Interviewed by Unknown
Date: 01/01/1992
Transcribed by Unknown (updated by Susie Hunt, Oct-Dec 2014)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no O 1992.4
Interviewee: Olaf Howard Rollins (OHR)
Date: Unknown
Venue: 13 Southfield Road, Hoddesdon
Interviewers: Unknown (Interviewer)
Transcriber: Unknown (updated by Susie Hunt, Oct-Dec 2014)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
[Start of side A of tape]
SCHOOL IN THE BAD OLD DAYS
We went to visit Mr. Rollins, a friend of Claire Prue.
Interviewer: Can I ask what your name is?
OHR: My name? Howard Rollins. I was born on the 28th April 1929
Interviewer: Where do you live?
OHR: I live in Hertford now 131 Cecil Road at Hertford
Interviewer: What was your life at school when you went there?
OHR: I started in a tiny little infants school at Bengeo till I think you went there in those days at 5. There was no nursery schools. And, um, at 6 or 7 you transferred to the school I was telling you about and the photograph it’s associated with, that was a church school just beside Bengeo church. There's a huge block of flats built on it now but it was a very Victorian looking building with iron railings all round it, the usual type of thing, boys in one school and girls in another. You weren't even allowed to speak to the girls, couldn't even go near the railings. You got a whacking if you were caught anywhere near the railings talking to the girls. There was a set of railings across the middle of the two playgrounds and you must not talk to the young ladies or go near 'em. And er there were two classes in that particular school. One run by Miss Williams the lady who I told you about in the questionnaire. She ran the school with a rod of iron she did.
Mr Bottomley was the Headmaster but he preferred a very quiet life, if he could help it. She instilled all the discipline for instance when she came to school in the morning, she lived in Duncombe road which was only what 500-600 yards from the school but she lived there with her sister. Very nice little old lady her sister was. But six prefects had to go round every morning and stand outside her house along the hedge facing out into the road like a row of soldiers and the one nearest the gate, when he heard the gate click at the entry as she came out in her bonnet and bags and handbag he had to open the gate, swing the gate open and she came and stood on the path in front of you and you all had to sort of chorus, “Good morning, Miss Williams,” and raise your caps because you got a good hiding if you didn't raise your caps to any adult when they said good morning or good afternoon, and then she used to sweep on in front saying, “Good morning Boys,” and then they used to follow her two by two by two all the way round to school. And she was escorted to school every morning by six prefects. (laughter) Like all her bridesmaids following! Yes! And of course as soon as them in the playground were all whizzing about playing saw her coming in the distance it was like the pall of doom descending on the school, because she was approaching. You see how bad it was! We used to get up early in the morning, about five in the morning reading comics or anything to try to take my mind off not going to school. You were petrified, there's no other word for it.
Then having got into the class she'd sort herself out. It was a 9 o'clock start and she'd come out to the side entrance of the school with a whistle and she'd blow one blast on this whistle and the whole playground would freeze like statues, like that game you play. And then on two pips - pip-pip - they all formed up in four lines, bom bom bom bom and you dare not even move or give her a dirty look and then on the next pip the first line went in and on the second line went in, the third line went in and the fourth line went in, and then you filed in and sat down at your single desks they were then and you just sat there. No noise! She didn't have to say don't make a noise cos you knew if you made a noise you'd cop a good hiding, (laughter) and then it was a quarter of an hour with the tables. I don't know if you have these great big – ooh they were huge things used to put 'em over the blackboards and it was one two three four five right down to twelve times tables. Big ones and you had to sit there for ten minutes or quarter of an hour memorising all this terrible table and then she'd have it rolled up and pick on you individually to recite the four times table, the ten times table, or the twelve times table and lo and behold if you couldn't recite them off like a parrot (laughter) there was dire consequences.
Interviewer: So for about ten minutes you just sat in silence memorising?
OHR: Memorising oh yes, Petrified that you were going to be asked
Interviewer: Not able to actually learn anything......(hearty laughter)
OHR: She did, she absolutely – I was telling Clare the other week I broke my arm on a Sunday. I used to get delegated to go down to the Warren House in Bengeo to fetch beer and lemonade for me mum and dad in an old bag, you know. I'd got a bike then, I'd bought it by doing a paper round but it had hard tyres in those days it didn't have pump up tyres they were those hard rubber things. I was going down New Road and I'd got my mate on the back, Terry Sargeant, on the carrier, and bottles and bags and things and we hurtled down round the corner whoom into the front of the pub - the bike, the bottles and I broke me arm! On the Monday morning up to the hospital in plaster, broke it! I begged and pleaded with my mother not to take me back that morning because she was going to hit me, see, for being clumsy, cos she'd hit Frankie Sparks in Duncombe Road the week previous for falling off his dad's horse and cart and breaking his leg. He come in on crutches and got a good hiding so I knew I was going to get one and lo and behold me mother left me at school and said don't you lay a hand on him (laughter) She'd no sooner gone than I got a good hiding on the other hand for being clumsy. Quite a character she was! It was a church school of course, right next to Bengeo Church erm Monday afternoons ha ha - nature classes - drawing. I don't know if you do it now but these are thick books with like a erm oiled leaf in between the pages. They're not crayons as such, they're pastels coloured pastels and over the weekend when you were on the walk with your mum and dad on a Saturday and Sunday you'd have to try and pick up some nature kind of spray, be it a flower or blackberry turning colour or whatever for your Monday afternoon lesson, you see. Well of course you never used to and of course get Monday lunchtime go home to lunch and by then there was about six of us used to meet up the top of my road round about Warren Park Road and we used to sort of be a bit desperate, six of us, haven’t got a flower between us, so we used to go up by Bengeo Churchyard, course we were all in the choir, and hop over the wall at this end with the church between us and the school and crawl about looking for daffodils anything that grew (laughter) and she used to be on a big stool in our classroom looking out of a tiny little circular leaded window, watching, see and she'd put all your names down on a bit of paper and then you'd all come, all line up with your daffodils and she'd say, right come out here. Rollins R, Haines, boom boom about ten of you, come out here, throw them flowers in there. So you'd have to open the big stove throw all the flowers away and line up at the big desk. She had one of them great big desks and put your hand up and she used to belt the living daylights out of that one and then if you squealed she'd belt the living daylights out of that one (bang and laughter) and go and draw the one on the next desk to you. Whatever some other goodie little boy or girl had brought in you see! But you had to get a whacking for that. Fairly regularly every Monday. (laughter)
Interviewer: Amazing
OHR: And of course everybody accepted it. It was extraordinary you see. There were what 30 odd 35-40 in that class. Mr Bottomly had 30 or 40 in his. He wasn't anywhere near as strict as that other one. He was the Headmaster of that small school but he very seldom laid a hand on anybody. We were older of course. His class you moved on after two years of her straightening you up !! (laughs) You moved into his class for the next two years you see.
