•  Haslemere Educational Museum
    Culture, Learning & Inspiration Since 1888

    Lets Share Stories Project


    Out & About

    Children growing up in the 1940s and 1950s had far fewer toys than children do these days and spent most of their time outdoors. With little traffic on the roads they played out on the streets of their neighbourhood. For children growing up in Haslemere, a relatively rural location, children played in woods, farmland and the local recreation grounds. Children at this time were also expected to have a hobby and joining societies such as the Girl Guides or the Scouts were part and parcel of growing up.

    Track 7 Playing Squash



    Credit line: Alan Perry talks about playing squash at the Georgian.

    Transcription:

    Interviewer: There was, the Georgian had a squash club.

    Interviewee: The Georgian had a squash club and I joined that because after my cricket, football career was playing tennis and I did my cartilage, and I never could score the goals that I used to for Shottermill. And we should always just remember that in those days, by the way, there was a Grayswood football team, there was a Shottermill football team and there was a Haslemere football team and a Hammer football team. Grayswood was terrible, Hammer was in the lower leagues, and so we, I think, played them on the odd occasion, Haslemere was not, Shottermill was the best team and we used to do trips abroad. And in fact, actually, it was on one of our original trips to Germany with Mr Watts that we met somebody who said he wanted to do a football exchange. So I remember Roger Farnborough and I introducing him to Shottermill, hence that football exchange that went on for years and years and years occurred between Shottermill and, I can’t remember the name of the place which was near Koblenz. So that sort of happened from there. So yes, and then I got into squash, can’t quite remember how, and joined the squash club and became part of the squash team. But of course the Georgian was a very parochial place in those days. There were always the regulars at one end of the bar, Old Jean the bloke who lived upstairs.

    Interviewer: Is he the man with a fantastic memory for Birthdays?

    Interviewee: Well he never remembered my birthday, might have been. It could have been m but he never knew mine. But we’d always potter in there and it was the same old faces. But of course you could remember that the Georgian was the very upmarket one, we were all down at The Swan so we only went to the Georgian when we took up squash and then began to take over the Georgian, at that stage later on in life.