Interviewed by Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)
Date: 02/03/2004
Transcribed by Eve Sangster
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2004.6
Interviewee: John Cook (JC)
Date: 2nd March 2004
Venue: 30 Riversmeet
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)
Transcriber: Eve Sangster
Updated (verbatim) Marilyn Taylor
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: I think today may count as some sort of red letter day for the Oral History Group or at least a first for them because this morning I have got coming to my house number 30 Riversmeet the serving Mayor of Hertford Councillor John Cook. I have asked John to come because he grew up in the Gallows Hill area of Hertford.
I have interviewed his sister Mary Geering very recently and she thought John would be able to add to her memories considerably. I would also, if there is time, just touch a bit upon his year of office. He hasn’t finished his year of office yet as it is only March 2nd today. March 2nd 2004 and he is not due to give up his mayoral year until the middle of May but at least we might get some idea of how he has found things.
Tape stopped and restarted
JR: Fishers grocery shop was..
JC: Meadside Garage
JR: Right that’s is now David….
JC: I don’t know whose got it now it was Fishers for years ever since I can remember it.
JR: It's still there isn’t it as a shop.
JC: Oh it's still there. Oh yes.
JR: David Morris, that’s what it is called now.
JC: That’s right yes. Its not Meadside garage anymore, its David Morris now sells second-hand cars, used to sell petrol of course.
JR: Oh did he, had a pump out the front?
JC: Yes had a pump out the front, I think there were two pumps actually.
JR: Yes.
JC: Doodlebug on Sunday morning I can remember that quite clearly I was in bed and we heard it come over and then it would go quiet for a little while, don’t know how long, less
than a minute, and then there would be an almighty bang when it went off and, of course , it landed on Mill Bridge and I can remember that quite clearly. I think there used to be old, gas lights on Mill Bridge and of course they all went.
JR: You were born in what year John?
JC: 1936.
JR: Yes I thought that Mary was saying she..
JC: Mary was the eldest of the three of us.
JR: 1931 was she born?
JC: Yes she would be.
JR: Your sister in the middle
JC: Yes
JR: In between you two, and then you so you were born in Gallows Hill?
JC: Oh yes
JR: So the bomb was 1944 so you were only about 8.
JC: I can remember it quite clearly though.
JR: The landmine. Do you remember that?
JC: Oh yes I remember the landmine dropping in Tamworth Road. There was a haulage contractor there called Brett, Tress Brett, and his wife was killed in that.
JR: Oh he was a haulage contractor?
JC: Yes, I knew him and I can remember that and the houses being damaged in Ware Road. A lot of the were damaged along that end was demolished and rebuilt. We always used to walk to school- I went to Abel Smith School and we'd pick up on the way from Gallows Hill estate and walk there.
First of all we started off at Faudel Phillips, the little junior school, and there was a crowd of us used to walk altogether and it was no problem because there was very little traffic about - very few cars on the road - the major problem was crossing the London Road, which had a traffic island on because this is going back during the war. Its altered considerably now. It was a single road of course not a dual carriageway and there was Elliott’s, the record and music shop, on th,e left, this side of London Road, and then we used to walk up to Rookes Alley to Faudel Phillips School, go up Rookes Alley and turn right along by the ditch and in there and when we moved up, I think we moved up when we were seven or eight, about seven or eight anyway we went up to senior school, to Abel Smith, we still used to walk and it was one mile and a quarter to school. Because in those days you didn't have school meals - they started there during the war but we used to go home to lunch and so we walked five miles a day without thinking anything of it, which children don' t do today, unfortunately. And on the corner, I can’t remember the name of the garage, there was a garage more or less where Iceland is now,
JR: Wasn’t Neale’s was it?
JC: Wasn’t Neales. Neale’s was London Road
JR: Yes that’s right
JC: I can’t remember the name of the garage, they had pumps - used to come out over the road and fill up vehicles but that was used as a British Restaurant during the war, where you could go down and have lunch - we used to go there.
Transcribers Note: Hertford Motor Company
JR: If you want to now join Rookes Alley you have to go down the underpass, before I imagine that came out…
JC: …came out on the main Road
JR: Did it, you know where you go under the underpass then go up and turn right did Rookes Alley come down in a single straight line?
JC: Yes a single straight line and if you were coming down from Abel Smith’s school…
JR: Where did you come out at?
JC: You came out in Fore Street, more or less opposite, not quite opposite the pub, you know the pub the Sportsman, a bit further towards Ware, it came out, it was a straight run from school.
Transcribers Note: Pub formerly The Blue Boy and now The Jungle Bar
JR: I suppose where Iceland is built now or their car park
Transcribers Note: Now Marks and Spencer food shop.
JC: Must have been yes and of course where the multi-story is was the cattle market, which was a great delight to us children, particularly when a bullock or something used to get loose. They used to actually drive the cattle into town, some of the farmers, perhaps only two or three or four. Other would come in in sort of horse boxes. I can’t recall many tractors about then but there was a lot of horse-drawn stuff.
