Melbourne Street – I Walk Alone

More Change – the demise of the gasworks

My walk over the bridge at Mount Pleasant on 1 February got me thinking about the old gasworks. I’d seen the gasometer from my rickety perch on the footbridge and wondered how much longer the familiar landmark would be around. For years, there’d been rumblings about the gasometers being demolished since Southern Gas Networks no longer use them and maintaining them is costly. I wrote about them and took several photos on a walk back in 2017. In 2022, when they announced they really were going, local residents had mixed feelings about their demise. Some saw them as an eyesore, others a piece of history. Personally, I sat somewhere in between. I knew the demolition work had started, so on 7 February, I thought I’d have a closer look while there was still a chance.

Who was Tommy Lewis?

Seventh Daughter, the third book in my historic fiction series, is currently being prepared for publication and should be available shortly. The story is set in the summer of 1931 when helping a neighbour unleashes a chain of events that threatens to tear the close-knit but impoverished Northam Street community apart. A few of the characters will be familiar to anyone who has read Plagued and Land Fit For Heroes. One new character is mentioned several times, although he doesn’t make an appearance. Most residents of Southampton will recognise his name, Thomas Lewis, but how many know his story? I think it is about time I got round to telling it.

Homeward bound

Thanks to the blue bin lorry driver’s rather rude and distracting interruption, I never did get round to the final instalment of my epic foggy walk on 11 January. To be honest, I toyed with the idea of leaving it as it was, with me walking through the beautiful misty parks and chatting with the park keeper. The trouble was, I had some wonderfully atmospheric photos I didn’t want to waste, and the area set the scene in both Plagued and Land Fit For Heroes. That area was Northam, and it is well worth a look around.

The rise and fall of the Railways

Gasworks train Britannia Road Southampton

Railways have played a pivotal role in my life. One of my earliest memories is of Pappy sitting me on the railway bridge at Bitterne to watch the trains, and my first full time job was in a British Rail Data Input Centre. It was there that I learned to touch type. It’s no surprise then, that the railway loomed large in my first two novels, Plagued and Land Fit For Heroes. My research told me that one of the big changes between now and then was the role the railways played in people’s lives. The main characters in both books lived in houses backing onto the railway line and the rumble of passing trains would have been a background to their lives. Hospital trains took Thomas across France and from Southampton Docks to Netley Hospital. Mary worried about her son, Eric, crossing the line on his way to school and she travelled on trains to visit Thomas in hospital. The trains rattled Laura’s windows until the General Strike came and quieted them. Percy and Lenny crossed the railway bridge and passed the busy Terminus Station every day on their way to and from work. The whole of Northam was crisscrossed with railway lines back then, but most are gone now.

Southampton docks and Southampton dockers

Research for my second book A Land Fit For Heroes, took me to Southampton Docks during the General Strike of 1926. It should have been easy. In my time working for a cruise company, I’d donned the obligatory hi-vis jacket and wandered around the docks more than once. The problem was, the docks I’d seen in the twenty first century were a far cry from the docks I was writing about. In fact, a lot of the docks as we know them today didn’t exist back then. The western dock had not been built and the sea still lapped at the platforms of Southampton station at high tide. There were no hi-vis jackets back then either. Health and safety wasn’t something the dockers of the mid 1920’s worried about too much.

Memory lane

My big writing project, inspired by my paternal grandparents, was completed (I promise all will be revealed soon, bear with me) and I had tentatively begun a second big writing project. This one was inspired by my mother’s parents. Where my memories of Pappy are still vivid and much of his story was told to me first hand, my memories of Nanny, Laura White, are far more hazy because she died when I was just four. I knew even less about my mother’s father, Leonard White. He died when Mum was barely more than a child and she had never talked about him much.

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