I have no memories of mammoth journeys, breakdowns or other
escapades in the A40. I can remember
travelling in the back of it, but not for any significant reason. We must have used it to pop into East London
to see grandparents, possibly to travel on holidays and as a general run about,
but I have no recollection. I do know
what was going on around the time we owned it though.
I was born in Cornwell Crescent in Stanford-Le-Hope,
Essex. Yes I am an Essex boy. I have always identified more with my East
London routes and my Cambridge years though.
I certainly have no desire to call Stanford-Le-Hope home. I have been back a few times, it is OK, but
certainly nothing special. It is a small
village by the side of the A13 which grew like mad in the late 1950’s. When I lived there most of the inhabitants
had moved out of East London into local authority built and owned housing
estates, London Overspill they called it.
In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of
England and Wales described Stanford le Hope like this:
STANFORD-LE-HOPE, a parish in Orsett district, Essex; on the
river Thames and the Southend railway, 10 miles SSE of Brentwood. It has a
post-office under Romford, and a r. station. Acres, 2,984; of which 570 are
foreshore. Real property, £4,244. Pop., 504. Houses, 95. The property is
divided among a few. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Rochester.
Value, £590.* Patron, the Rev. J.Knott. The church is old but good. There are
an endowed school with £38 a year, and charities £17.
It just had more houses by 1960. Our house in Cornwell Crescent was set back
from the road on a curve as the road climbed the hill. From the downstairs windows you could just see
the sloping front garden, from upstairs you could see the cars parked in the
road. It was the end of a terrace, I
think of 4 houses. The Robinsons lived
next door, then there were two more houses before the famous motorsport venue,
Steadman’s Hill.
Steadman’s Hill was the Stanford-Le-Hope centre of jigger
racing. A jigger is what many other
parts of the world would refer to as go-karts or soap boxes or trolleys. The Steadman’s racing formula was simple,
home made and powered only by gravity.
Construction varied from a set of pram wheels with a board replacing the
pram to sophisticated ply wood constructions with steering and brakes. The surface was large, uneven concrete paving
slabs. The left hand side of the hill
was a wooden panel fence and the right hand side grassed wasteland with a
variety of sharp and heavy objects concealed in the grass. Rarely did jiggers race side by side as the
track was only about 4 slabs wide, more often a time trial approach was
taken. There were also some early ‘Drifting’
type competitions with points awarded for style and the enormity of the
inevitable roll.
One of my early jiggers featured castor wheels from an old
sofa. It was impossible to steer and
even if you managed to turn the wooden chassis the wheels would immediately
castor round, leaving you still travelling down the hill, but sideways. You can learn a lot about steering and
suspension development from jiggers. Very
few safety features were fitted and the hill had little crash protection, so any
design error resulted in gravel rash, bruising and minor cuts. This usually resulted in swift re-design
work.
I have nagging memories of a double bend about two thirds of
the way down which went right left. The
right hander had a kerb on the outside that dropped into a garage and parking
area (for residents cars not competitors jiggers. In fact all racing could be stopped by
someone parking in the wrong place.).
The left hander had a run off into the wasteland for anyone who made it
as far as the left hander and then there was a short flat section down to Mr
Steadman’s shop. I have just looked on
google maps and it has all been replaced by housing, just like Brooklands was.
Whilst we lived there my father worked as a Quantity
Surveyor, I think for Terson’s The Builders.
I remember him taking me and my brother to the top of a 13 storey tower
block in Southend on Sea that he had worked on.
It was the highest building I had ever been up. I guess we went in the
A40.
My mother was a housewife, but supplemented her housekeeping
money trimming shoes for Bata Shoes and pea picking. The Bata shoes used to be delivered to the
house in a huge cardboard box. They were
plastic jellie sandals like you only see now at the seaside. They had a very special smell. From the mould they had flappy bits round the
edge of the soles and my mother would use a small, very sharp knife to trim them. All the rubbish and the trimmed shoes went
back in the box and was exchanged for another box each week.
Pea picking was a massive adventure with groups of women and
children being collected by the farmer, and taken to the fields. Here we were given sacks and walked the rows
of pea plants collecting the pods and filling our sacks. No idea what happened to them then, but no
way were they fresh as the moment that the pod went pop.
We also used to go to Pitsea Market. I think we went on the bus. I will always remember the fishmongers stall
where there was a barrel full of live eels.
He would reach in, select a couple of eels for you, chop off their heads
and wrap them in newspaper. I never
liked eels, especially not when they were jellied or served in liquor from a
food stand on Southend Sea Front.
I must have started school during the A40 years, I don’t
remember much about it. I went to Abbots
Hall infants school I think, which now shows on google maps as The Abbots Hall
Children’s Sure Start Centre. It was up
the hill from the house and an easy walk.
I don’t think I was there long as we moved to Cambridge. I am not sure when it arrived, but an Austin
Cambridge replaced the A40 before we moved.
