Interviewed by Eve Sangster (ES), also present Mary Ollis (MO)
Date: 07/12/1999
Transcribed by Juliet Bending
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2003.25
Interviewee: Philip Trower (PT)
Date: 7th December 1999
Venue: Sawbridgeworth
Interviewer: Eve Sangster (ES), also present Mary Ollis (MO)
Transcriber: Juliet Bending
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
SIDE A
[discussion]
ES: This is is is Eve Sangster on Monday December 7th 1999, and we're at Mary Ollis's in 14 Highfield Road, and we're talking to Philip Trower. You live in Norfolk now, do you?
PT: That's right, the very far part of Norfolk.
ES: What's your actual address?
PT: Cley-next-the-Sea, near Holt. Actually it's about three quarters of a mile from the sea, because there are now marshes. Sometimes the sea comes right up to the village.
ES: Is that near Wells?
PT: It's about nine miles from Wells-next-the-Sea, between Wells and Sheringham.
ES: When were you born?
PT: 16th May 1923.
ES: So I gather from reading that transcript of that talk that you came here when you were three?
PT: That's right. My parents -- when they first married they lived for three years in St Albans, and then we had some great-aunts who had a house the other side of Ware, which they eventually left to my father, and they wanted us to be nearer. So my parents first of all looked at a house in Stanstead Abbotts, and then they...Bengeo Hall came on the scene, which actually had...my great grandfather Gosselin had bought it back in the early 19th century. And it had come down from one of his descendants who was a first cousin of my father's, and he sold it to my father, so it had a slight family connection.
ES: So, going on to the name Gosselin -- presumably...that explains Gosselin Road, was he… apart from the distinction of living in Bengeo Hall -- was he a Mayor, an Alderman or...?
PT: He was a retired admiral, he may have been still a functioning admiral -- my brother explained this to me -- in the 19th century when you retired from the Navy or there was no longer any work you went on rising in rank even if you weren't actually doing anything at sea...!
ES: To justify it, yes! [laughter]
PT: They were a Guernsey family , from the Channel Islands, and I don't know quite why they came and settled in this area, but one -- the admiral had Bengeo Hall, then one of the sons perhaps married the heiress who had Ware Priory.They also eventually had...Blakesware, the other side of Ware, so that...
ES: Very 'Jane Austen', isn't it -- retired admiral? I mean, he was probably only in his late 40s or something like that. What was your father's occupation?
PT: My father was a solicitor. My grandfather, who was the youngest son of the family at Stansteadbury the other side of Ware, just outside Stanstead Abbotts, had to make his living, and he became a solicitor and eventually started his own firm , Trowers & Keeling, which still survives though it's now called Trowers and Hamleys , and my father became senior partner eventually, and then my brother was senior partner. Then he's retired and now one of my nephews, one of his sons, is in the firm, but he's quite junior.
ES: And have you got...? Well, you have got brothers and sisters...how many have you got?
PT: Yes, I've got this one brother at Stansteadbury, then I was number two, and then I had a sister who's married and lives in Gloucestershire, married to a retired surgeon, and then we had a younger sister who died in her early 30s.
ES: Where did you go to school?
PT: I went to...first of all I started in Bengeo, at a PNEU school.
ES: Yes, I've heard of that...what did that stand for? 'Parents' National Education Union'. And I can't -- I mean , it would be in a book -- I can't quite remember what the reason for it was.
ES: What, the sort of philosophy?
PT: Yes, I don’t think it was a special method of teaching like Montessori or anything, but there must have been something special behind it, some sort of philosophy
ES: I actually interviewed somebody two or three weeks ago -- he went there, his father was the vicar of Christ Church. Where was that school?
PT: It was in the High Street, not Duncombe, that was a private house. I think I could probably show it to you sometime. I think it was a large Victorian Semi-detached ..we were in one side, about half way between the top of Port Hill and where the Post Office is.
Transcribers Note: The PNEU was in the house that is 4 Bengeo Street. The old Post Office he refers to is now ITS Digital.
ES: So how old were you then?
PT: Quite small I should think. I was 5 something like that. I can’t remember if the school came to and end. Mt brother went to a prep school and then I was briefly taught by a governess with some other little children, I think, and then I was sent to the same prep school on the south coast of Dorset as my brother. It was very tough indeed, I like making the younger generations eyes pop (laughs) when I tell them about the cold….harsh conditions. Then I went on to follow my brother to Eton. Then I very briefly …the first two years of the war, I was at Oxford because I was too young to go ***** in the army.
MO: Did you go to Bengeo’s prep school?
PT: No, somewhere on the south coast, my parents thought it would have been too much on my doorstep.
ES: So you went away to school when you were about seven?
PT: About eight , just eight, I think.
ES: Just going back to this PNEU...
PT: Parents' National Education Union, I think it was, there were two Miss Ewans, there was...
ES: ...EWor EU?
PT: EW. One of the...two of the daughters of Mr Oliver the vicar...
MO: Oh I remember him!
PT: ...taught there for a time , awfully nice, Lily and Maud, and it's interesting how some things stick in your mind with a good teacher. I remember Lily teaching us about the Plantagenets. She held up her finger like that to her forehead and said they had a piece of Broom -- planta genesta -- in their helmets. That's how they got their name. And somehow, with her making that gesture, I always remembered it [laughs].
MO: Very interesting.
PT: We've got a very good church up where I am in Norfolk...
MO: Where is your nearest?
PT: Well, either Sheringham or Bodham?, but there is a little chapel at Blakeney a mile up the road.
MO: I used to go to North Walsham, I think, when I went up sailing on the Broads. Was it North Walsham?
PT: Yes, North Walsham and Aylsham, both...they're served by one priest. [discussion]
ES: Just going back to the school, do you remember the names of anybody who was at school with you?
PT: At the PNEU?
ET: Yes.
PT: No, though the Bagenals from Leaside were, I know, because I was talking about it with John.
ES: Did John go there then?
PT: John went there, but those are the only ones I can remember I don't have a vivid memory even of them, I must have been very small.
