Memories of Growing Up in Croxley Green
By Colin Gibson
By Colin Gibson
I was born on Christmas Day in 1949 at the maternity hospital in King Street, Watford.
At that time mum and dad lived at 34 Beechcroft Ave with my older brother Roy (born 1942) and also shared the 3 bedroomed semi detached house with an elderly aunt Alice and uncle Jack who had previously relocated from London after the severe bombing. They occupied the downstairs back room, rear bedroom and shared the bathroom and kitchen. Not the ideal situation for mum and dad’s new family.
I was very young and don’t remember when they passed away, but we then had the house to ourselves. I was told that it took ages for dad to clean and decorate the back room due to the amount of dirt and discolouration caused by uncle Jack’s continual cigarette smoke.
My first school was Yorke Road where Miss Bridge was the Headmistress, because I knew her from Rickmansworth Baptist Church where our family went every Sunday, I can’t remember having any problems on going to school on my first few days or school in general.
Mum used to take me, on her bike with me sitting in the rear foldable child seat, in the morning, fetch me and take me back after lunchtime and then collect me at the end of school every day. I don’t remember a lot of my school days at Yorke Road other than being a milk monitor and having to collect the crates of milk which I believe were 1/3 pint in glass bottles at that time. I recall the toilets were outside in a brick enclosure which got very cold in the winter.
My next school was Harvey Road which was obviously not very memorable because I can’t remember any of the staff or very much of my time there. I can recall it was a long low level wooden building with the classrooms coming off the main corridor. One thing it did teach me was that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, only because the field basically faces south and I noticed that the sun always travelled from the direction of Harvey Road across to Bateman Road. I still picture that today.
After the Eleven Plus Exam, I went to Durrants Senior school for the next 5 years. I was not very academic and couldn’t wait until the fourth year when I could choose which route to take, either technical/practical or academic. I chose the technical/practical route and thoroughly enjoyed the last 2 years in the metalwork and woodwork workshops with Mr Thomas and Mr Graver.
Not being very sporty, I used to dread cross country running and having to run out of the back of the school into Little Green Lane, down to Rouse barn Lane and then up and over Whippendell Woods and return. A group of us used to get out of the school quickly and hide in a local orchard until the teacher, Pete Rule, had passed and we could relax.
After the leaders and Pete had returned, we would sneak back into Little Green Lane and race back to school out of breath looking as though we had run the complete course. He never did twig that we had only done a few hundred yards. We could never understand why he had not noticed that he had not overtaken us during the run.
I enjoyed my last couple of years at Durrants, sadly no longer a school.
Growing up in Croxley Green was great fun and there was always somewhere to play, the canal was like a magnet to me and my friends. Quite often we would go fishing between Croxley Common Moor lock and Lot Mead lock, tackle up and cast out. However, the main reason for going was to cook our breakfast, we would find some old bricks and build a small fire inside, the bricks giving somewhere to rest the frying pan. Each one of us would bring something to cook, generally sausages, bacon and eggs, sometimes baked beans heated in the tin. The frying pan was borrowed from home, an old one that mum didn’t use any more. The fishing was secondary and we only ever seem to catch gudgeon, roach and rudd. On odd occasions the fishing bailiff would cycle along the footpath and we would have to pay our few pence (pre decimal) for a day’s fishing. There was no rod licence in those days.
I had great fun helping with the lock gates, either opening or closing and watching the various barges travelling along the canal. It was fascinating to watch the rolls of paper being loaded/unloaded at Dickinsons Paper Mill and the ones carrying coal. It was at Common Moor Lock that I witnessed the deck and hull part company on a small leisure cruiser. It appeared that whilst going down through the lock, the boat had been moored up to the bollards without enough slack on the rope to allow the boat to descend. When the bottom sluice gates were opened the boat started to descend, unfortunately, the deck stayed tethered to the bollards at the top and the rest of the boat tilted slightly, floated downwards, scraping down the wall of the lock, resulting in the deck and hull parting company. Panic ensued until the gates were closed and the lock refilled, by then the damage had been done, together with a lot of embarrassment for the inexperienced crew.
