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I attended Westbury Infants and Junior School in Ripple Road, Barking from about 1944 to 1948, wrote Tom Newman. One of the teachers was Mr Brassington. There was also a Mr Cox and a Mr Coe, whose wife was also a teacher.
There was a brick air raid shelter in the playground, where we were sent when a warning went off during school hours. Barking had a few industries and a power station, so we got a few bombs.
One of them went astray and demolished a church during a service. The bombsite was a magnet for the kids for a few years after, especially as the little mosaic tiles made ideal gobstones (or fivestones) to make up a set.
The church ruins were opposite a shop that supplied the wet batteries (accumulators) for the radios, so one of our errands was to take the flat ones up to exchange for recharged ones.
There was a large store at Blakes corner that was bombed, leaving a hole about 25 feet deep. I don't know whether this was a basement or the result of the blast.
This later became Timothy Whites and Taylors, a chemists come store, much like Boots is now. Next to this site was a House of Bewlay shop that sold tobaccos and pipes, quite upmarket.
A little way along was Sainsbury's provisions, which in those days had two long glass-covered counters with all the groceries on display and sides of bacon to be sliced. There were sacks of provisions and the biscuits were in tins. It was a bit dear for mums purse but we often went to look.
There were three cinemas in Barking: the Electric Theatre (commonly called the Bughutch), the Odeon and the ABC, which had a Saturday morning club for youngsters. We attended that on most Saturdays and if pressed I can still sing the song that started the club.
Some of the films were hilarious. I must have seen Flash Gordon most weeks. There was an amateur football club at Barking which played in the Athenian and Isthmian league. The players were mostly locals and we looked on them in awe.
There was a boat train that ran from Fenchurch Street to Tilbury Docks. The train had table lamps and heavy curtains and the lights shone in a magical way as it went past. We used to stand on a footbridge and watch it go by in clouds of smoke and steam.
There were trams running from Barking to Westminster, via East Ham, the Kingsway, down to the Embankment and up to Scotland yard. The tram could be driven from both ends and the wooden seats had backs, which could be swung from front to back for the return journey. The driver took his big brass handle from one end of the tram to the other to control the speed of the tram.
The trolleybuses ran until the sixties and often the traction pole came off at a sharp bend and the conductor used to pull a long pole from under the bus and use this to re-hook the traction pole back on to the electric cables. They also had this job at the terminus and when the bus changed its route.
We had a Peace Parade in Barking, in about 1945/46, where the lorries, half track tanks and guns were all paraded through Barking, and I believe were taken to the park for the populace to see at their leisure.
We had street parties for VE day VJ day and the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. There were the usual treats plus whatever could be scrounged or borrowed to give the children a break from the regime that existed up until the 50s.
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