Hanham in the 1920's

Within the period of the twenties, Hanham, a Gloucestershire agricultural and mining village of about two thousand inhabitants, was affected like every other village, town, and city in the country by the economic events which led to the world-wide Great Depression.

By 1921, two million were unemployed in the UK, industrial production having outstripped domestic demand. Additionally, exports were constrained by the inability of poorer agricultural nations to pay for industrial goods.

Those who remained employed were on short-timeworking and low wages. The miners suffered acutely in the then privately-owned coal industry, and along with workers from other industries led the fight for better pay and conditions. This culminated in the national General Strike of May 1926. Although the strike was over within the mouth, the miners did not return to work immediately, but struggled on, eventually drifting back to work or into unemployment.

The New York Wall Street Stock Market crash of 1929 precipitated a world economic crisis, which in many industrial countries threw over a quarter of the labour force out of work.

These events signalled changes that were going to have a profound impact on everyone in the next decade, but for the moment Hanham continued in much the same way as it had for many years past.

Den Gerrish conveys the atmosphere of a small community, intimate and industrious, linked to the traditions of earlier times whilst slowly absorbing the new:

In 1920 Hanham was still a village, where most of the residents were known to one another, and a stranger appearing on the scene was treated with some suspicion. At this period no major development had taken place.

Motor traffic was at a minimum, the majority of tradesmen were still using a horse and cart. It was a common sight to see the cattle driver ambling along the High Street with a herd of cows, very often going to the local slaughterhouse. Mr Jones, Mr Jefferies and Mr Taylor were all trading in the High Street as the village butchers. Another familiar figure was John Alway, the local carrier with his horse and cart, who went daily to Bristol collecting and delivering goods for the public and tradesmen.

Employment

The majority of local workers were employed either at the colliery, or in the boot and shoe industry, some at the local tar works, and a large number at Douglas', Kingswood, manufacturer of the then world famous motorcycle. Employment could also be found in market gardening. Many in the shoe trade worked at home, most had a small workshop in the back garden. Others worked in the scullery, or what was then known as the back kitchen. The wife very often helped to make the work up.

It was a common sight on a Monday to see the home workers with their handcarts going to the factory to collect their materials and making a return journey on Friday to return the completed boots and shoes.

image above: The Chequers inn Hanham Mills this property was first build as a private house in 1904 Its stands next to a much older inn the 300 year old Lock & Weir (both pubs still trading today)

Alan Cobhams Air Circus

To us as children, the highlights of the year were the Whitsuntide processions, Alan Cobhams Air Circus, Grass Track racing at Thirty Acres, and the annual Sunday School outing to Weston-super-Mare. There was no youth club or entertainment so the majority of boys spent one evening a week at the Band of Hope (Temperance meeting). At least we had a good singsong.

Bryants Hill

At the bottom of Bryants Hill lived Mr Jefferies who had a watercress bed in the brook, and in the summer months could regularly be seen going up the High Street with a bucket of cress which he sold in pennyworth's. Just beyond this was Sid Gillett the local shoeing smith, wheelwright and ironworker. He was probably the first person to manufacture an all-steel swing.

He also manufactured chain harrows, which he sold all over the country, and exported many to Canada. Going up the High Street, at the junction of Church Road, there could usually be seen a small group of men who stood in the middle of the road holding a conversation while the traffic moved around them.

Village People

Some that I remember are Jack lies, Eddy Musty, Jack Curtis, Mr Hamblin, Chick Jefferies. Further along the road, at the junction of Lower Chapel Road near Kemps Grocers, another small group of men assembled including Mr Britton, Darky Wilmott, Bill Bailey, Mr Godfrey, Gee Garratt and others. Friday was grocery night, women could be seen paying their bills and collecting their next week's shopping. The grocer had two or three sorts of butter and cheese, and I remember the shoppers asking for a taste of each before deciding on a particular flavour.

Bill Haynes the lamplighter could be seen at dusk seven days a week lighting the street lamps and doing a return journey about midnight to extinguish them. Should there be a fault with any lamp, he would climb the lamp post without the use of a ladder, make an adjustment and hurry on his way.

Creswicke Ave

In the late 1920's, some development had started to take place in Creswicke Avenue and the lower end of Victoria Road. At this time the electricity supply was being brought up the High Street and, as various shops had a supply fitted, usually two small bulbs, we waited for dusk to see them switch on the lights, as they never used lighting in the daytime.

Although Hanham was only a village, we were served by about ten milkmen and ten bakers. The Welsh Cockle lady came most weeks, carrying her basket on her head. On Wednesday a man and his wife came from Bristol with a hand barrow selling tripe and cow heels.

