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Cyril Smith's Memories of late 1930s / early 1950s Brentford

Cyril Smith wrote in February 2012:

Boars Head Yard

According to the Electoral Rolls that have been released on Ancestry the Smith family are listed at No.13 Boars Head Yard from 1919-1935 when they moved to 172 Ealing Road.

My father Solomon Smith married my mum Ada May Collett from there and returned to No.12 Boars Head Yard, as he had a job with Cooper and Caunt Coach Builders, he was a coach painter.

The house was next door to Cooper and Caunt, the front room being their office so we only had one main room, a passageway plus a scullery which included the toilet (a two holer one for children and one for adults).

The scullery was enclosed at the end of the yard with a door to the yard and one into the passageway,We had three bedrooms but one was above the passageway so was very narrow, the stairs from the passageway opened up into the middle bedroom with doors either side for the other bedrooms. We had gas but no electricity.

I was born in 1936 in Boars Head Yard and we stayed there until the 1953 East Coast Floods. You may ask what did the devastating floods have to do with us, well we lived near the canal and when we had high tides we always got flooded and on this occasion we had nearly 3ft of water in the house so it was on the strength of this we were offered a 3 bedroom masionette at county parade, whilst they were being completed. We finally moved into the new house in early 1954 from where I went into the R.A.F. later that year.

I used to play on the Ham green and on the barges on the canal with the other local kids that lived there. I remember Barbara and Marjorie COX also Joe WORBY.

Links

Cyril sent a class photo from Brentford Secondary Modern Boys' School from around 1948.

Boars Head Yard notes.

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Published April 2012; updated July 2024