Interviewer: You were about 7
OHR: 7 and then 7 in to Miss Williams class and between 7 and 9 she straightened you up. 9-11 Mr Bottomly's and then you came down into Hertford to Cowper School which is where opposite where the fire station is that dual carriageway wasn't there and opposite the fire station is blocks of flats as you come down London Road, and there was a massive boys school on that corner and the top of the school playground the little alley way went right the way down to St John's Hall and the churchyard at the back there and there was a girls school – I think it's an infants school now along the carriageway at the end of the churchyard. Is there – Longmore, yes cos a bomb dropped there. We hadn't been there many days when we'd moved down there when a bomb dropped in the playground one night and demolished the buildings so we were all off school for six weeks then while they reorganised all the schools in Hertford, and en we went to Cowper School which was total boys school and there was the usual regime of erm 1, 1B, 2A, 2B ,3A,3B six major classes as you got older, each master – in fact we had a mistress there – always remember the kerfuffle there a lady teacher, actually started while I was at school there. There was a right to-do about it in the school, really extraordinary to see a lady teacher. All the masters had specialised subjects, you know, history maths and this sort of thing and so of course, while you had your own classroom you did move about a bit like comprehensive these days, but as a class totally and if you were going to say Mr Budgen's class for history then the whole of his class would go to your classroom for maths because our bloke in 1A was the maths teacher, that sort of thing. I don't know how many'd be there. 2,3,400 I should think in that boys' school there.
There was corporal punishment I saw one or two rarely beaten badly but er you had to do something fairly drastic like um getting stuff out the fruit machines in Hertford you know because in them days it used to be outside the grocers and the sweet shops there used to be big machines let in the wall. They used to be on railway stations as well. They had all little glass cubicles in which the shopkeepers filled with an apple and an orange and a banana or two apples and an orange and one thing and another. There were all these little glass things all full of sweets and you used to put money in and it used to go down and you could open the little trap door and help yourself you see. But we used to file foreign coins to make 'em fit and if the shopkeeper heard the coin keep on clattering through and come out the bottom he used to come out and catch you and take you to school and you used to get a whacking for that! But very seldom they used to do corporal punishment there. Gambling was a bad on. They used to whack if they caught you gambling. Throwing pennies up against the wall in the school playground for pennies and halfpennies they used the nearest one to the wall perhaps four of them they used to warn them perhaps several days running and then one of the teachers would really get angry. At assembly they always caned them at assembly, in the morning in front of the whole school. Wasn't an individual thing always used to be done in front of the whole school in the morning, frighten everybody else to death!
Interviewer: It’s like capital punishment I mean, only they hang people.
OHR: (loud laughter) Oh yes, yes
Interviewer: Can you remember being caned in front of the whole school?
OHR: I mean it was um brutal. It was – you'd be held over the desk by two other boys, arms over a desk and held out, trousers taken down and a four foot cane. It wasn't a ruler or anything it was a real – and the bloke who used to go out on Bill Read I mean he was a nice enough bloke but he used to do all the punishment there and if he hit you three or four times they may say alright you're going to get six strokes of the cane, nobody ever was hit six times. Because they'd be screaming their head off by the time he'd hit 'em four times and couldn't stand.... and that'd be on their bare backside and stretched across a desk in front of three or four hundred people. Oh yes it was brutal but of course, nobody gambled in the playground over the next few months because they knew that's what would happen you know. They warned and warned and then the ring leader would be caned and that would be it and it would stop totally. For thieving in the town say, any shop was almost always four or six strokes of the cane in front of the whole assembly. If they caught anybody they'd leave it to the school – police wouldn't be called or anything like that. Shopkeepers would always inform the school, the Headmaster, that was the way it was done. Then of course if your parents found very often you got another dose at home.
Interviewer: Can you imagine it being held down, bare bottoms whacking in front of the whole school. But you felt that it was sort of fair and yes there wasn't......
OHR: Yes, yes it was immediate justice virtually. It was all over and done with. Yes it was all over and done with an of course, um it affected all the others that saw it. Yes.
Interviewer: You were telling us about your morning school mornings at Bengeo (laughter) Then everybody lining up and then 10 minutes silent work on tables and then the questions -
OHR: Then it would most likely be arithmetic itself. Not tables, arithmetic itself and there was always every morning 10 sums which would be written out by her meticulously on the blackboard. They would be additions, subtractions, multiplications and division sums ten of them and of course you all had your little exercise books which were all collected up and taken home by her every evening, so the retribution always came the next morning for the ten that you'd done (laughs) And er she really used to do everything you see. History I think the great favourite among everybody was reading novels which she used to do to you. She'd pick a well-known piece of prose and she would read perhaps four chapters a day to you, perhaps a half an hour of listening to a well-known book. That was one of the joys of the thing. Um, then she covered history, geography, the whole range she had you all the time.
Interviewer: Could you sort of stop hating her enough to listen and enjoy the stories?
