Southend, or ‘Sarfend’ as it is affectionately called in the Essex way, was the railways gift to the Cockney’s. Before the invention of steam locomotion, it was no more than one of many villages dotted about the north side of the Thames Estuary. But with the coming of steam it was the nearest coast to the east end of London and so it soon became the day trippers delight. But why the name you might ask, what is it the south end of? Well according to my history teacher of long ago it is at the southern end of a place called Prittlewell. Long before the Cockney seasiders came by the train load there was the cluniac priory established by Benedictine monks back in the middle ages. Unfortunately, Henry VIIIth put an end to it when he decided to separate the English church from Rome. But although much of the priory was destroyed the old refectory still stands and is now a museum. Incidentally, adjacent to the museum is a beautiful walled garden, a true delight with its formal beds, terraces and pools. But that is how it got it’s name, it was simply a spot that was at the south end of a lane from Prittlewell down which the monks strolled to do a bit of fishing. Probably on Thursdays!

        It is the parks, gardens and streets with grass verges lined with trees that for me makes Southend a very attractive place. I think I read somewhere that there are 77 parks and gardens maintained by the borough council. Most are undiscovered by the day tripper, even out of sight. Each is a gem. Two I would particularly recommend are the Southchurch Hall and Churchill gardens – if you can find them! Oh, and one place where I often watched on with wonder was the model boating lake in Southchurch Park where boy-turned-men, but still boys at heart, played with their sophisticated remote controlled and high-speed craft. I can still remember the smell of the nitro powered engines that sang like gigantic bees. Talking of smells, as well as the ozone from the sea, before gas from the North Sea came along there was the old gasworks that overshadowed Southchurch park. The smell it gave off as it extracted gas from coal was said to be therapeutic – but for what I have no idea.

        Although as a seaside resort it never quite made the fame and fortune of Brighton, some of its glorious Victorian past can still be seen. West of Pier Hill is the Royal Terrace over looking the Thames with its mews, cliff gardens and bandstand, hotels, floral clock, fountain and bowling greens and there is of course the pier that made it famous. But because of the many fires, the pier is now a shadow of its glorious past and the amazingly beautiful, Victorian bandstand was replaced by a boring, sixties, monstrosity. To the east of the pier to as far as the Kursaal Fun Park was the so called Golden Mile, which was actually less than half that. Here were the pubs, penny arcades, fish and chip restaurants, hot-dog, ice-cream and candy floss stands. For a council estate lad you could not resist the arcades where you would working out how to make a profit from the penny slot machines, nor could you resist trying to see what the butler saw; which was always a let-down.

        The Kursaal was in the top league of fun parks up with Pleasure Beach in Blackpool and Battersea Park in London. During his annual holiday, my dad occasionally worked there on the water-shute, until he broke his collar bone. It was not the sort of ride we have today which stay on rails and make a bit of spray. There were two ramps, one up and one down. The tower hauled real wooden boats that took about a dozen passengers up the 100 feet or so to the top, around and down the freefall slide into the lake at the bottom. Each boat had a man on the back of the boat as it went up and came down. All he had was a long pole that he used to manoeuvre the boat back to the jetty, help the passengers off and on and back onto the ‘up’ ramp. My dad was one of these men. I am not sure just how he broke his collar bone but he was always one to push his luck by standing all the way up and down.

        The Kursaal was renowned for the casino and ballroom with its domed roof, though it was not somewhere I ever went to except once when there was a concert put on by the combined choirs of all the primary schools in the borough, and I was in the one from Temple Sutton. The rides were also far too expensive for a local lad like me, but then came the 50th anniversary of the Borough of Southend and as a treat the council gave all school kids the afternoon off to go to the Kursaal and all rides were a penny. What a day that was. All the wonders we had only ever watched from outside we could storm. But it was not the rides that I remember so well as the Wall of Death. This was a big cylindrical room where motorcyclists would drive up the vertical walls and round and round the room doing tricks and whatever, what an educational visual aid that was. How if you could produce enough centrifugal force by driving fast enough round the inside of a drum, you overcame gravity. They had to accelerate really fast from the floor up a small ramp and on powerful four-stroke bikes the sound alone was exhilarating. We had to watch from over the top of the wall and they would drive to as near the top as they dared which was so exciting. Of course health and safety were never of much concern in those days, I do not know of anywhere where you can still watch such a thing.

