GERRY Goodchild, of Gipping Way, Bramford, recalls enjoying time in Wells Street when he was on leave from the RAF.

David Kindred

GERRY Goodchild, of Gipping Way, Bramford, recalls enjoying time in Wells Street when he was on leave from the RAF. He said: “Early in 1947 I met Gladys Emeny, the oldest of three sisters who lived in Wells Street, at Copleston School Youth Centre.

“I was 17 years old and had volunteered for eight years' service in the RAF. Gladys worked with her two sisters at Philips and Pipers clothes factory in Old Foundry Road. Their parents, Harry and Ethel Emeny and the three girls, lived at 18 Wells Street.

“In June 4, 1947, I started my life in the RAF. I had the very good luck to be posted to RAF Trimley on the Felixstowe Road, then to Martlesham and on to Sutton Heath, now known as RAF Woodbridge.

“We had liberty trucks run us into Ipswich on pay day evenings and we parked the truck with others on waste ground in Princes Street near Churchman's factory.

“After parade training I was sent to a large bomb dump near Grantham. Every chance I had to get a pass, I spent it at Wells Street. I had the settee in the front room to sleep on.

“We spent many happy times in the Water Lily public house in St Helen's Street, where Ruby and Bill Bloomfield ran a very nice pub.

“We got married just before I was posted to Germany. In the picture of Wells Street, published in Kindred Spirits, the gas light on the wall is just outside our bedroom window.

“Like other Kindred Spirits readers we also purchased furniture from Gardiners, sweets and cigarettes from Minters, fish and chips from the corner shop and on special days a little gift from the little jewellers shop.

“Another memory from that period is of a married couple with a son that had a mobile tea van and on summer weekends on the Felixstowe Road, near Levington bridge, selling refreshments to the many folks that cycled to the seaside and back.”

Do you have memories or photographs of this mobile refreshment stop at Levington?

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