I think it’s purely something that you have to accept for yourself, the people that lived in Ham, the majority of them that I knew that lived in the vicinity of the prison were quite happy about it. I think that as it went on I don’t think the people in Ham had any problems with the prison being there, in fact I think they thought it was quite secure […]
Category: Law and Order
Using and Teaching Music at Latchmere House – by VG
I was totally unqualified for anything actually including the guitar completely unqualified and they said they wanted somebody to do music with the boys at the Remand Home, 15-19 they were and she said oh yes I’ve got the person so I worked at the Remand Home for a few years. I’d no idea what I was going to do with them because they weren’t going to learn guitar because […]
Living near Latchmere House – by GDS
Latchmere House had various incarnations and at one stage it was a Borstal. My mother always very carefully kept the kitchen door locked at all times. She thought if anybody escaped from the Borstal they would immediately go into someone’s kitchen and nick money or something so she always kept the kitchen door locked just in case.
Living near Latchmere House – by ML
They had prefabs where the prison officers used to live. Latchmere House was a borstal so they must have had quite a few prison guards living there. I knew Mr. and Mrs. Wood very well because Mrs. Wood used to come and babysit occasionally. (ML) What did you feel about having Latchmere House just down the road? I didn’t mind. I felt safe because there were so many police.
Tough regime at Latchmere House – by EB
On this side I had Mr Grudgins who was a policeman, but he was one of the old style policemen and when he retired they got him a job at what was the boy’s Borstal at what was Latchmere House over on the Common and he only worked there a year, he said “I can’t stand it, the way they treat these boys is not right” but obviously that was […]
Garth House Polling Station – Memory by DM
My grandfather used to be a telling clerk when it came to a general election and the polling station was Garth House on Ham Common in Church Road which is now Garth Close. There was a house there and the polling station was in the house garage and I can remember taking my grandfather cycling over there with a bottle of beer and some sandwiches for his lunch and a […]
Police living in Lawrence road – by CL
There was quite a lot of police in that road and in that down there, Lawrence Road, there was quite a lot down there. It seems they must have bought the houses for the police blokes but that Watling that was in the army photograph, his dad was a Police Sergeant so there was a lot of police here.
Compass Borstal Club – by TH
My father founded the first Borstal Club in Great Britain in Feltham Young Offenders after the War and got Margaret Rutherford, Dame Margaret Rutherford, to be the Patron and she was very fond of my father and in her autobiography, she had my father as her adopted son as such so she was a great family member, she was at my mother and father’s wedding, Because he started the Borstal […]
Barclays Bank Raid 1976 – by GDS
There was the cashier in the bank, Barclays, on Ham Parade. There is a memorial seat to her outside the bank – Angela Woolliscroft, it was 1976 I think. There was bank robber who went into Barclays bank and demanded money. She gave it to him, as they were told to do, but he used a shot gun and killed her at point blank range. She was about 20 years […]
Our Police Box, Murder in 1953 and the Barclays raid – by EB
There was a Police box in Ham, do you remember it? Yes, that was in the garden of 1 Lock Road on the junction with Ham Street and Lock Road so it was in that top corner and it was blue like a Tardis and it had just a little window where you could open it and call the police. We never had any police in Ham, it was very […]