I can remember Cooper the farmer who had Foxholes Farm during the war; he used horses for ploughing and harrowing and also with a binder for cutting corn.
JR: Yes and all that was horse drawn.
JC: Oh yes.
JR: Because he had Foxholes Farm and he also had Rush Green farm.
JC: Yes he did.
JR: Was there a lot of farm activity, as you go up to the top of Gallows Hill did you play and…
JC: Oh yes we did, we used to go from Gallows Hill. We used to wander as far as what we called the second woods.
Mobile phone rings
JR: Sorry we will start again now then. We were talking about the top of Gallows Hill and playing up there.
JC: Oh yes, the top of Gallows Hill. We used to go up in to the fields there and we could …there was a wood. I lived in 37 Page Road and opposite there was a wood and it rose up quite steeply on a bank and we could walk into the wood; we could go out across the fields over to the second woods and there was a gravel pit there and we called it the Silver Sand Pit because there was silver sand in there and I don' t know what year the council started using it for rubbish tipping but it must have been about 1948-50 and that was used as a domestic refuse tip then.
But they’d long since ceased using it as a sand and gravel pit. And we also used to walk up to Hertford Heath and in those days nobody worried. We used to wander all over the place, the Meads and everywhere, had lots of fun and down at Dicker Mill there was a lot of aircraft fuel tanks and I don ' t know how we managed to get them but we did and we made boats out of them and we went down the river on them. Great fun. It was all good innocent fun, nobody worried, I can remember the Greens - it must have been the youngest one, Brian, and one or two others, they wandered off one Sunday and they didn' t come home for lunch and the whole estate turned out to look for them.
JR: That’s Arthurs brother?
JC: Yes Arthur’s brother.
JR: He didn’t mention this.
JC: Didn’t he? No. It was his youngest brother, I am sure and the whole estate turned out looking for them, they were found at Stanstead Abbotts by the police and brought back home. They'd walked along by the river which of course goes through to Stanstead Abbotts.
JR: Oh so quite a community spirit.
JC: Oh yes there was. I can remember when the war was ended they organized a VE party and they put up a big marquee in Foxholes and they had a cake made- I don't know if one of the wives made it - and we all had a piece of cake and there was a party there and it was great fun and they collected the sum of 6d per week per house to go to the party and I can remember that quite clearly and on the on the day of that party Doris Yandell's husband came home from the war! Yes I remember that well.
JR: Are you too young to remember any wartime activity?
JC: I remember they used to have a little aeroplane landing, I don’t know what it was, it was a little single-wing aeroplane, just the pilot in and he used to land and go to, there were troops in Braziers gravel pit.
JR: Oh is that where he went?
JC: The field near the gravel pit was sloping, whereas the field at the top of Page Road, you went up a steep bank, the field slopped then it flattened out and there was enough room for him to land and take off there. I can remember that very well. He used to give us chewing gum.
JR: Was he English?
JC: No, he was American.
JR: Oh yes, I couldn’t… Arthur Green told me about these Lysanders landing and they are normally associated with espionage I think.
JC: I don’t know what aeroplane it was, it was a very small aeroplane something like a Piper.
JR: Yes did it have rather a curious wing formation.
JC: No it was a small aeroplane. It didn't have a retractable undercarriage and just the single wing.
JR: Yes it probably was a different one then I think.
JC: I can’t remember bigger aeroplanes landing there.
JR: No this was a … the Lysander was small one it could land on a football pitch sized piece of land it didn’t need a long runway so in order to get down and go up, so this might be the same one. I will investigate that.
JC: This was a very small one that used to come in and there was just the pilot.
JR: Yes it sounds like the same one but ..
JC: It didn’t come in very often, it was only two or three times.
JR: So Braziers pit was over towards…
JC: You know where Caxton Hill is, it was up the top there
JR: Yes that’s what I thought. Right what about any target practice up there do you remember anything like that.
JC: No I don’t, I cant recall any target practice, I can recall the incendiary bombs.
JR: Yes.
JC: We had a big cannister of incendiary bombs fall on the estate. Some of the houses were hit on the estate.
JR: Oh were they?
JC: Some of the bombs went through the roofs but didn't explode. They landed in a field at the top of Page Road a lot of them and they used to get dug by the plough but years afterwards they still got dug up but they had an army lorry come up and park at the top of Page Road and we used to collect them up and take them and pass them down to the lorry and they took them away.
They used to go into the ground and they were that long and had a flight on top and we used to tie a rope round them and pull them out. I remember doing that.
JR: They were live or ..
JC: Oh no, live.
JR: Dangerous.
JC: Not really but incendiary bombs were purely for lighting up targets. They used to drop them so the bombers could come in and find the target. They weren't really dangerous. When they went off, they went off with a bit of a pop. They were magnesium.
JR: Just for the light.
