Our childhood experiences

I was born into a family which split by a feud. My mother had jilted her fiance, a man of good background, while he was away serving in WW2. She fell pregnant with me and ran off with my father who was a casual worked on the Liverpool docks. It was a reserved occupation so he was not called up intil 1944.

At first my grandparents cut my mother off. However my grandmother wanted to meet her grandchild (me) so she ordered one of my aunts to bring me to visit on the second sunday of each month. My aunt had assured her that at 4 I could read well. However my grandmother wanted to find out for herself so she purchased an easy reader type book.

I was seated beside her and promised a large cream cake if I could read the story. I can still remember the book. It was one of those in bright colours with large letters which spread across both pages. The story involved a small boy who dreams that he is walking through the forrest. Peeping out from among the trees are fierce creatures with huge teeth. The little boy is dressed in a "sleep suit" with a hood and ears. Later on, when I became a librarian I recognised the book in the childrens section. It was called "Where the wild things are."

Needless to say I read the book and only had to be helped with one or two difficult words. And I enjoyed the creamcake.

Growing up I saw my grandmother regularly and spent many sundays with her. When I grew older she taught me to do quilting, patchwork, crochet and embroidery. I still go back to these crafts from time to time and whenever I do it always reminds me of the happy times I spent with her.

I was born in 1949 , one of three children. I consider myself to be very fortunate, I recall feeling loved and safe, always felt everything would be ok as long as Mum was there. Dad worked 6 days a week and sometimes 7 in his own business - he was loving but not hands on!! We went to Sunday school , Brownies and Guides and I loved it!
One memory that is difficult is being out with my friend when we were stopped by a man who made sexual remarks , I was 12 years old , we were both terrified and ran home. For the first time, I saw my father very upset and angry , he took me straight to the police station - the man was never found. I remember parental support and love and I will always be grateful for that. Yes, I consider myself and my siblings to have been very fortunate indeed. My upbringing was not privileged in the money sense but we were rich in having a sensible, loving parents - nothing is more precious than that .

Yes I know This Thread is from JUNE '23 but I liked it so thought I would revive it
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In shoe shops today I remembered my father getting leather and cutting out shapes to fit us childrens shoe and putting the she on the ' hob 'to bang in nails in. was hob what it was called. it had different sizes on it.

We'd go out and play in the garden a great deal of the time, getting dirty, grazing knees. Germolene or TCP applied to these wounds. Mum didn't seem too anxious about them. Dad was a remote figure hiding behind his newspaper.

We'd disappear for hours to the local park with instructions not to take sweets from strangers or get into cars. Parents were very much in charge we were scared of getting told off. We didn't feel that we were the centre of our parents' lives and were expected to adapt to them, not the other way round.

We weren't given much choice for what to eat for tea, we ate what we were given. Prettification of our homes hadn't come in and D-I-Y was in its infancy.

Very happy childhood, loving, hardworking parents and plenty of friends to play out with. Fields around our council house avenue meant we spent hours exploring and playing hide and seek etc. Home for lunch then straight out again. Rarely went in other people's houses. When aunts, uncles and cousins visited we had lots of fun. Lots of laughing, happy, happy days.

I was born in 1951 in Cornwall at home in a prefab nice houses detached with a garden. My mother told me she had her pick of the houses and chose one opposite a red telephone box. Time was spent out playing, ball, skipping, recreation Park nearby and a pond a down the road, called Billy Burts pond where we would stand in and see what was there, lots of tadpoles. I grew up with my neices as my older sister had two girls. It was great that I and their company we became good friends growing up. Mum looked after neices as sister worked. I would also walk up a hill to their house to play. My sister married a sicillian he used to drive with his new family to Scilly and bring home big melons and big parmessn cheese. He taught my mother to cook spaghetti. My mother was a good cook always had lovely home cooked food with pudding. I feel very lucky I had such a happy childhood. My mother had her four children all spread out with the oldest and the youngest 25 years difference. Got a piano and my neice the oldest had piano lessons.

