Interviewed by Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date: 24/04/1994
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Verbatim transcript by Susie Hunt in 2016)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no O 1994.20
Interviewee: Dick Darton (Dick)
Date: 25th April 1994
Venue: 62 Hertingfordbury Rd, Hertford
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Verbatim transcript by Susie Hunt in 2016)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
[Starts with Dick and Peter discussing a settee Peter was given.]
PR: This is 25th April 1994 and I'm sitting in my own home (62 Hertingfordbury Rd) in the company of Dick Darton who agreed at short notice as I had the machine from the museum here, to pop round and talk about one or two Hertford things.
We have been doing quite a lot of talking around St. Andrew's parish and St. Andrew's School and your family is very much a St. Andrew's family and an important family within the community. So who is there in your family? Who of your generation?
Dick: Well I was born in Pavitt's Yard off St. Andrew St. near St. Andrew'sChurch.
PR: Under the clock tower!
Dick: I was the fifth of seven children. The eldest, Rene died aged 17 of kidney problems. Fred the next eldest recently died and so did the youngest, John. This leaves George now the eldest, who is blind, Peggy who is also blind, myself who is nearly 71 and Laurie the youngest one surviving who is 68.
PR: You said a moment ago before we turned on that you were going to thump Bruce Johnson for landing you in this (laughter) but you been to his house today
Dick: Yes I've been to Bruce's house today um Bruce promised me some cuttings and um I always do a little job for Bruce. He has an awkward gutter and I'm sure he won’t mind me saying this but he doesn't like very much going up a ladder and he knows that I've always got a ladder so I did his gutters in return for some geranium cuttings. (laughter)
PR: At the age of 71 this is quite a remarkable thing.
Dick: I wouldn't say quite a remarkable thing but we've always been an active age group. Quite recently I've participated in a medical research council series of programmes and most of us out of about 18 of my age group and very extensive they were and most of us had an extremely good review at the end, we were all very healthy and er quite fit, no heart problems and they attributed a lot of this to our upbringing which leads me on to my next point which in those days a lot of the families in Hertford were very poor. We were particularly so because my father had suffered terrible gassing during the first world war and as a result he was riddled with TB. Consequently did very little work from the day he came home. In those days if you hadn't lost an arm or a leg or an eye or something you didn't get a disability pension. So of course my mother got nothing.
PR: Your dad was James was he called Jim?
Dick: He was called Jim by his friends, that’s right.
PR: I remember him when I used to take the Church Magazine to your mother really but with Miss Turnbull who lived next door here he very often would be sitting when I was very small on the step in Sele Road.
Dick: He would sit on the step a lot of the time because he wasn't able to work but you just mentioned Miss Turnbull, she was my headmistress at St Andrews School. A lovely person she was ably assisted by Miss Hornby and Miss Row. I received many a cuff round the ear from Miss Row because she was a bit of a dragon really. Whenever she pronounced a word that had a S in it three or four blobs of spit would come out!! (laughs) Of course in those days we were just beginning to write with a wooden pen with a little metal nib on the end dipping it in the ink well. And of course she would say “Look boy, you've splashed” and of course where she spat it blobbed the ink and you got a clip round the ear! (laughs)
PR: Oh Miss Row. Was there a Miss Rutter there when you were there. I can't remember when she was there but er her name just popped up at school she taught at Broxbourne as well but she was for a time at St Andrews. I must look up to see what period she was there. So did they call Norah the governess when you were there?
Dick: She was the governess yes.
PR: Seems a funny name, you know.
Dick: It was, but it was a church school Peter and we used to have regular visits from dear old Nat Gardner I can always remember Nat because particularly I remember him because I was his health boy, what we called a health boy – I used to after school deliver all his letters that he'd written whether it was at Bengeo, Ware Road or wherever it may be I used to deliver them by hand, walking. I used to chop all the wood for the fires in the week and on Saturday I used to clean anything up to about 25 pairs of shoes and boots and erm work all day in the garden and my wage was a shilling a week.
PR: Well that was a – you were earning quite well! (laughter)
Dick: He was a wonderful man he truly was I can see him now he used to have a great big green Raleigh bicycle and it was part of my job to clean that every Saturday and when he used to go out of the gate because the Rectory was behind the big wall in North Road in those days next to where the old Mayflower hotel used to be where Cedar Close is today and he used to get out and have this enormous safety pin and pull his cassock through his legs and pin the back of the cassock to the front so that he could cock his leg over the bicycle. Off he used to go on the road and he was a strict disciplinarian because when we were boys we used to wear socks that came up to your knees with boots and if I walked into his study and my socks weren't straight he'd say go outside and put your stockings straight before you come into my study. (laughter)
PR: I think he was one of the loved parsons wasn't he?
Dick: Loved by everybody in the town, not just in the parish but in the town and he did a great deal of good work. He was a bee keeper, he used to keep bees and once again he wouldn't go up the ladder so I used to have to go up the ladder and if there was a swarm and I always remember we were called one evening to a swarm that was on a drainpipe behind Mence-Smiths which is in Bell Lane
PR: Yes its now – what's it called now?
