Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Bland, Michael and Cynthia (O2001.1) |
| Interviewee | Michael (MB) & Cynthia Bland (CB) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
| Date | 11/01/2001 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 2001.1.
Interviewee: Michael (MB) & Cynthia Bland (CB)
Date: 11th January, 2001
Venue: Bengeo
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: JR here. It's Thursday 11th January 2001 and I'm preparing a tape to go to see Michael Bland this afternoon at Bengeo. Michael and his father had an electrical business at no. 6 St. Andrew Street, Hertford. The property is now occupied by Hertfordshire Graphics.
I've arrived at no. 7 and we're ready to go. So, did your father have this shop before you were born at no. 6 or did you come from another town? What happened in the beginning?
MB: My father was born in Ware at the end of 1899. He was then going to train as a solicitor at Hare & Co. at Much Hadham. He stayed there until the First World War broke out and when he became 18 he was called up. He went to train at the Marconi Wireless Office which was at the bottom of Aldwych in London. He then got posted to various ships at the end of the war and stayed in there, until the war ended.
I assume that he got so intrigued with wireless that he then decided that he couldn't follow in the solicitor business. He then started a company in Ware, in West St. and as LG Bland. He was there for about three or four years and then moved to Hertford and bought the premises in St. Andrew St. somewhere about 1929.
JR: Yes, that tallies with the street directories because when I spoke to you I thought you said '22 and I couldn't find a Bland there until much later.
MB: It was in one way a courageous move and in another way a stupid move because Ware and Hertford in those days, even more than now. were absolutely daggers drawn against one another, and for somebody to be born in Ware and then start a company in Hertford, I personally think was a terrific risk.
JR: Do you?
MB: Looking back, obviously the whole system worked and it took off and all was well, My grandfather used to tell the story of how on Sunday mornings they used to have quite regular fights. Having gone down and bathed, washed really, in the River Lea somewhere near the fall, near Allenbury's. After that they used to have, quite often, now every Sunday morning, fights between them and the youth of Hertford and he used to say, "Goodness help you if you got caught the wrong side of the river when the fight was over. You had to get back."
So to start with all that animosity going on between Hertford and Ware and then move, being a Ware person, and then start in Hertford, I would have thought was ridiculous, but it worked.
JR: But he didn't ever have any problem with it, did he?
MB: No, I don't think so.
JR: Do you think it's just a youth thing, youthful spirits?
MB: I don't think so. When I had the company and ran the company, and when my father was still running it, there was definitely, with the old people in Hertford, a great feeling against the people in Ware.
JR: Really?
MB: Yes. This is nothing to do with the company or the family. I think it possibly stems back to all the arguments that used to go on hundreds of years ago about the tolls across the River Lea. Whether that was the beginning of it, I don't know, but there was still this great feeling, Hertford versus Ware.
JR: I've heard of it but I didn't know it came as late as that into the century' It doesn't happen now does it? It's rather a joke than reality?
MB: Nothing like that happens, but still the old people in Ware have definitely a bad feeling about the older people in old Hertford. It's changed so much because you've got these new estates that have now sprung up. I don't know what the percentage is but a large percentage of the population have now been imported from goodness knows where so those old feelings have gone.
JR: Yes, it's diluted. OK well that's a good start, isn't it. So, when he moved into these premises in St. Andrew St. you weren't born then, were you?
MB: No, I think he had it for a year or so because I gather it was in quite a state and had to be decorated and repaired. He actually moved into the premises in 1930 when he married my mother. The company was moved over to no. 6, St. Andrew St. from Ware. I was born in 1933.
JR: I've got a copy of Kelly's here. 1936. No. 2, John Barber, Coal, Coke, Corn & Seeds' merchants and Thomas Barber is in the same building. No. 2. Skerman & Son at No. 4 and Leslie G. Bland at no. 6, Electrical Engineers and Leslie G. Bland at No. 6 to live.
MB: We lived over the top, yes. The basement and the ground floor was the shop and the works and stores underneath and we lived on the two floors above that. A very frightening place to live.
JR: Tell me why.
MB: It used to howl and whistle. It had, amongst other things, an enormous chimney. If you shone a torch up it you would see the hand-holds where' chimney boys went up the chimney.
Starting down in the cellar, which was the domestic bit when it was a house, the kitchens and all the rest of it, and I think there was a lot of timber in it and every time the wind blew it creaked and it
groaned. Quite frightening, quite honestly, particularly for a child of six. I used to be sacred to death at times. I'm not sure that the rest of the family wasn't scared either, to be absolutely honest with you.
JR: Is it true that the chimney is Tudor? I've heard that it is.
MB: I've heard that it is. I don't really see that it can be, if the house is Queen Anne. Perhaps you could have a house that was built round an existing chimney. People have told me that it's a Tudor chimney. I honestly don't know. Some organization from London came down and were very excited about this chimney and took various pictures from inside and outside. There are definitely what looks like remains of a Tudor base to that chimney when the new brickwork was put on top of that.
JR: I would have thought that area of the town was possibly the oldest area because Old Cross, for instance, has got a very, very, long history and it's just there.
MB: Well, I think the original ford was across, as you go down St. Andrew St. somewhere I gather on the left of the bridge as you go over the Lea.
JR: Supposed to be, yes, the narrowest part, down probably near Barbers' Yard, down that bit of dry dock.
MB: Yes, the river would have been narrower and spread out more before everybody built the buildings and enclosed it in a narrower space. I believe there are traces of red clay there which is thought to be the old ford.
JR: To go back to the building, can you describe what it was like? I mean nowadays it's Hertfordshire Graphics and you walk in and it's modern-looking inside and you go down the stairs if you want to see Rod Lewis. He sits in a carpeted basement with a computer. What was it like in your day, when you walked in that door?
MB: In my day you walked in the front door because he had it as a shop. Just to clear this up in one go, as soon as I took over the company the shop was a complete waste of time and money. We were electrical contractors. We had so much work outside. I immediately shut the shop and we used that room for stores. But in his time you walked in the front door, the shop. There was a counter on the left-hand side and you walked round behind the counter and you could then get to the office at the back with a long passage and you could then go upstairs.
