All Our Yesterdays – a monthly look at Harlow in years gone by.

By Ian Beckett

There are days, weeks, and months when some single news stories dominate the headlines and beyond. Times when enthusiastic journalists cry out to their editors “Hold the Front Page!” 

The first week in October 1963 was not one of those weeks, and although I had come into the world three weeks earlier, I didn’t even warrant a mention in the small ads!

Harlow Citizen – number 545 – Friday 4 October 1963

Whilst the main headline reads “Damp Houses: Big Enquiry Promised (Corporation act after two petitions),” there are a plethora of other news stories for readers to engage with, including:

“Six Witnesses Tell Court Policeman Struck Youth”

“He pulls the strings for the ‘Telegoons’”

“Harlow To Get Third Market Day” and 

“Local Man Named As New Vicar Of Latton”

So for this month’s “All Our Yesterdays” I intend just to focus on these stories on the front-page of the Harlow Citizen.

Damp Houses: Big Enquiry Promised.

This news story focused upon a commitment from Harlow Development Corporation to conduct “a full and through investigation” into the causes of damp in the bedrooms of housing in Upper Mealines and Spinning Wheel Mead.

This story surprised me on several levels. I was aware that Harlow properties have had, and in some cases continue to have, problems with damp. I was born in a Council house in Harlow and lived in several Council properties – fortunately, I have managed to duck the damp. 

In 1963, Upper Mealines and Spinning Wheel Mead, neighbouring estates, were comparatively new builds on the southern side of Harlow. That damp was an issue so early in their lives, is surprising given the often-heralded prowess of the town’s architecture. If there was a design flaw, then the news report points its finger at the flat rooves of those properties, that were leading to plaster peeling off walls and “unsightly water patches” repeatedly forming on the ceilings.

The report refers to two petitions submitted to Harlow Development Corporation:

The first petition came from “120 housewives living in two-bedroom  houses in Spinning Wheel Mead and in Upper Mealines regarding the state of their kitchens. “Bad ventilation, they contended, was causing…walls and the interior of cupboards” to sprout “a green fungus-like growth which could not be removed by disinfectant cleaning.”

I was struck that the report specified that it was submitted by “120 housewives” – a sign of the times, as such a normal part of acceptable social commentary that might seem alien or even offensive today. I also found it interesting that “bad ventilation” was offered up from the residents as the most likely culprit attacking their domestic havens. I can attest to the fact that 50 years later,  Harlow Council Housing Officers would site with frequency “bad ventilation” to be the cause of damp in the town’s houses and flats. They would also elaborate that this problem was compounded by central heating, the introduction of which was not a consideration when the town’s properties were designed and built. Central heating was not even a thing in 1963; this creature comfort didn’t begin to take off until the 1970’s and wasn’t common place until the 1980’s.

A further petition of some 250 residents forced the Corporation to state that “the cause of the dampness had not yet been traced” but they “promised that as soon as the fault had been found urgent action would be taken to remedy the trouble”. I have no doubt that the Corporation followed through on the promise, but I also know that dampness in properties would continue to be a perennial problem for some of Harlow’s citizens in the decades that followed.

Six Witnesses Tell Court Policeman Struck Youth

A lasting solution to Harlow’s damp problem may not have held water but then neither did the evidence presented to the Harlow Court that a policeman had struck one of two youths fined for an affray outside Harlow Bowl shortly after midnight on the 8^th September. 

A security guard from Harlow Bowl informed the court that the leisure centre was forced to close early following a disturbance. Subsequently “about 30-40 youths gathered on the steps and the forecourt and the guard heard rude comments, such as ‘Black Gestapo’ when the police arrived. The attending officers D.C. Robert Williamson and P.C. Robert Meade encountered a crowd of youths, obstructing a footpath forcing the general public to use the road, behaving with “hostility,” greeting the police with “a lot of backchat and abuse” and refusing to move along.

After the crowd refused to disperse following a second request, the police enlisted the support of police dog “Bess,” who “straining at the leash” helped bring the unruly mob under control.

Two eighteen-year-olds, David Shoesmith from The Chantry and Victor Yardley from Ladyshot were identified as the ring leaders of the altercation and the counter claim of assault was dismissed. They were both bound over in the sum of £25 to keep the peace for 12 months and ordered to pay costs totalling £9 and 11 shillings each. Shoesmith earned £7 a week and Yardley £8 and as such they were given a fortnight within which to pay the fines. 

Other than the fact that the police dog was identified by name, I found it curious that the venue was consistently referred to as Harlow Bowl in the news report, a name synonymous with its present-day successor in Terminus Street. I remember it simply being called “the bowling alley,” though I am told it was called “The Lanes.” A further dig into the archives has revealed that Harlow’s 24 lane purpose-built bowling centre opened on 13th November 1962 and by the mid-sixties a young David Pond had become the star bowler in Harlow. The centre closed 31st August 1972, giving way to the rising popularity of Bingo, before being demolished to make way for the Harvey Centre.

“He pulls the strings for the ‘Telegoons’”

Who knew that, long before Fluck and Law brought “Spitting Image” to our screens in the 1980’s, the BBC brought viewers the first television puppet programme aimed at an adult audience. “The Telegoons”, adapted from the highly esteemed and successful BBC radio comedy show of the 1950s, The Goon Show, featured the well-known voices of Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan with quarter-life-size and a third-life-size puppets recreating appearance the infamous characters including Eccles, Bluebottle, Gritpype Thynne and Major Bloodknock. The local connection? Pulling the strings and rattling the rods was John Dudley of Stort House, Sawbridgeworth, the chief manipulator for the series filmed in Westbourne Park, London.

