I took an allotment at Walnut Tree Meadow, which is just near Ham House and in those days it wasn’t fashionable, so you could walk there, walk around the area and choose from anything up to a dozen empty plots to see which one you liked. We duly chose one which was not in too bad a state and that is now some thirty-odd years ago and we now have […]

I mean, they’ve been going for years and years; we used to have one of the shows next to Cassel Hospital. There’s a hall in there, it was called the Lawrence Hall Hotel, so presumably that Cassel Hospital was at one time a hotel, but it’s other things as well, because I went down to the Richmond Archives to make enquiries. We used to have our shows in there.  Then […]

I was a member of Petersham [Horticultural Society] as well.  I was a member and I used to enter the shows as well and later on I was on the committee, and then we formed a Flower Club and I was on the committee of that…. then we got to the point when our flower club used to use St Andrew’s Hall and we couldn’t get anyone to help us […]

It started off with Margaret Patient, I think I really started when in gave up work, Margaret Patient had classes at St Andrew’s church hall and they were nice classes, it was a weekly class and it was always a nice that you had a homework session so you would put up your work from your homework and we would have a little discussion about it, then you would go […]

I was more into going to the youth clubs. There were a few available. There used to be a youth club in what was still part of Back Lane but now that area is now called Wiggins Lane. There was a youth club there – variously named. It was a brick building that had been there at least, probably, since the 1940’s or maybe going back to the late 30s. […]

I did become a Youth Leader at a Youth Club which no longer exists which was in, the building is still there, if you go along the Petersham Rd towards Richmond, after Sandy Lane but before you get to the Russell School, the Orchard School there is a building which is at a different angle, quite a long low building and it was a hall and we used to have […]

My father also had a youth club over where the doctor’s surgery is in Lock Road because originally Lock Road where the new houses .. that was the Doctor’s surgery, that got knocked down, houses were built along that section of Lock Rd and then the Doctor’s surgery happened at the back where the Youth Club was and he sort of encouraged people to go, so yeh, he was underestimated, […]

Suppose it was Ham and Petersham Scouts by the German School.  That was my thing and I always remember, and it’s a shame its stopped now, but it was quite traditional every so often, that the Ham and Petersham Scouts used to have a band, drums, bugles.  They used to do the march all around the village, of course.

The big house immediately opposite us on River Lane, the first big house on that side of the road, it was put on the market. A Colonel and Mrs ‘something-or-other’ had lived there and then he had died and she moved out, moved into Richmond and she put the house on the market. It was bought by a developer, who decided that he was going to pull it down and […]