Interviewed by Eve Sangster (ES) & Jean Riddell Purkis(JR)
Date: 31/05/1995
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no O 1995.13
Interviewee: John Albert Turner (JT) and Olive Turner (OT)
Date: 31st May, 1995.
Venue: 4 Postwood Road Ware.
Interviewers: Eve Sangster (ES) and Jean Purkis Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Purkis Riddell
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
Transcription is as near verbatim as possible but recording is poor quality so some parts are lost.
ES: This is Eve Sangster on 31stMay, 1995. We're in the home of Mr. John 'Jack' Turner, 4, Postwood Road, Ware. His father kept a sports shop at no. 3, St. Andrew St. Hertford for 50 years. Were you born in Hertford?
JT: No. I was born in Hoddesdon. Then we moved to Hertford.
ES: When did your family move to Hertford?
JT: 1922.
ES: What is your date of birth?
JT: 19th April, 1918, Primrose Day. That doesn't make me a Conservative!
ES: No! unhappy accident. So you were four when you moved to Hertford? Were you an only child?
JT: No, no, I was one of 5.
ES: What's your earliest memory of St. Andrew St. or the shop?
JT: I've so many memories I can't think of the earliest. I had a very happy memory of walking down with my mother past Mr. Durrant's chemist and Mr. Durrant was a very dignified man and a very kind man, and he bent down and did up my shoe lace!
ES: You lived over the shop, obviously. What sort of accommodation was there?
JT: We had 1,2 ………. five bedrooms and a living room and kitchen cum, scullery.
JR: Did you have a yard at the back?
JT: We had a big garden. It went down to llott’s. Now lIott was the miller here as you probably know. Now he had a private path that went through here to his house.
ES: I should just explain for the benefit of the listeners that Jack is looking at a map of St. Andrew Street. What date is this, Jean?
JR: 1897.
ES: This malting you are referring to. I assume it's that conversion which now runs beside the Mill Bridge Garden and your garden ran down here, the full length of the malting? It nearly ran as far as the river.
JT: This is not quite as I remember it.
ES: Well, it is a few years earlier. From what I remember, these were gardens belonging to what was the mill house here. I think and there were a lot of fruit trees. As a matter of fact it was quite rural behind here.
JR: But it must have eventually backed onto the Castle grounds?
JT: No, between our end wall, that backed onto the orchard I refer to. Beyond that was the Castle but there was a ditch ran through there from what we called the alleyway, the bridges.
JR: That ditch is still there.
.
ES: When you say you used to walk along this path behind your garden.
JT: Well, I didn't, no.
ES: There was a path was there? Did it go by Oakers Buildings?
Transcribers note: Oakers buildings stood on the land that is now part of St Andrew Street Car Park, Exit End.
JT: No, no. Oakers Buildings?
ES: Here they are.
JT: Oakers Buildings. No, the mill house is now an antiques shop owned by ….
ES: Oh, do you mean Partridge?
JT: Partridge, yes! That was the mill house. (25 St Andrew Street)
(JR asks if Jack recollects somewhere called Newell Lane which is off St. Andrew Street. He doesn't.)
JT: Victoria Place! That's new to me.
JR: Ah, that's where the present car park entrance is now.
Transcribers note: The houses built into a former barn and a new one added.
JT: Yes, a couple of old dears lived there, used to do a bit of laying out.
ES: Oh, what for St. Andrew's. You're pointing to these 2 cottages going down on the left-hand side.
JT: Yes, but I never heard of Victoria Place before.
ES: Ah, but this is an 1897 map and these are names we put in. What about Oakers Buildings?
JT: I never heard of that.
ES: No, but can you remember, what was your name for that? See if you can remember because in actual fact it had about six names.
JT: Em, oh, dear.
ES: Oh, I'll just show you. Jean wrote an article about Oakers Buildings.
JT: The yards.
ES: But this is where, there's Partridge Antiques (25 St Andrew Street) there. There's another little antiques shop there (27 St Andrew Street).
JT: Yes, Miss Somebody.
