Interviewed by Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date: 06/03/2003
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2003.4
Interviewee: Tessa Chestnutt (TC)
Date: 6th March, 2003
Venue: Downfield Road, Hertford Heath
Interviewers: Jean Riddell (JR) Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: Thursday 6th March 2003, just recording prior to going to Hertford Heath this afternoon, Downfield Road, Tessa Chestnutt. Peter Ruffles may also be present at the interview.
TC: That’s right, you remember grandfather?
PR: Yes, I was just peering….
JR: He was Packman?
TC: Spackman, always troubles because the Packmans, councillors, remember Sheila Packman (yes) we were always getting muddled – Tessa Spackman, Sheila Packman, she was very, very pretty., Sheila’s my age.
JR: Was it Vance Packman?
TC: He was mayor, a biggish man, they lived in Queens Road, didn’t they? (yes)
JR: Can we start with the Folly now, anxious to get this folly project under way.
TC: Do you want me to tell you what my connection is to it?
JR: Yes, on here (tape) – you were telling me the other evening.
TC: My grandmother had a wicked stepmother and she came to London and she got married to a guardsman and they were both very young and he went against his commanding officer to marry my grandmother and so he had to get out the guards. It used to be like that in those days.
Unfortunately, he died when my mother was about two, he had TB which was the usual thing in those days. My grandmother then used to bring her child up and she went out as a companion to an American lady but it wasn’t such that she could have this little toddler with her all the time and was extremely worried about it all. My mother was ‘put out’ to some people and they went to view where she was after she’d been there a week and they were horrified at the way she was being looked after and they picked her up and took her straight back to the American lady’s house in London and were wondering what to do when the house-maid said ‘well if it’s all right with you, you could do my family a lot of good. They live in Hertford and my father and mother and an invalid sister and they would bring her up’…….so they thought any port in a storm at the moment and that’s how my mother came as a little soul to live in the Folly.
My mother had quite a difficult time because when she went up to London a car was sent for her and it went round that my mother was illegitimate and you can imagine all the stories. That’s how Mummy came to have connections with the Folly. You probably know the houses, they’re really nice. They lived at no. 1 Frampton Street which is next to the river and old Mr. Rawson, he was a drayman for McMullens and he always went back at night to sneak in and give the horses some more food because Mc’s were so stingy with the food!
It was quite a happy place to live. Everybody seemed to be friendly and seemed to help one another. They always had to keep their gardens just so and the house had to look just so from the outside because the Andrews brothers or one of them, would walk round every day to see that everything was just so. The children obviously played in the street but they were never allowed to chalk hopscotch or anything like that….no, no, no……if they did that, ‘get your mother to come and wash this off’. But they were liked by all their people.
My mother always tells the story about when she was a little girl she went up to them one day and said ‘Hello Mr. Andrews’ and he looked at her – ‘it’s very kind of you, my dear, to speak to me, but it would be much better if you said Good Morning Mr. Andrews’. Anyway, Mummy lived there and she went to the local schools and then she worked for a while for, not sure which way round, she worked in the Addis office or she worked in the record factory, connections still go on because my old gardener here, his mother worked under my mother at the record factory. Connections still go on because he was born in the Shire Hall, Ralph Hart.
PR: Not quite sure of the period when your mother spoke to the Andrews.
TC: Mummy was born in 1902 and she was about 8 when she spoke to RT or WF. She can remember the navigation being very busy and all the timber coming up and down. Then she worked for Addis’s, from all the nice things that have been said about the Addis’s they weren’t the easiest of people to work for. She can always remember that if one member of the family upset, they got the sack and “take the rest of the family with you”. But old Mrs, Addis was a great friend of grandfather.
She got on from there and then when she was married they lived, first of all at the top of Ware Road and then they went to Foxholes Avenue and Mummy had a **** used to go all the way from Ware Road down to the Folly to see the aunties and so as Mummy knew he’d been, they used to tie a piece of wool on his collar. My mother’s memories of the Folly were nice, except it wasn’t the place to live, that’s what I was always brought up with, not the Aunties - because one of the other sisters came to look after the invalid sister after the parents died – it was always the Aunties by the river, you never let anybody know you had anything to do with the Folly.
And right up until Mummy died she always called the Aunts by the river, never the Folly, because it was the workers’ place. Then my memories of the Folly were going to see the Aunties there and the old Auntie that was crippled, I suppose she had arthritis and she didn’t haver any help at all, and she used to move about the room on an ordinary chair, she never had an easy chair. I sued to play in the garden and although they had outside loos they were proper loos and because they were the last house they had a bigger brick-built coal shed …….
PR: They had a wall, the ones further down had fences.