OHR: Oh yes! You got used to it you see, it was as certain as your breakfast the next morning that if you stepped out of line you got a whacking. It was unfortunate if she picked on you so you got a bashing in the morning and then you got picked on in the afternoon to make the tea! That was another petrifying problem to make her an Mr Bottomley a cup of tea. It used to happen in the cloakrooms outside where the coats were hanging you see, and the teapot and everything was out there and if she said right Go and Make the Tea, this was in the afternoon. You thought oh my god. Two high stools to make this rotten tea on and they had cups and saucers, you see, and the thing was getting her tea from that cloakroom, through the door and round onto her big high desk without spilling any in the saucer, because if you did you got take it all the way back again and wash the saucer up and then when you got back you very likely got a clout or another whacking on your hand for being so clumsy. So I used to hate tea making – I didn't mind making it as long as the other bloke took it in. That was another sort of little hurdle to get over during the day but she was I don't know, unstable at times I mean another thing that they used to do was handicraft to some extent. This was waxwork. It’s the only time I've ever seen it done I don't think I've ever seen it done since. This was wax, very coloured waxes. Have you ever seen them, and erm they had small boards, oak boards I suppose about that size ( ? ) and of course they used to hang triangular wise like that ( ? ) all over this big wooden wall, and on here would be bunches of apples, bananas, grapes any kind of fruit and flowers you could think of all meticulously made with coloured was which used to heated and only her favourites used to get invited to the front row to do this and they used to sort of roll it out an cut leaves and put the veins in and the apples would be moulded and the stalks and all stuck on these lovely oak boards you see. Every morning the first monitors in used to open all these cupboard doors and take all these boards out and do 'em with a feather duster and they's all be hung on hooks all over this wall, very pretty but if anyone went through the door and slammed it and one of them fell off the poor bloke by the door used to get a good hiding for letting the door slam! Nothing to do with him. Yeah, a bunch of apples might go Clonk on the floor you see and he'd cop it, near the door for letting the door slam. That was something else she used to do, another was I can remember trays – battles and that sort of thing she used to come up with in history lessons. Um we used to do um big huge trays, I think that was with plasticine, waxes and plasticines and used to do the whole layout of a battle on trays, you know that sort of thing. Very enlightening really I suppose. So for two years she was in total control of you from age of about 7 to 9 . Yes. Formative years, I don't know if you'd call it formative years or not? In that photograph that Clare's got that's the next two years when we were in Mr Bottomley's class, cos he used to go on to book binding and weaving which you see some of them with those little white aprons on. They've ben weaving footstools, those stools with raffia and I got into book binding because we used to bind all our own books in the library. Our own library there and we used to take the hard covers off the books and actually re-bind the books, re-sew them and re-bind them. So to that extent he was you know much more into using your hands and he as I said, corporal punishment from his point of view was negligible.
Interviewer: (Laughter)
OHR: Oh god yeah. It was like being let out of prison really! To know you were going into Mr Bottomley's class after next term sort of thing. It was like a light at the end of the tunnel to look forward to. (laughs)
Interviewer: Did you have a favourite subject?
OHR: Oh I don't know, I don't really remember, don't think I had one in them days. They were all as bad as one another. I used to hate maths cos those ten sums used to be a petrifying thing every morning. They always used to be in front of you all the time. Invariably you got about 8 out of 10 of them wrong (laughter) and had to do 'em again. Oh dear..... We used to go swimming, yeah there was a swimming pool down Hertford so we used to go swimming sometimes. We all had to go to church of course.
Interviewer: Did you all have to sit together in church on Sunday?
OHR: No cos a lot of us were in the choir anyway and then it was bible classes on Sunday afternoon and then church again on Sunday evening cos you were in the choir. And then with a bit of luck weddings and funerals during the week. Funerals were half a crown and weddings were one and thrupence. The church bell always tolled when somebody died. They don't do that now but you could always tell in Bengeo if a man or a woman had died because we used to toll nine times for a man and 6 times for a woman. The church bell always was tolled when someone had died in the living. Us choirboys were very mercenary. We preferred them to die rather than get married you see because it was… (laughter)
Interviewer: *******(laughter) When you hears the bell tolling
OHR: Half a crown that was! (lots of laughter)
Interviewer: *****there was money
OHR: We used to have a big old boy in the back of the choir, Mr Onyon his name was, he lived right up by the Greyhound at the top of Bengeo Street and he had a great big moustache that he used to roll, and a beard and he was white haired and he was huge in his cassock and surplice. We used to be running all round the churchyard on a Sunday morning looking for birds’ nests or whatever and he used to come to the door of the vestry and say – used to clap his hands (bang bang) Come on Boys Get them Cassocks On - and we used to have to race in and get all dressed up, get all the buttons done up and all the little white surplices on and all stand there like a row of angels with him behind you you see, and he used to rule the choir, Mr Onion did, anybody who stepped out of line (laughs) he had about 30 choirboys, cos it was a very big choir then, had 13 young boys and there might have been upwards of 20 men. Terrific choirs, yes. We use to go down the old church once a month to St Leonards right down the bottom just to give it an airing. Every Sunday evening once a month, the last Sunday in the month. It's a tiny little place for the choir there, you were all hidden from the congregation because it is a tiny little arch with the altar through and you were all round there out of the way. So nobody could see what was going on. Down there you were all hidden away (laughs) What days! Shop on the corner, Mr Pickering's shop on the corner opposite the school used to do a roaring trade he did. Sweets for a farthing there! Four sweets for a penny, the old penny, so of course you could get oh gosh, ha'pnny or a penny spending money you could go and get two bits or four bits of something for a penny.
None of the schools had uniform. I hadn't thought of that ! The only school in Hertford that I can remember was the Catholic school, I think it's still there, round Railway Street. I don't whether it's still there. It used to be a Catholic school run by nuns. I think it's down by where Henry Norris is or down where Addis is, one of those entrances down there, there used to be a Catholic School and they always wore chocolate uniforms with bright gold edging round, little boys and little girls used to go the school there, all the Catholics. They wore a uniform. Oh, and Christ's Hospital of course. They were always in their uniforms when they walked around. But no I can't remember if any of the other schools in Hertford having a uniform at all. None of the girls did and we certainly didn't. Of course, Richard Hale. It was the Grammar School then because I won a scholarship there and couldn't go because couldn't afford it.
Interviewer: Why couldn't you afford it?
OHR: Well, you had to pay for everything. You had to pay to go. Uniform , books, everything. I won the scholarship but then my mother and father decided you can't go because we can't afford to pay for all the …
Interviewer: Because they had to have uniform at the Grammar school
OHR: Uniform, but not at Cowper school
Interviewer: And books and things were provided at the Cowper school but not at the Grammar School?
OHR: All sports equipment, uniform, everything had to be bought to conform to go to the Grammar school. Yes. There was what about er I think there from Cowper school there were about 8 of us sat the exam and only 4 out of the 8 eventually went. All passed to go. All got the scholarship but only 4 out of the 8 went.
Interviewer: Were you sorry about that or…?