ES: And what was the entrance to what we call Oakers Buildings?
JT: Is that it.
ES: Here.
JT: Can I have a look. Here Mills, I knew Mills quite well.
ES: Was he a pawnbroker?
JT: No, watchmaker - a very good one.
JR: When you were going through here (the carriageway) where did you say you were going to? (into Oakers Buildings)
JT: I've never been there in my life. That was somewhere you hurried past, as a boy, yes.
JR: Really?
JT: Really.
ES: Why?
JT: I don't know. People appeared from there and went back. They disappeared into their own little hell(!)
ES & JR: Oh!
JT: I tell you another story too. I'd never been on Bircherley Green until I was 17.
JR: Really?
JT: Really.
ES: Were you not allowed to or were you just frightened?
JT: I wasn't frightened, but it was somewhere you just didn't go, because you're looking for trouble. This is something that's not understood. I mean I went to Bircherley Green for the first time. It was to get the old dears down there to sign application cards for electricity before they moved to Horns Mill.
ES: Oh, so that was 1935 or so?
JT: I had a job on the North Met then.
JR: Oh, did you? We had another interview with somebody who worked for the North Met.
JT: Did you, who was that?
JR: Bob Harding
JT: Bob Harding! Ticker Harding!
JR: Oh, yes, in fact during the tape he said he was called Ticker and would refer back to that, but he never actually got round to telling us. Why was he called Ticker?
JT: No idea! And you'll find he had exactly the same birthday as I did, we're the same age. I've known him all my life and I'll tell you a funny story. He was the driving inspector and I'd been driving in the Army and I had to pass a test here. He never acknowledged me when I ....
ES: Oh, typical driving instructor!
JT: I made a dreadful mess of my driving, certain aspects of it, anyway, and I did it again and I passed it, but he never even acknowledged me! We spent a lifetime together. We weren't mates but everyone knew everyone in Hertford.
JR: He lived in Hertingfordbury Road, didn't he? When you got to know him?
JT: Hertingfordbury Road? Yes, but he must have moved from there because I remember somewhere else.
JR: Wellington Street.
JT: Probably Wellington Street.
ES: But going back to this. I assume you were a respectable middle-class family in trade and doing quite well?
JT: Well, this is one of these things, you know. Society in Hertford, if I can use the term loosely, was so stratified that it's a painful memory really. I often think of the MP who's just died, lived in Cowbridge.
ES: & JR: Oh yes, Eric Heffer.
ES: Did you know him?
JT: Oh, yes.
ES: We'll go back to that.
JT: When I think back to days in Hertford. In those days (the Thirties) it was a dreadful place in some ways. And yet again when I look back, it was pleasant because the standards and attitudes were by today's standards very high.
ES: I mean really, you are saying that you were in this narrow band of shopkeepers, couldn't mix with those above you, couldn't mix with those below you, I suppose.
JT: You've got to remember that the economy in those days was so tight and 80% of the population was within an hour of the sack. They were all on hourly rates and they could get dismissed with an hour's notice. And shopkeepers escaped that dreadful thing hanging over them and as such you had greater freedom, although it didn't mean that you had a much higher standard of living. You had to live on what you took in.
ES: You had a different attitude because of your greater security.
JT: You had greater freedom but that freedom brought its own social problems, in as much as you had a standard to maintain.
JR: And your father had a successful business in Hertford?
JT: Depends what you mean by success.
JR: Well he didn't have to give up because .....
JT: Oh, no, no, no.
ES: A sports shop you'd think wasn't the luxury end of the market.
JT: It was at the luxury end of the market!
ES: And times were hard, but obviously there was sufficient trade in Hertford.
JT: Well, what you took you had to live on. It's as simple as that. But, of course, the saving grace was every tradesman had the same background.
ES: It's the noise! I do have a bad habit in my old age!
JR: We didn't want to spoil the tape with rustling!
JT: No, all the tradesmen in St. Andrew St. were specialists. They didn't sell things in packets with names which were advertising at you.
