I lived in Langley Vale from 1947 to 1962 so a visit to your village website evoked memories.   My father was John Thomas Bird; my sister, five years younger than me is Damaris and we lived at 97 Grosvenor Road (it was bought for £1,180) and it was called Nootka, after a tribe of Indians in Vancouver where my father, a ship's radio officer, was shipwrecked in the 1920's.   We lived opposite what was then Tarka and I remember the Toppers well.  They took in stable lads as lodgers I recollect.   I always thought one was Dick Francis, the author, but as it isn't mentioned on your website I might be wrong.

 

I went to what is now Glyn Technical College and Damaris went to the Art School.   My passion was athletics and I belonged to Epsom and Ewell Harriers (I used the tan track nearly every day for resistance training - I ran middle and long distances).

 

I remember little of the friends I had then.   One whose Christian name, I think, was Paul - Paul Haynes - went to school with me and the corner of our gardens (they lived in Rosebery Road) touched on the right.  His elder brother was a jockey even though he had lost part of his leg.   I remember with his artificial limb he could run as fast as we could.  Later the brother went into films and played small parts where horse riding expertise was needed.

 

Several doors down from us on the same side was a bungalow and the husband was a Major somebody and he had a son called Trevor, I think.  Can't remember the daughter's name nor the names of the neighbours on either side of us.

 

Not too far from my cousin on the other side lived a quite well known fashion model and her husband.   I can't recollect their surname but it was one of those names that are not pronounced quite as they are spelled - like Cholmondeley.   The name Manningham keeps popping into my brain but it wasn't that name, obviously, but perhaps something like it.  (Authors note : the name was Mainwaring)

 

My father at one stage in the 1950's thought he would make a lot of money breeding Chinchillas and spent around a thousand pounds buying nine or ten pair which were in a large shed behind the house.   They didn't breed and he made no money.

 

He was an air traffic controller at Croydon airport and went on to be manager for a short while at Gatwick.   He died in 1965 when my sister, still living with him, left the village and now lives in Croydon.

 

Phyllis Dixie also evoked memories.   I remember visiting her as a very young lad.   I think her house was at the top of Beaconsfield Road and I seem to remember the entrance hall had a glass roof.   The picture of George Mitchell's house made me wonder if his was the same house.

 

There was nine days racing a year and we all locked up our sheds on race days.  Gipsies had permission to camp in the trees lining the Derby start and anything not tied down disappeared wholesale!!!

 

Us young lads, though found races days very remunerative.   We would go over to the bookies stands after racing and search around the grass for dropped money.   I can remember a good day would yield around £5, a fortune to a lad hardly into his teens in the late 40's.   But on one of the nine days we didn't bother.  On Derby day the bookies would only take paper money and that wasn't dropped.

 

I remember the 419 bus terminus was in Harding road just around the corner on the left from Grosvenor Road and there was a twenty minute service into Epsom stopping at the Marquis of Granby and it cost four pence in old money around 1950.   From the grandstand you could catch the 406 down Ashley(?) road.   Coming home from London where I worked in the mid 1950's I would get the 406 and walk home over the Downs.   But we had pea-soup fogs in those days and as well as you felt you knew the Downs and even had a trodden path to follow which came out by where the village hall is now, I still remember getting totally lost on several occasions.

 

On the corner of Harding road on the left of Grosvenor Road was the butchers, run by a man called Cockburn, who was a Tory or independent councillor, and whom my father couldn't stand and would always called him Mr. Cock-burn to his face and not Co-burn as his name was pronounced.   The dairy was on the corner on the right I believe?

 

At the bottom of Grosvenor Road and just round the corner was the newsagents and there was an off-licence someway up Langley Vale Road on the right.  In those days, of course, there was no bridge/underpass from the race course across the road to the paddock.

 

I remember playing in the Warren but no faces and no names come to mind.   What does come to mind is the winter of '47 when the snow drifts on the Downs were something like ten feet or more high.  Great fun for a youngster as you burrowed a tunnel right through.

 

I now live in Norfolk.

 

Peter Bird (2007)

 

 

 

Langley Bottom during WW2

Extracts from the book "One Boy's Heroes" by Freddie Parsons, 1995

The Amazing True Adventures of a Wartime London Schoolboy

Chapter Nine

REGMA OF LANGLEY BOTTOM

The trips down to Epsom had become quite regular again, owing to the raids making it very hard to get any sleep at night.  At least when on Epsom Downs, it would be very bad luck indeed to have a bomb fall on you.  This is where a very special lady comes into my story, a Mrs Sarah Ash. A happy friendly plumpish lady with short grey hair cut in a bob style, Mrs Ash lived in a detached house called 'Regma'.  Her husband was Reg but she was always called Ma, not too fashionable today, but homely then to use such names.

