My grandmother would say to my mother, newly married and installed in Medway, that she’d never known a place quite like Chatham. No matter which direction you took, you always had to climb a hill.

Back in the days when winter supplied us with ice and snow, and the local councils took care of the business they were created for, the hill pavements were scored deep with diagonal wounds so that boots could keep a grip. Metal handrails were installed. We’d perform somersaults over them and pretend to be Olga Korbut.

Our house in Dale Street was tucked into a curve in the valley. The windows were always clean and the paintwork neat. The little front garden contained a rose bush rather than a jumble of plastic recycling bins (we had a single dustbin out back, embossed with the warning that it shouldn’t be used for hot ashes). Most mothers stayed at home when they had children. Sometimes they would take on a cleaning job. In the evenings they might host Pippa Dee or Tupperware parties to make a bit of extra money for Christmas.

When my mum held one of these, a gaggle of local ladies would take over our sitting room. They would sip warm wine and nibble on cheesy biscuits, their conversation growing slowly louder until it reached a crescendo. At this point, if it was a Pippa Dee event, we kids would be dreading the call to come in and try something on. Mum would wash our clothes by hand and spin them in a spin dryer, before hanging them outside on a metal rotary line made in Australia. My dad cemented it into the lawn and we would hang from it and pretend it was a merry go round once the washing had been taken indoors.

Towels and sheets were done in the boiler. The Co Op laundry man would spirit the blankets away every summer and bring them back clean, folded and wrapped with brown paper and string.

Our Dad left the house early for work. He came home tired in the evenings and ate dinner after everyone else had finished. Some dads read bed-time stories from books, but ours made up his own. He’d get into trouble if they were too scary and my brother couldn’t get to sleep.

He had a vegetable patch in our back garden and a wooden shed that smelt of creosote, where he stored packets of seeds and tobacco tins full of nuts, bolts and screws. Dad did all of our painting and decorating, including hanging multi-coloured 1970s wallpaper, closely followed by 1980s chip paper painted with a ‘hint of something’ emulsion.

Visitors to our house included the pools man, the Kleeneze man, the Avon lady and the milkman, selling dreams and brushes, lipsticks and dairy. Another was the coalman, who would always turn up before Christmas. Our house didn’t have central heating, it had a gas fire in the back room and a coal fire in the front. We’d often wake up to find spirograph wheels of frost on the inside of our bedroom windows, but I don’t remember feeling the cold.

Sometimes during the summer a stranger wearing a trilby hat would come to our door offering to sharpen our knives…and the rag and bone man would roam the streets with his pony and trap, his howl loud and mournful.

A few doors down from our house was the corner shop, Hygates, with its bright yellow double doors and a bell that jingled as you entered. The counter ran the length of the room and held a shelf full of Mother’s Pride and Sunblest loaves clothed in waxed paper wrappers. More often than not there would be a cat sleeping amongst them. Tess the dog would waddle out, closely followed by the proprietor and his big moustache. He would pop his head up over the hillside of confectionery that rose above the bread shelf and urge you to ‘come along, come along’ because his half-eaten breakfast (or lunch) was waiting for him at the rear of the shop. The door to his back room was always open, and the Hygate family was always on display. Even on Christmas mornings.

A tall white fridge stood in the corner. Each morning Mr Hygate would open it and remove a sizeable joint of ham and a large rectangle of cheddar cheese. He would place them on a wooden board equipped with a wire cutter and at the end of the day they went back into the fridge.

We must have been blessed with strong constitutions, because cases of food poisoning were rare. Had there been an issue, Mr Hygate was a stalwart of St John’s Ambulance and would have known exactly what to do. He must have assisted nearly as many patients as our family doctor. Nosebleeds, bites, stings, bumps to the head; he saw to everything. Except childbirth and the measles.

Up the road, Mercer’s the butchers had sawdust on the floor and body parts hanging on hooks from the ceiling; legs of beef, pigs’ carcasses. Big wedges of moist, maroon meat encased in thick, rubbery fat.