ES: They had to know their trade in other words. But, who were your customers then? They must have been salt of middle class and upwards, then?
JT: Well, every village had its tennis club and its football club, they had. The football clubs had the same colour shirts year out and the same colour socks. They didn't change them with the seasons. The tennis clubs, well everyone was, that was a respectable pastime, an avenue to marriage. Get the idea? And we did get a bit from Hertford FC and one of our biggest customers was Christ's Hospital. We did all their maintenance. The stories were that Christ's Hospital had to do all their own repairs and' no one had more patches on their clothing than Christ's Hospital girls. They went to extraordinary lengths to save money. I remember old man Graveson, Edward, grey suit and tail coat, strong Quaker. They all were, of course. And Mr. Law, the tobacconist next to us, a frock coat and a big watch chain, and beard. They'd walk about, preoccupied.
ES: Going back to Eric Heffer. Were you going to say, then, no wonder Eric Heffer turned out the way he did, being born in Hertford?
JT: Well, yes, basically yes. You see there's another tragedy in Heffer's life in that he came from a family with TB. TB in those days was something pretty horrible.
ES: Yes, I lost an aunt through it.
JT: And you avoided them. They weren't directly ostracised but everyone was aware of it.
ES: Have you read the (auto) biography of Eric Heffer?
JT: No.
ES: Oh, well, Peter's got it, hasn't he?
JR: Yes, I think so. I read it. It's not easy reading but it's quite enjoyable. It doesn't say very much about Hertford.
JT: I don't think he would. He left here as a young man. l believe he was apprenticed to a carpenter.
ES: How did your paths cross?
JT: As boys.
ES: Were you as school together?
JT: No, he went to Port Vale School.
ES: Wasn't he in the choir?
JT: Not in our choir. He went to Christ Church in Port Vale.
ES: Didn't he organise a strike?
JR: That was at Christ Church.
ES: Oh, I see.
JT: Nothing to do with us. We were high church.
JR: Was it St. Andrew's?
JT: Yes.
ES: Was that another class thing? You were high church and the Heffers were low church?
JT: Oh, yes. It was one of these odd things, I never really understood it. St. Andrew's, the pastor in my time was Revd. Nathan Gardner, known as 'Natty'. I always thought he was a rather pompous little man. He wore a biretta and a cloak and black boots and as he was about my height it didn't go off very well.
ES: That's why he wore the biretta, I suppose!
JT: He also rode a bike which was too high for him. He had wooden blocks on the pedals. It was quite a common thing in those days, again from the point of view of economy. Instead of wobbling on the saddle, wooden blocks were bolted on the pedals.
JR: Did you get on well with him?
JT: Insofar as he allowed it, yes.
JR: He was quite well thought of, though?
JT: I don't know.
ES: Well, we have heard other news of him, but it's interesting that it wasn't universal. So where did the congregation come from, mainly?
JT: well, all over. A lot of people came from Queens Road and a lot from North Road. The choir was formed from old men, Bryant from Old Cross, grocer; Skerman opposite; then Squires who was a draper, from St Andrew St, he was choir master; Bill Peet a Schools' Inspector; Baxter; Stallabrasses from Maidenhead St.; Blakes from Queens Road.
ES: Do you know Geoff Hart?
JT: No.
ES: He was in the choir, but he's perhaps a slightly different age.
JT: Natty as I referred to him, introduced something into the church I thought was a bit far- fetched. At Evensong the lights were switched out in winter and a spot light played on Natty in the pulpit!
JR: Do you remember Maisie Ditton?
JT: Yes! Her old man charged batteries in St Andrew St.
JR: She was very fond of Natty.
ES: Yes, but I mean clergymen often have a great female following, don't they, the groupies, irrespective of other
(Laughter)
JT: I can't imagine Maisie Ditton as a groupie!
ES: What. Maisie Ditton as a groupie. No, course not, but I mean they have their fans.
JT: I suppose so, yes.
ES: Can you say some more about, you said about these people appearing from the yard then retreating to their own particular hell.
