Along the banks of the Gipping

The Gipping at Sproughton

Along the Banks of the Gipping

A favourite poem of Mr E. V. Day, who was both my form master and my English teacher during my final years at Ipswich's Northgate School was 'The little waves of Breffny' by Eva Gore Booth, a minor late-Victorian poet. It takes its title from the third and final verse:

The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way,

Shining green and silver with the hidden herring shoal;

But the little waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray,

And the little waves of Breffny go stumbling through my soul.

Although I could never hope to express my sentiments so eloquently, I feel rather similarly about Suffolk's River Gipping.

No-one would claim that the Gipping is one of Britain's great rivers. It is certainly no Thames or Severn and it cannot really compare scenically with its own estuary the tidal Orwell, that flows from Ipswich to the sea. Yet it was along the banks of the Gipping and in the Gipping's water meadows that I spent some of the happiest times of my youth and adolescence.

It is unlikely that I appreciated it at the time, but the Gipping Valley, from Ipswich to Strowmarket and beyond, has a quiet and peaceful beauty of its own. Had John Constable's birthplace been some ten miles further north than it was, I have no doubt that it would have been Sproughton, Bramford and Great Blakenham rather than Flatford Mill and Stratford St. Mary, that would have been immortalised in oils, and would now be the destination of those seeking 'the Constable country'.

My parents, remembering the fast-flowing chalk streams of their native Berkshire Downs, had no very high opinion of the placid and slow-moving Gipping. They realized its potential dangers though. I was forbidden to go along its banks except in their company until I had learned to swim. I can't recall whether or not I observed that prohibition to the letter but fortunately before I was ten I had demonstrated my swimming prowess beyond doubt, and the embargo was lifted.

Thereafter, on sunny Saturdays and during school holidays, my destination was likely to be the Gipping tow-path. Often I'd be accompanied by one or two like-minded friends. Always I'd have at my heel (or running excitedly to and fro!) our wire-haired fox terrier Queenie who closely resembled, in habits if not in ancestry, William's dog Jumble in Richmal Crompton's classic children's stories. By the time I was fourteen I was familiar with every inch of the Gipping's course from the lock gates and weir through which, at two separate points, it flowed into the Orwell to beyond Fison's factory in Papermill Lane, between Bramford and Claydon.

At one time barges had been towed up and down river between Ipswich and Stowmarket. A series of locks had been provided at strategic points to enable the barges to 'climb' up and down hill. The days of barges had ended just before the 1930s, but the lock gates were still intact. They exerted a powerful attraction to us kids. Strong swimmers (and I reckoned myself to be one of these) would plunge into the deep water 'the pound' between the two lock gates. The less bold would disport themselves in the shallower water below the lower pair of gates, enjoying a shower from water jetting from leaks that always existed between the gates and round the sluices.

We would also, and at all times, stride boldly from one side of the river to the other across the top of the lock gates. This resulted in an incident that ended happily enough but which haunted my dreams and woke me in a cold sweat for years afterwards.

I was fifteen at the time. A cousin from London, a year younger than me, was spending his summer holiday with us. I took him to a favourite haunt of mine, the Chantry Lock, near the sugar beet factory, between Boss Hall and Sproughton. Workmen were carrying out some repair work on the lock and had just opened the sluice gate to lower the level of water in the pound.

We strode across the lock gates to the other side safely enough but, as we returned, my cousin lost his balance and fell into the pound. He was a strong swimmer but was being dragged inexorably towards the open sluice– and my arms weren't long enough to reach him. Fortunately, one of the workmen saw our plight and, lying on the ground, could just reach my cousins outstretched hand to drag him to safety. I met my cousin again in 1993, after a gap of well over forty years. His memories of that incident were every bit as vivid as my own!

It must have been when I was about thirteen that I became an angler. First of all, and with very basic equipment, I fished down-stream from 'the Black Bridge' (the railway bridge crossing the Gipping near Boss Hall), where angling was free for all. Perhaps because of this there was very little to be caught there. Upstream from the Black Bridge fishing was preserved by the Gipping Angling Preservation Society. For my fourteenth birthday, and for every subsequent birthday until I was called up with the Territorial Army in September 1939, my present from my parents was a GAPS angling season ticket. In those days this cost ten shillings and sixpence (52.5 pence) and, as far as I was concerned, was money well spent.

