Memories Of a Childhood in Norfolk

As I get older I seem to spend more time than I perhaps should, looking into the rear-view mirror of life. This is a pleasurable experience for me as I have been very lucky thus far, and my childhood spent at Cromer in Norfolk during the fifties and early sixties, was a particularly happy one.

My family moved to Cromer when my father was offered the opportunity to manage Rust’s grocery shop in the High Street. The firm was well established with shops in several Norfolk towns. Each branch of the business had its own premises with a specialist manager. In Cromer there were Rust’s shops selling: wines and spirits; drapery and haberdashery; shoes, and sweets, as well as groceries.

We moved into an apartment over the shop; it was too grand to be called a flat. I remember an ornate staircase with a full-length mirror fitted into the wall on the first landing. The rooms were very large; bay windows fitted with a central door allowed access to balconies. The bell-pulls, to summon servants from the kitchen, were still in situ in the rooms.

Although ignorant of it then, I was living in a building that had been constructed during Cromer’s golden age of Victorian and Edwardian elegance. Very wealthy members of the aristocracy favoured Cromer and grand hotels were built to cater for them. Sadly, the resort never recovered this fashionable status after the Great War. The ritzy hotels were still there, but the clientele had changed. The rich were now taking their holidays abroad, and with the advent of the package holiday industry were soon to be followed by the less well off. That said the town was still extremely busy during the summer months of the Fifties and Sixties - as it is today - and my father worked extremely long hours.

Whenever the opportunity presented itself I would go down to help in the shop after closing time, assisting by fetching and carrying to re-stock the fixtures. Father often spent Sundays redesigning his window displays, in which he took great pride. A special effort was made at Christmas time; the well-lit windows were full of tempting seasonal fare.
Food packaging as we know it today did not exist. Butter was delivered in large blocks and was worked with wooden butter ‘pats’ on a slab of marble. This was a skilled job; getting the weight right was tricky. Cheese arrived in large, heavy, barrel-shaped pieces, wrapped in a thick ‘bandage’ material that had to be opened with a knife. This was then ripped from the cheese before the block could be cut into smaller, more manageable pieces. These large cheeses were difficult to carry; a grown man’s arms wouldn’t reach all the way around. Tea was delivered in wooden chests that had markings stamped on the outside identifying the contents, and their exotic places of origin. I also remember the delights contained within numerous biscuit tins kept under the mahogany counters; shelled nuts of all kinds, and particularly, desiccated coconut - something that I developed a great taste for.

My education was resumed at Cromer Primary School, where an open coal fire was still in use to heat the classroom. I can clearly remember bringing in the crates of milk to stand in front of the fire to thaw out. I don’t think I made much of an impression on the teaching staff, or indeed, them much on me, as I can remember very little about my time there. The high point, as far as I was concerned, was when a male classmate brought a dead mole to school, which he kept in an ‘Oxo’ tin in his desk. He confided in me, and even allowed me to look at the unfortunate creature. The teacher’s nose eventually led her to the area in which he sat. She, understandably, became very agitated upon opening the tin. The offender was ordered to remove the corpse from her classroom - Immediately!

In retrospect, our greatest asset in those days was freedom. Changing times have suppressed this, and worried parents are now reticent to let their children play unsupervised. This makes the great adventures that we embarked upon, impossible now.

Much of our free time was spent on the Lighthouse Hills to the east of the town. These hills and woods provided a wonderful play area: there were the cliffs and trees to climb; a flat area for ball games; large areas of bracken in which to hide and build dens, and woodland to explore. In early summer, the heady scent of bluebells and gorse flowers would fill the air. There were blackberries to pick in autumn; and in the winter snows, blood-curdling sledge runs down the steep sides of a natural amphitheatre, known as Happy Valley.
We also spent a considerable amount of time at the bottom of the Gangway to where the fishing boats were towed when they returned from sea. The famous Cromer crabs were packed into wicker crans to go to the merchants. Sometimes a kindly fisherman would give you a crab to take home for tea.

A very important day of the week for us was Saturday. There were two main venues that we patronised, the Regal Cinema and the Rollerdrome. For a small amount, we could hire some roller skates from Mr. Troller, the proprietor of the Rollerdrome. (The site is now a supermarket car park) Relay races, which generated great excitement, and a great deal of noise from the supporters of the teams, were a feature of the sessions. Another event, which I believe was officially frowned upon but was never stopped, involved the participants holding each other around the waist, forming a human chain. As the speed of this line of people increased the turns became more exciting, and hazardous, for those on the end of the chain. Their hold was broken by the whip effect, and they would be catapulted at very high velocity, across the rink.

The Regal provided the afternoon entertainment. This consisted of a cartoon, a serial, and a feature film. The feature was usually a cowboy adventure, which would be greeted by the audience with cheers for the good guys, and booing for the bad. Special abuse was reserved for any male film character that approached a female member of the cast with romantic intentions. It is also astonishing how vocal several dozen children could become, when something went wrong with the projection equipment - an event not at all unusual in those days.

Fish and chips from the shop in Corner Street would often be the fare for tea. The proprietor, Mrs. Quercia, would wrap them in newspaper; her hands would become increasingly blackened by the ink as she served. I assure you that this in no way affected the flavour of the chips; neither did it seem to have any adverse effect on our health.

To any reader who knew Cromer in those days, and can remember being awakened by the lifeboat maroons exploding over the church; Cilla Black appearing at the Rollerdrome; the waiters’ race; singing hymns with the C.S.S.M on the beach; and standing in the rain waiting for the lifeboat to return from a rescue, I send greetings. I hope that your memories of that time are also happy ones.