Pamela Hallam was born in Guy’s Hospital to proud parents Joe and Rebecca Hallam who lived in Webster Road, Bermondsey.
“The Jamo was on the corner of our street,” Pam says as an opener, referencing the old St James Tavern now St James Bermondsey on St James’s Road.
Joe was a painter and decorator for the old London County Council, while Rebecca did “little bits and bobs” locally that included cleaning jobs, shifts in Peek Freans Biscuit Factory, and a job in Shuttleworth’s, the chocolate factory, which meant regular bags of the legendary broken biscuits indoors and a constant supply of chocolate for the household, too. Very handy for Pamela, the only child.
Pam’s first school was Alma, where she enjoyed “sums, writing and reading, and bunking off to play on the bombsite”.
Out of school hours, Pam and her friends would play skipping, rounders and two-balls up the wall. All in the confines of Webster Road due to the strict boundaries set by her mum, who also wouldn’t allow Pam to attend any local youth clubs.
“She was a nightmare,” reveals Pam as she gives a fierce impression of Mrs Hallam: “You do not go out of sight, you do not go round that corner, you play here!”
Pam didn’t mind that much because there were lots of kids to play with in her street. “My mate opposite had a big shed in her garden where we could play housey,” she remembers with a whimsical glint in her eye.
Aged 11, Pam moved on to Walworth Comprehensive when it was brand new and improved her English and maths: “I didn’t like PE but I did like hockey,” she claims.
Plus, she was now able to leave the confines of her street and go to local parks with friends: “I liked Patterson and Southwark Parks.”
Family holidays and weekends were often spent at their caravan in Monkton, a Kent village with easy access to Herne Bay, Whitstable, Margate and Ramsgate.
“We spent a lot of time down there,” Pam recalls. “Especially during school holidays.”
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Travelling to Kent was fun for the young Miss Hallam. She rifled through her box of photos to find one of her and mum on dad’s motorbike and sidecar. But as Pam outgrew the sidecar, they purchased a Morris Minor.
The love of maths and English got Pamela a GCE in both and took her straight into a job at Barclays Bank on Borough Road “where you had to start at the bottom doing dogsbody work”.
The young Pamela Hallam now had a few quid and could be found at the local hotspots of the day: The Fellmongers, The Fort, The Jamo, The Colleen Bawn and The Bridge House near the bank that she would sometimes frequent after work.
“I used to love The Foresters ‘cos it was so lively, so friendly and so happy and always full and everybody knew everybody, and there was never any trouble in there…You could get drunk just on the aura of it,” claims the young banker who could never reveal to her teetotal mum that she had been anywhere near a pub!
“I’d stay over at a mate’s and go home in the morning with a hangover and hope I didn’t look too rough,” she confesses like a naughty girl.
The Blue was always a favourite place for Pam: “I loved walking round all the stalls and having breakfast in the caffs… I also had a part-time job in Thorowgoods, the furniture shop, doing the accounts.”
In 1970, Pam married and had two lovely daughters, Samantha and Donna, although the marriage didn’t last. It was also the year that her beloved father died while on holiday in Spain.
In the bank, Pam got to know a lot of the local publicans who were customers, and she would often visit their pubs. “I used to watch ‘em joking and laughing with the people, but there was one that stood out, Eugene Ward, an amazing Irishman with ginger hair who had the Albert Arms near the Elephant, who talked me into doing a few nights behind his bar.”
Over time, Eugene trained Pam up to know all there was about the pub game. “I really enjoyed it, and from then on I always wanted a pub of me own – I didn’t want to be a barmaid, I wanted me own pub! I wanted to be that person laughing and joking with customers,” she says. But the bank job paid the bills.
Another Barclays customer, Dave Griggs, who had a local printing firm that employed a lot of staff, would ask Pam to supply him with all the right notes and coins he needed for the weekly pay packets. This went on for some time and Dave would take Pam for lunch as a thank you.
Lunches turned into dinner dates, they eventually became a couple and Dave adopted Samantha and Donna.
Pamela worked her way up to being in charge of standing orders and direct debits and stayed at Barclays for over 20 years: “It was having to get the girls ready for school, off to school and picked up later. That took its toll, so I left.”
But Pam became bored. She tried various part-time jobs, but none satisfied, while all the time, at the back of her mind, was the dream she had of running a pub.
Dave realised this and said: “If that’s what you want to do, do it.” So, they bought their local pub – The Old Manor House on Bush Road, by Silwood Estate, which was turned into the Villa Romana restaurant near the McDonalds drive-thru and Lidl, on route to Deptford. It’s now converted into flats.
Pam was happy. She was the perfect host and was loved by all her customers. “One day,” she begins, “Dave says, ‘Why don’t we get married?’ So that’s what we done.”
Running the Manor was a great five years for Pam: “The people in that pub were the most friendliest, helpful, nicest people I’ve ever met,” she remembers nostalgically.
But this time, it was Dave who couldn’t get the work-life balance correct and wanted to go back to printing and leave the hectic pub life behind. “He wanted to live in a home, not a pub.”
The Griggs moved out of Bermondsey, the girls grew up and gave Pam and Dave four grandchildren, and they all live around Welling these days.
Sadly, Dave passed away in November 2024 and Pam finds solace in having had “a good life, where I met some amazing people and made some wonderful friendships… I don’t think I could ask for anything more.”
