7 and 13 took an early opportunity to negotiate an extra few feet, biting into the remains of the compound intended to be 9 and 11 when they were eventually built.

Aerial phone taken in March 1939.  Hazelwood Drive is extreme right.
Rectangular builders' compound near bottom end with historic oak tree
in top left corner.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

In the 1950s both the former compounds were finally sold for building, two houses in Woodland, but only one in Hazelwood, thanks to the narrower site resulting from the earlier land transfers.  So we have a post-war red brick home here as well as almost a complete set of evens which were more modern.  And it also answers the other question which has been posed more than once: why is there no number 11 Hazelwood Drive?

A similar query was raised a while back about house numbering in Beechwood Avenue, for which a certain answer is not clear; and for a development which progressed along the road in sequence, is rather puzzling.  From Beaumont Avenue we have numbers 1 and 3, then 3a and 5, 7 and 9 and so on.  Why was 3a necessary?  The most logical answer might come from the way the first pair face towards the junction instead of parallel with Beechwood Avenue.  It is possible the developer initially intended the first plot to be for a detached house.  The Post Office seems to have been prompt in allocating numbers, perhaps too prompt for a builder whose change of mind resulted in a pair of semis instead.  It would certainly be the reason for the resulting awkward plot boundaries and the need for a 3a in the sequence.  Of course, if there is a different account ...

Junction of Beechwood and Beaumont avenues.  Two former builders'
compounds are in this photo.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

While referring earlier to builders' compounds, H C Janes, which constructed homes on the opposite side of Beechwood and in Elm Drive in the early 1930s, had a compound where number 267 Hatfield Road appeared in the 1960s.  A similar compound had been left in Beaumont Avenue which is today the location of number 2.

All that from a pair of queries resulting from everyday walks!