Vague Memories of Coffee Bar Culture

So far as I can remember there never was one of those signifiers of cosmopolitan life in the early 1960s - the Wimpy bar - in Southall, my first thought was that Southall must have been too provincial but I remember there was a Wimpy in Hayes, a much fringier place. I also remember the one in West Ealing, plastic tables, coffee machine noises and froth, flat grills, that totally unhealthy smell of greasy burgers and onions, coffee, steamy windows in the winter and, the ultimate in romance - the RumBaba. What there was in Southall, though, in a parade of small and rickety shops between the old fire station and the George and Dragon pub, which no longer exists, was a small coffee bar. This was a place of vague Italian pretensions, with a Gaggia machine or something similar, where teenagers not old enough for the pub could go, especially at the weekend. It was near two record shops, one just across the road and the other round the corner in South Road and not far from several clothes shops where things like Levi jeans and purple mohair jumpers could be found. There were also several 'greasy spoon' cafes - I remember one on Featherstone Road, where teenagers could gather.

Libraries

I remember that, in the 1950s, there used to be a local library van, a kind of converted removal van, with shelves and books and a desk at the front, which travelled around and parked in various places, I think it had electrical sockets on small concrete posts where it would plug in. I remember it used to park by the medical clinic in Northcote Road. Before the days of relative affluence and JK Rowling the number of books available to children was much less, things of the 'Just William' kind, but some of us did benefit from that mobile library.

Later, I became a regular at the Southall Library, in Osterley Park Road. This was a splendid example of Edwardian public building, through an imposing entrance to a temple with polished wood and a grand staircase, lino or stone floors and wooden shelves which, with the books, gave off the smell of learning. I used to borrow art books, usually large and heavy, and carry them home as trophies. They were so interesting that the overdue fine system became very familiar to me. There was a desk in the middle where librarians lurked, coming and going with trolleys and stacks of books, or stamping the little cards that would be inserted into the cardboard holders in the books. The library was well stocked and a haven for the studious. I had an English teacher, Mr Russell, who lived on the same road and told me about some of the twentieth century poets whose work could be found there. He was very much into 'improving' working class lads like myself. There was quite a large section on philosophy, politics and history, which was well used - in those days some of us believed in historical progress. Also, I'd say, many a teenager learned a little from some of the medical reference books there (while never, of course, taking them home). Upstairs, the high ceilinged and windowed reference section also had rooms full of glass cabinets containg the peculiar Martinware pottery which had been made in Southall. This was where I first encountered the genus 'older library lurker', who would spend hours studying a few newspapers. In the 1960s, an era of 'modernisation', things like Martinware began to seem archaic, but I gather lately the same Martinware pottery became desirable enough for a new species of library lurker to organise a blag from the library.

Southall only gained its status as a borough in 1936 and that ended in 1965, so the library was a truly local centre for less than 30 years, but it and the branch libraries played a really important part in growing up there in the years before wall to wall television and the internet. I remember being taken to a children's library from school (probably the one on Lady Margaret Road), sat on the floor cross-legged and having stories (could have been Enid Blyton or LadyBird) read by the librarian, very exotic.

The Market and Blacksmith

Just off the High Street, every Saturday, there was (and I think still is) an open air market. This could be quite a large affair, with stalls and vans selling clothes, household goods, toys, food and tools. It was a magnet for the area and the market itself, a rectangular patch of land reached through a narrower entrance, was often jam-packed. When the market was on the local pubs: Plough, White Hart and George and Dragon, would be busy at lunchtime and many vehicles parked in pub carparks, in front of the Odeon cinema and along both sides of the road by the park and the High Street (this was an era well before yellow lines and breathalyzers). The old police station, in the same place as now but then very Dixon-of-Dock-Greenish with its steps to the front, wooden sash windows right onto the street and a blue police lamp above the door, was very close by. The market was especially busy in the run-up to christmas, when the entrance would be full of christmas trees, and also at fair times.

The same venue was also used on Wednesdays for horse dealing. Again the road outside would be full of vehicles each side and up beyond the park gate, but this time they were horse-boxes and other trailers. For most locals this was an 'outside' affair, since there were very few locally owned or stabled horses, but we were all familiar with it and with the sight and sound of horses being led up and down the roads. I also remember, as a young boy in the 1950s, being taken in to see the blacksmith, who had a premises just behind the police station in North Road, not far from the market. I saw horses being shod there, remember the fire and bellows inside, steam coming off the hooves when water was poured on them and the smell of the hot metal. I think the blacksmith also did other work than shoeing horses. I have a vague memory that there was a shop for tackle on the High Street but I would need this confirmed.