Dick: It’s called Millets. This huge swarm was hanging on the drainpipe at the back of what was then Mence-Smiths so of course we went down the town with the skip and he puts his great straw bonnet on me and tucks the neck all in my shirt and it was my job to go up the ladder - I had got used to doing it and I just scooped them into the skip, like big raffia hatbox, and put the lid on and then he could put them into his hives. He had a row of hives all the way down the garden leading right to the river, because the river ran at the bottom of his garden
PR: Yes on the way to the Sele Mill as it were, yes.
Dick: Well his garden ran to the corner where the Matron's house was which is the white house opposite the bottom of the hospital.
PR: Yes Sele Lodge now I think it's called, it may have been
Dick: He was very generous with his honey used to send a lot to the hospital and when he was doing the honey he always used to give me a square comb, you know it was the real crunchy stuff!
PR: I'll go and put the kettle on. Oh I've done that, I'll go and pour the hot water on to our teabags Dick. What I've been looking for and typically can't find it had it just a few weeks ago. Father Nat's Canterbury Cap. It was tucked in the cupboard in the vestry do you remember that sort of rectangular there's a photograph of him in the rectory wearing it and I took it down to Mrs Hebbs had it for a while (laughter) at WH Smith. I took this down to Philip Turnbull because he's in a nursing home. The Reverend Philip Turnbull on the South Coast, he's had a stroke but I took this Canterbury Cap down I thought it was called a Biretta but it's not it's a Canterbury Cap. I brought it back from there I've got it somewhere but I didn't know you were going to say that I was going to produce it and you'd say “Well fancy that!” (laughs) Philip says he last saw it on Father Nat's head that particular one not long before he died and he was wearing it sitting in a hearse beside the coffin drawing off ….
Dick: He used to do that
PR: And he waved to Philip from this hearse (laughter) So anyway it's here somewhere under the roof unless I've packed it off to – might have gone in a bundle to show my sister, can't remember.
Dick: Are we recording this?
PR: Yes we're on now.
Dick: Talking of Father Nat and his hat going back to St Andrews School, erm we always used to have the St George's Day visit from him and there was a boy at school who was, the kind way of saying it is he was retarded, was Leslie Harris.
PR: Oh old Les Gwen Pettit's brother, lived at No l43 Hertingfordbury Road, I think it would be.
Dick: Well now, Les's birthday was St George's day and of course we all stood round the flagpole and the flag was pulled up and the Revd. Nat would say a prayer and we'd all sing Land of Hope and Glory whatever it was and he'd clap like that (loud claps of hands) because it was his birthday of course! He was a most extraordinary character because he was very very fond of steam engines and in those days Scales' yard just in Hertingfordbury Road there had all steam rollers, the old-fashioned steam rollers and Les once they started to steam up used to follow them for miles and miles he'd follow them!
PR: I can remember him doing that not as well as you because he was an older chap but
Dick: But from a very small boy he would follow them. His brother worked in the butcher's shop but you know we used to do the same as Paul.
PR: Oh I didn't know he had a brother, I'd forgotten that if I ever knew it.
Dick: We used to do not steam rollers but we used to do it with the barges because in those days the barges used to come right up to Adam's yard which is now Barbers with corn and timber for Jewsons, and we used to hitch a lift cos they were drawn by horses in those days. A single shire, carthorse on the towpath with a rope and we'd get a lift with the barges. They'd give us a lift down to Ware or St Margarets and we'd walk back think nothing of it.
PR: Yeah, another world isn't it!
Dick: Absolutely. And what the children miss today.
PR: They won't go out seeking things and finding out places
Dick: We had so much on our doorsteps. I mean let’s go back to Pavitts Yard where I was born we had down there horse dealers we had game keeper, we had a zoo. Harry Fitkins he had a zoo in Pavitts Yard – a little alligator in the pond he had snakes he had umpteen parrots including the big red and gold and blue macaws. They these macaws were always getting out. I don't know why but they were and we were cracking hot with catapults and we used to say we'll get them back for you Mr Fitkins and they used to always used to invariably fly into those very tall conker trees on the island in the castle cos we was only just over the brook from there so we used to get the very very tiny potatoes (clock strikes) and we used to put em in and whack em up there, and we scared them but nine times out of ten we scared them and they went straight back to their cages!
PR: Game up – give in!!
Dick: And of course down there was also the Allen family won all the money on the irish sweepstake.
PR: Bruce mentioned yes.
Dick: Well it was extraordinary Peter because from the day they won that money they seemed to have nothing but bad luck. They really did. Cocker the youngest son killed a girl up by the Plough
PR: Yes was that the Cook
Dick: Cook the rag and bone man's daughter. Cocker knocked her over and killed her unfortunately. Of course he went to prison for that and the eldest one who was manager of the Morris's furniture shop which became the Co-op furniture shop by the War Memorial, he I think he contracted either cancer or something. He didn't live very long. And of coursenthe eldest sister Win she suffered a great deal of ill health afterwards and shortly after they won the money they, Mr and Mrs Allen senior they had a bungalow built along Molewood and erm I don't know what, she had something wrong with her legs, it might have been, as a young boy I didn't know, what it was but knowing now it might have been thrombosis or something and from the day they had the bungalow built she was virtually confined to it.
