My Reading

Some of my mother’s memories

Dora Gaines/Griffin wrote this.

Looking at all the troubles with the youngsters of today, then looking back through the years to my own school days I do worry where life went wrong for them. We did minor misdeeds of course, but we knew we would be punished if caught. Such things as scrumping, or picking blue bells in a private wood. We had walked miles to get there and we didn’t know it was private. We were chased by a gamekeeper with a gun under his arm and his dog. We didn’t get caught scrumping, but if we had then the owner of the orchard or a policeman would have threatened us with all sorts of things we could expect if we did it again.

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Di Rayburn has sent me a scanned copy of a small document called More Talking of Coley.

The  complete document is too big to upload as received so I have converted it into 4 PDF documents.

Coley Talking 1   Coley Talking 2  Coley Talking 3  Coley Talking 4

If you can imagine me standing on the old black gas stove and looking down to draw this…see below…on the right is the coal hole which dad eventually turned into a shower room. The toilet remained outside. We had to go through the door by the sink and down the back bricks to reach it.

The bane of my mother’s life, the old brick boiler is in the corner. I can still remember the smell of boiling soapy water when mum did the washing, and her ending up soaked to the skin after rinsing the washing in the shallow sink. Her hands used to be white with cold in the winter. There was no running hot water. Eventually dad put a small electric water heater over the sink so she didn’t need to put the kettle on to do the washing up and bought her an electric boiler after he connected the house to electricity. Continue reading →

Here are some gems – again from Di Rayburn.  If you wish you can view it as a slideshow but I suggest you ignore the {Show as slideshow} button and click on any photo thumbnail and it will take you to the photo list – use the left and right arrows on your keyboard to go through the list.  When finished either left click on the picture or hit the ESC key on your keyboard to return to the Posts page.

[Show as slideshow]

I have just read Di Rayburn’s story about Coley School. I can vouch for the pain from Miss Whites pencil on the head. My sister never ever forgave her for that. I too used to be taken to school by my brother Tony but refused to go in as he used to remind me in later years. I was in fear of Miss White also. As you say Di what bliss when we went into Miss Clemurphy’s class. Mr Welfare was a favourite, and as well as organising football he also took us to Wembley, to watch the Schoolboy International games. How he did that I shall never know. I am sure our parents could not afford to pay for such trips. Continue reading →

The forefront of fashion in Coley.

It made no difference that the hard working land girls of WW2 wore trousers. In our street, like wearing bright red nail varnish, it was still something we didn’t do, and it wasn’t until 1959 when I was fifteen and had started work that I treated myself to a pair of fashionable tartan trews and felt comfortable enough to wear them out and about.

No-one could say that the ladies of Coley were at the forefront of fashion, but in those early days after the war, shortages and lack of money took “make do and mend” to another level.

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I am Di’s Daughter, living in the USA. Thank you so much for this website. Not only did I enjoy reading my Mothers memories of her childhood, many of which I remember my Grandmother and Grandfather Griffin telling me about, but I enjoyed other peoples recollections of that time. Gran would have enjoyed this too, (Dora and Richard Griffin, at 51) and Thanks Mum for posting, I love you!

I’ve been blown away by the beautiful writings from Di Rayburn and although I only lived in Coley briefly as a baby, I can relate to many of the descriptions which remind me of grandma’s house at 151 Wolseley Street which I visited as a young girl. I have printed off the first batch of Di’s posts and have passed them to my mother Win Fullbrook (nee Lawrence) and my father Len Fullbrook, who I am sure will enjoy reading them. They are both quite well at 91 and 92 years respectively and live in a bungalow at Sonning Common. It’s wonderful that people are still discovering your lovely website and making contributions. Thank you so much for setting it up.

Best wishes,

Carole Gardner – Win and Len’s daughter now living in Caversham, Reading

Cough Please.

After asking how much, dad had barely extracted a five pound note from his wallet when the doctor leaned across, said, ‘That will do nicely’, and for something that had taken less than five minutes to carry out, pocketed what it had taken dad a week to earn.

Dad was on leave from the navy and had been on board a ship with an outbreak of smallpox, so all families were advised to get vaccinated. Although mum was annoyed with the doctor when she realised they weren’t getting any change from the fiver, she wasn’t surprised.

During her childhood through the twenties and early thirties if you were poor, calling on the services of a doctor was an act of last resort. If it was that desperate and a doctor was sought out, they frequently refused to attend when given the address of the patient. It happened to my mum when her mother [my gran] was taken ill. She ran to two surgeries and as soon as she said she lived in Coley, they found an excuse not to call.