Gradually I improved my equipment and my expertise. Roach were plentiful and could be caught anywhere along the preserved length of the river. A good spot for perch was below the lock gates at Sproughton, while the best stretch of the river for pike was between Bramford and Fison's factory in Papermill Lane. In the summer I'd take swimming trunks with me and, if the fish weren't biting, I'd abandon angling and take a swim instead. There were occasions too when, after an over-enthusiastic cast, I'd have to go into the water to retrieve tackle tangled in midstream weeds or even in the bushes on the opposite bank.

Below the lock gates at Sproughton was a good spot for catching perch. These gates are just out of sight on the right-hand side of the picture. This was also a good spot for a swim

I liked fishing for pike with a specially shaped silver 'spoon'. The alternative was usng live bait. Although we were less humane (or perhaps just less squeamish) in those days, I didn't like impaling a captured roach on pike-hooks as bait.

Spinning involved casting the spoon as far as possible and then reeling it in quickly enough to make it spin in the water and attract the pike. The secret of success was to reel in sufficiently quickly to make the spoon spin, but not so quickly that the pike couldn't catch up with it. It could be a frustrating exercise. Often I'd see a huge pike (the ones that got away were always enormous!) following the spoon and snapping at it, but just missing it.

The first pike that I caught was over 2ft long (yes, it really was!) and snapped at me viciously with its razor sharp teeth. I was proud to be able to take him home to make a small contribution to the family larder.

I explored the banks of the Gipping, I plunged into the river from them, I fished from their banks and – oh yes – I did my 'courting' along them. During the magic fortnight at the beginning of World War II when Wanstead County High School was– by mistake, I am convinced– evacuated to Ipswich, I strolled with Heather Gilbert, my future wife, along the banks and under the shady trees of the river.

I was just eighteen, She was not quite sixteen. We were both agonisingly shy, thoroughly naïve – and hopelessly romantic! I was well-read but totally inexperienced of 'the real world'. My ideas of relationships between men and women were based on the novels of such authors Jane Austin, the Brontë sisters and Mrs Gaskell. Heather's virtue was never in the least peril (I was so scared of rejection that it was several days before I screwed up the courage to steal a kiss!) but we formed an attachment that was to endure for sixty-seven years.

Nowadays kids 'learn all about it' at school. They're down to earth, matter of fact, take the necessary precautions and don't bother with what we called 'courting'. Perhaps though, despite all the pressures, some do. I am sure that the others miss a great deal – both joy and heartache!

A few years ago, one April, I went back to the River Gipping, visiting some spots – the site of the Chantry Lock for instance – that I hadn't seen for well over fifty years. I was shocked to see that the water meadows where I had once played had been either ploughed over or were well-managed (but boring!) pasture. I was disappointed to see too that all the lock gates that I remembered so well had disappeared and had been replaced by weirs over which the water thundered. Had the gates been there I think that I would have been able to resist the temptation to stride across them!

It wasn't all loss though. Much of the old magic of the Gipping remained. Walking downstream, back to Boss Hall Road from what had been the Chantry Lock, the peaceful scene with the river flowing past great alder and willows made it almost unbelievable that, within a few hundred yards there was a busy factory and a bustling industrial estate.

I was very pleased too to find that the Suffolk County Council was taking an active interest in the conservation and enhancement of the Gipping Valley. The County Council has co-operated with the Mid Suffolk and Babergh District Councils in the Gipping Valley Project, launched in 1978 to encourage wildlife, conservation and countryside recreation, to maintain valuable landscape features and to increase community involvement in countryside matters.

The project manages three nature reserves and three picnic sites, maintains and promotes the river path (all seventeen miles from Ipswich to Stowmarket) and eight circular walks. It also provides advice and assistance on conservation schemes to landowners, parish councils and local communities, and provides environmental education and guided walks to schools and the public.

The Gipping Valley is currently threatened with an enormous riverside 'leisure complex' planned for Great Blakenham, within a few hundred yards of the bungalow in Barham where Heather and I made our first home way back in 1948. This, as always, promises to bring untold wealth and hundreds of badly-needed jobs to the area. It would also inevitably destroy the character of and important part of the Gipping Valley.

I don't think that I am alone in hoping that, on this occasion, the forces of Mammon will not prevail – and that they'll fail to destroy the magic of the River Gipping, that first entranced me nearly eighty years ago!

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To Church on Sunday

Folk of my generation, in East Anglia as elsewhere, sometimes claim sweepingly that, in their young days, 'nearly everyone went to church on Sunday'. They didn't, of course. A great many people never went near a church except for christenings, weddings and funerals. What was different though from today was the

general acceptance that it was natural and normal to go to church. Those who didn't would often feel called upon to justify themselves. I recall an old Suffolk countryman saying, 'I don' gew t'chuch a lot meself, though Missus dew sometimes; but I reckon I'm as good a Christian as some o' them as dew'.