MO: I didn't go there...my cousin went there.
ES: But were you...? You were already a Catholic?
PT: No, I became a Catholic when I was 30, after I'd moved away.
ES: That explains what you were doing at this school, doesn't it. Did you have a uniform?
PT: We had a tie, I think, I can't really remember pale blue and pink, it was a PNEU tie. I think we had caps, because I remember hanging them up in the little porch [laughter]...
MO: My cousin went there. I think probably she remembered Miss Ewan.
PT: They were very nice, I remember thinking that. One doesn't always react like that.
ES: So it wasn't any preparation for the harsh rigours of...
PT: Prep school life? No, oh no, not at all. [laughs] But it was only a day school, it wasn't like *****.
ES: And did you have a playground or did you just play in the garden?
PT: I only remember a garden, there might have been a playground, I don't remember concrete or tarmac, or anything like that.
ES: Did you have a clergyman come in once a week to take a religious service or anything like that?
PT: I don't think I remember that. [discussion] It would have been Mr Oliver, I suppose, but I don't remember. We were a believing family, but not tremendously church-going. My parents became much more regular practising Anglicans after...well, as the War progressed. We always had prayers on Sunday, my mother would read us a devotional book or a book about St Paul, the Gospels, something like that. But my dear mother had ideas of her own, which she and Mr Oliver, who was kindness itself -- she would expose him to some of her ideas, which I don't think quite met all of his [laughs].
ES: I was surprised really that that was, for a Church of England, that was quite a measure of religiousness , isn't it, to have prayers on Sunday?
PT: Well, I don't think...not in the 19th century.
ES: Did you have them as well?
MO: They were Non-conformists.
ES: Oh I see, right.
PT: Well, we didn't go to church, you see, except on Christmas and Easter.
ES: Were you forced...or did you go to Sunday School?
PT: No, I never went to Sunday School. Strangely enough, my prep school had...we went regularly to Matins on Sunday but I don't ever remember any systematic religious instruction, except when it poured with rain on a Sunday in summer when we sat and went over the catechism and we never got very far [laughs]...! only got systematic religious instruction when I went to public school and was being prepared for Confirmation.
ES: Did you have any best friends in Bengeo? Was your position...? mean, it's the Big House up there, isn't it, Bengeo Hall, I wonder if that inhibited you from having friends.
PT: No, not a bit. My mother was, I suppose, very liberal in these matters , and she was... Now this was a good example. There were some very -- down in old Bengeo -- along the road there were some very bad cottages where some foreign workers lived...
ES: Where is this? At the bottom of Port Hill...?
PT: You go down the bottom of the hill and turn right...no, not down Port Hill, down New Road, Bengeo...
ES: Oh, so you come out of your gate and turn right, yes.
PT: And on the right there, facing more or less the church a bit to one side were some very bad cottages. Mum, who had a very strong social conscience, persuaded my father to buy them and to rebuild them and to let them at low rent to these two families so that they lived in better houses. And I also remember that on the new Council estate, which then didn't stretch right down to the bottom of the hill, there was a family we knew -- very poor, and a big family, and the mother had triplets, and big problems with her health, I think. And we still had our Nanny because my youngest sister was very small still. And we had, I think, all three triplets -- two of them anyway -- there in the nursery with us living with us...l can't remember for how long, and Nanny looking after them along with us -- I think there was a nursery maid at that time -- until the mother was well enough again to have them home. That was, I think, fairly unusual.
ES: I'm sure it was, extremely. There are various hazards attached to that sort of generosity.
PT: Yes. I think it was because -- it's one of the things I made in my talk -- we were less germ-conscious if only because there was much less we could do about it. You took it as part of the ups and downs of life. No, we were great playmates with the two Ramsey boys -- I mentioned them in my talk -- who are still alive, and their father looked after the ponies, and they were great playmates. And there was an undertaker who had a very nice son -- I forget names -- but we used to play a lot with him, and I think there were probably others.
MO: Are they...? Do they still live here, the Romseys/Ramseys?
PT: No, they moved away after the old parents died. I know Paul is still because he's still in contact with my sister, and when Nanny was alive who was very close to them he used to come down and see her.
MO: Was she a Hertford lady?
PT: No, she was an orphan who learnt baby-care...she was quite young when she came to us, but she was a wonderful character because after she left us, fairly soon after, she married this very nice painter for Botsford and Whiteman , Ernie Godfrey, and they had a little house -- I think it's still there -- you go up through the Council houses now from the gates of Bengeo Hall and up the village, you come to a little alley with houses on the right, and Nan lived there right until her last years. She was a wonderful nurse, she used to go out nursing sick people in the Council estate or anywhere in Bengeo, anyone who called her, very often free...she was a wonderful character. There were lots of people -- I meant to put into my talk something that I said -- how much poorer everybody was in those days: do not pity them too much because a lot of them were wonderful people.
ES: And of course we...most of our interviews have the other end of the social scale, so we never get opportunities to say, 'How attached were you to your nanny?'
PT: Oh, deeply attached .
ES: Did your mother mind, or was it just a very different relationship, and it didn't particularly detract from the relationship you had with your mother?
PT: I don't think it did.
ES: I've just finished reading again Brideshead Revisited, so I'm a bit into the nannies, and, you know, Nanny Price sitting up in the attic till 96 and still mending the liberty bodices or something like that.
PT: Well, we weren't quite in that league. [laughter]
ES: I mean, Nanny Price isn't still in the attic of Bengeo Hall, I hope.
PT: After she left us, I think she went to one other family, the Turners. Now they were local, but I think they lived somewhere near...the train goes through the place.
ES: What, Bayford?
PT: No, out beyond Bayford...Cuffley, I think they lived in that area. I think she went there for a short while...we were always a little jealous that Nan could continue to love other children as well as us, but she remained very much in our...when she got very old my sister found her a place in a Catholic home in Cheltenham which takes people of all classes, you could say, where she could keep an eye on her, and she died there.
ES: I just wondered how old she was when she died?
