Townshend Cottages and Charlbert Street

Who would have believed that one could walk down Charles Lane, cross Charlbert Street and continue down a delightful little road called Townshend Cottages. Here we really did have cottages; trim, clean and all proudly boasting beautifully kept gardens. Great pride was taken with these homesteads which, in many cases, had been in the same family hands for many generations. Much sorrow was displayed by not only the occupants but by most of the local community when they were eventually sacrificed for even more large modern blocks of flats. Back into Charlbert Street we find the shops, with few exceptions, very much as they were fifty years ago; a few alterations here and there and, of course, different faces behind the counters.

Townshend Road is hardly recognisable from the one I knew some fifty years ago. Some of the old houses remain but most have been demolished to make way for more modern ones and also large blocks of flats. The present Telephone Exchange stands on the site of an earlier one which was, I understand, demolished by a bomb from a Zeppelin in World War I. It seems that this small area suffered much from the two wars. The bombed site of the original Telephone Exchange provided us youngsters with a ready made adventure playground far and beyond anything they give that name to today.