Places To Remember For A Newton Exile

Whilst a tad younger than one or two others commentating on the pics and good old Newton Abbot it makes me feel old when seeing some of the pics and remembering them!

My grandparents lived at Pomeroy Rd just pass the Wolbrough Inn so when in town as a kid would always pop in there first before going in town. On the way back we always popped into Elliotts for some sweets...be good to see a pic of that if anyone can get it.

I appreciate those pics Dave...................

Bakers Park was never my favourite football venue as the surface was usually appalling, either cloying mud in winter or dried out and rock hard, cracked and rutted in springtime. There used to be three pitches there although only one ( the one featured in today's match) was any good. At least it was flat (I won't say level) whilst one ran up hill and the other over a hump and all of them were of minimum length and width.

When my former youth club Newtor United became Newton United, we played there and games would be called off by the council at the drop of a little rain or so it seemed and I recall we had a love - hate relationship with the Parks' Superintendent.

As for even trying to play good football on the crap surfaces, I can only say that I even found it difficult to referee properly over there; such was the vagary of bounce and I once recall turning to former Aston Villa and Torquay legend Dick Edwards when a through ball veered off a rut to go for a throw in instead of a goal kick and said to him "I bet that never happened to you at Villa Park" and he replied "I've not even seen 'em turn like that at Trent Bridge"

I hope the changing rooms still retain their original name for they are the Len Coldwell Pavilion ~ one of NA's sporting heroes who played for the England Cricket team and County Champions Worcestershire in the sixties. Although at least a dozen years younger than my father, they were firm friends and I remember the high excitement when we received his Christmas card from Australia when he was touring with the MCC as it was in those days. Len played in an age when even the very best cricketers needed a winter job and he worked as a rep for a brewery like his great pal Tom Graveney. His right arm medium fast bowling in tangent with the fellow opening trundling of "Mad" Jack Flavell proved that raw pace wasn't necessary in the game at that time and indeed in the early sixties I seem to remember Len claiming almost three hundred First Class wickets over two seasons before they even thought of him as a possible England player.

My dad always reckoned himself to be just as good a batsman as Len, just that Len was a much better bowler.....................Len never scored more than 40 in a match ~ any match, not even a second eleven or a charity game.

So even if the lettering has fallen off the building and is in the same sad state as the toilets and the drinking fountain, I can still picture those gold letters proclaiming "The Len Coldwell Pavilion" and that's what it is.

Len didn't live that long (he smoked too many fags) and his brother met an untimely end under a steam hammer in the railway carriage building sheds in Forde Road, but I remember his old mum in her little bungalow which looked out over Sandringham Park and popping in there with my dad for a cup of tea before playing a youth league game or two in the mid sixties, and if he was over for the day from his Teignmouth home; Len would come and stand on the touchline almost unrecognised and unknown watching Stefano and I strut our stuff

This might interest a few Newton Abbot oldtimers. It's from the pages of a 1964/65 AA members' handbook which I picked up for a pound last week. Shows things like licensing hours, early closing days and last posting times as well as hotels and garages:

God what a sad sight of the old Rendezvous................the very first place I experienced eating out when my parents took my brother and I there for Sunday dinners as an occasional treat for mum in those days of austerity back in the early sixties. Nothing sophisticated by today's standards, just a goold old Sunday Roast followed by a desert ~ usually of apple pie and clotted cream, or another of my boyhood favourites, bread & butter pudding with custard ~ and I can still visualise the old waitresses in their black and white uniforms.

My old gran's funeral was held when she died at the age of 101 in St Leonard's Church next door and of course the legendary "Miss Elliots" (not the hot little Jamaican singer!) "Open All Hours" emporium was just accross the street.

I noticed that many years ago and whilst not a religious person I think it's a shame really but indicative of the implosion of the importance of belief within our present day society.

Thaty's two major churches in NA now used for commercial purposes ~ the old Congregational Church in Queen Street being the other ~ and it's a trend common throughout the land.

I can think of former synagogues now being used as mosques and one instance in Kilburn/West Hampstead where a former church of England place of worship now sees life as a Sikh Temple...................but at least they are being used as places of worship and not as antiques centres or solicitors' offices.

Of course the other great conversion of old churches these days is for residential use and isn't there one in Torquay that is a youth club or night club or something?

Old churches often have great accoustics, and I can think of a few also which have been turned into recording studios too.

Not forgetting the Brick Lane Mosque, which has been a Protestant chapel for French Huguenots, a Methodist Chapel and a synagogue in previous times.

I have to say I'm not really too fussed about this. A building’s use will inevitably reflect the times. It's good to walk around old churches and places of worship, and an understanding of a faith increases one's appreciation of these buildings. It's not ideal when these centrepieces of a community turn into flats or estate agents, but you also have to question whether it's a good use of prime real estate to have them crumbling whilst a handful of ageing worshippers shuffle through each Sunday.