Interviewed by Peter Ruffles (PR), Eddie Roche (ER)
Date: 01/01/2002
Transcribed by Unknown
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: 02002.29
Interviewee: Zillah Driver (ZD)
Date: 2002
Venue: 76 Cowper Crescent
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR), Eddie Roche (ER)
Transcriber: unknown
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: Hello, I’m at Zillah Driver’s just checking: Peter Ruffles, Eddie Roche at 76 Cowper Crescent the house of Zillah Driver, just going to chat through Zillah’s life and I have to be fairly strict on keeping things tidy, one of our great problems of discipline particularly as far as memories of Hertford are concerned. Were you born in Hertford?
ZD: No, we first came to Hertford in 1929. My father was chief cashier of Lloyds Bank and previous to that he had been moved around. I was born in Dudley, we moved to Whitham when I was about 2, we moved to Littleport when I was about 4 and from Littleport we came here in 1929.
PR: When you say we…..
ZD: That was Mummy, Daddy, my sister Pamela….
PR: Well-known resident of Bengeo.
ZD: Yes, Pam Goodman, and myself and I was 8 years old when I came to Hertford.
PR: Why the moves, all of them?
ZD: It was a policy of the bank, they didn’t let people stay very long in one place because in those days nobody bought houses, they were all rented. Our big house in Ware road belonged to Norrises. It was one of those houses that is now between Fairfax Road and Rowley Road and the rent was £1 a week.
ER: And the accommodation was obtained for your family by the bank?
ZD: Usually, yes, the bank looked around and selected a house, or recommended.
PR: Fishers were there in that bit? Florrie Fisher, Flo Beetham?
ZD: Fishers had the little shop the other ide of me, they weren’t Fishers then, but they had the little shop there. Where Flo lived, I don’t know.
PR: So, he was appointed in what capacity to….
ZD: Chief cashier.
PR: Then, you’ve been here a long time, since 1929.
ZD: Yes, and I’m 81 years old.
PR: A nd you were driving until fairly recently?
ZD: Yes, had to give up because I’ve got this macular degeneration. I was very naughty, falsified 2 licence applications by saying I could read the standard letters on a number plate at 25 yds, I couldn’t read them at 1, let alone 25 yds. Then it got to the point when I couldn’t read road signs and things just used to appear out of nowhere at me and it was difficult to tell if vehicles were moving or how far they were going, so my tax disk was due at the beginning of May but all the time the car was in the garage I was tempted to just pop down the shops or pop to the town and I realised……..and the third application I read it more clearly and it said if no to this question, go to the next one and it was ditto 15 yds, if yes to this question, another little asterisk, your driving licence will be automatically category K. If you look up category K on your driving licence it says motorised lawn-mower or pedestrian controlled vehicle, meaning one of those invalid cars. So, I thought, I really couldn’t go to the cash and carry on my motorised lawn mower so I thought I’d sell the car and use the bus.
PR: Bus stop’s nearby.
ER: You can stop buses more or less, or do they just stop at the stop?
ZD: They stop at the stop but we’ve got an excellent driver on Reg’s Coaches, the one that comes up here, and he is delightful, cheerful and if I said to him it’s pouring with rain and instead of stopping at the bus stop, just drop me on the corner and he will. There was a lady who had one or two hip or knee replacements but she could barely walk at the time, she used to come out and he used to stop for her.
ER: Good, old fashioned service.
ZD: Absolutely. But when he’s not on we’ve got one or two youngsters and you say 50 return please and they just punch the ticket, they don’t even say thank you or acknowledge, or smile.
ER: What do you expect, lady, it’s my job to drive the bus!
ZD: Some buses are even worse because they come into the car park [bus station] that marvellous car park we have now, all that money that was spent on it, no facilities for passengers whatever. There’s no shelter at the bus stops, it it’s pouring with rain or windy or icy cold and you have to huddle in the “arcade” – there are 3 seats but they’re not covered, they’re metal and they’re not covered, they’re useless in bad weather.