During the summer at the haymaking time, entire families could be seen in Thirty Acres having picnics, the children playing in the hay. At this period we were surrounded by market gardens, and the growers could be seen daily going to town, with their carts loaded. Some I remember going through were Gallops, Henry Fry, Billings, Gilbert Short, Mannings, Whitchurch, Johnson, Sampsons and many others.

image above: 'The Swan Inn' this was once a delightfully unspoilt old fashioned three-bar pub An ex-miners pub for Hanham Colliery still known as 'Fanny Bailey's' by Locals after a former landlady

Childhood Between the Wars

The children of Hanham between the wars grew up in a close-knit community, an environment of green fields and open spaces, where today would be found houses, noise and traffic. Lacking the pre-packaged entertainment of today, their games were based upon tradition, changed with the seasons, and grew from whatever material was to hand.

There was less sense of danger than today, houses were left unlocked, a workman would leave his tools at night by the side of the road, a bicycle absentmindedly left outside a shop would be there the next morning.

Their lives were structured by the chapel, church and school. Adults were respected and feared - especially the policeman, schoolteacher, doctor and minister, who were seen as a class apart. But these children, while seeming to be free from a sense of immediate danger, were still subject to the same economic and social forces that shaped the lives of their parents.

The medical report for the Kingswood District in 1930 reveals an Infant Mortality rate of 91.3 per thousand, and 68 cases of Diphtheria, of which 3 were fatal. In the previous year this disease had claimed 14 lives. In 1930, 26 houses were condemned as unfit for human habitation, and overcrowding was cited as a major problem. The school-leaving age was 14 years, at a time when, as the same report indicates, 'the general depression in the Boot Trade continues', and ~'no fresh industry has been introduced into the area' -

The children of the time, then, faced the necessity of earning a living at an earlier age, with diminishing prospects of doing so. How far these children were affected by these realities, and how far their childhood insulated them from it, can be judged from the following accounts.

To begin with, Jack Bateman describes the natural environment in which the children of Hanham grew up:

image above: The Jolly Sailor Inn Hanham 1909 was once the haunt of the Kingswood Cock Road Gang (still trading today)

Hanham Countryside

The River Avon ran between the High Hedge and Dr Fox's Wood. In the dark water lived a water bird called a 'Dab Chick'. It was black with a yellow beak, the size of a thrush. It had webbed feet and dived very deeply.

It was unique, as it was only found on this stretch of the river. I had never heard of one anywhere in Somerset or Gloucestershire. Past Couches' Bank were huge beds of thistle and teasels. These teasels attracted large flights of Goldfinches, Bramblings, and Linnets. The next interesting wood was Cleeve.

It had a herony of ten pairs. They left at dusk to feed on the mud flats at Avonmouth. The wood boasted of its rare wild orchids, yellow, green, black, and deadly nightshade. Up Mill Lane to the Court, it had pure spring watercress growing. We picked bunches of it for sandwiches, then on to Nures Pond - lots of Moorhens.

The Elm Tree Bats 

The next ponds were the Four Pools near the hills. They had one solitary Water Rail, ;t was black with long legs, tiny feet, and ran on the top of the water. It did not fly. The 'Elm Tree' public house had a colony of bats in the door, they were there up to ten years ago.

Hanham Court

The oldest trees in Hanham are in the Court. The broad leaf are nine hundred years old. Bert Billett, a historian of Hanham, found harness rings embedded in the bark; one was of Iron Age, the other Bronze. In the oak that has nearly rotted away can be found the four British fungi, including the Cept or Fuj Ugru, the 'Birds Nest' fungus.

The Court Pond and St George's Church Pond were shrouded in myth and secrecy. Dating back to the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, they were dark, deep, foreboding looking waters. The monks reared carp for food, and the leather carp for its skin.

Folklore said they grew to as much as forty pounds, but the biggest I saw was three pounds. The pond was home to a family of grey cranes  a bird like a stork, but much thinner. It stood very still until some unsuspecting frog or newt swam by. It impaled it on its razor-sharp beak, threw it in the air, caught it, and swallowed it whole. I spent my school holidays watching these birds as I did not know what they were. I found out from the librarian at St George's library. 

image above: The Bowl Bowl Inn Hanham one of the oldest pubs in England It was once used for the regional headquarters of Cromwell's army during civil war. and rumoured to have been the haunt of highwaymen from the 'Cock Road Gang' (still trading today)

image above: A picture postcard of the Hanham area - View of Hanham Mount - Maypole Inn - Blue Bowl Inn

Memories of Travelling to Hanham

Mavis Moon describes her childhood impressions of Hanham as an outsider: Although not born in Hanham, as a child I had relations who lived in Longwell Green. During the school holidays I was brought from St George to Hanham by tram; there we boarded a bus owned by W Bence to be taken to Longwell Green. For me this was the equivalent of today's children being taken abroad; Longwell Green was the depths of the countryside.

In my teens, an evening's outing was a tram ride with friends to the tram depot, and then into the Grotto. This was a little shop with a side entrance to a covered patio, where light refreshments could be purchased.

Another childhood memory is of a party of people from the chapel I attended in St George, coming to Hanham on summer evenings to have a friendly game of cricket. The field we played in was three-quarters of the way down Whittucks Road, but it wasn't a road then. We approached it via a lane opposite the present Baptist Chapel. If memory serves me correctly there were no houses around, we simply walked through fields.

