When I was a child in the early 1900s no family in our road on the
Huxley Estate went away in the school
holidays as far as I know. Our family certainly didn't because there wasn't
the money for it. However we children had a very free childhood and we could
more or less do as we pleased outside the house. So we spent a lot of time out
of doors. We were entirely happy to go off for the whole day and our parents
never seemed to be concerned about danger. We would wander where we pleased,
taking our sandwiches with us. There was never anything particularly exciting
in them, either paste or jam, and we also had an apple or any other fruit that
happened to be around. Some days we might be given a halfpenny or a penny to
spend.
If you have an old photo which illustrates the
way of life that my mother describes, I would very much appreciate a copy.
Pat Cryer
One of our favourite places was Hadley Woods a few miles away from where
we lived in Edmonton (now Enfield). We thought nothing of walking there. If
there was a stream around we would paddle in it. We never had a towel with us
and just sat on the grass until our feet were dry. Some days we would take nets
and jam jars with us and go fishing to catch tiddlers or frogsporn. If we brought
these home, we were not allowed to keep them in the house but could in the back
garden.
Another place we would go was to the relatively new Barrowell Green open
air swimming baths in Southgate. Southgate was a very select area compared with
where I lived in Edmonton. One experience really brought this home to me. I
wanted to go swimming with my friends but had no swimming costume. So my mother,
who could see how upset I was, took one of her old vests, cut and sewed the
lover part into two legs and dyed it with the bluebag. That turned it mauve.
I was quite happy and off I went. Not being in a proper suit didn't matter to
me. Then, though, inside the baths one of the girls from the better-off Southgate
cried out, "That girl's got a vest on". It really upset me and I have never
forgotten it.
Nevertheless my friends and I would stay there for hours. As soon
as we arrived, we would go in the water. Then after a while, we would come out,
dress and lay out our swimming things to dry on the grass bank beside the bath.
Then we would have our sandwiches and change to go back into the water again.
In fact our swimming things were not really dry and it was pretty uncomfortable
getting into wet things, but we had to put up with that. We would stay there
until sunset. A few minutes before closing time, the staff would turn on spray
which came from the handrails around that bath. I'm not sure if this was to
clean the area at the end of the day or to alert us to it being closing time.
It was probably both.
My brother Ted and I would always have a spit and polish before we went home
after our outings so that our mother wouldn't be cross. We would go down to
the stream by the weir at Weir Hall,
wipe the mud off our shoes with dock leaves and tidy up generally. Then we would
check each other over to make sure we looked all right. We would also use dock
leaves when we had been stung by stinging nettles. I don't know if they really
had any healing properties, It could just have been the coolness of the leaves
that gave relief.
In Winter and wet days we played indoors, the girls with their dolls and
the boys with their soldiers and forts. The soldiers were very well made and
colourful and some had arms which were made to move. Just after the first world
war there was a move against letting boys play with them as it was thought bad
to encourage boys to think about war. Trains were played with by boys and their
fathers. The rails were wooden and interlocked, and some families had so many
that they would cover the whole floor. The trains ran by clockwork, so had to
be wound up and the carriages hooked on to one another. They really were fascinating
to watch.
This website Join me in the 1900s is also known as
Join me in the 1900's and is ©
Pat Cryer.