There was also a door in the shop on the right-hand side which was never opened. In fact I think it was screwed up because of security, but obviously before the shop was opened you could go through. It was quite a nice-looking door, and you could go up the stairs. All that, I think, has now been changed and you can't get through at all because it's all sub-divided into various lettings. Having got to the back of the shop you then went up a very, broad, easy-rising staircase onto the first floor. You then had a bathroom, a very, large bedroom, a large dining room and a kitchen.
You could continue up that same staircase and you went to the top of the building and up there were three further rooms. They were quite dove-tailed in with next door, Barber's property, and you could climb out of one of the rooms out of the skylight. You could then land on a shallow gully, which used to take the rainwater from the roofs and you'd got to undo the next one which James Barber and I now and again did, and you could get into each other's houses over the top of the roofs. I don't know if many people found that out.
JR: You can't still do that, presumably, can you?
MB: I don't think you can, no. I'm not too sure how they've changed these rooms round since I sold it and the developer came and he did a lot of work on it. In fact he did very well and it does look very nice. It looks much better now than when I had it for a works offices and stores.
JR: Yes, a different kind of purpose.
MB: Different altogether, yes. All the time I had it there was a butler sink right down in the basement. There was also a pump. I remember the pump working to get the water into the sink. It did stop working and I think that was when the water table got a bit lower than it used to be, when I was very small.
JR: You were telling me just before the tape came on that you did get problems with flood water coming up into the butler sink.
MB: Yes, it seemed to happen on average about every five years. You had to get the amount of snow and the amount of rain just right. If you had quite a bit of snow and the snow began to melt and at the same time you got a lot rain for a day or two, obviously the water built up. And two days alter that, I presume when it had drained down from the hills at Bengeo down to the valley, the river rose and you could sometimes get water gushing up the butler sink. The waste from that obviously went straight down into the River Lea.
There was also a well just in front of the butler sink. The way we used to get rid of the water, we made a small hole in the top of the stone that covered the well and the water used to come up into the sink, go over the top and go down through the hole in the well and disappear. We never got more than about 3" of water on the floor, because we managed to get rid of it.
JR: Yes, that's still quite a lot though.
MB: It's quite a bit, yes. It used to come up with quite a pressure. We put all sorts of things over the waste in the sink, but we could never keep, the pressure was so much that we could never keep the water down. We could never plug it up in any way. Since then I gather the well has been covered over completely since the company's been sold.
I have been down into that cellar. It looks completely different. It looks a very nice warm comfortable place which it never did in the time that I had it.
JR: Although you were frightened in this house, because it gave off certain noises, particularly when it was windy, did you find it an exciting place to live when you were a child?
MB: I don't think I thought about it that much, really. I remember it as being very, very cold, very, very draughty. It got a bit better towards the end of the time.
My mother died when I was six which was in 1940, which was the time when I moved out. We
didn't live there any more. My father and I went to live with my grandparents back in Ware so it was just kept as a company.
A lady called Miss Stevens was billeted, the war was on. the upstairs wasn't being used, so she was pushed in there and she lived there throughout the war as a tenant. As far as an atmosphere went I think it was one of the things I grew up with and accepted. It didn't make it any better because the Barber company next door used to store a lot of grain and corn in their cellar in those days so there were quite a lot of rats running around. And the only division between Barbers' cellar and our cellar was a bit of feather-edged boarding that had a gap underneath it for about a foot so tile rats could run in and out. And I have vivid recollections of my father going down, it seemed quite regularly, going round trying to kill those rats in the middle of the night and thumping about with lumps of iron and all sorts of things. It doesn't add to the peace of mind of a child up to the age of six.
JR: Now, there's another property between you and Barber's, the one that we now know as a hairdresser. How did that fit into the scheme of things because as you're talking now, it sounds as though Barber's was right next door, but it was actually next-door-but-one.
MB: The three properties, I couldn't actually say from memory what was what, but they were all so dove-tailed in to each other. Our basement went underneath the whole lot. It went underneath next door. The next door in those days was Skerman, the bootmaker. And then it you went up to the floor over that you had our bathroom over the top of them. Then going right up even more you had our top floor that went over Skerman's and a bit over Barber's as well and so you had this dove-tailing. It was a good thing that James Barber. who took over his company and I [who] took over my father's got on so well because when we got to the trouble of painting and decorating we used to do it together and sort it out, otherwise I don't know who would have decided who had to paint what bit.
The developer who bought my property fortunately managed to buy Barber's property as well, which saved a lot of trouble because he then owned the lot and he did all sorts of alterations. He could put various corridors and stairs back so it's one unit owned by one person now, which is probably more sensible.
JR: So Skerman, or whoever was in that shop, didn't have a lot of room, is that right? He was rather squeezed out by the two neighbours.
MB: Yes, I would say so. All I remember of Skerman's property was he had a shop at the front, coming behind the shop he had what I presume you call a living room and then even further back behind the living room he had a kitchen. And through the kitchen back into what is now the yard of number 6 was a fairly large workshop where he used to not only repair but actually make boots and shoes. I can just about remember sitting beside him and being given a small hammer and knocking nails into his bench to keep me amused at the age of about four, because by five I started school so I wouldn't have been doing it then.
JR: John, or Jack, Turner, mentions Mr. Skerman as taking the shoes from Haileybury to repair, actually walking there with a hand-cart?
MB: He always seemed very busy banging away in his workshop at the back. I don't know much about the Skerman family.
JR: No, except that they were there a long time.
MB: I think they were there before my father brought the property in 1930.
JR: Well. 1851 Census, Samuel Skerman, bootmaker, was there then.
MB: That must have been the Skerman I knew, or his father.
JR: No, 1851.
MB: Yes, must have been his father, or grandfather.
JR: So the family's held that property, the 1841 Census doesn't mention them so they must have come sometime…
MB: …between 1840 and '50
JR: That's a long time to have a business and Wigginton's were there in 1851. They were the predecessors of Barber's, weren't they?
MB: Yes. I used to repair the televisions and we did all the electrical work for the two Wiggintons. There was Miss Wigginton and a Mr. Wigginton. I don't think either of them married and they lived up North Road, just before you got to the hospital.
JR: No. 41 on the corner of Cross Lane. I've got the 1924-5 directory, at number 2 lived Barber and Wigginton, so that's when Barber came, just before you.
MB: I don't know where they came from. Mrs. Barber was Italian.