Cymres1

What a lovely story of a happy adoption and I'm so glad you found your birth mother again too, Cymres1

I was born in Shropshire in the late 50s, taken across the Welsh border to be kept secret. I was very small so actually left with my birth mother until I was taken off her, cruelly, at 10 weeks old. I did a lot of work over the years and finally traced her in my forties, long enough to have some beautiful times with her before sadly she's disappeared from me again into Alzheimers. My sweet Little Mum, a treasure.
My adoptive parents were chosen to be similar to my background, so I was lucky to have a farm upbringing in West Wales. Mum had been a SRN at The London, but gave up nursing to marry my lovely Dad.
I was the youngest, with 3 older naturally born brothers. Always felt a bit different but not in a bad way, if that makes sense. My parents worked so very hard, when I think of the hours and graft involved with running a small hill farm with little help, and my Mum's B&B, added to which she did so much for so many, and she baked all summer and for every social event for our Chapel. Dad was an elder, secretary, treasurer and general factotem for Chapel too.
They were big-hearted, kind and interesting people, so my childhood felt rich in experiences, with little money to spare but always lots going on. The visitors we had came back every year, and were a great pleasure to me but such long hours for Mum. We also had volunteer working parties from around the country staying with us through the winter for The Talyllyn Railway railway being restored nearby. They were like extra family arriving, many becoming lifelong friends. Never a dull moment. I think all those changing faces and fascinating folk made me into a people person, a better nurse (I hope) and a happy solo traveller. (Husband is the home-bird!)
I ended up working in a wonderful local nursing home throughout my teens, (started at 35p an hour) three shifts a week from age 13, finally getting a place at The London like my Mum. I was incredibly homesick but it's still the achievement I take great pride in.
Like someone else mentioned, going back to Wales is still "Going Home" , even though I left aged 19 and I am now approaching pension age. I have been very lucky, and my childhood probably gave me the resilience for the darker, tougher patches of life's journey.

You had a lot of courage to change your life like that at only 12 Hellogirl1.

Born in 1940, in a town on the Firth of Clyde. My mum spent the night before my birth under my granny's kitchen table, listening to the Luftwaffe flying back after bombing the Clyde shipyards. Dad was in a reserved occupation so was able to spend time in our sizeable garden 'digging for victory' with my 'help' once I could toddle around. In 1943 I was presented with a lovely little sister with lots of curly brown hair. I remember holding her in my arms on her first day. My other sister arrived a month after VE day. As my mother was vastly pregnant at the time, my aunt took me and my sister to watch the VE day parade, with my dad leading the local home guard, of which he was the Captain.
We had lovely beaches, only about 100 yards from our house, so we spent a lot of time playing, paddling and - later- swimming in the Firth of Clyde. What an idyllic childhood that was!

I was born in hospital in 1946 and we lived with my grandparents until I was three. I recently discovered that I was conceived in Worthing. I found my mother's diary for 1945 and it seems that my father had a few days leave from the RAF so they spent them in Worthing. A couple of months later there was a diary entry saying the doctor had told her she was having a baby. We moved into a semi with a garden. We had no car, telephone, or holidays away to start with and my father had to cycle to the next town for work every day. Food was fairly basic while we still had rationing and I hated a lot of it. Meat always seemed to be mainly fat and gristle and my mother always seemed to overcook vegetables. We all lived to tell the tale though.

I live by the sea now and had such fun when my now adult child was young doing all the things I’d done with my family. Building sandcastles, exploring rock pools, spoiling our dinners with ice cream and swimming in the sea.

I was born in a Catholic nursing home on Wimbledon Common in 1961. The middle of three girls. Dad was away at sea at the time and I have the telegram his employers sent him to tell him.

Primary school was a short walk with no roads to cross so we took ourselves there and back from a very young age.

My parents didn’t drive so we walked or went by bus or train everywhere.

Holidays were usually by the sea somewhere, often with Grandpa and Step Grandma when they retired to the Kent coast. Later we hired narrow boats and explored the British waterways.

There are large parts of my childhood I can’t remember (thanks brain injury) but as the youngest child of a large family the bits I do remember are full of fun and laughter.

How interesting to read all you childhood experiences as another 53 babe!