They lived in Langley Bottom a mile or so from the Derby Arms Pub where Mum and Dad spent so many nice evenings.  My first impression of Mrs Ash was when she entered the Derby Arms one night.  I saw her dressed in full air-raid warden's uniform, blue boiler suit, steel helmet with a large white W on the front, stirrup pump at the ready, and all the equipment needed to put out the Great Fire of London.

The bar full of people who knew her well roared with laughter - this quite elderly lady ready to take on Hitler's might rather depicts the spirit that prevailed at this time.

Children were allowed in the bar provided they were very quiet, so I often slipped in to see and hear singing of wartime sons like 'Bless them all'.  I loved to get to the line that said 'their bloody son'.  It gave me a change to say a rude word like 'bloody'.  It felt really wicked. 

That night a lone and probably the last bomber fleeing from a raid on London dropped a few small fire bombs onto the racecourse near Tattenham Corner.  The flares from the bombs burning on the grass raceway could be seen from the bar.  Ma Ash was infuriated.  How dare Hitler drop bombs on her Epsom Downs.  And she was equipped to do something about it.  Leading her team of amateur fire fighters at the gallop and at full charge they left the pub to do their duty, cheered on by the more than slightly pissed contents of the bar.

Into the night they went with buckets clanging.  Anyone who knew the location of the Derby Arms to that of Tattenham Corner knows it is quite a long way. Some hours later the brave team staggered into the bar exhausted and covered in mud, muttering that the bloody things had burnt out by the time they had got there.  The pub filled with hilarious laughter.  A few pints later everything was back to normal, apart from some hurt pride from the Langley Bottom fire wardens.

Mum and Dad became very friendly with Mrs Ash whose home 'Regma' was used by local racing lads who worked in the many racing stables nearby as lodgings, a real home from home for them, huge meals, everything homemade.  Her tea table layout was fantastic - jam tarts, cream cakes, homemade jams, apple pies - you could hardly find room for your plate.

'Why don't you come and stay at our house at night instead of sleeping in those damp golf huts?' she asked, the ash from her cigarette hanging in a gravity-defying curve that would never fall even as she talked.

This must have seemed an excellent idea, as from then onwards we travelled the extra mile into Langley Bottom and the extra comfort of Regma, an attractive house with two bay windows, a nice porch and well tended gardens and a large orchard at the rear.

We were greeted by the large now grown-up family, sons - Snowy, amazingly white blond hair, age about thirty, his wife Polly, a painfully thin young woman but very kindhearted, daughter, Beatty, a lady my mother's age, but my size as she was of restricted growth, Doug elder son rather deaf, her other sons away in the services.  Her husband Reg was a quiet man and as Ma would not let him get a word in edgeways it was just as well.

I think it must have been the experience of the small fire bombs dropped on Tattenham Corner that made the Ash family feel that Hitler had singled them out for annihilation.  For when we arrived that night they had arranged to all go to their Anderson Shelter for the night and suggested we should use their beds for ourselves.  What a great idea, after suffering the blitz bombing in London their beds were about as safe a place you could find.

To see the Ash family in their shelter night after night with an old blanket over the small entrance, not huddled in fear, it was like a gambling den in there, table set out with candles and packs of cards, large brown quart bottles of brown ale stacked up in crates on the floor.  Ashtrays everywhere full to overflowing, eyes squinting from the smoke as they gambled the night away.  W slept in their beds for many weeks, and I didn't remember a bomb ever being dropped on Epsom.  We did eventually move back to the golf huts behind the Derby Arms Pub.  I expect they became tired of sleeping in their shelter or ran out of money and beer.

The golf huts that we felt so safe sleeping in for all those weeks took a strange twist of fate.

Towards the end of the war, months after we no longer needed to leave London at night, the bombing had almost ceased.  Hitler was losing fast, but his new terror weapon the flying bomb, the V1, or as we called it, the 'Doodle Bug', were being sent over as a last-minute hope of success. These pilotless aircraft were wonder-weapons from science fiction to us, no one ever believed a plane could fly so far without a pilot.  Spitfire's could attack them with fire power, but one serious danger, the massive warhead in their nose could blow the Spitfire out of the sky the moment it exploded.  One trick that pilots had devised was to fly alongside the V1, use their wing to tip the flying bomb over and out of control to explode hopefully on open countryside.