JR: They came from Castle Street. They had a depot round there. But I think the original Barber arrived in town, he worked at the Town Mill, and then married a widow who kept a pub round in Railway Place [possibly the Albion].
MB: I know he had a wharf down beside what was the bus station and I think they used to get stuff running up by barge. I remember various sacks being lifted off the barge into their warehouse which was beside the old bus station.
JR: Now, you obviously knew the people who lived round that area. I mentioned Jack Turner who was older than you. Before you moved to Ware, did you make any friends there, children of your own age, or were there none living there?
MB: No, I think only the two Barbers. There was Peter who was quite a bit older than me and James who was a bit younger than me.
JR: I always think it's a bit tough on a child living right in the centre of town, where there's not much room to play. What did you do when you were little, for play?
MB: There was a lot of room at the back because what eventually ended up as stores, Nissen huts, garages, all that was a large garden which had a fountain at the, bottom and gold fish. My grandfather used to come and help my father out and do the gardening - he was retired. He was a fairly large chap and every now and again I used to get round to the back of him and regularly but not intentionally get knocked into the pond and he used to scoop me up and I used to get taken in, put in the bath, dried down and start again.
There was a sunken garden with a pond in it and that was filled up around the end of the war. When the war ended and all my father's staff came back from the services, shipyards and everything else they'd been posted to, the company then began to grow. They needed the room for stores, garages for extra vans and cars and so that sunken garden disappeared.
JR: So now when you stand and look at Saxon House that was an open space with lots of small buildings?
MB: Looking at Saxon House, the right-hand side would have been Skerman's and later Barber's gardens and the left-hand side would have been what was our garden. Saxon House was built on that open space after the developer got it and flattened all the boundaries and put that up instead.
JR: Yes, so next door the other way, the fish shop, was that Ramsey's when you knew it, or was it Brewster's, because that did change before the war, I think.
MB: I don't remember, but I think it was Brewster's. I remember my mother talking about Brewster's and after that Ramseys came in. The first one I remember there was really the Miss Ramsey. Those were the first people I remember, but I am sure that during my lifetime Brewsters were there before that.
JR: Ivy Ramsey said something about her garden going right round into – I'll have to look [at the transcript] but she said she had a very long garden that went somewhere and I just can't find it, which is wasting the tape. But apparently she went back to see her property and was invited inside, years later. I was never too sure when she actually left because she moved to Bengeo in 1953 but she's been somewhere else in between. By what you're saying, you had the garden behind Ramsey's. didn't you, so where was their bit of garden?
MB: All I know behind Ramsey's was a fairly small square space, which is now concreted over. I don't know anything about their garden. I don't really see where it could have been to be quite honest.
JR: You remember these two Miss Ramseys. Were they helping in the fish shop or was that the father's demesne?
MB: Only going from what my father always said about them, I don't think they did. They were obviously connected with the fish shop but I don't think they actually went down and served. It wasn't a busy road like it is now, but obviously traffic went up and down there and I knew I was allowed as far as the gate and no farther to look out. I remember quite a few army officers walking up and down the town because the army establishment at the other end of St. Andrew St. was busier than it is now and also the war was approaching, quite a bit of army movement, trucks and lorries.
JR: The T.A. building that we now know, was an active army centre then?
MB: I think it is still active for the territorials and cadets. I remember farther up, just opposite there we used to go up and get ice-cream from a shop eventually known as Glenister. And I think I used to go and have my hair cut, painfully I may say by some quite young girl, but she seemed old to me at the time, called Doris.
JR: Doris Shadbolt? Yes, she was on the St. Andrew's Church side, wasn't she? Somewhere near Partridge Antiques [no. 25]
MB: Somewhere there.
JR: Later on you went to live in High Oak Rd. Ware. Edgar told me that. Did you come back to St. Andrew St. quite a lot?
MB: Only to work in the shop and school holidays, yes.
JR: So you still had a limited contact with St. Andrew St. even though you lived at Ware?
END SIDE 1, TAPE 1
MB: I went to the grammar school while living in Ware, so I used to come to Hertford every day. Used to bike most of the time to and from Hertford and obviously used to still go round to 6, St. Andrew St. either to meet my father and bike home with him or whatever.
I then went into the Air Force. I didn't have much to do with St. Andrew St. That was for three years of the normal, two years National Service. After that, when I came out, I joined the company of LG. Bland Ltd. so I got to know it again very well. The middle bit when I wasn't living there he liked me to go over to do bits and pieces.
One job was to look after the accumulators. Most wirelesses worked by accumulator and battery and the accumulators lasted for about a week then had to be charged and the charging room was down in the basement. It wouldn't have been allowed today. There was no ventilation at all. It stank of sulphuric acid and there were sparks flying off the generators and off the bare wires everywhere. I don't think it was dangerous as such because it wasn't very high voltage but you just
connected all the accumulators up with the generator whirring away and these things were charged. You had to make sure you knew which was which so one lot wasn't over charged and the other lot wasn't charged at all. Once a day you took them all down, the ones that'd come in the shop, and at the same time you brought all the ones up that you'd taken down the day before that had been charged.
JR: Did you have friends wanting to come and help you?
MB: No.
JR: Just to go back to Ramsey's, briefly, do you remember them having a smoke hole at the back?
MB: No, don't remember.
JR: What about your family's attitude to people living in St. Andrew St., in the yards, were you allowed to go down these yards, Brewhouse Lane, Oakers Buildings or Colemans Yard, a yard where Cross & Palmer's is now and another across from there, Victoria Place?
MB: The only yard that I did know fairly well was the yard next to ours which was Cross & Palmer because my father's car was serviced and looked after by Cross & Palmer. In those days there was one van only, owned by the company. That was also serviced, and we also used to get petrol from Cross & Palmer's as well, which was a pump that had to be wound up by hand. It delivered half a gallon or one gallon at a time, quite a lengthy business, even with a 6-gallon tank as they were in those days.
JR: What actually happened in the case of your mother's death, was she ill or was it an accident?
MB: She was ill. She went to the hospital for an operation. I'm not getting at the hospital, it was said they didn't get her up after the operation quick enough, which they do nowadays, and she had a clot and died in hospital. She was then 40. I'm not sure it dawned on me, the full impact at the time. When she went into hospital I was shipped off to Ware to live for the two or three weeks as they thought. to my grandmother at Ware. Mother died so I, my father and I then stayed with my
grandmother at Ware.
