George Colliety
I was born on the 14 March 1924 at no. 3 Totteridge Road that was situated off York Road a short distance from Battersea High Street. My parents were Ted and Flora (Floss) Colliety. I was the third surviving child, Edward having been born and died as a baby 1918, sister Ivy, born in December 1919 and brother Fred, born in November 1921. We shared a terrace house with two other families, renting a kitchen and two rooms situated on the ground floor. The communal lavatory was in the back yard. Dad worked as a labourer in Phillips Mills Waste Paper Factory sited on the up river south side of Battersea Bridge. He was the union representative for the Transport and General Workers Union and took part in the General Strike of 1926.
Mother worked as a cleaner in offices in the City of London. At the time of my birth I had two Grandparents. Grandfather Edward Colliety lived with my aunt at no. 126 Speke Road, off Plough Road, and Grandmother Kate James lived at no. 39 Orville Road. She had five surviving sons and two daughters. My mother was the first-born. Orville Road was a no-go area for many other Battersea residents, although the illegal street bookmaker standing in the doorway of no. 33 seemed to make a profitable living.
At the age of three years I became a pupil at St. Mary’s School Nursery in Green Lane now renamed Vicarage Crescent. The school was built in 1858 for the Education in Scriptural principles of Infants and Girls of the poor families in the Parish of Battersea. When I went in 1927 it was a mixed C. of E. Elementary School with nursery, infant and separate senior boys and senior girls’ departments. At the age of 8 years I was transferred into the senior boys department where I sat at a two-seat desk next to a boy named Jimmy Brinkley who was aged 13. By the age of 10 I was in the senior class, after which I transferred to Battersea Central School.
Recreation took place in the street, in Battersea Park, Clapham Common, The Latchmere ‘Skinny Dipping’ Swimming Pool and sometimes as faraway as from Battersea as Wimbledon Common. The penny pool had the nickname of The Skinny Dipping Pool because of there being separate session for boys and girls and as some boys did not own a swimming costume they were allowed to swim naked.
Kensington Museums were a bus ride plus a short walk away. For me the most popular was the Science Museum especially the children’s department in the basement where there were many ‘hands on’ displays and what person would not be astonished by the huge model of a dinosaur in the entrance hall of the Natural History Museum.
By 1932 the family had moved to no. 41 Linda Street, a house with four very small rooms, a scullery and a narrow garden in which, among the vegetables, Dad built a chicken run, thus providing fresh eggs to help feed a family of two adults and six children. Reginald had been born in 1927 and Doris in 1930. This soon became seven. Ronald was born in 1933. A few doors along the road was a sweet and tobacconist shop owned by the parents of another pupil of Battersea Central School, Harry Withers.
The residents celebrated the Coronation of George VI by having a street party, food and entertainment for all the children during the daylight hours and, in the evening, a party for the adults. Such activities were taking place throughout the country and all organised by the local residents. It was our family upright piano, which was manhandled out into the road for the evening entertainment.
At 11 I was enrolled as a member Christ’s College Boys Club, which was financed by Christ’s College Cambridge. The clubrooms were in the building on the corner of Orville Road and Battersea High Street, attached to the Katherine Lowe Settlement, a Social Club for local young people. The club met five nights per week from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and the membership was predominantly for the boys of families living in Orville Road. The membership consisted of about 30 boys between 11 and 14 the age at which they left school. Above 14, you could still remain a member but this group was very small and met in a separate room on the ground floor. Many activities were educational. Whilst in the club I learnt to knit, make woollen rugs and repair shoes. I was also given the opportunity to read the broadsheet newspapers of the day and answer questions on topics, set by Mr. Tyler, the organiser of the club. We read The Times, The Telegraph, The Sketch, etc. The question session was in the form of a competition with three prizes of 3d, 2d and 1d, which, in today’s currency would be approximately, 1.25p, 1p and 0.5p.
