the bottom drawer

Visit the main website of Leyton & Leytonstone Historical Society

. > ...

History of Leyton

recollections, photos and memorabilia of Leyton and Leytonstone

6.30 a.m. It snowed again in the night! Ah,well, downstairs for a good cuppa from the teapot on the range, a bowl of steaming hot porridge, a rasher with one egg and fried bread, then it’s wellingtons and greatcoat on, shovel away the snow-drift on the outside of the front door, and off to work.

Careful not to slip on day-upon-day of compacted snow and ice as I trudge to the station - too early yet for folk to be out clearing the pavement outside their houses after last night’s downfall. There’s Arthur from Wadley Dairy, delivering the milk by dragging it on a sled over the snow -‘Morning Arthur’.

When it was deep and crisp and even, by Keith Tjaden

Commuting after the War

Up the rise to Fillebrook Road, cross over to old Alice at her news-stand at bottom of Gainsborough Bridge, ‘Morning Alice, Daily Sketch please – thanks’. ’Hurry up son you’ll miss your train’. Up and over the bridge with a quick look over the parapet to the signal arm, round the corner into Lemna Road past the open site where some fourteen lovely old Victorian houses were laid waste by a German V2 rocket in the last throes of the war. On past Kirkdale Road Infants School (from where I was evacuated in 1939), past the battery factory, the Rialto Cinema, the coal offices, and, after stamping the snow off my boots, up into the station booking hall.

Across the wooden floor to the ticket office, ‘Workman’s return to Liverpool Street please –thank you’. On to the platform just in time as the 7:10 from Ongar steams slowly into the station – carriages capped in snow.   

Good, got a window seat, slam the door and settle down to read the paper. Aha, Gamages are advertising ex.WD field telephones and ex.AM liquid compasses. Not much heating in the carriage today. Leyton, Stratford, Stepney, Bethnal Green and at last, slowly down the gradient into Liverpool Street. Two red-caps at the barrier this morning!