Victoria
Street was the setting for my childhood. It is a long
street and, when you walk its length, it feels like
three different streets: from the High
Street to Bartholomew
Green, from Bartholomew Green to the brewery
and from the brewery to
Trinity Street. So it is not surprising that it
was, in fact, once three streets. A map of 1840 shows
Camel Lane spanning numbers 1 to 10, Back Street numbers
12 to 34 and East Lane numbers 36 to 74.
The west end of
Victoria Street. Click the street numbers for detailed
information.
The
middle section of Victoria Street. Click the street
numbers for detailed information.
The eastern end. Click the street numbers for detailed
information.
Three
quite large structural changes have occurred in my
lifetime. In the 1930s nos 1,
3 and 5 together with several houses in the High Street
were demolished and the junction with the High Street
re-modelled to cope with motor transport.
Historically, the entrance to Victoria Street was
as narrow as the rest of the street. The space vacated
by the demolished buildings was used to widen and
realign the road itself and to create the little green
– Camels Plot – where the town sign now
stands. Soon afterwards the road was surfaced for
the first time. The third change was the demolition
in the 1950s of a complete row of 7 cottages - Numbers
57 to 69 - to make way for The Swan Hotel's Garden
Rooms.
The street has been the home of the Waters family
for well over a century. The 1881 Census lists my
grandparents and their family living at No 73. I was
born there in 1923 by which time there were 17 of
us in the street. Longshore fishing was the family’s
way of life until my Grandmother put her foot down
and forbade her children from taking it up. Fishing
had been a desperately hard way of making a living.
There was money for food when Granddad returned with
a good catch of herring, sprats or shrimp. When he
did not, there was next to nothing. Aunt Mary used
to relate how she’d sometimes come home from
school and be sent next door to her aunt’s house
to borrow half a loaf as otherwise there would be
nothing at all for dinner. That wasn’t just
‘being poor’; that was grinding poverty.
Whether the family ate or starved largely depended
on the wind; remember this was before longshore boats
had engines and, without wind, you had to row while
towing a heavy shrimp net – an incredibly hard
task.
Next door to us, at
No75, lived Freddie Wells who
made ice-cream in his back yard and sold it from a
handcart. Across the street, at No
46, was Mr Tom Goldsmith, greengrocer
and fruiterer who had moved there from No 2 Stradbroke
Road. I seem to remember his pony and cart outside
waiting to set off selling door to door. His was just
one of many mobile businesses in the town. They must
all have found it a slog to earn a crust in the 1920s
and 30s.
Victoria Street was packed with little businesses
like this, operating out of houses, some mobile like
Tom Goldsmith’s, others trading straight out
of their front rooms. Over the period of my research
I have found trading activity taking place at 19 or
more domestic premises in Victoria Street –
not counting the brewery, of course.
Then there were the ‘proper’ shops. They
were for the weekly wage-earners and those needing
a few days’ credit. They were owner-run and
staffed mainly by family members. There was Goddards
at No 4,
near the junction with the High Street, Miller
the wheelwright and laddermaker at No2
and Noller the blacksmith, next door
at No
42 High Street. Later, a coffee shop opened at
No 2. At No
24 was Cragie the watchmaker
and at No
8, were the baker Ben Newson,
and his children, Winnie, Georgie and Ben who sold
sweets, four for a penny. Winnie used to have the
sweets on a tray and she always kept her eye on them
as you picked them up. Across the street No
6 Young's Yard were the premises of the aptly
named Mr Bright the chimney sweep and window cleaner
(A shilling he charged for a chimney and a penny for
a window).
At No10
was the Corn Dealer. The private house which is there
now still has the words ‘Corn Store’ engraved
in the wall.
No 12 was Frank Dodd the grocer.
The houses between Bank Alley and what is now the
Mark Eliot Furniture store were reserved for Trinity
House Pilots. The derelict fish shop on the corner
of Church
Street (now being converted into a domestic home)
was, in my childhood one of a row with Mrs Stern’s
shop at No
47 and a nursing home run by the St Edmund Deaconesses
at No 45.
Across the road from here, at Nos
20 and 22, was The Royal, a pub
which was recorded as a beerhouse in 1857. It is now
a private house which preserves the name ‘The
Old Royal’.
In the row of houses opposite East Green, where the
Swan Hotel Garden Rooms are now, lived Fanny
Baker at No
59, next door to where my grandparents lived.
Fanny was renowned for making her own sweets, Fanny’s
Blackballs, which were a farthing each.
The two biggest businesses in the street were Newsons
the bakers at No
8 which I mentioned earlier, and Carters
at Nos 14-16.
The latter had been trading at that address since
at least 1874 selling pots and pans and oil for lighting,
cooking and heating. Both these shops also had ponies
and carts which enabled them to trade beyond Southwold.
Newsons also had a bread round to Walberswick which
the family ran with a handcart - pushing and pulling
it along the old railway cutting and across the Bailey
Bridge. Carters replaced their pony and cart after
the war with a small motor van and later diversified
by offering a taxi and car-hire service. The family
firm remained in business until 2003 when the premises
were converted into a private house.
The only businesses now left In Victoria Street are
the craft and gift shop, Serendipity
at Jack o’ Lantern Corner at the junction with
the High Street, the new Adnams Cellar
and Kitchen store, The Mark Elliot
furniture store and, of course, the brewery. Most
of the former shops have become houses – largely
holiday homes – and there are very few permanent
residents left.
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