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Sydney Partridge, born in London in 1922, went on at the age of 2 to live in Ventnor, Isle of Wight. Sydney shares with us his memories of life in Earls' Court.
'In October 1946 my demob leave finished and I resumed my post in the Civil Service in London. I lived in one of a number of hostels in Earl's Court that were run by the London Hostels Association. I believe the Government officially sponsored them, to provide board and meals for men (and for women in separate hostels) whose homes were in the provinces and who worked in London.
Each hostel was supposed to house not more than 50% Civil Servants and the rest in non-Government employment, to provide a 'social mix'. But nearly all of us were 'officer types' and we blended together smoothly - at least War service in the ranks had taught us to get along with our 'fellows' from all parts of the UK.
The job to which I was assigned was in the Post Office Money Order Branch. I was concerned with sorting out the problems of the many things hat could go wrong, between the time that a Money Order was bought at any Post Office in UK or abroad, and its being cashed by the person it was intended for, in the UK or abroad. I found it quite fascinating the number of things which could go wrong, from deliberate theft to being 'chewed by the dog', 'damaged in the laundry', or 'burnt after falling in the fire'. Several Government Departments had, because of bomb damage to their building, been moved into spare floors of some of the large West End stores. Trade during the war had been much reduced by the shortage of goods, so they were glad to get income from renting idle space to the Government. My Branch was on the 3rd floor of Harrods building in Knightsbridge.
The hostel in which I lived was in Penywern Road, Earls' Court, SW5, a district in which most of the large Victorian houses, with Greek-column entrances, were converted into one room, and even shared between 2 or 3 people, accommodation. Earls' Court was much occupied by Poles and other 'refugees' and it was subsequently 'colonised' by Australians who had come to England to see life in the 'Mother Country'.
Earls' Court station was on the Piccadilly underground line and was only 3 stations away from Knightsbridge (which served Harrods and neighbouring stores), so I got to know that part of London very well - from the Thames at Chelsea and Putney to Kensington Gardens, and from Westminster to Hammersmith. I used to walk and travel partway by 'Tube' throughout that area during the weekends.
To pass the time during the winter evenings my friends and I used to visit cinemas within quite a wide radius, having obtained information from our communal copy of 'What's on in London'. This was a weekly publication which listed the current attraction at all the cinemas and theatres in London, including the small, independent chain of 'Classic' cinemas, which showed foreign films (with sub-titles in English), as well as English speaking (UK/USA) ones. This was at a time when the Italian and French movie industries were building a good reputation for themselves after the war.
The hostel was a rather cold and cheerless place during the winter months and the bitter weather of Jan/March 1947 made life miserable. The nations' coal stocks were low, the movement of coal trucks from the mining areas to the cities being hampered by snow, and the production of coal gas was thereby reduced. This was long before the discovery of 'North Sea Gas' and the gas pressure in the pipes to the gas-fires (our only form of heating in the hostel) was so poor that you had to look hard at a fire to see whether it was alight!
For entertainment in the hostel we had a communal Games Room, with a snooker table, a dartboard, and a table tennis table. The latter was the most popular, because when your turn came to play, you could work up your body temperature, by the energy expended on playing the game. You could get so hot that, if you went to bed straight afterwards, you were warm enough to fall asleep before you got cold!
It was such a long cold winter that the snow lay around deeply on the gutters, pavements, and side streets (where there was insufficient traffic to squash the snow). The 'Serpentine' in Hyde Park was frozen over sufficiently thickly as to support the weight of the hundreds of people who walked on it (of which I was one!). It made one feel like the Dickensian characters in those old prints of 'The Thames Frozen Over in 18...' with the ice-skating and hot chestnut barrows. Three friends and I walked there from the hostel- several miles each way and there was very little traffic on the streets, so you could trudge along the ruts through the snow without getting too much of it up your trouser legs.
The major consideration of keeping warm must have been a God-send to the cinema owners, because, rather than spend the evening in their cold houses, people used to go to the cinema and keep warm for several hours while watching the film programme - usually two big films and a news-reel. There was no TV in those days, so the cinema was the main source of entertainment. There were three main cinema chains ('Odeon', 'Gaumont' and 'ABC') and they each had a cinema in every district in London.
They changed their film programmes every week (the same film being shown in every 'Odeon' for example, in north and east London in week 1, in West London in week 2 and in South London in week 3). The film show was 'continuous' from about 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and from about 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays. If you wanted to see the main film through again (or if you didn't want to go home yet to your cold house) you could sit there for the whole evening without additional charge. If the main film was a good one there would be queues to get into the cinema, with separate queues for the shilling, and 'one and nine-pence' tickets.
The commissionaire (dressed as splendidly as an admiral from Ruritania) would be calling out 'two more for the one and nines' as two people came out of the cinema, blinking in the street lights and shivering at the cold air. Of course, unless you happened to go in during an interval this meant that you would get in after the start of the film, sit through the rest of that film then the rest of the programme, until the point when you had 'picked up the thread' and were watching it for the second time. Then, if you didn't want to see it through to its end, it was usual to say to your companion 'Let's go - this is where we came in'. (That was a bit of a catchphrase).
The other popular entertainment in the evening was ballroom dancing at the 'Palais de Danse', when dancing was more formal than now, apart from the 'Jive' brought over by the American troops, and it was some years before 'Rock and Roll' and 'Pop music'. Some people went to 'the Dogs'(Greyhound racing at Harringay, White City and other 'Stadia') also dirt track racing (motor cycles on a cinder-track) and ice-skating at a few ice rinks like Richmond and Queensway.
On Saturday afternoons, from September to April there was professional football at Chelsea, Fulham, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham. During the summer months there was County Cricket at Lords and The Oval, Kennington, and athletic meetings at White City (near Shepherds Bush) and tennis courts at many public parks and at Wimbledon, of course. I used to 'knock about' in the tennis courts at Putney, and occasionally I went to athletic meetings at White City and in 1948 the Olympic Games were held at Wembley (I went to see the athletics there on its final day). I also went ice skating a few times, but never got beyond the plodding stage (always keep one foot on the ice!).
At the hostel, I was quite good at table tennis and, during the winters, a team of about half a dozen players would exchange visits with teams from other hostels in the London Hostels Association group. Occasionally we would also get together with the 'cloistered females' in the YWCA who were chaperoned by their dragon-like wardens.
I suppose there must have been about 30 of us 'guests' (men only) in our hostel, which was run by a resident woman warden and a housekeeper, plus a cook and some housekeeping staff (living out). I had a little 'cubicle' to myself (about 9 ft by 4 ft) with just a single bed, a small dressing table and a curtained off corner for hanging clothes). The 'cubicles' were formed by dividing a larger room into three 'cubicles' by a permanent wooden structure of partitions about 7 ft. high. The ceilings of those huge Victorian rooms must have been well over 10 ft high. We were all pretty well behaved (if only because we would have been thrown out otherwise!).
Most of us were single men, back from the Forces and with 'homes' some way out of London, and 'We're only here for the work'. We paid visits to our homes at every possible week's leave and Christmas holiday. A few were married men whose wives and children lived outside London, so the hostel was something of a 'pied-a-terre' for most of us.'
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