PT: She was in her...l think she was nearly 90 or just 90...interestingly enough she and my mother died quite close together and they used to see each other in the last years a lot, when my mother was staying with my sister.
ES: Were you...when you were so young at Bengeo Hall, were you conscious that you were privileged or that you weren't like the other boys, or what...?
PT: It's very difficult to say accurately what one thought about it. I think perhaps, looking back on my whole life, one of the differences is one took everything much more for granted if it happened part of the way things were. It wasn't until I was, I suppose, 17 that I began to have ideas about it, what society should or shouldn't be like . Till that age, just as like, you know, you had tummy aches, some people were poor and some people were better off. I think our parents...! mean, I remember once being ticked off if you talked to the maids as if you were...not courteously or something like that.
ES: Yes, you weren't privileged to be rude to people.
PT: No, we were taught...As I say, my mother had a strong social sense. In fact, we loved the maids, and I remember my aunt, my mother's sister -- my grandparents lived in London, my father was a barrister at the Court of Appeal-- and she said she loved having tea in the servants' hall in the basement and she hated having tea with her parents and the grown-ups [laughs]. She says she remembers being wheeled into the park or going for a walk and being taken into the park by Nanny and envying the East End boys who were then apparently allowed to swim in the Serpentine. And she thought how much more fun it would be. And she was a bit of a rebel, she was a member of (Ruskins?), my uncle became a sculptor in Bloomsbury, and my aunt was rather sort of touched by those ideas. So these things are... Seen through the perspective of now, it's difficult to give an account of them...
ES: But did you have...? Who were your parents' friends and did you play with... was there a circle of sort of 'suitable' children that you might have played with?
PT: Yes, I remember we went to parties -- there were several families we were closer to than others, sometimes you went to parties and there were lots of children you didn't... You have to remember also that even though there were cars, distances seemed greater...people didn't sort of jump into the car and drive ten miles just for...
ES: Did you have a car, or did you have a pony and trap?
PT: We didn't have a pony and trap until the War, when of course petrol was short, and then my mother got a trap. Then we had, you know, a car, never I thought nice enough ones [laughs]. My mother was a very sensible lady. Both my parents had servants, a nanny, but they spent a lot of time with us. They didn't -- my father was only there at weekends, he was working in London-- but I remember my mother was always taking us out on ponies and so on, and we were very lucky -- my father had this fishing on the Rib for two miles, which gave us access to the bank, and so we had swimming in the river -- now we'd probably consider it unhygienic, but it was lovely, better than any swimming bath.
ES: Especially better than Hertford Swimming Baths! [laughter].
MO: I learnt to swim in Hertford Swimming Bath, very very cold it was.
PT: I think we were taken there for swimming lessons.
MO: Yes, I'm sure. I was taught by a gentleman called Baker who had a confectioner's shop in Halls Green. I remember a very formidable man called Mr. Camp was in charge, and of course, the men and women they were on separate nights, I think, because it was terribly crude, wasn't it.
PT: On the river?
MO: Actually on the river, across the river. I know we had a diving board. But you know, the temperature, I used to think it was quite cold, it was 56, I'm sure it was too cold [laughter].
ES: Did your family keep any animals, apart from the horses? Did you farm?
PT: No, but my father after he inherited this house the other side of Ware, there was a small farm, 180 acres, and I remember working there for a few years in the War.
ES: Did you say...? Do we know what the name of that place was? Yes, of course, Stansteadbury. Yes, of course, you've told us. A lovely house! Yes, it's a very nice house, interesting.
ES: How many acres are attached to the...Bengeo Hall there? I mean, when you're out there you can see that there's the haha. Is all that more or less beyond there yours?
PT: I'm assuming actually now it's the same as some of the ones at Ware Park. When we had it, we had two paddocks in front going down to the edge of Ware Park, and then we had, I think , one on the other side of the road which is now built on. We didn't have any on the side of Revels Farm, but we did.have the big field -- which was compulsorily purchased throughout the War -- going right up to what were then the only Council houses, and then it was built right down. And then we had an orchard sort of over the road below the Rectory grounds. And my mother loved the animals there from a practical point of view -- she had geese and -- oh yes! -- opposite the gates she had a chicken run -- I remember we were always feeding the chickens, and my younger sister getting into trouble because she was out helping herself to the chicken food [laughs].
MO: When you refer to the church, was that St Leonard's Church?
PT: Yes.
MO: And then there was the Old Rectory next to it, which I think -- who lived there? -- it may have bee n Lady Beresford, but I think that was a bit later on, in the '50s.
PT: Yes. When we first went there, there was an elderly brother and sister, a Miss Morden and her brother she was devoted to him, and then there were various people, Mr and Mrs Buxton, and they lived there for a time after they were married, and then came Beresford. It changed hands several times, between 1923 and '48. Whether it was one of those houses that isn't somehow quite satisfactory, I don't know. Some houses change hands much more quickly than others.
ES: So which house...?
PT: The Old Rectory.
MO: We had a Civic Society garden party there.
ES: Yes, Russell Pearman. It does change hands, it's strange, isn't it. Perhaps there is something about it.
MO: And then you were so interesting about that little round house.
ES: You're not talking about the one that you can see as you come down The Warren...a sort of octagonal house? On the left as you come down? One of my nieces -- she started work as a nursery nurse and she had a year there, she's only just left about six months ago, it's not a family you'd know, it's the mother working as a solicitor with two little children. But anyway, the house is still...I've an idea it's been divided.
Transcribers Note: They are talking about “The Vineyard”
PT: Well, it was on two floors when I was a boy. It was actually flats I suppose, really.
ES: It possibly still is. I must ask my niece all about it.
PT: You went sort of down...l can't remember now whether the Ives were in the upper half or the lower half.
ES: I wonder why it was the way it...
MO: I was always fascinated by that house.
ES: Was it flint?
MO: Well, it was originally flint, wasn't it. And thatch.
PT: It's so long since I've visited it. It was almost like a lodge cottage.
ES: Yes, that's right, and yet it's in a rather strange position. Of course, the Savorys are thinking of selling it, to go back to New Zealand, and I had an idea that they were talking about selling some for development.