JR: Would you have stayed above the shop had your mother lived?
MB: I gathered in later years that mother and father were thinking about moving out from above the shop. The shop was getting bigger and they wanted the room at the top of the shop for various stores. The electrical equipment itself was getting bigger. They were thinking of moving up to Bengeo.
JR: Did grandmother become the mother figure in your life?
MB: Yes, I had a grandmother and I had an aunt, also. Her husband was in the war and so my grandmother and my aunt brought me up.
JR: Did you have to serve an apprenticeship with your father or did you get any outside training?
MB: No, the only training, he decided to send me to a London college that was a brilliant college for consulting engineers. Had I finished the course I would have been quite a genius, I think, but the more I got into the course the more I decided I did not like electricity. I didn't know much about electricity and I had no ambition to know much about electricity. It was a bit embarrassing after I came out of the Air Force, I joined the company and they didn't really know what to do with me at
all.
I always vowed I would never sit in an office but that's where I ended up. I quite enjoyed it. I ran the company. Everybody thinks it's hilarious that I'm not an electrician. I know nothing much about electricity at all, but I was very fortunate I had one or two other directors over the year's that were brilliant electricians. They looked after the electrical side of it. I looked after the booking side of it and ran the accounts, VAT and tax. It seemed to work well.
JR: When your father first started in 1928 or 9, was there just him working there? How did he build the company up?
MB: When he started in Ware, first of all, 1922-ish, there was just him. After two years he got another boy, bearing in mind he was only 24/25. He had a boy of about 14 and gradually they built up more staff, continued to build up to the war. Then there was the great hiccup because all the staff one by one got shipped out and it had to be built up again when they came back.
JR: How many staff did you take over?
MB: I took over 20, 24, it was a largish company. We never had enough electricians.
JR: Did you have the County Council contract?
MB: Yes.
JR: When I was working at Hoddesdon the van would come up, L.G. Bland. Wasn't sure if it was your successor. who kept the name.
MB: If it was black van, it was mine.
JR: Yes, I think it was, actually.
MB: Yes, they were all black vans, black with gold writing on until I sold the company and then he changed all the vans and had white with blue writing. When he bought the company from me one of the stipulations was that he wanted to keep the same name.
JR: Which was flattering in a way, was it, because that meant he thought you had a good reputation.
MB: I think it was flattering as such, whether we were happy about it, I don't know. Looking back, I think I'd rather the name had gone and finished altogether.
JR: Have you got any sons?
MB: Yes.
JR: So they didn't want to.
MB: No, he wanted to be a farmer. My daughter wanted to be a hairdresser. They didn't want to join the company, which was the main reason for selling.
JR: Well. Now can I go back to the beginning. Have you got any incidents when you were out on contract, that happened, or any famous people you did work for, anything that might be interesting to put on the record here?
MB: We did quite a bit of work for Lady Desborough at Panshanger before Panshanger was pulled down. We did the county council work. We did most of the Co-op work between here and Enfield. Had contracts with the county council for most of the school work, the police sirens and defence sirens.
JR: Where were they?
MB: They were dotted around the countryside. I think there was a 3-minute warning. One defence was at Bengeo.
JR: Was that an old air-raid siren?
MB: It sounded like an air-raid siren, and a 3-minute siren went off. What on earth you were supposed to do in three minutes I could never quite make out.
The one in Bengeo was notorious. It went off at 3 o'clock in the morning and we couldn't stop the thing. We couldn't find any keys to get in the place to stop it until 5 o'clock the same rnorning. I think the residents went mad.
JR: So who sets these sirens off, the police themselves?
MB: I think it was the police. I know we had to go down and get the keys from the police station, all numbered, whichever siren it happened to be. And these things had to be serviced once a year to make sure they did work. It was just a question of making the motor turn before they really got loud, so as not to cause a panic all over the place.
Going way back I can just about remember some of the houses that my father had a lot of dealings with were the large ones round the country. In those days there wasn't a lot of electricity around so most of them had their own generators, which meant starting oil engines up with a whole room full of batteries. And so they'd got their own private [supply] before the National Grid really got spread around.
The fire bells, he had the contract for looking after. They don't use them now, but when there was a fire all the firemen got called out by a bell in their house which was rung from the fire-station and so I have crawled over may roofs, in Ware particularly, connecting all these wires up from one bell to the next.
On one memorable occasion they lent us the fire engine, with an extending ladder, which was highly exciting.
JR: It was to their advantage to do that!
MB: Yes. And a lot of roofs I've also climbed up, particularly around Sele Farm and various estates when ITV first came in, because everybody wanted the ITV aerials which had to be a separate aerial. We couldn't get the aerials fast enough. We worked at an average of four aerials a day and I think I was on roofs for months, shinning up and down.
JR: You had to go and put them on the chimneys?
MB: Yes, either on the chimney or the side of the house.
JR: I hadn't thought that's what you would do. I'd thought a television shop would do that.
MB: Well in those days. I think there was us selling TVs. There were one or two shops down the town and there was one up the other end of St. Andrew St. which was Carrington's/Currington's, but as my father would still insist upon running the shop as a shop obviously people wanted to buy wirelesses, TVs and so on.
JR: I hadn't realized you were retailing things like that.
MB: Yes, up until the time I took over, then I decided to shut that bit altogether.
JR: What year did you take over, then?
MB: 1966. He continued up to when he was 65. He would be 65 in September 1966, and that's when I took over the company.
JR: So what did you actually sell in the shop, when it was a shop?
MB: It used to say "everything electrical' and I think that just about covers it. Cookers, irons, fridges, everything, including innumerable no. 8 batteries. It was quite a struggle, really, because all the wire, cable etc. was usually kept right at the top. So if anybody came in and wanted a yard and a half of cable you had to leap all the way up to the top of the place and all the way down, cut off a yard and a half, which I couldn't see the fun of doing for the profit. You got on a yard and a half of cable. It just wasn't worth the trouble.
JR: What did you like best about the business?
MB: I suppose it was a challenge. I think it began to lose its glow towards the end of the time when there were so many forms and restrictions. The great burden which really persuaded me to sell it was when VAT came on which just about doubled the load of work that had to be done inside.