TC: But there were all sorts of alleyways through and I remember that there was a lady who was in – which road would it have been – the Aunts’ house was like that, the alley went down there, so it must have backed on to – and all the women down there used to do something and this woman used to do all the stiff collars that the men used to have, she didn’t do any other laundry, just the stiff collars and we always used to take grandpa’s and daddy’s collars to her…….
PR: Was that Old Hall Street?
TC: I could take you there, but only the back way.
PR: It would have been 14 Old Hall Street. I was there later and delivered a Daily Mail to no. ** Frampton Street.
TC: Really? What, when the Aunties were there? Oh, Peter, no!
PR: I was always envious of their garden because they had lots and lots of Daphne Mezereum and they were self-propagated and that’s Folly soil and aspect for you because nowadays you don’t often see them seeding.
TC: They did! And a lovely big lavender bush. I had one when we came up here but it didn’t like the soil. When we were bombed out in Tamworth Road, Mummy, Daddy and I went to live with the Aunties until we got the house in Rainham Street. So we were there for about 3 months. The invalid auntie had gone to another sister up in Kettering so it was only Jane that was there then she was a bit….having a man in the house…..and she had to sleep, because we all slept downstairs under the kitchen table and she went with the ladies next door and she used to put 3 kitchen chairs together and sleep on those.
I can remember a bit of the town there, walking to the convent to school, seeing when we evacuated an awful lot of wood from London into the woodyards there and I can remember very easily the basin before they put the weir there, the wide waters – they used to chute the coal down and I can always remember walking along there and looking across, because you could see the top of the new part of the convent, which obviously has a flat roof, and one of the nuns walking up and down with her arms like this – whether she was doing penance or what, that mainly was my memory.
PR: Was the railway, you could see it, the trucks shunting?
TC: Yes, the railway was there and of course everyone was very keen on their allotment.
PR: What about Hartham, did you stray across there or were you retained on the island?
TC: I didn’t have any friends in that part so where you went to play, you went where your friends were, which wasn’t there. It was the Grubbs, Fairfax Road and Parkins, do you remember the Parkins?
PR: Yes, John Coborn’s wife’s family.
TC: Yes, and her father worked in Sheffields and so all my friends were that end of the town.
PR: How would you have got to them?
TC: Well, walked!
PR: Along the river?
TC: No, just went up past the station.
PR: And along Railway Street.
TC: When I went to school, of course walked like everybody did. You didn’t get school lunches and you didn’t take packed lunch you went home at lunch time and some of them, Marian Gosselin, Ian Shand, they lived at the top end of Ware Road near Cromwell Hill, and Tony Alderney – we all walked to school in the morning at 9 o’clock, left at 12, walked home and walked back again for 2. But I feel sorry for children now as they can’t do that, because you learned so much when you walked to school, you learned who the bully girls were, didn’t use the word ‘bully’ in those days.
PR: You learned the dangers, the world is sanitised for children now – taken away from places where they could fall over, fall in, dodgy people…..
TC: I can only remember one dodgy person – opposite the pub in Railway Street, the Railway Tavern?
PR: Great Eastern.
TC: Great Eastern, because there used to be a pub the other side, the Albion. We used to walk along there, well the station, goods station to the Eastern was there and that’s where the trains used to turn round and I don’t know whether it was a milk man, but there was a naughty man there and he used to drop his trousers. That was the only thing we had, we were frightened but giggled.
PR: Was old Flannel Feet living in Villiers Street then? Worked for a chap who had a sweet shop in St, Andrew Street.
JR: Palmer
PR: He was Palmer?
JR: She was called Miss Palmer, but her name was Miss Hoad.
PR: She was a curiosity for us in the Ware Road – Villiers Street end. She used to wear no leather because of her beliefs about animals and used to wrap her feet up in woollen….
TC: A shortish woman, very upright, I can see her now, not much expression on her face! I remember in Talbot Street there was the little Post Office as well as the shop and I can remember – what was his name now, was it Kemp – before the Hodges came there – Kemp – he was a rather grumpy man, he always wore a cap and always a white pinny but we like the Post Office because they the first people in our area that used to sell ice cream. The other shops in the area were in Cromwell Road, corner of Cromwell Road there was a shop and of course Fishers which is now the Post Office at Gallows Hill
PR: I was thinking, recalled working out for myself for the first time that the Folly was an island, I was enchanted with this community when I became intimately acquainted with it as a paper boy, I worked it out that it was an island but it was never called Folly island.
TC: Never, it’s something that’s come about in the last few years. It was always the Folly, never Folly Island.
PR: I do remember working it out and being very pleased at my cleverness!