I was born in a London Hospital on Easter Day 1950. Dad related the story of the day, telling me that the Ambulance men drove him back home early morning after leaving my Mum at the hospital. And hearing the dog howling to the annoyance of the elderly spinsters in the flat above! He eventually was summoned back and met me at teatime. We lived in a flat over my Grandad’s grocery shop in Fulham. My brother was born 15 months after me and I was sent to stay with Gran and Grandad for 3 months from June to August. I don’t know exactly why, but think this is one reason I didn’t speak until I was 4. I couldn’t have imagined doing the same with my DDs.

Just before I started school in 1955, we moved to a semi detached house in Wallington, Surrey. It had a double width plot as we backed onto Croydon Aerodrome and there was an emergency vehicular access between nos 11A and 15. My parents immediately changed it to number 13. (With hindsight, this maybe was not lucky). Dad continued to work in Fulham and had a 20 minute walk to the railway station every day. Mum didn’t go out to work, but was a very accomplished needlewoman, always sewing clothes for us. I still have the exquisite dolls clothes she made for my Pedigree doll. The garden was her pride and joy and it was beautiful, full of flowers as well as fruit and vegetables. She learnt to drive when I was about 8, when I think Gran and Grandad passed on their car. Mum and Dad were always working on the house and I remember him up the ladder painting with Mum steadying the bottom. Dad did a lot of woodwork and was very talented at adapting what we would now call junk shop finds, as well as fitted units. I had the large second bedroom, brother getting the small one. We had a coke boiler in the kitchen which was lit in the winter. In the summer, there was an Ascot for hot water in the kitchen and a really scary ancient gas heater over the bath upstairs. I still have the plastic jug that we used to carry hot water up to the bathroom in the summer. Mum and Dad had the telephone installed and it was a party line, shared with the neighbours! (Can still remember the number). My brother and I walked down the road to the local primary school. I can remember classes of over 50.

There was a gate onto the airport and I remember standing almost under the airliners (as they were called then) as they prepared to taxi down the runway for take off. Once it was closed in 1957, we used to play out there for hours making dens out of the bales of hay in the summer. I had a friend who lived in a house further up the road, she’d squeeze through the iron railings at the end of her garden and we play out for hours and hours. (Gosh, you couldn’t do that now). I do recall one of the houses having a chimney stack hit by an incoming plane, not ours through, thank heavens. My parents did not go to Church, but my brother and I went to Sunday School every week. I loved being a Brownie but hated attending Church Parade because of the incense. There was a parade of shops down the road and Mum used to catch the bus into Croydon for shopping every Tuesday. Mondays was washing day, no machine but remember a mangle and then a spin drier! Gas fridge too.

I did not pass the 11+ exam (found later to be very shortsighted and probably not able to see blackboard). Mum and Dad would not accept the place offered in the local secondary and after a tremendous tussle, I was given a place at a single sex school a week before term started, which involved a long bus ride. I was the first girl to attend the school from where we lived, many followed in subsequent years, I didn’t know a sole to start with. I didn’t realise what a fight Mum and Dad had put up until I found all the correspondence when clearing Dad’s papers 50 years later! My brother had an interview at the 11+ which he passed but didn’t get into the local grammar schools but also had a long journey.

In the mid 60s, there was talk of the M23, London-Brighton motorway being built. Sometime in 1966, it became clear that the Ministry of Transport would compulsory purchase our home. It was at that point, Mum became ill. I’ve posted before about what happened, so don’t want to spoil this thread. Would just say, the motorway didn’t get built and you can see the house on google.

I would say we had a happy childhood until 1967, although money was tight, and the funny thing is that both my DDs did pass the 11+ (out of borough) and went to the school that my Mum wanted me to go to!

Jumbled up random memories! What a different world we live in now!

Chardy

Dcba

I’m a 1942 baby ….born whilst my dad was in the army in Italy. Always lived in our 3 bedroom semi in Woodford which meant they must have bought that house just before the start of the second war. Started school at 4 (can remember the huge rocking horse in the corner of the classroom, the camp beds where we had our ‘afternoon rest’ and not answering when the teacher called out my name on the register)! Mum picked me up from school on her bike ….I had a little seat on the back and she always brought with her a bottle of orange (the thick stuff that was issued and you diluted it with water) and I drank that as she peddled us home…it felt like heaven after a day at school

Some time after the war was over - my dad had a job as a soft toy salesman with an office in London (right opposite St. Paul’s cathedral) and mum worked there two or three days a week there as his secretary, but instead of a typewriter on her desk she had a sewing machine…so I guess she just answered the phone for Dad when he was out visiting his customers! I had loads of dresses as a child because she had all the time in the world to make them at work!