When I Was Ten

Florence Young remembers playing with her friends in the Thirty Acres field: My earliest recollection at the start of 1930, when I was ten years old, is that my friends and I would go off to a large field known as Thirty Acres which was situated off Hanham High Street at the end of Creswicke Avenue.

We would take a bottle of water (no lemonade in those days, but water didn't cost much), and some bread and jam. When we arrived we would spend an hour making a hay house or den, and we would stay until dusk, just playing house. When the haymaking was finished, the owners would let the field to Cobham's Aerial Display, and they would do acrobatics out on the wings; it certainly drew the crowds as it was a special event in Hanham.

They offered plane trips for five shillings a trip, and my most treasured memory is that my friend's father paid for all three of us to have a trip. After all these years I can still remember the sensation in my stomach as we descended. In 1936 they opened Hanham Abbots School on part of the ground, and the Kleen-E-Zee Club is on another part. 

image above: This garage in the High Street Hanham was owned by Bence and Sons Ltd who operated a network of local bus routes radiating from Hanham it was acquired by Bristol Tramways in 1936 but it eventually closed in 1981 the building today is used by Tollgate Van Hire

Devil's Dye

Winifred Brasier recalls the houses in which the children of the time grew up: In the older houses of Hanham, not everyone had 'mod cons'. Cooking was often done in and on a black range, heated by coal. No bathrooms either, so a tin bath was filled with hot water in front of a lovely coal fire. The fact that the bath had to be also emptied, the fire tended and range kept spick and span with brushes, black lead and elbow grease, couldn't diminish the luxury of it.

Carpets were the exception rather than the rule. Lino, rugs and rag rugs were the floor coverings in the 20's. Rugs were taken outside and shaken, large ones put over the washing line and beaten. Lino was washed and polished.

Washing machines were unheard of for poor families. The rich had a primitive form of one, as can be seen in the 'Georgian House' in Bristol. Older houses usually had an extension built on which housed coal supplies, also a built-in brick boiler.

To start wash day, this boiler was filled with cold water, no taps attached and no running hot water. A fire was lit in the approximate place under the boiler. Previous to the actual washing, clothes would be put to soak in warm soapy water and worked on with a 'dolly'~ This was a bell shape of metal on the end of a long handle and one pumped with this on to the clothes to expel any dirt.

A soft scrubbing brush and a bar of soap was then used to finish off. After the boiling of whites they were then 'blued' and starched. When modern washing powders were introduced my grandmother would have nothing to do with them, she called them 'Devil's Dye'.

A Boy's Memories

Jack Britton recalls some vivid memories from childhood: My lasting memory of those years 'New Year's Eve, lying in bed trying to keep awake, waiting for midnight, to hear Albert Jones the butcher, and opposite, Bert Billett the grocer. Where the Co-op self-service now stands, they would each have an empty biscuit tin and would throw them to each other across the street, welcoming in the New Year. Then I went to sleep when all was quiet, dreaming of what the New Year would bring.

Sadly, this all ended with the outbreak of war in September 1939. No welcoming in the New Year, no bells to be rung, or biscuit tins to be thrown at each other.

Playing Around

The following tape-recorded recollections give some of the flavour of childhood in those times: Between the wars, one of our favourite past-times was to stand on top of the cliffs, above the old quarry works quite close to where Hanham spoil heaps were, and to make home-made bombs by screwing large bolts to get a nut in the middle and the gunpowder in the middle of that, the main contents of a number of fireworks, and we used to drop them from the top to the bottom on to the concrete roofed buildings, that was connected with the stoneworks of the old colliery, and it used to cause massive explosions there.

And that was one of the favourite past-times, I think the distance there is about a hundred feet. But as far as the colliery is concerned, I can still visualise the pithead buildings on Hanham colliery, with big wheels and winding houses.

Another favourite pastime for children was to follow funerals down to Greenbank Cemetery from where we lived at Two Mile Hill, and I remember on one occasion I followed a funeral from somebody that died in our road to the Greenbank Cemetery, and then got lost, and we couldn't find our way back again, and we had to be brought home by the undertakers.

River Drownings

To the right of where the Hundred Steps is now, I can remember quite vividly that between the wars this was a very popular playground for people of all ages, down on the river about there. And one of the highlights for all the local children was to see the bodies being pulled out; there was always drownings there in the summer and quite a lot of schoolchildren lost their lives and so forth.

The life-saving hooks was constantly in use throughout the summer, you know, and I can remember seeing quite large numbers of people over at Beese's Tea Garden, that was very popular. There was an awful lot of boating on the river, in fact, later on, I used to, with my friends, hire boats and would row all the way up to Conham.

Butler Tar

My own memories are of the old Butler Tar works down at Conham. I remember that was another favourite stamping ground for the kids between the wars, and we used to stand there watching the tar being made, and I can remember large lagoons of tar actually in the yards. And they used to have a series of pipes that used to take it across from one side of the road to the other, and it was always a very hot, smelly, sticky place throughout the summer.

