The main purpose was the January sales and the destination: “the London shops”.
Swindon had a department store – McIlroys on Regent Street (it even had those amazing overhead wire and pulley cash railway systems that transported money and sales slips to a central cashier and change and a receipt by return. Ping!) (In an earlier version of this post i mistakenly referred to pneumatic tubes.)
But nothing compared with the size, grandeur, and magic of Oxford Street.
To give you a flavor, here’s a video of the crowd at Bourne & Hollingsworth and the aftermath of the first day of the sales.
There’s a couple more here and here if you can withstand the humor and the attitudes of the times.
Covering the scrum at the January sales was a routine feature for Pathé News – rather like showing Australians eating Christmas pudding on the beach, or the Saturday summer traffic jam on the Exeter by-pass.
The journey was part of the adventure
It meant rising in the dark, a bus to the station, and a train to Paddington – a place of hustle, bustle, steam, and soot. It’s an overload for all the senses. A vaulted cavern at the end of which a moving staircase carries you deep into the bowels of the underground maze of the London tube. Bakerloo line to Oxford Circus.
And just look at the roof!
At Oxford Circus, the escalator (“Please stand on the right”) trundles you up to the booking hall on the street level. My mother knows exactly which exit to use to head to Selfridges.
Her purpose is to find a bargains on serviceable clothes for work and I remember one item in particular – a blue tweed coat that was to last her decades.
We always took a look at the toy department – not to buy of course, but to wonder at the displays and the elaborate electric train layouts. One year we did buy some plastic bubble goop which had a most distinctive smell and was probably full of toxic compounds deadly to small children.
Refreshments
Then it’s time for refreshments! To a Lyons for cups of tea and baked beans on toast or egg and chips.
Lining up and helping ourselves and then searching for a table was all part of the experience.
The Sights
The afternoon was for seeing the sights. Madame Tussaud’s one year, the Tower of London and the Natural History Museum on others. Or perhaps a matinée at a theatre. And this meant taking the bus – in the smoke-filled upstairs of course, and – if possible – the front seat. So much to see.
Even in the 1960s it was still common to see the remains of bomb damage although this photo is from 1954.
And, of course, as it got dark the Christmas Lights!
Tea-time
With time to kill before the train it’s possible to fit in a visit to a news cinema.
One year we went to the news cinema at Victoria Station on the Buckingham Palace Road side near platform 19. This would have been my mother’s old stamping ground from her years of teaching in Pimlico.
Perhaps that’s why we went. Or maybe it was just coincidence.
News cinemas are a thing of the past but they were once dotted all over London, offering cheap entertainment and news as a way to kill time in the warm.
Programs typically lasted one hour, and were shown continuously, without any interval between performances. It was a mix of news, cartoons, and travelogues with reports on sporting events.
It was all part of the novelty and excitement of a day up in town.
Home
Back to Paddington. Check the mesmerizing, ever-clicking departure board for the home train – stopping at Reading, Didcot, Swindon, Chippenham, Bath Spa, and Bristol, Temple Meads. Can you hear the echoey announcement?
And the journey. Scouting down the length of the platform for an empty compartment and corner window seats if possible.
Remember that sensation of sitting in a stationary train as the one alongside you pulls out?
And glimpses into the lives of strangers afforded by the lit windows of the backs of the Westbourne Park terraces as the train gathers speed, clicking over the points, charging through industrial west London, and then into the dark of the countryside. The sudden jolting whoosh of a train hurtling in the opposite direction.
Intoxicating.
The featured image by Kevin Parrish shows the Clun Castle – GWR 4073 Class No.7029 – waiting to depart from Paddington in 1960. The locomotive was fitted with a double chimney in 1959. and was the last Great Western steam locomotive to haul a passenger train from Paddington, on June 11 1965. It was built at Swindon Works in May 1950 to a design by Charles Collett and was named after Clun Castle in Shropshire.
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I was there too. Uncanny we never met until 1971 but til then definitely trains that passed in the night.
There were a lot of people about.
Really evocative of those days, which we all seem to think of so fondly through those slightly pink tented lenses. In reality there were some dark parts that we should be grateful to lose (the treatment of women in general and the rigid class system are two that spring to mind. My father was a very talented man but was constantly ignored by his managers because of his background). Being Londoners transported to Swindon for my father's work, we often travelled up to Paddington and then across on the Circle line to Aldgate East, with a Number 25 bus being the final vehicle to take us to our extended family. Do you remember the very distinctive smell of Swindon Station, as you went through the tunnel to the Up platform. The best description I could give would be stale fish with an overlay of sewage.
