Tower and Town, February 2016

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Marlborough Childhood

Mark Clements from Yorkshire remembers his childhood in Marlborough in the 1960s and 1970s.

One of my earliest memories is my Nan taking me as a toddler to the College playing fields as she lived at the top of Herd Street by the Common. Nearly all my family lived at that time in Marlborough - many Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and my Grandparents. It was handy for a school job to have an Uncle who managed the Tannery and another Uncle who ran Stratton and Son’s grocery for another part time job.

St Mary’s Infant School in Herd Street was ten yards down from our old house, and so it was an easy introduction to the school run. Other children there told me about the ‘Bogey Man’ who frequented the alleyway further up from the school and I believed it as any five year old might.

My next school, St Peter’s Junior School, was only ten minutes further on down the hill. I remember standing outside in my cap being given the welcome talk on my first day. Playtime was conkers or marbles. Boy, how we wanted to win some of those lovely shiny tractor ball bearings some pupils brought in! Who remembers racing hot rods across the playground? You could cover a great distance across that school playground queuing up and sliding on the ice till it ended up like glass. There were Brooke Bond Tea cards to swop and magnifying glasses to test: how the sun, when focused, melted the rubber on your sole, or made someone jump when you focussed it on their leg. Clacker balls came and left some sore wrists in their wake. You could run like the wind chasing around and have piggy back fights. We’d run and hide from the dinner lady when summoned for dinner.

Swimming was at the outdoor pool next to The Parade: upstairs to the pool surrounded by corrugated panels and with tiered wooden benches. It made me think about life moving on when we sang the school song which ended with “Those who here will meet no more, those returning make more faithful than before.”

We relished a quarter of sweets from the sweet shop in The Parade but regretted it later for the toll on our teeth. On the walk home I used to pop in to the little sweet shop at the corner of The Green to see the lady bring out a fresh tray of fudge and break it up with a little hammer before weighing a couple of ounces, paid for with the lovely old pennies.

There were of course other corner shops, Wheeler’s in Salisbury Road and Bayden’s in St Martins. It wasn’t just us who got free bullseyes and chicken claws from Webber’s butchers in The Parade. The bullseyes were lenses from cows’ eyes and magnified things, and the claws had tendons you could pull to make the claw open and shut.

Mum and Dad at that time had a corner store in Kingsbury Street so we lived above that. Mum awoke me and I stood in the window of our flat in my pyjamas sadly watching the Polly Tearooms ablaze. We had Hillier’s fruit and veg shop over the road with the stuffed pike in the glass case. The stuffed bream was in the companion Hillier’s shop in The Parade. It was there I made my first foray into theft, taking a handful of child-height monkey nuts...only for them to be discovered by Mum and for me to be marched across the road to give them back to Mr Hillier and to say “Sorry”.

My newspaper round comprised taking my sack to Mr Peter Flippence at the office on the corner of Kingsbury Street and Silverless Steet; he printed copies off in his braces in front of you while you waited. If it rained Mum drove me round so that I wasn’t a complete rufty tufty.

Lured by the promise of a medallion I went to one choir practice in St Mary’s Church but that was my first and last practice...and so no medallion! Ringing the bells in St Mary’s tower was another of my activities, until I realized that Plain Hunt was going to be the limit of my ability and I became slightly uneasy at the several tons of swinging metal I was controlling with the sally. The old tin scout hut was still standing and they did their famous bonfires on November 5th. For the benefit of the person who shouted “Who did that” about forty five years ago, it was me who stupidly threw a firecracker onto the bonfire.

(To be continued in a subsequent edition)

Mark Clements