TC: The new bridge from Hartham was made during the war because if the Mill Bridge had gone, there was no way of getting across.
JR: Was it a footbridge? Somebody yesterday I was talking to said it was, I know it was put through during the war.
PR: The footbridge part was really part of the highway and it went across the weir where the sluice gates could be lifted to let water through but the road bridge which was opened for a while and then closed again spent most of its time closed but that pedestrian bridge as you came to the end of Thornton Street going toward Hartham and Macs, it went sharply left and then across the sluice gates and then re-joined the road, you did a kink. I didn’t hear all the tape.
JR: Did you hear the tape where she said that, because I couldn’t understand?
PR: No, you were at cross purposes for a moment, you strayed there when talking about various bridges because she said there was a way under, she meant the cattle creep.
JR: I was talking about the Bull Plain end!
TC: I’d forgotten about the cattle creep!
PR: Just inches above your head and above rail tracks and you could go across to the right of it and I suppose pedestrian and vehicles….
TC: That was when the other river was there…
PR: Yes, but these waggons just 12 inches above your head rumbling over….
TC: Yes, but you were saying, did we play at Hartham but as you know my grandfather used to rent what they call Dickermill Island – it was really the gardens of the house [Leaside] and mill and my cousin, he’s another you should interview [Don Ellingham], we spent all our war years playing down there and he can remember, not sure before Hartham was built up, not sure I can remember, and flattened, it was a proper water meadow and it used to flood and we were all allowed to skate down and it wasn’t deep because if we went through we weren’t going to come to any harm. That was the end where the old swimming pool used to be. When I was at school at the convent we had no playing fields and we used to play hockey down there.
PR: It’s always ben a rough area, more manicured today than it’s ever been. The other little bit on the tape with Iris that you referred to with the bridge and the fire brigade because the fire engines couldn’t get through, that was modern day nonsense.
JR: Bet Brace told me that many years ago her sister had a fire…getting the fire engine from Bull Plain over that small cobbled bridge into Folly Island and the fire engine couldn’t do it.
TC: That’s nonsense, great big lorries go down, that bridge has never been altered
PR: Andrews took their business out of the Folly because long horse-drawn vehicles had difficulty negotiating it – the angles and the gradients are the same now as they were. The bridge was re-built just a little higher so that additional craft could get underneath (on) the navigation in about 1981 or 2. But on the same line, but lifted.
The fire brigade in recent time have tested it {15 years ago] and they can reach from the bridge without going onto the island every single property with their hoses. When I was first a councillor for that area when it was in the other ward I pushed and pushed because people were very anxious about it and they ran them out, I think it was a school holiday day, and I went down with the Town Clerk and witnessed the hoses being taken to your corner of Frampton St. and the far end, and they did reach effectively every one. The bigger worry of course is an ambulance and although it’s not as long if there are parked cars in the way and they can’t get through, there’s the indignity if taking a very sick person through the streets, but the fire engine thing is a myth.
TC: When Aunt Flor and Uncle Bert Ellingham lived in Ware Road their house – the ditch runs beside them, which goes down, in the end, to the Meads – and as kids we always played in the ditch, you can imagine, it was a most gorgeous place, made dams, did everything and I was always too frightened but my Cousin Don and his mates always used to go under Ware Road and my grandfather could remember before the ditch was, when it did run along the road there open.
PR: That used to be a time-honoured boys’ thing. I went with Richard Creese under the Ware road, I don’t know whether we did achieve it, the Dale boys lived at the other end of the ditch and we started there and came up as far as Ware road and I think now we didn’t go very far under the road. But what I did achieve was at Horns Mill.
JR: How deep was the water?
PR: Dry some seasons, and rushing sometimes.
TC: Only being 8 or 9 I couldn’t go in the ditch with my welly boots because it would have come over the top. I believe I was saying to you I haven’t got in touch with Margaret Harris about the gravel pit. But perhaps Peter knows about that. My grandfather used to say that his family all came from this area and his grandmother lived at Wareside and he can remember that when he was a young man that none of the houses were built after Villiers or Townshend Street and Ware Road and Tamworth Road and that plot of Ware Road, Tamworth Road, Raynham St. and Fairfax Road was a gravel pit. And that’s what somebody was asking Margaret.
JR: Tamworth road is lower than Ware road?
PR: No, think of riding a bike. There is a bit of a slope on Fairfax.
TC: We lived next door to Ted Salmon And ~Trish (Aunt Sam)…
PR: I was thinking of Dyballs, over the road….