We would spend hours in the woods behind Frankland Road, and use old metal corrugated iron sheeting or car bonnets or anything we could find to slide down the bank from the footpath down into the dell below, which I think was some old disused sidings. Remarkably, we never seemed to have any cuts or accidents… or none that I can remember.
As this also seemed to be the popular area for “fly tipping”, it was a great source for picking up old pram wheels to make a “soapbox”. Many a time I would pick up better wheels than I already had and take them home and refit them on my soapbox with minor adjustments being made in dad’s shed. Silver Cross pram wheels were the best and fairly large which made the soapbox go faster, or so it seemed, although stopping was a bit trickier. On Saturday mornings, an unofficial soapbox club used to meet in the fields behind Copthorne Road and we would race down the hill towards the Chess. Unless you had good brakes or didn’t mind using the soles of your shoes, there was always the fence at the bottom you could rely on for stopping. The worst part was pulling your soapbox back up the hill without getting mowed down by those coming down.
When the new houses were being built as the extension to Valley Walk and Sycamore Road we would consider this to be another playground. In the evenings when the workmen had left for the day we could play in and around the partly built houses and climb the scaffolding. It made a great climbing frame. There was no site security or fencing to stop us entering the houses. When one phase was finished we would move on to the next phase. How times have changed. We never caused any damage, we were just having some fun.
I remember being able to play football and cricket in the road and very rarely having to stop for traffic. Our metal front gate was made up of patterns with scrolls and bars etc. and as part of the design there were 3 vertical bars and mid-way a horizontal cross bar, just like a wicket. Needless to say, our gate was always used when we were out playing cricket.
I know it’s not allowed nowadays, but back in the late fifties/early sixties we would go “newting” in the pond at the top of Little Green Lane by Killingdown Farm. The main two types which we were able to catch were the common smooth newt and great crested newt. We would have a competition to see who could catch the most, and then we returned them back to the pond to be caught on another day.
A lot of my friends had early morning paper rounds with the newsagents in Croxley, but unfortunately I didn’t like getting up too early so never had one. My first Saturday job was with a pharmaceutical wholesaler caller Sangers who had a warehouse in the small industrial estate at the end of Harvey Road, prior to the houses being built. I was about 14 at the time and worked there for a couple of years until I started my apprenticeship. I was in the goods inwards and storage area and used to stock up the various shelves with basically anything you would find in the chemist shop. The shelves were in lines and in alphabetical order, like any normal warehouse. The “order picking ladies” would then locate and place the items in a container ready to be delivered out to the chemist. I think I earned half a crown an hour, ten shillings for a Saturday morning.
After leaving school in 1966, I started my plumbing and heating apprenticeship with a family building company called A.L. Adams & Sons in Mill End, Rickmansworth and continued in that industry in various positions until I took early retirement in 2010 from being the Plumbing Manager for Bovis Construction in Harrow for 24 years.
At that time mum and dad lived at 34 Beechcroft Ave with my older brother Roy (born 1942) and also shared the 3 bedroomed semi detached house with an elderly aunt Alice and uncle Jack who had previously relocated from London after the severe bombing. They occupied the downstairs back room, rear bedroom and shared the bathroom and kitchen. Not the ideal situation for mum and dad’s new family.
I was very young and don’t remember when they passed away, but we then had the house to ourselves. I was told that it took ages for dad to clean and decorate the back room due to the amount of dirt and discolouration caused by uncle Jack’s continual cigarette smoke.
My first school was Yorke Road where Miss Bridge was the Headmistress, because I knew her from Rickmansworth Baptist Church where our family went every Sunday, I can’t remember having any problems on going to school on my first few days or school in general.