OHR: Thinking about it afterwards I suppose it would have changed my whole life because my father was a printer and had been – he'd been directed here in 1929 from the Midlands. The print union could do that in those days. You were out of work and the print union could give you a single ticket to go to Hertford because there was a job there. So my father came down from Nottingham and of course he'd been at Simpson Shands and then the Mercury Office. He used to print the Mercury and so when I was 14 he'd already got a job lined up for me in the printing industry as an apprentice. A seven year apprenticeship you see. These were prime jobs if you could get into them, so I went to Simpson Shand at 14 as a printer but if I'd gone to the Grammar School it was education to 16 so I obviously then wouldn't have had an apprenticeship. I wouldn't have gone into printing, so yes I suppose it would have drastically altered my whole life really. I would never have been a printer.
I packed in printing about erm 11 -12 years ago when I was in London for health reasons and travelling that used to get me down and I'd got asthma and they advised me to pack it in because you know ink and that sort of thing. The faster machines go the ink flies off the rollers and it’s in the – you know how mucky you get reading the Sunday newspapers. The inks are very synthetic now they don't dry like they used to so I chucked that job in and got a job at Sharp and Domes where I work now as a security officer there. I've been there for 13 years on the security staff.
Do you want a drink you girls? Boys? What do you fancy? Coffee, got lemonade, all sorts of things. Do you fancy anything a drink? Go and get some then, you know where the glasses are. There are some more glasses up here if you don't. Would you like a cup of coffee?
Interviewer: Well, um
OHR: Let’s go and get some water, or lemonade or whatever you want. There are some crisps out there as well if you want. (crashes....) Shall I put the kettle on. What's the time. Quarter past.
Interviewer: You're not rushing?
OHR: No, I'm not rushing (*****************)
(unclear question)
Erm, what was I? 12 so where would I have been 7 Oh I would have started at the Cowper school by then. War was declared when I was 12 in fact that particular morning we just come out of church when they started fighting over Bengeo. The planes were actually “dedededededed” and that was the first day of the war the planes – we were just coming back from church yeah, about 12 o'clock and I was walking down Parker Avenue home for my mother was shouting and hollering at the gate and I ran and they were already German planes and English planes already fighting over Bengeo and war had been declared at 11 o'clock that morning, while we were in church.
Interviewer: I mean to have it right there …
OHR: Oh yeah, I was in bed one Sunday morning and I heard something - yeah it was early. My mother had shouted at me for breakfast, windows were open, it was a lovely summer morning and I heard a plane coming and that came straight across Bengeo being chased by two other spitfires and hurricanes and he dropped his bombs right across the village, boom boom boom boom boom..one dropped in Beane Road by the North Station where they keep them cows. Next one dropped in a garden just up er Beane Road, and the next one dropped up the hill by the little post office and the next one dropped in Duncombe Road and the next one just missed our Attendance Officer's house, Mr Peat, the bloke who used to chase you if you didn't go to school. It knocked the corner of his house off. The next one went over the school and dropped in Mr Trower's garden at the top of Parker Avenue and the next one went over my house and dropped in the spinney at the back of the house and the next one dropped in Mr Trower's garden. He just got rid of a whole stick of oil bombs as he want across the village being chased and I laid in bed and listened to 'em. They just went “wheeeoooh, boom boom boom boom” and they chased him away you see but there was nothing you could do, you didn't have a chance to move out of bed you could just hear 'em whistling and then he was gone. It was quite exciting in those days! Then in the middle of the night when the V1's started your mother used to get you up, the sirens used to go, and you used to get up and er we had the front room of the house they used to put the big tables in there and then put all boards and that and block 'em off and everybody used to get under the tables when you could hear the V1 coming. It used to chug along and you could see the light of it at the back door and then run under the table and when it stopped – Bang (claps hands loudly) – and then you waited a few seconds it went Booom as it dropped and then everybody round there was safe, sort of thing. At night that used to go on for hours and hours and hours. They used to come over and over and over and then they used to just buzz right over and you knew somebody else was going to get them, or they's stop and you's run and get under the table (laughs loudly!). Then the other one. How many fell in Bengeo? Two of the V2 rockets actually fell by Bengeo water tower. That was one lunchtime. They used to just explode in mid-air high up Booom and then the warhead (lady coughs loudly again) ****and smash into the ground – a ton of explosive that was. But that fell in a gravel pit at Lys Hill, one of them. Can't remember where the other one fell. There was two of those in Hertford.
Interviewer: Where was the one – you said there was a bomb that fell in the school and
OHR: Oh yes that was a raid one night – Longmores school it fell right bang in the playground and made a huge crater and blew all the windows in the building. Actually I think there was a new science block. Two or three storey's science block gone from one side of the playground and that devastated that one night. You know we went to school the next morning and were all stopped in Church Street because we used to go up by the Salisbury Arms Hotel because that was the way into the churchyard to Longmores school then and we were all stopped there by teachers and told to go home until we heard from them further, because the school was (lady coughs again)
Interviewer: Rather than going along Fore Street …..
OHR: Yeah yeah that, because (before?) the dual carriage way was there the churchyard used to come right across that dual carriageway to those gates at the top of Church (Road) Street and that was a turning in to the school then and then you could go across to St John's Hall and I think there was an infants' school or you could go right up through the churchyard up to Scott House. It all radiated from the top of Church (Road) Street, you see but the dual carriageway has come through and cut them off. Scott House was most likely a private residence it was only some years later it was changed into an evening institute, evening classes, um oh I can remember going there for a number of years. Hertford cine-club the movie club we had our headquarters there and evening classes there for people wanting to learn cine club work. There was all sorts of evening classes started there but I think its now and education office or establishment now. Yes, yes.
Your coffee will be ruined! That photograph you know? Clare knows em. Reggie on the tractor. Reggie Fores on the tractor, you know? Yeah I mean Reggie, he lived just down from me and but we were talking the other day. He couldn't get up here with his tractor, for cars, you know. But in those days I'm talking about there was no cars. The only thing used to go up Parker Avenue was a horse and cart with the coal, delivering the coal. No cars at all. (coughing) I can't even remember a bus service, might have been but I doubt it, certainly no cars. Not one, I can't remember anybody having a car!
Transcribers Note: No buses off Bengeo Street until Revels Road was extended built post WW2
Interviewer: Yes, It’s interesting isn't it because although there were cars, I mean cars had been made for quite a long time ….