PR: Trying to get something done about that, and litter bins, but it’s difficult, but we’re digressing. We’ve got Lloyds Bank and 1929 and you and your sister Pam have arrived. What about schooling?
ZD: We weren’t Catholics but we went to the Convent, St. John Street, that little school down there.
PR: From the time you arrived in Hertford?
ZD: Till I left in 1938.
PR: What age?
ZD: 17, I was then.
PR: What age could you begin at the Convent?
ZD: Well, I’ve got a photograph that was in Herts Countryside taken by George Blake the photographer and it was found in Hoddesdon and it was in the museum library and it said this is a photograph of a private school, does anybody know where it was? Sylvia Farrow, who was an old girl, saw it, recognised a lot of people in it and realised where it was and her sister tole me about it so I got onto Herts Countryside, got a copy of the photograph and there I was in the middle and I must have been about 11 or 12, I’m not sure what age Pam was but I don’t think she’s on it. There are lots of little ones, there’s Pauline Adams on it that started at 3 and Pauline Sledge and also the MIltons.
ER: The Milton sisters?
ZD: That’s right. Eileen was the eldest, she’s still alive, Elsie was the net one, she lives up in Leicester somewhere, and Peggy, Mimms we called her, and Loretta.
PR: Where did they live?
ZD: In Fanshawe Street, the tall houses.
PR: And was Sylvia Farrow anything to…
ER: Thora did.
PR: Thora did,.. well do with George Blake’s in-laws?
ZD: There was a connection, there, didn’t she marry George Blake?
PR: Thora did.
ZD: Thora did. Well I think she was the elder sister.
PR: They had a restaurant in Fore Street somewhere.
ER: Are you talking about the Farrow family?
ZD: I don’t recall that, the only restaurant I can remember was the Regal. My memories of Hertford are not so much when I was 8/9/11. When I was in my early teens, that’s when my memory starts picking up things. For instance the building of the Hertford County Cinema, where the old gaol came down, Baker Street, and was it Spence Street [no]. Baker Street is still there and of course we used to walk to school 4 times a day, once down, back for lunch at 12, home and home at 4, there was none of this finishing school at half past 3. It was 9 to 4. So we watched the cinema being built brick by brick, stone by stone and that wad when the old Plough was, the old building, long, low building and then that came down and then they built the new Plough.
PR: Did you ever go into the old Plough, I suppose you were too young to enter a pub.
ZD: Yes, I was, but I knew Sylvia Sandford at that time.
PR: Was she at your school?
ZD: No, I think she was a Ware Grammar School.
PR: And her parents were?
ZD: Landlords of the old Plough.
PR: And her brother died?
ZD: Just recently, Arthur Sandford, yes.
PR: Did the Sandfords give up the licence/tenancy at the time that the pub was re-built?
ZD: I didn’t know, because I was 14 at the time. There were, with the County cinema, 3 cinemas in Hertford. People remember the Castle cinema but I don’t think many people remember the Regent Cinema which was in Market Street. It’s now the hairdressers, but that was special, to go upstairs you went up one step, in there were seats without arms in the middle.
PR: Were you a regular?
ZD: Cinema goer? Yes, especially when the County went up, anywhere upstairs 1/-d anywhere downstairs 6d. So if you were feeling very flush and very posh you went upstairs.
ER: This was a shilling in the 1930s.
ZD: It was a lot of money, even 6d. Daddy used to go out on Saturday night down to the Dimsdale, he used to have his pint because he didn’t go out during the week and he used to come home and he’d buy Mummy a block of brazil nut chocolate and 6d worth of sweets for sister and I, and those sweets had to last all week, so if you ate them all on Sunday, that was it. And so to get a 6d for the cinema we had to do something for it. The other way was to ask for 1d for the bus and walk.
PR: To go back, the cinema, public usage, was there a good social cross section?