That was another difference from today. We all, church-goer and non church- goer alike, knew ourselves to be Christian. There were few self-proclaimed agnostics and no adherents of other faiths among my acquaintances. Thanks to assemblies and scripture lessons (they're called RE nowadays) at school we all had some experience of Christian worship and at least some familiarity with the Bible.

My parents were church-goers. My father had been 'brought up chapel' but, probably as a result of my mother's influence, had transferred his allegiance to the Church of England. He did so wholeheartedly and with enthusiasm.

When we moved into our house in Ipswich's Bramford Lane towards the end of 1926 we went to St. Thomas', then a small 'tin' mission church in Bramford Road, between Waveney Road and Shafto Road. When I last went past there, about ten years ago, there was a petrol filling station where it had once stood, but what had been the adjacent church hall, brick-built by voluntary labour, was there still.

I have very vivid memories of walking to church with my parents every Sunday morning and evening. My father always wore a black jacket and black and white striped trousers, stiff collar with bow tie, bowler hat and gleaming black shoes. In winter he would wear a formal black overcoat and he always carried a walking stick. On the Sunday nearest to Armistice Day (11^th November) he would proudly wear pinned to his chest his half dozen campaign medals from World War I.

He was particularly proud of two of them. There was the Mons Medal which marked him as an 'Old Contemptible', a member of the British Expeditionary Force, described by the German Kaiser as 'General French's contemptible little army', when it was sent to France at the very beginning of World War I. Then there was the French 'Medaille d'Honneur with laurel leaves' with which had come a certificate signed by the President of France confirming that Regimental Sergeant Major F.C. Hall had been awarded this particular French honour.

St. Thomas was moderately 'high church'. We didn't use incense or 'reserve the sacrament', but the most important service of the week was a Choral Eucharist held every Sunday morning at 11.00 a.m. There had, of course, already been a non-choral celebration of Holy Communion at 8.00 a.m. The priest in charge of St. Thomas' at that time (our church wasn't considered important enough to rate a vicar) was Rev. Donald Rae, a Scottish ex-serviceman with whom my father struck up an instant friendship. He wore a cassock and biretta when out of church (this doesn't seem to be the fashion among high church clergy these days) and rather liked to be addressed as Father Rae.

Those were rather less tolerant times than today. St. Thomas' was sufficiently

'High Church' to attract the attention of the Protestant Truth Society who, on at least two occasions that I can recall, mounted a street demonstration after Sunday Evensong to protest at our 'Romish Practices'. It must be said that we were not a great deal better. I can remember during a fervent 'Anglo-Catholic phase' referring to Nonconformists as 'those narrow chapel folk' and to Roman Catholics as 'the Italian Mission'.

My parents' friendship with Rev Rae drew us all into church activities. Both my mother and my father served on the Parochial Church Council and on various committees. My father, who could play any stringed instrument with competence, was the leading light in the formation of a St. Thomas' dance band ('The Whatnots'!) which performed at church dances and socials and occasionally did gigs (though we didn't call them that in those days) at other venues.

My father also became a server at the altar. Since he was by far the oldest server he was given the title of Sacristan and arranged the rotas for attendance of the servers at the various services. The servers' duties were not limited to assisting the priest at Holy Communion. They also had to light and extinguish the altar candles at the beginning and end of every service, take the offertory plate from the sidesmen to the priest after the collection, and carry the banners in the processions round the church that were held on important festivals

My mother, who remained an active and committed member of St. Thomas' Church until her death in 1978, quickly became a member of the Mothers' Union and Ladies Working Party, undertaking needlework for church bazaars, and was on the rota for supplying altar flowers and polishing altar brasses.

I joined St. Thomas', 11^th Ipswich, Wolf Cub pack and became a member of the Choir until my voice broke. Then I joined my father as a server. Choir men and Choir boys (there were no choir girls in those days) wore black cassocks, longish white surplices and 'ruffs' round their necks. We servers rather fancied ourselves in waist-level white cotters, trimmed with lace, instead of the plain white surplices!

The Church played an important part in our lives. As well as the Sunday services, there were regular socials, dances, children's parties, concerts and other entertainments. I recall, at the age of 10, being one of a chorus of 'gypsy children' in a light operetta presented in the church hall.

In 1935, when I was 14 (and at the Northgate Grammar School), we moved from Bramford Lane to Kensington Road which was, to my great satisfaction, just a couple of hundred yards from Broom Hill Park. This was definitely within the parish of All Saints Church but we nevertheless retained our allegiance to St. Thomas' where great things were taking place.

