ST. PETER'S ROAD (PREV. JETTY ROAD)
Ernest Bean moved with his
family into 24 St.Peter's Road in 1925 from Alma Road. Hilda, his daughter, was
born in 1919 at Alma Road. Her grandmother on father's side was a Kirby, a
family of farmers out at Martham. A generation later the sons allowed the
business to fail, and they became bankrupt. Grandfather Bean was a fisherman
and lived at 79 King Street. This was down near to Friars Lane. After leaving
the fishing he became a cooper at Nutman's on Blackfriars Road, opposite to the
house in Alma Road. Ernest Bean's younger and older brothers were coopers like
their father. Ernest was in the army
before the 1914 war, and joined the Artillery having falsified his age‑ a
usual practice I think. Later, in the Great War, he was wounded in the foot in
the battle of Ypres. Born c.1897, he had been one of six men operating his gun,
and being behind the gun was the only man of the six to survive when a shell
hit them. He was sent back with the side of his left foot cloven along its
length. Eventually the skin there became hard and thickened and he was able to
wear a shoe again, although every day he would stretch the leather with a
"copper‑stick" with a piece of rag wrapped around the end. He
used to cut skin from his foot, trimming it with a cut‑throat razor.
In the photograph taken
before the 1914 war, is Ernest with his horse, and another corporal named
Charlie Harrison, who in the war was unfortunate enough to have shrapnel lodge
in his spine and suffer paralysis as a result. Later the poor man was unfortunate
enough to have a breakdown, and he spent the rest of his days in a mental
institution. There was a copper at 24
St.Peter's Road in the early days; and gas laid on for the gas lamps. There was
a gas‑lamp in the front room, one in the middle room, and one upstairs on
the landing. Otherwise they lit candles. Ernest's wife Hilda used to leave the
upstairs lamp on for the benefit of it's heat. There was one further gas lamp
in the kitchen, and each lamp had a chain to pull to regulate the gas. Nos. 23, 24, and the cottage on the side in
Standard Place were built in one lot by the previous owner on a plot of vacant
land that he owned. Mrs Sharman lived in the little side cottage. It was empty
for many years after the second W.War, when the floor boards had rotted
away. The Sharman family used to walk
on bare earth floors, and if they lit a fire the wall behind, which was but one
brick thick, got so hot that a towel hanging near it in the Bean's house would start to steam.
After the First World War,
Ernest Bean went to work for the Post Office on night work whilst still on his
crutches. After a while he went to work for Norman's Furniture Store, who at
that time were also funeral directors. One day instead of the furniture
removals they set him to removing a body in a coffin. This was not to Mr.Bean's
liking, so he left Normans employ. Soon he met Oscar Reynolds, and worked for
him at his premises in Apsley Road. He had stables and a hayloft. They supplied
hay and feed for horses in the town and the countryside around Yarmouth. Later
Bean suggested to Reynolds that he learn to drive a car and Reynolds bought a
taxi that Bean drove in the summer evenings after the other work was finished.
In the herring season he would take the fisher girls from their lodgings in
St.Peters road to the quayside, This was from the end of the summer season
until nearly Christmas. He brought them back for their meals and at night, and
in the meantime he would work transporting the salt from the ships to the yards
where the herring was to be pickled in salt.
Earlier in the year they would go out to the country for the swedes and
the sugar beet tops (for the horses). In the hay season they would cut the hay
in hundred weight bales, and again transport it back for the horses. Some of
the hay would be made into chaff. In the fishing season another task was to
take the lorry to the fish‑wharf, and shovel on the fish guts, taking
that along to the farms for fertiliser or pig feed. In the evenings he drove the taxi. He worked for Oscar Reynolds along with another fellow called
Cubitt. It was Ernest Bean's
idea that they should get a coach and go 50/50 on it. As a result
they Reynolds had one, then two, and in due course a whole fleet of coaches
running trips around the Broads, to Sandringham, Cromer, and so on. No.24
became a booking office for the coach trips, with boards advertising them,
standing all around the walls in front of the house. The coaches were only
allowed to stand outside, one at a time, for a maximum of 20 minutes to permit
boarding, and then leave. The result of this regulation was of course that the
coaches would be circling the block waiting for one at a time to fill up. Eight
coaches there were altogether. They did morning trips, afternoon trips, and evening trips, and these resumed
after the war. Every day they worked, including Sundays, from eight to ten, and
Ernest received two pounds ten shillings a week in the winter, and ten pounds a
week in the summer. At the end of the season there was a bonus of about twenty
pounds commission.
Oscar Reynolds died of a
heart attack, and his three sons and
two grandsons all died of heart problems, but Oscar sold the business on his
retirement, and Bean first went to Seagull, and then to Norfolk Coaches. Ernest
Bean died of lung cancer, but he had been attacked on the Britannia Pier, by a
man who claimed that he had parked in his place. His injuries must have
hastened his illness, as he died two months later, having been apparently
healthy two months before. John Oscar
Reynolds married Victoria Royal had a daughter, Queenie May, who married Bob
Fryer jnr.*3 The oldest child was Vera
(1920), followed by Queenie(1923) and Lilly(1926). Their parents separated when Queenie was three. The marriage was
stormy, no doubt due to Oscar's drinking. At the time of Queenie's birth the
family lived in Row 123
Opposite to 24 St.Peters Road
is the Nelson School which was in two halves, and Mr.Harbord (see Row 112), had
the restaurant on the seaward side of the school, but there was an opening in
the middle, and through there was Harbord's Dairy, where milk and butter could
be purchased straight from the churn.