ZD: Oh yes, it was very well used. You also had the café upstairs with Lloyd Loom chairs and tables where you could get afternoon tea or beans on toast and that was up until after the war.
PR: And would you describe the Regent with its armless seats and convenient position…..were different sorts of people going to different cinemas?
ZD: Personally I was too young to know what the difference was, just people. If whatever was on at that cinema, if I wanted to see it then we went.
PR: And your dad’s choice of pub, he had plenty to choose from.
ZD: He used to go to the Dimsdale.
PR: Business connections?
ZD: Yes, possibly because being in the bank you were well-known, he was also connected with auditing and account work, I think he worked a lot with Mrs. Addis, old Mother Addis as we called her, doing accounts and things, and also some of his customers in the bank, a lady, I don’t know who she was but every Christmas he used to get a wicker [covered] flagon of sherry and that was a big one and possibly a bracer of pheasants or rabbits.
At his funeral there were all sorts of organisations represented because he died in 1942, he was only 51. He had heart, valvular heart disease which now would have been done with a by-pass but then …..He was in the Observer Corps, he joined in 1933 and they used to have their post in field at the top of what now is Welwyn Road and it was the field where the first block of flats is now on Sele Farm. And that was just like a dug-out with sand bags and planks to make a little shelter, they had a little wood-burning stove there because I had a photograph which shows the two of them, I think the other man in the photo is Bill Blake who used to have the tyre shop at what was the entrance to Addis, a large old building, then they had a fruit shop in Fore Street near the Post Office. I think the other one was probably Arthur Sandford who lived in Ware Road.
PR: And were the Blakes of Queens Road related?
ZD: No, different family altogether.
ER: I remember the shop in Fore Street next to the Post Office. [Muddled discussion].
PR: Then your father’s social company he keeps?
ZD: Daddy was also secretary of the Dramatic and Operatic Society from 1930-39. When the Society did the Merry Wives of Windsor 1933-4 they wanted some fairies so he approached the convent school dancing class and I was a fairy and that was my first time on stage and I had two words I had to say Where’s Bede? When I left school, I joined, and my first show was the Vagabond King at the Hertford County ‘cinema. They used to do shows there for example Rose Marie, Belle of New York , Mr. Cinders and in 1938 Vagabond King and I was in that. They stopped then because of the war. But during the war we formed the Merry-makers, that was a little concert party and we used to go round village halls, army camps and entertain the troops and get money for “Comforts” for the troops. And I was with them until I joined up in 1942.
PR: Let’s just tidy up your father in the observation hut.
ZD: It was just an open circle, sandbags and planks and in the middle was a table. It had a grid map on it and a thing like a sextant and if a plane came over they’d line up with this bit of equipment which translated it to a needle on the map and they would read off that map to HQ, which I think was in Watford. They then translated it to a bigger map and then transcribed these figures to whichever RAF Ops. Room it came under. Up until 1939 it was all practice and they had a little space that was covered over, because in the photo they are sitting on a bench, there is something over them so they had a bit of shelter at night. But of course being in the bank, the bank wouldn’t give Daddy time off to do daytime duties so he had to do night time either 6 to midnight, I don’t know if he did a week at a time, and 6 to midnight, and then another night he’d be 12 to 8 and he had to come home, have his breakfast and get to work by 9. Our doctor was Dr. Mortis and hr was a doctor in the TA so when war broke out he was called up and Daddy didn’t like the locum that was here.
ER: Dr Ramsey.
ZD: Was it Ramsey? I know he died shortly afterwards. But Daddy wouldn’t go to him, he didn’t like him so consequently heart trouble went on and on until he was so ill that he just had to, one of the last times I was home, he was in bed, but then it got so bad Mummy took him up to Harley Street to a specialist but how they got there, and that was on a Wednesday and the doctor sent him straight home and he went straight to hospital and they sent for me on a Saturday, I was at Duxford. I got the train home and I went up to see him on Sunday morning. But he was not really conscious, he did rouse up a bit and talked at bit and he started rambling away, whether he was sedated I don’t know but the hospital never told me her was so desperately ill and it was obviously terminal.
