SE17 Elephant and Castle, Kennington, Walworth
My Motherby Dianne Hinds |
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My mother, May Hinds, who died last month, lived in Brandon Street, which is where I lived for the first eighteen months of my life. My grandmother, also May, lived in the house with my grandfather; her parents had lived in the house since it was newly built. There were cows in the field opposite when they moved in! |
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Different constellations of family shared the house at different times; when we lived there (that is my parents and myself), with my grandparents, my aunt, uncle and several cousins lived opposite, in Nursery Row, and my uncle worked along the road, where as a carpenter he built massive sets for Covent Garden opera house. I remember the smell of sawdust as we stepped over the threshold on a Saturday morning, and the sight of the seemingly vast sets. |
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My mother had met her first husband (not my father) at a Radical Club meeting; they became engaged shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939; they had saved and married in 1942. She was not only a war bride, she was also a war widow. His plane exploded after take off in 1944, following a return from a bombing raid over Berlin the previous night. |
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As a child my mother had been crowned a Queen of the May. There were many memories and stories of those early times, although sometimes she did not wish to recall the war years. My memories are of a close knit clan living across the area, with links and cousins extending into other localities, unlike now when the family are spread across England, the US and Canada. |
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