Mum used to take me, on her bike with me sitting in the rear foldable child seat, in the morning, fetch me and take me back after lunchtime and then collect me at the end of school every day. I don’t remember a lot of my school days at Yorke Road other than being a milk monitor and having to collect the crates of milk which I believe were 1/3 pint in glass bottles at that time. I recall the toilets were outside in a brick enclosure which got very cold in the winter.
My next school was Harvey Road which was obviously not very memorable because I can’t remember any of the staff or very much of my time there. I can recall it was a long low level wooden building with the classrooms coming off the main corridor. One thing it did teach me was that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, only because the field basically faces south and I noticed that the sun always travelled from the direction of Harvey Road across to Bateman Road. I still picture that today.
After the Eleven Plus Exam, I went to Durrants Senior school for the next 5 years. I was not very academic and couldn’t wait until the fourth year when I could choose which route to take, either technical/practical or academic. I chose the technical/practical route and thoroughly enjoyed the last 2 years in the metalwork and woodwork workshops with Mr Thomas and Mr Graver.
Not being very sporty, I used to dread cross country running and having to run out of the back of the school into Little Green Lane, down to Rouse barn Lane and then up and over Whippendell Woods and return. A group of us used to get out of the school quickly and hide in a local orchard until the teacher, Pete Rule, had passed and we could relax.
After the leaders and Pete had returned, we would sneak back into Little Green Lane and race back to school out of breath looking as though we had run the complete course. He never did twig that we had only done a few hundred yards. We could never understand why he had not noticed that he had not overtaken us during the run.
I enjoyed my last couple of years at Durrants, sadly no longer a school.
Growing up in Croxley Green was great fun and there was always somewhere to play, the canal was like a magnet to me and my friends. Quite often we would go fishing between Croxley Common Moor lock and Lot Mead lock, tackle up and cast out. However, the main reason for going was to cook our breakfast, we would find some old bricks and build a small fire inside, the bricks giving somewhere to rest the frying pan. Each one of us would bring something to cook, generally sausages, bacon and eggs, sometimes baked beans heated in the tin. The frying pan was borrowed from home, an old one that mum didn’t use any more. The fishing was secondary and we only ever seem to catch gudgeon, roach and rudd. On odd occasions the fishing bailiff would cycle along the footpath and we would have to pay our few pence (pre decimal) for a day’s fishing. There was no rod licence in those days.
I had great fun helping with the lock gates, either opening or closing and watching the various barges travelling along the canal. It was fascinating to watch the rolls of paper being loaded/unloaded at Dickinsons Paper Mill and the ones carrying coal. It was at Common Moor Lock that I witnessed the deck and hull part company on a small leisure cruiser. It appeared that whilst going down through the lock, the boat had been moored up to the bollards without enough slack on the rope to allow the boat to descend. When the bottom sluice gates were opened the boat started to descend, unfortunately, the deck stayed tethered to the bollards at the top and the rest of the boat tilted slightly, floated downwards, scraping down the wall of the lock, resulting in the deck and hull parting company. Panic ensued until the gates were closed and the lock refilled, by then the damage had been done, together with a lot of embarrassment for the inexperienced crew.
We would spend hours in the woods behind Frankland Road, and use old metal corrugated iron sheeting or car bonnets or anything we could find to slide down the bank from the footpath down into the dell below, which I think was some old disused sidings. Remarkably, we never seemed to have any cuts or accidents… or none that I can remember.
As this also seemed to be the popular area for “fly tipping”, it was a great source for picking up old pram wheels to make a “soapbox”. Many a time I would pick up better wheels than I already had and take them home and refit them on my soapbox with minor adjustments being made in dad’s shed. Silver Cross pram wheels were the best and fairly large which made the soapbox go faster, or so it seemed, although stopping was a bit trickier. On Saturday mornings, an unofficial soapbox club used to meet in the fields behind Copthorne Road and we would race down the hill towards the Chess. Unless you had good brakes or didn’t mind using the soles of your shoes, there was always the fence at the bottom you could rely on for stopping. The worst part was pulling your soapbox back up the hill without getting mowed down by those coming down.