So after I’d seen him I went home, got the train to Duxford, walked back to the camp and was in the middle of washing my hair, and an orderly came down from the big house where the officers were and said the officer wants to see you. Oh, I’ve have a phone call and your father was more desperately ill. So I got a pass and I went to Cambridge, got the train, there was an air raid on, I got to Broxbourne about midnight and we had no phone in those days so I rang our neighbours who were very good to us, the Whittakers, and said what’s gong on, I’m at Broxbourne so they said we’ll meet you at the station [Hertford East].
I eventually got to the station and they were there, and they walked me home and told me on the way. When I left school I wanted to be a continuity girl in the films, because every film I went to I would spot a glaring mistake like a shot of a clock, it would be a quarter to three, and go back the clock would say ten to elven and so on. Father said no, that’s just a schoolgirl fad, you’ve got to go in the bank. I’d been taking shorthand/typing lessons and got certificates, so I went to Lombard Street for an interview and I failed. So, what do I do now, here it was 1938 and I was 17 years old and I had to get some money. So Major Whittaker who lived next door was the local ARP officer and I went to work for him to help him give out gas masks at the stables at the back entrance of the Castle, he ha an office there.
Side 2
ZD: And we never had a telephone at home so being in the office the telephone would ring and I was too scared to answer it so let it ring for quite a long…..what people on the other end must have thought, I don’t know. But, as I say., he gave me my first job but then as I needed a proper job I went to work for Colonel Charles who was 6 ft. tall and big with it. He always wore thick tweedy plus fours with woollen stockings and big brogues. He had a black patch over one eye and I worked for him and his clerk, Mr. Martin.in the offices at the Drill Hall, which has now gone, recently, bottom of Port Hill, and then we went into offices over the working men’s club in the Wash, which is still derelict. [now Six Templars public house.]
As soon as war broke out, no more TA so I was transferred to Army Corps HQ at the Barracks, London road [now the Fire Stn.] And I worked for the Lt. Colonel and the Major and they kept moving these HQ, we were in Hertford and then we went to Atterbury Hall, which was a beautiful place and then Hadham Hall, Little Hadham, that was the home of the Glynn family, Glynn Mills, the banking family and then to Felstead School in Essex and I went with them and I was in billets there and I stayed with them ‘til I joined up.
PR: What was the actual joining up, we’ve got to keep our roots in Hertford as much as possible.
ZD: Well, I’ve got another little bit before I joined up which puts the light on what we did during the war. Five or six of us worked at the barracks and we formed the “Blackout Club” because the cinema had closed, there was no entertainment, nothing to do at all. So the six of us got together and each week in winter we would meet in somebody’s house and one or two had soldiers billeted on them so they brought them along, or other people from the barracks. Girls would provide jam sandwiches to eat, biscuits and the boys something to drink. We had Beetle drives, pencil and paper gamers, or just sat and chatted. We had walks in the summer, picnics, rounders etc. Just before I joined up they hired a room at the Green Dragon and gave me a party because I was called up two days before my 21st birthday. Of those, Peggy Tomlin, as she was then, she’s over 90 now…
PR: Peggy Hardwick.
ZD: Eileen Farrow, who is now Eileen Bird.
ER: Ex Gravesons?
ZD: Ex Gravesons, yes, haven’t seen her for a long time.
PR: She’s got Alzheimer’s and she’s out sometimes in a wheelchair pushed by Jennifer.
ZD: We were all together and we made our own entertainment.
PR: So, you joined up, unlike the chaps it wasn’t compulsory, was it?