JC: They were only small things about 18 inches or so long and about 2 inches round. Oddly enough, my yard in Warehams Lane, digressing a bit, they found one in the river when they were clearing the river out where the Clayton brothers have got the cattle and they knew I'd been in the army and they came up with the digger driver and they said, "What do you think this is?" I said, "Oh, it's an old incendiary bomb. It's not too dangerous." He said, "Oh, I'll throw it away, then " and I said, " Well, if kids put it in the fire it could be dangerous." I said, "I'll ring the police. Let them worry about it" and it finished up they had the bomb squad to take it away.
JR: Well I suppose they didn’t know, want experience you’d had. I think it was Tom Gladwin told us there was a decoy wooden aeroplane on the golf course
JC: I can’t honestly remember that. I may have been too young. We often used to go, it was tradition in our family, we used to go for a walk on a Sunday afternoon but during the war my father couldn't go out of the Borough boundaries. They weren’t allowed. He was in the ARP, which dealt with all bomb damage and air-raid wardens and if we went for a walk we didn't go too far. I can' t remember any aircraft on the golf course. There could well have been.
JR: Well I will just put it in I think. What about legends and stories about Gallows Hill generally.
JC: There was a family lived not at the bottom of Page Road in the first house of the last block, you know they are long terraced blocks,- the bottom one on the comer of Spinney Street. A family of name of Waller and her grandmother reputedly saw the last person hung at Gallows Hill. I don' t know how true that was.
JR: He… whose grandmother?
JC: Mrs Waller’s grandmother, yes
JR: Well I can trace back the time span I suppose, did she?
JC: Well supposed to have done.
JR: I think Mary mentioned this and we worked out that it could just have been possible if the grandmother was a small child.
JC: I would have thought so. You know we are talking about somewhere near 1945 this woman, Waller ...... Her son was in the Second World War, her husband was in the First [World War] and he was shell-shocked. It was sad. He took to drink and he needed help badly and he was knocked down, killed, in an accident. I don’t know how old she would have been, she must have been then, I should think having a son in the Army about in her 60s I would think.
JR: If she was born say about 1890.
Transcribers Note: Mrs Kate Waller was born 25th November 1889 they family lived at 25 Page Road.
JC: I would have thought so, yes.
JR: And it was her grandmother, it’s possible isn’t it, I think the hangings stopped in the early 1800s.
JC: I don’t know.
JR: Somewhere around then.
JC: I have read about it because they used to bring them up from the gaol in horse carts didn’t they?
JR: Yes, again there is not a lot of information about that. If you go to the sessions records where the prisoners come to trial you never… virtually they haven’t, they have lost I think, the record books so you get a bit of the trial but you don’t get the punishment. Very difficult to trace where the hangings took place. Because that would be quite a study for somebody. (Discussion) were there any legends…
JC: Not really I don’t think.
JR: What about people finding bones because I think bones were found at the Isolation hospital site up there which were thought to be from those being buried in unconsecrated ground.
JC: I don’t know if there were any bones dug up there, I know there were a lot of bones of course found on the Jewsons site.
JR: Yes.
JC: A lot of bones dug up there and also I don’t know what its called Mason House? Which used to be Jewsons, which is Norris’s offices. There is a new development there and a lot of bones dug up there of course.
JR: It was an old churchyard I suppose.
JC: Oh yes The Priory.
JR: Did you know anyone that went to the isolation hospital?
JC: Yes I did. There was a chap by the name of “Duckie” Weaver, a couple that lived in Page Road, Brown was the name, they didn’t have any children of their own but they adopted two boys one was Douglas and one was Brown he’s still around he used to drive a lorry at one time and he had The Ram public house for quite a while Roy Brown but he was not a fit and well man, I am sure he went to Ware Park Hospital with TB but the Isolation hospital I can’t think of anyone.
But I remember, I can’t remember which one of my sisters, had something or another, might have been scarlet fever I don’t know but they had to fumigate the room. Used to put tape round it and light something inside. Yes I can remember that being done. I can’t think of the name of the chap that did it he was somebody that came out and did it.
JR: What about Kingsmead School.
JC: I remember Kingsmead School very well, yes, It was a school, I think for backward boys and oddly enough I know one chap who was a Kingsmead chap by the name of Tookey and he's been around the area for years and years, a little man, a bit older than me and he married Brett' s daughter and she died last year of the year before. He's still around and he's living in Foxholes.
JR: He was a Pupil?
JC: Yes.
JR: Or staff.
JC: No I am sure he was a pupil,
JR: I will try and find him.
JC: He lives in Foxholes still, 25 if I remember rightly, he hasn't been too well, oddly enough, he plucked pheasants for me when I used to go shooting. And there was another chap-he lost a leg in the First World War. He lived in Foxholes and his name was Brown. I don’t know if he taught there or was… but he was something to do with the school. We used to wander over the wood there sometimes because there was a big chalk cliff there where obviously in the past they took out chalk for lime-burning, I would think, and there was an old coach in the wood there, a horse drawn coach.
JR: Yes. Yes.
JC: Have you heard that?
JR: I have heard that I think it was Mary that told me about that as well, yes. Somebody has anyway, I will have to look back at some of the transcripts, to see if I have got the right person but I think it was Mary, yes. I wonder whether… I don’t know, Kingsmead School not the Isolation Hospital?
