Pages Walk

[bermondseyboy]

Harold Estate 1932
Memories of playing in the square.

Harold Estate 1934 Under Construction

Harold Estate kitchen

The Bermondsey Borough Council carried out an active programme of slum clearance and council house and flat building in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Harold Estate was unusual in that much of the site had previously been used for industry, not housing.

Although bleak by modern standards, the facilities provided in local authority housing in the years before World War II were significantly in advance of anything provided by private landlords, as can be seen from the kitchen.

[kiwi]

HAROLD ESTATE PAGES WALK.

[kiwi]

I remember all the women used to take turns scrubbing the communal stairs and landings and they were always spotless. Also the bag wash man would come around once a week, he would shout out, then all the windows would fly open and white bags of laundry would come flying out.

Flat in Guinness Buildings Pages Walk. 1950s?, Thanks to a friend Sue Meager(Winstone) Smeargher 1,for the photo.

Guinness's Blds Gas Meter, I think this only took Shilling Coins.

Gas Meter, upgraded to this maybe 1950s, took shillings & sixpence coins. Good for Co-op Tokens. got the knife stuck in both of these a few times.

[kiwi]

Pages Walk/Bacons School plenty of memories around this School, if only walls could talk? At least, they have not knocked it down and it looks really nice.

Flat for sale in The School House, Pages Walk, SE1 2017

[kiwi]

PAGES WALK/Willow Walk, 1990. Pickfords,BRS & Carter Patersons Depot over the years.

PAGES WALK 1990, Crosse & Blackwells in the distance

[kiwi]

PAGES WALK

Pages Walk. my mate Kenny Everdon lived in this house. 1940s & 50s.>>>

[kiwi]

Pages Walk, Harold Estate. Photo, Andy Worthington

[Macky]

Bermondsey Secondary Central School was a cross between a Grammar School and a Secondary School. It was for those who had not achieved enough points to get a grammar school place but were assessed as a near miss. These schools later became Technical Schools. The South London historian Brian McDonald went to Bermondsey Central and gives a description of what it was like in his book Elephant Boys - Tales of London and Los Angeles Underworlds.

[kiwi]

On 15/09/1941 39 High explosive bombs landed on Bermondsey. 11 did not explode.
The people killed that night in Guinness Buildings Pages Walk are listed as:
Eliza Annie BARKER (86) No 320
Frederick (28), Florence (22), Frederick (3), David (18m) CLOWSEY No 331
Henry Charles EMBERSON (19). No 334 He left the shelter to make tea and never returned. George PERKINS (80) No 322, Florence Maud ST CLARE (38) No 323, Thomas YOUNG (79) No 66.
William John (38) Mary Ann (34), William John (5), Julia (4m), GILL No 330. William John (5) died a couple of months later.
Sadly, two other children, Thomas H 1939 and Mary E 1938 (death registered as Marie) also died that night.
Having lived in Guinness’s Buildings, Pages Walk, in flat 366, Q Block, the one nearest to Swan Mead, from 1942 till about 1962, and looking at the names especially Henry Charles Emberson has made me wonder if he was related to Peter Emberson one of my mates who I went to Webb Street School with and played with in Guinness Buildings. Peter lived on the ground floor of Q Block with is mum and I think it was a sister.??

Pages Walk, Guinness Buildings, Residents and children at the Coronation Tea Party in 1937.

Sad to think that some of those people in the photo could be some of the victims of the bombing

[kiwi]

This is a picture taken in 1952, when we lived in Guinness’s Buildings, Pages Walk. Left to right is my sister Jan being held by my mum Annie Hamilton (Oliver) my sister-in-law Joyce Hamilton (Wilson) was married to my brother Bob, and also lived in Guinness’s Buildings, far right is my sister Sheila and in the front myself. I wonder if anyone can recognise the boy racer coming down the alley? To the right of them looking from this direction was Harold Estate and in the front of them, over the wall to the left was Swan Mead, at the end of the alley is an air-raid shelter. This is the only picture I have seen of the Tin Shed, not the best but better than none and we had such good times, because as kids we use to climb up one side and slide down the other. I can still hear my mum shouting out the window for me to get down and my Nan Katie Oliver doing the same from Swan Mead and George Horton the caretaker shouting at me from the square in Guinness’s. The wall to the left I use to run along and drop down into the park in Leroy Street, oh to be young again. Were the buildings in the background Arundel or Chichester?

1952

This is roughly the position where the Guinness’s Buildings block that I lived in was. The wall I would run along is still there at the far end, the rear of the block ended just there, look at the picture with my family and you will see what I mean. c2016.

Pages Walk, Guinness Square. 2021. Same location as the 1952 picture, with my mum.