ZD: I would have been conscripted at 21 and I’d been working for the army and they were gradually replacing civilians with ATS or with soldiers and because of Daddy’s connection with the Observer Corps and he used to tell me how the plots used to go through when they went through to the WAAFS with the long poles., and that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a plotter. As time went on, I cut a coupon out of the paper to apply to join the WAAF, filled it in, didn’t tell anybody and got a letter saying would I report to an address in Edgeware for interview.
How I got to Edgeware from Hertford I have no recollection whatever. Had my interview and that all went well and they said right, we’ll be contacting you. After a time a got a letter saying I’d been accepted and to report to Edgeware for enrolment. So I went up to Edgeware again and I went in as Miss Zillah Chambers and came out as 2030225 AC Chambers Z. Then I got the date when I had to report and it was 2 days before my 21st birthday. We all went to Insforth House, Gloucester. That was the holding place where you were………..all the investigations, interviews, kitting out. The thing that horrified me was what they called the FFI, learned later that it meant Free From Infection. They looked at my hands, between my fingers, in my hair – I had no idea what they were looking for, nits or scurvy and we were issued with a knife fork and spoon and a tin mug and I spent the whole of my 21st birthday sitting on a bench waiting to be called for interview.
We had an intelligence test which was like a book full of pages of different sorts of tests like join up the dots, here is a picture, draw the reflection in water. Then grammar questions, the synonym of something, ice is to water etc. So I waded through that, went for my interview with the officer. So she shuffled through papers and said do you really want to be a clerk GD – that is a kitchen hand, peeling spuds or cleaning floors, so I said no, I was Class Sd, clerk special duties, meaning a plotter. She said I thought something must be wrong. I got 90 plus on this test. Then we went by train from Gloucester to Morecombe and in Morecombe we did our square bashing because it was middle of March, up and down Morecombe front. There was a big dance hall with a bar and I had my first half pint of shandy there. We were all girls and there were a few local boys. Morecombe was full of WAAFS and Blackpool full of RAF and both places were out of bounds to the other.
PR: Oh, so this wasn’t where Mr. Driver came in.
ZD: No, not for a long time after that.
ER: They were very strict, weren’t they, I know what you’re saying because I went through a similar pattern with National Service.
ZD: From there I went to Leighton Buzzard signal school to learning plotting and was there a fortnight, then I was posted to Duxford. The Ops. Room was in Sawston Hall, a beautiful Tudor building which was all boarded up. The Ops Room was in the main hall or dining hall. And we had our rest room in the long gallery where the ghost was supposed to walk and spent most of the off-duty time in Cambridge.
I hitch-hiked everywhere, any sort of vehicle, mainly I’d look for cars but whatever came along. I was hitching down the AI one day and I got a fruit lorry as far as Sandy and the driver said I’m going for a cup of tea, do you want one? I said no, I was a bit late. And I went walking down the road and this great Rolls Bentley drew up and there was a man in uniform driving, a lady sitting next to him and two people in the back, and the window wound down and I looked and to my horror there was the Duchess of Gloucester. She was the Commandant of the WAAFS at the time. It was a misty moisty morning, my buttons were orange instead of gleaming gold, my hair was hanging down under my cap, and she said where do you wish to go and I said I’m going to Stevenage ma’am. She said get in, so I got in the back seat of this Bentley with the batman and a lady in waiting and I always remember that lady in waiting, she asked me questions, where was I going and everything I said “Oh yars” and her fingernails, she had bright red nail varnish on, it was all chipped! I realised it was the Duke who was driving, not a soldier. So she (the Duchess) tapped on the window and the batman wound it down. Where do you wish to get off. So I said just outside Stevenage there’s a pub called the Roebuck, you could drop me there. So we got to the Roebuck and I threw up a smashing salute!
PR: So, in the end, you had a war, then back to Hertford, were you back to Ware Road?