It was challenging, it was interesting all the time, the places you got round to, places you saw. It could be hilarious at times. Looking back, I think it was more fun than it was at the time. Some
situations you could tear your hair at.
JR: Because you know the outcome now, then, you didn't. Tell us on tape – when you did decide to sell you had Edgar Lake come and he asked you to do something with the cellars. We'll put that on tape for Edgar's benefit.
MB: Well, Edgar was fairly convinced, based on other properties, that right down in the bottom of the cellar, where all the accumulators were charged - it then turned into a cable store - way back before all this happened apparently it was a wine cellar when the property was a house, and Edgar was convinced that underneath the brick floor there could be some sort of mosaic.. He said there may be something under that floor. We ought to have the bricks up and have a look. Two or three days before I sold the company and signed the documents and hand it over, I met Edgar at the bottom. We went down with a pick axe and we dug up quite a few bricks dotted round the floor but there was absolutely nothing under them at all, apart from ordinary earth.
Also one of the curators at the museum, going way back, was convinced that a panel in the downstairs which is now Hertfordshire Graphics, the shop, a panel over a large fireplace, he was convinced that under all the paper would be a painting. Again when I was selling the place, various people scraped away but there was absolutely nothing under it at all. It was just a plain wooden
panel.
JR: Had the person got any grounds for thinking this?
MB: Apparently in other houses, the same sort of date, the same sort of age. Same sort of lay-out, various paintings, I've been told, have been discovered in various other properties around Hertford.
JR: We mentioned early on about the possible Tudor chimney and the Queen Anne facade of the place. did this person from the museum give you any idea of the date of the building?
MB: It is claimed that way down in the basement there are a lot of bricks, there is a brick passage and it has been claimed by more than one person that they are Roman bricks, therefore it could be Roman foundations. I couldn't see why they couldn't be Roman bricks moved from somewhere else. I don't think it necessarily proves that the foundations or below ground level is Roman. The only thing that can be established the building on top is a Queen Anne building, though I presume
there was something there before.
When Saxon House. the big building at the back in what was the garden, was built that has a cellar under it and a lot of excavation went on round there just before I'd sold the company. Bulldozers were brought in, a large bulldozer going down many feet. It was claimed that a lot of finds would be dug up but hardly anything was found. just one or two odd bits of pottery.
JR: Was that roughly the same time as they were excavating on Mill Bridge?
MB: Yes, it was the same time. I think it was the same people. There was a girl excavating at Mill Bridge and she used to come over now and again and dig a bit more in the trench that was in my bit.
JR: Did they then dig a cellar for Saxon House. or do you mean there was a cellar there already?
MB: I was told that before anybody would grant planning permission I had to pay for various trenches to be dug, exploratory trenches to see what went on. The developer that bought the property from me said, "Never mind about that, I will pay for everything they want. I will dig whatever they want, because I've got to dig a lot out of here. I want to put a cellar in the new place that was going to be built."
He wanted a cellar there so I think he and the archaeologists worked together and whenever they wanted a trench he dug it.
JR: I thought they would have done a dig there, it's something, I think, they have to do now when they're disturbing an ancient area.
MB: Yes, they were very good. They sent me a report on what they'd found, which wasn't that exciting, actually. I had a feeling they were a bit disappointed. I was told for many years that if ever that was developed it held the key to the whole of Hertford because it was just opposite the original ford, but there was nothing there.
JR: I think our ancestors were quite keen to use old building materials again, so probably it'd been recycled many times.
(Pause.)
JR: I hope now we're going to get a ghost story.
MB: Going a long way back, when I used to go as a small child to the basement and all the staff were doing their time sheets, they used to refer to the peculiar going on and tools missing, about somebody taking them whose name is George. And I never really thought about it until much later when I'd taken the company over and I used to go back at night to do various bookwork. I was convinced there were footsteps on the stairs, sometimes coming up, used to stop outside my office. I used to put it down to the wind, very large chimney, used to whistle and creek and groan. I didn't let my mind dwell on it at all.
One of my other directors said you didn't hang about if you were locking up. You shut the door quickly and you went out. Nothing really happened except keys being moved. I had a staff of about 20 so you could never be sure that somebody hadn't moved the keys.
We used to go across the road and buy stamps from the Post Office and you'd come back and after two or three minutes. If you were distracted from sticking them on the envelope, you'd find they weren't there and you usually found them the next day, somewhere. I didn't think much about this until I'd seen a film about Hertford and many other premises in the town had had the same experiences. We used to call this "happening" George and we used to say "George, put the starnps back" and they were back.
Now I sold the company and about three years after, I went in one day and the new owners said to me, "Is this place haunted?" I didn't like to say that it probably was. I said, "Well, what do you know about it?" And he said. they went across the road to buy stamps, and they put them down - there were only two of them that worked in the shop - and if the bell went and they went upstairs to answer the shop sometimes they'd go down and the stamps had disappeared. And the funny part was, he said, "We just say George, put the stamps back," and the next day there's two lots of stamps, the lot we went over to buy in addition and the first lot. He couldn't explain how he hit upon the name George at all.
Nobody had ever seen anything, we'd only heard the creaking stairs. The only one who had claimed to have seen anything, I had a man start in the office, I suppose you'd call him a clerk. He'd been there about three weeks and he knew nothing about this at all and I know nobody had ever said anything to him. He said to me one day, "Who's the old gentleman in a long raincoat that stands at the end of the passage. I've talked to him and said, "What do you want?" and he just seems to disappear. Now, that's the only one of all of my staff that have claimed to have seen anything at all.
TAPE 2 Thursday 1st February, 2001
JR: You explained in the last tape that your mother sadly died when you were six, which meant you had to vacate the premises and go and live with grandmother in High Oak Road. Was that their home already?
MB: Yes, it was a fairly small house. After a few months my father managed to buy a bigger house about four doors away and converted that so we had a bit more comfort.
JR: And you came back here to your school?
MB: Yes
JR: And at that stage, at the age of six you were where?
MB: I was at the PNEU School, at the top of Bengeo, top of the hill on the right hand side, which was run by the Macklin family. There were 2 sisters, Joyce and Marian that actually ran it.
JR: Can you tell us what PNEU stands for?
MB: Parents' National Education Union. It was countrywide. It wasn't just one school. It was a private school.
JR: So how did you get there, physically, every day?