Each year, group visits were made to Olympia to see The Royal Tournament and in December, to see Bertram Mill’s Circus. On some summer Saturdays we were taken to Esher where Christ’s College owned a house at which we had lunch and tea, with time to play on the green and enjoy pond activities. At Whitsun a visit was made to the Cambridge College where lunch was served in Hall before a tour of the college and then tea in groups served by students in the study rooms. In August the members who were not at work spent three weeks camping on a farm field in Frimley St. Mary, close to Felixstowe. All was prepared before we arrived. Luggage and very small boys were transported from the station to the site by a farm horse and cart. All kinds of activities were arranged and supervised by visiting undergraduates from Christ’s College. There was lots of free time for roaming around the farm and the small local wood. A bedtime story was chosen by the boys and was, more often than not, not one of Rachael Crompton’s ‘Just William’ tales. It was privilege to have been a member of such an exciting project. Although attending the club each evening, I still have had time to do homework. I cannot remember being chastised for not presenting my work.
My main interests were Mathematics and any practical subjects. That must be why I sat the test to be transferred to a Technical College at the age of 13. This resulted in a move to the Wandsworth Junior Technical Institute. The new buildings were almost opposite Wandsworth Town Hall. At that time the building of the new Town Hall must have been taking place because the following year, together with all the students from the Tech. and pupils from other local schools, I was standing in Wandsworth High Street waving small flags to welcome a member of the royal family, who was to declare the building officially open. In January 1939 residents of Linda Street were re-housed by London County Council and my family moved to a newly built flat in Larkhall Lane close to Wandsworth Road. We no longer had a garden but had an inside toilet and a bathroom though still not enough bedrooms.
The journey to school took more time but it was only to be for one year more. I enjoyed my time at the Tech. but unfortunately it was cut short on the 3rd of September 1939 by the declaration of war. Shortly after Neville Chamberlain’s speech the air raid warning sirens sounded. Many people from the flats went outside in order to look up into the sky for any marauding planes. My sister had jumped out of the bath and dressed very quickly to join the crowd but very soon the all clear sounded and the Sunday morning became as tranquil as ever.
Staff and pupils of the school were evacuated to Guilford where they shared the Guilford Tech’s facilities. At this time my sister Ivy and brother Fred were working in the carpet laying department of Peter Jones. My parents decided that my brothers Reg, Ron and I would not be evacuated. A well-built underground bomb shelter had been dug in the area between the blocks of flats for the residents. As the Tech. had gone to Guilford I missed the last year of my school education. I became a ‘Paper Boy’ and had a wage of about 10p for my seven Morning’s work.
In May of 1940 my parents received a letter from the school to see if arrangements could be made for me to go to Guilford to take the examinations and so, for a few weeks, I became an evacuee. Without the schools permission I cycled to Guilford, stayed in the allotted accommodation until the end of the Friday school session and then cycled back to Clapham. At the end of the examination period I was officially eligible to seek work. I applied to The Morgan Crucible Company in Church Road Battersea for a job in their brush-holder manufacturing department but meanwhile had employment with The Claude Butler Cycle Co., which was situated, in Manor Street, Clapham where I helped to manufacture their cycle frames, particularly the front forks. This lasted about two months after which I received confirmation of work at the Morgan Crucible Co. It was here that I had the experience of suffering a near miss bombing incident.
At the age of 17, I and a colleague of 24 were working from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on milling machines on the third floor of the factory. At about 11 p.m. an air raid warning sounded but there was a firewatcher on the roof and we had instructions to continue to work until we received a warning from him to indicate that the raiders were flying close to the factory. No such warning came. A bomb exploded, possibly the one that landed on the Waste Paper Factory by Battersea Bridge or the Flour Mile situated a short distance from Morgan’s along Battersea Church Road. Its affect on our workshop was to blow out all the windows and the wood panels that had been nailed over them to protect the workers from glass fragments. The electric power was cut off which had the effect of taking the two lifts out of operation together with the lights and the machines. Luckily neither of us was injured and was able to make our way along the workshop to the far staircase and into the basement. The next night we were back at work.