Near Christmas there would be turkeys still dressed in their feathers, hanging by their feet. And rabbits wearing bloody fur, bright eyes shut tight. The counter behind which Mr Mercer stood, wearing his pink smeared blue and white apron, held a display of tongues, hearts, kidneys, livers. Neatly garnished with bright green sprigs of parsley, they jostled for space with pale, goose bumped chickens.

Opposite the meat counter a circular wooden booth housed Mrs Brenchley, the cashier, sanitised and separate from the carnage outside. I longed to be like Mrs Brenchley and sit in that little hut all day like a queen.

Twenty-five pence pocket money would buy a week’s worth of sweets and a hard back Enid Blyton story book. Jaydee Newsagents at the top of the road sold them. They were displayed on a wooden bookshelf opposite racks of tabloids and broadsheets.

Blyton was an awful woman, and her stories were dreadful. I know I’m obliged to point that out. However, credit where it is due. She enchanted a whole generation of children into reading, including me. You don’t have to like someone to admit they are impressive.

I would read for hours, sometimes lying belly down on the floor with my forehead pushed up against the seat of an armchair to help me keep my eyes open. It didn’t matter that the characters spoke a slightly different language to me, and ate strange food during their many picnics and midnight feasts. They had adventures and discovered magic, and that was all that really mattered.

Diagonally opposite to Jaydee Newsagents was Suttons the grocer’s, presided over by old Mr Sutton and young Mr Sutton. Their shop had a large rectangular table in the centre, displaying baskets full of fruit and vegetables. They didn’t stock plastic or polystyrene. Their shop didn’t have a fridge or a cooler. It had a big striped awning that provided shade in the summer months and an inexhaustible supply of brown paper bags.

I have to admit I did not find the vegetables particularly interesting and would make my way through to the back of the shop, passing between the colourful strips of a fly curtain to the parlour, where old Mrs Sutton would let me watch her cage full of blue, green and yellow budgerigars.

I have a similar memory of the Flying R tailor’s shop over the road from our home, where women would hunch over sewing machines next to ash trays and mugs of sweet tea. We didn’t visit the tailor’s often, but when we did I would be taken outside to see the chickens living in the garden.

Dale Street was once an entire village, thriving within the confines of a single road. Fifty years on, almost all of the shops have closed. Their doors and windows have been removed and replaced with new façades that allow the buildings to masquerade as houses. All that remains is a solitary Best-one franchise, where the Post Office used to be.

Banner image credit: David Anstiss / Pedestrianised section of Dale Street, Chatham

Appendix

A Selection of Businesses Operating from Dale Street 1963-1974

Doris E Cue, draper (formerly Miss Katherine Jones draper) no.78
Mrs G I Bosworth, newsagent, no. 79
Dale Street Fisheries Fried Fish Shop (formerly Kemal Alibey, fried fish shop) no. 96
B. Kaur, drapers (Formerly Miss A D Knott, wool store) no. 102
RF Wright the butcher no.113
J T Nicklen, confectioner (formerly Nicklen, hairdresser) no 150
Mace supermarket (formerly M W Farthing, grocers) no. 152
E A and J State, greengrocers no. 155
Warren, J R (formerly D S Waite, formerly A E Carr, shop and post office) no.157
Young, P N and B R Greengrocers no. 229
Flying R Services, tailors shop (formerly Gilbert T Cooper boot repairs) no.256
Gordon Salon, ladies and gents hairstylist, no. 269
J Connolly, shopkeeper no 271
Terrys of Chatham Ltd., Radio Engineers no. 287
R D Mercer, butcher (formerly Matthews Butchers) no. 289
Ellbris Ltd., hardware no. 293
Dulcie’s Hairdressers, no.323
Jaydee Newsagents (formerly Mrs Heather Lake, newsagent) no.323
Suttons Grocers, no. 2 Elm Avenue