PR: Where was the bungalow?
Dick: Just past the second river, on the right hand side – go past the cemetery and you go past the first river bridge. A bit further on there's where you can walk through under the viaduct, and then there's a bit of a steep track
PR: Yes, up over the tunnels
Dick: And then there's a bungalow set back about 40 yards and that is the bungalow.
PR: And did they move there direct from Pavitts yard or had they been somewhere else?
Dick: I think they had that bungalow built. I know for a fact that he used to work at Adam's yard and I know for a fact that when they won the money I don't know who it was that went down to tell him one of the family I suppose but he insisted on working till 5 o'clock, well he came home at 5. And I know we kids had an orange and a bun and I think the men had beer and the ladies had stout 'cos in those days they used to drink Mac's Milk Stout I can see it now and we all had a
PR: Part of the healthy upbringing in fact isn't it well upbringing there's a lot of food in a milk stout!
Dick: Yeah they said it was good for nursing mothers, I don't know if that was the case (laughter)
PR: Bring our teabags in! There we are, a cup of tea
Dick: Are you on, are we recording?
PR: I know we are meant to do this all professionally and we are not meant to keep having breaks and press the button and run away. I'm meant to set the ambience right! (laughter) but we've got Dick the raconteur here and we needn’t worry too much about formality!!
Dick: But St Andrews Street in those days was a fascinating place you know because there was such a variety in the interesting St Andrews Street – if you started off by the Ebenezer Chapel, which was where St Andrews Street separated into North Road and Hertingfordbury Road. You had Cold Bath on the right-hand side and Old Freddie Wackett's cycle shop on the left hand side next to Ginn's yard. I mean in those days Peter we could honestly and we did lots and lots of times, you could put a couple of coats down in the street and play football for 20 minutes before you got anybody come along. And then it would probably be a horse and cart. In fact almost opposite the Ebenezer Chapel was Nuncky Pateman's Dairy.
PR: Old Nuncky you called him
Dick: That was his name we called him Nuncky. He had cowshed at the bottom of Warehams Lane where what is Temple's yard is now and um at that time Hartham was about 6 or 7 feet lower than what it is now – it always flooded in the winter and um for years all the dust carts were emptied on Hartham and gradually they raised and raised it to its present level. It doesn't flood now!
PR: Not many people know that!
Dick: Well it did. He used to graze his cows on Hartham Common and we would often many and many a day would pick his – the cows knew when it was time they would all be waiting by that little archway where the little railway line went over.
PR: The Creep where you had to duck your head and wait and get rumbling truck
Dick: The Unicorn, yes old Freddy Whiting’s pub and we used to bring them up there for Hartham Lane round Old Cross and up St Andrews Street down into Warehams Lane. You couldn't do that today. And then of course we used to drive cattle and pigs to the market behind the Ram in Fore Street quite often, oh yes.
PR: How would you, I mean how many of you would bring the cows up from Hartham?
Dick: Oh only one or perhaps two. They knew the way just a question of hustling them along and I'm untangling them sometimes from the dray horses that they were coming in and going out of McMullen's. By the time we brought them up in the afternoon the draymen were coming home fast asleep on the wagons cos the horses used to bring them home. I mean they were drunk most of the time. They used to a big party at every pub and if you got 8 or 9 pubs on then the horses would bring them home and they probably wouldn't wake up till they drove in the yard bom bom bom wheels over the bumps! Yeah
PR: And that would be Mr Ball on that would he, old Bill Ball?
Dick: Yes old Rosier from Cole Green (phone rings). What was the little chap down Hartham Lane I can't remember his name now but of course you see in those days McMullen’s had a hold over them because um they all lived in tied houses. (phone still rings) 90% of the people who worked for the brewery of the adults, not so much the...I mean my first job was with McMullen’s brewery. I worked as a shorthand typist!
PR: Did you?
Dick: Yes for McMullen’s in the wine department! (phone still ringing) but I didn't live in a tied house um but they were wonderful old men they really were.
PR: So the only hazard would be as you say the dray horses but there would have been vehicles on the road wouldn't there?
Dick: There were, but not many we still had steam lorries at McMullen’s. In fact one is being used these days as publicity. It is driven by a Mr Skipper the head brewer. I think that is his hobby, he drives it....
PR: So it was dray horses or the steam power, rather like Les Harris's steam engine, that's the steam roller
Dick: Then they started to bring in those bull-nosed wagons like reversed lorries, you know. That was really modern stuff in those days.
PR: What other breweries were there in the town then? In West Street...
Dick: Nicholl's in West Street and they had a shop on Mill Bridge. Now I wasn't here at the time but of course it was destroyed by that landmine that fell. I was abroad at the time but um Nicholls shop and off licence and all that was destroyed.
PR: Yes the......
Dick: Wasn't Nicholl's florist destroyed at the same time
PR: Well I don't because I was a baby at the time
Dick: And of course Ilott’s Mill and the shop all down there going down to the Castle Cinema that was all there.
PR: So your yard was quite a community, Pavitt’s Yard?
Dick: Yes absolutely I mean Pecker Farrah he was the um, in those days the Beane River was a famous trout river as boys we used to see beautiful fish in there.
