Resident, Edna Hazelwood, Wins Essay Writing Competition
25 May 2011
The Death of a Street.
They pulled it down they said in the name of progress - what progress but concrete blocks and each building a replica of it’s neighbour, ugly, cold and hard. In a few hours they bulldozed through centuries of history. I could have wept as I remembered. Eighty-seven years ago New Street was the hub of my young existence. Not a very long street and certainly not among the elite of that time. There were several rows of cottages, none really alike: some low built, others rising tall to the sky. One pair had bay windows and a small front garden surrounded by black iron railings and in one of these I was born and lived for the first seven years of my life. Braintree at that time was a small market town where everyone knew everybody, where they lived and worked, also the many children attending the church school at the bottom of the street where the three Rs were sternly taught. At the top end of New Street was a grocers shop. Actually its front door was not in the street but the rest of the building was down two very awkward steps, which seemed very steep to a small child, but oh the bliss when one opened the door to hear the loud ping of the bell, so correctly placed to announce each new customer. A tall assistant coming forward dressed in white jacket and long white apron almost to the floor, eager to serve you with what you required, whether it was for a pennyworth of treacle for which you took your own jar and watched fascinated as it ran thick and golden from the cask, or perhaps two ounces of tea from one of the four or five tall churn-like cannisters with mysterious pictures of the East painted upon them, small amounts of sugar weighed out on shining brass scales and packed into the beautiful thick blue bags used for wrapping rice, beans and dried fruit. Great boxes of plump currants, sultanas, raisins and prunes were gazed at in delight and if you were a small child employed in the very important are of shopping, be it for your own mother or anyone else, it was sheer heaven to have an assistant pop one of these into your mouth. The smell of everything in that shop will forever linger with me. Many people would ask for 2 ozs of butter, 2 ozs of tea and a half penny worth of broken biscuits - the widow’s mite in those days was indeed a mite. The name of the shop, I almost forgot to tell you, Bowtells. On the opposite side Pilgrims Vegetable and Seed Shop, a father and son partnership for many generations. Next we came to a place that unless you had seen it, it was difficult to believe it ever existed. It was called “The George” and it was originally an old coaching inn. The inn itself stood well back and onto the street itself were the stables end on to the place where the coaches were housed. Now there were no horses and no coaches, it had become a home for down and outs, people who could still earn a few coppers and did not want the disgrace of the workhouse to fall upon them. We were always told to hurry past here and we did, but I smile now as I wonder what possible harm those poor old men and women could have done to us. They all lived in a huge communal room with a huge fire always burning. Originally it would have been the room passengers on the coaches must have eaten in while they awaited another coach or a change of horses. Where the old people slept or cooked I don’t know, but one could often see the old rag and bone man sitting and sorting his wares collected that day. Opposite The George stood a tall ugly brick building which was the Masonic Hall. Perhaps the focal point of all was “Mayns” Bakers Shop, another glorious but different smell as the fresh hot loaves were placed in the window, the huge black trays of sticky buns that shone and glowed like the newest conker. The bakehouse itself was fascinating, a huge place with great black ovens, bakers with floppy white hats on their heads, white jackets and trousers and everywhere the white flour seeped into everything, and above all the heady smell of the yeast. There in the early afternoon one took the Christmas cake to be baked, perfectly cookec in ovens cooling down from the last bread bake of the day, and the cost was 2d. I can remember seeing 50 or 60 awaiting collection each the same lovely warm brown colour and smelling of the fruit they all contained. Next to the bakers was the sweet shop. On this door was another bell, which had a loud metallic clang. Here we lingered long gazing into the windows, halfpennies clenched in hot sticky hands savouring the delights of farthing liquorice or toffee strips, bright red shoe laces, large gob stoppers which changed colour as one sucked and sucked forever removing it from the mouth to see what colour it had become. There were boxes of aniseed balls, 20 for a penny, sweet heart lozenges and sticky fruit chews. How difficult was the choice. Almost next to our house was a large commercial laundry, my Uncle Jim was a stoker, providing the gallons of hot water needed for the loads of clothes brought in for the wash. Here another unforgettable smell of hot soapy linen boiling away. No modern aids, just hard soap and soda, perhaps a packet of Hudson’s powder, the forerunner of todays labour saving products. Across the road from the laundry was the Blacksmith, a Mr Hicks. There would stand two or three horses loosely tied to rings nailed into lime tress, which stood in the vicarage garden. Their owners left them and did their business in Braintree while Mr Hicks used the bellows to brighten the smouldering fire and soon the clang of his hammer resounded up the road and the smell of burning hoof as a new shoe was quickly hammered into place. So now New Street has gone. No more will the elderly lamp lighter with his long hook pole pull the chain that suddenly lit the whole street with golden arcs of light. No more the musical sound of the senior children in the school will be heard singing. The only remaining glory is the town’s original old lock-up, standing in the gant that leads through to the church. None of the happy people I knew and loved as a child. They left behind their spans of years a long time ago and for me only memories remain.