        The Kursaal was not the only place for rides, there was also Peter Pans Playground, a name they eventually had to change, I guess because of copyright. Though the rides were nothing like those in the Kursaal it had some unusual features like the Jigsaw Train with its drum like carriages that spun as they turned a corner and there was the rickety old House that Jack Built where none of the walls were vertical or floors were level. High up on the wall outside was always a tide mark to remind everyone where the floods of ’53 reached, a flood that in the southeast of England killed 1800 people. Then at the west entrance was something so amazing, it was called the Guinness clock. On the hour or may be less, it would perform a show that was a marvel of mechanisation with the Guinness Toucans and dolls and things – I guess it eventually wore out.

        Each year during the middle of August the highlights were carnival week and the illuminations. All the carnivals from the local towns and villages with their queens, floats and bands would convene and parade along the promenade from Chalkwell park to the Kursaal. The final parade of the week was always the torchlight procession. You had to queue early to get a good roadside view. It was a time of waving flags, candyfloss and the smell of fried onions from the hot-dog stalls.

        The ‘lights’ were also a thrill for young and old, especially ‘Never, Never Land’. Although you had to pay to get in through the turnstiles it was worth every penny, the whole of the cliff gardens, trees and paths were filled with illuminated, moving tableaus, fairies and fanciful creatures hidden and waiting for wide eyed children.

 

But Southend was more than a place for fun and play. Until the end of the sixties it was a pioneering centre for electronics. Established before the Second World War, the company started by E. K. Cole was the birthplace of mass produced electronics. It made the first bakelite cabinet radios and expanded into television and all other domestic electronic and electrical manufacture. But like with most British industry, there was never the investment to keep it competitive. While the plant that originally made the plastic cabinets continued, the buildings that were the television assembly line were bought up and became offices for the Access credit card company. But the original art deco reception and offices still stand.

        My father and two of my uncles worked for Mr Cole and it was where I too occasionally worked during holidays before leaving school. It also gave me my first full-time job and later an apprenticeship to become a design draughtsman. It did not only provide a living but a social life too. My dad played for the companies football team in the winter and the cricket team in the summer, so as in those days because the basic working week included Saturday morning, my mother only really saw her husband for any length of time on a Sunday. But he would take me with him, perched on a small child seat on the crossbar of his bicycle, to the games he played in.

        It also had a Sports and Social club with a club-house which employees and their families were members. It was here my mum taught me to waltz to the sounds of Cyril Andrews and his band and where under age drinking – and I mean from twelve and older – was no real concern. (It was only shandy!) The clubhouse also had two full size snooker tables which occasionally my dad let me have a go on. As well the regular social activities there were the firms Christmas parties which were a real treat. Every year it would cater for hundreds of kids with loads of party food and entertainers and one year we were all treated to the circus.

        But sadly this pioneering industry has largely been replaced by government offices for VAT, Custom and Excise and banking which has helped a little to reduce the need to commute to London for work.

        I can still name at least twelve cinemas that there used to be in the borough of Southend. Most were in the art-deco style except for one I particularly remember called the Gaumont. Near Victoria circus, it was truly what they called a picture palace. Its plasterwork and furnishings were so ornate and there were tiers upon tiers of seats right up to what were called ‘the Gods’. But of course times change and almost all are now demolished, all except the one in Alexander Street which is now a theatre and the Plaza in Southchurch road, which apparently is being used again as a concert hall. This was my local cinema for Saturday morning flicks that I went to every week to enjoy the likes of the Three Stooges, Marx Brothers, a feature film, Looney Toons and cliff hanger serials like Batman that made you come back next week.

        To house a growing population, after the war, there was a major program of building state owned houses for rent. At the age of four I so remember moving from the darkness of a town centre terraced house owned by my grand parents, to a new estate built right on the edge of what was called ‘the green belt’. These were light, modern houses all with front and back gardens plus plenty of green open spaces for youngsters to play in. The developers had left many trees that were perfect for climbing, none were too high. It gives me vertigo just thinking of the heights we would climb to. But with such a natural playground, there were natural injuries! Falling out of trees was a common occurrence, though not from the higher branches or I would not be telling the tale. But on one occasion I had a fall that resulted in a compound fracture of the arm. Going to hospital, the x-rays and full plaster cast did not bother me too much as I had one before for a broken leg, what upset me most was missing Liberace who that night was top of the bill on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. They took so long putting me back together I was going to miss it! Other common injuries were caused by barbed-wire; I still have at least one scar to show for it and undergrowth that made wonderful hiding places. Problem was in those days we wore short trousers until we were twelve which gave little protection from thorns and nettles. I remember one particular incident when a doctor took hours getting a hundred thorns from a hawthorn bush out of my scalp which together with nettle stings covering both legs gave my mum such concern my dad had to take me to sort it out.