JC: Oh yes definitely Kingsmead School grounds, there was a cliff and the ground levelled off towards the hospital and it was all pine wood.
JR: Yes, was the school able to use this as a playing thing or…
JC: No they didn’t.
JR: I mean Mrs Yandall said somebody told here that they had seen a horse drawn black cab going up Gallows Hill towards the Isolation Hospital with bedding strapped on the back to be fumigated and nobody else seems to remember this horse drawn vehicle only a motorized vehicle so I am thinking I wonder if the gave the old coach to Kingsmead School for the children to play in.
JC: May well have done, it was in the wood there, I can recall it, and it'd got smashed up over the years, in fact, I can’t remember the wheels being there.
JR: It sounds likely around the old system. There may be, I haven’t started looking at the minute books yet I am about to start very soon, it may mention that in there. That the Isolation Hospital actually gave them this, it could actually be in the minute books.
JC: Because they have altered the road there quite a bit.
JR: Yes, how have they altered the road?
JC: The Stanstead Road, we used to call it Gallows Hill, Stanstead Road was more in a cutting.
JR: Oh was it?
JC: Oh yes it was more in a cutting, that must have been, oh a few years after the war, I would think probably '52,'53, the road was altered and they cut the banks back and widened it.
JR: But they had to do that on the side away from the houses, they did id on the Kingsmead….
JC: They did it on both sides.
JR: On both sides, oh…
JC: Yes because there were trees very close. The banks were steep and there were some beech trees which they took out. And going up the hill the beech trees were on the right.
JR: Where the houses are?
JC: No, after the houses. The houses that end at the top of Stanstead Road, just after the houses.
JR: I see, it was narrower up there originally was it?
JC: Yes it was, I can remember convoys coming down there in the war and they used to walk with their guns - the artillery pieces; 25 pounders, I suppose they were - used to tow them with ropes.
JR: So where had they come from?
JC: Do you know I don’t honestly know where they had come from, but I can remember them going down, I would imagine they probably stopped at the barracks in Hertford and then moved on. I don’t know we never used to ask!
JR: So they had come along from, I am just trying to think, in those days when you got to the top of Gallows Hill, now you have got a big roundabout,.
JC: That’s right. There was no roundabout at all of course,
JR: There was one, the way that went on towards…
JC: Amwell crossroads.
JR: Yes, Hoe Lane on one side and Downfield Road on the other side, that was an ordinary …
JC: Track really as you went up Gallows Hill, just past the roundabout that is there now, there was a little turning to the right which went round to Rush Green Farm and that connected up to Downfield Road where you could tum right and go up to Hertford Heath but that little track, well it was a road, it was a public road; that's all overgrown now its blocked off.
JR: I remember Eddie Roche telling me, trying to find out where the Roman road which comes up, Hogsdale Lane in Hertford Heath, and through almost to Foxholes Farm I think, goes across the top of Gallows Hill then across the golf course and down on in to Ware. We are trying to find something of that track, was that road you just mentioned possibly part of it?
JC: I know we used to say there was an old Roman Road at Hertford Heath .
JR: Yes there is.
JC: I walked on that many years ago.
JR: When you come along the back, it runs parallel to the road from Hoddesdon.
JC: Yes it does.
JR: Then when you come to the garage it become the main road.
JC: That’s right.
JR: Then it shoots off up Hogdell Lane by the Ware memorial across to Rush Green and Foxholes its always on the maps but some of them have been inaccurate just trying to cross reference to get it right.
JC: As children, we used to go and pick blackberries up on Hertford Heath and my mother used to make blackberry and apple jam.
JR: But actually everybody in Stanstead Road I think had an apple tree in their garden didn’t they?
JC: Yes they did.
JR: They were quite prolific.
JC: And yet on the other side of the road we hadn’t
JR: It was a gift from the mayor, Ashley Webb
JC: I don’t know, there was a chap named Turner lived not quite opposite us, if we went out our back gate and turned right and his gate was the next one on the, left and he had a beautiful eating apple in his garden, beautiful red apples on it.
JR: Yes I think it was Joy John who I forgot to mention we interviewed Joy Crane she was.
JC: Crane, I remember the Cranes.
JR: They were in the first local authority house, she was saying each house had either a cooking apple tree or an eating apple tree and the neighbours would swap with each other. Real community spirit. What about the laundry?
JC: I remember the Laundry, that got burned down in 1954.
JR: Oh that’s when it got burnt.
JC: August 1954 it got burnt down the night before I went in the army. I can remember that.
JR: I hadn’t realised it was a fire and it burnt down.
JC: It was a big fire.
JR: It was rebuilt.
JC: A lot of it was rebuilt and, of course, it's no longer a laundry. It's little factory units now. We used to go to school down there, next to the laundry there's a little alley goes up to Clyde Terrace.
JR: I know I went up to see Arthur Green I went up this alleyway, I remember going up there. Yes its quite a quick way isn’t it.
