Time traveller who dwells in the playground of words and pictures.
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Geraldine Evans and Angela Bailey - The Barge - S1 E15 (podcast)
I was fortunate enough to find Geraldine Evans on social media when I was researching for my book, Lost Basildon. What a lady! With some really amazing stories about The Barge and Vange's history. Her family had ran the pub which has also been known as The Old Barge Inn for seventy years! It all started when her paternal aunt wanted to escape London to the then countryside of Vange and on the 20th May 1937 she paid £2,643.06 for the lease of the pub and its surrounding land. I contributed four pages to The Barge and also a couple of pages to Geraldine as the Pitsea and Vange Carnival Queen of 1967 in the entertainment section. She also let me have a copy of a picture of Doughy Saunders on horseback heading up the Vange Carnival procession dressed as John Bull.
After meeting Geraldine with her treasure of stories I knew that there was more that could be done so as I was on a writing course for The Writers Bureau and I needed to write an article I just knew that people would be keen to read more of the story of The Barge when it was ran by her family. You can actually read the article here. The article had pride of place in the EssexLife magazine.
When Geraldine's husband died suddenly she told me that her daughter and son stepped up as licensees as Geraldine couldn't do this as she was also a Justice of the Peace. Angela gave up her job and joined her mother to run the pub. I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast where I talk to the pair of them and I also have them on video too.
I spoke to Angela about her Lockdown book and her new book that is going to be published soon, you can find out more about these here.
The Old Barge Inn and Saunders & Son, the bakers close by.
Geraldine with bar staff Sharon Hayward, Jackie Stock-Baker, Shirley Ansell, Betty Barker, Margaret Price, Sharmon Szewczyk and Barbara Smith
A newspaper cutting of celebrations after the war in 1945 at the pub organised by Geraldine's dad, Ted.
I have known about Metal Culture, the one that is based in Southend, and their events for some time. I have often thought of joining one of their events but didn't get around to it. Last night I plucked up the courage to join their Zoom meeting called 'BASILDON, what next for the Creative Industries in South Essex?' It was really good actually, I imagined that I would sit observing, feeling too awkward to join in, but in fact I did get involved and added something to the various debates that were going on. To start with we watched six speakers; Aden Hynes from Sculpture Studios who showed a film. Moira Brock from La Danse Fantastique who showed a film. Joseph Brennan, an architect. Clare Mortimer from The Craft Shed. TIME - Therapy in Musical Expression, who showed a film and then Laura Mauro a writer. It was really interesting, although I already knew about Sculpture Studios and TIME. There were about forty participants and what struck...
I thought I would share a few photos of Basildon town from the past particularly around the East Walk and East Square region where a lot of changes are happening right now. The last photographs are my own shots of the demolition of the old post office in East Square. These can be clicked on to be enlarged. The Mother and Child Statue with East Square seen behind. Date unspecified. From Basildon Through Time. Basildon Town Square 1960s. Keay House can be seen on the right and the part of it that overhung the square was demolished in 1996. From Basildon Through Time . East Square before the head post office was built and opened in 1963. From Lost Basildon. A photograph that seemingly didn't appear in either book. East Square. You can see Stylo (Barratt) and Austin the Tailor in East Walk, Basildon, in the 1970s. From Lost Basildon. New...
YARDLEY London, that legendary purveyor of perfumes, soaps and toiletries will celebrate its 250 th anniversary this year. The company which was once called Yardley of London is one of the oldest brands in the history of perfume, toiletries and cosmetics. It has been awarded ‘Royal Warrant of Appointment’ six times, starting with Edward, Prince of Wales in 1921 then including the Queen and the late Queen Mother and most recently, in 1995, Charles, Prince of Wales. At the end of January 2020 it will be 21 years since Yardley of London closed its doors at its site in Basildon. The last man to leave was security guard Roy Davis. He locked everything up and put the key through the door in January 1999. Unfortunately the company had got into financial problems in the mid-1990s and it went into receivership in 1998 after a year of marketing attempts to try and turn around its then old-fashioned image even though it had swapped Hele...
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