My mother, Rose Margaret Fitch's family originated in Essex, but moved to London in the early 1800s. They became cabinet makers, but the early death of her father from cancer and that of her eldest brother in World War I meant the business was lost to their part of the family, and hard times followed.

When my parents married they moved to Dame Street, Islington where my brother Archibald (known by his middle name, Eric) and me were born in 1921 and 1926 respectively. My Father joined the civil service after WWI and my mother, with family assistance, started a newsagency business in Danbury Street. She read all the magazines and became obsessed with moving out of London. My father agreed, believing a ‘better address’ would help his career.

I think the gardening magazines of the time influenced their choice more than anything. They acquired a car, my father mastered driving it and they made forays into the countryside. Finally they decided that the place in which to settle and formulate their future plans was Welling.

Early Days in Welling

We were told that Welling had originally been "Well In" and was so named because if you got over Shooters Hill when traveling from London to Dover without being accosted by highwaymen, you were well in indeed!

We were all real Londoners, and we found the countryside a little overwhelming. There were no pavements outside our house at first, and very few houses around us. Every morning my father put on his bowler hat and his spats, picked up his furled umbrella and a lumpy pair of shoes, carrying his good ones in a satchel. The roads were too muddy to wear his office shoes on the journey to the station.

One night he was late returning home, and it was already dark. We were sitting in our dining room when there was a heavy thump on the door. We looked at each other in dismay – nobody had called on us before. My mother leapt up and picked up the poker from the fireplace, my brother the tongs, and I followed with the broom, and we crept out into the hall. Calls of “Who's there?” brought no response. My mother bent down and opened the letter vent, but could see nothing – then my brother rushed in behind us, roaring with laughter. He had slipped out of the French windows and gone round the side of the house to look. Our visitor was a horse!

The Building Trade

My parents soon realized that building was the opportunity in Welling, and so my mother became a builder. She had a small, thick “Builders’ Handbook” which illustrated everything that anybody putting up a building should know and there were plenty of unemployed people from every trade. She collected together a team, had plans drawn, and started in. I was too young to take in everything that was involved in starting her business, and never thought to ask about it in later years, but it must have been an immense step for a young London woman who had been a machinist and a newsagency owner to take. However, she made a great success of it.

After a while her brothers, William and Walter Fitch also moved from London. Uncle Bill became a foreman in our building firm, and Uncle Wally was manager of Mother's shop in Bellegrove Road. It was called Armhill. For a while my father’s parents also lived in a bungalow near us that my parents had built for them, but they moved back to London.

Both the house where we lived at 56 Marne Avenue and where Mother's cousin Rose Slowgrove and her husband Claude lived in Huxley Road were damaged in the war - in fact the Huxley Road house was partially demolished. It was rebuilt and the Slowgroves moved back to it for a time after the war.

I can remember my mother in Wellington boots, cheeks flushed by wind and hair a-blow, out on the sites, or with plans and papers spread over the dining room table, talking to visiting contractors.

My brother and I used to run around on the scaffolding of the new houses and were great friends with all the workmen. I can remember sitting on the stairs with my doll while a wallpaperer talked away on the landing above me – it was many years later that in reading I suddenly recognized many, many paragraphs. Sam had been quoting Karl Marx!

The Gypsy Maid

When I was very young we had a gypsy maid. I cannot remember her name, but I can remember that she could whistle like any bird you cared to mention. My mother employed her because she had been in hospital, constantly visited by her family until she was almost recovered from her illness, when the family stopped coming.

This, apparently, was often done with children and young people. The gypsies knew that if they left them, they would be well cared for until the parents came round again with the seasonal work the following year. Young children would go into a local orphanage or similar institution and slightly older ones would be found work.

One evening during one of my mother's frequent building conferences I was upstairs in my bath and my hair had been washed by the maid. Mother had purchased a newly available electric hair dryer and naturally I wanted very much to see how it worked. I cajoled the little maid into switching it on and drying my hair with it. Unfortunately neither of us knew anything about electricity, and she switched on with wet hands. She received a nasty shock, and as she was holding my arm, I received it too.

Fortunately I let out a scream and my mother, the contractor and my uncle came pounding up the stairs. My uncle had the sense to turn off the switch and the contractor bundled the maid into his car. She spent four days in hospital, recovering.