JT: They were at the bottom of the heap and they didn't mix, the Moggy Lowens and the other people. They were just not allowed to mix. They were people who lived by casual labour and they got drunk.
JR: Do you remember any of the characters of St. Andrew St, people do remember them quite vividly? Like a lady called Miss Hoad, who worked in the sweet shop, Palmer's and she had rags on her feet.
JT: Name again?
JR: Miss Hoad.
JT: Yes?
JR: Apparently she didn't approve of animals being killed so she wouldn't wear leather and she bound her feet with rags instead.
JT: Was she from St. Andrew St?
JR: She worked in Palmer's but she lived in Villiers Street.
JT: Where did the Palmer's come from that you're talking of?
JR: I don't know, the sweet shop I think it was somewhere round the Oakers Buildings complex but maybe it was the little shop between Partridge Antiques and Oakers Buildings.
JT: Ah, yes, that's how I remember her. Well, I remember the old girl who kept it, but as far as my memory goes there was only the one woman in the shop and she was the proprietress and she was elderly. Well, when you're young, everyone over twenty is elderly, but she was quite an old lady.
JR: It seems unlikely she's the one as people still remember her in the Sixties. What about the Wrens? Do you remember Chitty Wren?
JT: Who?
JR: Chitty Wren.
JT: Oh, yes, Chitty Wren, I know the name well enough, I can't place him.
JR: Did he have a three-wheel bike, or did he play a piano accordion, entertaining people on Christmas Eve from their bedroom windows?
JT: Do you know where he lived?
JR: Oakers Buildings.
JT: Oh.
JR: I just wondered if you'd seen him come out.
JT: No, I'd probably recognise him if I saw him, I'm sure I would.
JR: Yes. We don't have a picture.
JT: I didn't know he came from Oakers Buildings.
ES: But what did you call it?
JT: The yard.
ES: You just called it the yard. I suppose that was because you were near enough to it.
JT: I don't know. I just haven't heard the name.
ES: Well, it was also called Dimsdale Yard, Duncombe Yard.
JR: Coleman's Yard, Poets Corner!
JT: No. Brewhouse Lane and the yard.
ES: Oh, well, we want to ask you about Brewhouse Lane.
JT: Err, up here, that led down to a bowling green at the bottom.
ES: Yes.
JR: Earle's slaughterhouse?
JT: I don't know, was there one down there? I remember Captain chap who ran the butchers in Scales!
JR: Washe Captain?
JT: He went round with breeches and polished brown leggings, collar and tie.
JR: Was he one of the Scales?
JT: Where's that book?
JR: Captain Hubert Norris, and he was working in the butchers shop?
JT: He ran it, yes, butchers in those days were, quite something, captain. It must have been a WWI rank, but I've seen him butcher a cow in the yard there.
JR: In the butcher’s yard, not in Brewhouse Lane?
JT: No, in his yard at St. Andrew St.
Side B
JR: Skerman was a boot manufacturer, boot seller, wasn't he?
JT: Well, Mr. Skerman was a man who looked like Neville Chamberlain with a drooping moustache, but without Neville's arrogance. He was a tall fellow, a bit bad with his feet for some reason. He was completely lost because all his family had stood for before, had gone and he had no family and his wife was virtually blind. And they were a couple alone in St. Andrew St. with their business gone.
ES: Why had their business gone?
JT: He told me once he made shoes for thirty people behind their shop and from that level he came down to, well I do remember him pushing his truck up to Haileybury College because he did repairs at Haileybury College. That was in the early days, though.
JR: You'd think he'd have had the best shoes possible, wouldn't you?
JT: Pardon!
JR: You say he had something wrong with his feet.
JT: Yes, but again you see, if you are talking about physical disabilities, they were so common, for all sorts of reasons. Kids had irons on their legs and big boils and cross eyes. I know I've got a glass eye.
JR: According to people on the tapes, a number of people had hook arms, a result of natural disabilities or accident or WW1.
JT: Most of them were natural. Oh, the standards have changed so much.
