We had a modest back-garden but also an allotment behind it and also two more allotments adjacent to Rush Green Road.  They were at the end of Grosvenor Road - there is a church [St. Augustine's] marked there on the map now.  Dad had a full-time job at the brewery and was firewatching in the evenings and overnight.  On top of that he and Mum kept these four plots going to provide vegetables for a hungry family of four and, I suppose, two grandparents as well as neighbours.  He had a trailer for his bike and would cycle from Crow Lane to Rush Green with me in the trailer.  I would come back on top of a trailer full of potatoes on occasions but I did have to walk if there was a slight uphill gradient.  The same trailer was used to collect coke from the gas works.

How Mum and Dad did all this I will never know.  We also kept chickens for the eggs and the pot as well as rabbits.  We were never allowed to see Dad wring their necks.  The neighbours would trade for eggs and I suppose the money they paid kept us in chicken meal which was bought in those wonderfully smelling shops of Matthews Corn and Seed Merchants in Chadwell Heath High Road (near Dr Frew's and opposite the police station) or Beacontree Heath.  There were the open sacks of all sorts of seed, feed and everything horticultural.  It all smelled so terribly earthy.  All the seeds were in little wooden drawers which lined the back wall.  The day old chicks were delivered by post!  We had a wood and wire enclosure on the living room table and kept them warm with light bulbs.  We kids loved it when a new supply of chicks arrived to play with.

Where did Mum and Dad get all this knowledge and skill?  Was it Dad's Essex roots or did they learn from scratch?  Sadly I never asked him.  They never missed Mr Middleton's gardening programme on the wireless (battery delivered weekly from Silcock's in North Street even though we had mains electricity) and when Mr Middleton died one of our gardening books was inscribed by Mum "Dedicated to our friend on the wireless, Mr Middleton" so the programme obviously meant a lot.  We also bought the Smallholder magazine.

Was it just us or did everyone live this semi-rural life back in the war days?

Roy Woolley, June 2001.