Wayne Pritchett on Rivers and Harbours

To occupy your time you played outdoors, and of course if you lived in that part of the town, or any part of Newport really, the two main playing places was Newport Quay for those who lived in the south of the town, or the chalk pit up at Shire, up at Pan Chalk Pit, the Quarry, which of course they stopped digging chalk there many years ago, so that was the two playgrounds.

But ours was always down the Quay because I could look out of my bedroom window and see the place, so we used to play down there much to the annoyance of the Night Watchman down there. He was always chasing us off, chasing us around.

We used to get in the stacks of timber ‘cos there was tonnes of timber stored on the Quay. As a general rule, the timber closest to the town belonged to Alec Sharp’s which were Timber Merchants based in Sea Street, and further down was Morey’s Timber and as I said when I later joined that sort of work, we unloaded on the Quay and covered over with tarpaulins because we just couldn’t have room up at West Street to keep it at times, so as kids it was nothing … a bit of fun climbing amongst all the attacks of timber down there.

Of course, another thing which was when we were slightly older, the Vectis Shipping Company had a contract to bring Brickwood’s beer, which was brewed on the Mainland, to Newport, and their motor barge the ‘Seaclose’ was the one which they had … was on a train bringing the beer over. Well of course it wasn’t long before the local lads realised that when they brought all these empty beer crates on the Quay, quite often they were empty bottles but of course in those days, you could go to some of the pubs in Newport, long gone pubs like the ‘Prince Regent’ on Coppins Bridge and the ‘Brown Jug’ up the top of the town there, and you could go there and you could take empty beer bottles back to the Landlord, and he’d give you a penny for the empty bottle. Well it wasn’t long, after a while the kids thought that if we could take these bottles from the Quay and take them up to the pub, he will buy them for a penny because he thought that perhaps our parents had bought that bottle of beer in the pub, there was a penny to be returned on the bottle.

But that didn’t last very long before they twigged what happened and I think we had a visit from the Policeman and that was the end of that.

And of course, further down of course we used to go down in the grounds of North Ferry House which of course is now Medina High School.

There was a big house down there and the Arboretum, there was a beautiful garden of that house, we used to play in the trees down there, swinging on the trees and we used to take ropes off the barges and put ‘Tarzan’ swings up there and things like that.

And of course those families which didn’t have a lot of money, that little piece what we call Sandy Point, which is just down Seaclose field before you get into the main cycle track, a little piece of grass there, a little piece of the beach got a small piece of sand on it, that was Newport beach and some of the families would go down there swimming on a Sunday. You know, actually swim in the river there.

I mean the river was in much poorer condition than what it is now, ‘cos you’ve got to remember up until 1958, there was a Gas Works at Newport where the Riverside Centre is now and all sorts of funny things used to leach out of the wall there for years afterwards.

You’d see all the tar stuff and funny chemical stuff in the river. There would be a film of it so of course that would make its way down the river when the tide went out and you’d swim in amongst that.

You know, when you were kids you didn’t seem to bother you.