Growing up in Lee-on-the-Solent

by John W Green

  Travelling to school was sometimes fun. In the winter we would often go downstairs (‘down below’) and stand in a passageway alongside the boiler room by the open door and watch as the stoker shovelled coal into the boiler. It was warm and was a good place to dry out if you had got wet. It had a particular welcoming smell of coal and hot oil.

  The Gosport Ferry

  On a few occasions when there was dense fog, and there were certainly more fogs in the late 40s and early 50s, although the normal ferry would not run because of the reduced visibility, the Floating Bridge car ferry which operated on a fixed chain would continue plying between Gosport and Portsmouth. Instead of waiting for the normal ferry and arriving late, we would travel on the car ferry as foot passengers to get to school. This ferry operated from about where the Harbour Tower flats are situated into the Old Portsmouth harbour near the Still and West public house.

  D-Day: Before and After

  In the build-up for D-Day, thousands of soldiers mustered throughout the area in numerous locations. As part of this, soldiers from the USA, Canada and the UK were based on the cliff-lands in Lee-on-the-Solent, most of them under canvas. Broadly speaking, the Canadians were encamped at the eastern end of the cliff-lands near where the present sailing club is situated, the Americans had set up camp to the west of Lee Tower, and the British troops were on the cliff-lands between Beach Road and Cambridge Road.

  The Americans were known for chewing gum, Camel and Lucky Strike cigarettes and most of all for nylons. It was to be some time before many synthetic materials were to be discovered, but nylon as a material was just beginning to be produced, and most importantly for the ladies, nylon stockings appeared on the scene, but with only a limited availability. Although wearing them also involved the wearing of a suspender belt (I am told), nylons became much sought-after items, and it was rumoured that the Americans used them as a means of bartering with young and not-so-young ladies for their favours. Although the name is supposedly derived from the two places where it was developed - New York and London -the ‘poor British Tommy’ didn’t have any nylons available to assist him in his cause, and had to rely upon his natural charms.

  Later I was to learn from my wife and sister that the more mature ladies had a preference for rayon stockings, which were not as sheer as nylons. The Americans were not the only source of nylon stockings, because some young men who lived in the area, who were in the Merchant Navy and were fortunate enough to be on the ships that went to and fro between the UK and the USA (if you can call running the gauntlet of the U-boat wolf packs luck), were able to lay their hands on supplies. However, their motive was more mercenary than amorous: they would buy them in America relatively cheaply and sell them for one pound a pair, a substantial profit and a lot of money at that time. It would have been about a day’s wages for many young women.

  The first nylon stockings had a seam at the back, and according to my wife and sister, it was not easy to keep the seam straight when putting on the stocking. Young ladies who didn’t own a pair of nylons would resort to ‘painting’ their legs with light brown water-based paint and then they would draw a line with a dark crayon where the seam should be. The fortunate young ladies who did own a pair of nylons (no awkward questions as to how they came by them) treasured them and took great care not to ladder them. As an added precaution, whenever they went out they would carry a small bottle of clear nail varnish in their handbag. If they did have the misfortune to snag their treasured items, they would apply a small dab of the varnish to the snag to stop the ladder from ‘running’. There were even establishments that repaired nylons. One of these was the Silver Arrow laundry and cleaners on the corner of North Cross Street and High Street in Gosport.

  Let me assure you that this information about ladies laddering their nylons is completely secondhand ... well, more or less.

  When the troops were assembling for D-Day, although the beach was cordoned off with barbed wire, the troops under canvas on the cliffs had surprisingly little security, and as remarkable as it may seem, it was possible for us youngsters to walk among the assembled tents. In fact, during a period just after D-Day, when the army still had a large marquee on the cliffs opposite the Bellevue Hotel, any youngsters who happened to be in the area were invited into the marquee and treated to tea (sweetened with condensed milk) and buns by a small contingent of troops who were probably waiting to be shipped to Normandy. It may not sound much, but it was greatly appreciated by all of us who were fortunate enough to have been there.

  Now that I was a pupil at St John’s, I lost touch with many of the lads that I had associated with previously. We gradually drifted apart, not intentionally or by design, but because we were being subjected to different sets of experiences. It was just before D-Day when I had happened to meet up with two lads from the past, one of them an older brother of Ronnie, and somehow we had managed to get on the beach at the western end of Stokes Bay. We were just standing on a grassy patch near the beach, and I suppose we were trying to blend into the background of shrubs and trees as we casually watched DUKWs (Ducks) and tanks being loaded onto landing craft.

  It was an absolute hive of activity, and we thought that we were quite inconspicuous where we were, but no! We were seen by one of the officers, who became agitated, and that is putting it mildly. He promptly had us ‘escorted’ to the road under armed guard.

  The military vehicles that we had just observed being loaded on to the landing craft had, for a number of weeks, been ‘hidden’ in the grounds of what is now Bay House School. When I say hidden, that is only partly correct because they could be seen quite clearly from the top of any bus en route between Lee-on-the-Solent and Gosport, and although all of this military hardware disappeared soon after D-Day, the large number of caterpillar-tracked army vehicles such as tanks and Bren-gun carriers had played havoc with many of the kerbstones in the area, and this damage was a testament to their having been here. It remained a reminder for many years after the war.

