Steeped in history
Robert Payne of Old Tovil Road said people do not appreciate how steeped in history Tovil is.
“The paper mills, the ancient Anabaptist burial ground in Burial Ground Lane, the Scouts – who boasted Guy Gibson as a member – and their outdoor chapel,” he said. “Goachers brewery, the Working Men’s Club once the site of Tovil Zoo, Mount Ararat and the grounds of Hayle Place, where a previous owner kept a lion in a cage.
“Richard Hearne, the actor famous for his character Mr Pastry, lived here and the renown electronics firm KEF had works here too.
“At the junction of Church Street and Tovil Hill is a listed drinking fountain that is quite a feature, and trolley buses used to run to the bottom of the hill, terminating at The Rose pub (now gone).
“Lidl supermarket stands on the site of the extensive railway sidings that served Reeds paper mill and the wharf remains pretty much intact near the foot bridge across the river. There I remember as a boy of four or five seeing the barges laden with paper and the little train crossing the spur. I used to stand there with my late mother wondering if it would be the steam loco or the diesel engine and waving to the driver.”
Mr Payne believes the houses with the stone steps in Church Street were demolished in the very early 1970s.
He said: “I am just old enough to remember this and the discussions my Mum had in the Post Office with the folk who had been displaced. As a child, I was worried that at any time someone could come along and pull down your home.
“For years afterwards the flattened rubble served as a temporary car park accented by bent and broken pipework polished by car tyres.
“Somehow this always disturbed and troubled me perhaps because I was saddened that people had lost their homes. Eventually new flats were built in their place.”
Mr Payne said the existing footbridge across the river resembles the original.
“In fact,” he said, “The decorative scroll work that supports the lamp in the centre is from the original.
“The present bridge was delivered in one piece via a lorry in the late 1980s.
“Old Tovil Road, Tovil Road and Church Road were all cleared of all parked cars so that during the night the convoy could deliver its load.”
He adds that in the last few months, the warning bell that used to signal to pedestrians crossing the footbridge over the line (in Fant) has fallen quiet. A large new footbridge now crosses the tracks, and the foot-crossing has been closed.