ES: What do you regret of the old days that are gone?
JT: I think we were a lot nicer.
ES: Is that because you had to be, because you depended on your neighbour more?
JT: Possibly, is that a bad thing?
ES: No, no!
JR: Who were your parents' special friends and associates. Were they other shopkeepers or?
JT: No, my father was invalided out of the Boer War and suffered somewhat from asthma. He liked to go round to the clubs and that didn't do him any good at all. He sometimes came home and was sometimes carried home and thereupon he lectured us on religious matters!
ES: The evils of drink! When you say clubs, were they drinking clubs?
JT: There was the Old Cross Club.
ES: Oh, a men's club.
JR: Where was that then, because there was a temperance hotel there at one time, wasn't there?
JT: Not to my knowledge. Before my time. Where was the ….
JR: Around the corner from Barbers?
JT: Oh yes. There was Barbers. Then there was the Letchworth Bacon Co. Then the club just had a double door.
JR: Oh yes, it's a bar now.
ES: Have you got any photos?
JT: No. It is a pity because my old man, l never really had a conversation with him, the social attitude …
ES: Yes, I suppose social conventions of the time. I was going to say how did you get on with him, but you hardly tested it.
JT: Well, he was, the most moving thing I can remember about my father was when I joined the army. We were not a demonstrative family. 17th February 1940. I had to leave early to catch the train and none of my family got up to say goodbye, but my father kissed me goodbye.
ES: You thought you were going to your death, I expect!
JT: No! but the mere fact that he made this gesture of affection. Oh, he wouldn't beat me or anything like that. I suppose he just ignored me. I remember as a small boy he always treated me with affection.
ES: But have you tried to be, I know this is not 'Oral History', have you tried to be different? Have you got children?
JT: Well, we had three, we lost one.
ES: But have you tried to be an affectionate father?
JT: No, I haven't, er…
ES: No? You see, nothing changes!
JT: Well, I was away five years. The world changes then. So has the teaching!
ES: Why do you say that?
JT: Well, I went to Cowper School and there's been a booklet published, chap named Green. Well, he was after my time. I was there with Stalley. And you say why do I say that? If you were sent to Stalley and you were stood there outside his office, it was all open, he just came down and gave you a smack and another one on the way back and that was the end of it. You knew why you were there and he knew why you were there. School in those days, you knew precisely where you were and schooling was a matter of instruction, very instructive and you were supposed to absorb it. I think there's a lot to be said for it somewhere. We read a lot too.
ES: At home?
JT: Yes. that's another thing. The library on Old Cross was run by the Pilchers and Miss Pilcher wore a black bombardine dress and choker and the place was ruled with a rod of iron.
(Noise of tea making in the background)
And I was a regular user of the library and people went in there to read, read newspapers and so on. You daren't cough. I discovered in the corner of the library a series of books with black covers without titles and I found that these were written by a chap called Guy de Mauparsant and I discovered that this was reallyhot stuff by the standards of those days. Very mild by anything going today! I was reading these at the rate of about one every three days, and Miss Pilcher gave me a lecture on this. She thought they weren't suitable for me and if I read any more, she'd have to phone my parents!
JR: Who else were your friends besides Bob Harding?
ES: Who was your best friend?
JT: In those days I suppose, a chap called Toby Ince, came from Sele Road.
JR: Toby Ince, had he got a sister named Kitty?
JT: Two sisters Phyllis and Vera.
JR: Oh, that's Vera Chappell, isn't it?
ES: Oh,yes!
JT: She lives at Letty Green.
JR: Rush Green.
JT: Rush Green, that's right.
ES: Married Frank Chappell.
JR: Yes, it's Phyllis Kitty Ince. She married ....
JT: Bill Halls
JR: That's right.