MO: Oh gosh, that's what I was afraid you'd say.
ES: And of course it's got that absolutely splendid kitchen garden. Was it superb in your day?
PT: It was lovely to bicycle, going round all the box hedges.
ES: What games did you play, or were they mostly things like just cycling, skating in winter and so on?
PT: I don't remember skating at all, actually, although I've spoken of the lake and the floods being frozen. Well, we were fortunate in having a very nice garden, lots of -- when we were smaller children -- sort of little gates in the garden, hiding, building houses and things like that. And then there was the bicycle age. And then we had a tennis court, and swimming, because the river Beane, swimming was on, and... But indoors we were a great family for charades, we had a dressing-up cupboard and there was a game -- I said my parents spent a lot of time with us -- in the evening with small children and the grown-ups, there were masses of games played, questions and answers, sort of board games, and later cards -- we were a great card family. Except I can remember my mother-- coming in, I must have been about 12 or 13, maybe a bit younger, coming in from the garden -- my mother was writing at this desk -- and us saying, 'Mummy, we can't think what to play. What shall we play at next?' and her saying very firmly , 'You're very dull children if you can't think of something for yourself to play, because I'm not going to think of something.' [laughter)
ES: Was your father…?
PT: Do you mean in the First War? He was in the Home Guard when war broke- out, and this will perhaps give you an idea of how little at my age -- I was only 16 or 17 -- one realised what the situation was like. I remember thinking it was quite easy if the Germans dropped by parachute you'd just stand with pitchforks and spear them like sausages as they come down [laughter].
ES; It didn't turn out quite like that, did it. And your father was in the Home Guard?
PT: Yes, I think he had a platoon at Bengeo, Bengeo 2, and I can remember fire watching on top of the water tower, and that was cold! When we were off-duty we went down into the little chamber and there was water all round us.
ES; But you were never in danger of being called up, were you?
PT: Yes, I was called up.
ES: Oh, of course you were 22.
PT: I was 17, no, 16 in '39, and was called up in '42.
ES: And did you...what arm of the Services did you go into?
PT: It was in the Infantry.
ES: Were you called upon?
PT: Well, yes, I went to the...1 was briefly in the Italian campaign. This isn't about Hertford!
MO :No, but it is very interesting, because Jim Morris was in Italy, wasn't he. He was one of the heroes.
ES: Whatever happened, he happened to be there, didn't he. So, tell us something then about Hertford.
MO: There were those lovely little visits on bicycles.
PT: I don't think I can really add much more.
ES: I was very struck by the bit you said about the horses, and of course you're quite right, how completely ...
PT: Well, re-reading it I slightly...! hope I haven't exaggerated it, because...
ES: Oh no. I don't know why I've never thought of it or...l've never heard anybody else say it.
PT: It may have been partly because we used to be taken by horse when we were quite small children along the old Ware Road -- it's now almost impassable, you couldn't get out the other end -- and of course you've got a wonderful view...
ES : Oh when you say 'the old Ware Road', is this somewhere...not the present one?
PT: No no, not the one from Hertford to Ware. It runs...
MO: It runs at the bottom of Ware Park, doesn't it?
PT: That's right, under Ware Park.
ES: I think we've walked that way. When you get to the other end do you come out in Allen & Hanbury's?
PT: Yes. I don't know if you can get through now.
ES: Well, I think you probably can, because if you're actually walking on the other side...the road's this side of the river, or...it's the other side to the current Ware Road, isn't it?
PT: It's right under Ware Park, so it's the far side of the...
ES: When you say 'under', you mean right at the bottom of the hill, sort of? But presumably it runs along the opposite bank to the present Ware Road, doesn't it?
PT: Yes. It's very pot-holey now.
ES: Oh yes. This is why I'm absolutely amazed to hear you call it 'the old Ware Road'.
PT: Yes, well, I believe if you go up the Rib valley, a couple of fields from where we lived, there was a field with a strange sort of shelf on one side. There's a line of oaks along it, and I always understood that was part...whether it was the Ware Road or not.
MO: I'm not sure it wasn't the original Ware Road...it really was the original Ware Road. The present Ware Road was developed when the railway came.
ES: I must look. In that book of...have you got that chap's book about the Civil War? But, in one of the newsletters, a couple of issues ago, there's a map showing where the Ware mutiny took place, and that shows -- I think. -- the Ware Road, and that would have been...16--something
PT: Yes, the bit I was talking about , do you know where the Reformatory was, I mean, that was very much a thing that my brother... When we did go to church on Easter or Christmas , one of the great things was...the Reformatory boys would all march in a sort of squadron...
ES: You mean Crouchfield? Along the Sacombe Road, yes, Crouchfield, it was called.
PT: ...they'd march from there and they would all come in and they'd all be...
ES; They must have been, I suppose, objects of some interest.
PT: Yes, I mean, they always looked splendid stalwart chaps [laughter], we were small boys, we thought they looked rather splendid, and occasionally one of the sirens actually -- I forgot to mention the hooter going when one of the Reformatory boys escaped -- I mean, I don't suppose...it wasn't...! don't ever remember hearing of any sort of dreadful murder or anything like that that you hear now.
MO: Because I remember actually they had a very good woodwork department, and we had several things that they had made. And they used to make clock cases. We had one.
PT: Coming back to the road, I think it might be interesting...! remember being told that there was this, below the Reformatory and coming all this way, from Bengeo, there was this side of this field that looked as if there had been a road there, with some lime trees along it -- whether it joined up with the one underneath Ware Park...how it...whether it was coming from Thundridge to Ware, instead of going over the high ground. But coming back to the barges, that's why they made an impression, we used to walk along the old Ware Road to the mill and a bit beyond, who had a very nice family -- do you remember Mrs Mansell? She had an awfully nice son Neil -- but from there you got a wonderful view of a strip of the river and then a great canal going straight towards Hertford. And it was there particularly that I think of the barges.