I can remember, as far as the old Hanham colliery was concerned, the big shale tips that used to fall and go right down to the river, and there was also the remains of gantries where they used to take the coal to the riverbank, and also stone, 'cause there was quarry stone there, and there was railway lines leading right up to the river bank, with a kind of jetty arrangement, and I can still remember stone being loaded onto barges there. I also remember barges going up the river with the rubbish on, and there was also horse-drawn river traffic.

I remember between the wars that for the local groups in the St George/Two Mile Hill! Hanham areas, where I lived, a favourite outing was to go with parents on outings to Fry's factory at Somerdale, where we used to have a tour of the chocolate factory, and given a gift of a box of chocolates to come home with.

The Patch

Bertha Poole describes the games of her childhood and the places the children frequented: In those days games were seasonal; certain times of the year certain games came out. 'Skippin' was more or less always around; 'whips and tops' was one that seemed to come out in the summer. You'd buy these little tops and put chalk marks on the top so that when they spun they made a pretty pattern.

As we got older we used to play, well we thought we played tennis, but we could do that in the road because there was very little traffic. We used to play where they were building new houses, play shops there with pieces of clay. We played ball, and also with dollies, much as they do today.

Where the two chemists and the Westminster Bank is now, there was an area of green which was fenced off and locally it was known as the 'Patch'. We were told that we mustn't play on the 'Patch' because it was dangerous. From time to time holes would appear and they would tell us that was where the ground was sinking from the old mine shafts.

But I suppose progress being what it is, they were able to put down enough foundations to build on it, and those buildings now have been there I should think forty-five years if not more so it must be quite safe. But I know that was always called the 'Patch', and we used to crawl through the railings, but we were not supposed to play there because it was considered dangerous.

Initially, the streets were lit by gaslight. The local man would come round with his long pole, he'd pull something and the light would go on. We had gas lights so far, down to where the Blue Bowl is now and there wasn't any lights from then on, it was dark.

But we just didn't worry, I think we just accepted it, didn't know any different.

I mean these days if you're going somewhere you think is going to be dark you take a torch, but we didn't take torches, I think our eyes became accustomed to the dark. And we would go for walks around Sally-on-the-Barn and there was no lights then from Whittuck's Road. You'd walk perhaps two and a half miles and no street lights; you didn't fall down or go into the ditch or anything like that. 

image above: The High Street 1919

Who Would Ride the Bike?

Childhood was not all about playing and going to school. Children ~ often expected to contribute to the family income, or, in the case of girls, to the running of the home. Jack Britton relates some of the part-time jobs he did while still at school:

You got a job for the local paper, you know, for George Willis selling papers; or the local tradesmen, you'd help the milkman on a Saturday. or the baker, things like that. There was three I can recollect that employed various boys as their ages went on: Alfy Jeffries, the butcher, you knew you'd always get a job there, delivering the meat.

Then there was George Willis, delivering the evening papers. There was Graham Sampson, ironmonger, he would push sand and cement onto a handcart, you got a hundredweight of sand and cement And he also had the shop and you could go there every day, except Sunday of course, first thing on a morning and display all his wares outside on trestles, cups and saucers, paints, bowls, pans, ashbins. It would take quite a while to arrange it all outside, and then last thing at night you would take it in.

On a Saturday you would probably help him on his round. And there was also Mr Knee, who had a big grocery shop in Hanham, and I helped deliver groceries on a carrier bike. They would also take on another assistant, a young girl from school and also another school leaver, a boy.

I remember one occasion helping a fellow name of Bert Sugg  he would be about fifteen or sixteen, but employed full-time, and I would go along with him, and I would ride his bicycle, and he would ride the carrier bike. And then we would quarrel. I was a few years younger than him, but we would quarrel as to who would ride the carrier bike, 'cause it was much harder to ride, you see. We were down 'round Sally-on-the-Barn, near the duck pond.

It was winter and it was frozen over, and we had a little bet on if you could ride the bike across the duck pond, you see. And of course he fell for it and rode the bike across the pond and it gave way and in went the bike, Bert, and all the groceries and everything. That needed some explaining away when we got back to the shop.

The Life of a Schoolteacher - Samuel White's School

Mr Malpass, ex-teacher of Samuel White's school, relates how he came to Hanham, and describes the typical school timetable: After being trained as a teacher at St Paul's College, Cheltenham, I commenced my duties in this capacity at the All Standard Department of Samuel White's School, Hanham, on the 1st of October, 1927. This school provided accommodation for mixed pupils from the age of seven to fourteen years.

There were seven classes, labelled standards 1 to 7. The number of pupils reached as many as fifty in some of the classes. The children were placed in the forms according to their ability, ranging from 7 to 11 years in all classes.

The school day started at 9.00am with registration in each class, following the assembly of all the pupils in the hall, where the Headmaster conducted a religious service consisting of prayers and the singing of hymns.

The children then returned to their respective classrooms for a lesson of thirty minutes, based on the study of the Holy Bible. Every class then spent some forty-five minutes on arithmetic.