A short while later I was transferred to the tool room as a lathe operator. This was a much more challenging job. As I was in a reserved occupation, at the age of 18 I did not receive my call-up papers but in 1943 I applied to join the RAF as aircrew and was accepted. My future wife had already been conscripted into the WAF her first posting was to Regents Park in London where, on my initial uniformed parade, I was treated to a tirade from a sergeant because, that day, I had not shaved. He would not accept that I only had a little fluff and that I had not reached the age of shaving but simply yelled that as long as I was in the RAF I would shave every day. A day or two later I, together with a couple of other cadets, were sent to the medical centre where we were told that we had volunteered to give blood. When I protested and pointed out that I had done no such thing, the medical officer then said that our blood was in short supply and that if we agreed to go ahead and give the blood, then we would each be given forty cigarettes. As I did not smoke, my Dad had the cigarettes.
Then to No.11 Initial Training Wing in Newquay. Parade ground drill, P.E., Morse code, simple radio repairs, guard duty, room inspection, etc. At least we were billeted in a sea front hotel. It was here that it was decided I would train as a navigator/wireless operator. The rest of my flight was posted to Manchester to be sent overseas for pilot or navigator training and I was now on my own wasting time and waiting to be sent off to No.1 Wireless School at Cranwell. The ground and air training lasted until early in 1944, when I was posted to Heaton Park in Manchester to await being sent overseas to train as a navigator. As we seemed surplus to requirements, a group of us was sent to Waddington Bomber Station. Nobody seemed to know what to do with us.
Christmas 1944 I simply went home for a couple of days and was not missed. Eventually we were sent back to Heaton Park where those of us who lived in London or had relations there with home were they could stay, were invited to volunteer to work at an Air Ministry office. I jumped at the chance and began working as a clerk in a requisitioned block of flats near Russell Square. On an Aircrew Wireless Operator’s pay, plus living allowance, I felt quite well off. At the beginning of 1945 Vi, whom I had met in 1941, and I decide to marry. The date was to be 25th August and was a peacetime wedding as Japan surrendered on 15th August 1945. I managed to scrounge enough clothing coupons to have a suit made for the occasion.
On demobilisation in March 1947 I returned to the Morgan Crucible Company but this time to the Experimental Workshop, which was attached to the laboratories. This was to be for a relatively short time as I had been selected for teacher training and had gained a place at St. Mark’s and St. John’s in Chelsea. I started the two-year course in September 1948, at the end of which I went for a further year of training at Shoreditch Technical Training College. In 1950 our daughter, Barbara was born. The first teaching job I had was in a school for boys with learning difficulties and some who were ascertained as being maladjusted. Here I taught metalwork for 18 months and then became a class teacher for 20 boys who were between 14 and 15 years old. All had difficulty in reading and arithmetic. The work was difficult but stimulating and worthwhile. At that time I became involved in the Peace Movement and the National Union of Teachers. This could only have been done with the active support from Vi and my work colleagues.
In 1955 our son Ian was born and about this time I transferred to Brixton College of Further Education to teach Mathematics, Physics and Craft to day release students. In 1958 a vacancy for a post in the mathematics department at Battersea County School was advertised. I applied and was appointed to the lower school. A few members of staff were from the old Battersea Central School, including Mr. Lewis who had been one of my teachers of mathematics at Battersea Central. A few years later I was appointed to be head of the mathematics department and soon after Mr. Lewis retired.
In 1970 I made another move, this time into teacher training, by being appointed to the Mathematics Department of Furzedown College of Education. After two or three years I was elected by the staff to be Secretary to the Academic Board but still, with the very strong support of Vi, kept up with my work within the Union and CND. In 1977 the college was amalgamated with Phillippa Fawcett College in Streatham but not for long. In 1980 the new college was closed, some staff redeployed elsewhere within the London Education Authority and many, such as myself, accepted redundancy. I did continue as a governor in a few schools and did voluntary work in a primary school to help with computer studies. Although by now Vi had medical problems we were still able to enjoy visits to New York, (where Ian was now living), Canada, France and a few other European Countries, besides enjoying home holidays. In 1994 Barbara, who had moved to Abingdon, with her family encouraged us to move to a house nearby. We made very wise decision. In September 2000 Vi died and I had the comfort of my family to see me through this period. Since then I have continued to travel, have been encouraged to walk very long distances and continued to enjoy life.