MO: Yes, and there were the waterworks there just this side of the new bridge, the A10
PT: Yes. And there were a lot of...l remember we used to bicycle intoHertford down over Hartham Common, under a railway bridge on a little path, and there were a lot of walkways there.
MO: That was a cattle rake, and the little stream went underneath the railway, the old Great Northern Railway, and then it continued into The Folly.
PT: And we used to bicycle under the bridge and through The Folly and into Bull Plain.
ES: It's still there. Why was it called a cattle rake?
MO: Alan Melville explained that it was a cattle rake. It was very low and it was only really just high enough, when they built the railway, for cows to go underneath, and the cowman perhaps bent down, it was very very low. The railway was built over the top.
ES: Because then they used to walk the cattle from the pens at the bottom of Port Hill, didn't they, across to the market. When people speak of pens, I didn't know what they were. That's apparently what they were, cattle pens, an obvious explanation, as it turns out. And you were saying about how crowded the canals were?
PT: They seemed to be. As I say, I'm giving my impressions rather than facts, that's my impression. I think I remember them sort of actually in the...on the edge of retiring, those waterways, but somebody who knew the economics of it all would be able to tell you exactly how much barge traffic there was. I mean, horses were very much a part of life, not just for pleasure, and still quite a number of butchers would deliver with their own horse-drawn vehicles.
ES: I mean, after the War, in Potters Bar, and probably ten years after the War, the baker's roundsman drove a horse and cart, and a very unsavoury do it was too, by and large.
MO: The road-sweepers used to have a horse and cart.
ES: Certainly the Hertford one did.
PT: Another figure of course was the rag-and-bone man. I was terrified as a very small boy. I suppose they were very poor...they weren't exactly tramps...
MO: No, you see, the Archers were rag-and-bone men, round at the bottom near the Baptist Church, they did very well for themselves, and I think there were several.
PT: Really they were kind of pre-ecological...they were recycling things.
End of Side A
Side B
MO: ***** Did they not pay a sort of minimum amount each year, and that went into Grass Money
ES: As a matter of fact, I think it did, and I think the Grass Money came from...mostly from fairs and things like rent and...from fairs and so on.
MO: I don't remember any fairs on Hartham. Whit Monday there was always a fair and a cycle race.
PT: It's just a faint memory. Almost from the age of eight, on Whit Monday we'd always have been at school, and that was very curious, because looking back now, after the age of eight I only had a memory of the flowers that bloomed in the garden, the August...April ones, and the August--September ones, and, you know, you didn't know what went on the rest of the year.
ES: And you could hear the Allen & Hanbury hooter from there. It's funny how some of these things -- the noises -- seem romantic, don't they, after how ever many years? (laughs]
PT: I was thinking of that the other day, at my brother's, there's been a train down the Stort Valley for a long time, and although there's now a fast track to Stanstead Abbotts the regular old tracks...they do have a quite pleasant sort of traditional sound for us now, don't they? (laughs]
ES: It's like hearing a hand mower. I was interested to...what you were saying about the smells of the brewery and of the glove factory.
PT: Well, it was faeces, wasn't it.
ES: Well, it was mostly gloves, but they were tanning leather. But I've never met anybody who had the job of collecting that...that 'pure', it's called, isn't it...yes, it's a strange name, for their trade. That's what they used, to...
PT: That was the tanning.
ES: No, dog turds and so on...that was called 'pure'.
PT: Oh that's what was used? The smell I think I remember was this vert sort of sweet smell of dried faeces. It was a sort of disgusting sweet smell.
ES: I don't know whether they're from...oh, are they from...? They smell all right. No, but that's what they...they used dog dirt to...
PT: Are those made from Hornsmill?
MO: They 're a whole fleece. The leather and the wool is all attached.
ES: Are these...? They look as though they're verging on the antique.
MO: Well, I think so. I think my mother used to wear them when she drove the Vickers touring car, you know.
ES: What , without a heater.
MO: Yes, wonderful, aren't they.
ES: Nothing would get through that.
MO: I actually offered them to Rosemary Bennett at the Museum, because she talked about them , but I decided I was going to keep them [laughs].
ES: You'd never get any to replace them. They're wonderful, aren't they. Used you ever to come down to that part of the town? I suppose you did, if you smelt the...
PT: Well, among other things it was the main way out of the Lea Valley. I don't know...is that street blocked?
ES: West Street?
MO: No. No, it's access only.
PT: Oh; I see, but that was the main way out. You couldn't come up here. So whenever we went to Bayford? House we went out that way. So it was very much something we noticed every time.
ES: You say in your talk that you weren't aware of...you talk about poor housing in St Andrew Street...
PT: I imagine that the housing at the other side of the canal...
ES: Oh the Folly, yes. But did you ever go down into Railway Street or Bircherley Green?
PT: We certainly went through The Folly, and we came up Bull Plain. We probably did go...we went more or less everywhere our fancy took us.
ES: Except sweet shops!
PT: Except sweet shops, yes [laughs] . I don't remember my mother saying, 'You're not to buy sweets.' We hoarded our pocket money for other things, I think.
MO: We went to Mr Claydon, the fishmonger.
PT: Yes, that's right, it's nice to see he's still there, and llott's, though my memory is that llett's used to be at the Castle entrance, didn't it.
MO: Yes, I don't think that had any connection with the present people there, they didn't have any connection with the mill, the mill lletts, I think it was a different family. It used to be Copping's the greengrocer's on that comer.
ES: Oh, not the nursery? Nigel Copping.
MO: Oh yes, I don't know whose son he would be, but the Coppings had a market garden at Panshanger.
PT: This is interesting, this fits in with something...! got the impression from what John said that apparently Desborough's inherited it fairly late, I think after the First War, from the Cowpers, and that they didn't spend a great deal of money on it, and it rather fits in with my boyhood memories of going there, because my father had been a great friend of the three sons killed in the War. And it was grand...but it wasn't sort of painted up to the nines like a National Trust house.
MO: I remember going there to the Coppings' which was in the kitchen garden and seeing the house, and it looked as if it was sort of...had a lot of moss or ivy growing round its stonework.
