I was born on the 5th of April 1928 to Frederick and Winifred Warren (nee East) at Belmont Road Luton Bedfordshire. My parents were married on 2nd July 1927 at the Luton Registry Office, my father was a 22 yrs. old Motor Lorry driver and mother was a 23 yrs. old Hat Machinist.`
On January 4th.just three months before my birth my father was very seriously burned while trying to save a driver of a lorry that overturned and caught fire, He received a Carnegie Hero Trust Award for his part. I have often wondered if the Warren Road that runs off Runley Road was named in his Honour. It must have been a very hard time for my mother. They lived at 14 Beresford Road at the time but mother moved to Belmont Road to be near her mother before I was born.
My early childhood memories.> 5yrs.to 7yrs
My grandmother East, my mothers mother lived in Dallow Road just around the corner from my birth address so most of my early memories concern her and where she lived. I guess my mother returned to work sewing bands to be inserted into hats (Luton was the centre of the hat manufacturing trade) while I was very young because my father was in hospital and the only monies coming in were from a Public fund, causing grandma to look after me most of the time.
Grandma's back yard ran up to the railing fence bordering a Cocoa Factory, to this day I can still remember the aroma of cocoa which I am sure made me love chocolate. My mother's youngest brother Jack lived with grandma and I have memories of him frying eggs and bacon, he loved them well done, eggs turned over and bacon crispy, just the way I like them too. Uncle Jack had a beautiful Alsatian dog named Trixie which I used to have rides on her back, still my favourite kind of dog.
Another painful memory I have is having wood splinters removed by grandma from my rear end after sliding down a plank, I did not do that again!
I have vague memories of going to a private house in Dallow Road which a lady ran a pre-school kindergarten, which I suspect my age then would have been about 4 yrs.
When I was between 4 and 5 we moved house to 45 Runley Road which would have been all new houses at that time. Grandma East also moved into next door at #43 along with son Jack.
Runley Road was a great place to spend my early childhood, our backyards run to the base of a line a low chalk hills which ran around Luton effectively putting the town in a valley. Nearer to town, were the excavation for chalk done years before, a great place to dig caves, but a dangerous practice as they were prone to collapsing.
You could walk over the hills (an area made for a lot of fun & games, plenty of large bushes to play under, they made great Indian tepees.) to the village of Caddington where my sister resided in later life, also you could walk along the base of the hills all the way to Dunstable.
My uncle Jack owned and raced a greyhound which we often walked for exercise towards Dunstable. I remember one occasion when we passed a field of corn being mowed and there were quite a few men surrounding what remained left to cut, hoping to catch any rabbits that remained inside the small circle of corn left standing, when one run out in our direction so uncle released his dog which took off after it, but it managed to elude him.
On the way there we used to stop at group of trees we called a spinney to collect wild bluebell flowers in the spring, if lucky you could also find crocuses also. Collecting blackberries in season was looked forward to also holly at Christmas time.
I remember the Rag & Bone cart coming around with a chap yelling out Rag-a-Bone, if you took him old clothes he would give you such things as goldfish in a jar or cheap toys. From time to time a band of Gypsies would camp in fields nearby, they would go from door to door selling hand mad clothes pegs. While they were in the district my mother was always afraid to leave clothes on the line for fear the 'gypos' would pinch them, they were not liked and the police would move them on if they outstayed their welcome.
Then there were Indian chaps that came around selling ties etc out of a suitcase and the Spaniards selling onions slung in net bags from a pole carried across the shoulder.
Another memory is of my mother going out onto the road with a bucket and shovel to collect any horse dung left there for the garden, mentioning garden, reminded me of when Uncle Jack was digging in grandma's garden next door when he unearthed a field mice nest with about four babies which he called me over to see, but then he killed them all with the back of his spade causing me to have a crying fit as I wanted to take them home.
To the east of Kingsway there was vacant ground on which Thurston’s Fair & Carnival used to use from time to time. Grandma used to take in Boarders so she had a card placed in the window of a shop that was on the corner of Dallow And Runley Roads offering Full or Casual board. One day I came home off the hills and being summer grandma had her casement windows open and I jumped into her lounge room through the open window and got a big scare, as there was this very little old man sitting in a child's feeder chair. He was from one of the side shows at the fair where they had all sorts of weird people and things in the side shows.
I started school at Dallow Road School but have next to no memories of my time there, I guess I did not like going much, but I gained two friends there. A Colin Glover who lived in the Kingsway and Derek Barnes who lived further up Runley road, I am very pleased to say that I am still in contact with Derek who now lives in Scotland.
Colin and I had three wheeled bicycles which we had great fun on. One occasion with them that remains very clear to this day, the three of us and the two bikes were in the Kingsway recreation ground which had a path from the entrance that turned a corner as it rose up quite a slope to the level playing field area. Well Colin & I would ride down this path around the bend at what to us was breakneck speed but when Derek borrowed Colin's to do the same, he somehow did not turn around the bend, instead hit the grass verge and lost the bike and hit his forehead on the iron railing that marked the perimeter of the park. The result was a nasty, bloody cut, luckily someone picked him up and transported him home by car. Colin grabbed his bike and shot off home leaving me to pedal to Derek's home to receive a good telling off by his mother. (It's always my fault it seems). Derek & I had a laugh about this when we last met in 1997 as he remembers it well.
When King George V died in 1936 and Edward the V111 was crowned, all children at school received a commemorative mug. My sister Pamela was born in October of the same year. I received a two wheeled bicycle for Xmas that was made to size for me by a brother of grandma East. He owned a cycle shop where he made and sold "Holly Cycles".
1937 saw my family move to a bungalow situated in the premises of a haulage firm my father worked for at the corner of Beechwood Ave. and Dunstable Rd..
The company had contracts to collect boxed hats from various factories around Luton, they were then sorted into piles for delivery to different places in London. Drivers like my father would start early in the day so as to start delivering in London as soon as the premises open and then be empty in time to return to Luton to do the collection run before they closed. The sorting was done after the evening meal and usually finished by about 10.00pm. A long day.! The hat trade spurned the design of the Luton Body for cartage vehicles which saw the loading area extended over the driver’s cabin to give greater cartage capacity.
Not long after we moved Derek's family purchased a house not far away in Chester Close so we still spend a lot of time together. Derek went to Beechwood Road school but I attended the one in Beech Hill. We were not long in Beechwood Road before my parents purchased a newly constructed house at 36 Grosvenor Road Limbury, which was some distance away. Derek & I kept in touch as we were within about a half hours walking distance away of each other.