When the new houses were being built as the extension to Valley Walk and Sycamore Road we would consider this to be another playground. In the evenings when the workmen had left for the day we could play in and around the partly built houses and climb the scaffolding. It made a great climbing frame. There was no site security or fencing to stop us entering the houses. When one phase was finished we would move on to the next phase. How times have changed. We never caused any damage, we were just having some fun.
I remember being able to play football and cricket in the road and very rarely having to stop for traffic. Our metal front gate was made up of patterns with scrolls and bars etc. and as part of the design there were 3 vertical bars and mid-way a horizontal cross bar, just like a wicket. Needless to say, our gate was always used when we were out playing cricket.
I know it’s not allowed nowadays, but back in the late fifties/early sixties we would go “newting” in the pond at the top of Little Green Lane by Killingdown Farm. The main two types which we were able to catch were the common smooth newt and great crested newt. We would have a competition to see who could catch the most, and then we returned them back to the pond to be caught on another day.
A lot of my friends had early morning paper rounds with the newsagents in Croxley, but unfortunately I didn’t like getting up too early so never had one. My first Saturday job was with a pharmaceutical wholesaler caller Sangers who had a warehouse in the small industrial estate at the end of Harvey Road, prior to the houses being built. I was about 14 at the time and worked there for a couple of years until I started my apprenticeship. I was in the goods inwards and storage area and used to stock up the various shelves with basically anything you would find in the chemist shop. The shelves were in lines and in alphabetical order, like any normal warehouse. The “order picking ladies” would then locate and place the items in a container ready to be delivered out to the chemist. I think I earned half a crown an hour, ten shillings for a Saturday morning.
After leaving school in 1966, I started my plumbing and heating apprenticeship with a family building company called A.L. Adams & Sons in Mill End, Rickmansworth and continued in that industry in various positions until I took early retirement in 2010 from being the Plumbing Manager for Bovis Construction in Harrow for 24 years.
J. A. Gibson & Sons Coal Merchant
My grandad, John Alexander Gibson, started his coal merchant business ( J.A. Gibson and Sons) in Croxley Green around the early to mid-1930’s. He had a coal yard (The dump) alongside Croxley Green Met station, which is now the car park, and the coal office was run from their house at 68 New Road. The yard was also shared with Croxley Building Supplies and W Stone & Sons, operated by “Bob” Woods, another local coal merchant.
All the manual labour was carried out by grandad (J A Gibson), his sons Stan (my uncle), Frank (my dad) and uncle John Wright and in later years my cousin David also joined the team.
The office was run by Doris (my aunty) who would record the various order requests from customers, either by phone or personal visits to the front door. Quite often customers would visit and pay for their last delivery and then reorder. She would then produce a hand written triplicate carbon copied delivery ticket, one for the delivery, one for the customer and one for the office and billing.
From this order information and from the stock levels at the coal yard, coal could be reordered to arrive by train to replenish stocks. Once the coal trucks had arrived they were checked off and manually unloaded via heavy duty “Youngman” boards and wheelbarrows. In order to avoid a penalty (demurrage charge) for keeping the trucks beyond the agreed free-time period, the unloading was carried out as soon as possible, come rain or shine. Whilst this was being carried out no deliveries were made. Each type of solid fuel was kept in 3 sided separate bays constructed from railway sleepers.
Delivery tickets were picked up the night before and the loads and routes organised depending on the fuel required. On the morning of the deliveries the team would meet at the “dump” and each lorry was loaded according to their requirements.
There were a couple of small storage sheds which housed the coal sacks and one doubled up as a shed for break times. When possible, although I couldn’t do very much, I enjoyed just being at the yard and looked forward to the mid- morning break when I could sit in the hut with everyone and have my own sandwiches which mum had packed for me. My favourite was marmite and tomato. There was a small stove in the hut for heat in the winter and there was never a problem with a lack of fuel. When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6, mum made me my own black coal sack, which was basically a sealed up black pillow stuffed with kapok or old tights etc. When out with dad on deliveries, I could pretend to deliver my own sack full of coal to the customer following dad to the coal bunker or coal shed. I repeated this for each sack of coal ordered.