PR: Still good water, even today
Dick: Yes but it hasn't got the fish. Pepper used to shoot them with a 12 bore! He was the game keeper and the river keeper for Mr Gifkin senior the man with one arm and a hook and used to fly fish, he also had a hand cart and the fish for the shops used to come down by train to Hertford East Station. The Claydon’s, Donoghues, and where the hairdresser is now in South Street, Brewster’s and um Cowbridge
PR: Fosters, Mrs Foster
Dick: That's right. And Pecker used to pick it up from the station in his two wheeled old fashioned hand cart and wheel it up and drop it off at Claydons, and whereever it was going. And of course as boys we knew all the fishermen, all the fishshops because it was from them that we used to get our bait for crayfishing. Now we used to get an old bicycle wheel and we would have four strings coming up to a central cord and we used to get the most stinking fishheads and rotting stuff you could imagine, put it on with a piece of wire. No good putting it on with string the crayfish would nibble through that in couple of seconds, in the middle of the bicycle wheel and lower it into the river off the hump back on the Castle bridges and within a few seconds you'd get 10, 12, 15 crayfish on there and they were big crayfish and we used to sell 'em to different people get 1d a bucket! But you could get a bucketful quite quickly and another thing a lot of people don't know this but if you got crayfish in the river then your river's clean and pure because crayfish being bottom feeders they are the first to suffer from any kind of pollution. And I believe there are crayfish there now but nothing like so prolific as what they were when we was kids, but several years just before the war there was a breakage at the sewerage works at Luton by Wheathampstead there and of course that's the beginning of the river Beane and it wiped out all the crayfish and a lot of other fish right from many miles and it took many years to recover.
PR: I get carried away with these because I think of my own little thoughts that come back half the time but your mum wasn't she a lovely lady?
Dick: A great woman my mum was. She had a hard life but she was a very very nice woman. Loveable person. She loved her family she loved her kids ever so much and in fact I can remember quite often my mum not having a dinner to make sure that we did. Oh yes. I mean in those days quite often dinner would be a load of vegetables with perhaps a sheep’s head in a stew, you know and um it was always my mum's privilege to have the brains! Yes always. But you see in those days Peter they had to do it because there wasn't the money. I mean people talk today about you mustn't eat dripping you mustn't eat but many and many a time we went to school with two or three thick slices of dripping toast inside us and this is what this medical research people were saying. We seem to have survived extremely well on our frugal diet .
PR: I can remember your mum's voice because your brother Fred who died what a year ago? He was 80 wasn't he?
Dick: 82 he was
PR: But he had been a sidesman at St Andrews Church and he was the longest serving sidesman when he died, evensong and he used to sit because evensong has wittered away down a little tiny congregation in the side chapel and Fred was not so keen on them, but he used to sit at the back one pew behind where they give out the hymn books, Fred and your mum (Dick laughs) years earlier sat the opposite side on the front row and when we used to come round, cos I was in the choir as a boy, in procession if it was a special festival we'd come down the side aisle beside the crucifer and the candles and then we'd come round and when we got towards the back we'd hear this lovely voice, ooh -
Dick: He'd had a nice voice, yes. But of course you see I was in the choir as well for a long time and I used to serve at the altar for many years and I also did a year as verger, just before I joined the air force. What was his name now he was very keen on Hertford Town Football Club, Bassett, that was his name Bassett.
PR: Oh right we couldn't remember his name the other day. You've got it.
Dick: Bassett – he was a scatterbrain if ever there was one to look at him you'd never think he was a verger! He was the verger and then I think he went to war or not, he disappeared and um old Mrs Hibbs said to me Dick, we need a verger. I said no good asking me and she said well we really would like you to do it for a little while. I said but er anyhow I did it. They shortened the cassock for me (Peter laughs) I had a leather belt on and er without bragging I knew all the services in those days. As I say I think it was 12 months. Unpaid of course! (laughter)
PR: Yes, on the tight side! But er Mr Bassett lived in St Nicholas Hall house didn't he at the front?
Dick: Yes that's right. In the house which is now Beckwith's antiques. And of course we used to have that was the hall used to have that for plays and drama and etc
PR: My mum was very upset when your mum died because, your mum died in the County Hospital, quite suddenly recovering from an operation.
Dick: Yes she had we were going to fetch her home two days later.
PR: My mum was in at the same time for an operation.
Dick: I didn't know that Peter.
PR: No, well no because you'd have been caught up with the sudden grieving really, and she’d gone my mum had gone to the toilet she'd had her op and your mum had had hers and they met in the bathroom and my ma said how're doing Mrs Darton and she said very well. And within a few moments she'd gone back to her bed and died. Presumably a clot from the operation as is usual that sort of thing, which obviously upset mum because…
Dick: It was extraordinary because um George in those days had a horse and cart, George used to keep pigs, and um although he was blind he used to walk this horse and cart all round the town. Don't know how he did it but he did. And er mum actually died, the day mum actually died in the morning, George and I were down Garratt’s at Molewood which is where Keith Shepperd's now got his boat building place loading up pigs to take to market for Garratt’s and a policeman came down and said “Are you the Darton boys?” So we said yes, so he said “Would you get home as soon as you can cos your mother's died in hospital.” We couldn't believe it because I think that was on the… must have been a Monday because it was market day, cattle market was always on a Monday in those days and um we were due to fetch her home on about the Wednesday, and it was sad in a way because um my wife was expecting our second baby and mum didn't know and we were going to tell her when she came home that Beccy was expecting you know, so of course mum never knew that she'd got another grandchild coming, but there we are, that's life Peter.