MB: My father, on the meagre petrol ration that you were allowed, had just enough to get from Ware to Hertford, so I used to come with him and in the afternoon to go back by myself by bus. There was a 333 bus that went down from Bengeo to the bus park in the town, and then get on a bus to Ware and then walk up from Ware Station to the other end of Ware where we lived at High Oak Road.
JR: And you were doing this at what age?
MB: From, I suppose, eight but the last couple of years I was at that school. Before that I went down to father's place in St. Andrew St. and waited for him and we went home together.
JR: But then you got promoted to seeing yourself home at age eight. That's very good.
MB: Yes, then at age nine I was entrusted with coming by bicycle when I started at the Grammar School.
JR: Yes, you were saying to me just now, that you actually got in at nine. That wasn't very common, was it?
MB: There was a whole class of us I remember. A class in those days was between 30 and 35, and it was known as Form 1 and we all started at the age of nine. But talking to various people that went to school at my age. most of them started at eleven. There didn't seem to be very many of us that started at nine. There was a great influx at the age of eleven. A lot of them went to the Convent and other places up to the age of eleven. This PNEU took you to nine and then you left.
JR: This class of 35 nine-year-olds, did they stay on in the school at eleven or did they go elsewhere?
MB: No, they went right through the school. There were one or two bright/brilliant characters that got scholarships to Eton and places like that.
JR: When you went to the Grammar School were you considered to be quite important children in the town? Did it have a certain prestige, the grammar school?
MB: We always felt it had. yes, it had. We had a wonder headmaster and I think it was instilled in you that there were levels of loyalty. First of all you had a great loyalty to your family, then to the school, then to the town and then to the country. And I do know it stuck with us. It stuck with me and I'm sure it stuck with all those I went to school with. Having talked to them again since, we still have that great sense of loyalty.
You were made to feel that it was the best school, and we were so instilled in this that we were convinced and still are convinced that it was the best school. We did tend to look down on any other school. I don't care who they were and what they were.
JR: I get that impression. People seem to be proud to be associated with it. That shows in the old boys' magazine.
You had a blazer, did you, with a badge on it and a cap? If you were out in town or in Ware. you had to behave yourself especially well, did you if you were wearing that blazer and cap?
MB: Yes. You only wore the blazers in the summer months. The other terms you wore a grey suit, grey trousers and a grey coat without a badge on it. You only wore blazers in the summer,. But that was relaxed a lot because at that time the war was on and you really put on whatever you could get, with clothing coupons and getting blazers and badges and suits. It should have been got from Graveson's, the agents.
JR: What was the name of the headmaster in your time?
MB: Bunt.
JR: Did he change while you were there. or was that after?
MB: No, he was there a very long time. He was there quite a few years before I got there and he was there for many years after I left.
JR: Who were the other teachers you remember there?
MB: The deputy headmaster was a man called Clouting. He was the one I liked the least. The rest I got on extremely well with. We were all treated very fairly. They gave the impression that they thought the world of us pupils and I think we thought the world of them, looking back.
There was Fred Harvey. There was a man called Tophouse who taught classics. Latin, Greek, another master with one arm, I think he lost it in the First World War, whose name was Irwin. He
taught English.
The thing that did change a bit in the war, we had one or two lady teachers, drafted in because a lot of the masters were called up to fight. I know one, she had some pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy. Field, her name was. Her husband was a bomber pilot, or he was in bombers, anyway. He was the art master at the grammar school and she just came to take his place while he was away. Then as the war ended he came back and she left.
JR: The same thing happened with Len Green. When he went into the army his wife came to take over his job. Maybe if the two of them were teachers it was quite a common thing to do. Because you were there during the war, did you find there was fear during the day, of air raids? Were they always conscious of the fact, because it was right on a hill, that the school might take a direct hit? Were there any air-raid shelters?
MB: I don't remember any sort of fear at all. I think our parents were more bothered. I think the war was going very badly. Talking to my father afterwards I think the older generation were very fearful that the war might be lost. There was a certain faith at 9. 10, 11 that England was going to win the war. It was never mentioned that the war might be lost.
There were some air-raid shelters that were constructed. We only went down them once and they were so cold and damp that the headmaster said, "We're not ever going down those things again."
And we never did.
JR: Where were they?
MB: There were some playing fields in the front of the school and I think they were the only places where these air-raid shelters were constructed. And I remember them being bulldozed in after the war was over and they went back to playing fields.
JR: There was quite a spirit in the school, of patriotism?
MB: Yes, the only animosity was towards the school that was billeted with us. That came from Battersea, Battersea Grammar School. There was definitely very, very [much] ill feeling between the two of us.
JR: But didn't you have a session in the morning, and they a session in the afternoon, or. were you with them?
MB: No, we were completely separate. How on earth the school ran, and how the headmaster and staff ran it, I just don't know because there were two headmasters, two complete staffs. They didn't seem to be there all that many years. I think they left before the war was actually over. It was quite a struggle, only one physics lab. one chemistry lab and so on.
I think the Battersea Grammar School was about the same size as us so you had two schools put in a building designed for one.
JR: Len said they came after Dunkirk. They were not there right at the beginning but they'd been evacuated first of all to Worthing. Whether Worthing was then in the firing line perhaps they thought that if there was an invasion the south coast would be [unsafe].
[Boys and masters were billeted around town]
JR: Did anyone you knew have any of them to stay?
MB: None of my relations, nobody I knew then had any of them staying.
JR: I think Stuart Humphrey was the most famous one in the town. He just died recently and he went to live with the Neales in the Old Vicarage where he eventually lived his life and practised as an [osteopath].. You spoke of animosity between you and them. Did you encounter them much on the premises because you went there at the same time?
MB: Yes. we were there at the same time. They would be in one room and we in another. They staggered, very wisely, the breaks in the mornings and the afternoons. That is we would be out 11:00 – 11:15 and they would be out 11:15 – 11:30. They tried to keep us apart as much as possible. I don't think that was because of any animosity, but because it was easier. The school itself was not really designed for the number in Hertford Grammar. Year by year it got bigger.
There must have been a hundred more when I left than when I started.
JR: Were there any incidents you particularly remember?
MB: No, but if anything went wrong or anything got broken it was never us. It was always the Battersea lot. And I've no doubt as far as they were concerned it was always us.