OHR: Yes you'd got to be really sort of rich to own a car. I can remember Mr Trower at the top of the road sort of Lord of the Village kind of thing, he had one. He had a chauffeur actually drove it! He didn't drive the thing himself. Yes. No television. Just sit and listen to the wireless in the morning. Valentine Dial the Man in Black – used to frighten me to death before you went to bed with his ghost stories. (laughs very loudly) No television.
Interviewer: How old was you when you finished secondary school?
OHR: Fourteen, That's when you went, in those days you finished at 14 and went for a seven year apprenticeship. There were always electricians, plumbers, printers, whatever. You always had to do a seven year apprenticeship before you were supposedly qualified. All it was really again was to some extent between 14 and 16 you were just a general run-around really you know and for the men, though I was lucky in that as I say war was declared when I was 12. 13, 14 I went into Shands well they'd lost half their men through going into the army so a lot of the machinery in fact was covered with dustsheets. Empty, not been used so of course within 12-18 months or two years at 16 years old I was running massive great lumps of machinery that I wouldn't have been allowed to lay hands on until I was 21-22. Just to get it ticking over. If you showed any aptitude they said Right then have a go. It’s all yours. Ask any of the others. So we were all on machines then that we'd never have been allowed to touch. Had an early insight into big machinery then. Of course within then a lot of them came back from the war and it was overstaffed then to some extent because they'd got a lot of apprentices so we had to wait. And then I had to go into the army then two weeks after your 18th birthday you always go your call up papers. You knew that within two weeks of being 18 your call up papers would arrive and so then you had to go into the army compulsorily for two years. Conscription was still going then so I went in the army at 18 and while I was in there the Korean War started and it went from two years to three years. So I didn't come out until I was nearly 21. Then you had to do an extra piece on your apprenticeship. You didn't come out of the apprenticeship at 21 you then had all right you went on to sort of minimum man's money if you like but had to do extra time at your trade to account for the time you had been away. Yeah so conscription was rife then. Everybody had to do it. Virtually no exceptions.
Interviewer: Did you go out to Korea?
OHR: I didn't, no, no I stayed in a training regiment in England erm again a change of circumstances. I should have gone to Gibraltar and Malta but I went to the training regiment to train others who were actually coming in. I stayed there all the rest of the time.
Interviewer: Better than Korea.
OHR: Oh yes, Korea was a – I suppose to some extent better than Vietnam, but it was a bit of a go while it lasted really. Yeah we got involved.......It seems a long while ago I mean last week it was 40 years when the war was officially declared over. You know it does seem an awful long while when you think as a child you can remember war being declared.......hmm. I would imagine from your point of view it's very hard to think about war isn't it? Can you ever think about what it would be like? Not ever having a banana for instance or one orange a year? Two ounces of cheese a month (laughing) and if you went for your sweets down the Post Office (coughing interruption) you had to take your ration book with all these little coupons in and to the woman you'd say I'll have a Mars bar and..... No you won't she'd say you'll have a Mars bar or..... you can't have both. They're on ration, key ration. Then when you give your book in she clips your sweet coupons out and you think auwhh half gone and only half way into the month and half your sweet coupons have gone. You couldn't go into the shop and buy sweets just as you'd like.
Interviewer: Even if you had done plenty of funerals!
OHR: Yeah, yeah plenty of pocket money! You see your mother would save sugar. You could have perhaps half a teaspoonful of sugar in your tea. A two pound bag had to last the family a month. Meat I mean you might – your mother might say bit of luck today the co-op butcher up there got sausages. Oh he let me have 4. 4 of you in the family and you could have one sausage each if you were well in with him, or very kind to him! Yes it was quite extraordinary, the things they used to manufacture. I mean dried egg. I used to love dried egg omelette. Mix 'em with milk and in a big bag, dried egg. I think bakers use them now. I used to love them. I used to keep rabbits because of the meat situation. I had between 20-30-40 depending on the litters coming off. I had a whole load of rabbits down the bottom of the garden and the ladies used to send round on Saturday for a rabbit for their Sunday dinner. So I used to have to kill 'em and skin 'em. Half a crown then for a rabbit for your Sunday dinner. Do you like rabbit? No? Of course not, I suppose. All you can imagine is the little while fluffy things, yeah? So I used to make a few bob. *All this piece of ground here where Clare's house is and all the way down to the beginning of this part of this road these were all prefabricated houses during the war. This was field and they were all tiny little wooden bungalows up here. All this place here was covered in them. It was temporary housing that was devised for both army and civilian occupation rather than using bricks and mortar which were required for factories and that sort of thing. So they used to put a concrete base down and put two and three bedroom prefabricated houses up and they were up here until they were built 16 years ago. They were only supposed to last during the war and yet there are couples in Hertford have been in them up here – what these have been up about 16 years and they lasted about another 24 years after the war. This was all covered all this place up here. Used to see 'em when you went on a train to London all these prefabricated houses up here. Yeah.
* Transcribers Note: he is describing Cecil Road Hertford
Interviewer: Its nice isn't it **********
OHR: They're quite nice. Having a little bit of trouble with vandalism at the moment, I don't know I think everybody has that problem. Again the kids have got nowhere to go in the evening you can understand the problem. They sort of congregate in groups and if it’s bad weather they to go into the entrances of the flats and all the glass has been smashed out of this one. Well, actually the council smashed the glass out of – they smacked the glass out as it was dangerous I suppose. Thy do tend to congregate in entrances and things. They've got nowhere to go, poor little devils, really. There's no clubs, youth clubs I mean there used to be.
Interviewer: Were there more when you were young. I mean
OHR: Clubs? Oh yeah!
Interviewer: I suppose in fact also I mean you were hard at work.
[Start of side B of tape]
OHR: I can't remember the game but if she heard one of those pieces of wood crack the game instantly stopped and she walked her way round and woe betide the poor little devil who's got the broken bit of wood. I mean actually a bit of firewood broken in half might be only mucking about you know - - crack – he was immediately banished to the classroom to await his fate. (laughter) for breaking a thing like a bit of firewood. Oh yes. Or if you were caught talking to the girls the same. There was a sort of a yard from that fence which was a sort of a no mans’ land and if you were caught in there never mind talking to them if you were actually caught near the fence the girls were protected from the boys .
Interviewer: Did you have ….....