PR: What age was she?
Dick: Mum would have been 64, that's right! PR: So she saw your first daughter ….
Dick: Sarah, yes saw Sarah but didn't see Jill.
PR: Was Peggy married then?
Dick: Yes, she married Chris from the hospital.
PR: I remember being in the choir for the wedding.
Dick: She had one son, Nicholas.
PR: That would have been before your mum had died would it?
Dick: Just before mum died, not long before mum died.
PR: So she'd seen that launch off
Dick: And of course George was married as well. She saw George off. It's extraordinary how things happen because although dad had been ill all his life he did actually die very very suddenly cos I don't know if you know this but after the war I was an RAF ferry pilot for four years. I flew on a fighter squadron during the war and at the end of the war I was an RAF ferry pilot for four years, I was, I had completed all the papers to do full time but I was at a place called *****in North Africa at the time taking a mosquito out to New Zealand and I had a signal come through to say to leave the aircraft and come home, my father had died and as I say although he'd been ill all those years ‘e just died quickly overnight and I actually got back just in time for the funeral to leave the house.
And um that left mum at home with Peggy and George, cos Fred was in the army in the middle east and Laurie and John were both at sea in the merchant navy. I thought there is no way I can leave mum so when I went back they gave me compassionate leave for the funeral and when I went back I went and saw my commanding officer and I explained the situation and he said well the papers haven't actually been signed by the AOC that's the air officer commanding he said I'm quite sure we can get them squashed and er I got a compassionate discharge.
PR: Yes
Dick: So I came home and gave mum a bit of moral support and I think she was very grateful that I did because it would have been very difficult for her.
PR: So she was at Sele Road by then?
Dick: Yes. I used to come over in an airplane quite often! I always used to let her know. I used to shut one engine off you know. It’s very difficult because you've got the hospital so what I used to do I used to come over from the County Hall drop right down low over here , pull up quickly over the house and turn sharp off to the left towards Cole Green, away from the hospital. She used to come out and I can see her now waving a teacloth!
PR: Oh brilliant!
Dick: I used to circle round two or three times and rev the engines a couple of times and away I used to go. That was when I was doing an ar test or something like that. But of course you weren't supposed to do that.
PR: So we've done St Andrews Street and I suppose we'd better just pinpoint whereabouts Pavitts yard was cos there are so many
Dick: Pavitts Yard if you can as you come over Gascoyne Way you've got Consumers Association on your left hand side now there’s a bit that sticks out at right angles to the main block of Gascoigne Way where our garden was. Our garden used to come right down to that fork that v-shape where the little bridge was over the in the castle bridges so Pavitts Yard was where not where the whole of Consumers Association is but where the left hand side is that would have been Pavitts Yard would have been.
PR: Of course if you walked up in your day forget Gascoyne Way for a minute come out of the church turn left the first thing was Cawthorne House then Scales the butchers then the almshouses
Dick: Where Miss Vines who used to do all the sewing and we used to frighten her at choir practice - used to hide behind the tombstones (laughter)
PR: Yeeesss! Maud.
Dick: We were wicked, Poor Miss Vines.
PR: Round the back there Stonehouse then you got the Red Lion the pub and then shoe shop, well there was..
Dick: Hattam’s cake shop and then Pavitts Yard and the other side was the tobacconist sweet shop....and then you went on to Ginn’s
PR: So Hattam’s and Pavitts Yards are alternative names for the same place and did well when I was at school there were the Porters and Mrs Anderton
Dick: Oh yeah that rings a bell.
PR: And someone with who was that with one arm down there? Used to have a truck and old chap used to go around with a barrow and a truck. The first one on the right? This is more recent than your
Dick: Trying to think who that was
PR: Was he one of the Braces?
Dick: Pip Brace that's right one of the Braces, yes Had a hook arm.
PR: I've got his ladder on top of the garage at the moment. He gave me a ladder, before he died. Only a little well not a step ladder a short wooden ladder.
Dick: Well if you came on a little bit further up St Andrew Street you came to Ginns Yard the builder under the archway with the office on the right then there was Freddie Wackett's cycle shop
PR: My great uncle was a foreman carpenter in Ginns. Will Childs used to have a bowler hat. Somebody remembered him from - Frank Chappell that was with his bowler.
Dick: Then there was the paper shop Mrs Emmett’s and then Nuncky Patemans's dairy under the archway then the Hayden’s used to live under there as well
PR: With another shoe shop connection.
Dick: Reg Hayden and Dorothy the sister, she'd still around you know Dorothy is. I often see Dorothy Hayden. Now Mrs Slater
PR: In the Folly. Old Hall Street. Right. I meant to link her up I wasn't quite sure, she's someone to talk to isn't she.