        On these new estates there were also allotments to rent for the energetic to grow their own vegetables, big new primary schools and for me there was the beyond. From outside my front door you could walk straight up a lane and into the fields of the local farmers, much to their annoyance!

        The particular path near my home was called Rebels Lane, which followed the course of a brook all the way to Barling and the Rivers Roach and Crouch. I would wander this path, crossing the brook as often as you could without getting what we called a ‘’boot full’, by slipping in. All over there were exciting places to play like the old concrete ‘pill boxes’ that were built as gun emplacements during the war and the craters left by German planes that off loaded bombs that did not make it to London. These old craters became ponds filled with life, particularly newts which we really enjoyed fishing for.

        Of course, these were places for mischief and adventure. Here you could hide from mum and dad and have your first secret puff and choke on a cigarette or try your hand at starting the odd fire. When the wheat fields were near to harvest, and it really did grow taller in those days, there was nothing more fun than crawling through it, making a maze of passages and dens where you could lie, completely shielded from any wind, look up at the blue sky and listen to the hovering lark, high up above catching flies on the wing. The warm sultry smell and the warmth of lying in a field of ripening wheat is one of my most endearing memories, though we did occasionally get a roasting from the farmer.

        We used to roam from the airport at Rochford through Sutton, Shopland, Barling and Wakering out to Star Lane and Milton Hall brick fields in Shoeburyness, which was the best place for blackberry picking. Not far from here was Foulness Island. A sound I can never forget was the regular pounding boom of enormous artillery that practiced on the firing range on that island. The shells were fired out into what are called the Maplin sands, which at one time was proposed as the site of the third London Airport. But the number of unexploded shells out there was probably one reason they chose Stansted instead. Eton House boarding school was another favourite haunt. Over the high walls was an orchard and pools full of fish. Of course we helped ourselves to the apples and hooked a few fish that we always put back.

        School of course was a part of growing up, but in those days competition was not thought to be such a bad thing; we even had the eleven plus! We also used to have opportunities to play in school football, cricket, pin-ball and netball teams that competed  with other schools in the borough every week on a Saturday morning. Every year there would also be inter-school athletics at the Southchurch Park track on Empire Day, that later became Commonwealth Day.

        One thing very different then was that the only time I was ever taken to school by a parent was my first day, there after I trekked there and back morning, midday and at the end. Oh yes, I did not like school meals, they were awful, you always had meat that you could not chew so did not know what to do with and custard made from some powder that never tasted like anything mum made. So I walk home every lunch time for my main meal of the day and back to school for the afternoon. Are children even allowed to these days?

        The one facility the town did not have until much later was an indoor swimming pool. There was a small one at the Catholic school called Lindisfarne but there was no public one, just the outdoor pool at Westcliff. But that outdoor pool was such fun. It was large, open to the sun and the water was filtered sea water not chlorinated water like today’s pools use. The only downside to the place were the changing rooms which were wooden and somehow, all had small holes in the dividing walls!

        Records show that Southend is the driest place in the UK, but nevertheless, every year you usually get a good downfall of snow. The winter of ’64 was different. Snow started falling late, not until February, but it fell deep and remained right until April. That year I so enjoyed Sunday hikes with my sister and a beautiful golden retriever we borrowed from a friend – it truly was a winter wonderland and playground.

        Southend remains a pleasant place to live, but it lost its identity sometime after the sixties. For over thirty years, every time I went back, there would be new grandiose development schemes in the local Evening Echo – but until now, they have not come to fruition. It seemed to become too proud to become a second Blackpool while at the same time no one had the money and vision of the Victorians to bring it into the 21st century. Or maybe it was just that Londoners now spent their holidays in Spain. The pier has had at least three major fires, there have been serious landslides on the cliffs which have been fenced off for safety and none of the proposed marinas and Tenerife type beaches have ever been built. The annual air-show brings in the crowds each spring bank holiday and the theatres have been saved from closure, but how it will develop over the next fifty years, who knows? The Palace Hotel on pier hill is at last being restored to its former glory and I guess if global warming is to have the expected affect on the country, it could well, once again bring back the east enders from their Spanish villas and have a life like it once had, I for one, certainly hope so.