JR: Well, it's very handy for both parties. So you had to cycle over from Ware every day. Were there many boys coming from Ware?
MB: No, I don't recollect anybody else. There must have been some coming from Ware. I lived at High Oak Road and it was very convenient to cycle to Hertford. You went down the track known as 'under the park'. It's overgrown now. There is still just about a footpath but you could easily ride up there in those days. It was a bit bumpy and pot-holey but it was a short cut from that end of Ware, down past Allenbury's and then down under the park and you came out at the top of Bengeo and cycled down the Warren. Whereas anybody else that lived at Ware, down in the town, they would have cycled along the Ware Road itself. The path has been overtaken now by the tow-path, which is quite a well made-up cycle track and footpath and it's a lot easier to cycle along there.
And the difference now is that when you approach Ware and you're on a bicycle you've got to go up a fairly steep hill, that wasn't there, to get over the top of the relief road. Before the relief road you cycled straight along past the ruin. There was a chimney I remember which was the last remaining building of a public house which was called the Cat and Monkey which used to be for workers on the brick fields that Glaxo is now built over. There's some rotting barges in a cut down there. but when the brick fields were in full swing, nm father remembered in 1918, 1920 there was this small pub.
JR: So You weren't worried about going all that way?
MB: No, in those days I don't think anyone was worried about going anywhere. There were quite a lot of adults, who for various reasons were not called up for the fighting. There were quite a lot of people you passed on bicycles, going both ways, to Hertford and back the other way, to Ware.
JR: Now, you'd been at the grammar school about two years when this bomb fell on Mill Bridge. How did that affect your father's business?
MB: It was on a Sunday morning and he was shaving, living at Ware, and the bathroom overlooked the meads. He was looking out the window and said, "I think a bomb's just landed in Hertford. It looks as though it might be near the shop." And it wasn't long before he had a telephone call and he went over. There wasn't any damage to the fabric of the building. There were several cracks in the ceiling and plaster. Some of the plaster had come down. The main trouble was that all the glass had blown out.
There was a lady living upstairs and everybody was told that if there were any bombs around you got under something to protect you. She got under the bed and was cut very badly by all the glass that came out of the windows and shot under the bed.
JR: Nobody's mentioned an air-raid warning for that bomb.
MB: I don't think there was an air-raid warning. At the end of the war you didn't really get warnings because they were flying bombs, either VI s or V2s [rockets]. Nobody knew when they were coming over.
At the beginning of the war the enemy was picked up on radar. Going backwards and forwards from school quite often you'd hear a colossal bang from somewhere and you knew another one had come down.
JR: You had this characteristic droning with those bombs.
MB: With the first ones, yes. Then the engine cut out and the thing came down. The second lot, the V2s, the supersonic ones, the rockets, went right up into the atmosphere and came down. They were so fast you couldn't even hear them. You heard the roar of them coming after they'd actually come.
JR: And the effect of these was much more devastating than the V1s.
MB: Yes.
JR: Barber's certainly sustained a lot of damage so I've heard. Maybe they took the blast off you
because you were slightly farther up the street.
MB: I remember going over with my father into Barber's shop and basically it was the same thing, glass and plaster. There was a bit of structural damage because you ended up with more cracks than you'd had before.
JR: That happened in the holidays?
MB: No memories of if it were term- time or not?
Right, let's switch now to friends. Edgar and ?
MB: Peter Hills. Very few who are still around in Hertford. Most of them seem to have left.
JR: Were there any famous ones in your year? You hear of all these bishops
MB: Yes, a lot of clergy. Yes some of them went to school with me. Some of the bishops, including the Bishop of London, came after me so I didn't know him. One or two deacons and arch-deacons. One has just retired from Gloucester. He was older than me. He was a prefect when I was there. And one in the Isle of Wight who was actually with me. The rest of them were older than I was. I don't think that any school at my time has ever had so many ordinands. At the last count there were fifty something. They all had a reunion in London. All those that could get there. And all these were educated during the time that Thomas Bunt was headmaster.
JR: Was there a great emphasis on religious education?
MB: No, not as such. We had a very short service every morning. I think most grammar schools did, a hymn, a prayer, a reading. We then sat down and had musical education for ten minutes with classical music.
JR: That set a pattern, though.
MB: I don't think it could be done now because with the size of the schools you would need such an enormous hall. We were very fortunate that the whole school could fit in the hall in one go.
JR: Right. What about socialisation with other schools in the town? Did you meet, say, boys from the Cowper School?
MB: I think they were basically unknown to us. Frankly, we just didn't meet them. I think we kept ourselves to ourselves. That's my reading of it. I don't know whether anybody else you've interviewed contradicts me.
JR: No, I haven't asked anybody else.
MB: We had cricket matches and rugger matches with other grammar schools.
JR: You had to travel there?
MB: Yes. they came to us or we went to them. It definitely grew after the war because travelling was so much easier.
JR: And did you have any contact with the girls' grammar school at Ware?
MB: Not very often. Right at the end, not very often. in the sixth form they used to get together a bit.
JR: Christmas parties, dances?
MB: No. One or two strictly controlled dances right at the end of wartime. They used to send two or three girls that were carefully closeted away at the back of the chemistry lab, Physics lab because the Ware Grammar School hadn't got the facilities of Hertford Grammar School and if we were doing School Cert exams where they hadn't got the equipment at Ware. They were very carefully escorted in and out.
JR: By whom, their teachers?
MB: No. They used to come over by bus. They were then met at the front steps and taken to the labs.
JR: And what did the boys think of this?
MB: They thought it was rather odd. When I was doing school cert there was a glassed-off area at the back for certain experiments, and they were there. It was like a glass box. We got on with our bits and those two or three got on with their bits.
JR: And did the teacher go in and out of the glass box?
MB: Yes. They didn't join as a class in any shape or form at all.
JR: None of your boys went over to Ware Grammar School to do anything?
MB: No. There were one or two very lethal hockey matches and that's the only contact that I remember. We never went over for any sort of education to Ware Grammar School.
JR: Generally, did you think you were quite happy at this grammar school?
MB: I was very sorry to leave, I enjoyed it.
JR: So, would you have liked to have gone into further education, in the sense of university?
MB: No, I was just sorry to leave the grammar school.
SIDE TWO, TAPE TWO
Cynthia's grandmother and the story she used to tell the family.
