Part one dealt with employment, homes and shopping here. Part two covered sport and leisure plus transport and is available here
Childhood
By the end of the decade 170 boys were bring educated at Borlase School. Though the main building dated from the 1600s the school was keen to keep the facilities up to date, funds permitting. In 1938 a block was added containing a purpose built laboratory and dining room along with extra cloak rooms. Earlier in the decade an old dorm house was converted into a library for the boys.
Marlow infants attended the mixed infant school in Oxford Road. The older boys and girls were then educated separately from each other, girls at a school in St Peter Street (which formerly had had infants too) and the boys at Wethered Road. In 1931 there were 8 teachers at both the boys' and the girls' schools. Bovingdon Green village school still existed for infants and juniors of both sexes early in the decade. This also catered for the children of Marlow Common. Older children were given motor bus transport into Marlow to attend the schools there.
Just outside the town in Quarry Woods was Quarry Court, a boarding and day school for girls. This school started in the late 1920s and seems to have gone by 1946. It is now a domestic dwelling. Wycombe Court private girls school at Lane End for 8-18 year olds also had a mixed kindergarten for under 8s and provided coach transport for it's Marlow day pupils.
The children of Marlow Bottom had no school of their own. Motor transport was provided for all of the village children from 1925 to 1932 but then the education authorities decided that only those with more than two and a half miles to travel each way to school would be offered transportation with the others having to walk. Their walk took them along the main road which in those days had no pavement and was a notorious accident blackspot. The road through the village of Marlow Bottom itself tended to flood whenever it rained which made things doubly difficult for the children. Older children gave piggyback rides to the little ones to get them through the resulting mud that was at times more than 6 inches deep and tended to linger for weeks at a time. Some of the Marlow Bottom pupils went on strike in protest, fully supported by their parents, all to no avail.
There was at least one nursery school catering for the 2-5 year olds of 1930s Marlow.
On high days and holidays little Marlovians could make use of the swings, sand pit and roundabouts in Higginson Park (there by 1933), or enjoy the recreation ground at Seymour Park Road. There were official bathing places with attendants at both Marlow and Bisham. Marlow schoolchildren practised for and gained their 20 yard swimming certificates on a marked course at the Marlow one. In 1934 children's river swimming competitions were organised at Marlow with medals up for grabs and a tea for all competitors.
The Bucks Free Press of 7th September 1934 reported that there was a barrel organ proprietor who visited the town regularly and whose real live dancing mouse delighted the Marlow children.
Marlow possessed a toy shop and plenty of sweet sellers to please the littlest of our townsfolk. Woolworth's "bazaar" in Market Square must have been a fun excursion.
The cinema, first at Spittal Square and then in Station Road, offered some child friendly features such as Mickey Mouse shorts.
Like most towns in thirties England Marlow had both Boy Scouts (and their Wolf Vub juniors) and Girl Guides. In those days the Scouts met in a hut in Mill Road. The boys usually had a float in the Marlow Week carnival parade mentioned above. Our Marlow troupe of Girl Guides were part of a 3000 guide march past salute to Lady Baden-Powell in 1933 at their county rally. In 1934 lucky members who could afford the fee went on a five day camp to Wales where the girls played cricket on the beach, rode in motor cars, and practiced their camping skills. The following year the Guides also performed an unspecified display at the 1935 annual Church Fete in the park. Sea Scouts (Thames River) also existed in Marlow during the thirties.
The Salvation Army in Crown Road had its own youth group for girls "The Girl Guards', and there may have been an equivalent for boys too. Most of the churches had some kind of junior endeavour as well as a Sunday School.
At the C Of E Church Fetes children could enjoy pony rides thanks to the Pinches family at Pinches Farm near Newtown Road and "Dodge The Ball", "Bran Tub" (plunging your hand into a tub of bran to see if you can pull out a prize) and "Hidden Treasure" sideshows amongst others. They might not have made a beeline for the stalls selling "toilet requisites", kitchen implements or needlework but the sweet, cakes and ice lollies surely drew a crowd of little Marlovians.
Rosy cheeked little cherubs could be entered into the Baby Show (pretty much all similar events in the thirties had one of these). In 1935 the Marlow winners in the various baby categories at the Church Fete were Peter Anson, Kenneth Short, and Pamela Ball.
Every summer the Regatta brought the fair to the town and with it the lure of the steam horse carousel, coconut shy and "catchpenny" attractions it contained, not to mention the firework show afterwards.
Dancing lessons were available from Hilda Bailey for any little Twinkle Toes in the early and mid 1930s, before she relocated her classes fully to High Wycombe.
At home, listening to radio shows were very popular. The Ovaltiney Concert programme on Radio Luxembourg, sponsored by the makers of the Ovaltine drink was a craze for better off children whose parents could afford to buy what was then seen as a premium drink and priced as such. Children who joined the League of Ovaltineys (a million in number by 1938) pledged to drink Ovaltine every single night and had their own club song. They were given coded messages on the programme, and could earn badges based on their activities.
Children engaged in less wholesome activities and who found themselves on the wrong side of the law as a result were offered anonymity and attended a special children's court at Marlow. During the thirties this moved to a room in Court Garden. Almost all of the children who came before the bench were boys.
A shadow was cast over all childhoods as Marlow began to prepare for and then fight WW2. In 1939 a large number of children arrived in Marlow as part of evacuated families or schools. This gave the Marlow children a chance to make new friends and learn new versions of favourite playground games such as skipping rhymes which the evacuees brought with them. Some of these children came from severely deprived backgrounds and were found to have untreated scabies or body lice. The mixing of evacuee and local children lead to a scabies outbreak amongst the local children which the authorities struggled to contain as the nearest isolation accommodation was already overstretched. Some children had to be sent to Beaconsfield for treatment.
Religion
A Plymouth Brethren chapel was built in Newtown Road at the start of the decade providing the first permanent base for a Christian group that had been in the town for some years. The more established churches were the Catholic Church in St Peter's Street, the C of E parish church by the river and it's sister Holy Trinity, the Wesleyan chapel in Spittal Street (which absorbed the Primitive Methodist congregation in 1933), the Congregational Church in Quoiting Square AKA "the Congie", the Salvation Army in Crown Road and the Baptist Chapel in Glade Road. Those last two both rebuilt their places of worship in the thirties.
All Saints by the river and Holy Trinity Church in Trinity Road both received electric lighting for the first time in 1934.
Canon Owen Spearing was the C of E vicar of Marlow from 1916 to 1938 when he was replaced by Revd Amies. Owen needed to move for the sake of his health to a less busy parish. He was an honorary canon of Christ Church, Oxford and the rural dean of Wycombe district as well as our vicar. His saddened congregation presented him with a cheque for £132 at a farewell event held at Court Garden. Before coming to Marlow Owen had been a missionary in Iran and a clergyman in Reading.
Researched and written by Charlotte Day
Some sources=
Marlow Town Guide 1931/32 edition.
A Century of Childhood by Steven Humphries, Joanna Mack, Robert Perks Published by Sidgewick and Jackson, London, 1989.
Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire etc 1939 edition.
Personal interview.
Bucks Herald June 3rd 1933, Buckinghamshire Advertiser 19th August 1938. British Library Archives via the BNA.
Bucks Free Press June 28th 1935, South Bucks Free Press Archives.
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