  During the war there was an army checkpoint on the corner of Gomer Lane and Browndown Road, which at that time was a military road. The corner was in fact a T-junction if you included the track that led into Stokes Bay. All vehicles were stopped at this checkpoint and all occupants of the vehicles were checked. On one occasion when I was among the passengers travelling on the bus to Lee from Gosport, as usual it was stopped, everyone had to disembark and wait in a queue to have their identity cards checked before being allowed back onto the bus. Identity cards had to be carried at all times. There were several of us young lads who had ended up at the back of the queue - this was quite customary because everyone knew their place. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t manage to get back onto the bus before it set off again. Consequently we had to walk from there to Lee. Not that this was any great hardship, but we felt quite aggrieved because we had paid our fares.

  One afternoon about a week or so after D-Day, I was cycling along Privett Road on my way home from St John’s College. On the other side of the road was a column of about a dozen large mobile long-barrelled guns together with a number of trucks. Some of the soldiers called out to me: ‘Hey lad! Can you go and get us some bread?’ I stopped and crossed the road and they gave me some money, asking me to go and get whatever I could. So I turned round and cycled back to a baker’s, near the White Hart, and bought as much bread as I could carry. It must have been more than half a dozen loaves. I didn’t need coupons, because bread rationing didn’t come into force until later. When I got back and gave the soldiers the bread and their change they were delighted, and were obviously very hungry. For doing the errand they offered me money - half a crown, which was a lot of money, and it would have paid for quite a few visits to the cinema, but I said no thank you and that I didn’t want to be paid. What I did say was: ‘I wouldn’t mind one of those,’ pointing to what turned out to be occupation money that I had seen one of them had in his wallet. I remember the soldier who
gave me one of the notes saying jokingly: ‘Look he doesn’t want what’s no use to us and he’s taking money we could spend tomorrow.’ They gave me a five franc note, worth a few pence then, but that note has become one of my most treasured possessions which I still have seventy years later.

  After D-Day it became easier to get onto the beach, where our ‘scavenging’ became directed at a different target: we became beachcombers and the coveted prizes that we were looking for were K rations and D rations. They were packets that measured about 8 inches by 4 inches by 2 inches and were encased in semi-waterproof packaging - a kind of waxy thick paper. These ‘rations’, we discovered later, were a day’s supply issued to soldiers when they were fighting at the frontline and were unable to get to a feeding station. These K and D rations were flotsam produced when military vessels were sunk, most likely on the other side of the channel, and it must have taken quite a while before the tides and waves washed them on to the foreshore at Lee-on-the-Solent. These coveted finds contained, among other things, sachets of coffee, biscuits, sweets which were a bit like glucose tablets, and cigarettes. The K rations were for American troops and the D rations were for British troops. The outside of the packets was often coated with tar, but the contents in many cases were still intact. On one beachcombing day a group of us found the remains of a large package which had contained about a hundred D rations: there was still about three quarters of it intact. On another day I found a case of lard which weighed about 10lbs: as the weekly ration per person was two ounces, Mum was very pleased with this find, even though only about a quarter of it was useable.

  Five franc note issued to soldiers – one of my most treasured possessions

  At the end of the war in Europe, there were great celebrations. Everyone who was around at that time will remember the VE celebrations. Nearly every road had its own street party. The party for our immediate area was held in our garage. Well, it was not really a garage because we - like most people in Elmore - had no car. The bikes and tools were moved out, the walls and floor were washed down, and tables from various houses were set in the middle with sheets for tablecloths. I cannot remember what the food was, but I remember that it was a most enjoyable occasion. It always seems incredible that, in times of necessity, mothers seem to be able to conjure surprises out of nowhere.

  Although there had not been any air-raids for a long time, it was not until after VE Day that people no longer had to bother about the blackout. With the restrictions removed, lights were put on and the curtains and blackout were not pulled. The criss-crossed sticky tape was taken from the windows.

  In May 1945 there was a Victory party put on by the combined personnel of HMS Daedalus for all of the local children. The party was held in the ballroom at Lee Tower and there was, what seemed to me and the other children present, a huge spread. We were all given, among other things, a commemorative victory spoon as a memento.

  The Monster in the Bathroom

  Death and taxes may always be with us but so is change, and this became dramatically apparent after the war, when the pace of changed greatly increased. It was as if the Almighty had suddenly decided to put his foot down on the accelerator of life in general, and my life in particular. What we considered to be our ‘village’ was about to undergo a series of growing pains, changing from being a village of two halves to a town of two halves. The harbinger of this change was the arrival of the prefabs. Several dozen of them were erected on the land behind Gosport Road and Brickland Terrace, on what previously had been farmland.

