Jackson Road was originally known as Skym Corner until Mr George Jackson, who kept the general shop on the corner and also owned a considerable stretch of land lower down the road, agreed to it being altered to Jackson Road. 

Only the few cottages in the corner where the footpath leads up over the fields to Crofton retained the name Skym Corner. [Click on the thumbnail to the left to see a larger photo of these houses at Skym Corner.]

It was quite a narrow road.  There were two houses just at the end of the shop market garden [now gone] and from there, no other building of any sort on the left side until you got round into Woods Road (now Lower Gravel Road) where there were three pairs of houses before you reached Woods Laundry, now the New Era Laundry. Mr Wood was also a coal merchant (l0d. per cwt sometimes).

Copthorne Avenue was just a narrow track leading up into Plough Wood and known as Wood Lane.  Below the lane were a few houses, one of which was occupied by Mr. George Shorter who left the legacy to Holy Trinity which provided the Shorter Trust. He was a bachelor, very fond of children and knew most of us by name.

Between Bradford Close and the corner there is still to be seen an iron plaque let into the footpath. [I saw it in 2001.] It stood on the other side of a deep ditch where we used to play round it. The reading on it informs people that in 1865 that piece of land belonged to the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury in the City of London. It also bears the names of the two churchwardens of that period. That piece of land stretched right down to the bottom corner of Jackson Road and there was at one time a similar plaque in that corner, but I cannot remember ever seeing one there.

Several of the people used to keep a pig or two and when they intended to kill one, they would let us know and we would have a nice joint of pork at 6d per pound for Sunday dinner. We were able to buy eggs at Oakley Farm at 1/- per dozen, l0d per dozen when they were plentiful, and skimmed milk at Bencewell Farm at l½d per quart.

Most of the families in Jackson Road appear to be related; it seemed all Woods and Whiteheads. Some of the men never seemed to work, relying on the wives’ earnings at the laundry.  The men were always addressed by their nicknames which they each seemed to possess (not of course by the children).  Anything more formal would have suggested sarcasm to them.

Of course, development had to come, but I like to remember Jackson Road as I knew it and lived in it with old Punch Gurr, Brewer Edmonds, Slip Whitehead, Spratty Davis and jolly old London Dick, to mention just a few.