Living in Swindon as a young boy interested in machines meant that I learned to love the GWR and its locomotives in particular. Sadly the Grace Golden picture is of St Pancras and the LMS, but there is enough GWR involvement to interest me. The bright blue locomotive on the left is a Coronation Class engine, designed by William Stanier after he had learnt his trade at Swindon.
You are correct. As things change they get both better and worse and sometimes both at the same time!
Do you remember the distinctive smell of the tunnel as you went from the Swindon Booking Office, under the Down line and across to the Up Platforms? Best described as stale fish with a top note of raw sewage? And then, when you fond a decent seat on the train, if you sat down heavily, there would be a cloud of dust rise up? The compartments all had faded brown and white photographs over the seats, of West Country tourist spots such as Penzance or Budleigh Salterton. They weren't likely to encourage anyone to travel to those locations. I don't know whether the 'glorious GWR' really was glorious before the war but by the 50's and 60's, Western Region trains were often grubby inside and out.
That all sounds so negative but there was still an excitement about 'going up to London'. Travel was such an adventure as a child, with all the sights and sounds that you mentioned making me feel that I was involved in something slightly scary and out of the ordinary. Some memories that stick in my mind are the cobbles that still made up a fair proportion of London roads and the electric trolley buses, not quite silent as there was the flash of electricity from the wires and a whirring noise as they slowed or accelerated.
The Grace Golden painting is the LMS station, St Pancras, but it is allowed in a Western Region memory as the blue engine on the left is a Coronation Class, designed by Sir William Stanier, who learnt his trade under George Jackson Churchward at Swindon. Even though I was born In London, the GWR was in the air in Swindon and I breathed it in!
So great to hear from you Mike. And yes - you nailed the smell in that subway plus the interior of the compartment - even down to the artwork. And never forget the leather strap to lower the window to open the door. All big adventures. I knew the Grace Golden was not Paddington but rather intended as a generic painting but good to know it still passes muster!
Thanks for all the additional details. And speaking of GWR in the DNA of Swindon - walking to school through the Old Walcott estate - we used to count the houses painted in the brown and cream of the GWR livery.
This is lovely thank you! Those pathe films are always good and I'm sure Bristol Temple Meads isn't really a place, just somewhere that's announced!
Temple Meads sounds like the setting for a scene in a Shakespeare history play where gardeners comment on the shenanigans of assorted dukes and earls and their legal quarrels about who is the rightful heir to the the throne of King Edward.
Agreed on the Pathe films - always interesting and revealing however hokey.
A beautiful, atmospheric account with stunning illustrations.
Thanks Jim. iI was fun to put together.
What a delightful post - your evocative writing reminded me of going 'into town' to go shopping with my mother (in the very small city of Perth in Western Australia). I remember there was a pneumatic chute system for cash in one of our department stores and the female staff in another all wore black skirts and white blouses which puzzled me at the time!
Going to London was always "up" even though it's on the bottom of th map (!) and mostly low lying geographically being close to the estuary end of the Thames.
Those outfits showed 'respectability'". Those "girls" might be out of the house and working but they had to be kept standards of morality and were expected to maintain them. Whiteley's on Queensway, in Bayswater, was notorious for its rules and rigidity.
My dads first job was at Whitelys in the 1930s
From what i've read, employment conditions there were grim.
A wonderful journey. For a while I lived at Chertsey which was near Reading but I think we had to get on either the front or back of the train which split apart at Staines.
And for a very short while I had a job showing people to their tables in Harvey Nick's cafe.
Probably out of Waterloo - Weybridge, Addlestone, and Virginia Water with a split at Staines.
I don't think I've ever been to Harvey Nicks, which is still there. It always puts me in mind of Edina and Patsy and Ab Fab. "Stoli, darling and pop the Bolli"
I enjoyed every moment...seeing your life through my eyes, and your brilliant writing! Thank you
That's a very generous comment. Cheers Lynn.
Enjoyed and can relate exactly to your reminiscing. What about the food section at Harrods? Always worth looking and marveling at. Thanks for the memories.
I never went there as a child.
Food in my family was a simple affair of garden produce, other veggies, cheese, milk, eggs, bread, nuts, fruit etc. enhanced only by items from the health food store on Fleet Street - gourmet delicacies as Vecon, nut butter, Tartex, and Instant Postum.
Although this isn't a part of my past, I loved the sights, sounds, and overall feeling your post offers. Excellent!
Kind thoughts. Thanks.