JT: As a boy in the choir, our evenings were filled pretty well because on Monday and Thursday we went to choir practice and Wednesday was Scouts so not many evenings left for us to entertain ourselves. But Squires was a draper who lived opposite number 3 and he had two brothers and poor old Squires was virtually blind in those days. The winters were something like you see in a horror film nowadays, particularly when it was foggy. And the choir boys used to gather in the porch at St. Andrew's, round about there and Squires would turn up, and at the bottom of the drive he would light a cigarette. And he would make his way up the drive with his walking stick to the porch before he threw the cigarette away and of course the senior
boys used to .....
ES: ..... pick up the fag end?
JT: That's right and Squires would go into church and he'd literally have to find his way with his walking stick and they always used to send the small boys in first. I was always cantoris. I don't know whether they use cantoris and decani now?
JR: They do, yes, for the sides.
JT: And the older boys would have hassock fights at the back of the church knowing that Squires couldn't see what was happening. He could only only come down by tapping his stick. If you were in the chancel at the time you informed Mr. Squires that the 'boys from the yards' were at the bottom of the church whereupon we'd all chase out, to chase the boys away! Silly things like that and Squires would be hammering the organ up in the chancel and somebody would undo the wing nuts and the back would fallout.
Another trick was for a boy to sneak into the church, to sneak into the men's stall on the cantoris side and play around and make the boys giggle. And when Aubrey Mason tried this, blowing strawberries of course, and Squibs, Squires was in the chancel conducting with his walking stick and Aubrey just popped his head over the men's stall and he'd just had a haircut, a crop. And as he popped up, so Squib hit him on the head with his walking stick and he promptly disappeared!
JR: So you were quite something then, in the choir?
ES: So, obviously, you said the boys from the yard were in. It was a sort of way of pacifying people. You might say they'd come from 'the Green' or they'd come from 'the yard'.
JR: They were used as scapegoats, then.
JT: Oh, absolutely! They were quite blameless actually.
ES: But it's interesting because we've interviewed several people who'd actually lived in Oakers Buildings and people who lived in the Green and you don't actually get from them a sense of feeling inferior. But obviously the feeling was more strongly felt by people who didn't live there. They were aware of this social divide.
JT: Yes, it was a social divide as such. They were not of your world.
ES: And what did you think when you did go into the Green in 1935?
JT: I was horrified by the level of poverty and thinking back, had it happened today, the timbered properties on the Green would have had geraniums and brass lamps, highly desirable.
JR: What primary school did you go to?
JT: The first school I went to in Dimsdale Street.... (The British School)
ES: A little school behind the church?
JR: That actually took boys. We were wondering about this. It became a girls' school.
ES: But why didn't you go to St. Andrew's School?
JT: No idea.
(Short break)
ES: So where did you first met your wife?
JT: In the office of the old North Met on Parliament Square. She worked in the showrooms and her hours were a major problem as during the week she worked 'til seven and on Saturdays 'til nine which meant we sometimes had to walk to Hoddesdon at night and I had to walk back. Nothing unusual in those days!
JR: Well, it's about a ten mile round trip.
ES: Yes, but when you're in love it's ten miles well spent, isn't it. You're not sure!
(Laughter).
JT: It's a word that has been somewhat debased, I think!
ES: Love?
JT: Yes.
ES: But assuming it meant what we think it did, in your day.
JT: Well, it all worked out in the end, by and large.
ES: So how old were you both when you met?
JT: You were 18 and I was 20, I suppose.
ES: But I suppose, had you had many girlfriends before?
OT: I'd better go out!
JT: Well, put it another way. In Hertford on Saturday nights it went wild. The market was there and people came in from the surrounding villages by bus and it was really jumping. The policemen walked about in twos and threes and the drunks in Railway Street were there as a matter of course. And being young we took advantage of the chaos. On Sunday nights everybody paraded in the town. This is where you met.
OT: The North Met was a hot bed for marriages. It was a very young staff. There were so many teamed up and of course the year after we met, the war started.
ES: But I suppose it gave a sort of edge to these romances, because of course if you were going to do anything you'd better get on with it, with the war pending.
OT: Oh, the war did so much for our generation. I mean, I got away from home and I'd never have got away from home. Girls didn't.
.
ES: Did you go into the services then?