My earliest memories are of living on the Dallow estate in Luton. After a brief spell in the L&D, I lived for the first two years of my life in Summerfield Road.

I remember my next door neighbour, 'Grandma' Cole with her Dalmatian, the rag 'n' bone man who regularly toured the streets, the gasometers of course, and the local fireman who used to bring his fire engine home and spray the road with his hose for the amusement of everyone living nearby.

Before the ward was dissected in two by Hatters Way, we used to go shopping at the West Side Centre, (complete with clock tower and pigeons) which was demolished so Sainsbury's could be built. I also remember my first visit to the Odeon in Dunstable Road - one of the last two traditional style cinemas in the town before multiplexes took their hold, and the long-gone shops they had along Dunstable Road, with the tortoises in cages they had outside on the street there.

It's a long time since I was christened in St Peter's Church, in fact my only visits to the area in recent years have been to the Bedfordshire Yeoman and the Winston Churchill on a Saturday afternoon, and the highs and lows of Luton matches afterwards.

But in actual fact, the housing estate South of Hatters Way hasn't changed that much. The Greengrocer on the corner may have gone, and the hairdressers in Runley Road bricked up, but it doesn't look that different. Even the doornumbers my dad nailed to the front of our house are still there.

The only difference really, (apart from the obvious cultural difference - twenty five years ago, there were very few Asian families,) is that sadly many of the houses have fallen into real disrepair, and it makes you wonder just how much effort needs to be put into getting the estate completely off its knees.

For older Lutonians Dallow Road will conjure up differing memories. I will always remember the clinic near the junction with Dunstable Road. In the days of polio and diphtheria, the children of the town were wheeled in and inoculated. The Rec used to host an annual donkey derby which was quite a major event. The Luton Corporation number 11 bus used to travel up the road between Round Green and the far end of Dallow Road via Bridge Street with the destination Wandon Close. The Dallow area developed because of the Great Northern Railway which opened in the 1850's before the main line that remains today. The Luton to Dunstable line had several sidings which served various industries.

Hatters support and BBC Three Counties Radio presenter Ian Pearce

The town's gas works was situated where Sainsbury's is today. Children with breathing difficulties were encouraged to breathe in the distinctive coke fumes which I can still remember today. When North Sea Gas arrived the depot moved up Dallow Road to the site where the gasometer stands today. It was a road of smells.

At the bottom was a timber yard with the smell of freshly sawn wood. There was the Co-operative chocolate factory which supplied cocoa and chocolate bars to societies across the country. Heavy industry was there with Jackson's the boilermakers then right up the top end was Laporte chemicals. The reason for Laportes was to supply the hat industry with the chemicals it needed. It's said the bleach turned the hat workers mad...mad hatters.

The hills above Dallow Road were a popular beauty spot which my grandfather always called the Lintses. Does anybody else know this name or its origins? During the war the road was lined with curious canisters. The idea was to fill them with diesel oil and set light to them to create a smokescreen to hide the factories from The Luftwaffe. The fumes were appalling and the filth left behind meant the canisters were little used.

Of course located in among the terraced houses of the Dallow area is Luton Town's Kenilworth Road ground. As a small boy I can remember the cheer of as many as twenty thousand people as the goals rained in. This must have been when the Hatters were in the first division and reached the F.A. cup final. The main stand was bought second hand after the Great War from Kempton Park Racecourse.

My first visit to the ground was for a schoolboy match . I spent most of the match watching the trains though the holes in the corrugated iron fence. I'm told a match at Kenilworth Road was once held up because an engine in the sidings made so much smoke the players couldn't see.

Today the Dallow area is a cosmopolitan area with many Asian families moving into the Victorian houses. The industry at the bottom end has now gone, although the gasometer remains. The railway is closed but may come to life as the Translink guided bus way. Dallow Road has been extended and a new industrial estate at the top end hosts several smaller companies including Gordon Coachworks the country's leading Rolls Royce repairer. The building of Hatters Way in the 1980s saw a new piece of road linking Dallow Road to Chaul End giving access to the Motorway without going through town...It was only ever a dirt track crossing the railway with a small level crossing close to where B& Q stands today.