JC: Oh yes, I can remember as a child, my father being in the ARP, money was very scarce. In fact, my mother used to make gloves for the glove factory at Homs Mill and sit and stitch them at night.
JR: Oh did she?
JC: Yes and father used to do some proof-reading at home, as well, because he worked for the printers Simson Shand and when he had a bit of time off in the summer he wanted to take us to London and we had to get the 6 o'clock train, 'cos the train fares were a lot cheaper then, called it the "workmen's", and I shall never forget we walked down and we were walking to the station, one did in those days, walked to the East station and we got down to the bottom of the alley and a train driver or fireman, I can't remember who it was, came and he said, "The war's over." He was coming off work and he said “The war’s over” so we didn't go to London that day. Father decided it would be too busy.
JR: Well it would have been yes.
JC: They were good days actually at Gallows Hill, there was a lot more spirit, we used to help each other a lot more.
JR: Were they still building Woodland Mount and Woodlands Road when you were a boy or were they completely finished?
JC: No they weren’t building. We called them the green-topped houses because they had green tiles
JR: Yes they still have.
JC: Yes I suppose they do but the only houses that were there when I was a boy were the green topped ones, so that’s Woodlands Mount and Woodlands Road. And as you tum at the mini-roundabout by what was Meadside Garage you right to go up Stanstead Road immediately on the right after the last green-topped houses there was a green there that was left and I think it was owned by McMullens and that was sold for housing and I can't remember when that was built on. But it was built on of course and they also extended Woodlands Mount and Woodlands Road and there were allotments up there and all through the war and for a long while afterwards, if fact I would say up until the 1960s, Braziers Field was an allotment or allotments and there were a lot of people had allotments up there and they were very well kept, of course, during the war you didn't grow flowers, you grew vegetables.
I can remember we grew vegetables in the front garden as well as the back garden. Dreadful thing to do. I can remember in 1947 when we had the big freeze-up. We had a terrific amount of snow and it came right up to the top of the hedge at the front of the house and it was 6 weeks solid freeze-up we had and we used to go down to the old gas works with our sledges and drag back half a cwt of coke on our sledges, 'cos coke was cheap fuel and when it all melted I can remember looking out across the meads and the only thing that was out of the water was the railway track. It was completely flooded across there.
JR: So the train service was suspended was it?
JC: I don’t think so.. think the trains kept going.
JR: Oh steam trains weren’t they?
JC: Oh yes.
JR: Wasn’t electrified then
JC: No, oh no it all seems a long time ago now.
JR: Now what about where Wheatcroft School is now? That was just a chalk pit wasn’t it?
JC: That was the playing fields for the Kingsmead School. There was nothing there at all.
JR: No just a chalk face.
JC: It was grassland if I remember rightly. They used to play football out there. Of course, the clock went from the old Kingsmead School to All Saints Church
JR: Yes, did you see the boys walking to church?
JC: Yes, they used to walk two by two when they went out and about. They used to take them out and about for walks and that sort of thing. In those days everybody went to church. We used to walk to church.
JR: You went to All Saints did you?
JC: Yes we went to All Saints', we used to go to the evening service and I think they had a Holy Communion service once a month and we used to go to that and that was eight in the morning if I remember correctly. We always used to walk and of course at that time, the traffic under the Shire Hall clock was going both ways and on Sunday night the Salvation Army band used to play in Fore Street just by the Shire Hall. You know where the little guardsmen' s recess was, they used to play by there.
JR: Yes you could set your watch by them.
JC: They used to play on Sundays.
JR: A very nostalgic sound isn’t it the Salvation Army band.
JC: Yes it was how life was in those days, not everybody used to go to church when I was young very few I supposed when you look back but we certainly did, my father was a sidesman at All Saints' and old Dan Dye used to go there as well, he was a sidesman, and there was quite a congregation in those days.
JR: Have you got any more thing on your pad you wanted to say? I know we have got quite a bit more tape I was going to ask you about …..
JC: Oh the doodle bug I mentioned that and the big freeze up, the lost children, the incendiary bombs on the estate. The cows used to come out of Billy Coopers field and get down into the gardens and that .
JR: Did they?
JC: Yes they did, they used to cause havoc because we had to get up and chase them out.
JR: So did he appear on the scene at all?
JC: No, no we used to chase them back into the field. Because the fences weren’t in a good state of repair.
JR: He himself, I think there were three of them actually in succession, but the one you knew was the middle one I would imagine
JC: His old father was alive but I can’t …. I can only vaguely remember Billy’s father. Of course Billy is dead now. His son is still alive and he lives at Windy Ridge Farm, Bramfield Road.
JR: Ok yes so I think that the lease we have shows Cooper in the 1890’s…
JC: At Foxholes farm.
JR: Yes and then he takes Rush Green on as well I think or the other way round I can’t quite remember now. He has Rush Green and takes Foxholes on, because Foxholes was originally farmed by George Lines the chemist.
JC: Was it, Oh.
