Happy days and hard times in a two-up, two-down

Occasionally prompted by Joan, his wife of 55 years, he recently reeled off nostalgic bitter-sweet tales to me of his boyhood, youth and early married years among the courts of two-up-and-two-down houses with their shared outside lavatories, wash-houses and water standpipes.

Home for Bill was one of the close cluster of six small houses in Chequers Lane, which led off Hylton Road. The cramped space of a kitchen, "front room" and two bedrooms had to accommodate his father and mother, William and Annie Weston, and their five children - Bill and his four brothers!

"There were two outside toilets shared between the six families of Chequers Lane, together with a shared brewhouse which had two boilers for washing clothes and a whacking great mangle.

"The other five houses had electric lights but dad was a bit old-fashioned and insisted on keeping the old gas lighting, which meant we had to use oil lamps or candles to go up to bed," said Bill, who was born in 1922

"A hell of a lot of poor people lived in the Hylton Road and Tybridge Street area in those days and, though we never had much, we were happy. Mum and dad were good to us and we had great fun playing with our chums in the street.

"You could play football in the middle of Hylton Road because cars rarely came along, and there were other times when you could have fired a gun along the road without hitting anybody. This was when mothers and children went off pea-picking.

"Newmans, who had a vegetable business in Hylton Road, used to buy up fields of peas, and I remember sometimes going pea-picking with my mum.

"Summers were also marvellous, and when it was hot, we youngsters would all go swimming in the river. We would get a plank of wood and push the end of it into the bank and then use it as our diving board.

"There were no cinemas nor other places of entertainment for us in the area then, so my mates and I would often gather at the riverside near the Royal George inn. A lifebelt hung there, but it was never touched. We would never have thought of descending to vandalism or other mindless activities.

"We watched charabancs arrive on Saturdays and Sundays and park on the riverside in front of The Pinch - a row of six little cottages which stood alongside Hylton Road, between the junction with Tybridge Street and Worcester Bridge. The charabancs brought families from the Birmingham area for a day out.

"We would often play too on The Acre - a piece of green open space on the riverside opposite where the Evening News offices now stand. Another favourite spot for our outdoor games was the playing field with swings which covered the land now occupied by the Cripplegate Park bowling greens.

"This field was also used for sports by St Clement's School, where all the children from the Hylton Road and Tybridge Street area were educated. Among fellow pupils at St Clement's were brothers Amos and Frank Moss, who went on to play football for Aston Villa.

"Their father, Frank Moss senior, who was landlord of the Grosvenor Arms pub in Henwick Road, had also played for Aston Villa and for England, and he used to display some of his international caps in the bar."

Bill recalls the strong sense of discipline and good behaviour among St Clement's pupils.

"As soon as a teacher walked into the playground at break time, everybody immediately stopped, went silent and fell into their class line-ups to march back into school."

Bill Weston's boyhood mates included Arthur Powell, Sid Hawkins, Reg Gunton, Charlie Hayes and Harry "Fatty" Jones, and he is naturally sad that they are all now, alas, dead. Two of Bill's brothers - Arthur and Frankie - have also died but the other two - Albert and Tommy - still live in Worcester.

To help feed the Weston family of seven, Bill's mother or father would sometimes go into St John's or the city on Saturday evenings when butchers and fruiterers sold off their meat and produce cheaply as they had no refridgerators to store them over the weekend.

"Another sign of the hard times was that St Clement's Parish gave out blankets every winter to the poor of the area. I fetched them for our family many a time, and they were always returned nicely cleaned and pressed at the end of each winter," stressed Bill.

He then took me on a walk in the mind's eye along Hylton Road as it was in the 1930s.

"Nearly every trade under the sun could be found there," he said.

We first passed those six cottages at The Pinch before coming to the two neighbourhood pubs which stood almost opposite one another - The Bear at the corner with Tybridge Street and the Royal George close to the riverside.

"A Mr and Mrs Mackenzie, a super couple, kept the Royal George and The Bear, in turn, for more than 20 years. The pubs were always packed in those days."

Our imaginary stroll then went along the Severn-side of Hylton Road, passing Cyril Tompkins' barber's shop, Coombey the master butcher, who had his own slaughterhouse, and Rowden's cake shop where, as lads, Bill and his chums often bought "sixpenn'th of so-called stale cakes - bagfuls which were still good and tasty."

Next came Windiate's scrap yard, then six small cottages, Mr Shone the shoemaker, Woottons the undertakers who had "lovely big black horses" in their stables, Len Darke's timber haulage yard, Harry Campbell's petrol pumps and garage, Charlie Crouch the blacksmith under the railway arches, Reynolds' fruit and vegetable yard, Newmans' much larger fruit and veg depot and base for their market stalls business, Tommy Ratcliffe's yard where he sold blocks of wood for fires, and then "Doughey" Taylor's large haulage business with his fleet of lorries. He earned his "Doughey" nickname because, by comparison with most people in the area, he was thought to be financially well off!

Finally, on the river side of Hylton Road were to be found Ben Davis the stonemasons - still flourishing today, but now on the opposite side of the road - Whitepantry's garage, and Bob Mann's coal and coke yard.

