Bill Gower

“I was eleven years old and I’d never heard of Canvey Island before. We left London before midday and didn’t get on Canvey till about 2 o’clock the next morning. We were in, what was then the equivalent of a transit pickup truck. Mum and Dad in the cab with the driver and us five kids stuck in the back amongst our few paltry bits of furniture. We came along the Southend Arterial Road which was then a country road and they stopped at a couple of pubs along the way. I know by the time they stopped at the ‘Halfway House’ I was getting fed up.