A situation like this occurred over Epsom Downs.  A Spitfire in hot pursuit of a doodle bug, bravely flying alongside - which was very difficult and only achieved by the Spitfire diving at great speed onto the very fast target - tipped its wing over.  The V1 going into an almost vertical dive straight for the Derby Arms, it ripped clean through the end of the building damaging some of the public bar where I sat on the piano singing 'Bless them all' and my rude word.  The outside toilets were demolished as it continued to slide into our golf huts beyond, where it exploded turning them into matchwood.

The Derby Arms still stands today, very lucky that the fuse on the bomb was delayed enough to allow the explosion to occur after the initial impact.  So were we as safe as we thought, sleeping so snugly in our golf huts for all that time?  Little did we know their future. 

Epsom to me had become a perfect paradise so it was with delight that I learned mother had accepted Mrs Ash's offer for me to stay with her at Regma.  The bombing had become extra heavy again so she felt it would be safer for me.  My sister Jean, being only a baby, never left mother's side. It must have been a terrible stress for mother this bombardment every night nonstop.  They had decided not to travel each night to Epsom but to stay in their shelter and take their chances like everyone else.  Bombing had become a way of life by now, but for me to be safe and out of harm's way would have been important to her.

On arrival at Regma, my suitcase full with my clothes, my ration book in my hand . . . here I go for another spell of evacuation  . . . but this time I wanted to go.  I knew the area quite well by now, so felt at home straight away.

Mrs Ash showed me to my room.  Well, not quite my room.  I shared this room with three older men.  In one corner was a large double bed, in this bed slept Tommy Reeves, a tall dark and handsome, black curly haired, and very Irish jockey.  How come he was tall you say?  Because he was a steeplechase jockey.  They are normal height and weight.  My mother I think quite fancied Tommy.  He was full of Irish charm and very handsome, was very attentive to her, quite a contrast to my Dad who showed her no love and had no idea how to flatter the ladies.

Tommy's room-mate was a stable lad named Hobo, called Hobo because of his unkempt scruffy appearance.  They shared a large double brass bed (two men sharing the bed in those days was not considered in the least bit strange)  On the other side of the room was a single bed in which slept an older man whose name I have forgotten.

Tommy Reeves became a bit of a hero to me from then onwards.  He was so witty with his film star looks was ready to fight anyone in the pub who showed disrespect to my mother.  One one occasion, after a dance and quite a lot of Guinness, he wiped the floor with a fellow Irishman, who happened to make the near-fatal mistake of describing my mother's sexual appeal within his earshot, doing all this with his right arm in plaster to his elbow, having had a nasty fall from a racehorse the previous week.

The village school in Langley Bottom was an all-corrugated tin building at the top of the hill.  My first morning there was a bit uncomfortable for being the new kid involved being picked on by the Village kids - all from the pretty rough homes of the farm labourers.  The answer was to trade with them.  Coming from a dealer family I expect I had a natural ability to do a deal. All boys collected birds eggs.  To amass a large collection was my ambition, so these kids could not afford to dislike me - as they were experts at bird nesting and I was a bigtime buyer up from London.

I was accepted into their gang and full membership allowed me access to the Camp.  Opposite Regmar was a large flint wall, on the other side a thick wood backing onto a golf course.  It was in this wood we had the camp, the army used the adjoining land for war games training.  This was an excellent source of unexploded thunder flash (imitation grenades), very much like large fireworks, many being left behind by the soldiers.  Armed with these and bow and arrows, many battles were fought by us kids in these woods.  Another regular place for our gang to meet was the large brick air raid shelter on the edge of the village.  These shelters had no windows so it was pitch dark inside.  A reinforced concrete roof and fitted out inside with bunk beds, three high on both sides - a perfect place for our gang to meet.  In candlelight we would discuss the next daring escapade. 

Epsom Downs in 1942 was open heathland combined with dense woodland, the racecourse running around and through this very attractive place.  The grandstand no longer housed the Irish Guards.  Instead there was now a new and much more interesting soldier stationed there.  He chewed gum, wore a very smart uniform, always wanted to know if we boys had a sister, talked and looked as though he had just stepped straight from the silver screen we all worshipped every week at the cinema.  He was a 'Yank'. We boys loved them and so it seemed did the girls.  The saying at the time was 'Overpaid, oversexed and over here'.

If we spotted a Yank we would home in on them with, 'Hi, Yank - got any gum, chum.'