Dick: Of course, on the other side you had Freddie Roche in his shoe shop. He was a lovely character old Fred. Another fisherman used to fish a lot with Harry Botsford. He and Harry used to fish – in fact I can remember one evening we were about to have tea, the girls were quite small and through the front window I saw Fred coming in with his big raffia basket. He said I thought you'd like to see these fish before I even went home and he opened his basket up and he'd got two sea trout. He'd been up to Northumberland with Harry and he'd got two sea trout in there one weighed 11lbs and one weighted 9 and a half pounds and they were absolutely gorgeous fish.
PR: Didn't he fish with Butcher Bedford sometimes?
Dick: He might have done. I've got a feeling …. funny you should say Butcher Bedford because a lot of people owe their lives to him you know although he was called Butcher he was very brusque and very straight, but he was a very good surgeon.
PR: My mother would put herself as one of those. Lots of operations. She had cancer and in the earlier years when there wasn't the knowledge as there is today. She didn't die of that she survived all the operations of Butcher Bedford.
Dick: I'm coming down a bit further this will probably make you laugh but you know St Andrews Church right opposite there was a little alleyway up there with two or three little houses where the Easters used to live. Well up there lived Onky Fisher. He's called Onky because he used to keep pigs up Hertingfordbury Road and he used to feed them with all the stuff from the fish shops. God 'e used to honk! (laughter) Well he had a donkey and a cart and he used to go round selling the 1d lumps of chalk for the steps, the front steps, what the women used to clean the front steps with. And whiten the front steps with. Of course he'd be round the back somewhere having a cup of tea or a chat with some old girl, selling her a bit of chalk and we'd lead the donkey down the road about a 100 yards (laughter) You little buggers he'd say!
PR: He was over there where Mrs Miles opposite as you go down some steps there's a little alley at the side
Dick: That's right. Onky Fisher. Oh yeah.
PR: What about Old Rigor Mortis? I mean Dr Mortis? His surgery was along there wasn’t it?
Dick: Of course he hasn't been dead all that many years you know. He was still doing um? What did they give you before you had an operation? Anaesthetics! Isn't it awful when you get old and you can't remember these things. Sign of age!
PR: We've talked to him – he's in the museum like you're going to be! (laughs) but did you have a Dr at home when you were children then? What would you have done?
Dick: No. Mum used to pay a on penny (1d) hospital card. Now this is a long while ago and I honestly can't remember all the details but you see there was no national health at all. The Church was very good. The Rev Nathan Gardner if he knew someone was ill he would do something about it. Whether he paid out of his own pocket I don't know. But I know for a fact that when I fell over in the St Andrews School playground as you went in the gate there was all the blood red cobbles. They were all laid in like to form a path and I fell and I split my knee cap on these things and I was only 5 or 6 and I was taken to the County Hospital (clock chiming) and mum produced her card. You paid a penny a week and this covered you for treatment or something at the hospital but I don't ever remember a doctor.
PR: Childbirth and all that sort of thing would all be.........
Dick: Done by the neighbours. Yeah. I can't remember when my sister died - I can remember – I don't remember a lot about my sister Rene but I can remember the coffin being in the house, at the bottom of the stairs. Ours was a very old house. It was the bottom one at the bottom of Pavitts Yard. There wasn't any gas or electricity. That was connected later. Our hot water we got from boiling up an old copper we had a big old copper and we used to boil that up with wood and um mum used to ladle the hot water into an old tin bath with one of them old aluminium scoops. And the cooking was done on the old kitchen range, one of them old fashioned kitchen ranges But I can remember vividly as if I am looking at it now the coffin being at the bottom of the stairs with the lid on of course with Rene in it. That was a couple of days before the funeral.
PR: Well that's one of my memories here in this room we are sitting at the moment. The Coffin. My Grandma Mrs George died in 1952. Mum locked the door and one day she said to come and see Grandma. The coffin was open at that point having been locked down but I remember being surprised when I gave her a kiss on her forehead. It was cold. The first time and someone you know.
Dick: it is strange how they change.
PR: All these things used to happen within the family. Now they are all whisked away somewhere else.
Dick: When brother John died, Austin his son came to see me and said that he'd never seen a dead person before and would I go with him to the mortuary with him. So I told him of course I would and to think that's just a shell, dad has gone now that's just the carcass it's like the grandfather clock and all the works have gone out of it, but he was very upset ad I sort of steadied him up a little bit. He said afterwards it was like touching marble.
PR: So the neighbours would have just when the time came for the delivery of a baby for example?
Dick: They would help until the midwife arrived you know in fact my wife was born on the kitchen floor without anybody, in Townshend St. and Sister Major had said she'd be about an hour but to tell Mr. Moore to come up to her place and get her bag and get back with it and get some hot water going. He got the bag but he went in the Little Eastern didn't he! And Betty arrived on the kitchen floor. Sister Major gave him something to get on with when she caught up with himl! (laughter)
PR: Yes, it wasn't wise to get on the wrong side of Sister Major.