The days of the old tin church in Bramford Road were numbered. A splendid new permanent church, suitable to serve an ever-developing part of Ipswich, was being built at the junction of Bramford Lane and Cromer Road. The style was, I think, '20^th Century Perpendicular'. My parents and I, and other members of the St. Thomas' flock, marvelled as it went up. I was able to see it again, from the outside, early in 2007 and I thought that, weathered and matured as it now was, it was still a splendid building. In a couple of hundred years time - if anyone is still interested in such things – it may well be regarded as a first class example of 20^th century church architecture.

How well I remember the priest (it was then the Rev. Philip Butler-Smith), servers and choir, leading the congregation in procession from the old church to the new on the day that the new church was consecrated. Just sixteen, I proudly carried one of the banners. How well I remember the fresh smell of the new church, its spaciousness and light; the roomy new choir vestry in the tower.

Alas, I wasn't to know them for very long. Just two years after the new church came into use, World War II broke out and I was called up with the Territorial Army into the 67^th Medium Regiment RA, a local Territorial Regiment in which I was a volunteer. A couple of months later on 27^th November 1939, my father, aged 57, who had volunteered in vain to enlist in a local antiaircraft battery on the outbreak of war, died of a coronary thrombosis.

After his funeral, away in the army and - after the war - moving away from Ipswich, I hardly attended St Thomas' again until my mother's funeral nearly forty years later.

There is a post-script to this account of my Anglican childhood and youth. Once, when I was eight or nine years old, I spent an afternoon in Christchurch Park with a friend of mine and his mother. We came out of the park into Fonnereau Road, opposite the Quaker Meeting House. 'Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)' said a notice on a board outside.

'What's Quakers?' I asked my friend's mother. 'Coo! They're a rum owd lot boy' she answered. 'They've all got pots o' money – and they sit around in the dark waiting for the spirit to move 'em.'

Little did I think that day, that some twenty years later, disenchanted with the main-stream churches as we then saw them, my wife and I would attend our first Quaker Meeting for Worship at that same Meeting House – and that a few months later we would be accepted into membership of the Religious Society of Friends,

where we remain today.

A Further Postscript

When Heather and I joined the Society of Friends in 1948, I had lost my faith and was, in effect, an agnostic. All the Quakers asked of me was that 'I had my face set towards the light and was prepared to become a humble learner in the School of Christ'

Over the years, faithfully attending the based-on-silence, Quaker Meetings for Worship I slowly recovered my Christian faith. I became interested in the ecumenical movement and became a Quaker representative on the Clacton Council of Churches (now 'Churches together in Clacton').. The local United Reformed Church found itself suddenly without a Minister and asked other churches if they could help fill the gap until a new Minister could be appointed.

I was by that time an experienced writer and public speaker so I took my turn leading worship at the – quite large – URC Church. I chose the hymns, remembering those from 'Hymns A. and M' from my youth, led the prayers (leaning heavily on the Book of Common Prayer) had a brief and friendly chat with the children before they departed to their Sunday School and managed to preach the 25 minute sermon that the congregation expected.

They must have liked my style because after a new minister had been appointed – a very pleasant young family man who became a friend – they continued to ask me to lead their service when their minister was on holiday or otherwise available. I found myself doing this perhaps twice a year until the need, three years ago, for me to become a full-time carer for my disabled wife, made this impossible

They always offered a fee for this service, in a small brown envelope which my Quaker scruples ensured that I always refused. I therefore never even learned how much I was being offered!

In the meantime I found myself occasionally attending 8.00 a.m. Holy Communion at St. James' Church, the nearest Anglican Church to my home and was always warmly welcomed by the priest Rev. Anthony Spooner, who also became a friend. I deeply appreciated these occasions, remembering as I did, the Book of Common Prayer liturgy from my youth.

These occasional attendances also had to cease while I was acting as sole carer to my wife. It was as much as we could do to get to our Quaker Meeting each Sunday with Heather in her wheelchair. During that period I had to give up driving because of a cataract, but we continued to attend Meeting for Worship in a wheelchair-friendly taxi.

Sadly, my wife died on 12^th July 2006 – asleep, in her own bed, in her own home, with me by her side.

Immediately after Heather's death I found some solace in resumed attendance at Holy Communion at St. James' Church. I was very pleased that both Rev Spooner from St. James' and Rev. Chris Wood from the URC attended Heather's Memorial Meeting for Worship at the Quaker Meeting House. She had been a very committed Christian and an active member of the Religious Society of Friends throughout her life.