They were very friendly to us kids, always generous with their gum. I never ever remember not being given a few strips of gum from them.  There was always the inevitable question, do you have any sisters, to which we always answered yes, two, eighteen and nineteen years old.  This immediately gained their interest and possibly a few more sticks of gum.  Which we chewed as we swaggered through the village, all talking with American accents out of the side of our mouths, mimicking the characters we saw in American gangster films.

Our gang would organise Yank-hunting raids.  Yank hunting was quite fun as it combined two very important elements, the hunting instinct and sex.  I did not quite understand about sex yet, but knew I would kike to find out more about it.  Our raiding parties would involve four or five boys.  We would spread out in a line and move slowly across Epsom Downs.  Sooner or later we would spot a Yank and his girl seeking out a quiet spot to lie in the sun.  Slowly the pack of hunters would close in on their quarry until we all had a front row seat to their cuddling.

Village life in Langley Bottom evolved around the dusty hut.  The dusty hut was the tin village hall, dancing there every Friday night a highlight for all to look forward to.  The nickname dusty hut came about because of the dust that rose from the wooden floor as soon as couples started to dance.  It became a haze that, combined with cigarette smoke, developed to a fog within minutes.

Here boy met girl in the age-old fashion way.  It gave everyone an excuse to dress up in their best clothes, to see and be seen.  Dressing up with quite a ritual for the Ash family.

Hours before the event suits would be taken off their hangers and pressed until you could cut your finger on the trouser seams.  Blue pinstriped double-breasted suits would be brushed to look like new as you probably never had the coupons to replace them - with white shirts, a tiepin pinning the collar together under your tie to follow the latest fashion, black unbelievably polished shoes, looking like glass as the duster was strapped briskly over the toecaps for that final touch - the whole family were jostling for positions near the solitary mirror in the kitchen. Eager to apply as much dark green incredible strong-smelling Brillianteen to the hair as possible. In their tight jackets and very wide trousers, shoes shining like glass, the prime of Langley Bottom's manhood set off.  To be covered in dust within minutes of arrival must have been very annoying. 

On one occasion, just after the Ash boys had left for the big dance and, being impressed by their slick appearance, I opened their shaving cabinet.  Unscrewing a jar of hair cream I slapped as mass of it on my hair, sliding the long black comb through my very fine hair until a large greasy quiff was standing up on top like a cockerel's comb.  Meeting our gang later I felt quite grown up as we sipped brown ale from a large brown quart bottle of beer that one of the boys had managed to smuggle out that night.

'Let's go to the dusty hut.'

We all agreed, so half an hour later found us all looking through the window of the dusty hut with total fascination. The three-piece band was thumping away with the hit tunes of the time, 'In the mood', 'Three little fishes' - probably the silliest song ever written - all the Hollywood influence.  We tried to relive the fantasy we saw on the screens every week, dancers would 'jitterbug', a frantic, almost acrobatic dance, with girls flying over their boyfriends' shoulders, stocking tops and knickers flashing to the delight of all the boys - although what appeared to be stockings would often be legs stained brown with an eyebrow pencil line up the back of their legs to simulate a seam.  For, unless your boyfriend was a Yank, stockings were almost impossible to find.  This was the exciting world of grown ups.  I couldn't wait to join them.

It was a very warm evening, the window and door to the dusty hut were open wide to allow the dancers as much cool air as possible. By this time we boys had consumed the last of the bottle of beer which probably accounted for our boldness.  Sneaking in the back door behind the band we settled down on the floor half hidden by the curtains.  This was great, enjoying the music and going unnoticed until I started to feel sick.  In a mad rush to get out I did not quite make it, throwing up just inside the rear entrance.  Suddenly I was surrounded by angry dance officials.

The Ash boys were called over.  'He's drunk,' they were told.  An exaggeration, I was just wobbly on my feet.  Ron Ash told me to go home.  'You will be in trouble when Ma hears of this.'

In bed that night I was terrified of the consequences.  Next morning, to my delight, Ron said nothing at all about my mishap so I was off the hook. 

It was about this time that I started to visit the racing stables of the once famous jockey, Johnnie Dines.  He had a beautiful racing stables just outside Langley Bottom village, high on the hill, perfect in every detail, the stables set in a 'U' shape with a large courtyard and adjoining paddocks. 