PT: Yes, well that would explain why their main house had been rather too distant.
MO: We do have a tape , don't we, of Mrs Warner...
ES: Yes, it was next door to the Astors, wasn't it, at Cliveden.
PT: That sort of area, yes.
ES: I've rather forgotten that, yes, it was Panshanger, that's right.
PT: But you say that the Coppings used the garden...
MO: Yes, and barns and outhouses, and they used to have this greengrocer's shop on the corner of Railway Street and Market Street, next to the fleapit...
PT: Oh, the one I mentioned. [laughter]
MO: And I always remember, particularly on Saturday night, you see, my mother would take us round there as children, to get fruit and vegetables -- they were sold cheap. Otherwise we weren't really supposed to go into Railway Street we were not allowed to. They were a great family , and I'm sure...
PT: My memory is now that where llett's is now, there was a big fruit shop.
MO: There was Nichols', on the bridge...
PT: No, opposite...
ES: You mean opposite Pearce's?
MO: That was Copping's. It was a fruit shop. It went right the way round that corner.
PT: Yes, a fruit shop. Something that I think would be very nice, if the City Fathers could bring themselves to raise the money, I used to remember on top of the Corn Exchange -- yes, Ceres -- if they could replace that, it was a great feature, in fact I think it was the first statue I can remember, and I really valued that, I thought it raised the tone of Hertford no end.
ES: It is a project -- in fact, I would quite like...
MO: It exists, doesn’t it, still?
ES: Well, no, not really, it's very decayed and it's lost almost all its limbs. But it seems to me if the town insists on having a Millennium project, that would be a very good one.
MO: I don't want to show any disrespect for Hertford, Connecticut, but I think it would be better. I don't think there's a great move to have Samuel Stone.
ES: Well, it was...having Samuel Stone, having, you know, a stone monument, but when Pete's wife rang off I said to Andrew, 'At least [laughs] we won't have to have a monument to Samuel Stone, because he said it was abandoned.
MO: No, I saw him on Saturday and he was still talking about the Millennium Fund and the statue of Samuel Stone.
ES: Yes, but I think we are very likely to have Ceres, but it would be a good project, but I think it would have to be a replica , probably these days, that's right, because it was taken down, wasn't it, because it was thought to be a hazard during the War.
PT: I mentioned the bombers.
MO: No, it was deliberately taken down.
ES: Which just shows they might as well have left it there, it would probably have survived the bombing, whereas it didn't survive being in the Museum garden.
PT: Actually there's a very nice one -- if they could copy it -- at Swaffham, in south Norfolk. There's a lovely 18th century rotunda in the market place with a statue of Horace Walpole.
ES: So , what else do we want to know about the town centre?
MO: Oh yes, your recollections of Carter's, because did you go to Carter's. If you weren't allowed into sweetshops but you went with your mother...
PT: I don't think during the War or just before the War, I don't remember again going. Mum would go in there, especially with Alison Bagenal, I think you remember her -- they were great friends. But, as I say, once I was eight I was only at home two months in the summer, one month at Christmas and one month in April, and then you know one wanted to do other things, not sitting in coffee shops [laughs] .
MO: But you do remember Mrs Carter.
PT: Oh yes, I do remember, yes, well she was an unforgettable figure [laughs], and I think that once we were in our late teens we probably did go there...
MO: You didn't play cricket?
PT: No, we were not a cricketing family. At school I rowed [rode].
MO: Did you know the Bowyers?
PT: Yes, they lived at...l was with Duncan at school, Gainsborough House, that's right, my parents were very friendly with them. I kept up with more especially the one with red hair, who was in the RAF, and I can remember actually [laughs] going to a dance in London in the War, and it was a girl my sister had met at the Foreign Office, and she came from a rather grand family, and they had a dance and we were invited, and the Queen was there -- she was then a Princess -- and I was longing to ask her to dance. I didn't have the courage although I was a young lieutenant, and this Bowyer boy who was only an Aircraftman at that point had the courage and went up -- and I was furious - and danced with the Queen! A missed opportunity! [laughs]
ES: History might have been different!
MO: There used to be a sort of junior Hertford Cricket Club up at Balls Park, you know, and I used to go up there and score, and the Bowyers were both...belonged to that.
PT: Yes, they left, I think, just before the War and then my father rented part of it for his office *****.
MO: After the War, because the school, I think, was started by...it originated in Mr Bunt's house, and Miss Taylor started it, that's right, then they moved out.
ES: So did you leave...live here until 1946?
PT: My parents moved to ***** in 1948.
ES: When you were a young man, when you couldn't pluck up courage to dance with Princess Elizabeth [laughs], was there a social scene in Hertford? Did you-- you talk about dances -- were there dances in some of these rather nice houses?
PT: Yes, they were...well, I remember going to dancing classes.
ES: Yes, I wanted...they weren't the ones at Hertingfordbury, were they?
PT: Yes, the earliest I remember going to were...a lady called Miss Nagg? who with something called ***** and ***** -- it was very fashionable -- they were supposed to teach you rhythm, and those were very...to begin with at one point they were in that Memorial Hall at Hertingfordbury.
ES: Yes, because the Baker girls from Bayfordbury used to...of course they were much older than you...the Clinton Bakers. The one we interviewed...
PT: Oh, you're not thinking of the Cole-Hamiltons...?
ES: Oh no no.
PT: ...because their mother was a Clinton Baker.
ES: Yes...no, these were Clinton Bakers, it must just be a different generation, because you know the one who's -- I think actually she's just died -- but she was 90-something, wasn't she.
PT: Yes, they were cousins of Dad's, he used to call him Cousin Doobie, his name was Luigi -- Lewis -- and he was a bit like a Gilbert & Sullivan figure to look at, because he was very small, wasn't he, and his wife, I suppose, was magnificent [laughter]. And I remember once having lunch just before the War -- perhaps it was at the beginning of the War -- and they had that...big room called the Kit-Kat Room with all the portraits, and we were coming out and there was long sort of Dutch portrait picture with two rather prim early-18th century ladies at either end, with a sort of space between them -- it was an oblong picture. And I remember Cousin Doobie looking at it and saying, 'Billie, I think the thing would be to have that sawn in half and make two really good pictures.' [laughter] She was very nice and kind. No, they only had two -- Billie who emigrated and lives in New Zealand, I think it was, and Jane who was my sister's age, about two years younger.
