You used the pits as a playground then? We used to be over the gravel pits all the time over in the pits because what a playground that was with the train going round it, little tipper trucks and stopping every so often to pick up the load and all that we used to take a potato with us and then while we was over there you could drink the water in the pits then, can you believe that?

Did you fish there? Oh the fish that was in the green one, we used to call it the green one because the water was all green but it sparkled, yeah you could drink it, you could drink it.  Yeah we had an old bit of cane and they couldn’t get out quick enough the fish.  I was never a fisherman but I could watch someone fish, I could stand there and watch them fishing but I didn’t like fishing but we caught one perch and my mate was with us, my next door neighbour, but I never liked taking the fish off the hook, I didn’t like the slimy feel of them, so you know he was stirring it and I said “could you take it off the hook for me” he said of course I can and he got the perch and he rubbed it the wrong way and got it all stuck in his hands.  We beat it to death but yeah that was me fishing.  I don’t like touching a live fish, don’t like it, never did.  He never liked it after he did that.  He had him stuck in his hand, turned you off.  But the pits were really good, they were a playground in the six weeks of the holidays it got full of kids over there. 

And did you go swimming in the pits?  That was one thing I was never good at, swimming, but the river was there, you went in there.  Yeah they would go in the river then just behind the weir, the bit we used to call the Ham Riviera.  It was a little sandy beach, I can remember a mate going out in the water on me and I had a pair of my sister’s knickers for a costume and it filled up with air and I was floating about. Yeah, I never forgot that, but we used to call it the Ham Riviera, you know where the bridges are? the second bridge, the one you go to the left, you go down and that’s where we used to go and all the boats used to go down there and the river was really clean and everything then.  I don’t suppose it’s anywhere near as clean now.  You could, we never drunk the river water there but we drunk it out of the pit.  No effect, it was sparkling, it was that clean, loads of fish.

What about some of the machinery used to fill in the pits. It had an engine on it but it had little tipper trucks on the back of it, I’ve seen pictures of them before but since now but I forgot all about them, when they come past the hopper head and load it all up and bring all the stuff down to their main yard used to be which is still, I suppose it’s where all the flats are on, you know down the river you know the main road down to the football clubs and all that you know that road round there.

What about other wildlife? Black rats are something else, when they filled the pits in and it was all gradually getting filled in they poisoned a load of them, these rats, big black ones, they were really big.

Given the somewhat dangerous terrain, were there any accidents you know about? I’ve certainly seen some sights down there.  There was a couple of kids I think there was one kid that definitely got killed down there.  Drowned?  No he fell off the train that was going round with these tipper trucks on it.  He fell off of it.  Because there were invasion barges in there.  I don’t know if they ever went.  Some were made of concrete with turrets at either end, we were on them all the time, us kids, and then the wooden ones I presume must have been for troop carriers and they had the old navigation lights in them with just oil lights not the other ones you get and there were all in the end of it and of course and being as most kids as there were we would be down there and the police let it be known if they were put back nothing would be done about it so it was all put back.  There was a cubbyhole there, I fell in the pits once with my mate, we were late down there in the winter and it was cold.  We used to get a plank of wood and a beer crate and a little bit of wood and row about.  We got on it and the timber would have been about nine inches by three inches thick and paddle about and I fell in this day and thought, you know, and I couldn’t swim and I stood up so I was near the side without knowing it so I stripped all my clothes off and put a line up but it was so cold down there I was sitting in this cubbyhole up the top where they stored everything and I was shivering away because I wasn’t going to go home and say I’d fallen in the tip because I’d have got a good hiding, you know and in the end I said to Ray I said I’m going to have to put them on and go home and  have a good hiding, I’m freezing and I did and got me a good hiding.

Where was this exactly?  Where the Mariners is, is where the tug boats used to come out and if he’d see a load of kids in there the tug boat would come out that used to pull the barges in there he would come out and fire a shot, and we all thought he was firing at us but he must have been firing in the air and we were all running away, because there were so many kids there, especially in the summer holidays and you weren’t supposed to be in there but we were all in there.  Don’t make no difference to you then did it but they must have thought them kids must have been terrible.  There were loads of little lads.

You were saying about the lad that fell off the train but were there any other fatalities?  It was the only one I can think of bit I don’t know if anyone got drowned but a friend of mine he did he went down between say four of the barges that were nosed together and the water was lapping and he fell down in there in between the boats, all the boats and they managed to get a barge rope down to him but he was really floundering down there and the barges doing this sort of thing rocking up and down. 

He would get crushed between them.  Yes he would have done, yes old Jim I can see him now, the little gangs may have been around.

Do you remember the pits being filled then?  Yes the road that goes round is still going round the road where the lorries used to come down and go back up saw one truck there he had forgotten to open the back bit and it pulled the team down into the pits.  The lorry went down backwards because he hadn’t opened the back bit you know the flap at the back he hadn’t opened it and he went down and he didn’t get it out but I mean it didn’t get right in it really was in right trouble.  War damage stuff from London a lot come down on the barges as that was where we got all the stuff on the bikes’ bits.  There were all sorts of things there..

So as kids you went round scavenging?  Scavenging yes, we were all finding this, but it was good you couldn’t have built a better playground for kids could you really when you think of it