TC: My grandfather came and lived in 24 Raynham Street with my father, and I’m not quite sure what date, but I should think 1906 and so Daddy and Aunt Sam as I always called her, she was older than Daddy but they were schoolgirl, schoolboy mates always. And she was a Miss Norris, her grandfather was the Norris that started Norrises and he lived in quite a few of his own houses and that’s why he lived in the one at the top of Raynham St which is now next to the dentists, the town side [75], that’s why one has the stables at the back and I don’t know what Aunt Sam’s father did, but he, grandfather, [presumably the original Norris’s son] gave the house that she was born in, which was 13, and the house that we originally went into, which wads 11, to his children.
No. 11 belonged to Miss Norris of Bengeo, her parents. Grandpa came and lived at 24, then his wife died comparatively young, late 60s, there was Joe who was mentally handicapped and Mummy and Daddy came to live with grandpa at 24. Then they grew out of it and we went to 32 Tamworth road which actually belonged to Uncle Bert Ellingham. Then we were bombed out and had nowhere to go and no. 11, there were naughty people in there so they were very glad to have an excuse to push them out , that’s not quite right but they hadn’t paid their rent for God knows how long, so Aunt Sam was always there, She lived her whole life at no, 13, she was born there and I remember she had to go and live in a home for the last few months of her life – I can see her now, she walked out of the house, she didn’t look back, turn round or anything, she just got in the car and went, it must have been a dreadful time for her. But she was great fun and so was he.
PR: I saw him once coming down the stairs of a bus, a bit wobbly and he was going to visit her when she was a patient in the County Hospital.
TC: She was one of the first people that had an artificial hip, something to do with a London hospital with outreach in Surrey.
PR: Tell us about Joe.
TC: Joe was the youngest of the family, he was really Henry Ernest Charles, but as a little boy he’d got mastoids, little soul of about two, when they lived in London and he went in and had an operation and the nurses there called him Joe and it stuck and to everybody he was Joe Spackman.
It affected his brain but in those days, well as you know, it wasn’t very nice to have someone who was mentally handicapped or difficult learning, it was rather a disgrace and he didn’t go to school but his sister Kate, she was, what did they call those school mistresses, a pupil teacher, and he could read and write and he was very bright in a lot of things but he never had a job, or anything like that, he just used to moon around, but he was a great member of the YMCA. He adored the Territorial Band that they had in Hertford and would always go there and set up all the music for them. He loved it. He always was very active.
Grandpa had an allotment and he always did the allotment, then after the war came and they were worried because they thought he might be called up to go and work on the land, to be away from home, even though he was, he was born in 1901 and grandpa got him a job as a road sweeper in the town and it was the best thing they ever did for him, because he was the same as everybody else and I can remember him coming home from work and picking up his knife and fork and saying ‘come along, I’ve got to get back to work, you know’. I can see him now, he was the same as everybody else! He took great pride in his job, always wore breeches and gaiters. But what is very interesting about this, the more I got older I couldn’t really relate to him being properly mentally handicapped because he’d come out with things that’s amaze you, his observation of people, particularly, and I said once to John Bench, Dr Bench, of course my grandparents used to say sometimes that he wasn’t born like that, it was the operation and I said that’s what they would say in those days, and he said ‘no, no, no they’re quite right’, and I looked at him, he said, Joe had to come for something and he had to move his head and I could see where the scar was and oh, no, they were right, he wasn’t born like it.
PR: He was very, very interesting to talk to, boys used to stop and chat, just to hear his little quips.
TC: Certain members of the family didn’t like the idea of a road sweeper! He was a lovely old boy, he really was.
PR: Must find out about here and must take pics from outside.
TC: You must take a picture of the tree in the middle of the lawn – I don’t know – it’s got a special name and it’s very unusual to find it in an ordinary garden. If you go to big houses with arboretum or Kew people think it’s an acacia, it’s an acacia type but it’s old.
Mr. Cooper, he can remember his father being absolutely over the moon, he got this tree and planted it there, and only about 5 or 6 years ago a big branch came off. It’s very pretty and it had a lovely white blossom, it either has masses or none at all, sometimes the lawn is covered with the white blossom just like snow and you can’t walk across because of all the bees.
The house is quite interesting because the little garage just by the front door is a little generator where they generate their electricity and they had their own water, we’ve still got a well here and we’re still not on mains sewerage.
PR: I remember stories of next door but one.
