Dartford crossing

Dartford crossing's tunnels and bridge today

The Dartford crossing joins the two ends of the M25 orbital motorway around London where otherwise the Thames estuary would get in the way. It now provides four lanes in either direction using two tunnels (North bound) and the Queen Elizabeth bridge (South bound) and has just been fitted with automatic toll collection. The crossing was opened in stages. The west tunnel was opened first in 1963 providing just one lane in each direction. That was long before the M25 was even a twinkle. And that's where I come in. I must have been about 11 then. My parents were in the habit of making the journey to visit my Dad's folk in Rayleigh, Essex maybe twice a year and this post is going to be all about the various routes we used. So prepare to be very, very bored or maybe stop reading at this point.

I explained here and here a bit about Rayleigh. My older sister and I used to dread going there. The feeling of dread started about half the way along the Arterial road - but I am racing ahead of myself. Suffice it to say that the destination was dreadful but the journey I loved. I have always loved journeys (whether driving or as a passenger) - and generally like the journeying somewhat more than the destination, the destination being a sort of necessary evil means to an end.  Whereas for Ali it is the opposite.

Google maps reckons a 2 hour drive from Alresford to Rayleigh. Back in those days it was more like 4 hours. Before 1963 the only way to get to Rayleigh was by going through London. The Dartford tunnel provided a route that happily avoided London altogether.

For the sake of those my readers (if anyone has made it this far) who might not be cognisant with South East England geography, here is a summary of the various routes on a modern map (there were no motorways in this area back then).

The various routes highlighted (click to enlarge)

The green and magenta routes were two ways of approaching London. Once in London you either went through the centre (imagine contemplating central London as a through route now!) or the North Circular road (shown in red). There was a South Circular but it was (and I believe still is) single carriageway and tortuous, so we rarely used it. And then the new Dartford route shown in blue.

After 1963 we almost always used the Dartford route, so my memories of the other routes must be from before I was 11.

We generally approached London on the A30 (green route). I am not quite clear on exactly how we jumped from the A31 (the magenta route and which goes through Alresford) to the A30. Either it would have been via Basingstoke as shown, or more likely further to the right through Aldershot (A331). It matters little because my memories are from further along.

We (I include my older sister, the younger one not yet having a say) used to beg my dad to go through central London because then we would get to see the pièce de résistance Piccadilly Circus with its amazing neon advertisements and the statue of Eros in the centre of the road back (as it was back then).

Piccadilly Circus and Eros

But again I am racing ahead. The A30 around Staines area passes through some very beautiful countryside. Indeed the very name "A30" is to me evocative of every good thing as (going in the opposite direction) it took us to our beloved Devon or Cornwall for our annual holiday.

Let's start at Camberley - I think my father was born (or something like that) there. Next comes Virginia Water. We would sometimes stop there to stretch our legs and it remains in my memory as a mystical place of dreams. That such a beautiful place (and name) should exist purely for the sake of enjoyment amazed me.

The cascade, Virginia Water

Totem pole, Virginia Water

The soil is sandy in this part of Surrey. Grey sand. The sort (my parents told me) that snakes liked, so we were to be careful on a hot day (because apparently snakes like to sun-bathe). The only poisonous snake we have in the UK is the Adder and it can be recognised by the "V" on its head. I think I have only seen one once in the wild and it was not at Virginia Water.

Shortly after this the fairy-tale red-brick building which is the Royal Holloway university rose above the tree tops on our right. Much more recently my niece was a student there, lucky thing.

Royal Holloway

And then, on the left, the water meadow Runnymede, another possible halt for a leg stretch or sandwich and, by coincidence, the place where King John signed the Magnacarta on the 15th of June, 1215. A bit before my time. And further to the left the vast reaches of the Royal Windsor Park and its famous castle.

We pass through Egham which always brought a chuckle (my father repeated his jokes often, it is a senile weakness I find myself slipping into) and Staines and then pass by two giant reservoirs on our left. All I can see from the road was a high, neatly grassed bank, but my father says there is water on the other side. So now I look out for these landmarks whenever I fly into Heathrow.