OHR: They even had two air raid shelters. (laughter) Yeah. The school was bearing the expense and there was a garden there and we used to have to race through there and down these entrances into these air raid shelters and they wouldn't have the girls in the same – they built two. (laughter) Sitting in rows like budgies on these little hard benches underground (laughter) Yeah yeah. What a time. And its gone the school's gone now, shame really. Big block of flats I think now . But oh dear oh dear. That would tell a tale. Toilets outside, you know they used to be outside the toilets in the yard, the back yard.
Interviewer: Did you ever share the same classroom with girls?
OHR: No, not even the same school.
Interviewer: At Bengeo, there were
OHR: Yeah, two schools, side by side.
Interviewer: Next to each other, but quite separate?
OHR: Yeah yeah. And the railings were all along the road, but the railing went right through to the gardens.
Interviewer: And the buildings
OHR: Were separate. Oh yes.
Interviewer: Interesting isn't it.
OHR: Single desks as well. Ink wells to be filled every morning by a monitor who was her favourite. He used to get the big ink bottle out and fill all the ink wells up every morning. We used to use them pens with the scratchy nibs you know.
Interviewer: Either you got the cane or you became the monitor
OHR: Yeah, the one or two favourites who ruled the roost. I mean they weren't above getting a whacking if they stepped out of line. Nobody was immune. (loud laughter) Yes, she had no fears or favours no no she didn't discriminate at all. I mean Saturday or Sunday evenings I used to go out for a walk looking for – your mother and father always used to go out for a walk after tea on Sunday evening and my mother and father used to go up Bengeo Street right up *Chapmore End Road to the old iron fields, across the old iron fields and drop down into Waterford and stop at the Waterford Arms for a drink. Me and me sister used to sit on the bench outside and we'd get a lemonade and a packet of crisps and then walk back down the North Road, past North Road cemetery into Hertford up to Bengeo that was every Sunday. But if you met her and her sister out for a walk Oh God, you'd had to raise your – because you had to wear a cap – that was the only part of the uniform a cap was. Good evening Miss Williams and then you had to stand ten feet away so you couldn't hear what your parents were talking to her, because it was almost certainly about you but if she on the Monday morning didn't think you had stood far enough away, you'd still get a good hiding for not doing what she told you!
*Transcribers Note: This is actually Sacombe Road, Bengeo.
Interviewer: What sort of caps were they? Did you all have to wear the same?
OHR: Yes, caps, grey caps with a peak on, and a little badge, that was it. Like a cubs that was it. But you had to raise them to her. And I used to dread meeting her and her sister on a walk on a Sunday evening. Oh God! I used to back away half way down the road. I didn't leave any doubt about it. (loud laughter)
Interviewer: Did a lot of families used to do that? Go for walks on Sunday evenings.
OHR: Oh yes, nothing else to do you see. When you got back it was listen to the radio.
Interviewer: That's really nice isn't it? It would be nice to go out for a walk you know.
OHR: They want to get in the car and go off to Stevenage shopping, don't you?
Interviewer: No! (laughs)
Interviewer: Would you like to do that or go off walking over the fields ?
OHR: Everybody used to do it. All out strolling on Sunday afternoon. Yeah. (very loud laughter)
I've often wondered what age she actually lived to. I never was able to find out. She lived with her little old sister cos she was a nice little old thing her sister, they lived in Duncombe Road but no I don't really know how old she was erm when she died. She must have been a fair old age because she – I suppose she was in her 50s then so you know she........she ruled Bengeo school for all those years. I suppose the school governors used to lap it up. (loud laughter)
Interviewer: How many smacks would you get if you didn't raise your cap?
OHR: Oh it was indiscriminate! I mean she you can imagine a little tot standing beside one of those great big desks. The desk top used to be sort of there and it had she had a big stool where she used to sit on but I mean when she got your hand up there she used to just ping it with her hand there and used to lay into you with a ruler. A twelve inch ruler flat not on the side like that. No she used to BANG BANG BANG until all that was all red and phoooow and if you said anything you got another dose on the other one for squealing. (laughs) But that I suppose to us it was the height of indignity and hurt but really I suppose (child coughs) it was nothing really to what the pain used to do to some of the older boys at the Cowper school when they stepped out of line, I mean a ruler on your hand was forgotten in an hour and all right it used to make the composition look a bit dodgy when you were writing (loud laughs) with your wounded hand !! (laughter) You get another one for bad writing there. (lots of loud laughter). Teach you to be ambidextrous! Hit you on your right and write with your left! Dear oh dear.
Interviewer: Makes it all seem pretty tough nowadays.
OHR: Yeah
Interviewer: Well I don't know I do feel that you must have been scared all the time – you were not likely to be learning anything
OHR: Yeah, scared, we were. I used to get up at some ungodly hour in the morning reading comics, I used to sit there in the morning reading comics before anybody else stirred in the house, just to try and forget or to think that you'd even got to go to school cos you knew you were going to cop it. Yeah.
Interviewer: If you didn't go to school one day, did you get the cane or the ruler?
OHR: Well you'd have to have a very good excuse not to go to school. Oh yeah. Your mother wouldn't even contemplate giving you an excuse. You were either ill and you didn't go to school or you went to school and if you…?
Interviewer: What would happen if you …?
OHR: And if you played hookey Mr Peet used to come round, the Attendance Officer, this great big bloke with his big whiskers or moustache. He had a motor bike and he used to flash round all the houses. Anybody who was away and make sure they were ill, and if they weren’t he'd take you to school in his motor bike sidecar.
Interviewer: What would happen if you did have a very good excuse?
OHR: Well then you'd cop it off the teacher and he'd warn your mother and father as to their future conduct that sent you to school I mean they were petrified of him, never mind the kids! He was the Attendance Officer. Yeah that was his job. I don't think they have such things nowadays.
Interviewer: I don't know, I mean I think they have sort of education and welfare officers or something – somebody, you know, who isn't turning up and they go round to see, but they don't sort of grab the child and (loud laughter) *********yes... A question of trying to understand why at the moment, rather than – getting the…
OHR: Yeah, if you were ill that was fine you know er scarlet fever I spent eight weeks in isolation up at Gallows Hill. They'd put you up there in a glass ward for eight weeks. My mother and father never went to visit you. They'd stick you up there for eight weeks in an isolation ward for scarlet fever. I mean nowadays I think they let them go to school with it!
Interviewer: How old were you then?