JR: Yes and I think when he died, Billy, the older one, the Billy Cooper of the time took over Foxholes as well as the land he already had. Yes because Foxholes was also called Brick Kiln farm, there were Brick Kilns there as well as I suppose arable farming.
JC: It was mainly arable farming. Certainly along Foxholes you could walk through from Foxholes there. The big field on the right-hand side, that was definitely under wheat I can remember that and they built police houses in the corner of the field there as well.
JR: Oh did they? How would you get to those Police houses there?
JC: Right as far as you could go along Foxholes Avenue and there's a little bridge they built to go over into the site and they were built for police. I don’t know if they still are. The houses are still there I don’t know if they are still police houses or not. There must have been about a dozen quite large houses.
Yes what else can I think of. During the war various bombs dropped round the place and didn't go off and there was a chap by the name of Brown who lived at the top of Admiral Street. He had a son a couple of years older than me and he had a rabbit and he used to take it into the field and it went down a hole one day and they dug it and they used to dig out these bombs by hand but I don't know how far they used to go but it seemed a hell of a long way and they used to shore it all up as they went down but they didn't find it.
JR: Oh is it still there?
JC: May well be I don’t know. They filled it in but not the last bit.
JR: That’s under, somewhere, is that under, what would be built on it now the Foxholes estate or?
JC: I am not sure what they have built, you know I haven’t walked up over the fields there for years but you could walk up there from Foxholes or from….
End of side one
Side two
JR: So if you walked to the top of Foxholes, could you repeat that again
JC: Yes you go in to the field and you turn left up there you'd come to what we called 'the bomb hole' and it was at the top end of Admiral Street.
JR: Probably isn’t built on now then.
JC: I wouldn’t think so no.
JR: From the edge of the Foxholes it would be visible.
JC: and during the war they used to bring tanks from Wickhams at Ware. The used to drive them on the road and along Foxholes and test them on the field there.
JR: Yes Mary was saying.
JC: I can remember that very well, the tanks being driven round there and tested after they'd been repaired. We used to see them going there on low loaders and that sort of thing for repair. A chap by the name of Arbon, he drove a big artic lorry and he used to call in to his wife and he'd have an aeroplane on this lorry that'd been damaged and he was taking that for repair.
JR: And it came up on a lorry!
JC: I mean it wasn’t a big lorry as we think of them today but a very big lorry for its time. Spitfires and that sort of thing.
JR: So he was taking it where for repairs?
JC: I don’t know where he would take it. We were very curious as youngsters and, of course, it wasn't glass in them it was Perspex and they used to make things out of the Perspex glass, rings and all sorts of bits and pieces.
JR: We don’t know where these were being repaired then?
JC: I don’t know where. I imagine they'd go to Hatfield.
JR: Oh I suppose it was yes that’s right. So where had he come from with these planes?
JC: I don’t know where he had come from I imagine and he'd have picked them up from an airfield somewhere. Because there were airfields scattered around, Hunsdon was the nearest fighter airfield.
JR: Were they crashed planes or were they just damaged ones?
JC: I wouldn’t have thought they were crashed as much as badly damaged, gun shots and that sort of thing.
JR: Yes gunfire. OK exciting.
JC: Oh yes it was to us because we were only little whippersnappers then.
JR: Yes, yes if you saw an aeroplane on a lorry nowadays you would probably see someone dash out with a camera.
JC: That’s right yes
JR: Did you have many photographs taken?
JC: No, my father had an old box Brownie and he used to print and develop the films himself.
JR: Do you have any I could borrow? You would have them back.
JC: I think I have got about one photograph if I can find it.
JR: Oh right, of the area or you and family or anything like that.
JC: It did occur to me to bring any photographs with me, I have one of the family I think it was just before we went to Cyrus in 1956, may have been earlier than that. I will have a look I know I have got one photograph. We used to go to Sunday School at Abel Smith school, that’s where the All Saints' Sunday school was and I'm sure I've got a photo from there, 1946 I reckon.
JR: Ok thanks.
JC: Anything else you want to hear about?
JR: Well that’s good. You’ve done well.
Unclear discussion about his father’s camera
JR: Do you feel you have told me everything you wanted to?
JC: Petty well, I am sure there are lots of silly things will come to mind
JR: I was going to say to you you could now if you want to tell me a bit about being Mayor and your hopes and expectations.
JC: Oh well I thoroughly enjoyed being Mayor. I make no apology I think these old things should be kept up. I think I am something like the 399th Mayor of Hertford and for something to last that long it can’t be bad. I like the old traditions, I like the old values. I don’t like to see it disappearing and I felt very very honoured to be Mayor and very delighted and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is so much to do in Hertford that you cannot possibly be bored and it does annoy me a little bit today to hear “there’s nothing to do here” there’s a tremendous amount of things to do. I am never going to live long enough to do all the things I want to do because there are so many things to do. I mean today you have got the University or the Third Age and they have got literally hundreds of different things you can take part in. When we were children I was in the Cubs, 1st Hertford Cubs, then went on to be in the Scouts, then the Senior Scouts, and we had lots of things we could do, used to go camping in the wild in the Lake District and things and in those days you had to do it the cheapest possible way you could because money was very scarce, so we used to take the overnight coach up to the Lake District and the same going to Wales and that sort of thing.