CB: Grandma always acted like a lady. We understood they lived in Southwark and it was a very large house and they had servants and they had a seat in Southwark Cathedral. Suddenly my grandfather died. He was in his 30s we believe. And after that my grandmother had to leave the house, but where she moved to, I don't know.
There were four children so I think they must have been married for quite a little while - Guy, my father Arthur, Edith who went to Canada and Winnie. The family name was Edmunds.
Then after a time my grandmother married again, a Mr. Webb, nothing to do with the factory in
Hertford, don't know where they lived but they came to Hertford [husband died] and after a time she married the Revd. Martin Ashby at Hertford Baptist Church. He was a widower. I don't know what year they married but she died at 99, still being a lady.
JR: And you were saying that there is a plaque at the Baptist Church and it has a Mrs. Ashby inscribed on it as having laid the foundation stone, but it's not?
CB: It was the first Mrs. Ashby.
JR: Yes, but for a while you thought it might be her?
CB: Yes.
JR: When did the Revd. Ashby die?
MB: Ask Edgar.
JR: Yes. And one of her sons was Guy Edrnunds who had a business
CB: Yes, he was a baker opposite the library.
JR: If anyone's listened to the tape of John Hart, who lived in Hart's Dairy at Old Cross [now McMullen's social centre] he was a friend of the son of Guy. David Edmunds were a high-class bakers, very fancy cakes.
CB: I don't know much about them.
JR: I've heard people say they used to go and gaze in the window and imagine they could afford to buy them and definitely couldn't. Your father, what line of business did he go in?
CB: He had a hairdressing business at 7 Salisbury Square, which is a little bit along from Oddbins. It was Wiltshire Café, once.
[AuntieWinnie stayed in Hertford and married a Mr. Skerman, works manager at Stephen Austin.]
JR: Was he any relation to the family who had the boot shop?
CB: No.
JR: So, you two met very early on.
CB: We did, but we don't remember each other at all.
JR: Tell me about schools.
CB: I went to the PNEU and that closed and I went to Brook House at Wormley, used to get there on the bus. That school closed as well and as I was 15 I could leave school then, much to my delight and then I went to the County Hospital.
JR: At 15?
CB: Yes, as a nursing cadet. It was a new course just started and it got you into nursing early. You couldn't start until you were 17 and a half to actually nurse and we went round all the departments and it was very good training because you knew how each department worked. And it didn't matter if it was in the kitchen or the path lab or physiotherapy, it didn't matter. Then I started my training.
JR: Did you have to attend lectures?
CB: In our own time, in the hospital, upstairs. The surgeons gave you the lectures. Pay was five shillings a week of which I gave half-a-crown to my mother and half-a-crown I kept. But I used to cycle. And we had uniforms and we had two meals.
JR: Where were you living at that time?
CB: I moved into the hospital just after that because my parents moved away and so [aged] 15-17 I was at 12, Stanstead Road, green-roofed houses. Then I lived in the hospital which we had to do. It was compulsory for three years.
JR: So what about time off?
CB: Very little once you started training. We had one day off a week when I selt, mostly. We didn't have much money. Even when I finished training I got £16 a month. But we always used to go and get a cup of coffee and a cake at the Regal Café when we got paid, the luxury of the month. [Fore Street, south side, about half way along.]
JR: Who were the notable people there? Was Dr. Mortis there?
CB: Yes, sister Lacey, Mr. Bedford, Mr. Coleman, Millie Howard. We worked hard.
JR: Did you stay on there when you finished training?
CB: Yes.
JR: And did you specialize?
CB: I was Staff Nurse, surgical ward, 36 beds.
JR: That's people going for operations or have just had them.
CB: Yes. Then I went into the theatre for a while and then we were married so I went back in the evenings and worked in casualty.
JR: Did you like working in casualty?
CB: Oh, yes.
JR: And also in the theatre? You didn't find it daunting?
CB: No, loved it, you're so busy.
JR: What was your part in the theatre? The classic thing of the sister handing instruments over?
CB: Yes, at times. We used to have to boil all the instruments and get the trolley ready.
JR: Did you ever know the person who was lying on the table?
CB: Oh yes. It was important getting them better and you didn't think about it, really. I think they liked it.
JR: They were reassured?
CB: Yes
JR: You weren't to do with the maternity ward?
CB: Yes, we had to do that as well, but I didn't do midwifery. Didn't have disposable nappies. We had to sluice them all down, bucketfuls and bucketfuls of them. Then they had to go into the laundry.
JR: What was the highlight of the time you were working there?
CB: I think seeing patients coming back when they were well.
[Cynthia then describes being knocked over by a car in the Ware Road, aged six. She was taken to her maternal grandmother's house in Villiers Street. The motorist wasn't charged as Cythia had run over the road on impulse.
Mother's maiden name was Johns.
Grandfather was a tailor and there was a possible link with the other tailor in Villiers St., grandfather of Ian Osborne.
And upon further reflection I now wonder whether there was any link to the Johns family of Biggles fame?]
(Pause)
[Then Michael gives an account of the grammar school choir and the land mine which landed near Ware.]
MB: The grammar school had a choir led by Dr. Prinz, he had a German name. He escaped from Austria. but German names in the war with us at our age were not exactly popular. Secretly I thought a lot of him. I liked music. I joined the choir and we did concerts. "Trial by Jury” I was the first bridesmaid which did cause a schmozzle. And we used to sing for the troops billeted around Hertford and sometimes we did concerts on a Sunday morning in the Corn Exchange.
There was a big canvas curtain that came down and there was no electricity to pull it up. The caretaker, who was a short, stoutish fellow, had to pull a lot of ropes to get this thing up. It had a picture of the arms of Hertford and a very large painting of Hertford Castle on the front of it, rather faded.
And the land-mine. One landed somewhere near Ware. The bomb disposal people made it safe, or they thought they'd made it safe and they moved it into the Priory at Ware as an exhibit. After a day or two something happened and somebody heard the thing ticking, and there was obviously a second fuse in it. And the army were called back and they moved it and got it into one of the sand pits somewhere near the cemetery at Ware, just about in time when it blew up. If it had happened at the Priory it was have flattened half the High Street. I was at Hertford Grammar School when it went off and I came remember a colossal blue flash and colossal flame.