TC: Do you want to go round the garden, Andrew’s in the Breakfast room? People who lived on the corner of Raynham Street and Talbot Street called Gisby and they had a daughter and a son, Tom, and Pam. Pam Gisby and my cousin Cicely, and going back to 24 again, when my Aunt Ellingham, she was married during the ‘14/’18 war and Cicely was born at 24 and she and Pam over the road became friends and they were buddies all their lives but Peter Ruffles’ parents and …[you’ll have to ask Peter about this]. Pam Hipgrave as she became, became Peter’s godmother and they lost track with one another for years and it was only through your book of Hertingfordbury road, because it was her, Peter’s mother was a great friend of Pam Hipgrave, and that’s how she became Peter’s godmother, and so they got together [She lives in Leatherhead].
JR: Didn’t she spot a picture in the book, I didn’t know who they were and I don’t think he did, either.
TC: I don’t know if you have spoken to Baden Browne about the book.
JR: He did know I was doing it because he offered to do his aunt, Miss Collins, (Mrs. Sawkins) he was going to visit her in Surrey and I gave him a blank tape and he promised and he still hasn’t and the book was published last February. There was a link between Collins and Scales, Collins were working for Scales and had a cottage in Hertingfordbury road, near the works.
TC: Seems familiar, from what Baden was saying.
JR: I’ve found subsequently a Collins, builder, quite early in the 19th century in Castle St – I assume it’s the same family. But that’s another story. Well, I don’t know whether there’s anything you want to say going off what you were saying but Ruffles seemed very keen to get the history of this house and then we can go back.
TC: I should really get the deeds out then I can tell you more.
JR: How did you meet Andrew?
TC: In a stable, where else do you think! Well, as you know, Andrew’s a vet, and he comes from Ulster.
JR: Oh, I thought he came from Scotland!
TC: Everybody does, because that part of Ulster you can see Scotland and people who come from Scotland speak just like he does, you wouldn’t know the difference. He comes from outside Port Roche. They were farmers, he was one of 10 children, 7 boys and 3 girls. They were all given, he’s in the middle of the family, a girl was the first-born, a girl in the middle and the last one was a girl, so they’re spread out. Very hard-working farmers and he’s worked all his life, really, until now.
As little children they got up and as soon as they could they fed the chickens and he always had to milk 2 or 3 cows before he went to school, but my in-laws were wonderfully far-seeing people in that their eldest child, Rita was sent to university to do chemistry, can you believe it? She’s 88 now. It was something in those days and they were always further behind the times there than here and they were all given the chance of an education or some land and when it came down to Andrew’s turn, his eldest brother, because there was 20 years’ difference between the children, so there was till the farm going on, and he became a doctor.
The next brother down, John, he was the first one to have some land and this is how it went on, when it came down to Andre, there wasn’t land so he’d got to do something and he wasn’t quite sure what. One of the brothers had goner into the ministry but he didn’t fancy that. He didn’t want to be a doctor, his mother wanted him to be a teacher, he’d have liked to have been a farmer so the best thing to do was to be a vet and he did a year first of all in Belfast University because there wasn’t a space for him to be a vet at the Royal Dick in Edinburgh. They led very sheltered lives because there were so many children and they had masses of cousins so they didn’t make friends out of the family, and he was sent off on his own, ‘cos when he went to university and came home it was always some harvest, either potatoes or flax, he had to take himself off to Edinburgh for his interview and he went into the room and there was this chap sitting at the table who said this is the man who can’t spell his own name (because we spell our name with 2 ts at the end) but on his certificate they made a mistake and put one. Anyway he did his stint at the Dick.
JR: When you way the Dick, what does that stand for?
TC: Royal Dick Veterinary College. He passed his exams and he was offered a job to come down here and work for Mr. Archibald ~Andrews, the vet that was in Ware and in Hertford so he thought I’ll do that for a few months and get myself going ‘cos he wanted to go back and work at home where he had a job waiting for him.
And he was very pleased with himself up to about 3 years ago because he was offered 10/- more than any other student, He went to a reunion and he was talking about this and somebody else said, I did rather better than you, I got the same amount of money, but I got my digs paid for! Anyhow, he qualified on the Friday and he was working down here on the Monday. He was at Hertford first of all and he came to do small animal work. He had digs at the Black Horse in West Street and at the time I was between jobs and I was very keen on horses, always ridden, and Mrs. Stallabrass, of Stallabrass the butcher, her husband was Cecil Stallabrass, and they lived in Fordwich Hill, but they’d separated – she had horses, she had stables behind the, was it the Black Bear? At Cowbridge, where Macs now have a training centre, on the corner of Cowbridge and Dimsdale Street [the old Gt. Northern Tavern, renamed].
Tape 2:
TC: Her mother was Mrs. Jeffries who had only one eye and wore a funny glass one which used to scare us to death as children, and they had the first shop on the left-hand side of Ware road. The shop now is a trophy shop next to Pearces. And that was a newsagents and the father had a mens’ hairdressers at the back.
