I was just 5 years old when we moved into Basildon having spent my growing years till then in Dagenham where we lived with my grandparents. When we moved into our house in Methersgate, there was a lot of farm land around us. At the top of the road was one where I met another little girl and we played in her playhouse up in a barn loft. When we walk along the Broadway I think it was called there were cows about and Dad took us to walk by and look at them.

Our house had no garden to start with, but Dad made a wonderful one, with climbing roses up against the high fence in the back garden, lovely smelling ones I remember so well. The lawn was his pride and joy, with a rock garden at the very end of it. In the front garden shrubs surrounded the lawn. For a Londoner, he had extremely green fingers. We often walked up past the Infant school , the church there...Holy Cross I think, and along a beautiful lane where we picked blackberries. My brother Steve Shean, played cricket and football at the pitch thereabouts. In 1964 we left for Cape Town, and proceeded to have a most wonderful life there. I am so grateful to my parents for being brave enough to make what was in retrospect a most challenging and daring move.

I took two of my sons and husband to look at the street and the house, no 78..and it looked so small..no garden just cars, shabby and horrible. I could have wept. They said, you didnt live here did you mom...thank goodness mom and dad never saw what we saw. Every blade of grass gone, all the meadows and fields gone...It looked so terrible.

Anyway, I can share other stories of the New Town Centre...(oh the excitement with the first Sainsburys!)...The building of that horrific high rise block in the middle of it!!! How safe it was to go playing in the woods ...how grateful I am that I lived there when it was so semi rural...


Pat Goldswain (Shean) 78 Methersgate...