David Gowers, of South Croydon, remembers his childhood living near the brickworks:

Our playground as children in the 1930s was Handleys Brickworks. That is, my three brothers and myself, also occasionally with one or more of our neighbours, Iris

Collison, Les Carr and Joan Bathgate, whose fathers were all key workers (to use today's expression).

We all lived in Meadvale Road, adjacent to the huge wooden main gates to the works, ourselves the Gowers) at number 103.

My grandfather, Edward, was Works Foreman and my father, George, was Production Manager. Jack Milsted, the Works Manager and later Managing Director, was a personal friend of my parents and, of course, to us boys. At the bottom of our gardens was a pathway which led directly to another gate.

On the other side of the gate was the main roadway leading from the main gates to the works itself.

Alongside this roadway were workshops, one being that of a great character, carpenter Arthur Hawkins, also there was Bill Sandford, the electrician.

However, all the workshops were intimately known to us, as were the people in charge of each.

Dad ran the Christmas club for the employees and each weekend one of us would help him enter the contributions into his ledger. By this means nearly all the permanent employees were known to me, at least by name, but regretfully, with the passage of time, most have now been forgotten.

In those days, there was a fence running alongside the boundary between Meadvale Road and the Works.

Our four end houses had easy access to the works via the aforementioned gate and on the other side of the fence was a mound of waste land, heavily grassed to a height of about three feet.

This was a favourite spot for our games, one of which was to roll an old oil barrel over the grass, so as to form a hideaway, and then to taunt old Mr Handley with giggles and calls.

I can still remember his stentorian voice (accompanied by a wave of his stick and a bark or two from his dog)saying: "I know it's you Gowers boys. I'll catch you."

I think he was only half serious though, and although we sometimes got a telling-off from Dad, we did not get barred from the field.

In the days leading up to the war there were seven (I think) tall chimneys, one of which, near the corner of Meadvale and Becleford Roads, had the word Handley prominently built into each of its four faces in white bricks.

This chimney, and the others, was used as a navigation point for the aeroplanes entering and leaving Croydon Aerodrome and also, of course, during the war, by the Luftwaffe!

It was the fleet of lorries and other machinery, however, that was our chief interest.

At first were the steam lorries which delivered the bricks and the steam-roller which was kept busy within the works. Now and again we would be treated to rides on these and what excitement we had from the noise of the pistons and shafts.

Perhaps the greatest thrill, however, was driving the Lister runabouts. This came later, when we were older.

These runabouts took the wet bricks from the machinery which made the bricks to the drying sheds, before the bricks went into the kilns for baking.

The works was divided into two distinct sections, the old and the new, and each section had two or three brick-making machines.

We were pretty well up in the actual process of brick-making, and could follow the path of the clay from the pit to the top of the machine, down through the grid into

hoppers which shaped the clay into a long rectangular sausage which was cut into slabs about two metres long.

The slab was then pushed over oiled rollers on to the cutting table where wires finally produced the finished article, i.e. wet common bricks.

This reminds me that the clay was dug from the pits by Ruston Navvies (excavators or diggers).

Production rarely stopped and when the weather was particularly icy or foggy my father had to supervise the laying out of duck lamps (oil lamps with thick open wicks) at strategic points.

When the war started I was 13 and was evacuated to Crowborough in Sussex with my school, Tenisons.

The brickworks was closed down and occupied by the Canadian Army.

The soldiers were billeted in requisitioned empty houses around the Works and some lived with families. They quickly made friends and the families around were grateful for the various gifts of food, chocolate and nylons that were given by the soldiers from time to time.

Later on I was called up into the RAF and was on leave on one occasion when during a doodle-bug raid I heard one pass overhead.

I looked out from our Anderson shelter in the garden just in time to see another pass very low over us and then heard it explode in the works. We learnt that they usually came over in twos! I am sure that over the period of the war there must have been several bombs or rockets land in the ponds or clay pits. Yes, the brickworks certainly played a large part in our childhood, right up to its closure.