The road now hugs the edge of Heathrow airport and we see the giant tail-fins of parked aircraft and hope to get a close view of an aircraft taking off or landing. There are gigantic hangers marked BOAC or BEA.

After Heathrow the A30 joins the A4 "Great West Road" which is our artery into the depths of London. But this time we turn left and follow the North Circular Road (A406) which, back then, was single carriageway with only limited stretches of dual carriageway further along. It starts as Gunnersbury Avenue opposite Gunnersbury Park where we stop for mum to do some unspecified business with a charity there. It seems to take her ages while we have to wait in the car with nothing to do.

All these roads in and out of or around London suburbia have endless rows of semi-detached houses either side. I found it hard (and still do) to imagine how there could be so many people and why-ever they would want to live nose-to-chin along busy roads like these?  I do not remember much else about the North Circular - it was mostly boring houses, but there were some interesting bridges especially where it crosses the river Lee.

1952 map of the North Circular (A406) crossing river Lee and Gants Hill

Gants Hill underground station

Gants Hill sticks in my memory: it is where we turned onto the A12 eastbound and so was the beginning of the end of London. I think we stopped there once for a bite to eat or maybe the loo. I remember the London Underground signs there although am not sure why this station of all the hundreds should be so special. Today the North Circular has been re-routed and passes to the west of Gants Hill.

Flyover at Gallows Corner

Miles upon miles of suburbia followed, punctuated only by the round-about at Gallows Corner where we turned onto the Southend arterial road (A127). It seemed to take forever to get London behind us. I can recall my father's pleasure when, in 1970, a flyover was erected over this round-about to favour traffic on the arterial road. The flyover was made of prefabricated units rather in the way I might have made a bridge using toy bricks. One ascended at constant slope, then suddenly the angle changed to horizontal and then suddenly again to the descent. Apparently this flyover was meant to have a lifetime of 15 years but it is still in use today.

And then the arterial road. In my time it was dual carriageway all the way past Rayleigh to Southend. It was, we were told, a marvel of engineering. Originally a single carriageway, it was largely built by hand in 1920 as the first road in this country made specifically for motorised vehicles.

Half way from London to Southend

As we travel from Gallows Corner towards Rayleigh the hedgerows seem to get shabbier and shabbier and that feeling of dread in the pit of the stomach becomes more and more evident. Dad points out the Halfway House which seems to me a mild wonder for just happening to be exactly half way. I do not think we ever patronised the place.

Basildon onion

The next landmark we look for is the Basildon "onion" which, my father informs us, is a water tower. Which in itself sets me thinking: how could such a small structure contain enough water for a town like Basildon? The new town Basildon with its high-rise flats was, Ginty told us, something out of the Apocalypse. This made it all the more interesting to us children even though we had little idea what he meant.

Recent view of "the cutting" A127 ascent to Rayleigh

1955 photograph of the Weir round-about

We are now dangerously close to Rayleigh. I try to suppress the fact and at least enjoy the last few remaining miles which end in the cutting as we climb the hill on which Rayleigh is built. At the Weir round-about (it now has an underpass) we turn left, then right along Glasseys Lane and right again into Weir Gardens. Number 10 was almost at the end on the left. The picture below is from Google street view and shows the property still standing but sadly overgrown now that my aunt has died.

10 Weir Gardens, from Google street view

We park and ring the doorbell. The door opens and out wafts that Rayleigh smell followed by a gushing Aunt Mary, Nana and Ginty and a jumble of dogs intermingled with the odd cat. Perfunctory kisses are exchanged (how I hated them). We bring in our stuff and then sit down to eat watery boiled smoked fish with bread-and-butter and start counting the days until we leave.

As there is probably a rule about how long a blog-post can be I will have to tell the rest of this story in a future post.

Aunty Mary

The story of my Aunty Mary is a sad one.