Each coal sack held 1 cwt. of fuel which was weighed on balance scales with an empty sack placed on the weights end to counterbalance the one holding the coal. This guaranteed that the customer got at least a hundred weight of fuel. Sometimes an extra lump of fuel was added to ensure it was over rather than underweight.
On many occasions during deliveries the Weights and Measures officers would arrive and select, at random, a few sacks to check the weights for accuracy. Heavy fines were imposed for any short measures. To my knowledge, no fines were ever issued to the company.
Once the sacks were filled, very large, wide and heavily constructed wooden steps were used to carry the individual sacks up onto the back of the lorry where they were stacked according to the delivery route. In many cases double stacking was necessary to get all the sacks loaded. The loading generally took most of the morning and deliveries started after lunch.
During the late 1950’s they invested in an automatic sack lifting hoist which completely eliminated the need for the steps. Once weighed, each sack was placed on the hoist platform and it was automatically raised up to the level of the back of the lorry. Once the sack was removed for stacking the platform dropped back to ground level ready for the next sack which had already been filled and weighed. This vastly improved the loading time for each lorry and deliveries could begin earlier.
As technology progressed, a large central coal concentration depot was built in the early 1960’s in North Watford. It was used by all the coal merchants around the area to obtain their solid fuels from one place.
The fuel was available at various hoppers where you would reverse up, place the sack under the hopper, fill and weigh at the same time and then stack. All this was done at the level of the back of the lorry, therefore saving a huge amount of time and effort. The lorry was weighed as you entered and again as you left confirming the weight ordered and loaded.
Most of the time they owned 3 lorries. During the spring, summer and autumn months one of the lorries, driven by my uncle Stan, was on hire to Pratts Building Supplies operating from a goods yard near Watford Junction. They were later taken over and became UBM Pratts. When the building industry became quiet during the winter, uncle Stan and the lorry returned to help with the higher demand for coal over this winter period. During his 2 week summer holiday dad stood in for uncle Stan delivering the building supplies. As I was also on school holiday I loved going out in the lorry and helping load and unload the vast array of building materials at the various building sites we visited. Also, you stayed a lot cleaner than when delivering coal. In the latter years my cousin David joined the business and he then took over the deliveries for UMB Pratts as well as helping with the coal when necessary. For many years they garaged the lorries at the rear of Fishers garage in Watford Road, now the Shell garage.
For many years at least one of the lorries was thoroughly washed and cleaned and used by a youth group or a school to take part in the Croxley Revels Parade. It tended to be dad that drove on the Saturday and also helped the group to decorate the lorry beforehand. As a young boy I would often ride in the passenger seat during the parade and then spend the afternoon with mum and dad on the Green. One year, I took part in the schools’ maypole display as part of the celebration.
The business was sold in 1979 when dad and my aunty Doris reached retirement age. By then John Gibson, Stan Gibson and John Wright had passed away.
All the manual labour was carried out by grandad (J A Gibson), his sons Stan (my uncle), Frank (my dad) and uncle John Wright and in later years my cousin David also joined the team.
The office was run by Doris (my aunty) who would record the various order requests from customers, either by phone or personal visits to the front door. Quite often customers would visit and pay for their last delivery and then reorder. She would then produce a hand written triplicate carbon copied delivery ticket, one for the delivery, one for the customer and one for the office and billing.
From this order information and from the stock levels at the coal yard, coal could be reordered to arrive by train to replenish stocks. Once the coal trucks had arrived they were checked off and manually unloaded via heavy duty “Youngman” boards and wheelbarrows. In order to avoid a penalty (demurrage charge) for keeping the trucks beyond the agreed free-time period, the unloading was carried out as soon as possible, come rain or shine. Whilst this was being carried out no deliveries were made. Each type of solid fuel was kept in 3 sided separate bays constructed from railway sleepers.