ES: These were two sisters, one, the oldest, lived in a very pretty cottage -- I went with Grace Eve -- in Bayford. And the other one who is still alive, and I think she must be in her late 80s, she lived...going up Brickendonbury Lane, just before you get to what I would think Bayford...almost opposite the church, she lived in a house that...yes , Kitty Murray is the one who lived in... But they are relatives, aren't they?
PT: Yes, yes...Kitty...there were four sisters, Kitty...they were all Cole-Hamiltons, and their mother was a daughter of Clinton Baker from Bayfordbury, so we knew them, and that's right...
ES: Which one was it lived, and possibly still does, in Brickendon Lane, going up on the left?
PT: That was Ann, I think. She has died.
ES: It is, that's right. Yes, she wasn't well.
PT: Mary and Elizabeth, the younge r ones.
ES: Anyway, she said about going in the trap to dancing classes at Hertingfordbury.
PT: They used to have dancing classes at Brickendonbury before that, and -- I'm afraid this is all trivia -- I was told a very nice story...
ES: No, it isn't!
MO: Was it the Pearsons lived there then?
PT: No, well, they did originally, and then it was bought by a family...their name has escaped me again...! should say, it changed hands in about 1932 or something like that.
ES: Was he the architect?
MO: Pearson the engineer.
PT: There is a Pearson family…..
ES: Because their land went down as far as there, that was actually built on Pearson land, I think. There was a little gravel pit that Ernie Chambers bought from Lady Pearson. You were saying...a story about...
PT: Oh, this came to me years afterwards, I met a nice woman whose father had been Rector at Bayfordbury and old Mrs Cole...Clinton-Baker, the mother of the Admiral , was...l think, had been widowed quite young , so had reigned there for a long time, and I gather she was a bit formidable. And this woman I was talking to whose father had been vicar said they used to go to tea there from time to time as children, and on one occasion she remembered that Mrs Clinton Baker said, 'I hope you've enjoyed your ice cream.' And one of the children said, 'It didn't really...well, it was a bit warm.' Mrs Clinton Baker apparently drew herself up and said, 'The ices at Bayfordbury are always a little warm.' [laughter] Everything had to be perfect! But it was rather a lovely house, but a lot of its attraction depended on its furniture in the ballroom -- you probably know this, Mary -- they had the original Chippendale bills for the furniture.
MO: I wonder what happened to it. I was once taken as a privilege on tiptoe into the Kit-Kat Room to see the collection. There was a connection between that and Walpole.
PT: I would think so. It was a kind of a quasi-political club, I think. And we were always shown one of the portraits and it was a man who had himself painted when he thought he was going to get the Bath...the Order of the Garter.
ES: He'd left a space, had he?
PT: Well, no, he had it painted in and then he hadn't got it and so it was painted out, [laughter] and with time it had just begun to show through.
ES: So what were these families that you mixed with, and went to Coming-out Dances or whatever?
PT: Well, there were children's parties to begin with, and then Hunt Balls or the Hertfordshire Regiment -- they used to have balls and all that sort of thing, dances...
ES: Did you ride...hunt?
PT: Did we ride? Yes.
ES: When you said you 'rowed', I thought for a moment -- oh, you did mean that! - and then I thought you must have meant -- when we said did you play cricket - you said no you 'rowed', did you mean 'sculled' or...?
PT: Sorry, my pronunciation was not very precise. I rode at school, not very enthusiastically, but we had ponies, and our ponies were always delightfully shaggy [laughs]. I was there about 20 years ago when my brother's children were growing up and I went out with them on ponies and we ran into this other family that they knew, and all their ponies looked as if they were going to a show or something. Ours were not like that and we all went out on these lovely woolly creatures, with the Enfield Chase mostly, and occasionally it was the Puckeridge Hunt, but it was more of a slog. But it wasn't good hunting country because there were too many woods. And I remember long periods sitting in the mist in a ride in a wood. And there was old Sir Francis Fremantle who lived at Bedwell and my pony took a great attachment to his horse and it used to come up behind this horse and lunge at its backside. Very rightly he said, 'Get back, get back, don't you see it's got a red bow in its tail!', which meant that it was a kicker, you see. So I'd haul him back and at the next possible opportunity…….. [laughter].
ES: Did you know the Melvilles?
PT: Yes, very well. Well, we knew the Melville...the two Melville boys through Enid and Peggy Tennant, because we knew them first, we knew the Kenyans first.
ES: But the Tennant family that Peggy belongs to...is that the Tennant family.
PT: I don't think so. I think they're a family who lived over – one of them is still alive at 101 -- over the other side of Stansted Mountfitchet, and they had a very lovely house called Cornwall Lodge, I think, very close to the road. But if you ever go up to Stansted Mountfitchet, you see it on the edge of the road...it's now a Home, I think, but they lived there.
MO: I did meet somebody who had a connection with the Tennants; I don't know if she was a Tennant or married a Tennant, and she lives at Takeley not very far from Stansted Mountfitchet, Takeley, the other side of Bishops Stortford. She knew the Melvilles.
ES: But they're considerably older than you? But not perhaps old enough to...
PT: Yes, well, I'm 75.
ES: Yes, but I suppose Alan was...
PT: Yes, Alan would have been older than I, I'm sure.
ES: And Peggy must be 84, I should think 83 or '4, something like that.
PT: Was she as much as ten years older?
ES: Well, perhaps, I don't know.
MO: They were Kenyons, weren't they, and lived at...
PT: Amwell, yes. And then Peggy and her family lived in -- when I remember them best, she had an awfully nice little brother David -- they lived in Clock House, and they were very musical, I remember playing quartets or something with them.
ES: They started really the Hertford Symphony Orchestra, the Choral Society and all sorts of things.
