THE BEGINNING (written by Ron Stevens)

At the Congregational Church in Bramshot Avenue, Charlton, South East London the Grenfell House Youth Club, led by Rev. Samuel W. Smith, met on Saturday Evenings in the Church Hall. Among its members were my old school friends Les Walden, Ted Smith and Cyril Page; others were Fred and Wally Baisden, John Dixon, Ron and Ken Johnson, Reg Webb, Gordon and Malcolm Williams. Table Tennis was the main sport with both internal tournaments as well as inter-club matches but in the summer cricket was played in the Churches Youth Club League, which as best I recall involved twelve weekly matches through May, June and July. The Club was closed throughout August for holidays. This is not to be confused with school holidays, as fourteen-year-olds the youth club members would all have been working men, but with the various shutdowns of the region’s big employers, such as Johnson & Phillips, Siemans and Harveys.

If you wonder why there was no football tournament it is because all of the big employers provided sports facilities for their staff of which football was the most popular and usually included an apprentices XI. There was no need for junior football as we know it today where it is in the hands of private clubs.

Church League matches were played on a Sunday afternoon after Sunday morning church parade. We prepared for these by practising most summer Saturday afternoons at St. Germans Place, Blackheath – batting and bowling among ourselves and sometimes combining with other groups of lads doing the same. Archrivals of Grenfell House Youth Club at this time were Invicta Road Youth Club led by Les Pearce and whose members included Dick and Ernie Heath, “Micky” Shopland and George Wall. However Tom Chipperfield of Fairthorne Cricket Club (drawing its name from Fairthorne Road) would often take his two sons Ken and Ray along with Len Scoley, “Fitz” Fitgerald and Ron “Windmill” Hunt to St Germans Place for a practice. I got to know them because “Fitz” and “Windmill” had played with me in the school team of Charlton Central School.

As Fairthorne was already an established team Grenfell House and Invicta Road would often combine to provide a full eleven in opposition to them in practise matches. Here in embryo is our Club awaiting only evolution and a little organisation.

Apart from the youth matches, the members also played an annual match against the men of the church during the shutdown month of August. In the first two summers it would fair to say they were more of a mismatch with resounding victories for the men. However in 1937 the result was a lot closer; confidence saw us take on Fairthorne in a senior match and Ted Smith arranged for his work colleague at Johnson and Phillips, Bill Ash, to give us a third match against J & P hopefuls (i.e those that could not break full-time into either of J & P’s two elevens).

As time passed with the youth clubs, neighbourhood friends, older relatives and unused hopefuls in the local firms elevens there was now an ample pool of possible players and members. I drafted a few simple rules and invited Les Pearce and his group to a meeting at my home, 89 Troughton Road, Charlton when Grenfell Cricket Club was formally constituted. I think the annual subscription was £1. Among those in attendance were Les Pearce, Micky Shopland, Ted Smith, Wally Baisden, Bill Ash and Reg Webb.

So in 1938, we paid 2/- (10p) for a pitch on Blackheath Common or 2/6 (12.5p) for Charlton Park. I had from Monday morning when the Parks Department confirmed a permit to find an opponent and raise our own team. Among our first opponents – Fairthorne; also Falconwood from whom we recruited Len Ritchie, a work colleague of Reg Webb at Siemans Electrics, and who in turn would introduce his next door neighbour, Harold Tozer – who also happened to be an old school friend of mine. Ted Smith at Johnson & Phillips had already introduced Bill Ash. Bill was a bit older (at twenty-three) than most of us but still too youthful to command a regular place in J & P’s teams. Les Walden introduced his older cousin, Doug. Both Harold and Bill were subsequently to introduce many more members and to play most important roles in the growth and development of Grenfell C.C.

No playing record has survived that first season but certain facts emerged for that 1938 season of occasional matches; Len Ritchie aggregated 29 wickets and scored 54 against Metrogas. Doug “Wick” Walden scored a fifty in a one day match at Sutcliffe Park.

The Youth Club’s enthusiasm for table tennis led to evening matches at the schools against C.D. and A.F.S. crews (who up to then had nothing to do) and against other Youth clubs at church halls. At St. Swithin’s, Hither Green, it was suggested that an adult cricket league be formed alongside the youth (under eighteen) league – and we agreed and joined, finishing runners-up to St. Swithins in its first (and only) season – 1939.

For that year, to my relief, we had been able to pay a registration fee to the L.C.C. (now G.L.C.) as a regular Club and received our pre-season allocation of permits; had arranged and printed our first full fixture list – Saturday league matches and Sunday friendlies. Scores were fully documented in our first full season.

Then the war started and where most of us were nineteen and would not expect call-up until twenty years of age it meant – one year to go.

Well, Doug Walden our wicket-keeper (aged twenty-one), was one of the pre-trained twenty year olds and was called up almost at once. Bill Ash, at twenty-four, was the second to go. The Johnson & Phillips team was generally older and were called up almost en masse; three or four were left and joined us – I remember Tubby Mead, Arthur Hewson and Morry Bass. We played a full 1940 season with a pretty useful team.

As a defence against air-borne landings – open fields, heaths and commons and sports grounds were slashed with trenches or scattered with large cable drums. Games were often interrupted by air raid warnings and we were obliged to take refuge in the ditches or elsewhere before resuming.

But we gradually got sent for and no fixtures were possible for 1941…42…43…44.

In looking back to the origins of our Club we are looking at life and times as they were in the nineteen-thirties.