I have now had my cataract dealt with but do not think it wise, at 86, to resume motoring. I have acquired a mobility scooter and every Sunday I attend St. James' Church for Holy Communion at 8.00 a.m. and then attend our Quaker Meeting for Worship at 10.30 a.m.

I feel that both attendances are of value to me. St James' is a church with a style similar to St. Thomas' in the 1930s – though rather 'higher' I think. As Quakers say, 'It speaks to my condition'; but I still value Quaker silent worship and am very grateful for its restoration of my Christian Faith.

I therefore now regard myself as being in 'dual membership' – of Clacton Quaker Meeting and of St. James Anglican Church, a position that has been accepted by the vicar of St, James and his congregation and the local and area Quaker Meetings. This is an unusual situation but by no means unique. I suppose that the best known 'dual member' is Canon Paul Oestreicher of Coventry Cathedral who is both an Anglican priest and a Quaker.

School and Play - Between the wars in Ipswich

School and Play – Between the wars in Ipswich

There is no faculty s fickle as memory. These days I often find it difficult to remember the name of someone I met last week. Yet I can remember, word for word, the first couple of verses of a poem that I learnt at the age of five in Springfield Infants School, Ipswich.

It was called 'The Snowflake'. No, it wasn't the well-known poem by Francis Thompson, but a banal piece of doggerel that I'd be only too happy to erase from my memory.

Apart for 'The Snowflake' there isn't a great deal that I can remember about that Infants' School. I have vague and somewhat menacing recollections of frightening noise and tumult in the playground, of a stern headmistress who strode down the classroom aisles with a ruler, to smack the bare legs of those who misbehaved, and an end-of-term Christmas party at which I was given a sugar mouse from the Christmas Tree – and thought that it tasted horrible!

About the Senior School catering for seven to fourteens (known as 'the big 'uns') my memories are more specific. Headmaster Mr Offord ('Pip' Offord to us) was a stern disciplinarian who wielded the cane with expertise. He was also an enthusiast for choral singing. To him, morning assemblies were another singing lesson. An enormous hymn sheet was suspended from the ceiling in the school hall and the hymns changed by mechanical means beyond my understanding. Many a time he would make us sing one or more verses of a hymn again and again until we reached an acceptable standard.

No doubt there were also prayers and a bible reading- but I don't remember them. I do recall his reading letters from 'Old Boys'. One that impressed itself upon me was from a naval rating who recorded a football match between the crew of his ship and a native team somewhere in the southern hemisphere. The natives played barefoot- and won!

Miss Dalliston (I may have spelt her name wrongly) taught me in the first year, Mrs Trod in the second and Miss Dunkley in the third. There was also a Mr Lowbridge (Old Lowbug') with a reputation for ferocity, but I was never in his class.

Mrs Trod, who had a biting and sarcastic tongue, was feared rather than loved. She prided herself on the control that she exercised over her class. One day, through the wall of our classroom, we could hear Mr Lowbridge shouting at the top of his voice to keep his class in order. 'I don't need to raise my voice', said Mrs Trod, quietly but with menace, 'to maintain discipline'; and she didn't!

Miss Dunkley was kind. Perhaps I was one of her 'favourites', because I was beginning to show an aptitude for English composition and an interest in history.

History was a subject we were never allowed to forget. On Empire Day (24^th May, Queen Victoria's birthday) we always had an outside speaker from Zululand or Labrador or Kashmir or some other outpost of the Empire, to inspire us with patriotic fervour. We also had to march round the playground and salute the flag- the Union Jack that was always flown on that auspicious day. Armistice Day (11^th November) when the school, like everyone else in the country, went into dead silence for two minutes when the sirens sounded at 11.00 a.m., was another day that punctuated the school year.

Boat Race Day was yet another. It is astonishing to recall the fervour with which those who had not the slightest association with either university supported one or the other team. We all wore light blue or dark blue favours! Since my family originated in Berkshire, the county adjoining Oxfordshire, we were among the minority 'dark blues' in East Anglia. It wasn't till my own son went to Cambridge in 1971 that I really changed my allegiance!

When I recall those days in the late '20s and early '30s, it is our leisure activities rather than our school work that first comes to mind. We all collected cigarette cards. Most adult males were cigarette smokers in those days and we would accost total strangers with the plea: 'Got any fag cards Mister?' and would, as often as not, get a positive response. I collected Kings and Queens of England, 1930 Cricketers, National Flags, Fresh Water Fish and Salt Water Fish. The last of these, carefully stuck in an album, proved to be an extraordinary useful guide to identification when, years later, I was studying for a qualification as a Food Inspector!

