Memories of friends, neighbours and growing up in Talbot Avenue, Oxhey

Beginning with the Hammond family at No.1, I remember their daughter Susan. We used to wander around Attenborough’s fields looking for ladybirds, four-leaf clovers and blackberries and our parents had no worries for our safety. We relished an early sense of adventure, of which Enid Blyton would have approved.

At 2 was the forward-thinking Arthur Arkinstall and his wife Lilian. When he became Headmaster at Callow Land (sic) Primary School for Boys in the mid-1930s, late Watford historian George Lorimer, in his final year, described him as ‘young, enthusiastic and athletic’.

Lesley's father, Ted Parrish, and mother Peggy, right, outside 62 Talbot Avenue with best man, John & Mary Loader, 1946. Note the 'ancient' Austin 7! (Image: Lesley Dunlop)

As a youthful head, he had observed that most teachers were still teaching as they were taught rather than how they had been taught to teach. He was dedicated to audio visual education, recognising that whilst bright children could be taught by abstract verbal methods alone, the majority of children needed the added benefit of concrete or near-concrete experiences to provide a depth of meaning to aid their understanding.

At 4 were Dorothy and Reginald Roy Linsley who ran the popular Oxhey Fisheries at 88 Villiers Road. Molly and Frank Edwards were at 18. Molly had family connections to the Royal Doulton ceramics business and never missed ‘The Archers’ on her kitchen radio. Frank was the gentlest of men who worked as a railway clerk before his retirement.

Lesley, left, with Molly & Frank Edwards of Talbot Avenue and their niece. (Image: Lesley Dunlop)

With no children of their own, Auntie Molly and Uncle Frank, as I called them, took me to their hearts. A bunch of pink rambling roses from their garden rooted in my parents’ garden and I have since taken cuttings each time we’ve moved. They are growing in our garden today.

My parents, grandmother and I were often invited to their house to watch ‘What’s My Line’, when we tried to guess the contestants’ occupations before the panel did!

Ernest, Edith and Betty Parsons lived at 26. My father was engaged to Betty before the war but during his service in India she broke off their engagement.

Charles Pocock and Leslie Walduck lived at 54 and 56 respectively. They had known my father from his youth and I recall them too; true gentlemen.

Large scale Talbot Avenue map. (Image: Lesley Dunlop)

Harold and Evelyn Bunce at 64 were next door neighbours to my grandparents when they lived at 62 Talbot Avenue. My parents and I lived there too for a while. Evelyn, or Auntie Bunce, was a pleasant and practical lady who removed a fish bone from my throat as a child. Strange, the things that remain in the memory!

Freda and Arthur Patmore, a lovely Welsh couple, lived at 66. My parents kept in touch with them for years and, although Arthur sadly passed away, Freda still takes pleasure in reading the Watford Observer nostalgia page.

At 68 was widowed Ellen Andrewartha, whose husband Ernest once rented out boats on the river Colne at the Wiggenhall bridge by Oxhey Park. My father remembered his beautifully maintained boats and the small landing stage in the 20s and 30s, when the sound of oars epitomised summer. Ernest, a former Naval Officer, and Ellen named their eldest son Ernest Jellicoe after Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe as he was born the same month that Lord Jellicoe became Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow.

The old Wiggenhall bridge where Ernest Andrewartha rented boats, c1920. Image: 'Watford, A Pictorial Record', published by the Festival of Britain Committee of the Borough of Watford, 1951. (Image: Lesley Dunlop)

Betty and Dennis Conner and their family lived at 70. Betty was Chairman of OVEG for several years.

On November 15, 1944, following his broken engagement, my father wrote from India, South East Asia Command, to his new penfriend, Peggy Hunt.

He was clearly homesick. ‘I’m afraid my heart is back in Oxhey. The neighbours [in Talbot Avenue] are so friendly and helpful. A Sunday morning was such fun, especially on a sunny day. Two doors away a young neighbour would be singing opera for all he was worth – he was in a small society. The children next door, now grown up, were making enough noise for 20. Lawn mowers would be going; a sort of continuous echo all along the road. The trees on the pavement used to be quite small; now I expect they too have grown. Mother would be having a constant stream of visitors. Sunday mornings usually saw me disgracing the whole road with a grease gun in my hands checking over the ‘Thunderbox’; a very ancient Austin 7’.

Then he reflected: ‘I often wonder whether things will be the same when this war is over or whether I will want them to be.’ Nostalgia indeed.

• Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.