Mum’s memoir opens with one of her earliest memories, holidays in Wimbledon, which ended when she was 7 years old (and thus in 1932). She went on to describe her early childhood in Wallasey:
“Back in Wallasey, things moved at a very leisurely pace. We resided at 24 Hale Road which was very near to the Egremont Promenade. Shopping was easy way back in the twenties and thirties. Most goods were delivered to the door mainly by horsedrawn carts and vans. My dad grew beautiful roses, and my sister and I had the unenviable task of going in the wake of the various horses, with shovel at the ready, to gather up the manure for his roses.
There were not the same hygiene laws and butter was in big kegs and was cut and weighed by the grocer. Also cheese…
Neither my sister or I went to school at the right age. The School man used to come around and my mother always told him that we were too delicate to go through the rigours of attending regular school. Eventually, at the age of over six, my sister Sheila was sent to the Junior Branch of the Maris Stella Convent, New Brighton, and at nearly six I followed her. She went to school at first in the “S” tram (S for Seabank Road) but, by the time I went, the buses had just been put on the “S” route. We used to pay 1/2 d to go all the way to New Brighton and we were given 6d a week pocket money – 1/2 d to go to school in the morning and 1/2 d to go to school at lunchtime, as we did not stop school dinners – we then had to walk back from School at lunchtime and in the evening when, invariably, my mother met us after school had finished. She normally took us to the Marine Park (Wellington Road) to play. We had great fun going up and down the many paths and playing hide and seek. She would then take us to the dairy which was opposite the gates of the park (recently the block housing the dairy has been demolished) for a cold glass of milk, and then she would take us over to Reeces for a scone and butter. It was a lovely end to the day and one which we looked forward to all day.”
In my own childhood, Mum often talked about chasing after horses with a shovel for the manure. 24 Hale Road was a large double-fronted semi-detached house, faced in red-pressed brick, and probably built in the 1890s, when Wallasey was one of the fastest-growing towns in Britain. Seabank Road, on which trams, and later buses, ran, was built in the 1880s to connect Egremont and New Brighton, on the east side of Wallasey. It was then a prosperous suburb, with long streets of large houses running down to the wide but pedestrian river promenades.
Mum must have gone to school at the start of the January term in 1931, and her sister a year earlier. One feature was that her mother Winifred was very protective, and this continued after my Uncle Tony was born in 1932. 1/2d would be around 50p in today’s money and a weekly pocket money of 6 pence would be between £1.75 and £5.
Marine Park remains as an Edwardian park, not much altered from that time, although the block in which the dairy was located was indeed demolished in the late 1980s. The school nearby (demolished in the 1970s) was about a mile from Hale Road – quite a way for primary school children to walk three times a day. However, they would walk past familiar locations – the church that they attended, and, later, her Aunt Esther’s shop in Seabank Road.
Reeces Restaurant was a chain started in 1908 with venues in Liverpool, that Mum and her mother visited. Her mother was particularly keen on the Lyceum Cafe at 1 Bold Street, next to Liverpool Central Station; a creature of habit, she always maintained that she was entitled to a particular table there. In Wallasey, there was the Grove Cafe at the corner of Grove Road and Wallasey Village, which I knew in childhood as a shop and bakery.
The Reeces outlet in New Brighton was the Tivoli Cafe, The Promenade. This was, I gather, located above the Tivoli Theatre, just south of the Pier; it was certainly open by 1917, and still open in the 1940s. I surmise that Mum, her mother and sister must have walked home from here along the river promenade, past Vale Park, and then up Hale Road. I have wondered what they would have done when it was raining – perhaps they did not go to either Park or cafe, or made their way back by bus. By today’s standards, it seems like quite a long walk for primary schoolchildren.
Oddly, one of the last places that Mum ever visited was in this vicinity – the Queens Royal pub – but she never commented on this, or indeed on Marine Park. My memories with her are of Vale Park, and I will discuss that separately.
Begun 22 April 2020, amended 24 December 2020
Joan Boughey Recalled 