With spare cards and 'swaps', we played 'flicks' in the playground. I can't recall the rules but the basis of the game was to flick your card so that it covered that of your opponent. 'Flicks' and marbles were played all the year round. Other leisure activities were strictly seasonal. Conker fights were, of course, an autumn activity, and snowballing and 'slides' had to wait the advent of snow and ice. I don't know who decided that it was time to bring out whips and tops, or hoops, but suddenly tops or hoops would be in fashion and, for a few weeks, everybody had one.

Coming home from school we would listen to Children's Hour (Uncle Mac, Toy Town and an interminable list of Happy Birthdays, including a few 'Hello Twins!') on a crackly 'wireless set'. During the dark winter evenings we would read our comics (The Wizard, the Rover, the Hotspur and so on. They had, I remember, much more text and much less illustration than their equivalent today) or play card games– Happy families, Snap, Lexicon as well as games with court cards- and board games. Snakes and ladders and Ludo were both popular.

During the summer we would go on long walks or cycle rides at first with our parents and, as we grew older, with our friends. A popular summer evening's walk in my part of Ipswich was 'to gew t'Bramford and hoom b'Sproughton. The double 'o' in 'hoom' was, of course, pronounced as in 'foot'. Passage from Bramford to Sproughton might be made by road or – as we kids preferred – along the tow-path beside the River Gipping. Adult walkers would pause for refreshment at the Sproughton 'Wild Man' before setting off back to town. In those days the Sproughton to Ipswich Road was a quiet and peaceful rural highway- very different from the busy-with-traffic thoroughfare that it is today, with industrial estates pressing in on both sides!

A special treat was to go to 'the pictures'. My parents favoured Poole's Cinema in Tower Street. One reason for this was that I belonged to a 'Birthday Club' run by the Daily Sketch that permitted me to go in free, if wearing my membership badge and accompanied by a paying adult. The other reason was that it specialised in 'Western' films. My dad liked to think that he could have been a cowboy. Perhaps he could have been. He was certainly an expert horseman and possessed an illicit revolver (a souvenir of World War I). No doubt he would soon have learned to call it a 'six-shooter'! He knew quite a bit about cattle too, which was more than could be said for the screen cowboys.

They were silent films in those early days. Poole's remained a silent cinema long after the town's other cinemas had gone over to 'talkies'. Goodness knows how many times we watched Tom Mix or Buck Jones leap from a saloon balcony onto his trusty steed and gallop off to save the heroine from 'a fate worse that death'! There was always a serial too. Each episode invariably ended in a desperate situation; the hero about to be scalped by hostile Indians or the heroine clinging to a cliff edge (hence 'cliff-hanger') with a raging sea below. This was, of course, to persuade you to come along next week to see how he or she escaped – as we all knew they would!

As I grew older I went to 'the pictures' on my own or with friends. We went on our bikes and left them, unlocked, outside the cinema without considering for a moment that they might be stolen. Nor were they. Most cinemas in those days put on a three-hour programme. As well as the main film there would be a supporting film, a news reel and a cartoon (Felix the cat and Bonzo the dog had their fans long before Micky Mouse appeared on the scene). My not-always-reliable memory tells me that 'the serial' disappeared at about the same time that 'talkies' came in. There might also be an organ recital. At Ipswich's Regent Cinema an important and well-advertised feature of each programme was 'Andreas at the mighty Wurlitzer'.

Film programmes were continuous. If you came into a cinema half-way through a film you could, if you wished, leave when you reached the appropriate moment next time round ('This is where I came in') or, if the film was very good, you might sit right through it again to the end. God save the King was always played at the end of the final performance each evening. It must be said though that, even in those rather-more-patriotic days, there was a rush for the exits with the opening chords!

Films were classified as either U or A. U films were considered suitable for everybody but A films could be watched by children only if they were accompanied by an adult. If my friends and I particularly wanted to watch an A film, and couldn't persuade our parents to take us, we would hang around near the cinema entrance until a friendly looking adult appeared and then ask – very politely – if they would mind if we accompanied them. More often than not they would agree. I don't think that our young minds were likely to have been seriously corrupted by films that, in the 1930s, were considered 'rather risqué'!

