The Rose public house in the foreground, pictured c. 1950. The 1930's building on the left is flats, which we thought, were very 'posh', and beneath them were a few shops. The Gaumont Cinema can be seen beyond the flats.

For a public house The Rose was massive, wrote Ray Crawley. To the left were the public bars; continue round and there were tea rooms with a walled garden and pond. Continuing round further, next came the Winter Gardens, then the saloon bar and off-licence, which was very busy on Saturday evenings as we were always sent round there on to pick up my dad's brown ale, and to take the empties back. (There used to be an extra charge on the bottles, which you got back when they were returned.)

Upstairs was a lovely ballroom, which was a great temptation for us to creep up the stairs and look in, until we were seen and chased down the stairs! Funny really, because later in life, I became a ballroom dancing teacher, with my wife and daughter, and the same thing used to happen to us at our studio.

The Rose has now been pulled down, more's the pity, and I believe a supermarket built in its place!

Just past the phone box on the right was the very large car park. This was used by the No. 88 buses, which used to terminate there. The crews would go off for a drink, leaving the buses for us to play in.

The roundabout is on the left, roads on both sides of the flats led to London. On Derby Day a stream of traffic would pass The Rose on the way to Epsom. The Rose was a popular place to pull-in, especially after The Derby.

We would stand over there by the flats and shout to the open top buses etc., "Throw out your mouldies!" The passengers if they had had a good day would throw out handfuls of money, usually pennies, which we scrambled for. If they pulled into the car park they would line us up then throw the money! You can imagine the scene.

One Christmas we could not afford a tree, so Terry, one of my elder brothers, climbed into the Winter Gardens; I was there too, and he cut the top off a fir tree! Of course it never grew any bigger so I think it stood like that until they pulled the place down!

Another memory was around Guy Fawkes Night, we had a really good Guy and we were charging 6d a dance as the men came out of the bar! We made quite a bit I remember.

Another thing we had to do on a Saturday afternoon was to buy the classified Star or Evening News, which would be sold near the public bar opposite the phone box. We would crowd round there looking out for the newspaper vans. We had no tele in those days so the classified had all the results and reports.

During the war, they had a Spitfire just to right in the picture. It was used as a wartime savings promotion. You could sit in the cockpit for buying a 6d stamp, which you then stuck onto an enormous bomb. As youngsters I can remember walking round those walls many times, balancing on the bars.