Turning to the opposite side of Hylton Road from The Bear was "Doughey" Taylor's other depot and coal yard, Mr and Mrs Small's grocery shop where big jars of pickles were a speciality, Williams' confectionery and cigarettes shop, Flo Faulkner's fish and chip shop, Harrisons' scrap yard with its "massive piles of old cars," Mrs Jones' bread, groceries and cigarettes shop where people would often have items "on the slate" until pay day, Win Hall's lodging house on the corner with Chequers Lane (it had originally been the Chequers pub), Mr and Mrs Ireland's post office, finally and certainly not least, the extensive and imposing Tannery and Tan Yard from which the smells were obnoxious and overpowering.

Bill Weston's father, William, was a Birmingham man, who came to Norton Barracks while serving in the Warwickshire Regiment. He met and married a local girl, Annie George and settled down in the Faithful City for the rest of his life.

His wife Annie's father, Wilson George, had a fruit and vegetable shop in Tybridge Street for many years, and his parents before him, Wilson senior and Louisa George ran a fruit and vegetable business in St John's for decades.

Bill Weston cherishes Victorian photographs of Wilson and Louise George, his great-grandparents, and very occasionally visits their graves which are to be found in St John's cemetery. Bill's mother Annie was "born and bred" in Tybridge Street and went to St Clement's School.

Bill's father was a bricklayer by trade and worked for local builders until the outbreak of the Second World War, when he was assigned to building air raid shelters at the Meco factory in Bromyard Road. He was later taken on to the Meco workforce and became foreman of the maintenance department with its small team of bricklayers, painters etc. He worked at the Meco for about 30 years.

On leaving school, Bill Weston was employed from 14 to 17 at the sheet metal works on the site of what is now the Co-op supermarket at the Bull Ring but he was then called up and saw active service throughout the last war.

Bill's eventful war service was the subject of a recent Evening News feature by my colleage Mike Pryce.

Bill's wife Joan, who came from Uxbridge, Middlesex, moved to Worcester in 1941. She was sent from the Woolwich Arsenal to help train new girls at the munitions works set up in the Cadburys' factory at Blackpole. She later worked in various jobs at the nearby Archdales factory, eventually choosing to became a crane-driver, operating a 10-ton machine!

She first met Bill by chance when visiting a house in Hylton Road and though there was no romance then, Joan later agreed to a request from Bill's aunt to write to him in the forces, keeping him up to date with news back home in Worcester.

Towards the end of the war, Joan joined the NAFFI staff at Norton Barracks and was due to be posted away from Worcester when, by chance again, she met Bill at the crowded Bear Inn at Tybridge Street in 1945.

"As soon as we re-introduced to one another, he asked if I would just step outside for a minute," recalled Joan.

"To my astonishment, he asked 'Will you marry me?' and I said 'Yes'. He then asked 'When?' and I replied 'Next Saturday!'

"Thus it was that we were married within a week at St Clement's Church, both being 23, and we've never regretted the day in the 55 years of marriage since. We have three lovely children - daughters Ann and Mary and son John - together with nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren."

Nevertheless, the first five years of Bill and Joan's married life was hard and "bit of a nightmare" because of the severe post-war housing shortage.

"There were no housing estates then, such as Ronkswood, Warndon and Dines Green," explained Bill.

His parents' house in Chequers Lane therefore had to be the home base for the newly weds, though the lack of bedrooms meant they had to sleep at the nearby houses of friends and relatives in Hylton Road, starting with a Mrs Powell,

Then, in 1946, Bill and Joan hit the national headlines when their first child, John, was born on the eve of a Severn flood which spilt over into the Hylton Road area to a depth of several feet.

"At the time, we were sleeping in the attic at No.99 Hylton Road, the home of my cousin Ivy Tinsley," said Bill.

"John was born at 7.30 am, and hospital beds were in such short supply that I was sent home by noon," said Joan.

"Then, within hours, the Severn flood came up and trapped us in 99 Hylton Road. The next development was that the Press were in touch to ask if they could come and see me and my baby."

Bill took up the story: "I well remember the day a lady reporter and a photographer arrived from the Daily Mirror. They were brought along Hylton Road in a punt and I carried the lady reporter across the flooded front room so she could get up to Joan and the baby in the attic.

"Later, stories appeared in the national and local newspapers under headlines such as The Water Baby of Hylton Road."

The all-time record Severn flood of 1947, also meant hardships for Bill and Joan. By then they were living over the shop of Mr Shone the shoemaker in Hylton Road.

"We would feed the swans from the upper windows and could hear the furniture banging about in the flood waters downstairs," recalled Joan.

On demob, Bill had a job as a postman with the Post Office at Worcester and, during the 1947 flood, he had to climb out of an upstairs window at Mr Shone's house each day to get into the boat or Army 'Duck' which came along Hylton Road collecting people.

Despite all these traumas of their first five years together, Joan still firmly believes "it was a better world then than it is now. People were kind and considerate to one another and there were no muggings and vandalism."

Sadly, Joan was the victim of a mugging only three years ago, suffering head and shoulder injuries when attacked by two men in the street. "I'm still under the doctor today because I get flashbacks," she said.

Life and times at Hylton Road came to an end for Bill and Joan in the early 1950s when they moved to a house of their own in Canterbury Road, Ronkswood.

Subsequent home moves took them to Tolladine, Warndon and Flagmeadow before they settled in retirement at their present apartment at Nash's and Wyatts Court off New Street.

Bill spent most of his working life as a postman, though he left the job for a few years to work in the stores at the Meco factory.

His parents remained at Chequers Lane until all the old housing, shops and depots alongside Hylton Road were pulled down to make way for redevelopment in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

William and Annie Weston went to live in Coventry Avenue and were to complete 67 years of married life before they both died within months of one another at the end of the 1980s.