ZD: Yes, we lived in 143 Ware road, a big house, lounge, dining room, big hall, door through to kitchen, cellar door through to scullery. Upstairs a small bedroom at the front and two large and another double bedroom at the back. Then there was another flight upstairs to the nursery 2nd floor, a big room that went front to back of the house and we had play things up there, a dolls house. After Daddy died, of course my mother was in dire straights. The bank gave her £500 lump sum and £2 a week pension. Her rent was £1 so she was faced with existing on £1 a week for everything, gas electricity., coal, coke, food, clothing. I used to send 10/- a week home to help but in the end her sister who was widowed in WW1 gave up her home in Rye and came and lived with Mummy and she was very wealthy because from that day that Ken died in 1916 until the day she died in 1977 she had a Canadian Army Pension and in the earlier days it was payed in dollars.
The exchange rate was very high and she took over the big bills (Aunty Bea) like the rates and coal and they let off the dining room and bedroom and use of the kitchen and bathroom to people to help. And in the meantime I went to all sorts of places trying to find out how she could get help and was asked what money she’d got and as soon as I said the bank gave £500, well, when that’s gone come back and that was the attitude, spend it all.
ER: Thins don’t change, do they, same now.
ZD: But Mummy heard a chap on the wireless, and it was Douglas Houghton, he was an MP and he had a programme called Can I help You? And she wrote to him and told him the situation and so he took the case up and he finally found that if she paid a stamp voluntarily for 10 years she could get the OAP so she started off out of her £1 a week paying for a stamp which was 3/-, by the time she’d paid in for 10 years it was £1 por something and that meant that at 65 she did get the OAP, in the meantime the unions had got into the bank and they took up the case of pensioners and they got the £2 a week to be in line with the OAP so she eventually was all right but t the time she needed it…..by the time she was 80, 85, 90 she had so much money she didn’t know what to do with it, she just didn’t want anything at that time.
ER: And she still kept the house on in Ware Road?
ZD: Mr. Benadide, who was the manager of Westminster Bank at the time, he was going to move into 139 where Major Whittaker, because he and his wife left Hertford because both of their sons were killed, Dick was a fighter pilot. And he was my boyfriend. There was Dick and Glyn and when they were home from school we used to play Monopoly and Dick and I used to hold hands under the table. But he was killed in 1940 and they didn’t find his plane or his body and then Glyn, as soon as he left school I think he falsified his age, he joined the Royal Marine Commandoes and went on the invasion D-Day walking somewhere near Caen with his sergeant, the other chap stepped on a butterfly mine which flew up and hit Glyn and that was Glyn gone. They took him to a farmhouse somewhere near and they buried him in the garden and when they started doing the war graves Glyn is now in one of the military cemeteries. Pam and Tim when they were over there they found the grave and Dick’s name is on the stone as well.
PR: So the Whittakers……
ZD: They moved out of 139 and they swapped Mummy in 139 and Whittakers in 143. And she lived there until….I came up here in ’62 – it would have been in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s when they built Queens Court, I’d got my foot in the door because I went to see Derek Willard because we tried desperately to get them to moveout of that big house to something smaller and Auntie Bea was adamant, no I don’t want to move, but we said you must move because Mummy had a terrible fall, She would do her cleaning, and she was washing the walls in the bathroom which was all wooden cupboards and she fell off a step ladder, she fell in-between the wash basin and a big thick round, like Lalique glass towel rail, and she smashed that, how she didn’t go through the window I don’t know.
After that we said we’ve got to do something and I found these flats were going up and I went to see Derek Willard and he showed me the plans and I chose the downstairs flat and I said put my mother’s name on that one and they moved in and were very happy until they eventually died. But thinking back, of Hertford, thinking of Fore Street, it hasn’t changed an awful lot. Things have changed use but if you stand outside the Post Office, what is now the picture framing shop, if you look up, the roofs and the chimneys, I love chimneys, the skyline of those buildings and also another shape that people don’t seem to realise is the Café Pasta which is the Egyptian….I think it’s famous, isn’t it?
PR: 1827 when Napoleon was doing his big…..[Napoleon died in 1821!]