It was an adventure, we used to carry everything on our backs, also when we were in the 1st Hertford Scouts we used to have an Easter camp or Whitsun camp at Bramfield in Tuckers field where we used to have a push and pull a cart from the Folly where the den was all the way to Bramfield. There was a hand trek cart, like a builder’s cart.
But being Mayor has been a wonderful experience, I have met lots of people I quite unexpectedly went to the opening of the new campus at Hatfield the University of Hertfordshire. I shook hands with Prince Phillip, which was totally unexpected. I didn’t think he would bother to come over and speak to me but he did. He asked me where I was Mayor of and yes they obviously like these things. It is still held, the office of Mayor is still held in very high esteem by some people. When Lord Salisbury died I went to his funeral and I got there and I was a little bit behind time, later than I wanted to be, and you parked in the park itself (Hatfield House) and you can walk though to the Church there and virtually everybody had gone in and there was a seat reserved for the Mayor of Hertford right at the front of the church, which quite surprised me. Its been a wonderful experience, I hope it has done some good and I hope it continues for another 400 years.
JR: Well let’s hope so.
JC: I hope so.
JR: Depends on people.
JC: It does unfortunately the people have got this apathy “Oh what can I do”. Well they can go and vote for a kick off. Quite frankly I think a lot of us are thoroughly disillusioned with politicians and I put this right across the board in all parties, not just the current party in power. There are not people of what I call stature.
I met Harold McMillen and he to me was a man of great stature. Wonderful public speaker, I can remember going to a dinner where he was guest speaker in London and the place was silent and he held that audience right in the palm of his hand. Very much with it, I can’t think of any politician that I would bother to cross the street for today quite frankly. I think that’s sad when you see they have all these so called spin doctors and that sort of thing. I think there were some very good politicians in the past, I think Attlee had some great ideas, he did a lot of good, bought the National Health service in and I don’t think, politicians of both parties, they haven’t taken care of the peoples’ expectations.
I have got friends in France and their National Heath Service is far superior to ours. I think it is dreadful here, I was today being phoned for an appointment privately, now I have paid all my taxes why can’t I do it without having to go private, great pity. Unfortunately in this world you always get people, thankfully we are all different, some won’t be able to cope with things and do things for themselves, others can. I was shall I say one of the more fortunate ones of this world I was bought up on Gallows Hill, the council estate. I left there in 1954 when I joined the Army as a regular soldier and unfortunately I had to come out in 1956 er.. no 57, this was after Suez, we never got to Suez but we finished up in Cyprus instead and I worked locally.
By my own efforts I built up my own business and I had quite a good life all in all. Enjoyed the good things in life and I still do, some people will be able to attain things and others won’t but I feel sad when I see the way things are going because not everybody is academic, I was certainly not academic. Some people are, but its no good kidding ourselves that everybody is, some people make wonderful bricklayers and carpenters and are not really fit to do anything else, but there is nothing wrong with that because they can earn an honest living by doing it.
JR: Its an attitude of mind isn’t it
JC: Oh yes.
JR: If people are happy and take pride in what they do.
JC: I think the greatest thing in this world, the greatest joy that I would wish anybody is to have happiness. Happiness is not actually having a lot of money, unfortunately money is a necessary evil. All the things that I see in this world you cannot buy. Last week I was in the back, downstairs room of our house, looking out through the patio window and there was a Green Woodpecker on our lawn. Now you can’t buy that. I can remember walking along in a street in Ireland where we stay with my brother-in-law and I usually walk down to the town to get a paper and I suppose its half a mile or so and I was coming back and I was walking over the bridge and something caught the corner of my eye. So I looked over and there were these big circles going out, I thought blimey that must be a big fish, a I stood looking and then an otter came out!
JR: Oh.
JC: Now there are not many people that have seen otters, I stood there watching and there was a woman walking down the street, coming across the bridge, I said “come and have a look at this” she looked, she said “what is it” I said “well its an otter, you will probably never ever see one again in your life”. Kingfishers, do you get kingfishers out the back here?
JR: Out here we get a lot of … it’s a good bird sanctuary, here considering its near the dual carriageway.
JC: Of course you get lots of ducks, the odd Heron comes along.
JR: Small birds as well.
[Talk together]
JC: You can get fun out of it silly little things. Like last year I built two bird boxes and I hadn’t put them up. Very quickly as we we were going off to Ireland that day and I had to get them up in the garden. They’ve got birds in them.
JR: What’s been, you mentioned Prince Phillip, was that the highlight really of your year? You still have some to go I know.
JC: I have still got a couple of months to go, I think the highlight will be the day I was made Mayor. The actually mayor making, a lot of people say well its outdated and that sort of thing and its ridiculous but its not, because it reminds of values. Unfortunately today people are far too ready to forget what I call “good values”. We should all try and retain good values and I think the world would be a better place for it.