Hobo and Tommy worked for him, Hobo as a stablehand, Tommy as his top jockey.  Being invited to go with the boys was really something.  It meant getting up very early on non-school days, 6 am to get an early start, for there were two strings of horses to be cleaned, ridden out for exercise, properly galloped and timed by Mr Dines to see their potential for the next race meeting.

My job was to help.  It was unpaid but very coveted by boys and I was very lucky to be allowed to go.  Practical jokes were constantly being played on the younger members of his staff, new girls working there would often have their jodhpurs pulled down to their knees, stuffed head first down between bales of hay and left there screeching for help, until some kind would who probably wanted a close up, come to their assistance. 

One trick that could have proven fatal to me was when the horses were fed.  These were racehorses, highly strung beautiful speed machines, not steady old plodders.  Given a bucket full of hot feed or a sack with dry chaff and corn, they would tell the new boy, feed No. 26.  Off I went, reached up, unslid the large bolt to the half door, stepped in to be faced by the bulging wild red eyes of the biggest black stallion in the yard.  Once I had to somehow get to his feeding trough - always at the furthest spot from the entrance door.  He would nip at you, snort, charge, kick and if possible crush you against the stable wall to finish you off.  He was lethal.

As I emerged bruised, bitten and battered, there were peals of laughter from the waiting stable lads who knew only too well what this horse would do.  Looking back I could easily have been killed.  I made sure I never fed that horse again.

Apart from the dangerous sense of humour, this was a wonderful place to work and I immediately decided I would like to become a jockey.  To be a jockey you would have to spend five years as an apprentice, most boys living with ladies like Ma Ash as lodgers.  It was a great lif if you loved horses and were small.  If you were normal in size you could only aspire to a jump jockey. 

The problem with this side of the profession was you were always in danger of a nasty fall, no matter how good you were, it would happen.  Tommy was a first-class jump jockey but had still broken about every bone in his body and was forever in plaster.  As I was a nine to ten year old and some of the seventeen to eighteen year old boys were still only my size, my chances of being small and light enough to be able to follow a successful career in flat racing was pretty slim.

As I cannot say too often, living with Ma was just special. Her home was just full of happiness, there was always so much activity, full of bustle and laughter, the boys always joking with each other.  At meal times these huge dinners would appear to be instantly consumed by starving stable lads.

Ma would flit in and out from the kitchen, her arms full of extra helpings to try to satisfy these hard-working appetites.  She did all this usually with a twinkle in her ye and a three-quarter burnt-out cigarette, its ash still intact and defying gravity, refusing to fall.  Probably the twinkle in her eye was induced by the cigarette smoke.  As she talked, juggled hands, her cigarette moved about in rapid flicking movements but never did the ash fall on to her starched while linen table cloth. 

Card playing was a major pastime at Regma.  Most nights her large dining table would be set up, cards shuffled, ashtrays everywhere, players tightly packed around the table, Ma very much in charge looking like a Las Vegas croupier.  Within minutes the room was thick with blue smoke, yet nobody seemed to cough or feel the least bit distressed by the lack of air. This was serious gambling, a week's wages could be lost in one night. 

Mrs Ash's husband Reg had died very suddenly.  I was not really sad, I had never got to know him at all, he was a very quiet man completely dominated by his wife Sarah, but also quite happy in that situation.  Very quickly a new man came into her life, or was he already there?

Charlie was his name, a short thin ex-jockey, now in the Royal Air Force, he embarrassingly quickly married her at the local register office and moved in to much resentment from her sons.  During the next few months Charlie was thrown out and allowed back to Regma so many times we all lost count, he was eventually roughed up by her sons after some of Ma's money was missing, sent on his way and was never seen again.

I really cannot remember how long I spent living with Ma.  I do remember how much I loved her, she was so kind and happy and had so much to do in her busy life but always found time for me.  What was about to happen next was a sudden shock to me, so unexpected.

One day after returning home from school I unintentionally slipped into the house unseen by Ma and a lady friend talking in her parlour.  They were deeply engrossed in conversation and just did not see me go up to my room.

On my return I heard my name mentioned.  Standing quietly listening in the half light of the dark hallway, I heard Ma say, 'He's a little sod, and he's going home.'

What I had done to make Ma feel like this I really never found out, I suppose she was under quite a lot of stress with her second husband Charlie disappearing with her money.  Perhaps I had been cheeky to her once too often, perhaps she just felt she could do without the work and responsibility of a young boy up to and into everything. 

I was sad to leave Regma and the excitement of our gang's adventures.

(Authors note : Regmar still exists and is in Langley Vale Road)

 

Sheila Leonard  - Resident 1952 -