At 10.45am the whole school took a break for a quarter of an hour. The period from 11.00am to 12 noon was chiefly given over to academic studies, comprising the teaching of English (reading and essay), History, Geography and Nature Study, interspersed with Physical Education in the playground, weather permitting.

The dinner time from 12 noon to 1.30pm followed. Most children travelled home to have lunch, but a few, particularly from distant parts, brought sandwiches. The only drinks available were from the cold water taps in the two cloakrooms.

The afternoon session, lasting from 1.30pm to 4 o'clock, commenced with registration, and was given aver to cultural subjects and crafts. This part of the curriculum embraced Music, Needlework, Science, Handwork and, in part, Physical Education again.

Caning, which I regret to say was given chiefly for a low standard of work rather than misbehaviour, was administered by the headmaster. The conduct of the pupils was generally very good, and it was comparatively easy for the caring teacher, there were some exceptions to this label  to establish a friendly relationship with the children.

I made myself responsible for the promotion of sporting activities for both boys and girls. These comprised football for the boys and athletics for the girls. We competed on a friendly basis against other local schools on Saturday mornings and some evenings. An attendance officer, now known as a Welfare officer, and then called a 'Board-man' by the parents, checked up on absenteeism by the pupils.

A father, always responsible for his child's attendance, was occasionally taken to Staple Hill Magistrate's Court and prosecuted for unsatisfactory attendance. At the age of 11, children sat an examination which admitted a limited number to Kingswood Grammar School.

The Samuel White's Infants was a separate school, admitting children aged 3 to 7 years. They were mixed schools, joined together as one building. The site is now occupied by the Library and Youth Club.

Two similar Church of England schools lay at the junction of Church and Memorial Roads, whilst in Hanham Road stood a senior girls school, a senior boys school, and a mixed infants school side by side.

Mixed School

On the 1st August, 1930, the schools in the area were re-organised. Samuel White's Senior School became a mixed junior school, admitting pupils aged 7+ to 11+ years, whilst the Hanham Road Girls and Boys schools became purely Senior schools, admitting pupils aged 11+ to 14 years from the Samuel White's Mixed Junior School and Kingswood High Street mixed junior school.

On the 15th June 1936, the newly built Junior School of Hanham Abbots was opened and staff and pupils were transferred from Samuel White's Junior School, when the whole of Samuel White's building was handed over to the Mixed Infants. Pupils at this period who passed a Scholarship Examination at the junior schools were admitted to the recently built Kingswood Mixed Grammar School.

image above: The High Street 1923

Recollections of a First Day Pupil

What was school life like from the other side of the desk? Here, W. W. Brown recalls his first day at school: Somehow the cross roads of the High Street and Creswicke Avenue provided a magic corner. Hanham was still a village, and here, where the tram lines ended, the four corners of the streets had their own identity and atmosphere.

The 'Doctor's, was on the corner opposite the present surgery, and where the chemist shop now stands was a small paddock in which an old donkey grazed only to be disturbed by the local paper-man, Mr Dalziel, who had an almighty voice and who would call his customers to his wheelchair shouting the odds of the latest editions of the Evening World or the Evening Post. Behind him, and much in his shadow, Mrs Hayman, the fish lady, would be offering her fresh hake and cod in a funny, stuttering staccato.

On the opposite corner, across the end of the line, the 'Welcome Cafe' offered broken biscuits at a halfpenny a bag. The last of the corners was dominated by 'Sammy White's.

I was introduced to Sammy White's at the tender age of three and half years, no apprenticeships in playgroups, they had not been invented. Teachers were 'paid by results', therefore, if you were fortunate enough to have an older sibling who showed promise, then you were 'called for'. It was in the company of my older sister that I was introduced to the wonders of the small, shallow baking tins filled with damp sand in which we drew our Numbers and letters with our forefinger, then to tap the side and like magic erase everything and start again with a clean sheet.

We danced round the Maypole in the big hall and after a story in the afternoon it was arms folded and heads down for a sleep. Later we wrote on real paper, with awkward pens that were dipped into some nondescript liquid, resembling dirty water which issued forth from some kind of oil can carried by the ink monitor.

Miss Mason would send us to the desk of Miss Fish the headmistress and tell us to stand on the right hand side of the desk or the left hand side of the desk. One side was equipped with a large bottle of boiled sweets, and on the other side of the desk hung a cane with a curved handle. Each represented a just reward; we all soon learned our right from our left!

In the 'big school', which was the PNEU, we were trained for the scholarship with Picture Study, Copper-plate handwriting lessons, still the same ink, Paper Craft for the boys, Needlework for the girls, and Drill for everyone on the bumpy, uneven playground separated from the Marion road by stark iron railings.

No wonder our imaginations ran riot when a new school began taking shape at the bottom of Creswicke Avenue in the large field we called 'thirty acres'. It was here that Alan Cobham brought his Air Show, with five shilling flight, in Tiger Moths and we thrilled to the sight of the motor bike racing on a huge dirt track.

Would we be able to see all these marvels from our classroom windows? What would we miss? The sloping floor in the rear classroom of the old school, where the knots in the floor were raised well above the softer timber that had worn away around them. These proved to be one of our delights, much to the annoyance of the member of staff.

