The Duke of Edinburgh, Crichton Street, Battersea, was the first pub that Mum and Dad managed themselves in 1953.

The 1871 census listed it as Duke of Edinboro and did the same in 1911.

The pub was old and rather run down, to say the least. But my younger brother and I loved it. There were so many rooms on three floors above the bars, and we all had a bedroom each. I remember that the large rooms had long windows. 

Our living quarters were just above the bars, a tiny kitchen with a huge old black range but not much else. There was a living room and a toilet that seemed totally out of place on the little middle landing all by itself. You know how stairs sometimes twist with a small triangular landing? Well, this toilet was in the triangle. Tricky to get in and out of.

As we were so young, I don’t remember much about the patrons, but I know that my birthday was just a few weeks after we moved in, and they all sang to me. Most customers who used the pub worked on the railway or at the power station and were down-to-earth working men.

We were only at The Duke of Edinburgh for three months! Mum and Dad had made a really good impression on the brewery, which earmarked them for a new pub. I’m guessing that staying at a pub was only ever going to be a temporary situation.

I did like my school there and was upset to leave it. Imagine the impact of that sudden change on a young child; being uprooted with so much of the unknown to fear is quite telling.

On the first floor was a huge space called The Club Room. It had a bar and a sprung floor. A dance floor. I guess it was for functions like weddings, but I don’t think it was used while we were there. The Club Room had windows on two of the walls. There was a weird patterned yellow and brown linoleum floor covering and tables and chairs stacked against the walls. At one end of the room lay an old piano on a low stage that Dad said was beyond repair. He should know as he was a pianist. 

Dad had made my younger brother and me stilts. They were all the rage at the time, rather like skateboards now. We painted them up, decorated them with ribbons and danced on them in the Club Room. We had worked out a routine for a children’s talent competition where we would dance to Paul Anka’s ‘Diana’.  We practised repeatedly, singing at the top of our voices, although we danced and bounced so much that we put holes in the lino. We also made quite a noise, and Dad got cross with us as the customers were complaining about the thumping on the ceiling. However, every cloud has a silver lining: all our hard work paid off as we went to the competition and won!

Sleeping was a problem at first as the pub was very close to the train line. My room seemed to tremble, and the windows rattled when the heavy rolling stock went by in the middle of the night. But we all got used to it.

When I told my younger brother about my plan to write down these stories, he came up with bits and pieces of information and memories of his time as a pub kid.

He remembered the Duke of Edinburgh for a couple of reasons, even though we were only there for a short time. He remembers the stilts and the talent competition that took place every month at the local community hall.

But the main memory he has is of rushing to get dressed every morning before the chemist opposite the pub opened. We didn’t have net curtains at the windows, and he said he felt exposed as those windows were almost floor-to-ceiling in his room. Mum would wake us up and pull the curtains. So, why the scramble to dress before the chemist opened? Unbeknown to Stephen, who was only about six years old, every morning at 7.45, the chemist put a life-size cardboard cut-out of a very glamorous girl holding a Kodak camera. He thought the girl was real and looking up at his room, pointing her camera in his direction! He said it was a few weeks before he knew she was cardboard. We went to school via a side door, so we didn't walk past the Kodak Girl.

The Duke of Edinburgh needed so much renovation that it eventually closed and was finally pulled down, I believe, in the late 1970s.

I sadly don’t have any photos of this vibrant working man’s pub and could only find one old picture online of the building all boarded up and ready for demolition, which I painted to preserve its memory.