Copyright Swanley History Group and Terry Fox and should not be copied or shared without permission
Terry Fox now living in Perth, Western Australia has kindly shared some of his memories of his childhood in Swanley
We came to Swanley because of WW2. My father, who was technically minded and who ran the Singer Sewing Machine shop in Lavender Hill, joined 90 Group RAF at Kidbrooke. We therefore went to live with my mother’s sister, who ran the nudist colony at Mount’s View, Upper Ruxley. All went well until we were bombed out by a stray. The Germans weren’t against nudism per se but it was just that we were on the way to or from the London docks. I can remember going with my cousins to see the wreckage of a German bomber that had crashed nearby.
We then moved to a flat over a parade of shops close to the LT bus garage. I don’t think that we were there too long before we were bombed out again - not a direct hit but the building was uninhabitable. I can still see the electricity meter swinging on one wire and sparking furiously. So yet another move, this time to 5 The Flats, London Road. This was a relatively new (1930s) building just to the West of the A20 bridge over the railway. My aunt (Cherry Haydock) and her family had moved into 1a The Flats, which was at the other end of the block. She was probably quite well known, as she was the ticket clerk at the railway station. After the war she moved into one of the prefabs just off the Dartford road. Because of the flat roof, there was an Observer Corps post on it and we were allowed to go up and watch the aerial displays. We stayed there until 1950.
I went to the Church of England primary school, which I think was in Goldsel Road; the headmistress was Miss Dalton. I had two real friends: one was John Castle, whose father was a hospital administrator and lived in one of the villas on London Road and drove a Daimler. The other was Ken Masters, who lived with his mother and grandparents in Goldsel Road, backing on to the railway line. We gathered coal for heating by putting bottles on the back fence and the train drivers would throw lumps of coal at them. Ken’s grandfather was the caretaker of the Methodist church, where there was an old three quarter size billiard table. We went to Miss Simmonds’ library in Goldsel Road and for threepence took out a book by Joe Davis, which illustrated all the billiard and snooker shots. We became quite proficient.
On Saturday mornings we all went to the Corona cinema, where for ninepence we were entertained by Abbott & Costello, the Three Stooges and Hopalong Cassidy. (“Look out Hoppy, he’s behind you!”) On Sunday mornings we all attended church at St Mary’s, I was in charge of the attendance stamps.
I was very keen at that age on collecting engine numbers and bus numbers; I think it was a firm called Allen who produced booklets with all the details and one could tick off the ones that had been seen. The 21 bus route, which I think went from Farningham to Lewisham, had some amazingly old buses: the LTs and STs with open staircases at the back. The Greenline route (703?) was an express route to Victoria, they were single deck and had a fin at the back to give the appearance of being quick. All of course had brown sticky tape over all the windows to prevent fragmentation injuries.
In 1945 I passed the new 11+ exam and was admitted to Bromley Grammar School; this meant a train journey every day. The rolling stock at the end of the war was pretty decrepit; there was an old pull-and-push train with two coaches dating from the Victorian era. Our favourite compartment was the saloon, about half the length of one carriage, which was equipped with moveable arm chairs and sofas. As a reward for passing, my dad bought me a second hand push bike. This gave me a new freedom, as I could then for example go catching sticklebacks in the river at Eynsford or watch the dirt track racing at Brands Hatch.
Copyright Swanley History Group and Terry Fox and should not be copied or shared without permission