She was my father's only living sibling. In her parents' eyes she was second-class compared with the older, blue eye'd Ted. When the war started she wanted to join the land army, but her parents said she should be a nanny and so a nanny she became even though she didn't particularly like children. She fell in love with a dutch man who promptly got killed in the war and she never got over that loss. Apart from times when she lived in as a nanny, she lived with her parents and, after her father died, ended up nursing her mother through neglected breast cancer to her death. It seems that, all through her life, she thought that other people made decisions for her or circumstances dictated her actions at variance with her own desires and she allowed this to make her bitter.

The top picture is the earliest I have of Mary, as a bridesmaid at my parents wedding.  In the next picture, taken at Longleat, she is the one looking sideways at my mum, my mum being the one holding onto the good-looking chap in the front.

She was at one time a heavy smoker but successfully gave it up - I remember tales of how she gorged on chocolate to thwart the withdrawal.

After her nanny years she tried various low grade jobs (I remember being taken to a Rubbolite factory where her job was to file off molding flash, and gratefully taking away seconds in various colours), but she could never hold a job down for more than a few months. I was too young at the time to ask exactly why she so often got sacked, but I imagine it was because she was so hard to work with. It was not that she was not willing to help: just that she had to do it her way. This used to drive my mother to distraction when they came to stay at 16 Broad Street. There is truth in the adage that "if you want a job done properly, do it yourself".

Mind you, there were some things she excelled in. She was very capable at flower arranging and, I think, at gardening generally.

Us children have vibrant memories of her intolerance of noise or vibration - like being snapped at for merely allowing one's shoe to touch a leg of the chair she was sitting on in church. Those were the days when children were to be seen and not heard!

In the back garden at 10 Weir Gardens

It wasn't all bad, though. I think Mary took this picture, and I think it was she who found the set of wheels at my request. Giving me a set of wheels to make a go-cart was on a par with giving a modern child an i-Pad.

My own children have similar memories of when Mary would visit us in Ireland, though I think that they were more able to dismiss Mary's antics for what they were than we were able.

She would bring presents for our children and, just the same as she did with us when we were children, she would often choose totally unsuitable things.  Like a join-the-dots book for a 15 year old. These presents would be selected from a vast stock she had acquired when, long ago, she worked for Woolworths. On one occasion I remember opening a present to find a box on which the manufacturer had boldly claimed "3 men's handkerchiefs" of which she had crossed out the "3" and written beside it "2".

I took this picture on my first camera. Mary is in blue and Nana is adoring, I suppose, my son Jonathan, and the location is the front room at 16 Broad Street. Behind Mary you can see the map of Narnia I drew, which picture has become a family icon. I hate knitted dresses.

Ginty died suddenly of a heart attack. In contrast Nana suffered from cancer for many years. Nana's death must have been a great anticlimax for Mary after she had given all those last years to caring for her and then - nothing. She remained at 10 Weir Gardens until she was no longer able to look after herself.

Mary played organ at the Grange Free Church and insisted that I try my hand

Mary tended the garden outside the 'Grange church'

We occasionally visited Mary during this time. On the occasion of the pictures above she took us to see the church she had taken possession of. She could be very possessive of things and people. So at the time this was "her" church and "her" organ and I had to play it. I am not sure what Jonathan and Chris made of it (I regret I am not much of an organist).

Mary greeting me with bags of useful things

Mary liked to collect "useful things" and would present me with bags of same whenever I visited. In her eyes, moulded by her upbringing, men needed such things and could work wonders with them. She was just a woman and would never understand how. The bags contained rusty nuts and bolts, bent bits of metal, and such like: mostly picked up off the street. The vast majority went straight in the bin after I left Mary, and I am not one for throwing anything away that might possibly have some future use.

The contents of Ginty's workshop (a garden shed made by my father) were sacrosanct, especially his tools, although towards the end she weakened and allowed me to take some of his stuff as I have recollected elsewhere.

10 Weir Gardens

At Thorpe Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea, 
possibly on an outing  from the nursing home

As time went on 10 Weir Gardens went from bad to worse. When our parents died we children agreed to spend some of our inheritance to replace the roof and to have the piano overhauled. The latter because Mary has always loved music so we figured she would enjoy "tinkling the ivories" in her dotage. But from that time on she never once even touched the piano. She was ruled by horribly restrictive laws entirely of her own making.