A combination of the knots and the iron frames of our double desks made an ideal bagatelle board laid out like a large map on the floor. Therefore, if you were seated at the back of the room, which was the highest point, it was your duty, usually during the History lesson, to quietly place a large marble or ball bearing onto the floor.

Gravity did the rest. It was a slow start with a tinkle, a rumble, a thud from a knot, but gradually the pace quickened and the music became more audible and the smiles on the faces would reach their limit before the offending object would finally come to rest near the free standing blackboard, or if you were really lucky, at the feet of the teacher.

March 1936 saw the scholarship come and go. We had written the essays demanded of us, completed the sums with fractions and decimals and some of us had been called to the Grammar School for an interview. Sammy White's had done all it could for us. It was now our turn to repay, and the new school offered the opportunity. A great deal of the traffic was still horse drawn, apart from the trains.

The avenues on the left hand side of Creswicke Avenue as you approached the school were just being developed and all the land behind the school was the green of thirty acres punctuated only here and there with various modes of dwellings, like Johnny Salter's cottage, which stood across the road from Hanham Hall.

The hills were green and untouched, the Little Woods capping the southern end; Fussells Field had not yet given way to the Tudor domination and Peacock's market garden stretched across the area now given over to Woodyleaze Drive. Victoria Road, like Beechwood Avenue, was a cul-de-sac. It was this quiet, village backcloth that enabled us to convey with a great deal of gusto most of the books that had to be transported down the Avenue to the new building.

We brought our array of transport, handcarts and the like, but the classic way was the dilly. A board with a box on the back and two sets of pram wheels, the rear ones set but the front ones allowed to swivel and be manoeuvred with a length of rope. It was upon these 'Austin's, that the insecure loads of learning were transported at a pace which took us through the school gates and up to the doors of the palatial building.

We were the top form and I seem to remember that we moved in a little earlier than the rest because we could be of service in what we looked upon as paradise. The green of the grass, the new flat playground, the smell of new paint, the long, to us, endless corridors, and a Staff Room. We found out about the Staff Room later.

Our year was governed by seasons: pecking with cigarette cards, marbles, conkers, dilly making, hopscotch, ~Whiptops, and the inevitable cricket and football. All these we played in the street with no one saying when each season started or finished, except perhaps the lamplighter would give us a clue when, on the way home from school, we would observe him with his bicycle and long flint pole which penetrated the underside of the glass hood to light the delicate gas lantern underneath.

Our stomachs were our docks, no one had a digital watch, for which you still require two hands to tell the time. 'They'll come home when them's 'hungry' was the order of the day, and it worked. No television as a distraction to our evenings, we could still listen to the radio if the battery and the accumulator were still functioning.

We wanted to engage in all of our pursuits at once in our newly found space, but the first summer term we restricted ourselves to cricket in the wide open spaces and realised we could play 'strong and weak horses' without being battered and bruised by an unyielding playground.

A pattern began to emerge, a long walk to school sucking the spoonful of cod liver oil and malt that was given to us as we left home, morning lessons, PE in the hall, or games on the grass and then a new venture. It was decided that the school needed a good radio

set and so the first public concert was arranged when we would perform part of 'Midsummer Night's Dream'. We played the play within the play. I do not remember that the play meant much to us but I do remember walking up and down to school and scuffing the blakeys in my boot heels so that they sparked on the flagstones, and this to the funny sounding lines of Bottom the Weaver.

The Staff Room was our dressing room and, as I mounted the stairs to go on stage and wearing the asses head which was too large, very hot and with the eye holes in the wrong place, I wondered why I was not outside on such a glorious summer's evening. We raised enough money for the radio, everyone said it was a great performance, the Hall was packed, but I remember most of all the smell inside that pappier mache head and the fact that I could not see the audience at all through the eye slits of the ass.

We travelled the avenue four times a day, no school dinners, so it was all home to lunch and back in time for the afternoon school, except the day when the tram ran through on the lines and we were transfixed by the efforts of the big burly men struggling to ease this ship of the line back on to course.

We were twenty minutes or so late and it must have been one line of blakey sparks all the way down the avenue when we realised that the hush from the playground was rather foreboding. I do not remember the consequences.

In July 1944, Mr Routley, who had been head of Sammy White's and now head of Hanham Abbots, asked me to go and see him in his bungalow at the top of Wesley Avenue. He was seriously ill, but still very concerned about his school.

They were very short of staff, most of the men had been called up, and as I had just completed my training at Loughborough, could I help? Later, in October of that year, in the top classroom nearest the cycle sheds, where we had played pecking with our cigarette cards, I took over a class of well over forty pupils from the lady who had trained me for the scholarship, a dear soul named Mrs Williams. As a new teacher I was also responsible to Mr Malpass, who was now deputy head and who had taught us how to play football in the playground at Sammy's.

Going into the army in the following December broke my ties with the school, but I was to return as a parent to observe my own children taking part in school productions and sports days.