Bridges and Tunnels

The railway, when I was growing up, was a huge physical and sensual entity which ran through the middle of Southall like a river. I've mentioned the division of the town into two by it: 'the other side' and 'new Southall', but the barrier had its crossings. The most obvious is Station Bridge, that great hump which rose, on metal stilts, from the Post Office and Glass House pub on one side, peaked at the station building and dropped to the shops on the Green. That's where the buses crossed and was the main road linking the two Southalls. There used to be a hostel there for railway workers, drivers and firemen, who often spent days away from home on trips, as did my own grandfather. It was a functional slab of a place, a load of regular steel window frames. But, as a boy, I also followed other routes across. There was the dingy foot tunnel, which ran under the shunting yard, 10 or 12 tracks wide, from White Street on one side to Spencer Street on the other, with metal obstacles at each end to stop cycling. The shunting yard itself was a noisy and busy place. Up until the early 1960s first steam engines then diesels moved lines of goods wagons forwards and backwards. There was lot of clanking and squealing, often into the night when noise carried on the wind into the surrounding area and it had vague industrial smell. Shunters used to hang onto the sides of the engines and jump off to hook and unhook bits of trains with poles.

The gasworks next to it had its own strange little engine, which used to move coal and coke wagons in and out of the works sidings. Not far away, another way to cross the tracks was along the canal, at the Hayes end of Southall. You could walk along the towpath, by the wall of the gasworks and under the tracks, to where two canals met and turn left back towards Western Road. The station these days is a somewhat sad and truncated version of what it used to be. then it had a grand booking hall, with a couple of hatches, off the bridge and three or four big staircases down to platforms. There used to be a machine on the platform where you could punch your name into a metal strip. As well as the booking office staff I remember there being porters with trolleys. Sometimes an engine would be stationed at a little platform to one side. There was the usual wooden planking across the sloped end of the platform where porters (and others) would cross the tracks and the usual sign telling passengers not to do it. Just beyond the platforms was was a signal box which still had the old brass levers. Between trains the signalman would lean out of the window and just beyond that was another way to cross the railway: the footbridge from Park Avenue to Bridge Road, the old Bachelor's factory and the Community Centre. The Villiers Road-Park Avenue part of town was slightly 'upmarket' private housing and the railway separated it from the factory area over the tracks. The bridge was a long, narrow wooden affair and in the days of steam trains it was exciting enough to stand on it as the big express engines came thundering underneath. It had steps in the middle which went down to Southall Engine Shed and you could see drivers and firemen in their blue denims, with their kit bags, going to and from work. There was a small building with a track running into it where post was delivered and there was a parcel depot. When I was quite young there were railway vans which delivered parcels from there to local houses and businesses. Beyond the engine shed, right by the edge of the old AEC works, was another tunnel. To get to it you went by the side of the park along Green Drive, more middle range private houses. It started with a narrow alley, with a high wall for the AEC works (and a small works entrance) on one side. Then it went under the railway and came out to Glade Lane, which went on to the canal. That part of town in the 1950s and early 1960s was quite cut off. The canal area had some hidden places and I remember catching things like grasshoppers and slow-worms there. There used to be an AEC equivalent of the gasworks engine as well, a strange little diesel engine, built in house, when AEC had its own siding off the railway which ran into the works. Near there was also the turntable for the engine shed where you could watch the engines and also a playing field where railway workers played football. My grandfather used to look after the pitch there. These tunnels and bridges were not built for the convenience of children of course, or even for people to shop or visit parks, they were there to allow people to go to and from their workplaces, which helps define what Southall was, from the 1930s onward: a centre of industry. I remember men in large numbers on bikes and walking, with an increasing number in cars through the 60s, going from one side to another, to the factories and works. In those days shifts started at 6am, so certain parts were always busy.

Sporting Clubs

I was never that much into either but two places I remember members of my family going were the billiard club that stood on the corner of Beaconsfield Road and South Road and the Billiard and Snooker hall above the Burtons shop on the corner of the Broadway and Alexandra Road. These were basically retreats for men and the couple of times I was in the one above Burtons, reached up a straight high staircase, I recall the dimness, the over-lights, the score boards and the smoky atmosphere - an absolutely typical snooker club in other words. The club life for men I have alluded to before: the Legion, Labour Club, Conservative Club and so on, the sporting clubs were part of that. Southall Football Club, where my grandfather worked as groundsman for a couple of years, also had its club life for supporters, as did the greyhound track near Havelock Road. Railway workers had their sporting club and I think other workplaces did as well, AEC certainly had playing fields and a clubhouse. These were all alternatives to the pubs and provided venues for social functions as well.

There was also an overlap. Two pubs close to Norwood Green, the Wolf and the Lamb, both had cricket teams and played a match every year. The winner was awarded as trophy an enlarged cricket bat which was hung on a bracket outside of the winning pub. There were also many darts teams based in pubs; my father and cousins played in a pub league. Pubs could be taken over almost totally on competition nights. I have some memories of people keeping racing pigeons as well but I can't remember where they met.