Getting To Know Newcomers - 20 Years Ago (2 November 1973)
September marked the 21st anniversary of the arrival of the first “Londoners” in Bletchley under the town expansion scheme.
The Saints Estate was the first to be built for the scheme and early in September, 1952, the key to the door of 3 St. Andrew’s Road was handed to Mr. Arthur Attwell, who had come with his wife, Eileen, from Acton.
The second arrivals under the scheme were Mr. and Mrs. Ken Barrow, who came from Harrow into the house next door, No. 5.
The Attwells still live at No. 3. The Barrows have since moved to No. 7, which is larger.
I myself became a saint the following February. Ever since then I have counted the Attwells and the Barrows among my friends and I intend this mention of the anniversary to be a pleasant surprise for them.
Arthur was to join the Wipac group the following Monday, but he wondered where the buses were – he hadn’t seen one up to then.
On the other hand, he and his wife spoke highly of their new house and also of the courtesy of the local shopkeepers – “so different from London.”
Arthur had run the Acton Albion football club and looked forward to sporting activity in his new surroundings.
After 21 years most people who know him – and who doesn’t? – will agree that Arthur’s most prominent characteristics are his liveliness and enthusiasm. Things happen when he is around. His hope of sporting activity has been amply fulfilled – by himself. For many years he has been one of the liveliest members of the very lively Bletchley Table Tennis League, among other pursuits.
Over the past good number of years he has been employed at the LBC works. There he has made a name for himself as the promoter of the “LBC Olympics.” This is the title of a series of indoor games played between various departments of the company’s works at Bletchley and also including teams from the firm’s other works. There are six to a team and the games have become so popular that the competition now runs to two divisions.
Recently my wife and I were invited to sit-in on one of these encounters and found it a hectic and sometimes hilarious experience. It was a second division affair between the “Officios” (who included a lady) and the “Vikings.”
The contest began innocently enough with darts – except for the occasional arrow past somebody’s ear. But things livened-up with a vengeance when the next match was a game of table skittles in a room only just large enough. Player after player flung muffin-shaped wooden missiles at the pins and everybody ducked whenever one hit the stand instead and rebounded like a flying torpedo on Guy Fawkes Night.
Having more-or-less survived this, the teams trooped to the main hall for Arthur’s pet – a double-innings game of single-wicket table cricket played with a table-tennis ball and a miniature bat and stumps. It was a six if you hit the ceiling and you could not be caught out from it. It was some other score if you hit a wall, but you could be caught out from that. The scoring rate seemed to be about 100 in five minutes. I was told that sometimes in the first division this is dead serious, but on that night there were enough jokers in the teams to ensure it was anything but that.
I couldn’t say which side won this trecatholon (sic) but I gathered that Mr. Jim White, of the “Officios,” better known as secretary of the Bletchley Bowls League, was top-scoring batsman. Anyway, it was a very enjoyable evening and notable for being the only time I have seen a batsman caught off the scoreboard and be given out.
For a long time Mrs. Atwell was an attendant on the county ambulances. They had two sons: David, who was educated at the Saints School and the erstwhile grammar school and is now heading for the highest awards at one of our senior universities; and Martin, who is one of the former grammar school boys now included in the Lord Grey Comprehensive School.
Mr. and Mrs Barrow were actually having to live apart before they came to Bletchley. They had been in rooms at Harrow but had had to break up their home. Mrs. Barrow went to her parents’ home at Sheffield until other accommodation could be found and she was there when a friend sent her a cutting from a Wembley newspaper about the Bletchley scheme.
In less than three months Ken, who was a railway clerk, his wife, Vera, had a house and a similar job in Bletchley.
Ken is now known to the large rail-travelling public as one of the men who issues their tickets at the station. Up to some years ago he was very active for the Labour Party and his home was used as a committee room at election times. Then he was suddenly struck down by a severe heart attack – a tragedy in one so comparatively young – since when he has had to take things much more quietly. But he has refused to let it get him down. He has been offered a lighter clerical job but with the railway doctor’s consent he continues in the booking office – just because he likes dealing with the public race-to-face.
Mr. and Mrs. Barrow’s only child, David, is making a career for himself in the Department of Inland Revenue, but continues a family interest in railways as one of the enthusiasts running the narrow-gauge line at Leighton.
In the November after these early arrivals the Gazette began its still-remembered “Welcome to Bletchley” feature. Those interviewed and welcomed in the first article were Mr. and Mrs. D.B. Wall, Mr. and Mrs. J. Elgar, and Mr. and Mrs. H.F. Potter, all in St. John’s Road.
Those articles show that the housing problem was at least as great in those days as it is today.
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