Well you see in Latchmere Close we were a very close-knit community, we used to go in the prison club in the evenings, but it was only people that you’d worked with all day and you see them most of the day even when you were off duty you were still altogether in the environment, you just didn’t mix with the outsiders because there was no need to because we […]
Category: Leisure Activities
Ham institute, a wedding reception venue – by MG
Well, most people in Ham had their reception at the Ham Institute, which was in New Road, just opposite where we lived and that’s where we had our reception. It was always a big affair, always had a live band and everything, big sort of celebration, really.
Playing and Scrumping – by MG
My brother didn’t, I suppose, play so much, but I used to play in the road a lot with children down the road. I remember that we had a bike, my sister and I, which we shared and we had a skipping rope which was tied to the lamppost, because there wasn’t any cars then, so those days we played outside a lot. We roamed around Ham! We used to […]
Play reading and singing group – by VG
He’d started this U3A play reading group that met here. He’d organised it really well. I was the tea lady for that because I didn’t want to do plays but I had joined the U3A. Well I did start off with that but we left it and became an independent group, a sort of singing for pleasure group, nothing to do with .., I mean I played the guitar for […]
Local Band records a session – by VG
It was terrifically loud and crashing but Paul could sing very well, one played bass guitar and one played lead guitar and Gareth did drums and percussion and they were good, just too loud, but they were actually very good and they taught themselves it was all, Paul could sing. I’ve got a record of it … for somebody’s birthday, an hour in a recording studio so they just went […]
Carols on the Common – by VG
We had carols on the Common every Christmas for about six years we were doing that and also in the summer. Was this in the 80’s, 90’s? The last one was 2005 and then the year of the centenary of the view from the top of the hill we did a very big one it was sponsored by Jason Debney, yes, anyway and we did a programme it was called […]
Cimema visits to Kingston – by MW
Oh, I do remember once, going with my grandmother, my mother’s mother, to Wilkinsons – I do not like Wilko – and it was the Elite Cinema. If I remember rightly, when you went up onto the first floor, there was a proper little fire… but that’s all I remember. I don’t know whether I ever went into the Empire, the Kingston Empire.
Bird Nesting and playing where Grey Court is now – by GS
I do remember it as a lad when we used to go birds’ nesting where Grey Court is now, it was like a big ditch but it was sort of roundish and it was quite deep, and at the bottom of the ditch, you probably went down sort of twelve foot or more before you go to the water, in the bottom of this ditch was water, I don’t know […]
Ham and Petersham were our playgrounds – by KS
My mum used to make us up sandwiches and we’d go up to, walk up to Petersham Park for the day and that’s the bit at the bottom.. Where the swings are opposite the Dysart Arms. You know and there used to be a park keeper there that kept an eye on us. It was so free and I don’t mean financially, you know – Ham and Petersham were our […]
Skating and Music entertainment in Richmond – by KS
There used to a lovely ice rink in Richmond and there were dance halls and there was always loads to do, you know, coffee shops. So how did you get around, was it all by..? Bus, yeh. I mean no-one owned a car. The dance hall, was that in Richmond? It was in the same block as the Town Hall. I think there’s a little road and Palm Court […]