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Air and Sea: A flying boat flies over ships berthed at Southampton's Town Quay in the 1920.

Anyone born in the Southampton of the 1920s will have early memories of a home town radically different from today.

In the 1920s in the main centre of the town, as it was then, there were not only shops as the streets also boasted many public buildings and fine open spaces.

Tucked away was the small area bounded on one side by East Street, in the north and on the west by High Street which for centuries had been the centre of the town's population.

Entering by narrow streets such as Canal Walk, better known as The Ditches, Back-of-the-Walls, Sugarhouse Lane and Oriental Terrace, any stranger faced a bewildering criss-cross of lanes, courts, cuts and alleyways.

Densely-packed Here were hundreds of densely-packed houses, often dilapidated and unsanitary, but home to thousands.

At the time a survey revealed that the courts and alleys of an area bounded by Lime Street, Russell Street, Threefield Lane and King Street housed a population of 600.

In the 1930s the council started clearing away this area. However, this work was completed in the terrible, devastation of enemy air-raids in 1940.

The acclaimed local historian, the late Eric Wyeth Gadd, who was for so long a regular contributor to the Daily Echo, vividly recalled the centre of Southampton in the 1920s.

"Just above Bargate Street stood the George Hotel, whose yard was one of the calling-places for country carriers,'' wrote Eric in 1979.

"A little further up, next above the old, narrow Regent Street and Ogle Road were Scullard's Hotel, the Alexandra Cinema, later to be called the Odeon, and the Church of Christ. Next came the impressive domestic gothic premises of the Royal Southampton Yacht Club, in dark red brick with terracotta dressings.

"Narrow Aslett's Cut led to the Grand Theatre. Here on a Saturday night the flower-sellers stood under their naptha flares.

"Thorner's charity buildings in their delightful grounds were followed by Gibbs Road, then a row of fine Georgian houses inexorably being turned into business premises, though several of their dignified facades were still preserved.

"Beyond the popular Bungalow Café, the Corporation transport offices, Plummer Roddis and the Junction was Lutyen's glistening new Cenotaph; next the public library and art gallery at the junction of Bedford Place and Cumberland Place.

"Finally London Road with St. Paul's, the Unitarian and Carlton Baptist Churches, the Ordnance Office and the ageless Avenue.'' Eric, who died in March, 1996, was born and bred in Southampton, a city he loved all his life, and was a prolific writer,.

A teacher, Eric taught at Swaythling Elementary School, Bitterne Park and Taunton's, where he was art master, before becoming head of two junior schools, firstly Northam and then Beechwood.

Looking back to the 1920s, he wrote: "In the main people were more contented than their successors of today. The authority of law and order managed to keep wrongdoing within reasonable bounds.

"Acts of violence seldom figured in reports of police court proceedings. If the spirit moved you to go for a midnight stroll you could almost certainly do so with impunity and you would probably exchange greets with a bobby on his beat. Nobody would have understood the words vandalism' or graffiti'.

"In those days the townsfolk took tremendous pride in Southampton's reputation as one of the cleanest and tidiest seaport towns in the world.''

4:48pm Friday 2nd May 2008

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