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John Turner

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 My name is John Turner, but I would have been known by anybody that knew me from the area that we lived in, i.e. Broseley Road and surrounding roads, as John Coe.

My family moved out of the Shoreditch area of London in the summer of 1950. It was a wonderfully exciting time for me as I had spent many years in care for one reason or another, most of which I still don’t understand after all this time, but that is another story. The only school anywhere within shouting distance was in Straight Road and it being a junior school, or at least having a junior section and me being 10 years old, that was where I was sent.

Living on this one big building site was like a great big fun fair for me, and on discovery of the woods and the Manor, and Noak Hill and what was the called the fields - the to be Central Park. After the bomb damaged slums from where we come it was a childrens paradise, or at least that was how I remember it.

I can remember being the only kid in the school whose parents either wouldn’t or couldn’t pay the five bob for me to go with the school to visit the Festival of Britain in 1951. I did go, thanks to all the teachers having a whip round. Something I never forgot and it is only recently that I have found out anything about the Festival, thanks to the internet. I left the estate in 1960 due to my job and I have never returned, to live that is. I have no family alive on the ‘Hill anymore but am still in touch with a couple of old friends. I visit as often as I can and after all this time I still get that feeling of nostalgia. I am unable to walk nowadays so I am unable to wander over some of the places I remember so well in my younger days.


 
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