On one occasion my older son and I manfully agreed to do a makeover in her kitchen. We spend a week and did a very passable job (sorry, no photographs were taken). She really did appreciate this at the time. Amazingly we even ate from her "table" (eating at 10 Weir Gardens was always somewhat hazardous, but verged on being dangerous towards the end).  The sleeping arrangements were more akin to camping than accommodation and there were no washing facilities apart from a bowl of water and a cold tap, so we took off to the local swimming pool at the end of each day for a shower (and a swim).

But the new kitchen soon deteriorated. Mary apparently did not believe in washing up, or cleaning the cooker or, indeed, anything else. She would buy things impulsively and then not know what to do with them, and never threw anything away, so the house gradually became a refuse bin.  Before people started noticing and there came a time when she had to be admitted to a nursing home.

My last picture of Mary, taken in the nursing home

Once it was clear that Mary would never return to 10 Weir Gardens my older sister and I had the job of clearing it out and disposing of anything of any value.  Towards the end Mary lived in the kitchen and slept I know not where. All other rooms were dumping grounds, so much so that in some rooms we had to use shovels to remove well over a foot deep of rotting papers and material. Let's hope somebody keeps me in check in my later life and prevents anything similar happening!

The one-time sacrosanct music room:
the unplayed piano is under wraps on the left

'Miss Knight's room' 
Mary's former bedroom, stuff up to 2ft deep in places

Another view of 'Miss Knight's room'

The living room.

The living room seemed so small when filled up with junk like this. To think that in better times my parents, sisters and I, Nana, Ginty and Mary would have sat around the table to eat Christmas dinner in this room. With two armchairs either side of the fireplace you can see. Ginty's chair on the left (no-one else sat there: he had a gadget that clipped to the right arm of the chair on which could be placed his ginormous mug of tea and a small plate). There were two polished brass shells from WW1 on the fireplace one about 1" diameter, the other about 2". They used to tell me that at least one of them was live. And father Clovis. Clovis was a small pottery figure of a monk. There was a real Clovis but what the connection I know not...

Ginty

Bailey family at 10 Weir gardens

From left to right we have yours truly, my dad, Ginty, my mum, my older sister Margaret, Aunty Mary and Nana behind the camera.  I started by writing about my father but soon discovered that a necessary precursor was an introduction to his family and in particular his father who we children called 'Ginty'. Ginty is an Irish name (as in Paddy McGinty had a goat) but it does not appear to mean grandfather as I had imagined.

Prior to meeting Nana Ginty worked on the railroads in Canada and it was in a sawmill there that his lost two fingers on his right hand. This did not stop him being a reasonably accomplished church organist and carpenter. He passed on his love of organs to his son and grandson.

He also played the violin.

On returning from Canada Ginty could not have had much money because it was a Miss Knight, who I think was Nana's aunt, who put forward the money to buy 10 Weir Gardens. Although she passed away before I came on the scene, she exists in my memory as a kind of dark but necessary shadow over the Bailey side of the family.

My father had a younger sister, my Aunty Mary, whose influence on my life deserves a post of its own, and an even younger brother who died in early childhood. Mary cared for Nana through her final years suffering with breast cancer which she had refused to disclose to the medical profession until it was too late, and continued to live at 10 Weir Gardens until she was too frail to look after herself.

Our family would alternate between spending Christmas at Rayleigh or having them stay with us. The latter arrangement almost drove my poor mother insane, and being at Rayleigh was little better. We children also suffered but differently. It was not exactly that they disliked children - it was more that they made us feel like we were a nuisance. As a result we hated going to Rayleigh. Even when visiting Mary in her later life, as soon as I came within about five miles of Rayleigh a terrible feeling of desolation and foreboding came over me, as if the very air had become heavy and grey.  Even the place names still seem grey to me: Essex, Billericay, Wickford, Eastwood, Rochford, Chelmsford.

