THE SONG IS ENDED...

I don`t know what it is about me and buildings.   Maybe it happens to everyone that, over the course of a lifetime, places you have known, lived in, worked in, disappear under the relentless inevitability of change.  The picture above is a case in point and just the latest in a series of places I have known in a trail of destruction lasting over 70 years.

A few quick examples.   After the war, my first permanent boyhood home was a cottage, circa 1735, in the Waterside village of Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water.   After we moved out, the cottage was demolished and for some years the site formed part of the test facility for Sir Christopher Cockerill`s hovercraft development.   It`s now a small residential close named Sir Christopher Court.

After we left Hythe, my parents decided to enter the `licensed trade` - the pub business -  and they learnt the trade in a big South London pub, the Dover Patrol, at Kidbrooke.   It`s now a small residential close named, err...The Dover Patrol.   We then moved to an Off Licence in Engleheart Road, Catford - not one of south London`s more agreeable areas - and I recall coughing my way through the London Smog of 1953 and watching the Coronation and the Matthews Final on a small black and white television with a magnifying glass stuck on the front.   What was the site of the Off Licence has been a small residential development for years now.

Work wise I have occupied offices too that are now given over to residential development and the latest in this saga of demolition, conversion and development is the pub shown in the picture above.   It`s in the hamlet of Padworth Common right on the Hampshire/Berkshire border and it`s where my licensed trade parents made their final move, keeping the pub for some years before finally retiring.   As you can see, it`s now boarded up, on the market and, surprise surprise, has planning permission to be converted to residential use.

My parents were happy there.   The pub did pretty well and I recall many an evening in the convivial company of local regular customers who were also customers of my grandparents` bakery just up the road and my aunt`s village shop.   So I have many happy memories of Padworth Common and my family`s businesses there and it`s more than a shame that the Round Oak has become the latest in the series of buildings to suffer from the dead hand of my occupancy.

For the Round Oak, the song may have ended, but the melody lingers on.