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Coley School – Part 1.

Living almost opposite the school we were used to seeing the teachers pass by daily. They were always given lots of respect by both parents and pupils as they walked to the school gates.

When I started I was the third generation of my family to attend Coley School. I can’t remember my first day, but it wasn’t long before I would wake in the morning and ask mum what day it was. If she said Monday through to Friday, I would start to shiver and shake and try to stay under the bed covers. I’d be crying as we went out of the front door and hang on to mum’s coat tails grizzling as we stood outside the infant’s entrance while she desperately tried to quiet me down so I wouldn’t show us up.

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Coley School – part 2

After Miss ClemMurphy, we went into Miss Inkley’s class. She was also what you could call Victorian. Short, dumpy, with white wispy hair and rosy red apple cheeks, she too was nearing retirement but whereas Miss White had ruled with a rod of iron, Miss Inkley was the exact opposite and was always kind, although she told my mother she was driven to her wits end by our class, but said we weren’t naughty, just lively. She put it down to the fact we were war babies.

And then the bomb dropped. At the end of the school year just as the six weeks holiday was about to start, the news flashed around the street that Coley school was to become just a junior school. All the over elevens would be going to Katesgrove. I had been out the front learning how to ride a bike when I heard and was devastated. I loved the school so much, I’d cosily pictured myself staying there until it was time to leave at fourteen, just as my mum and grandfather had done. And to add insult to injury, the school leaving age was being upped to fifteen.

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Coley School – part 3 and final part

Mr Chandler had left that year to take over a new school at Southcote and our new headmistress was Miss Scoble. Miss Scoble was very fond of country dancing, and gave us a lesson once a week. We practised in the hall and as the music started she would shout out what steps we had to take and stamp time. She had the patience of a saint because we used to mess about although it was in a nice way. A couple of boys would get us laughing and like Charlie Welfare she had the hardest job to keep a straight face.

Once a year all the Reading schools gathered at Palmer Park for a mammoth country dancing event. Miss Scoble was very proud of us when we behaved ourselves and never put a foot wrong.

Leaving Coley was very hard. I shut myself in the toilet for hours after my last day there. The teachers, Miss ClemMurphy: Miss Inkley: Miss Austin: Charlie Welfare and Miss Scobles, stood head and shoulders above the staff at Alfred Sutton Girls which was my next school.

After 60 years I still say they were an impossible act to follow.

I found something that may be of interest; …www.coleypark.com/cp_railways03.html – Coley Park and beyond.

Twirl the Baton Diane!

Here is my Coronation Day story.

In our street the mood was sombre on the day King George VI died, and the memory stands out because it was the only time a paperboy walked down the middle of our road dramatically waving a newspaper above his head and calling out, ‘The King has died, read all ‘abart’ it.’

As a mark of respect, most of the residents drew the curtains across their front windows as they always did when there was a death in the family, and for a few days it was all the housewives talked about while they were waiting to be served in Bert’s.

It wasn’t long though, before plans for Princess Elizabeth’s coronation were afoot and a committee was formed to organise our street’s celebrations. They decided to hold a fancy dress parade as well as a street party, but not trusting to luck although the coronation would be taking place in June, arrangements were made to decorate the street with flags and bunting, while the party would be held in the Church hall at the bottom of our road just in case the day was wet or cold.

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AA few odd notes on Wolseley Street.

During the fifties Coley Boy’s Club was held in a hall at the bottom of Coley Hill, just before you crossed the road into Wolseley Street. I always knew it as the Mission Hall but I’m not sure if that was its correct name. It caused quite a stir when the local lads discovered a way of making themselves faint at will. They had a great time passing out on the gym mats at the club, until for safety reasons they were stopped much to their disgust. We girls had nothing as exciting. Our club was run by Mrs. Robbins and held in Coley School, where we spent the evening learning lady-like handicrafts. I particularly remember making pictures on glass with the coloured, metallic wrapping paper that sweets, particularly toffees were wrapped in. Eventually in the late fifties, a mixed youth club was started up and held once a week in St. Saviour’s hall. By then jive was all the rage, but we had some hilarious ballroom dancing lessons there as well.

Socials were regularly held in the church hall, as well as a weekly Old Tyme Dancing club and the Coronation street party was moved to the hall, because it was such a cold day.

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The Josey’s live in Howard St. They were quite a big family. I remember Terry, who was blonde haired and stocky. He was a couple of years older than me. Margaret his sister was a year or two younger. She had ginger hair… That’s about all I remember of them.