Dick: But there was Miss Campkin who rode an upright bicycle and she was earlier that Sister M. She used to have a long narrow woven basket down the front fork (of her bike) into which she used to put her umbrella and if it rained, she'd ride along with one hand with the umbrella up, along Ware Rd. That's going back a long while.
PR: Joy John (Joy Crane she was) mentioned her, but it was Sister Major when I was born.
Dick: And mine and she was midwife when my girls were born. Of course there was one other fascinating character not actually in St Andrews Street but just off St Andrews Street do you know Brewhouse Lane?
PR: Yeah
Dick: Where the pub is on the corner. The very – cos that's where the old slaughter house was. We used to go down there
PR: Back of a shop there more or less.
Dick: We used to watch them slaughtering you know as kids and the only way they could get rid of us was to blow up a pig’s bladder and give it to us! We used to run off with it like a balloon!! On the last house on the left lived an old lady, Granny Edwards. She wore a very long black skirt and would say, “Boy, give me that chicken out the run there.” And you'd get the chicken. She couldn't wring a chicken's neck you know, she lived on her own, so she'd get hold of the chicken, put the head on a chopping block and wallop with the chopper. We were fascinated when she let it go and it stood up for a few seconds tipping its head like this you know! (loud laughter). Very macabre but we used be fascinated. That was down Brewhouse lane. But of course all the slaughtering was done there. All the butchers had their own slaughter houses. I don't think Johnson's had a slaughterhouse.
PR: I don't think Bruce mentioned that. He talked about a chap called Reed* who was a kind of master-supplier of a lot of provisions of a lot of butchers.
Transcribers Note: Mr Reed had a slaughterhouse in Millers Yard
Dick: Did he mention Whiffey Hall? Well this slaughter house we're talking about Earle’s they used to keep odd nights and odd days keep cattle and things, if they'd got more to cope with in one day they'd be fed and kept in the pens down there overnight which of course there was manure to be got rid of and there used to be a man from Bengeo he always wore black beautiful leather leggings and boots and he had one of the strongest ponies I ever seen in my life. Everyone called him Whiffey because he used to take the dung away from the slaughterhouse and he used to come up Brewhouse lane with it and turn into St Andrews Street down to Old Cross, as he got to Old Cross the pony was beginning to get a bit of a trot on you know and he'd go down Cowbridge and swing up to Port Hill and by this time the pony was really going well going fast. He got up that first slope over the bridge down the other side and he'd be almost up the top of the hill still running before we slowed down and he walked the last few paces but by job that was a strong pony. And of course he was sitting on this two wheeled cart was full of dung from the slaughter house. We boys would shout “Hi ya, Whiffey!” as he went by.
(More laughter!)
PR: Tell us about the leaders of the town. I suppose you didn’t have much to do with them as a kid. Who were mayors and things in those days?
Dick: Dan Dye, and Mrs. Purkiss Ginn who was very prominent and a lovely person, and of Dr. and Mrs. Medlock.
PR: Dan spent all his life round those few square feet at the Green and Railway Street.
Dick: Yes, the Green was a right place. We had a doss house down there, a tramps' doss house. There was a real character, Bruce may have mentioned him, Reme - a cattle driver at the market. He was as bow-legged as you could imagine you'd have thought he's have been riding a horse and had fallen off it and he always smoked clay pipes. I don't know if you can remember it but there used to be 2 fish and chip shops almost side by side there down Railway street.
PR: Donoghues and Tovell's.
Dick: And a bit of an alleyway in the middle it was up there that the old doss house was. Where Reme used to kip…amongst one or two others, yes.
PR: A lot of these characters. More recent times we've had old Danny the town drunk wasn’t there but always every town had got its
Dick: Then another character was Chitty Wren. When we were kids he was a very old man probably only about 60 but he appeared ever so old to us. He had a three-wheel bike and got on by putting his left foot on the axle at the back and going over onto the saddle. And he used to play a concertina and go around carolling at Christmas time and we used to take the mick out of him and let his tyres down.
PR: Where was Chitty based?
Dick: Kettridge's had a little greengrocers shop, he had a hook arm, opposite Dr. Vawsers' house in Castle St as it widens into the War Memorial, Parliament Square. He lived in one of those little tiny cottages round that yard somewhere. Millers Yard. Where he used to have that three wheeled bike. Chitty Wren. There were some fascinating people then. But we used to make our own fun Peter! There was no television. I can remember one of the greatest things in the winter we used to get a cocoa tin with a hammer and nails knock a hole in the bottom and in the lid and then get an old bit of rag and light a match to get the rag smoldering put the lid on and then holding it horizontally run up and down the road as fast as we could go to get the draught to blow through and within a few minutes we'd got a beautiful hand warmer. The only trouble is when you put it in your pocket your coat reeked of burnt rag!
PR: A completely different world isn't it!!
Dick: I know the kids can't do it today but when we were quite small I mean we used to have the old carrot tops shaped like a thick carrot and we used to whip them all the way down here, all the way to school. Used to wind it up say at the bottom of Sele Road and whip it down the road and run like hell and whip it again before it stops spinning and we perhaps keep that going all the way down to St Andrew's Church. They can't do it today!
