St. Johns Church,Wapping

As a child, between the wars I lived round the corner from the Anglican church of St John of Wapping. Catholic children in those days were told not to go into Protestant churches for fear of eternal damnation.

As usual for children, this morphed into the belief that the devil lived there so that not only did we not go into the church we would cross over to the other side of the road in order not to pass by.

There was also a  churchyard there then with many gravestones but most have now been displaced and the area is a garden, the church itself being bombed during the war, with only the tower remaining.

St. John of Wapping was the parish church for a small area of Wapping which dated back to 1760 and it was in the churchyard here that Robert Hartup Jury, my wife's four times  great grandfather, was buried in 1824. He had been apprenticed as a Lighterman in Wapping in 1773 although born in Maker, Cornwall, married and raised nine children and lived in several addresses in Wapping some of which he owned. Robert also owned several barges at the time of his death as well as a share in a coastal brig.There were several other members of the Jury family buried in the churchyard but there are no signs of their resting places left now.

Needless to say, that as a young boy walking and playing nearby I had no means of knowing about the connection with the Jury family and this church which would occur later.

We do not exist on Earth

This is a picture of where we live as shown on Google earth!!

+

And this is how it is.

Its not surprising then that if we give people our postcode to visit us then many, particularly taxi drivers using some satnavs cant find us! 

The Google Earth picture is what the area actually like some five years ago, a former industrial site,  before building work began on the block of apartments and houses that we live in. If we were paranoid then we would be thinking that there is some kind of conspiracy to stop us being found.  Are we on some witness protection programme that we don't know about?  Answers on a postcard please as fortunately the postman knows where we are.

Musical memories

The first time I heard the melody of O Sole Mio was a slightly bawdy song my grandmother used to sing which went something like:

Old Mother Riley

She bought a cow

But to milk it

She didn't know how

She pulled its tail,instead of its tit

Old mother Riley got covered in snow.

My cousin Vicki, who lived in the same house as my grandmother as a girl refused to accept this.  She had never heard our grandmother sing and in any case would not of have sang a song like that.  Well this is not a false memory and anyway I could not have made up words like this at the age of ten.

When one of my older brothers returned from serving in Italy during WW2 he had learned quite a bit of Italian and lots of Italian and Neapolitan songs.

One of his favourites was O Sole Mio which he would play on the piano and any other instrument he could get his hands on, which included a mandolin which I had bought out of curiosity in a second hand shop.

It was only much later that I realised that the tune was the same as Gran's little ditty.

Later on of course there was Elvis with "It's now or never" with essentially the same melody. and then later there were the wonderful renditions of the original song by the three tenors in concert.

Goes to show that there's nothing new.

Roaming the countryside

Over a relatively long life there are a lot of things that have changed. Some for the better,some not.
I don't have much contact with young children these days but I get the impression that they do not have the freedom that we had. Not surprising perhaps with parental concerns about safety, but a bit sad.

Although born in the east end of London I spent several years as a evacuee in Guildford. There from about ten years of age, boys like myself were free to roam about,alone or with just a few mates.  The woods of Stoke park, the downs above the town, stolen train journeys to Clandon or Horsley and the walk back or the bus if we had the fare.

The woods in the park were enemy territory, Sherwood forest or just a place to make camps or climb trees. There was also a old tramp who camped there during the summer in a makeshift tent and cooked his food over a camp fire. There were beech trees in the woods with nuts in the autumn and in the park itself there were several walnut trees.  The taste of a fresh walnut is completely different to the ones bought at Christmas time.

Up on Pewley down there were different attractions: wild apples, crab apples, blackberries and other edibles from trees in the hedgerows like nuts and berries. And of course there were more woods with protection from enemy aircraft or places to ambush the sheriff of Nottingham's men.

Along the footpath alongside the River Wey,  there was a small rock pool below a clear water stream running down from St. Martha's hill.  After a drink from the pool by lying on your stomach, climbing up alongside the stream, at the top of the hill there was a small plantation of bamboo canes. Ideal material for boys with their penknives to fashion bows and arrows.

Three centuries of one Family in a Sussex Village

When the second world war came, thousands of London school children were evacuated and we went with our school from Wapping to Brighton. 

The Baker family that we were billeted with had an allotment out at Moulscombe and we went there many times.

We didn't know then and not for many years that the small village of Falmer which was just a couple of miles up the road from the allotment was the birthplace of our gg-grandmother Rebecca Baldy.
Rebecca had been christened in the parish church in 1797 and was a direct descendant of William Baldie who had been christened there in 1676.

Whilst we were learning to "dig for victory" on the allotment, still living in Falmer in 1940 was Harriett Wilson whose maiden name was Baldey. She also was a direct descendant of William Baldie. She had two sons George and Henry who was also still living in Falmer so they were our cousins that we had no knowledge of. George married and had a daughter who did not marry and Henry did not marry.  So sixteen years short of three hundred years, with the death of Harriett in Falmer in 1960 there came the end of the Baldy family in Falmer. 

Wapping and Dartmoor

Of all the places in London's  East end which have been gentrified over the years,   Wapping is one that stands out.

I'm wondering if any of the Porsche and Land rover owners who occupy apartments in the former warehouses are aware of the connection with Dartmoor, the prison, that is.

The former warehouses which line the river front abutting onto Wapping High Street or Wapping Street as it wass then, were designed in the nineteenth century by Daniel Asher Alexander the Surveyor to the London Docks company.  

It is said that his work was heavily influenced by the Florentine artist Giovanni Piranesi and in particular his macabre drawings of imaginary prisons.

  Not difficult to see that this  influence is evident in the warehouses in Wapping.  Later Alexander had the opportunity to put this enflunece into greater effect  when he was commission in the early 1800s to design the new prison on Dartmoor. 

From surgical boot to a stage clog

My cousin Tommy Harrington contracted polio as a child. He survived the illness but,like many others he ended with one leg shorter than the other.  The only remedy then was the surgical boot, a contraption consisting of a brace on the longer leg and a heavy boot with a thick sole on the shorter.  Like most children fitted with the boot Tommy hated it. He knew that it helped with his walking but it made him stand out from the other children. Also at this time in the early 1900s children whose limbs had been damaged by polio were "cripples" and rarely got beyond that either in description or aspiration.

Tommy Harrington would not accept that. He developed a liking for music possibly derived and perhaps learned from his grandfather Alphons Eder, a street musician,  how  to play the accordion and concertina. As well as being a natural musician, never learning to read music, he began writing comic songs and performing them for anyone who would listen.

Later he decided to go on the stage, developing a yodelling style of singing and dressed in his own version of a Dutch costume. He later said that the costume was inspired by wanting to cover his surgical boot so baggy trousers did that well.. Eventually he was able to have some special boots made which resembled wooden clogs, which he wore to the end of his stage career.

He appeared on the Music Halls which were still popular and numerous in those days, recorded many of his songs and even had hits, such as they were then.  I told much of this in a previous blog. I am reminded that he died twenty-five years ago but you will still find mention of him on the internet.  By today's standards a "celebrity".