Watching the TV series about Queen Victoria has brought my childhood into focus in an unexpected way.
When, after the war I was returned to live with my mother it was to a small row of very squalid houses near to the town centre of Rochdale.
The name of this street was "Sir Robert Peel St."
So far as I remember no one knew anything about Sir Robert but as a very little girl writing out my address involved this rather cumbersome title.
It was a very poor street consisting of two up, two down rows of tiny homes . No one had a toilet. The one loo for the whole row of houses was up a very dark alleyway. I would have to be desperate to go out at night to use it.
So Sir Robert did not have anything salubrious in Rochdale.
When my dad came home from the army he explained that Sir Robert had instituted the police force which had been known as "peelers"
This was the full extent of anyone's knowledge but until we were rehoused about ten years later this was the main part of my address.
Peel street was a much longer row of houses leading outwards from the town centre. None of this exists any more I don't think.
We were all moved out to go to live on a new housing estate when I was in my teens but this very impressive address was mine during all my school years.
The portrayal of the man on the TV reveals a man with a Lancashire accent...he apparently came from Bury so I am not sure why this depressing terrace in Rochdale was named after him.
This name was one of the first to sit permanently in my brain...and still does oddly...
it jolts me back to a time when life was hard. Much harder than it should have been for growing children. But me and my brother survived!
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1 comment:
When were were young, we lived in a block of early Victorian flats. Which had been condemned in 1937,but due to the war, were in full occupancy in 1964, despite half of the block having been blitzed. They shored up the remainder and left the families to moulder. Checking my family tree, I found my great grand parents living there in the 1860's. For the sake of continuity, 4 generations lived in the block over the years. When we left, they knocked it down (1965).
The conditions were basic. Gas lighting. Open fires with a black range in the sitting room. No heating whatsoever and only cold water, boiling kettles for a tin bath in the kitchen was the only way of bathing, one after another.
During the very severe winter of 62/63, we nearly froze to death and burned old newspapers to keep warm, and slept fully clothed.
Not the good old days as far as I concerned.
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