Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member @Doctor Alan.


It’s funny how ‘nostalgia’ sweeps over you every now and then, especially as you get older and in retirement. Perhaps it’s due to not having work that you have to do. It could be a piece of music, a smell, a name – all sorts of little things – that remind you instantly of some time and situation long ago.

One of my first memories of my grandmother’s little cottage on Boxhill in Surrey was of me as a 5-year-old child riding down Ashurst Drive on the blue three-wheeler my grandmother had bought especially for the children who stayed, with a sign around my neck proclaiming ‘I am 5 years old,' without a care in the world.

My brothers and I always looked forward to our stays at Rose Cottage, where we went for a ‘birthday treat’ or at other odd times.


The house was originally relatively small, but my grandfather had extended it to accommodate his five children, Jack, Val (Valentine), Les, Don and Joan, my mother. Of course, they’d long since moved out, allowing plenty of space for small children to run around.

The kitchen was an ‘add-on,’ I would say, being three steps lower than the main house. A bathroom adjoined, with an ‘Elsan’ toilet. There was no sewage and no septic tank – the poo and such had to be put out into the garden.


I remember once my grandmother calling out: ‘Dad, did you bury the dead yesterday?!’ Apparently, he’d forgotten to move the stick along from the previous day, and when she’d dug down to bury a new lot of excreta, she encountered yesterday’s! Fun and games.

Of course, the garden was marvellous! There were red, black, and white currants, gooseberries, plenty of vegetables like runner beans, broad beans, potatoes, carrots, strawberries, and several plums, apples, and oranges.

One of our favourite treats was ‘topping and tailing’ the gooseberries. I can’t tell you how many didn’t reach the plate! My grandfather was a keen gardener, maintaining a very useful compost heap with all sorts of household rubbish.

It was in about the late 1940s that I first saw a rotary mower used. He used to have a rope that wound around a pulley on the top to start it. Many years later, I was told it was an Australian invention, but I suppose, like the clothes hoist, it wasn’t.


My grandfather had been in the Navy and worked on Radio communications, I believe. I had a vague recollection of jars that were home-made batteries and a large radio set on the kitchen table. The comprehensive garden was probably part of his failed business venture to sell fruit and veggies to the London markets.

I believe my father used to visit Rose Cottage to discuss radio stuff with my grandfather, but according to one of my uncles, it was just an excuse to see the girl who later became my mother.

My grandmother used to carry the bowl of water out through the back door after she’d finished the washing up, and would throw it across the driveway to the left. On one of these occasions, she heard a yell – my father was walking up from the front gate on one of his visits while on leave from the RAF, and copped the lot! (I wish I could have been there to see it!)

My grandmother was a marvellous cook. She had to be really, with so many children. I think my mother inherited her skill. When I was about 11, I cheekily used to call her ‘Sabrina’—after the actress known for her glamorous figure on Before Your Very Eyes with Arthur Askey. I remember how Sabrina would always be interrupted just as she was about to sing, only uttering her first words at the end of the series: ‘Isn’t it enough to make you want to spit!’


It was great to go for long walks on Headley Heath with my grandmother. It was just a short walk down Ashurst Drive and Headley Heath Approach to get there. The heather used to come up nearly to my chest when I was small, and we sometimes used to lie in the long grass on Box Hill, making animals out of the clouds.

Box Hill was a real beauty spot. It’s situated near Dorking, where I was born, and is about 600 feet high. It now has vineyards on one side. The road down towards Dorking is called ‘The Zig Zag’, which was pretty dangerous after snow. My Uncles used to ride down the hill from the top – not on the zig-zag, but straight down. It must have been hair-raising!

There were bomb craters left over from the war, making it even more dangerous to do that. As children, we were told that the German bombers used to drop their bombs sometimes on open countryside to avoid dropping them on London.

There used to be a caravan park called ‘The Roof of the World’ where a lady used to sell eggs. However, it was at another park that one of the Great Train Robbery blokes, Jimmy White, hid afterwards with his share of over £30,000. There was also a pub called ‘The Hand In Hand,’ but it’s long since gone and was replaced by an upmarket restaurant. Everything has changed.

What I mostly remember though, apart from the ‘hiss’ sound of the ‘Guzunder’ when we used it (to avoid having to tiptoe through to the bathroom), and apart from the lovely ‘damp’ smell of the old place, was lying on my bed in the back room on misty mornings, looking at the trees swaying gently through the window at the top of the curtains and listening to the doves calling to one another in that haunting echo of theirs.


Many years later, when I was a salesman in Sydney, I called at a little factory and the same smell hit me. It took me right back to Box Hill. I remember mentioning it to my grandmother when she was still around, and she just said: ‘Oh, that damp little place’. Such are childhood memories!

Rose Cottage is gone now, bulldozed and replaced by a modern-looking cottage. The area is designated ‘Green Belt’ and everything is very expensive.

When I drove down there on our last, and probably final, visit to the UK a few years ago, I couldn’t recognise the place. I stopped the car and got out.

There it was… the ‘coo’ of the doves. They couldn’t take everything away, could they?


From the Editor:
Members, what everyday sound or smell instantly takes you back to your childhood? Share them in the comments below!


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