I find very sad today that young people have not got respect for older people and a lot of respect for other peoples’ property, public property, you see far too much vandalism and that I think is sad. Last week I went to a thing, it was educating children to be good citizens, it was organised by the police, the fire service and the environmental health and it was up at Morgans Road school, basically its what parents should be doing, teaching their children to be good citizens, purely by the way they behave themselves. Telling them what they should do and what they shouldn’t do, I think it is sad when you find the tax payer has got to pay out to have these courses run for what parents should be doing.
But today, unfortunately mothers have babies and its taken for granted that they’ll go back out to work and I think that is a very sad sad state of affairs and shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. When our children were born my wife stayed at home, we didn’t go without, we had our holidays, it was only when the recession hit and then she went back to work again.
JR: What have you got in the offing, anything important or anything that you are particularly looking forward to?
JC: Nothing dreadful I thoroughly enjoy going to the Castle Hall, local shows and that sort of thing, they like to have the Mayor there with his chain on.
JR: Yes of course they do don’t they.
JC: Yes I thoroughly enjoy going to the local things and what I found encouraging was the Music festival last year. The local talent we have got, wonderful local talent, there is one girl, a really beautiful singer, you can hear her words, she sings I suppose you would call them older songs from the sixties and that sort of thing and you could hear her words and wonderful music
JR: What about the castle open days did you enjoy those?
JC: Yes I do, I can remember when I was on the council before over 10 years ago a chap came to the Castle open day and he said “Do you know” he said “I have lived in Hertford all my life, I am retired now, and I have never ever been in the Castle” and I think that’s sad. Now the last open day we had, if I remember correctly, we had over 750 people go through which I think is good. People should make use of it, go and visit it, because it is part of our history.
JR: Yes I have met people who have been in the town all their life and may have been in once before. But I think the options available now are very good, once a month I think isn’t it.
JC: That’s right in the summer yes, Band Concerts in the Castle have grown which is a good thing, people should go there, they should use it.
JR: Thank you.
JC: Not at all you are most welcome, if I think of any other bits and pieces I will certainly let you know Jean.
Tape stops and re starts
JR: It won’t matter if this is a bit out of sequence.
JC: Yes I can remember as a child there were two blacksmiths in Hertford, there was one almost opposite the Lord Haig and another one round at Old Cross.
JR: Was the one opposite the Lord Haig Hughes?
JC: I can’t honestly remember, I can’t remember, but the other one was opposite Hartham Lane
JR: Gunners area.
JC: Yes just past Gunners, and they both used to shoe horses, but of course they are long gone.
JR: Yes. Was there also one in town somewhere between the covered market, the back of where Joan Neal used to live. I suppose Duncombe Arms that sort of area.
JC: I can’t recall, I am not sure.
JR: Yes, well I am not sure where I mean, I get an idea it was round the back where the veterinary surgeon is.
JC: There may have been, but I can’t recall one in there. I remember the one in Railway Street not quite opposite the Haig where Warren Place is. Because as children we used to, on our way home from school sometimes go and look round there and watch.
JR: Do you remember McMullens having a regular horse drawn dray?
JC: Oh yes I do, and at Gallows Hill our milk was delivered by a horse drawn milk float and I can remember Pratt was the name who used to have it. Then Sparkes the Ware Road Dairy that went on for years.
JR: Was Sparkes anything to do with Judith Sparkes who was a nurse?
JC: Yes she was the daughter, Judith Sparkes.
JR: Oh right I knew she came from a founding family in the town but Sparkes is a fairly common name and I wasn’t sure if it was that Sparkes or not
JC: Yes Judith Sparkes was from, I think they had four children and one died.
JR: I s she around now still?
JC: Oh yes, Judith Sparkes, lives up in Horns Mill at the, what’s the name of the estate up there?
JR: Oh Liberty Close or the older one
JC: No on the private houses, you go down, well up Pegs Lane, drop down to the mini roundabout at the bottom there, turn left, in front of you was the glove factory,
JR: Oh Tanners Close [Crescent].
JC: You go along there the old Hatfield Road turn left as though you are going up to Brickendon and it’s the private estate on the left as if you were going up to Brickendon.
JR: Yes Mandeville, sorry I was….
JC: Mandeville that’s it, she lives up Mandeville
JR: Sorry I was thinking of Bullocks Lane.
JC: Yes Judith Sparkes, she had a sister and two brothers.
JR: They were all from the milk family. Yes, did they have anything to do with the ownership of those two cottages in St Andrew Street, the very old ones?
JC: I believe so, I believe Fred Sparkes owned them.
JR: Yes I have got the right connection here then.
JC: He gave a woman there a lifetime tenancy.
JR: Is that the one that died and they built the development at the back.
JC: I couldn’t tell you.
JR: Awaiting events there.
JC: She didn’t want it modernised or anything,
JR: No No Ok. I will switch that off again.
Tape Ends