ZD: And then the buildings where the Bouquet is, the top of those buildings…..then the buildings where our shop was, it is like a Dutch shape [Mansard roof].
ER: Yes, Mansard, like that place in the Wash, you could go up 3 storeys, where Scoley the tailor was.
ZD: Thinking of the old days, the type of shop, 2 or 3 fishmongers, 4/5/6 grocers, there was a little one on the corner of West St., and Cook and Dranes where the Chinese place is [Castle St], Bates Bros, the International and Home & Colonial. The tradesmen used to comer before the war, baker came every day, milk man every day, fishmonger twice a week, butcher 2 or 3 times, laundry man came for the laundry. Everybody was happy in those days. Big market on Saturday. There was a big stall and it used to be at the beginning of Bircherley Green where Lloyds Bank is now (corner Railway and Bircherley Sts.] it was the same family that came for years for fruit and veg.
ER: Davises.
ZD: And another thing, where I learned to swim there was a bit of the river that ran down beside Dickermill and it was blocked off at each end by a grill and there was a row of changing huts and a soggy wet board at the bottom and spiders and cobwebs for you to change into and I learned to swim in that – a man had a long pole with a sling on the end which you put round your stomach and he held you over the water and we learned to swim like that, but you didn’t put your foot down.
ER: That was the old Hertford swimming bath. I take people down Hartham now and say this is where the swimming bath was.
ZD: Yes, all little things like that. And then our 2 landmines that dropped in the war. I remember walking down Ware road, I’d been to the library and it was pitch dark and I heard this plane coming and it was obviously German, a throbbing sound, and it went over and I still kept walking and there were 2 big thuds and it turned out that they were landmines and they’d dropped at Hertford Heath. So they must have been down while I was walking along Ware road. But the two that landed in Hertford, one was on Mill Bridger [V1] which took Ilotts Mill and was it Nicholls Brewery? [Wells & Winch] a couple of shops,, Rushes.
ER: Rushes was adjacent to the river.
ZD: On the other side of the river, I was sure it was Nicholls or their offices….[no, Nicholls was in West St]
ER: They rebuilt with some houses.
ZD: Of course there’s a lovely vista but how anybody can live with a window that’s 8” square, but they’re so tiny, I’ve got to have light and space then after the war I had to get a job and I worked for a builders’ merchants down a road just before the railway bridge down St. Andrew St. [Mimram Road]
ER: Where Scales used to have their steam roller?
ZD: That’s right, 2 brothers and they worked carefully with Alfred Scales, Nap Harms,
ER: I think he was Alfred Scales son-in-law [nephew], a very nice man. I can remember when they kept the steam roller there, when we were very young we used to go and look in the yard.
Tape 2 Side [Bombs]
ZD: The one that dropped in Ware Road between the 2 houses, Mrs. Brett, Betty Futter now, her mother……..
PR: Daughter’s still around…
ZD: Yes, she’s on my tea bar.
PR: Would she remember that day, was she there?
ZD: I don’t know where she would have been because it was at night.
PR: Ask her what she thinks.
ZD: I wasn’t at home when that came down. 1940 and I decided I was going on holiday and my school friend Joyce was going to come with me, but she backed out. I came homes, coming down on the train from Kings Cross I sat opposite a lady, one of the Miss fosters [photographer] I didn’t know it was her at first, she was the one who wasn’t at home very often. . She said I am going home to see the damage, I said where do you live? She said Ware Road, there was a bomb, she lived at 137, so I thought that was a bit close to 143.
Got the bus along the Ware Road and I saw windows broken then I got to where the house was and it wasn’t, then it lessened as it got……the only damage in the house, 143, was one window in the cellar and Daddy had put a new lock on the front door and that had blown right off and in our bedroom there was a big metal curtain rail and that had blown off the wall and it was right across my bed, but that was the only damage.
PR: Susan Brown’s house, farther down, was damaged.
