The houses reputedly were built with flints taken from the abbey after it was dissolved; the abbey site basically becoming a builder’s yard for hundreds of years to come, for the construction of these two up, two down poor quality terraces. There was a single outside tap and a privy at the bottom of the back yard shared by two houses lit by either an oil lamp or candles should you be unfortunate to have to make a visit in the night!
Everybody knew everyone else; families like the Burroughs, Frouds, Chinnerys, Freemans, Shorters, Bulls and Jennings. The latter lived further up the street which was a bit better. Of course everybody knew each other’s business as it had been for generations. There were lots of characters good and bad. One evil "so and so" used to go out drinking, got drunk and then abuse his poor blind wife often turfing her out into the street with little more than a night dress on. People would take her in and she would go back home the next morning after he gone to work or sobered up. He was an evil man; sorry but there was no other way to describe him. Neighbours looked after each other, no loneliness or age gaps because everyone was in the same boat!
During the war, when the telegram boy came down the street, the women would watch him in case he stopped at a house to deliver one of those fateful messages that their son or husband was missing or had been killed in action. They would then rally round and give what help they could.
The Brackland was recognised as a law unto itself, the roughest street in the town. Police had to patrol in twos on a Saturday night and the ‘Billy’ had more than its fair amount of bother. You know when you are in a rough part of any town if the Salvation Army is close by. Not only was it close by but their ‘soldiers’ lived among us, I admired them for that.
People would avoid walking down by our street, preferring to go via Tayfen Road, Ipswich Street or Cannon Street. Mind you as kids we never feared anyone, roaming about as we wanted and if anybody interfered with us they had the whole street to deal with, both men and women! They looked after their own, but I’m sure they knew what we were up to!
There were three children in our family and one of my earliest memories was one night going to bed with a candle. I was playing about with it and it caught alight to my pyjama jacket, I was four years old, my sister Phyll was five and Bertha six. Phyll took me downstairs to Mum but by the time we got down my jacket fanned by the draughts in the house was ablaze. I spent months in hospital and months as an out-patient. A year later I was chasing Phyll and tripped over a door tread breaking my knee. These were the days before the NHS so I don’t know who paid for it all!
Another early recollection was one hot summer, they were always hot in those days,and there was a lot of Scarlet Fever going around. As it was a close community it spread like wildfire, so if you got it you taken into the isolation hospital, which at that time was up the top of Barton Hill. However the ambulance was like a big black horse drawn box with the driver sitting on top. To me it looked a terrible thing, in my imagination like a coffin with the devil taking you down to Hades. I dreaded having to go in that.
Thinking about diseases, I remember playing with someone for about a year or two then suddenly you would miss them. When you asked what had happened to them you were told you would not see them again. They had gone into White Lodge, which was a T B hospital. I lost two of my play mates like that. So you can imagine when many years later I was told that another friend of mine had got T B and had gone into White Lodge and that I would never see her again. Anyway she ended up marrying my best friend and didn’t seem to suffer from it at all!
When they pulled most of The Brackland down I was told that Dr Cockram said it was the best thing that could have happened to it as was a breeding ground for T B.
The houses although two up, two down had large families in. I once went to a cousin’s funeral and was told she was one of 13, eight girls and five boys. She was the only girl to grow up and I can’t help but wonder why only the girls died. Another aunt had 11 children, her husband had been shell shocked in WWI, and was often out of work. Once, when one of the children was born he was out of work and there was no food or anything in the house. There was a collection in the pubs for them.
Of course the 11 weren’t in the house at the same time, some had grown up. In fact the oldest daughter was having her first baby at the same time as her mother was having her last! Can you believe it, uncle and nephew being born on the same day and the nephew an hour or so older than the uncle!
It is surprising how many children you could get in a bed by topping and tailing. How you smelt wasn’t that much of a big deal as we all smelt the same. Sharing a toilet with next door could be a problem if several of you wanted it at once. The ‘old go'sunder’ (chamber pot) saved a lot of queing up!