I have mentioned before that there were five dogs and cats without number. The cats had free access 24/7 to the kitchen (a window was left open) and this included all the work surfaces. So dog or cat hairs in the food were par for the course. And the washing up facilities were best not thought about - if it wasn't that hunger lends a rosy tint I might not have eaten at all whilst there. Actually this was more my mum's and my sister's experience as I was too young to make the connection. I could never understand then why Ginty always did the washing up - but I think I know now.

My memories of food at Rayleigh include smoked fish with bread and butter (swimming in the juice) - often a quick meal on arrival after a day long drive from Alresford (no motorways in those days). Nana's steak and kidney pie had a totally different taste to my mother's and yet it was one of her better meals in spite of the cat hairs. On one occasion I remember my sister and spreading butter on our toast and, on tasting, finding the butter was way off - I can vividly remember the taste being similar to strong blue cheese. When we pointed this out the grown ups told us there was (of course) nothing wrong with it and forced us to eat it (which we kind of did) - but curiously recanted when they got to taste it!

Unlike our visits to granddad's house or to Aunty Bee and Uncle Elf we were not showered with toys when we arrived at Rayleigh. Having said that there was the monkey up a palm tree - he would jiggle down the trunk when placed at the top; and a trolley on a ramp that would fill with sand (it had to be dry and clean) from a hopper, then run down the ramp under gravity, deposit its load and return to the top.  Both were made of tin plate and had to be constantly supervised by grown ups which lessened their usefulness as toys.

It is my theory that the dark side of my memories came from the Knight influence. I have often wondered what Ginty made of all this. An example of the strangeness of Nana and Mary was that both appeared to dislike female company but positively adored both Ginty and my dad: they could do no wrong in their eyes. As a child one did not question such behaviour and yet it left a bad taste. It was OTT.

10 Weir Gardens had a very distinctive smell - a Rayleigh smell. It was a small house and rather too full of stuff, not to mention the dogs and cats which doubtless helped the smell along. And not just the house - the garden also smelt. It was an untidy garden, as if whatever you did in the way of weeding and edging it would still remain untidy. At the end of the back garden there was a stream - more mud than stream and also untidy as was the undergrowth beyond this through which you could get to the field beyond.

Interestingly my younger sister (seven years younger) does not have the same memories.

But the subject of this post is Ginty. He was the most normal Rayleigh-ite. He played music, kept a bevy of tape recording machines and made things out of wood. Although he, too, was somewhat distant from us children he did at least try to make me feel at ease.

When I was a bit older I overheard a conversation in which Ginty was telling my dad about meeting a man who spoke in tongues. I pricked up my ears and was pleased to find that Ginty had an open mind about such things: this raised him a peg or two in my estimation.

Ginty never learnt to drive (I know not why) and Nana's driving was hardly up to long distance so it was not unusual, when we were staying there, for my parents to take us for a drive and thus escape from the tendrils of 10 Weir Gardens. But everywhere I remember going in Essex was flat and dull and grey. Here is Nana in a typical stance on one such trip at Maldon, a particularly grey spot in my memory. Maybe that's why this slide has become so moldy. One bright memory though - here it was that Mary might possibly have saved my life - I had wandered out into the vast areas of mud and had started to sink: I wailed (I was very small at the time and knew no better) and it was she (may God rest her soul) who ran to my rescue.

I think I may have mentioned that Ginty loved organs. His ambition was to build an organ, but he neither had the financial resources nor the space to do this. He did make a few organ pipes and kept books on the subject, and during outings in the car would want my father to stop at random churches to check out their organs.  I have in my possession a hand-written copy he made of the 1887 book 'Organ Building for Amateurs' by Mark Wicks. Strange to think that even photocopying was not an option then and yet you can now download this book for free from the 'net.

For interest here are some pages from the downloaded version compared with Ginty's copy.

Ginty's title page

Sample pages

I hope you can tell which is the original!