During the summer there were occasional trips to the seaside. I remember day excursion return tickets from Ipswich to Felixstowe costing only 10d (about 4.5p) per adult. Felixstowe was, of course, within cycling distance of Ipswich. So was Shotley. My parents and I- and later my friends and I- would cycle to Shotley, leave our bikes (unlocked of course) in the yard of a local pub and take the ferry that then plied between Shotley and Harwich, for a day out in Dovercourt.

There were also paddle-steamer trips from Ipswich, down the Orwell, to Felixstowe and Clacton-on-Sea. The steamer put in at the end of Clacton pier to give passengers, I think, three hours ashore. I remember in 1931, as a 10 year old, taking a swim in the icy water of the recently opened 'swimming pool above the waves' on the pier at that time. During the outward and homeward trips we children liked to go down into the engine room, noisy and smelling of oil, to see the mighty pistons driving the paddle wheels.

It is strange how memories of summer holidays in childhood are of a succession of warm, sunny days and cloudless skies. Leaden skies, driving rain and bitter north-east winds, which surely must have plagued us then as now, are totally forgotten!

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                               An Ipswich Childhood

 

            Searching for some papers recently, I came across three documents that had belonged to my father, all dating from World war I.   There was the Royal Warrant  confirming his appointment as Warrant Officer Class I (Regimental Sergeant-Major) from 2^nd May 1917.  There was a certificate recording that he had been mentioned in despatches by Lieut.General Milne in March 1917, for 'gallant and distinguished services in the Field', and expressing the appreciation of HM the King.  It was dated 1^st March 1919 and was signed by the then Secretary of State for War- Winston S. Churchill.

 

            Finally there was a certificate from the French Foreign Ministry declaring that Monsieur Hall, Frederick Charles, Regimental Sergeant-Major of the British Royal Army Veterinary Corps, had been awarded the Médaille d'Honneur en Argent avec Glaives (The Medal of Honour in Silver with Swords) by the President of the French republic. In my earlier article about my origins I have written, incorrectly, that the medal was 'in silver with laurel leaves'- which demonstrates how unreliable memory can be!

 

            Mind you, I didn't need certificates and medals to tell me that my father had been a man of courage and resolution.  One of my earliest memories is of his walking with me the half mile from our home in Bramford Lane, Ipswich to Springfield Infants' School.  I can have been no more than six years old at the time.

 

            As we approached the railway bridge near Cromer Road, there was a clattering of wheels and thundering of hooves.   Towards us, down the middle of the road, charged a two-horse delivery van.   The horses had panicked and bolted.  The driver had lost his reins and was cowering, ashen faced, on his seat.

 

            Without hesitation my father ran out into the road in front of the two bolting horses, seized them by their bridles and- with his heels dragging along the road surface- brought them to a halt.  At the time I took what had happened for granted.  It was only years later that I realized what a dangerous and courageous act it had been and how few men, other than my father, would have had the knowledge and experience of horses to have carried it out successfully.

 

            We hadn't lived in Ipswich very long at that time.  My parents both came from the Hampshire/Berkshire border country and my father had left the army after completing 21 years army service in 1922, the year after I was born.   He had a number of civilian jobs and was working as a clerk at Woolwich Arsenal in 1926, when the job cropped up that was just what he wanted – Permanent Staff Instructor (including riding instructor) to the Territorial Army in Ipswich.

 

            The 'in Ipswich' was something of a worry.  Nowadays it is difficult to appreciate how remote and 'foreign' in those pre-television days, another part of the country could be. East Anglia was terra incognita to my parents.  I remember them finding Ipswich on one of those maps of England that used to be printed inside the back cover of cheap exercise books.  It seemed a long way from Woolwich and even further from their familiar southern down-land.

 

            We first had a furnished flat above a flower shop opposite Woolworth's in Carr Street.  The street seemed very narrow to my mother- and it certainly was noisy!  Ipswich Corporation was switching from trams to trolley buses or, as we called them at that time 'trackless trams'.   In parts of the town the process had been completed. There was already a single decker trolley bus running from Ipswich Station to Cornhill with an open 'observation area' at the rear, rather like those we used to see on American railway trains in early 'westerns'.   Carr Street was in the process of conversion.  It resounded from dawn to dusk with the noise of workmen digging up and removing the iron tracks and resurfacing the road.

 

            Eventually- I suppose that it was a matter of a few months- my parents managed to rent an unfurnished house.  It was one of a long row of 'working class' terraced homes built along Bramford Lane between the railway bridge and Wallace Road.  We moved in as the row was completed.  My father, a keen gardener, particularly wanted the tenancy of the end house, no 389, which had an extra large garden.  He was unlucky and perversely, was given the next door house, No 387, with a particularly small garden!   He made up the deficiency by renting an allotment which supplied us with most of the vegetables we needed throughout the year.