At the next house towards the sea from no.24 was a Miss Day. Here you
could go in for tea, order your tea downstairs, and then go up for it, where a
maid would receive you, and the tea would be hoisted up from below on a pulley
up the wall. Hazel's fish-merchants
sold eels and cockles. Further down, Mrs Scotter's daughter married a man
called Kruger, a half German, with an English mother, whose father was interned
in the war. At St.Peter's tavern, was Mr.Addis, and Spandler, the son in law
took over in due course, but he was also involved with a lorry transport
business. Joan Minns sold shrimps and
cockles, and Minns senior was a shrimper.
Ernest Watts was known as "Tiddy", on account of his small
stature. Many years later there was still a hairdressers here in 1973. Again, see Row 112, regarding the Wellington
Tavern. Pole, who had the apartments at
no.23 wanted to buy 24. Hazel the fishmerchant bought the cottage, and put in a
bid for 24. Ernest Bean had to find the money, and borrowed most of it from
Reynolds on the strength of his commission for the next three seasons, but still
had to find 5 pounds, so ended up selling the family's piano, and young Hilda
had to forgo her piano lessons. Hazel decently stood down, and allowed Bean to
proceed with the purchase. A reserve bid of £500 had been made. Reynolds made
the deposit available. Hazel still
owned the cottage until he died and left it to a daughter, and Hilda eventually
paid £5 for it. Mr.Glassman had a
grocer's shop selling rather nice ham, but after evacuation in the second war
they returned to find squatters in the house and couldn't face moving into it.
Mr.Hazel's son then bought it, and had it as a fish shop. Much later this was a
toyshop. Before the war at 24, Mrs Bean
took in six fisher girls for the herring season. They came down from Stornoway
with all their possessions in a trunk. Ernest used to take them down to the
fishwharf on the back of his flat lorry, but they put rails round to hold onto.
They were gutting fish before breakfast, come home for breakfast, went back to
work, return for dinner, and back again for the afternoon. Work finished at tea
time unless there was a glut of herring. The Scots boats would stay in port on
Sunday, but the English boats would still put out. The Scots used to congregate
around the pubs, such as up at the Old White Lion. They were well known for
their spitting and fighting, and the police were frequently out dealing with
disturbances of whole gangs. The ships
would be coaled up at the quayside, and the fishermen would frequent the pubs
along the South Quay. People used to take a barrow along and buy steam coal for
their fire from the railway wagons on the quayside. This cost 1/‑ (one
shilling) a hundredweight. This coal was rather messy though cheap, and left a
lot of white ash in a domestic grate.
Saint Peter's Church was used
as the main church in Gt.Yarmouth after the war, since St.Nicholas Church was
derelict and burned out. After St.Nicholas was re-opened, St.Peters was closed
up, empty and unused for many years, until it was given over to the Greek
community in the town, who appointed their own minister, and re‑named it
St.Spiridon's Church. I remember the Clock still working until 1980, but it
then ceased to function, and could not now be repaired, as the staircase in the
tower had collapsed. (It was eventually repaired in 1993)
During the war Ernest Bean's
eight coaches were commandeered for transporting the troops, and his wife and
children were evacuated to Dereham, but the accommodation was so sparse that it
was only fit for people from the London slums, and Mrs Bean was on the next
train back to Yarmouth, and back before midnight. Later they went to the White
Horse at Edgefield near Holt, where they stayed for ten months, and returned to
Filby whilst they were still bombing Yarmouth in 1944. They slept in a Morrison
shelter after that in the St.Peters road house. Such shelters consisted of a
metal structure that sat on the floor in your own home. The air raid warning
would go off and indicate a warning, but then a whistle would sound if the
bombers were in the immediate vicinity. Then you could go to the shelter over
in the Nelson School Yard, or lie under the Morrison Shelter.
One night when Ernest was
sleeping in the front room under his Morrison shelter, a bomb came in through
the hall with four incendiaries attached. The wardens knew it was there, but
they went away, Ernest was left there on his own and the bomb blew the wall
down, whilst he was under a large iron bedstead on the other side. In the same
clutch of bombs, another fell on the fish‑house behind no.24, one fell on
the corner of Lancaster road and went into the basement, one fell in the
passageway by the former fish‑house (now "Carpet Crazy"), one
on York Road and one on the Park. The bomb in the house could not be removed at
first, as it was buried in sand beneath the floor. These bombs were made in
Czechoslovakia, and it was thought that they had been sabotaged, and they
failed to explode on impact. They turned off the gas main which had burst, and
took the bombs for disposal to a pile in the marshes, where they exploded of
their own accord! Ernest Bean was taken
to the Red Cross, (where they still are at the south‑west of the road),
and his minor injuries were attended to by the minister (of the church).
There is a certificate issued
by Dr.Rodker to Hilda Bean, Ernest's daughter, which exempted her from the land
army on account of her heart. She had had rheumatic fever as a child, but I
found no evidence of any heart disease in later life, indeed she survived until
1992, and then passed away as a result of a cancer. (see under St.Georges
Road)
There is a photo of a class
at the Nelson School in 1900. The second girl from the left in the front row is
Gertrude Lydia Chaston*4.
For the St.Peter's School,
see Row 130.
*3 grandson of first
mentioned, Row 8
*4 see row 127