Lives in Cricet No 33 - Jack Robertson and Syd Brown

16 Beginnings: Syd sporting prowess develop. They lived at 14 Letchford Terrace, towards the end of a small row of classic two-up two-down houses built by a local farmer in the 1870s, just north of the main railway line into Euston. 15 In the mid-1930s they moved again to a larger property in nearby Carmelite Road. The rapid growth of London’s suburbs in the twenties and thirties, especially in the Metro-land 16 area of the north-west, was a notable feature of the inter-war years. This growth, and the recognition of the need for the expansion of secondary education nationally, led to significantly increased demand for school places in the area and hence the opening of Headstone School in 1929. It was a large, gabled, red-brick building on the edge of pleasant countryside and with spacious playing fields. It is now the much expanded Nower Hill High School. The school still has a playing field, although inevitably much of what would presumably have been the cricket ground has now been taken over by new school buildings. According to the 1932 (and final) edition of Metro-land , a guidebook issued annually by the Metropolitan Railway company: ‘Headstone Farm, lying between Pinner and Harrow, is now almost swallowed up by the houses which have arisen around it.’ This area was close to the school and Syd no doubt knew it well. It is now part of Headstone Manor Recreation Ground, a large park where a number of cricket clubs now play, including Bessborough CC 15 The Electoral Register refers to the address as Letchford Cottages, but according to Kelly’s Directory the address was Letchford Terrace and that is the current name of the road. It was about a mile from Headstone School and so it would have been an easy daily walk for young Syd. Strictly the terrace was just outside the school’s catchment area as defined in the school history. However, as it was then in a relatively isolated area with apparently no convenient schools nearby I imagine there was some sort of special dispensation. There was (and is) a large dairy farm nearby and so Edward (who had been a milk carrier in Eltham) might have found employment there, or if not, perhaps locally as a groundsman. 16 A name created by the Metropolitan Railway’s Publicity Department. Letchford Terrace in the early twentieth century. Number 14 is just past the picket fence on the immediate left.