OHR: War had just been declared. Yeah a bomb dropped and smashed the hospital about the fourth night I was in there. The one on the top of the hill behind the police station yeah I was in the ward with Didi Beachem another school friend of mine was in the other part of the ward and er it must have been during the first year of the war, the bombers had already started coming over at night and we could hear 'em and erm, we'd got scarlet fever, we weren’t terribly ill and we could hear the bombers coming over and the sirens had gone but they were imminent round here and we hears bombs dropping and the sisters and that rushed in and got us on stretchers and put us under the tables in the room outside under some tables. And then there was an almighty explosion – never hears anything like it – and a land mine had dropped in Tamworth Road by the bus garage. Further down by Presenters, and these were these big huge mines that were dropping, they dropped on parachutes. They let 'em out of the aircraft as the aircraft flew over and they just floated silently down you see, and they would devastate a huge area. I mean there were houses in Tamworth Road that had virtually been picked up from the ground and dropped at a 45 degree angle including the foundations, the whole house was picked up put down at an angle. That was the force of the explosion. Not many people were killed but it did do a tremendous amount of damage. Ware Road, Tamworth Road all round. Where we were it knocked all the roof and the glass up at the isolation hospital and we were sort of just put in another ward while it was mended.
Interviewer: And that was from Tamworth Road. Cos its quite a distance ...
OHR: Oh right up there yes you can imagine the glass it shattered glass and then right out of the blue I was home – oh I 'd been home for some weeks and then on a Sunday morning the army came round the village of Bengeo and said would we open all the windows. A game keeper at Ware Park had found another land mine hanging in an oak tree and had obviously let two off this particular night and one of these huge one ton mines was hanging by its parachute in an oak tree up at Ware Park and so the bomb disposal squads were going to try and get it down and remove it and take it away to explode it but the imminent thing was if it went off it would virtually devastate Bengeo the village and smash all the glass in the village, so all day every window in the house, smaller doors, had to be open while they removed it and they took it to Tonwell I think somewhere out in Tonwell into a big deep gravel pit there and they exploded it there but then it made a tremendous noise he day that they did explode it. Yeah, they used to float down on parachutes. A game keeper in Ware Park found it one Sunday morning, hanging in an oak tree. Yeah great big things they was.
Interviewer: Thank you very much.
OHR: Nice to see you. Hope you have a good day.
Interviewer: We never have that!
OHR: You never have a good day! Oh lord! Have you ever thought what it will be like in 30-40 years time when some kids interview you?
Interviewer: What games did you play?
OHR: None that I can remember. You mean at school or?
Interviewer: School games.
OHR: I can't remember. There were only playground games. You know. There was no such things as football, cricket or anything of that nature. All our own games were devised by ourselves. We used to have roller skates as such. Good old horrible metal wheels on 'em. Conkers, bows and arrows, you have it we invented it. Used to live over the fields during the summer holidays, live down by the river for six weeks, used to take tents and live down by Mr Trowers river for all the six weeks of the summer holiday. Me mother used to have to threaten you to come home to either wash or get food in yer, and then used to be off all day again. Never used to be at home. Used to have massive collections of birds eggs. They're illegal now but I mean we did used to have massive collections of birds eggs. Used to eat ducks eggs, moorhens eggs, fry 'em. Lovely. Mr Trower had part of his river cleared down the bottom of Bengeo, just for the kids to swim. He had part of the river cleared. It was his trout stream really but he had part of it cleared. As long as you kept to that particular area he didn't mind so we used to swim in his river all the summer holidays. Six weeks of glorious sunshine. Camping down there with your tents. Don't get 6 weeks of sunshine now do you!
Interviewer: We did last year, didn't we?
OHR: Yeah we had a tree. He had one of his trees cut off and diving board put on for us, you know. Marvellous, yeah, he was a great old boy Mr Trower in Bengeo.
Interviewer: And he didn't mind you camping down there?
OHR: No, no as long as you kept to that particular piece and didn't go in the rest of his trout river he was a great old gentleman. He had game keepers of course. He employed gamekeepers.
Interviewer: What would happen if you didn't keep to that bit?
OHR: Well, then you lose the thing and he'd turn everybody away. This was the thing er he warned us and that was it. And the game keepers kept you to it as well. That's what he employed them for. Both to look after his pheasants and partridges, and his salmon river – salmon and trout river, used to go all the way up past Chapmore End Approved School where all the naughty boys were. Crouchfield it's called now. Closed but that's where it used to be. The youngsters used to be up there. Sent to reformatory school they all went to Crouchfields.
Interviewer: Well, I'm not quite sure – how much things have really changed but doesn't seem like that nowadays does it.
OHR: No, no. When you look back I suppose things like television, telephones, cars, holidays. I can never ever remember going on a holiday. The first time I ever went on holiday I was erm 21 or 22 after I'd come out the army and I went on the Norfolk Broads with a great group and we thought that was the most daring thing we ever done in our lives. I mean all you ever had was a day. Most likely done by the church or the school. Perhaps a day at Clacton or Southend by coach for a day and that was the sum total of any holidays I can remember. Nobody ever went on a week or a fortnight's holiday away. No. Relatives sort of tended to come and go that was the main thing in those days. If you ever went away you went to relatives anyway, visiting and that was it.
Interviewer: Did you ever get bored?
OHR: Didn't have time to get bored! You're bored the first day of the school holidays!! You've got bedrooms full of books games everything you can think of scooters, roller skates, and the first day she says I'm bored I am, I'm bored I am!! Got electronic games....
Interviewer: They've got television, yes.
OHR: Used to say Oh God I'm going to be down the river swimming in the morning, Mum. Oh I'll make you some sandwiches. So she'd make sandwiches, bottle of lemonade or cold tea or orange squash or what have you. Down the river 8.0'clock in the morning and if your're not home for tea at 6.0'clock tonight you'll get a good hiding. 8 o'clock in the morning till 6 o'clock at night they'd have to threaten you to come home! And you'll say Cor it was smashing! All right well you can have your tea and go back down for another hour but you be home by 8 o'clock or there'll be trouble!
Interviewer: Was you ever late?
OHR: No. Cos you get a good hiding, (giggles) but then you went to bed absolutely exhausted. You'd been swimming and racing and chasing about all day long but the next day it was up with the lark. It was another day. More swimming more racing about. Terrific!! Never had time to be bored. Never had time to see your mother. Be lucky if she'd get your clothes off you to wash 'em. (laughs) Yeah. Someone would think of something else to do and you'd be all off for another day somewhere. We'll go up the iron fields today and build some houses up the iron fields. Be up there all day ….