OT: Yes.
ES: What did you do?
OT: I was a telephonist to start with.
JT: Commendable service in the artillery. If they found you'd done any office work they pounced on you. Oh, it was a colossal change for everyone.
OT: I met people from Scotland and Newcastle. I mean I didn't know what a Geordie was until I went into the army. I think it was a wonderful experience. We were all broadened as a result of it.
ES: And mixed with people from different social backgrounds, which is also good for you, I guess.
JT: I was called up into the Beds and Herts in Ipswich. From there we went to Woodbridge and we were put in an old furniture store, 3 or 4 stories. vast place. All the windows and doors missing and it was snowing, and within a fortnight 130 of them got 'flu and mine degenerated into pneumonia.
(Short break)
ES: We are looking at the map of St. Andrew St.
JR: Tom Barber was no. 2, was he?
JT: Then there was Skerman. Then there was Squires. Then there was the opening.
ES: Did you call that anything you see here, Rix's Yard or Fiddle Yard. But obviously some of these names have disappeared.
JT: Down here Palmer's Garage.
ES: That's still here.
JT: Yes, and come down here there were some cottages in this area. They were rather more respectable. Brewhouse Lane was reasonable.
ES: But Oakers Buildings you were saying was 'the pits'?
JT: A man called Pecker Farrow came from there.
JR: Where did he come from?
JT: Behind Palmer's Garage. Here my uncle lived, Ramsey the Fishmonger and in his yard at the back he had a smoke stack where he smoked fish. You can imagine what it smelt like in St. Andrew St. on occasions. One associates smells with a place. You had Bryant's on the corner grinding coffee, McMullen's, and two bakers on Old Cross baking bread.
ES: Oh, well, we've still got McMullen's. You can tell in West St. when McMullen's are brewing and it's a jolly nice smell because it means employment and all sorts of things.
JT: But the worst smell was at the leather works at Horns Mill.
Olive brings a photo of the Thirties. Little Berkhamsted outing of the Primrose Club, Young Conservatives.
ES: What were you doing there!
JT: I wasn't there. That was my sister social climbing!
OT: No, we're not Conservatives!
ES: Is that Robert Addis? it's a super photo. It could have been in Len Green's book.
JR: Which is your sister?
JT: This is my sister, next to Bert Addis, naturally.
ES: Well, she made it, then.
JR: Who's this one?
JT: Farrow, Eileen.
JR: Is she to do with Pecker?
JT: No, no, good Lord, no!
JR: She was to do with the people who had the restaurant, was she?
JT: Yes, that's right.
JR: Thora Blake's sister?
JT: Thora Farrow, great friend of my sister. She's here somewhere, lovely face, bad legs.
ES: Typical male remark.
OT: What about the man who won the money, John Allen?
ES: I know, but let me have a look. Mind you, she's got trousers on. That's sensible.
JT: Who?
ES: Unless those are her bad legs.
JT: She hasn't got trousers on. Didn't wear trousers in those days!
JR: She's got dark stocking on.
ES: Well she's got something like a pair of drainpipes on. She was such a beautiful woman. I saw her when she was about 85 and she was strikingly good looking. She was a really, really, really pretty woman.
JT: Thora? She was good looking, but as I say, bad legs.
OT: Nobody would have known Blanche.
JR: Which one was that?
JT: My sister died, Eileen. She married a chap named Huckle and after Eileen died he married Blanche. She came from Birch Green.
JR: Did she! What was her surname?
OT: She's still alive, Blanche.
ES: It's a beautiful photo, isn't it?
JT: I've no idea. In 1930 this family came from Kiddill's Yard.
ES: Oh, I see. Which family came from Kiddill's Yard?
JT: A chap named Allen.
JR: Did he win the money?
JT: That's right.
ES: Oh, and had great misfortune, that one.
JR: Didn't he have a road accident with somebody?
JT: There were 2 brothers. This is the older Allen. Young Alien had a car and I think he was guilty of some, I'm not sure whether it was manslaughter, or what.
End