I have so many more memories and have realized that, looking back, my older brother and I had the best of childhoods and we were so loved and cared for, but at the time I thought that was how everyone’s life was.

Camp beds? Luxury
I still remember napping on the grey blankets (ex-WW2) on the floor when I was in Class 1 (Reception)

We had little camp beds at nursery as well
And those grey blankets 🙂

I was born in 1944 the oldest of five children.My father and uncles (of whom I seemed to have many) where all serving in the Merchant Navy. My great grandmother, on being told of my birth, broke down in tears, because of the terrible world I had been born into.
We lived with my grandparents until I started school when we moved into a one down two up terraced house with outside toilet and a bath under the kitchen bench.
I can remember my first day at school, I started with little boy.Our mothers had to leave us in the hall with the headteacher. As soon as our mothers left the boy started screaming and tried to run after his mother.The headteacher grabbed him and slapped his legs then she looked at me and threatened me with a slap if I started crying.I was terrified of that woman all through the infants school.
When I was in the junior school I was one of the children aways top of the class . Our parents were told we would get into the grammar school after the eleven plus exam. I was the only one of that group who did not pass, and my parents told me I had disappointed them and I felt a failure all through my school life, my father kept telling me I was stupid.This was despite the fact that two of my younger siblings also failed the even plus but they never seemed to get the same treatment.
I never had the same relationship with my parents afterwards., especially my father whose behaviour towards me could now be describe as bullying. He was a heavy drinker who later became an alcoholic,and all five of us were terrified of him.
I left home at 18 to do nurse training which I loved. Got married at 24 and enjoyed bringing up my family.

Dcba

I’m a 1942 baby ….born whilst my dad was in the army in Italy. Always lived in our 3 bedroom semi in Woodford which meant they must have bought that house just before the start of the second war. Started school at 4 (can remember the huge rocking horse in the corner of the classroom, the camp beds where we had our ‘afternoon rest’ and not answering when the teacher called out my name on the register)! Mum picked me up from school on her bike ….I had a little seat on the back and she always brought with her a bottle of orange (the thick stuff that was issued and you diluted it with water) and I drank that as she peddled us home…it felt like heaven after a day at school

Some time after the war was over - my dad had a job as a soft toy salesman with an office in London (right opposite St. Paul’s cathedral) and mum worked there two or three days a week there as his secretary, but instead of a typewriter on her desk she had a sewing machine…so I guess she just answered the phone for Dad when he was out visiting his customers! I had loads of dresses as a child because she had all the time in the world to make them at work!

I have so many more memories and have realized that, looking back, my older brother and I had the best of childhoods and we were so loved and cared for, but at the time I thought that was how everyone’s life was.

Camp beds? Luxury
I still remember napping on the grey blankets (ex-WW2) on the floor when I was in Class 1 (Reception)

I was born in January1951 at the Kentish Hospital where my father’s sister worked as a nursing sister. Dad was permitted to see me, through a glass door, newly born just before he caught the train to Portsmouth and a ship to the Korean War.

I was 2½ when he returned and, since the picture on Mum’s dressing table was of a smart sailor, I was indignant that “That’s not my Daddy, MY Daddy wears a hat!” But he kissed my Mum so I guess everything was OK.

Until I was five we lived at Littlestone on the Kent Coast in the top floor flat of an old former hotel building literally across the road from the sea, shoes were never worn except when we visited my Grandma in south London who, very far from posh, would have been appalled at the thought of her grandson bare footed, but on the dunes it was heavenly.

In readiness for my schooling my Dad got an Admiralty hiring, a three bedroomed house in Rainham from which he could cycle to the dockyard each day. I went to the brand new infants school, built as part of a vast council estate created specifically for ex servicemen and their families. I was very happy there and made good friends who a couple of years later moved with me to the next door, thirties Junior School, which was quite strange but gave a good honest rounded education. Like many others here I took the eleven plus and was sent to the Technical High School, now a Grammar, but at the time very much the Chatham dockyard apprentices route into a career. I rejected that, following my Dad into the RN.