 

            We lived at 387 Bramford Lane for nine years, from the time I was five to the time I was fourteen.  By today's standards the house was agonisingly small, uncomfortable and inconvenient.   It had an outside lavatory, entered from the back yard.  The bathroom, with nothing in it but a bath and a cold tap, was on the ground floor at the back of the house.  There was no running hot water.  Water for baths had to be heated in a gas boiler and for washing and shaving- at the kitchen sink of course- in a kettle on the gas stove.

 

            When we first moved in there was no electricity.  Gas was used for cooking, lighting and water heating, and there were open coal fires for space heating.  The gas lights had a 'mantle' that glowed to give a white light when gas passing through it was ignited.   The mantle was enclosed in a round glass globe and the gas was turned on and off by two thin chains hanging down on either side of the light fitting.  We paid for the gas by means of a shilling-in-the-slot gas meter (it was in a kind of pit just inside the front door!).  When the shilling ran out, the gas light would dim and there was always a rush to find a shilling and feed the meter before the light went out altogether.

 

            We didn't, except when ill in bed, use the gas lights in the bedrooms.  Candlesticks were standard domestic equipment.   While I was very young I had a candle night-light burning all night in a saucer of water by my bedside.  As I grew older, I would light my candle in its candle-stick holder, take it upstairs to my bedroom at bed time and blow it out just before turning over to go the sleep.

 

            The house was cold and draughty with hollow boarded floors through the cracks of which the wind would lift the meagre square of carpet that we had in the front sitting room.  In other rooms my parents could afford only linoleum floor covering (we used to call it 'floorcloth') with a few thin mats and rugs.  Getting out of bed into an unheated room in mid-winter was an ordeal.  The floor would be bitterly cold and ice would have formed from condensation on the inside of the sash window.

 

Not only was the house far from draught-proof, it was far from sound-proof too.   If our neighbours raised their voices we could hear every word they said and my parents claimed that, in their bedroom, they could hear when our neighbour took his boots off and dropped them on the floor!

 

            I wasn't conscious of all these deficiencies and I doubt if they seemed as awful to my parents as they do now to me.   No 387 Bramford Lane was the first real home that they had had since giving up their army married quarters.   It was the first real home that I can remember.

 

            There were compensations.   We were living almost in the country, with a meadow immediately behind our back garden.  In it was a large pond containing frogspawn and tadpoles in season and large crested newts.  These could be caught by dangling a worm tied to a piece of string in front of them.  They would sieze the worm and could be lifted out of the water before they realized what was happening to them.

 

            What's more, the real country was within easy walk or, as I grew older, cycle ride.  In those days the tarmac surface of Bramford Lane ended at its junction with Wallace Road, a few dozen yards from our front door.   There was a hard, if uneven, surface as far as Shafto Road, a quarter of a mile or so further on.  Beyond that point the lane degenerated into a narrow rutted track, a swamp during the winter months which, with hedges closing in on either side, descended into the main Bramford Road, on the outskirts of the village of Bramford.

 

            I soon made friends.   There was a language problem at first.   I can distinctly remember informing a teacher at Springfield Infants School, that 'I'm five yurs old and I come from Burkshur'.   However it's easy to learn a new language when you are young and it wasn't long before I knew the meaning of 'a hobnedob', 'a slummocky little owd mawther' and a 'hoolly rafty owd day', as well as any of the Suffolk-born.  My parents never completely lost their south-country accents – and I have never tried very hard to get rid of my Suffolk one!

 

            As I grew older I roamed with my friends – climbing trees, birdnesting in the hedgerows, catching tiddlers in the ponds over the meadows and fields that are now the White House residential and Industrial Estates and along Sproughton Road to Boss Hall farm, then occupied by a relative of one of my friends, and the River Gipping.  Now I see there is a Boss Hall Industrial Estate!   Sometimes we would go up to my father's allotment- it was on the site of what is now Westbourne High School- to give him a hand or, more likely, to interrupt his work and make a nuisance of ourselves.

 

            Our parents, I have little doubt, must often have worried about the possibility of our falling out of a tree and breaking our necks, falling into a river or deep pond and drowning, or getting into trouble for trespassing on a farmer's land.  I'm quite certain though that, never for a split second, did they consider that we might be abused, abducted or even murdered, as conscientious parents undoubtedly do today.

 

            As L.P. Hartley remarks in the prologue to his best-selling novel 'The Go-Between';  'The past is another country; they do things differently there'.