Interviewer: And now its slumping until the television starts and then slump in front of the telly and I'm bored and ******
OHR: A severe case of nerves -
Interviewer: I mean how can we get back there?
OHR: I dunno. Television's going to get worse. To me they have cable television films going on all day. In America now videos. One programme has nothing but videos all day long. Old films all day long .
Interviewer: With the odd cookery programme
OHR: Yes (laughs)
Interviewer: Yes, but if you've got films the whole day then
OHR: Your eyes will change from round to square I expect in the end to fit the same shape as the telly!
Interviewer: I think it's not the same now it's something to do with cars but its not just safe enough for kids to get about.
OHR: Yeah, we were talking about this the other week actually some friends and I were out to dinner and we were talking this about we used to go off but of course there is no way that their mothers would let these two go out at 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning and say come back at 6 o'clock in the evening.
They'd be frantic if they didn't show up at lunchtime. Because I guess the trust was there, you just didn't get all this aggro. I mean old Charlie the tramp who lived he used to come round he lived in this area and he used to arrive during the summer holidays and he used to camp behind the pit in Bengeo. He was sort of king of tramps because he had a very big posh pram what he carried all his gear on. Not an old down and out thing and Charlie used to make all the pegs for the village. He arrived and over a period of about 5-6 weeks he made all the pegs all the washing pegs for all the ladies in the village, you see. We were great friends of Charlie. It was a great privilege to sit by his fire and watch him cooking his tea you see. And all the time he'd be peg making. Used to cut down the willows and strip the bark off them and then he'd chop the pegs up to that sort of length, the piece and then all the tins that he'd used the previous days he'd save and wash 'em out and with a pair of pliers he used to peel a thin strip of tin like that, off round like that. He had a little wooden block he used to sit there and on his peg he used to wrap this tin round and put about an inch from the end put a little nail in and with his very sharp knife he used to cut the end of the peg in reverse his knife and cut the two bits out and shape 'em. Chuck on a heap and cut the piece of willow that length and put a dozen pegs on and chuck 'em in his pram until he had a pram full for the next day and then he used to go round each road in the village and make sure he'd served all the village by the time the six weeks were up with new pegs. Might buy a dozen or two dozen until next year. Charlie lived like a lord – he could kill anything on two legs or four legs cos he had a catapult and a sling. He either used to kill them with a catapult or he had a sling like you know the bible story David and Goliath he used one of them.
Interviewer: How did you – you swing it round ….
OHR: Round your head, yeah it’s a piece of leather about so long and about that wide with just two holes in and it’s got leather thongs on it two leather thongs. And he used to pick up round or oblong stones about that size, you know, a pocketful and if he saw a pheasant standing perhaps 100 yards away he used to say, shh! And he used to get a stone out of his pocket like that and he used to go Whoom, whoom whoom and the bird used to sit and look up then it'd go Crack, Bang, and it'd be dead.
Interviewer: What he does is let go one thong when he's
OHR: Yeah, let go one thong got em like that in his hands whoom, whoom, whoom, whack and it's worse than a rifle. You're making a pheasant when it's hit by a pellet that high – it was dead just like that! God, you'd never seen anything like it, it was lethal it was. He was not a young man but he had his old overcoat on and his little old trilby, he had quite a posh canvas affair which he lived and slept in. It was up Watermill Lane at the back of the pit he always picked the same spot and you were greatly privileged if he let you sit round his camp fire at dusk and sort of watch him peg making and eating his evening mean. And then somebody'd say Charlie's gone! Can't have! He has! Go round the next day and it was all his camp fire'd be laid out and he'd packed up and - Charlie's gone! Till next year, he'd be off to St Albans Watford. He had his whole round you see and you wouldn't see him again until next year. He was a great character he was. Cos of course we all had slings and catapults then, trying to kill everything that moved, but we weren't very clever at it. (laughs) I suppose he couldn't eat if he didn't – there again he sort of you know he'd kill to eat. Cor ! What days, what days, never mind, never mind. Progress is here! Uh?
Interviewer: Difficult to see where the advantages lie. Yes the advantages lie in not having to put up with…?
OHR: Oh yes the Miss Williams of this world!! I don't think you'd want that. Have you thought what you want to do when you leave school? No, No. I suppose it's a bit early really. The thing would be to go for more education if it was available, rather than the swanning around looking for jobs.
Well, very nice of you, thank you very much dearie very interesting (laughs)
Interviewer: Really lovely. ***********
* * * * * * * *
Boys and girls did not play in the same playground and the boys had to keep away from the fence where the girls were. I can remember playing "Touch, statues, conkers and fives."
The school was a brick building with large windows. The toilets were outside. In the classrooms there were rows of double desks. Inkwells were filled every morning by the monitors. There were large coal burning stoves to keep the classrooms warm.
To try to give you some idea of the discipline, I will give you some examples.
Boys had to wear caps. If you saw a teacher and you were with your parents you raised your cap, said, "Good morning”, and then if they were talking you had to stand 3 metres away. You would be wacked with a ruler on the hand, two dozen whacks at a time, if you did not obey.
Frankie Sparks broke his leg, he fell of his dads' horse and cart, he got a whacking for being clumsy. I got a whacking for breaking my left arm when I fell of my bike.
Commentary: He won a scholarship to Richard Hale School, then Hertford Grammar School, but could not take it up because of the expense of books and uniform. So he went to Cowper School (forerunner of Simon Balle).
OHR: My senior school was Cowper School, Hertford. I was there from the age of 11 to 14. It was a boys only school and the discipline there was good. The cane was used only at assembly in special cases.
The school is no longer there.
You'd be held over the desk by two other boys, trousers taken down, and a four foot cane. Nobody ever was hit six times because they'd be screaming their heads off by the time he hit them four times and couldn't stand any more, and that would be on their bare backsides and stretched across a desk in front of 3 or 400 people. Oh yes, it was brutal.
Mr Peet the Attendance Officer was a great big bloke with big whiskers and moustache. He had a motor bike and he used to flash round the houses of anyone who was away and make sure they were ill. If they weren't, held take you to school in his side-car.