Thus, for me, the new school, Hanham Abbots, has always had a high place in my affection and some of the original magic will always remain.

image above: Hanham Pit 1920s
 

Livelihoods

In Hanham, local employment was concentrated around the Coal Pit in Memorial Road, stone quarrying on the Conham bank of the River Avon, the small boot-making factories around the High Street area, and farming and market-gardening in the surrounding rural district.

The Hanham Colliery was opened in 1906 by Monk and Leonard who also owned the Easton Colliery. By the mid-1920's it has been estimated that it employed a few hundred workers. In common with other mines in the Bristol Coalfield, the broken strata of the seams became increasingly uneconomic to dig. The colliery closed in April 1926, the last owners being the East Bristol Collieries Limited.

Ex-miners found themselves competing for restricted jobs in the other traditional industry of boot-making: at the factories of Wilshire's 'Empire Boots', Godfrey and Gover's, and Linthorne's. Again, short-time working was normal, with much of the process being handled by out-workers at home.

The newly-established business of the Kleen-E-Ze Brush Company, which moved into Hanham in 1928; the Douglas' Motor Cycle Company; and the movement of J. S. Fry and Sons, chocolate factory to Somerdale in 1923 provided further work possibilities.

Elsewhere, jobs were sought after at the William Butler tar works, Crew's Hole, in Kingswood factories, or in Bristol. In 1932, unemployment in Bristol was 21,245.

For women workers, local employment was even more limited. Those who were single might find work at Willway's Laundry, in High Street shops, in market-gardening, or in domestic service. Married women helped their husbands cobble boots at home. Only the demands of the war economy in 1939 brought women back into paid labour in any great numbers. Previously, World War 1 had been the catalyst.

image above: John Wesley's Beacon Hanham Mount 1951 the green light can be seen for over twenty miles this is the spot where Wesley once preached to the Kingswood Miners and the beacon marks that spot

Hanham Coal Mine and Work Underground

Many local workers were miners in the twenties, suffering long hours in appalling conditions for little pay. Jack Britton, whose father was a miner, describes vividly the closing of the mine was not altogether a bad thing.

Although much has been written about Bristol's coal fields, very little has been said about our own mine in Hanham. The 'Bedminster, Easton, Kingswood and Parkfield Collieries Ltd, owned Dean Lane, Bedminster, Great Western, Feeder Road, Easton, Hanham, Kingswood and Parkfield collieries. Hanham pit was situated in Memorial Road, near enough where the diecasting factory now stands.

The road was called Pit Road, but later named Memorial Road, after Memorial Cottage. At the rear end of the diecasting, there still remains the slag heap or tip as it was called, the rubbish of the pit, small dust or slag. At the side was the incline, where drams of coal were lowered by ropes on rails to the river's edge, then loaded onto barges, taken by river to Bristol and Bath, and towed by horses along the banks, which in those days were called Tow Paths. I expect there are quite a few old coal drams still lying on the river bed after running off the rails.

Underground, the drams ran in one direction. This was because of the river at the back of the mine. The main dram road ran under Cock Road and looped under the Kingswood Hotel, which is now the British Legion Club. Under the Kingswood Hotel they called it the 'parting of the ways', roads branching off in different directions. From then on you crawled on hands and knees, sometimes on your stomach, naked except for an old pair of football shorts, to reach the coal face.

Older miners, it is said, put names to the places where they were working. Coming upon a rich seam of coal, remarking 'this Soundswell', or 'now we're made forever, (New Cheltenham). Who knows if it's true or false? Many of the miners lived in cottages and small dwellings, called in those days 'Ragged Lane' (Vicarage Road), 'Mud Rank' opposite Christchurch, Anstey's Lane (Church Road end). The rent in those days averaged half a crown or 2/6d, a week.

It was not always collected as the rent man often found the occupants out, or hiding under the table. One tenant, leaning out of his bedroom window, was overheard telling the collector, 'You shall have your rent even if I have to sell the house'. Times were bad. 1923 saw the miner earning just over two pounds a week, a shift, if you were on a good seam of coal; nothing, no pay if you were laid off for roof falls, flooding, or poor quality digging.

All this work was done by hard graft: hands, picks, shovels,  no conveyor belts or powered coal cutters in those days, and often working in water and near-total darkness. The miner helped supplement his pay by selling the coal ticket which he was allocated. The ticket was worth 2/6d to him, and people would buy it then pay to have the coal delivered.

The transport in those days was the horse and cart, and the handcart. You could hire a handcart, for 1d or 2d an hour, from Wride's opposite Hanham Church Old School, or Walt Jones oppositethe Maypole, at the end of the old Police Station rank.

The two pubs the miners used were 'The Swan' (Fanny Bailey's), or 'The Crown and Horseshoe', now renamed 'The Maypole'. Older people of Hanham always called it 'The Maypole' anyway. The miners were often given a bad name for spending most of their lives in pubs.