We only stayed in the hiring a year when a bit of financial luck allowed my parents to buy a between the wars three bedroomed bungalow with a good long garden where I played after school, since my only sibling, a brother born shortly after I went to school, was born with a club foot, necessitating my mother taking him, on the bus, the five miles to the hospital three afternoons a week. I was never actually a latch key kid, if it was wet I played in the shed and the girl next door walked me to and from school for a few months until I felt confident to go on my own. Half terms alternated between Grandma in Sydenham, Gran in Ashford and Canterbury, my mother’s dream city, whilst summer days out were on the Railway along the north Kent coast: Broadstairs, Margate, Herne Bay, Ramsgate.

From the age of 8 I was a wolf cub and later a sea scout which filled many weekends under canvas or later as a teenager we slept on HMS Discovery, now in Dundee, but then moored at the Temple in London where I learned self confidence and navigation, both for at sea and getting around the capital.

I had a wonderful childhood, with caring but not stifling parents, bearable but occasionally sadistic teachers, (the cane was regularly employed and the slipper in daily use, especially by a few of the unmarried female teachers). As planned I finally left school at just 16 with almost no qualifications and went to sea where I spent virtually thirty very happy years.

They are all wonderful accounts, Fanny, aren’t they? I’m absolutely enthralled!

It's been so moving to read these stories.

I was born in London in 1948. My father was a NZer and when I was a year old we went to NZ to start a new life away from rationing, bomb sites and awful weather.
I remember my DGP farm where we must have spent happy times but my father died when I was 5 so suddenly my poor mum was widowed with 3 DC in a strange country. She did not get on with her in-laws.

After a few more years she brought us to live in London with the promise that it would be wonderful. It wasn't!
I found it huge, cold and terrifying.
Life for mum wasn't much better but there were more opportunities for women. She never remarried but went to university and had a job where she found fulfilment and many friends.

I left home as soon as I could, met my Scottish DH, married at 20 and luckily was happy living in Scotland ever since.

Forgot to add - I was born in 1944 in Liverpool.

I was born into a family with a huge schism where my mother had been pushed out. I wont go into the details because they are very complex and based upon principles of class and gender which appear very old fashioned now. I was first taken to see my grandmother when I was 4 years old and she immediately took a fancy to me. Whatever notions she held against my mother she did not extend to her grandchildren.

I loved visiting my grandmother because everything was so much nicer. We would have high tea with china cups, cream cakes and dainty sandwiches. There was none of that at home. Grandma had a fascinating house full of Victorian and angli-Indian furniture (which I would inherit one day) whereas my parents lived in a tiny two up two down by the railway track. Visiting my grandmother was a real occasion even though she had some very fixed ideas as to how children should behave.

You were not allowed to have cream cakes until you had eaten your sandwiches. If other adults were present I was not allowed to interrupt. However I was usually content to play with grandma's buttons or costume jewellery.

When I grew older I was expected to bring some "mending" with me because according to gran the devil makes work for idle hands. By "mending" she meant something useful like sewing, crochet or knitting. If I forgot to being anything then gransma would soon find me a woollen garment to unpick to be re-made into crochet squares. Some of my happiest childhood hours were spend sewing or crocheting with grandma, who taught me these skills.

Its fair to say that in contrast to my home life (where I was regularly beaten) my relationship with my grandmother, strict as she was, was idyllic. My sister (younger by 7 years) never formed the same close relationship with grandma who considered her spoiled and demanding.

Even after I left the parental home in the early 1960s I maintained a very close relationship with my grandmother until she died. I still miss her.

I was born in 1943, my father, in Bomber Command had been killed 5 weeks earlier, so things were a bit tough for us for a while. I went to the local Day Nursery as my mother had to work, even though my father was a Commisioned Officer ( in field) her widows pension was pitiful. The RAF did however pay my education fees both for school and College. When I was 4 my mother married again to a lovely man who was fantastic to us. It was our lucky day when they met, that's for sure. Sadly for them no children, but for me what I hadn't got I didn't miss!