I went in there to get the Horse & Hound to see if there were any horsey jobs around and she said, no, why? This was Marjorie, the daughter, Mrs. Stallabrass, she said I could do with some help with my horses so I ended up helping her at the pub we’ve just been talking about and one of the ponies was ill and Andrew came to look at it and then he went and lodged with her and she became very much a part of our family. She had nearly all the vets for many years because in those days all the vets either lived at home or lived in digs.
Then old Mr. Andrews needed an assistant at Ware and Andrew went, and old Mr. Andrews, the great horse vet over a very large area, Andrew went into his shoes. East End of London, Epping.
JR: Did he have to travel a lot? (oh, yes) By car?
TC: Barnet, Royston, Enfield, Hatfield. He earned 10 gns. And he had to leave the car at the surgery at night and walk to his digs, even though he was on duty.
JR: Did the car belong to him?
TC: Oh, no, where the vets are now in Fore Street, had to leave it there and walk to Fordwich Hill so if he got a call he had to walk to the surgery to pick it up. He had one Thursday afternoon and evening a week off after he’d finished his morning round, a Saturday afternoon and whole of Sunday once a month. But I don’t think he’d have changed his life for anything!
He’s a very shy person, he was asked to be a vet for the Olympics but he wouldn’t do it but he did do the Olympia horse show for 25 years, all the point-to-points and Horse of the Year Show. Then when old Mr. Andrews retired, my Andrew went to Ware and took over that side of it and eventually Andrew became a partner and it was very good because in those days you couldn’t change names, but it was very good because Andrews was the surname and Andrew was Christian name so they just put Andrew Chestnutt and then, and partners then when my Andrew retired they weren’t allowed to keep the name because there wasn’t a Chestnutt in the practice, but because the name had 2 ts, they could cross one out and call it the Chestnut Group, the chestnut tree with animals underneath.
Elbow Lane in Hertford Heath, he wasn’t allowed to drive the car down there, he had to leave it where the road comes in by the Jolly Pindar {East India College], and had to walk to the farm down there.
JR: So, how did you manage to come up here – was this your first home when you were married?
TC: When we were first married we lived with my parents in Raynham St. It was quite a squash because my grandfather was still alive, Joe was still alive, but we did it mainly because I couldn’t make my mind up where I wanted to live. Every house or bungalow we looked at, no it wasn’t quite right, anyway, we got married and our first child, Clare, was born when we were there and then my mother was just looking through the Mercury one day and there was a picture of this house and it was being advertised by agents from Enfield, and mother said this looks rather nice, what do you think about this, and I can remember walking up here with Clare in the pram and Andrew, and we fell in love with it straight away.
This is a funny story. About a year ago we had to have a new mattress for our bed. Went to Fishpools and wandered around the bed dept. and there to my amazement was a bed and headboard and 2 side tables and it was £500 more than we paid for the house! We paid just over £5000 for it in 1958. But we’ve lived in it longer than anybody else and our children have been the only little children here. There used to be tenant farmers at Foxholes called Cooper and there was old Mr. Cooper and he had a brother. They were friendly with Aunt and Uncle Ellingham. For some reason the brother of Farmer Cooper bought this plot of land, I’m pretty certain from the Balls Park Estate. And originally, this plot of land here, because as you know, Peter’s and Edie’s house is much older than this one, and the plot of land in Downfield Road was a field rented from Balls Park estate to put their horses on that took the bread round. Anyhow, he bought the plot and had this house built by Mr. Kemp who was the local builder in the town.
JR: What dater is it?
TC: 1810, it’s Edwardian. But he did live here but he didn’t live here very much. On the deeds there are different people. I don’t know if he rented it out, I must look it up and make sure. I squirrel everything away and then forget. Mr. Cooper, that was the farmer’s son, always known as Bay, very much a character, he’s been dead a few years now but he used to walk round Hertford in a stockman’s coat. Anyway, he would always remember his father and his uncle boozing in Fore St. the Dim or the Salisbury and racing each other home and one would come up Gallows Hill and one the other way and they could always tell who got in because they would hear each others voices! After that series of people the Fordhams lived here.
JR: I’m just thinking about another tape I made the other day, I think it was Cooper, had to be helped into the trap out of the Salisbury and somebody had to hold the horse.
TC: It could have been when he lived at Foxholes – they didn’t live in the farmhouse when we were here, they lived in some cottages which have been pulled down in Hogsdell at the other end of the field there. But the Fordhams lived here. You know that Fordhams had a shop, Marshalls used to be Fordhams. Zara Fordham’s still around, that’s Keith’s mother and she married Bernard Marshall, a boyfriend of mine at one time and they lived in Ware Road.
