This week’s Nostalgia article has been contributed by Mike Tranter, who in the nineteen fifties and early sixties, lived in Railway Place, now a car park, which was located where Easton Street joins the London Road going east from the town centre. Mike has kindly agreed to share his reminiscences with us, he writes:

“In the early 50s Mum & Dad bought their first house, No. 22 in Railway Place.

I turned up in October 1953, their first son, and I lived there until I was 10.

The house was a two-up, two-down, terrace, with a scullery added at the back.

There was a small garden patch and a path down to the shed.

There were all the modern conveniences, including a toilet at the bottom of the garden.

It was heated and lit in winter by a small oil lamp and furnished with Izal toilet paper.

The galvanised steel bath was kept in the shed and brought to the scullery for us to enjoy a dip once a week, water heated in what mum called the ‘copper’.

This was a boiler-tub, and was also used to wash clothes on Mondays.

The open fire and a couple of paraffin oil heaters failed to keep the ice off the inside of the windows in winter, although I don’t remember being cold.

We were lucky enough to have a 405-line black & white TV which received BBC 1, there was only BBC 1, and we had the wireless (ie the radio).

By the late 50s, the neighbour next door had ITV, which we were allowed to watch from time to time.

The house and its services were probably luxury for mum, since she had lived with her family for a short while in an ex-military Nissan hut off Daws Hill Lane, having ‘emigrated’ from Barry Island in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales.

In that hut, I believe there was only an outside tap for water, and cooking was on a Primus stove.

Dad was a local lad with a motorbike and Brylcreem, who lived with his family in Mill End Road.

A practical man, he had been conscripted into the army as a REME tradesman and was more than capable of dealing with repairs around our home in Railway Place.

Paper aeroplanes

I shared the back bedroom at Railway Place with my brother, two years my junior.

Mum and Dad’s room was at the front, with the stairs in the middle of the house.

The sash window in our room was conveniently low enough to launch paper aeroplanes into the back garden.

This was okay until the development of the ‘flame engine’.

As any child would know, at that time, lighting the back of a paper aeroplane with a match made it go much faster.

Apart from a small burn mark on the Bambi rug in our room, test flights were going well until a crash-landing on the scullery roof.

I had one leg out of the window in an attempt to recover the burning wreckage when Dad came in.

After a meaningful discussion, otherwise known as a clip round the ear, flight tests were cancelled.

Probably putting the flame engine development back several years.

Mum kept that Bambi rug for many years, probably because she liked it despite the burn mark, but it always made me think of the ‘flame engine’.

Out and about

Dad had a motorbike and sidecar to get to work, which was also used for family trips to, for example, Burnham Beeches, and sometimes Hayling Island. The sidecar frame unclipped so he could wheel the bike through the alleyway to the back of the house, via a neighbour’s garden.

The neighbour on the other side had a much bigger garden and beyond their garden wall, was what we all called the Patch.

Since seeing the photos on the SWOP (Sharing Wycombe’s Old Photographs) website, I now understand that the Patch was in fact a Quacker burial ground.

To us at the time, it was a playground, a small grassy area with a few climbable trees.

Railway Place sloped up to a tee junction with Station Road, and turning left, the road ended after a few metres at Birdcage Walk, which continued to the town.

The slope made a great starting point for roller skating and homemade trolleys.

As a result of using old pram parts and bits of wood, the trollies were a bit unstable.

The brake lever, a piece of wood nailed to the side, would be pulled to drag on the road in an attempt to stop, but would sometimes come off, leaving only our shoes for brakes.

Railway sidings ran parallel with Station Road.

Trucks were sorted in the sidings by the shunting engine at various times, day or night, ready for their onward journey to other parts of the country.

The noise of the steam engine and trucks banging into each other must have been just something we all got used to, because I don’t remember it being an issue.

Diagonally across the Patch and over Station Road was the pedestrian tunnel under the railway.

It was damp and poorly lit, so not a place to linger when on the way to Totteridge Road infants' school.

The winding path at the tunnel exit was next to the southbound station platform. It was great to see a train standing there ready to continue its journey toward London, and a treat to see the new Blue Pullman, except that if it was there, it meant I was late for school.

Going to school

At that time, Totteridge Road school was quite small, not more than two or three classrooms with open fires.

At break time, small bottles of milk or orange juice with a paper straw were given out.

On warm days it was a treat to have a story read by the teacher on the grass at the back of the school.

In winter, the fires were lit and a wire guard fitted.

I was caught with another boy sticking our paper straws through the guard in an attempt to light them.

With my escapades with fire, it is surprising I didn’t join the fire service in later life.

At the age of seven or eight, I started at Spring Gardens junior school. It was a bit further to walk from Railway Place but I managed to get home and back at lunch time.

The route was either along Queen’s Road then the A40, or along Gordon Road via the damp tunnel, up the alleyway and along to a small wiresided footbridge, over the railway track and down between the Ercol factory and Gomm factory.

The footbridge provided a challenge for us lads, then in short trousers.

It was a dare to stand on the bridge as a steam train passed directly beneath.

At that point, the locomotive was still picking up speed, having just left the station, and puffing out smoke and steam along with a few sparks.

The Rye, Dyke and Keep Hill

The Rye was at the bottom of Railway Place, on the other side of the A40, crossing the road outside Trinity church.

The Rye had all sorts of attractions, boating/paddling pool, children’s swings, at one time a miniature railway and the outdoor swimming pool. Along the southern end was the Dyke, where a rowing boat could be hired, and a waterfall and shallow lake at one end.

Beyond that was Keep Hill, with woods. We usually walked there with Mum, and Dad if he wasn’t working.

When I was about nine, my brother and I were occasionally allowed to go unaccompanied, with the strict instruction to keep away from the water, meaning the Dyke.

Not long after such an outing, dad was reading the Bucks Free Press when he came across a picture of two boys playing by the Dyke.

He and Mum were convinced the two boys were us, so thanks to the BFP, we were grounded for a while.

We moved from Railway Place to Hicks Farm Rise in the early 60s when the street was compulsorily purchased for, as we then understood, a bypass road. It eventually became a car park.

It was so nice to discover the SWOP website and see photos I had not seen before, of our first home in Railway Place.”

Footnote Railway Place was originally purchased, and the dwellings demolished in preparation for a proposed inner relief road for High Wycombe, which would have seriously encroached on the Rye, instead of skirting it as it does today, leading to the part known today as the flyover.

This led to the formation of the Rye Protection Society (RPS), who successfully headed-off this proposal.

The RPS then became the High Wycombe Society.

IMAGES

Tranters Mike and his two younger brothers at the top of Railway Place, Station Road and the railway is behind them.

HWS:02580 Children playing around the Waterfall to the right of the Grotto, on the eastern end of The Dyke, off Wendover Way, the Rye, High Wycombe,1967.

BFP:70068 Old factory buildings and houses towards the southern end of Railway Place, with the towers of Trinity Church behind, London Road, High Wycombe, April 1962.