The house we lived in was one of three and just a little more modern. It had higher ceilings and sash windows and its own tap and toilet. Some of our girl cousins who lived down the street would come up to use our toilet because they couldn’t wait.
We had a wooden floor unlike the rest of the houses that had brick floors. These had to be scrubbed once a week and the kitchen range with the oven on one side had to be black leaded as well. There was also the old copper with a fire underneath for boiling the wash and heating the bath water. An aunt of mine used to make a big stew in it big enough to feed the family for a couple of days. Bath night was usually on a Friday night, whether they wanted it or not. The old tin bath was in front of the fire in the winter; all the children shared the same water being topped up by a kettle or from the copper. Everyone was then clean for the weekend.
There was Jack Booty the milkman with his horse and cart, the brass churns carrying the milk. You had it poured into your own jug, no bottles then. Jack had never taken a day off in his working life, never had a holiday not even Christmas Day nor never seen the sea! You never got your milk before lunchtime and sometimes nearer tea time.
Mr Sharman, "the midnight coalman", often delivered coal at 10 o’clock at night with his horse and cart; once his horse dropped down dead between the shafts.
Other people who delivered with horse and cart were Freeman the fish merchant and Jim Braybrook, who had his stables in Ipswich Terrace. Jimmy Redet lived in a stable there with his horse, it didn’t pay to stand and talk to him for too long unless you were up wind of him! But the horse didn’t seem to mind.
There were coaches at the railway station waiting for people to come off the trains; The Angel Hotel had their own coach that waited there. Cars were only just beginning to come into the town. In the ‘King Billy’ yard were two real gypsy caravans with round canvas roofs, carved and painted. There were those people who lodged in the ‘Billy’, one and a half pennies a night. The lodging house on the corner of St Martins Street was the same price with fleas thrown in for free.
We played games in the street as there were very few cars about, for instance marbles in the gutter, we didn’t care what was washed down them. A rope was stretched across the road for skipping was mostly on bank holidays like Good Friday. There were shops nearby like Cunnolds, the Post Office and general stores and Bettles who sold newspapers, 2nd hand books and comics. There was a lot more reading pages in a pre-war comic than a war time one. In Northgate Street, Rowlands sweet shop had a cat that lay in the window among the trays of sweets. Also there was Mitchell’s hardware store on the corner of Cannon Street.
When I started school I went to St Johns infants school, it wasn’t very successful for me as I lost a lot of time with a burnt arm and broken leg. The first day I came out of assembly and with five other boys was told to stand to one side and we had a ruler across our hand because the teacher said we were talking during prayers! Whether it was true or not, that finished me with school before I had really started - preferring to take a back seat; even if I knew the answer to a question I didn’t bother to put my hand up.
So much so that when I went to St Edmundsbury I couldn’t even read! However, a teacher there took me to one side from the rest of the class and taught me, from then on I was always reading and I still do. I was always reading anything and anywhere; you could read in the toilet in those days because the toilet paper was the Bury Free Press cut into squares. I still have a hang-over those early school days. I am still reluctant to volunteer for anything preferring to be asked to help.
Sunday school was what I liked best, no fear of the cane and you were encouraged to talk. In those days just about everybody went either to the Salvation Army or as in my case the Railway Mission. Altogether I attended there for about 68 years.
But the Burroughs family weren’t strong on church except my mother, who was a Christian.
You would mostly find the Burroughs in a pub, the King Billy or the Brittania. The ‘Brit’ was kept by my Uncle Charlie and you could go in there on a Saturday night and the bar would be full and you wouldn’t find half a dozen there that weren’t related to me in there. No woman would go in the bar but into the Lounge Bar and again it would be full of my aunts and cousins.
I don’t suppose my father went out of the street, except to work, more than once a year and often not that, but whatever he was he never laid a finger on us children, and whether he was drunk or hung over he had a wonderful sense of humour, there was always laughter in the house. Today it would be thought I had a deprived childhood but we were all in the same boat and we didn’t know it. I had a happy childhood.