MO: And Alan was one of those who started the Civic Society.
ES: Yes. I only know this because we've done an interview with them, Peggy and..this is really nothing to do with Hertford, but I can't help being interested when you said your father was very...was a great friend of the three Grenfell boys. I just was reading a bit of Julian Grenfell's poetry last week. But how did...?
PT: How did it come about? Very simply. They were at school together, and his great friend was Billy, the one I knew best, and through that you know, and then towards the end of their life he actually was their lawyer. But Dad...funnily enough he was interested in the present and the future, and he'd reminisce a lot, and it wasn't that he kept anything from one, but he didn't bother to sort of...the things you're asking me, I would ask him now if he were alive .
ES: But in a way the interest of this sort of thing...it almost depends on families not bothering to ask their fathers...
PT: It's like searching...hunt the thimble.
ES: If everybody did it, nobody really would be interested . It's because by and large families don't say...well, if they do, perhaps they'd get bored with hearing about...'oh,' you know, 'he's talking about that again .' Everybody switches off. Well anyway, it's an interesting connection.
PT: The second daughter, Imogen, was my godmother, and she married Lord Gage, a house down there, near Glyndebourne.
ES: It is so strange though, isn't it, because you say 'Imogen' . We have heard quite the other side of the story from this Molly Warner -- she wasn't exactly a cook -- but she was the still maid, something like that -- and I recall now that she was very fond of Lady Imogen. It is strange, isn't it, to hear the same characters discussed from such radically opposing viewpoints.
MO: Were they Abel Smiths?
PT: I only remember Pamela and Cynthia...in fact I think Pamela may still be alive, they lived over at...I don't remember the one at Woodhall Park...my brother does. They were over by...do you remember an old boy called Sir Geoffrey Church?
MO: Oh yes, I do indeed !
ES: Why? [laughter]
PT: He's a really historic character. He and Mum in their last years used to see a lot of each other, they were always going backwards and forwards to lunch. And this only came out in those last years. His grandfather, I think I'm right about this, was born -- now he was in his 90s in the '80s, only a few years ago.
MO: So he was still alive then, was he?
PT: He was still alive, and I remember taking him to Mum’s. And his grandfather was born two years before the French Revolution. It was two generations in which these old men had married and had a son in their old age.
MO: Sir Geoffrey Church was a man in the Hertfordshire Home Guard, and there were two characters, one was Sir Geoffrey Church who lived near Hatfield, and the other was General Lucas who lived near Stevenage. I only know because I was Adjutant to the County Hall Platoon, and Sir Geoffrey Church was always coming in to see John Newsom who was my boss, who was Captain of the Home Guard. I think he also had lots of connections with Hatfield schools and that sort of thing, but I always thought he was really quite a character. There was a stamp about people involved in military activities.
ES: And of course interestingly, Peggy Melville organised the Land Army and did a stint, I believe.
MO: And the Gerards did the WVS, didn't they?
PT: I was around in the first two years of the War, coming from university for vacations, *****, so I really didn't know the place so well in the War.
ES: Did you marry a local girl?
PT: I'm a bachelor.
ES: Oh you're a bachelor, right.
MO: We're not all married! [laughs]
ES: No, I realise that of course, and less and less. It's getting to be a very fashionable thing to be -- not married -- isn't it.
MO: Or if you're married you tend not to be together for more than about ten years.
ES: Yes. Who were the Bessboroughs? Was there a Lady Bessborough?
PT: Yes. Actually , that dance I went to -- the girl was a Ponsonby. All these families are very interesting politically actua lly , they go back to the 18th century. I think the Bessboroughs and Ponsonbys were very much in the 18th century sort of Whig world.
ES: Yes, with their sort of allegiances . Did you have anything to do with the Salisburys?
PT: Only very remotely. I was in prep school with two or three of the boys. I think one was Dickie, and my parents...my father had some kind of...l don't think he was a sort of lawyer. I remember actually as a boy, when a smll boy of six, my brother was at prep school, my parents went down, the then Lord Cranborne -- the one who became Marquess before this one -- invited us to stay at Cranborne -- it was fascinating at the time, except that I disrupted the dinner party on the Friday night because I was staying in the same room as my parents and left there, in a house with a spiral stone staircase and window blinds tapping and I used to have nightmares, and I screamed and screamed and screamed, and my mother had to be summoned from the dinner table. I have a faint memory of that
ES: And you're older than the present...this Robert Cranborne. Because he's just 62 or '3, isn't he.
[discussion] – about getting home and MO visiting him.
PT: I met somebody else in the street today, she was at that dinner and the talk, and she's got a brother-in-law and they're always going up to Holt.
ES: That wasn't a Rochford?
PT: No, I'm sure it wasn't. No, because I met her...she was very kind...she came up after the talk *****.
ES: Why do you live in Holt and not in Hertford? [laughter] It's just accidents of history probably!
PT: Well, life isn't always...it comes about bit by bit...
ES: Oh, of course, it's a series of tacks, isn't it, getting a fair wind or something?
PT: You don't organise your life , you know: 'This is the place I'd like to live.' You do that at the end of life, very often.
ES: I just wondered if you...something I read about one's final destination is the village you started from , and I just wondered if you felt like that...
PT: Drawn back here? Well actually, I’m very lucky, I’ve a very nice brother and sister-in-law...! can come as much as I like in these parts, just as I can go to Gloucester, where my sister lives .
ES: And I'm sure it's not necessarily the business of an Oral History interviewer to ask all these questions!
MO: It's lovely round there, the Priory...
PT: Yes, it is. How do you know that?
MO: Well, I used to spend a lot of time on the Norfolk Broads, because we started a sailing school there, the Hertfordshire Educational Foundation , at Barton...
PT: Oh yes, Barton Broad.
MO: Yes, well, in...from about 1950 to '57, I left Hertfordshire in '57, and then my cousin married a pilot in Air UK and he used to fly from Norwich after having done his stint in Barnes?, and they bought a house at Blofield on the Yare, so I go up there.
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