Rosehill
For a public house The Rose was massive. To the left were the public bars continue round and there were tea rooms with a walled gardens and pond. Continuing round , next came the winter gardens, then the saloon bar and off licence, which was very busy on Saturday evenings as we were always sent round there on to pick up my Dad's Brown Ale, and to take the empties back, there used to be an extra charge on the bottles which you got back when they were returned. Upstairs was a lovely ballroom which was a great temptation for us to creep up the stairs and look in, until we were seen and chased down the stairs! Funny really because I later in life became a Ballroom Dancing Teacher, with my wife and Daughter,and the same thing used to happen to us at our studio.
The Rose has now been pulled down, more's the pity, and I believe a supermarket built in its place!
Just past the phone box on the right was the very large car park. This was used by the No 88 buses which used to terminate there. The crews would go off for a drink, leaving the buses for us to play in.
The roundabout is on the left, roads on both sides of the flats led to London. On Derby Day a stream of traffic would pass The Rose on the way to Epsom. The Rose was a popular place to pull in especially after The Derby. We would stand over there by the flats and shout to the open top buses etc "throw out your mouldies!" The passengers if they had had a good day would throw out handfuls of money, usually pennies, which we scrambled for. If they pulled into the car park they would line us up then throw the money! You can imagine the scene.
One Christmas we could not afford a tree, so Terry , one of my elder brothers, climbed into the Winter Gardens, I was there too, and he cut the top off a fir tree! Of course it never grew any bigger so I think it stood like that until they pulled the place down!
Another memory was around Guy Fawkes night, we had a really good Guy and we were charging 6d a dance as the men came out of the bar! We made quite a bit I remember.
Another thing we had to do on a Saturday afternoon was to buy the classified Star or Evening News which would be sold near the Public Bar opposite the phone box, we would crowd round there looking out for the newspaper vans. We had no tele in those days so the classified had all the results and reports.
During the war they had a Spitfire just to right in the picture. It was used as a wartime savings promotion. You could sit in the cockpit after buying a 6d stamp which you then stuck onto an enormous bomb. As youngsters I can remember walking round those walls many times, balancing on the bars.
Thinking back to those days it was suprising that nothing happened to us, for example I remember a very large water tank was put in the Rose car park for the use of the fire service. It must have been 8 to 10 feet high and about 20 feet long. One very cold winters day we discovered that the tank had iced over! Without a thought of the danger we were in the tank sliding over the ice. Another really stupid thing we did as a dare - no boy could back out of a dare -also took place in the car park. There was a large brick garage in one corner with a petrol pump, the same as those in the garages . It was never used due to the war and eventually the glass top was smashed. It was found that if you put your fingers in a certain place, you received an electric shock!
You see what I mean about being suprised that nothing happened to us?