PR: They can't for obvious reasons. But no
Dick: Opposite where we are sitting used to be a big brick wall and there used to be frogs come across this road by the hundred by the thousand and it was incredible because when I used to walk down to church early Sunday morning I used to see these I mean this was later on when I was sort of getting 15 or 16 when I was serving at the altar and I would come back for breakfast time when I would count perhaps 150 been run over. I don't know how they came through that wall There must have been a hole in the cement where they could just slink through
PR: They do make that journey
Dick: Oh they do because today they have a frog patrol up at Bramfield you know
PR: We used to get them in the cellar there's a window below ground level and they can somehow get into the cellar itself. I'd forgotten all that. Oh well we've covered and we've almost run out of
Dick: Well if there's anything else you want to ask...
PR: What we'll do Dick is put these – we've got lots now we're going to put on store as it were and then when we index them and we want to know more about something or other we'll ask people and say what did you mean when you said this Dick or what can you remember so and so about it.
We've done schooling and we've done the County Hospital and talked about Bob Harding about the Fire Brigade we ought to get in on it.
Dick: Is he still alive?
PR: Bob's lives at Hertford Heath. Dick: Does he?
PR: Yes. He was the chief driving test examiner at one point
Dick: That's right I haven't seen him for years.
PR: No he's still about. Um and we've had one or two go back a long way like we got Annie Inman when she was 101
Dick: (breathes quietly...) Oh goodness me!
PR: A few weeks ago I went up the Campfield Chelmsford Road and talked to Ruby Henry. She lives on her own now 93. She used to keep a fish and chip shop on Railway Street round by The Diamond.
Dick: Oh yes that was a place wasn't it! PR: so we got Ruby..
Dick: You've got a nice mixture then Peter a nice cross section
PR: We got Evelyn Lacy and Thora Blake and you know, George the photographer’s wife.
Dick: Is she still alive?
PR: Yes she's in Western House but she'd had a stroke but we got her before she had it and we did have groups of people meeting at her house once or twice. Got them all sitting round and one sparked the other off . (Dick coughs) We started looking a bit at, well, you know St Andrews street and that St Andrews School I suppose. We'd better move away from that and we got some Elsie Ansell she was born in - she's 80 now, born in St Andrews Street, one of the yards off St Andrews Street, forgotten which one
Dick: Ansell, Ansell Probably know if asked to see it but I can't
PR: She worked at various shops in the town, Coleman’s and various others. But she's lives in Ware.
Dick: What Coleman’s the shoe shop?
PR: Yeah
Dick: Oh I know who you mean now - Elsie.
PR: She was a good easy talker so that’s and we've had a few teachers from St Andrews School now retired but obviously they're talking about more recent. So we are covering the ground quite nicely but there is so much more to do. Everywhere you think of everywhere
Dick: Hertford's a wonderful little town. People run it down but it’s a wonderful town really. Like the hospital, wonderful hospital, absolutely fantastic that hospital. Great.
PR: New patterns new ways and er I don't know how we'll finish up
Dick: What's going to happen now ? This will go.....
PR: I will give you a sheet of paper to fill in some details on and then we'll put it – we've got so many
Dick: Are we ever going to be able to hear it?
PR: Yes you'll be able to hear it any time. It'll go into the museum with a number on it. You'll say who's allowed to hear it because there's a form to tick - most people just
Dick: I don't mind who hears it Peter.
PR: We haven't run anybody down we've enjoyed a few characters. And then someone will do either rough notes, abbreviating what we said into headings or word for word and it'll be indexed and then, when in 50 year time someone wants to know about St Andrews School, what was the lighting like you know what was the playground like and you've mentioned the cobbles and then it'll be indexed and you'll say well listen to Dick Darton talking and you listen to this person or that and you'll get it all or you can read it. So it's official and its... so you've made a contribution there
Dick: Oh well!
PR: We're going to talk to a few more traders I found Muriel Cook from Cook & Draynes
Dick: Oh goodness me!
PR: So she lives out at Thundridge and I'll talk to her sometime. The odd train driver or two and Bill Lawrence who used to live at Tudor Way caretaker Hollybush School. We talked to him. He's moved away of course.
Dick: Yes, he's gone.
PR: But we've got quite a few in store. If I can just nip upstairs or no I've got it here I'll give you a form which you can fill in now Dick or um
Dick: Can I take this off now. How do I do this Peter?
PR: You squeeze it. Like a peg! Take the form away and pop it through the door one day. So you've been to this house before?
Dick: And of course there's the NSPCC used to live along there.
PR: Turnbull’s. Dan Dye's brother just through this wall here. This house you see was…
Dick: Which was Horace Creasy?
PR: Two doors or 3 down and Binkie Farnham and Botsford’s of course.
Dick: All well-established families in the town but all professional people.
PR: Yes. I mean grandad was born next to St Andrews School down here and when he moved across here he was not very far up in the Post Office and his £324 bill from Alfred Scales for building the house took him the rest of his working life to pay off. Finished one year before he died but that must have been a big step because this house had hot and cold running water, fireplaces you know coming from the cottage
Dick: I don't know how good your memory is but I can remember walking up what we call Sandy Lane Welwyn Road, now I'm sure it was a joint venture between Ekins and Botsfords.............
Tape Ends....