Places Where I Have Lived Summary Page
On this page there is a document that I prepared in 2010, after I discovered that the Streetview pictures being published by Google could be downloaded and kept in a file. To my astonishment I found that almost all of my dwelling places, educational establishments and workplaces had been photographed both in the UK and in the USA, So here it is!
PLACES IN THE LIFE OF DEREK GREGORY
With the coming of Google's world wide photographic record, both Google Earth and Street View, I have amused myself looking up some of the places from my life, to see what they look like today. Here is almanac of my residences and workplaces over a period of 80 years spaced about 5000 miles apart
I was born at 2 Perrymead St, Fulham, London at the time a poor working class dwelling where my parents were lodgers. It is now in a very smart area of London. No major changes appear to have been made
Aged 3. I moved to 2 Poplar Grove, Maidstone, where I lived until I left school. This house appears to be completely unchanged since it was built 75 years ago
I attended Maidstone Grammar School from 1938 to 1949. The gatehouse in Barton Road still stands but is no longer the school entrance. Two more views of the old school buildings show little evidence of a major change.
These modern views of the school appear to me to be just as they were in my schooldays. The tank trap dug across the playing field is long gone!!
In those days I sang in the choir of St Peter’s Church, the oldest church in Maidstone dating from the 10th century, and situated in a crowded industrial area between a brewery and the gasworks. Today it is no longer a church, having been rescued from its use as a brewery warehouse to become a day nursery.
In 1949 I went to University College, Southampton. It became a full university in 1952 when I was still there. The University has grown from 900 students then to over 24000 today. The campus is almost unrecognisable but the the main building, the Turner Sims Library still dominates the site on University Road
I lodged for a year at 32 Avenue road, Southampton. It is unchanged today
Then I moved into Connaught Hall, a Hall of Residence in Swaythling. Although enlarged, the front face is unchanged.
As a graduate student in 1953 I moved into lodgings at 4 Violet Road, Southampton, still looking identical after 57 years
And then in 1954 I got married at Freemantle Church,
and moved to a flat at 24 Blenheim Ave, Southampton, also unchanged
My first job was at AWRE Aldermaston. The streetview camera got no further than the view into the main entrance.
For 6 months I lived in a flat at 100 Shinfeld Rd, Reading it is the one on the left but this is totally obscured by trees today,
In 1954 we were assigned an Atomic Energy Authority house at 18 Southdown Rd, Tadley, next to Aldermaston. Today it is just as we left it !
In 1958 I went to work for Shell Research Ltd, and we moved to 19 Moorcroft Avenue, Chester. The first house that I owned. Now the house has had a garage and large extension at the back, but is clearly recognisable. The trees at the front were ones that I planted over 50 years ago.
I tried to find pictures on Google of the Shell Laboratories on the edge of Stanlow Refinery, but the site has changed beyond recognition.
In 1962 We emigrated to Hartford Conn, USA where I woorked for Pratt and Whitney Aircraft.
We rented for a year at 1578 Manchester road, Glastonbury Conn. Apart from bigger trees, it appears to be unaltered
We bought our second house in 1963 at 135 Natchaug Drive, Glastonbury Conn. It looks exactly the same now as when we bought it new.
After 4 years we retuned to England to work at Energy Conversion Ltd, then located in Sunbury Middlesex. We rented a flat n Oatlands Drive, Weybridge. Our flat had the huge grey patio you can see in this aerial view. The neighbourhood is totally unrecognisable now with many new houses and the old Park Hotel being demolished. However this flat complex built I the 1960's has survived intact though now with other buildings in its once beautiful grounds
A year later ECL was relocated to Basingstoke New Town. We bought our third house at Barn House, Hammonds Lane, Ropley, Hants. Since we left in 1970 the house has been extensively enlarged and only the original steeply pitched roof is still visible. Tall hedges surround the 1 acre garden which has been split and a second house built there.
The ECL laboratory building in Basingstoke which we built in 1967 was later converted into a Royal Mail sorting office but was subsequently demolished. The road it was in no longer appears on the Google maps, being replaced by huge new factory buildings
In 1970 we once again emigrated to the USA to work at IGT (Institute of Gas Technology) in Chicago. This was located on the IIT campus at 3424 S State St. The buildings are still there unchanged, but IGT moved out to the safer suburbs long ago. My office was on the top floor on the left facing the elevated railway station, from where the windows were shot out twice during my eleven year stay.
We rented a house at 109 Arthur Avenue in Western Springs, 25 miles to the west, for one year. Unchanged since 1970, though a huge new house has replaced the one next door.
We bought our fourth house at 322 North Monroe St, Hinsdale Illinois in 1971 where we lived for 11 years, the longest I had stayed anywhere in my life. Today most of the houses built in the 1930's and 40's have been pulled down and replaced by monstrous mansions on the half acre sites, but 322 still exists just as it was built 77 years ago
. After 11 years at IGT I decided to move back to England once again, and worked for Building Services Research Association in Bracknell, Berks
We spent a year in a rented furnished flat in Rectory Close, Bracknell, waiting for our American house to sell. We had left it full of our furniture and belongings expecting a quick sale.
.After a year in a rented flat we decided to make our home in Somerset, so I bought a flat in nearby Wokingham as a weekday bachelor pad
At the same time we bought our fifth house at Blakes Cottage, Chantry, high in the Mendip hills near Frome in Somerset. This is totally unchanged today, other than a new roof over the entrance porch.
After 3 years we found ourselves about to be swallowed up by a fast growing Whatley Quarry, and decided to sell and move to a more stable location. This Google aerial view shows the quarry. Blakes Cottage is marked by the yellow pin
We bought our sixth house, one third of the former manor house, Evercreech House, Evercreech, Somerset Since then, this has had a few minor changes inside but as a listed building it remains unchanged outside.
In 1992 we felt that we had done everything we could to restore the inside of the house to its former glory. The garden was too small for our gardening ambitions and Evercreech High St was becoming noisy. We bought our seventh house 4 miles away at Bay Tree House, Batcombe, where we lived until 1997 when Anne died and then I remained there until 2007. I had been there for 16 years, by far the longest stay in one house in my whole life. Bay Tree House still looks much the same, but the new owners have given it a complete rebuild, a new roof, conservatory and chimneys, with huge structural changes inside. It doesn’t bother me as I am happy to think that there is nobody else living in “my house”.
In 2007 I moved into house number eight, 15 Castle Rise, in the centre of Castle Cary. Of all the houses I had lived in before, this was the only one not to have been photographed by Street View. Here is an aerial view of the 23 house development, 15 is the top house on the left. And here is a Google Streetmap picture of the entrance to Castle Rise from the Horse Pond.
Since moving in, Street View has been updated, and here is number 15 in 2018.