I used to have a book entitled something like "1001 things for a boy to do" which came from the same era - one of the things a boy could apparently do was to build a fully working steam engine from scratch. The nearest most children get to this sort of thing now-a-days is to create virtual civilisations using high-level tools in a computer game. Unobtainable as making a real steam engine might seem, some young people really do make organs and have found this book invaluable, see for example:

I found this invoice in Ginty's copy of the book.  Nice to see pounds, shillings and pence again.

As for the violin... the house had only two bedrooms and a small bathroom upstairs so getting us all bedded was a challenge: typically I would be on a camp bed in Nana and Ginty's room, under which was the back room aka music room. There was a large wall clock at the foot of the stairs with a large tick and a loud and creepy chime on the quarter. It was here that I learnt how to not be able to get to sleep - I lay there unable to shut out the wailing violin downstairs punctuated by chimes and loud ticks and fearful of steadily approaching midnight when, I had helpfully been informed, all the woodwork in the house would come to life and would start to move around. Children can believe that stuff. The same as I seriously believed that (back at home) our neighbour (who shot game on Alresford lake) might shoot us when he mock brandished his shot gun, and for a while I lived in fear of meeting him in case he had his gun.

I am glad to report that I have since learnt to be able to get to sleep - but it took a fair bit of unlearning what Rayleigh had taught me.

Eschatology was another bee in Ginty's bonnet and another bee that my father inherited. On one occasion I begged to differ from my father in his eschatological beliefs and got such an ear-full that it has affected my opinion of the subject ever since. Here is the only other tangible memory I now have of Ginty (apart from a reed puller which is very useful for getting things out of small spaces): this time not a copy. Amazingly you can still buy this book and it is still highly regarded.

Frontispiece (click to view larger version)

This book is full of complex charts of which I include only one. I cannot claim to have read the whole book as it somewhat blows my mind: it is not that I necessarily either agree or disagree but rather that it is, well OTT.  Here is the chart in question:

It is an explanation of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed (Daniel 2:31). Ginty made a humongous  copy of this picture and coloured it beautifully, doubtless using it as a sermon aid (yes, I forgot to say, he was a Reverend for part of his life). Some while after his death Mary decided to give this masterpiece to my older sister, possibly because her husband is a Baptist pastor and she though he could or perhaps should use it. I have to record that in the course of time my sister disposed of said artifact. To Mary this was an unforgivable sin, such was her adoration of all things Ginty. This adoration was, well, OTT. It was not worth discussing anything that Ginty had done or made because it would almost certainly be taken the wrong way.

I have mentioned in a previous post the way Ginty saved my face when I fell into the watercress beds and wetted my "pants" as he called them: this above all other memories is when I started to respect him.

He had a particular smell: odd the things children remember.

Before 10 Weir Gardens and before my time they lived in a timber structure they called the "Cottage" in The Chase. Here it was that Ginty and my dad made wooden toys for a living. My own workshop in the Top Garden at home was a section of a larger workshop in which were cupboards full of half finished wooden trains and suchlike, left over from those days.

In my time Ginty had a workshop - it was only a small garden shed but it packed with floor to ceiling with boxes of this and that and all in perfect order. These things suffered from damp and neglect after his death so by the time I got to being offered anything there was little of any value, but I do still have some brass chain and some brass gimp pins from his collection.

On one occasion, when they were visiting us at home, I was drawing one of my marvelous mechanical inventions in my random free-hand style and Ginty saw it and tried to teach me how to draw proper engineering drawings using a ruler and a scale. On another occasion I was making a small box to house a battery and lamp to illuminate a china model lighthouse I had been given, and Ginty gently scolded my imprecision and helped me joint the corners properly.

Thus I have some fond memories of Ginty mingled with the horrors of Rayleigh.

Ginty died peacefully whilst sitting in his chair in the back room. They say he had some premonition and put his affairs in order beforehand. He lay in his coffin in the back room for several days before the funeral, Irish style - it was so when we arrived from Alresford for the funeral and I found the idea of a dead body in the house somewhat horrific. This was the first funeral that I experienced emotional feelings in.