Delivery tickets were picked up the night before and the loads and routes organised depending on the fuel required. On the morning of the deliveries the team would meet at the “dump” and each lorry was loaded according to their requirements.
There were a couple of small storage sheds which housed the coal sacks and one doubled up as a shed for break times. When possible, although I couldn’t do very much, I enjoyed just being at the yard and looked forward to the mid- morning break when I could sit in the hut with everyone and have my own sandwiches which mum had packed for me. My favourite was marmite and tomato. There was a small stove in the hut for heat in the winter and there was never a problem with a lack of fuel. When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6, mum made me my own black coal sack, which was basically a sealed up black pillow stuffed with kapok or old tights etc. When out with dad on deliveries, I could pretend to deliver my own sack full of coal to the customer following dad to the coal bunker or coal shed. I repeated this for each sack of coal ordered.
Each coal sack held 1 cwt. of fuel which was weighed on balance scales with an empty sack placed on the weights end to counterbalance the one holding the coal. This guaranteed that the customer got at least a hundred weight of fuel. Sometimes an extra lump of fuel was added to ensure it was over rather than underweight.
On many occasions during deliveries the Weights and Measures officers would arrive and select, at random, a few sacks to check the weights for accuracy. Heavy fines were imposed for any short measures. To my knowledge, no fines were ever issued to the company.
Once the sacks were filled, very large, wide and heavily constructed wooden steps were used to carry the individual sacks up onto the back of the lorry where they were stacked according to the delivery route. In many cases double stacking was necessary to get all the sacks loaded. The loading generally took most of the morning and deliveries started after lunch.
During the late 1950’s they invested in an automatic sack lifting hoist which completely eliminated the need for the steps. Once weighed, each sack was placed on the hoist platform and it was automatically raised up to the level of the back of the lorry. Once the sack was removed for stacking the platform dropped back to ground level ready for the next sack which had already been filled and weighed. This vastly improved the loading time for each lorry and deliveries could begin earlier.
As technology progressed, a large central coal concentration depot was built in the early 1960’s in North Watford. It was used by all the coal merchants around the area to obtain their solid fuels from one place.
The fuel was available at various hoppers where you would reverse up, place the sack under the hopper, fill and weigh at the same time and then stack. All this was done at the level of the back of the lorry, therefore saving a huge amount of time and effort. The lorry was weighed as you entered and again as you left confirming the weight ordered and loaded.
Most of the time they owned 3 lorries. During the spring, summer and autumn months one of the lorries, driven by my uncle Stan, was on hire to Pratts Building Supplies operating from a goods yard near Watford Junction. They were later taken over and became UBM Pratts. When the building industry became quiet during the winter, uncle Stan and the lorry returned to help with the higher demand for coal over this winter period. During his 2 week summer holiday dad stood in for uncle Stan delivering the building supplies. As I was also on school holiday I loved going out in the lorry and helping load and unload the vast array of building materials at the various building sites we visited. Also, you stayed a lot cleaner than when delivering coal. In the latter years my cousin David joined the business and he then took over the deliveries for UMB Pratts as well as helping with the coal when necessary. For many years they garaged the lorries at the rear of Fishers garage in Watford Road, now the Shell garage.
For many years at least one of the lorries was thoroughly washed and cleaned and used by a youth group or a school to take part in the Croxley Revels Parade. It tended to be dad that drove on the Saturday and also helped the group to decorate the lorry beforehand. As a young boy I would often ride in the passenger seat during the parade and then spend the afternoon with mum and dad on the Green. One year, I took part in the schools’ maypole display as part of the celebration.
The business was sold in 1979 when dad and my aunty Doris reached retirement age. By then John Gibson, Stan Gibson and John Wright had passed away.