This is quite untrue, they spent most of their lives, 8 hours a day, not seeing sunlight, crawling in the bowels of the earth on hands and knees or on their stomachs, hacking coal, breathing foul air, dust, gases, enduring roof falls or flooding, and wondering if they would ever see daylight again only, in many cases, to die at an early age through the dreaded Miners Lung disease. Surely they deserved a drink to swill away the dust and memories of that shift?

1926 saw the General Strike. Hanham Pit closed and never re-opened. Some miners after the strike went to work in the South Wales pits, others got jobs on the buildings or in boot factories. Some took work home to finish in their out-houses or workshops. On the buildings, you were laid off in the bad months of winter or rainy days. In the boot and shoe trade there was a lot of short time through lack of orders, and this meant no money at all.

My grandfather, who was an ex-miner, lived with us and every Friday he would collect his old age pension, a 10/- note (50p). The first stop would be Fudge's cooked meat and confectionary shop. He would change the note buying me a cake. Next he would buy himself a half-ounce of black shag tobacco.

Then he would give my mother half a crown for his keep, but he would buy his own food. Still, a lot of people were out of work or working short time. Children went to Hanham tip, dug for the small coal, wetted it, rolled it into balls, then went round selling them to help supplement the family income. Surface coal was found on the County Ground, which it was called in those days, at the top of Furber Road and St Anne's Road. People could be seen digging there.

If you could not afford coal, there were always the off-cuts of leather, that is if you knew anyone working in the boot factories. You could always tell who was burning leather by the smoke coming out, and the smell.

There was not much call for chimney sweeps in those days as the leather often caught the chimney on fire and cleaned it. If this failed, on top of the cottages you would lower a brick on the end of a rope, dangle it down the chimney, tie a gorse bush on the end of the rope, and pull it back up. This was better than all the sweeps brushes in those days. Finally, I quote from an ex-miner: It was the worst days work I ever did when I went down there, and the best days work when they closed it. I think I am inclined to agree with him.

Horses ware used underground at this pit and occasionally they ware brought up to graze. They were hooded so that the light didn't disturb them. Florence Young recalls a childhood memory:

My recollection of Hanham Colliery is of my grandfather's donkey, (Jinny) pulling the coal cart along. Also, my brother and sister and I went to the entrance of the pit and dug a powdered substance like coal dust Then we dampened this with water, rolled it into balls, and sold it to people to keep their fires going. My father worked underground, and I can see him now with the crown of a felt hat on his head, with a carbide lamp fixed in the front.

image above: Local undertaker Arthur Painter 1937 located next to The Jolly Sailor Inn the bungalow was demolished in 1988

Life in Hanham and Mount Hill after the General Strike of 1926

One month after the Hanham Pit was closed, a General Strike was called protesting at pay and working conditions in the country as a whole. Jack Bateman tells of the impact of the strike in Hanham, and of the relief when it was over:

Before the strike, the atmosphere was gloom. Men stood about on street corners, hands in their pockets, shoulders drooped, shoes or boots unlaced, no interest in anything. Women in long black dresses looked for work scrubbing stone floors and collecting sticks for the fire. There was no gas or electricity in those days; they hung around the coal tip picking up small coal that fell from the pit head.

Men came over from South Wales in small groups, about four to six in number. They walked the High Street in the gutter in single file, singing. The last one had his cap in his hand, hoping for a few coppers to get a pint. Things were much worse in Wales than in Hanham.

My mother, by today's standards, was an intellectual. She took me to hear breakaway preachers who were speaking in Crew's Hole or Conham Valley, denouncing the conditions. They could not do this openly or they would upset the Church. They carried their pulpits with them. These were wooden fold-up affairs, like a painter and decorator's steps  two steps up and a flat top. It was very left-wing, against the bosses who wielded such power over their workers. Although he spread the 'cloth' on his makeshift pulpit, he was not recognised by the Church.

Harry Pollitt was a labour spokesman, leader of the strike and very left-wing. My mother, sister and I went on the tram car to the Downs at Blackboy Hill. Hundreds of people were there. Police on horseback broke up the meeting. The police riders had spikes on their helmets, the horses had a spike in their Blaze head-harness.

Factories began to open with invitations for the men to return to work at Kleen-e-ze, Douglas, the motorcycle manufacturers, the quarries and the mines. The rivulets of prosperity overflowed into the back lanes of Hanham. Women left the drudgery of the big houses where they were employed as skivvies. Signs went up in their windows; 'Poultry cleaned and dressed ready for the table', 'Harness made of leather for goat and dog carts', 'Silk Dress Hats', 'Bridal Outfits', 'Pickled walnuts, chutney'.

The village had become free. The strike had produced great politicians and Church leaders, household names today. Everywhere buzzed with an excitement that was to be short-lived.

Personally, I was doing well after school. I went strawberry minding, driving the birds off the fruit. I used a rattle or two empty biscuit tins. I brought my first cycle from Halfords at one shilling and three pence a week. Later I changed my job for more money. I bought a two-stroke Francis Barnet at Five shillings a week. Hanham was booming.

The ladies got rid of their black dresses for silk and cottons. The men had more money and better living standards. Gone were those depressing years.