I lived in Troughton Road, Charlton. It has houses on one side only; on the other is the railway. Nowadays the land between the passenger platform and the road is mostly derelict and overgrown but fifty years ago there were goods yards (e.g. coal, timber, steel), fenced-off to prevent theft. The coal merchant was particularly popular and in the winter nights it was common to see neighbours trying to work a shovelful out under the fencing. At the Church Lane end was the path to the passenger railway station. Everybody rented from from private landlords, mostly the houses were owned by the Church or Friendly or Benefit Societies. Ours belonged to the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society. All the families had been there for many, many years indebted to the steady employment offered by Johnson & Phillips, Siemans and Harveys. It was with these companies that many of my generation found work where they often worked alongside their fathers.

The world was in recession following the American economic depression, evidenced by their Stock Exchange (Wall Street) “crash” of 1929. So the country had huge unemployment and you’ve heard of the shipworkers marching to protest in London from Jarrow-on-Tyne.

You had a very good job at around £5 a week – say a manager, foreman or skilled tradesman. I started, in common with other fourteen year olds, at 7/6d (37p) per week. Apprenticeships generally took seven years. I suppose the average breadwinner, a clerk or working man, earned £3 to £3.50 per week. I recall, but perhaps not reliably, our rent at that time was around 15 shillings (75p) per week.

Henry Ford was starting to mass produce motor cars but only the really well-off could afford one. We rarely saw one in Charlton.

The streets were traffic free.
The streets were playgrounds.

While at play, any of us could be summoned by the nearest housewife at her front gate and sent to the shops on an errand – carried out with great despatch so as to return to our game.

The milkman, baker, coalman, rag-and-bone man, dustman were all horse drawn; Walls’ ice cream was served from boxed tricycles (slogan, “Stop me and buy one”). The muffin man carried a big wooden tray on his head and rang a handbell. Shrimps and Winkles pushed a hand cart and shouted “All fresh from Gravesend”. All we were urged to do was keep off the main road (Woolwich Road) away from the buses, trams and lorries. Generally these were drawn by teams of horses (rather than one horse) and unlike today’s cars had no braking capacity or stopping distance. Brakes were applied only when vehicles finally came to rest. Surviving being run-over (or trampled on to give a better description) was highly unlikely. For this reason cars were considered safer; the fastest only went at 20 mph (but that would be on open country roads); in London they mostly they drove amongst horse drawn traffic at about 6mph. At that speed, if you were knocked over, it could stop quick enough for you to either, roll out of the way or get straight up and run out of the way – or it passed harmlessly over you!!

In the thirties, the cricket world was in turmoil over the “body-line” tour of Australia in 1932. Before and after, Don Bradman reigned supreme. The County Championship was dominated by Yorkshire who won it every year from 1931 to 1939 except 1934 (Lancashire) and 1936 (Derbyshire).

In football, Arsenal, under Herbert Chapman , who introduced the “stopper” centre-half, were the leading club. This had its reverberations in Charlton and Woolwich as many of our parents were Arsenal supporters from the days of Arsenal as a South East London team. The move North of the River Thames was an acrimonious one; many supporters felt that the move was unsustainable, that Arsenal would always, at heart, be a South London team and it would not be long before they returned to their native roots. These days fans might choose to follow their team in such a move but in the nineteen-thirties that was not possible. Most football crowds were made up from workers finishing work at 1pm and making their way to the football for a 2pm kick-off.

For us, however, living on their doorstep, the greatest excitement was Charlton’s “straight through” from third division to first. Look in your London A-Z atlas and see just how close is Troughton Road to the Valley.

Radio was a new thing. In our gas-lit houses the “wireless” was powered by a dry battery (lasting about a month) and an accumulator requiring recharging weekly or more. Sports commentators were a new breed who described football matches – Cup Finals, Internationals and so on – using a background assistant announcing the particular number of the eight imaginary squares into which the pitch was notionally divided to position the flow of play for the listener.

Being “on the phone” was a rare and definite status symbol, and so was a hoover, as gas was the predominant power although gradually being replaced by “the electric”. Records were played on a hand wound portable gramophone; either 12 inch or 10 inch diameter and made of black shellac records were played at 33r.p.m.

Two of the commonly held opinions of the time- interesting now to recall: One – that continental footballers may all be very clever but they could not shoot. Two – that mass produced articles (to throw away and replace) were all very well for America but we would always prefer things more solidly made – built to last.

In recent times there has been a bemoaning of the loss of “British” industry but in actual fact the then fledgling motor industry was created by the American Ford Motor Co and other big employers were all American; Heinz, Singer, Kraft, Siemans and Woolworths.

Towards the end of the thirties we read in our newspapers and heard on the wireless of events in Spain, Italy and Germany; civil war; air-raids; dictators; anti-semitism; and other nasty and ominous happenings. In 1938, with Czechoslovakia under invasion threat by Germany, we were caught up in war preparations.

Evening institute classes were suspended. The schools were given over to Civil Defence and Auxiliary Fire Service posts and we went and filled sandbags; we went to Charlton’s ground for physical training: some joined the Territorial Army – the then official civil part time reserve army. There was a Government Order that reaching age twenty all men were “called-up” for a period of military training, thus rendering them the first to be mobilised should war actually break out. Subsequently this same age point was kept as the “call-up” age for conscription into the Forces when war was declared in 1939.

The thirties ended: from “bodyline” in 1932 to real war in 1939 and a last look back to the Oval where in the final Test Match for many, many years Len Hutton scored a record 364 in the “timeless” Australian Test. England 903-7 dec. Australia 201 and 123.