And his father was the manager for North Met which is Zeros now and they lived in Ware Road opposite Caxton Hill. The Fordhams lived here and I’ve got pictures of when she was here in the ’40 and early ‘50s., they lived here quite a while. After that they sold it to Dr. McLellan and he was here quite a long time, he was a consultant, I think, he was into eyes in London and then it was sold to some people called Herring who lived here only a few years before they went off to Australia, and we’ve had it since. When we came here there was the pump still in the breakfast room for the well and the little garage was where the generator was.
JR: Have you not got gas here?
TC: Oh, no.
JR: Oil for your converted Aga? (yes) and you’re on mains water now, presumably?
TC: Yes, but not drains.
JR: And electricity, what have you got, a cess pit?
TC: A cess pit down in the orchard,
JR: Does that have to be cleaned out?
TC: Yes, once a year. But we bought part of a field, so part of that field there, Downfield, we bought that bit that goers onto the end of our orchard mainly because it was always gorgeous down there, birds, wild flowers, lovely pond, gorgeous trees and along the edge there was a row of very old oaks and the field was like a miniature Dunstable Down but when old Bay Cooper left and Coilin Smith and his father took it over they put the bulldozer in, took out all the trees and levelled it. It broke my heart, actually, and we did have the chance of buying that, Bay said, they’ll never cultivate it because he only did cattle and they grew maize in it and the tractor turned over, got stuck in the mud, and one year he left it, they didn’t do anything.
I used to love it and you could look out of the landing window and look down and see all the foxes rushing around so one day you know how these things happen, I picked up the phone and I said to Colin about the field, and he said, Oh, I’m sorry Tessa, I know you must be furious, all those weeds, I said, no, not really, I’m just upset you’re probably going to comer and turf it all over again because there’s so much wild life come back. And I said, you wouldn’t sell it to us, would you?
But he wouldn’t sell us the whole field but we bought the little bit here. We’ve always longed to try and put it back, but we’ve failed, put the pond back because all the really old people from Hertford Heath learned to swim in that pond. Beautiful old chestnut tree that had a bough that came right don and it was smooth and I said to Mrs. Bean, oh, she said, hundreds of children have ridden on that! We had a pond dug, we had to make up our minds in 10 minutes and we didn’t quite get it right and they drained all the fields so it didn’t get enough water like it used to, and all the farmers, they put on all this nitrate, but it saved the old oaks this side.
But it’s so different from when we first came to live here, it wasn’t straight, the road down here, it was bendy and you know when you go to Devon, there’s a high bank and the trees are on the bank, well it was like that. Now they’ve straightened it all. But when we first came here, our first dog used to sleep in the road. And, of course, the house that’s now being built next door wasn’t there. There was just us and the neighbours – they used to call it the Irish end of the village.
JR: This road going down to…..when you go down the hill here you can take a left-hand turn to Rush Green, what’s the name of that manor house there?
TC: Gamels Hall.
JR: That’s right, because when I was teaching in Hoddesdon one of the staff lived in the coach house – Anne Connan, did you know the Connan sisters? One was head of Sheredes Infants and Ann was at the school I taught at, and their mother, they all lived in the coach house.
TC: Gamels Hall used to belong to the Chalmers-Hunts, who were solicitors in Ware and they became Gisby & Harrison and now Harrison and they’ve moved out in the last few years to Cheshunt. Norman Chalmers-Hunt was a real character, a lovely old man, passionate about bees and had a marvellous amount of heather in his garden for the bees. And his home was Chadwell House, which I can’t really remember, but as you go down the hill in Ware, opposite you is the pump house and on the right-hand side there are a lot of houses.
At one time there was a large house there and I was taken over this country club and they had a swimming pool built in the garden. We paid to go but it was a lovely little pool. Hertford only had one in Hartham and the one in Ware wasn’t built, anyway that was his family home, or at least that was where he was born. Then he moved up here and when the war started my father was in the Home Guard and Chalmers-Hunt, he was in the Home Guard, too, he was the officer at the time but he gave it up and said he’d just rather be an ordinary soldier like Daddy because Daddy knew so much more about what to do and what not to do because father had been in the 1914-18 war and I don’t think Chalmers-Hunt had, and he had the marvellous idea that if the Germans came they should lie in wait at the top of Gallows Hill and so they wouldn’t know where or what, they’d shoot them with bows and arrows.
Anyway, when we were bombed out he offered for us to go and live in that part of the house (Gamels) that they had turned into a granny flat for his mother, when it was all his and the bit is where the Nixes live now, Gerald and Esme. They had all the Home Guard there. At the top of Hoe Lane there is still a pill-box, and they never used it, they dug their own trench, before you come to Pinehurst there’s a little spinney, that’s where they were going to do their work from.
