My House, My Street

About that time that I was born a large factory began to be erected at the rear of the house, the BSA factory, for the making of the BESA machine guns. My early years were accompanied day and night by the rattle of those guns as each one was tested and they made thousands! From the other side of the town, as a sort of bass accompaniment, came the dull boom of the HDA (High Duty Alloys) Big Hammer. There is a photo of me sat on my Aunt Beat’s shoulders with the BSA girders rising behind. On the opposite side of the road was a bank, a hedge, then open fields rising to Lodge Farm, owned by Mr. Stanley and his sons, while going down the road, from town, the houses on the L/H side ceased where they do now, Uncle George’s being the last house. Further on there was a derelict farmhouse and then the Monochrome (a chrome plating factory). On the R/H side the houses were intermittent, finishing just after Pinder’s and Danks’s shops. Salt Hill, to Studley, was little more than a cart track, rough and potholed.

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