Most of the puppets used were the property of the production company Grosvenor Films but some of Mr Dudley’s marionettes appeared in the background sequences of the TV show. Mr Dudley was a man with more than puppet-strings to his bow, being a toastmaster, an M.C., a member of the Magic Circle, and the proprietor of The Dudley Marionettes, the largest touring marionette theatre show in the country at the time. “The Telegoons” ran for less than a year, from 5 October 1963 to 1 August 1964. 

Perhaps this is why:

Grytpype-Thynne: Oh, Neddie.

Seagoon: Curses, I’m spotted.

Grytpype-Thynne: Why are you wearing that leopard-skin?

Seagoon: So that’s why I’m spotted.

“Harlow To Get Third Market Day”

It’s hard to be nostalgic about Harlow without mentioning the town centre market, in Market Square at The High. Certainly, images of the market, in particular from the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, are frequently shared on Facebook’s “Photos of Harlow – Old and New” group, with a certain wistfulness. Photos of the market can also be found in the Francis Frith Archive collection. 

In the latter days of Harlow’s thriving market, and even whilst it was falling into decline, it was overseen by Harlow Council’s Licensing Department, who continue to rent out pitches to vendors but now on Broad Walk and in East Gate in the Town Centre, rather than in the Market Square. 

I find it slightly incongruous that back in the 1960’s the simple act of a local town moving from having a market on two days a week to three days a week would require central government approval but that is what this news item reveals. 

Market trading was so heavily regulated that it needed the blessing of “the Minister of Housing and Local Government” for Harlow to get its third market day, on a Friday. However, there were wheels within wheels that turned slowly and when Cllr W. Arnott, chairman of the Works Committee, delivered the good news to Harlow Urban District Council he added ruefully “I cannot say when it will come about yet. This will be discussed at the next meeting of the Committee.”

It was further reported that because it had not been possible to start a Friday market during the summer there would probably be a deficit on the market accounts, big enough to wipe out the reserves!

We do know that it happened. Eventually. But certainly not as fast as it took Cllr Dan Swords to organise a Christmas Market in 2025!

It was big news and good news then as it would be today, although there is little in the article to suggest how significant it was, centred around not that there was a new vicar appointed to St Mary’s at Latton Church in Mark Hall, but that that he was a “local man”. Or was he?

In the Church of England (other religions are available) it was and remains uncommon for a vicar to be appointed in the place they were born and bred. In that respect, this news report is, a bit confusing, if not misleading.

It says, “A Harlow man, the Rev. Ian Stuchbery…has been appointed vicar of St Mary’s Church, Latton.” It continues, “Aged 29, Mr Stuchbery is the only child or Mr and Mrs L. Stuchbery, of Braemont, Harlow Common”. It goes on to reveal that one of Mr Stuchbery’s predecessors at St Mary’s Church, Latton, was the Rev. J. Oliver White who had also been the vicar at St Mary Magdalane Church, near Potter Street, and in fact Ian Stuchbery had been a choir boy there. 

Some might say that there was enough in Ian Stuchbery’s relatively short life story to establish him as a “local man.” However, curious to learn more I trawled the internet and discovered the following information from Ian Stuchbery’s Obituary:

“Born in Leytonstone, England in 1934, he was the son of the late Leslie Alfred and Jessie Eliza (Carlow) Stuchbery. Ian’s early years were spent in the north-east part of London during WWII, moving to Potter Street in Essex after his family home was destroyed during an air raid. He earned Bachelor of Divinity at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he met the love of his life Sylvia Doughty. They were married in 1959 and enjoyed a long, happy 55-year marriage. Ian was ordained as a Deacon in the Anglican Church in 1960, and subsequently as a priest in 1961”.

Ian Stuchbery spent six years at St Mary’s at Latton Church before moving with his family, settling, and continuing to preach, in Montreal, Canada.

I feel a certain kinship with Ian beyond the fact that we share the same Christian name. In the 1970’s he was a board member of the Centre for Bioethics at McGill University and became an early advocate for the recognition of same-sex unions. He was acutely aware of the evangelical urgency of the gospel in the post-Christian secular setting, and his work in inner-city Montreal communities led him to co-found Tel-Aide, one of Canada’s first telephone crisis lines.

Ian Stuchbery was renowned as a gifted spiritual director, and his publicist Robert MacLennan, said “Ian possessed the gift of grasping complex and diverse concepts, organizing them into coherent structures and articulating them in congenial language. His warmth, sincerity and intelligence shone through.”

Ian went on to serve as Archdeacon of St Mary’s, Montreal diocese between 1994 and 1999. The Venerable Ian Stuchbery died peacefully on 2^nd June 2015 at his home in Greenwich, Nova Scotia at the age of 81.

`

And finally

If you were asked to recall a driving related story, I suspect you might, based on your typical news report, think of a road traffic accident or some kind of misdemeanour or offense. You would not leap to the idea that it might be a good news story and yet in October 1963 it was indeed good news, and it was worthy of putting a photograph on the front page of the Harlow Citizen.

It read: “Safe-driving awards for ten or more years of accident-free driving went to these Harlow bus and coach drivers at the award-presentation ceremony at the Blacksmith’s Arms on Monday night. They are: front row (left to right) – J.G. Munn, W.R. Adams, F.H Furlomg, F.G Cox, A.W. Rolph, L.M. Stammers; back row – H.W. Luck, E. Lee, W.F. Cole, and W.C. Scott.

Next month

The November edition of All Our Yesterdays will be drawn from the pages of the Harlow Gazette, week ending November 10^th, 1989.