JR: And lie in wait for the Germans?
TC: Yes, because they had a terrific view at one time, right over the valley and they said it was hopeless where that was (the pill box).
JR: I suppose if they had a spigot mortar there where they could see where everyone was coming from they could have controlled the ears with that.? (Yes!) Many years ago, when you went down this road and came to the road leading down from Hoddesdon to Hertford, was that there, or was this road a continuation down to Hoe Lane into Ware that way?
TC: Originally the road from Hoe Lane and the road from Stanstead Abbotts, Amwell Cross roads came round via Rush Green and out now where you can’t go because there’s bollards and the house that’s coming from Hertford round Rush Green, a yellow house on the left, Netherland Cottage, or something. That was originally part of the garden of Rush Green House, which is divided now and there was a little orchard there. When we came here you could always use the bit round Rush Green and out, but there was a road going to Amwell Crossroads but nothing like it is now, it’s been widened. I remember the Rush Green roundabout being opened. But Hertford is such a lovely old town. Ann-Marie Parker and I were talking about this the other day: we’d just come back from a day in Hitchin and we were amazed at the Blue Plaques, so many, not of famous people but of interest, an we thought it would be lovely to have a lot more in Hertford, if possible because there aren’t many, there’s Wallace and Johns, there’s been so many wonderful people.
Side 2
JR: When Rosemary Bennett did that chapter on Murchison in the Local History Journal, about the 1903 car rally she had him down as living at Bengeo Lodge.
TC: Funny you should say that, where is Bengeo Lodge?
JR: I thought it was at the top of Bengeo Street where the road to Sacombe goes off, but that’s not right. In a trade or street directory I found it as you go past Holy Trinity /Church, just a little farther down there on the other side is a little alley going into Duncombe Road and the Drive, next to that is a biggish house and I think that was Bengeo Lodge because behind it is Lodge Close.
TC: What you’re saying is very interesting but going back to Hitchin, there were all sorts of things, not just people, in Hitchin there are many pubs and they’ve all got 1542, etc. and this was something else and I was thinking about the Hertford Framing shop, that was where the pub, the old Queens Head was.
JR: I can’t quite remember, the old Cross Keys was where Threshers is, a very old pub, taken down in the 1860s, nobody would remember that apart from seeing a photo of it.
TC: It was a shame that Threshers changed the front of their shop. Remember that big brass bit that went round? Who were the people that had the wine merchants?
JR: Willsons.
TC: Willsons! And then there was old Mr. Knight, you’ve got him, bless his heart!
JR: He was in a wheel chair for a bit, but he’s back on his feet, walking into town, I think he’s such a goer!
TC: Have you seen the embroidery he’s doing?
JR: No, I’ve seen the paintings.
TC: Paintings and models, but his embroidery, gorgeous. Dear old man, that was Knights, very old, those buildings at the back. A bit farther down the singer Sewing Machine shop, then a yard, then the framing shop next to the electric shop, which I think was the Queens Head.
JR: Well, you can tell, because it has two little carved faces.
TC: I think that is the second oldest pub site. The thing that does intrigue me a bit is the layout of the town. Bull Plain is such a wide area, it must have been a market place.
JR: Ranch Johnson says it was, but one of my theories is that is was such a large coaching inn, stabling from Hertford Cameras to Hinds. It was called the Princes Arms until the Civil War and the Bull after that. It was demolished in 1850 [1857]. I should think they needed a fair turning area there, coming out with all the coaches, the archway to get in there was approximately where the present gates are.
TC: It was obviously quite a posh part, the Museum and Beadle House and Lombard House wouldn’t have been built in not a very nice place. When I was a little girl there were shops, the Chocolate Box, and Ellises, but they never gave you the feeling of very old but then everything has its fronts changed, you have to go round the back. Ralph can remember the old oak trees being felled at the end of Thieves Lane, it was a Canadian firm brought over and they did them by hand.
[JR refers to the Charles and Barbara Grove interview re: tree felling on Sele Farm]
TC: (Ralph) was born in the Shire Hall, moved when his father got fed up with being caretaker, had more and more put on to him and they moved up to Sele Farm and they lived in Tudor Way and Cherry Tree Green. He was telling us that when he was a little boy he had to creep through a trap door in the Shire Hall into a loft and he had to wind by hand the chandelier down and it went down to within 3ft of the floor, you could clean it and put in the new bulbs. There was also a trap door going to the clock.
JR: You’ve done so well!
TC: Oh, no, there’s masses more!
End of recording