A memory bank of a community’s collective history has launched.

St Helier Memories includes an aural and written history of residents’ recollections of life before the estate was built, its construction, and everything after.

As the initiative of Circle Library manager Margaret Thomas, heliermemories.org.uk features memories of school life, celebrations, accidents, bombs during the Second World War and sports clubs such as Rosehill boxing club.

Ted Thomson, a greengrocer, is featured talking about his father – also Ted Thomson – who was known as one of the best boxers on the estate.

He said: “I used to box at Rosehill boxing club. My dad was a schoolboy champion. He came off the estate and that particular era had some very good boxers.

“Boxing was encouraged in all the schools then. The gloves were big enough to stop them getting hurt if they were taught properly.

“Fortunately I was taught by my dad who was very good, so they tell me.”

The website also includes collective memories of Alfred Smith Funeral Directors, founded in 1881 by Alfred Crawford Smith, a hat box maker of Southwark who, after losing one of his children, decided he could better the services of other undertakers.

Mr Smith and his wife Caroline had 22 children, six of which were sons, and opened his first premises at 101 Wrythe Lane in 1934 when the St Helier estate was still being built, moving to their present location at 304 Wrythe Lane, Rosehill in 1939.

The memory bank cites one of their most memorable funerals as that of Stanley Parish who died 1936 of a broken spine when his leg was trapped in a rope tied to a tree being felled and he was catapulted into the air.

His funeral cortege on April 16 was watched by several thousand people.

Memory bank project manager Cheryl Bailey said: “We felt the community is not what it used to be and this is a way to regain that feel for the estate. This is by the community, for the community, it really belongs to them.”