  This was in the spring of 1946, when all and sundry - wives, mothers, and children - stood in the road outside their houses to watch with awe at the arrival of the ready-made homes being transported-in on large trailers hauled by lorries, to the sites of previously prepared foundations, which lined a few extra concrete roads that had been built in the fields nearby. The prefabs had arrived! Throughout the land prefab estates had spread far and wide, like a rash, to replace housing destroyed during the war. Although there had been very little destruction in Lee-on-the-Solent, here were some of them arriving in our own little ‘patch’. One particular feature that was enviously observed in these clean and fresh-looking pale-green-and-cream little buildings (which came in four parts with their ready built insides of kitchen and bathrooms) was the fact that the prefabs had fridges! This was before fridges became commonplace: not many houses, especially those in Elmore, would have had that luxury. In fact, you would have been able to count on the fingers of one hand the number of houses in our area that had a fridge.

  Mum was very house-proud, and she kept the place spick and span - in fact everyone had to take their shoes off at the door when they came in. Although the house was only about ten years old and kept in pristine condition by Mum, we certainly didn’t have a fridge, washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher or central heating.

  In our house, as with most of the houses in Elmore, there were only cold-water taps. We had one in the kitchen, and two in the bathroom. If Mum wanted hot water in the kitchen it meant filling a kettle and putting it on the gas stove. As for hot water for a bath, that was a different kettle of fish, so to speak. It involved using the geyser above the bath. Geysers were ‘fearsome beasts’ - well, the one in our bathroom certainly was. To light it meant using a lit taper or, more often than not, a small rolled-up piece of newspaper. The gas to the appliance had to be turned on and then the ‘flaming brand’ had to be inserted through a small aperture into the ‘innards’ of the beast .... and then there was a minor explosion as the burners lit. Lighting ‘the monster in the bathroom’ was always a nerve-racking experience, because the longer it took to light it, the greater the explosion would be. Mother dreaded lighting it; in fact when Dad was not at home, we would often make do with a wash-down in the kitchen sink, with hot water supplied courtesy of the kettle. Fortunately Mum didn’t have so much trouble lighting the appliance in which she washed the clothes. It was a gas ‘copper’, as the clothes boilers were known. It had a long flexible hose, and when she wanted to use the ‘copper’, she would connect it to a designated gas tap in the kitchen. The rather ugly little grey thing with four short bow legs would sit sulking in the corner of the kitchen between washdays. That is, until 1949, when Dad decided that it was time to replace the coal fires downstairs with modern (state-of-the-art) gas fires.

  This meant, as we no longer required a coal shed, it became home for the ‘copper’. Every Monday it would be dragged out and set to work by Mum. On fine days this would take place on the concrete hard-standing outside the kitchen, and on wet days inside the kitchen, where it would wreak its revenge for being locked in the ‘coal hole ’by filling the kitchen with steam. As a companion for the copper we had a large mangle with wooden rollers, on the opposite side of the concrete base at the back of the house.

  Our front room

  Up to the late 1950s a number of roads in Lee-on-the-Solent, particularly in Elmore, were ‘unadopted’, that is that they had not been taken over by Gosport Borough Council for maintenance, so were not covered with concrete or tarmac. Effectively this meant that they were not much better than dirt roads - often full of potholes, and without pavements. When it rained, these roads became overwhelmed with puddles and it was impossible to walk dry-shod between the puddles. As we lived on a corner house we found it particularly difficult, especially as the worst-affected of the roads were Anglesea Road, Wootton Road, and Gosport Road as far as Cross Road. This placed us in the middle of the ‘near impassable roads zone’.

  After the war ended and the pace of change seemed to accelerate, more and more of what had been our playgrounds, the green spaces between the houses and bungalows, began to disappear, as did some of the surrounding farmland. Along with my contemporaries, I was beginning to grow out of play escapism so I did not feel the loss too much. Nevertheless eventually all of the ‘Greens’ became covered with bungalows and houses and the ‘gaps’ in Gosport Road and Wootto
n Road and the bottom of Raynes Road were built upon.

  At the same time as the play areas were disappearing, the roads began to be adopted and covered with tarmac or concrete; also pavements were built. Apart from making the roadways narrower, another downside to this for the owners of the properties abutting the roads, was that they had to pay for the work involved. Because Dad had bought our house, which was on a corner, it proved to be quite a heavy financial burden. The main upside was the fact that it was now possible to walk along the roads after it had rained.

  At the same that this time was happening, the street lighting was being changed over to electricity. Although gas lamps may conjure up a picture of Victorian England, even as late as the 1950s, street lighting in Lee-on-the-Solent was by means of gas lamps. In addition to not being very bright, the lamps were very few and far between. Although they were not lit during the war years, once hostilities were over they were brought back into operation and a man came round at dusk to light them. I remember seeing this. He must have made a second visit later to turn them off, probably just after midnight, although I never actually saw it being done. There was one on the corner of Anglesea Road and Gosport Road, and another outside the pig farm at the bottom of Wootton Road.

  Mum and Dad in the garden

  (note the street gaslight in the background)

  During the hours of darkness when the gas street lights had been lit, and when there was little or no moonlight, youngsters - myself included - would run between the pools of light from these street lights; they were the circles of safety providing sanctuary from the imagined monsters lurking menacingly in the blackness. It was noticeable that even adults appeared to quicken their pace between the illuminated patches.