This is part two of the local Gazette & Post’s, ‘This is your Street’ series, which appeared on 28th February 1958:
‘Thirty years ago, there was a pond and a row of cottages on the corner of Askew Road and Goldhawk Road.
Now, in place of the pond, is a small garden, and instead of the cottages is the Seven Stars Garage.
But part of the cottages is still there. “When they were pulled down, some of the walls were left, and they form part of the garage buildings,” said Percy Rickman, who has been a petrol attendant at the garage for over 20 years. Mr Rickman lives at 39, Summerlands Avenue, Acton.
“During the War, I used to wonder if the garage would still be there when I came into work in the mornings,” said Mr Rickman.
“One morning I arrived to find all the windows were blown out and there were holes in the roof. A bomb had dropped in Ravenscourt Park.”
Mr Rickman lived in Ingersoll Road, Shepherd’s Bush, during the War. When the raids finished, he would often come round to the garage in the early hours of the morning, “just to see if everything was all right.”
A plaque on the wall of a yard marks the spot where ‘The Sun’ public house used to stand.
Mrs Grace Farley, aged 73, has been living in Shepherd’s Bush for over 50 years, and remembers the night in October, 1940 when ‘The Sun’ was bombed.
“I was in Elmo Road that night,” said Mrs Farley. “A bomb dropped at the back of Askew Road. The doors and windows of our houses were blown out, and when I looked across at the public house, it wasn’t there.”
Fifty people were in the basement of “The Sun” when the bomb fell. Only a parrot was saved.
Mrs Farley lives at 2a, Bassein Park Road, just off Askew Road. “It used to be called Coleman’s Buildings, and I remember when the trams, not trolley buses, went up and down Askew Road.”
“Askew Road was always a busy place. Years ago, it was a poor district. Now it is more prosperous, and I like it better that way.”
The little confectioner’s and tobacconist’s shop at 161, Askew Road, seems to be full of voices – Cockney voices, Northern voices, foreign voices – and they all belong to one person, 18-year-old Carole Allen.
Miss Allen is an impressionist and comedienne, and in just over a year she has been ‘The Voice’ in nearly 70 commercials on ITV.
“I’ve advertised toothpaste, cigarettes, ice cream, shampoo, sausages, nylons, washing powder, soft drinks, custards and chutney,” she said.
Each commercial takes anything up to an hour to record, and it is then cut to between five and thirty seconds.
But this is only part of Miss Allen’s work. Three years ago, when she was still at Godolphin and Latymer School, she was announcer and interviewer in BBC’s radio programme, “The Younger Generation.”
“It was then that I decided to become an impressionist,” she said. Her voices – and there are at least fifty of them – have been heard on “Ray’s a Laugh”, “Life of Bliss”, “Son of Lumiere” at Greenwich, and in Bernard Braden’s television show, “Early to Braden” (“I actually appeared on the screen”).
“How did I get the jobs? I wrote to everyone I could think of in the commercial world and once I had made a few records I began to get known.”
Miss Allen’s hobbies – apart from collecting voices – include tennis, driving, letter writing and cartooning.
Her ambition is to do Revue, or television, or radio, and from the few voices which she used to me, I should say she’s a girl with an unusual talent who should be very successful in the entertainment world.’
Steve Russell
(Part Three will follow in due course. Thanks to Colin Woodley for sending me the article. The photo is from my collection & features Kings Parade on the Askew Road)