ZD: Yes, and to this day not a thing has been done to it. Susan has lived in that all these years and her mother wouldn’t have anything done, there was no war damage (repairs) done to that house and Susan has now moved round into [Railway Place]. But the house, after she left it, they took the front door, they broke all the windows and they ransacked the house inside as well.
PR: That’s just this year. Why wouldn’t they have it repaired?
ZD: I think because Mrs. Brown was Mean, she wouldn’t spend any money at all. Susan and her mother used to haunt rummage sales and would always be seen on their bicycles with carrier bags every time there was a rummage sale. We used to have rummage sales for the Dramatic Society and they were almost first in.
PR: Normally you think of poorer people but they were pretty comfortable.
ZD: I suppose so, I don’t know how they were fixed after Mr. Brown died. Mr. Quelch lived in Bengeo [Quelch and Brown had a shop in Fore St.]
PR: Gertrude Fanny Maud Quelch.
ZD: Things that were in fore St….British Restaurant, we used to have our meals during the war, where Hertford Motor Co was.
PR: Was that a national movement of restaurants?
ZD: So you didn’t have to spend your coupons on food. It’s for people who couldn’t afford to go to a restaurant. But everything was on coupons, food, so they had these British Restaurants which were very basic but at least you had a hot meal inside you if you were unable to provide for yourself [no coupons required]. And also in Fore St was Elliotts the music shop and you could try all the records before you bought them.
ER: They always had a very fine display of radios. I often wondered how many pianos they sold.
PR: Did you work in Hertford after you were demobbed?
ZD: I came out, and the first thing I wanted to be was a continuity girl, so I’d taken shorthand/typing classes while I was still in the WAAF, I was at Peterborough then and I used to go into Peterborough so when I came out, I hated coming out, I just wanted to stay, but with my mother, so I did the rounds of Wardour St, Elstree, Pinewood, Welwyn Garden City and every interview I had, what experience have you had? None because I’ve been in the forces for 4 and a half years. Well, I’m sorry. And in the end, at Welwyn Garden City, I said well how am I to get experience if no-one will give me a shorthand/typist job, the bottom of the ladder, how am I going to get experience.
So I came back and that was when I got the job with the builders merchants in Mimram Rd. 1947 the river started coming up. I worked for him until I got married, After I got married I worked at Rose & Sons, newsagents, Bull Plain and over the top old Snowy Ransome had his printing works. Uncle Fred, that was Bill’s uncle. And then in 1956 after Bill died I had to go out to work so I worked at Chaseside Engineering down Marshgate Drive, Mead Lane, but I was only temping there, worked part time. I had this little house in Townshend St and I had a little dog, Penny, and a ginger cat, so I had to get home at lunch time to walk the dog. Then I began to realise that by just being a temp I wasn’t insured, I had no paid holidays. So I joined an agency, everything they offered me I was refusing because O needed to get home for the animals. Then one of the receptionists at Addises, in HD&OS, said they are going to be advertising for a secretary for Robert Adddises.
So I said to the person at the agency, do you ever have any jobs at Addises. Oh Yes, she said. I’ve just placed a personal secretary to Robert Addis. So I said, oh dear, my application has gone by the board. After a fortnight John Perry., who was company secretary asked me to attend an interview in mid-November so I went in at 5 o’clock for my interview. I said where do I go and she said through that door you’ll see a window and at the end you’ll see chad. He interviewed and then Robert came in and he dictated a letter, then I had to read it back and it was full of technical and engineering terms including a thing about Shanghai bristle, so I got the job. I started on 10th November 1956 and I was there 25 years. I worked with Eric Blackburn, the engineer and they were in the process of making their own nylon filament and it was all very hush-hush, and secret. I worked with Eric on that from the very first letter he wrote until I went up and saw the nylon filament coming out at the other end. And then when Robert got to 65, he was slowing down, I was becoming the typing pool. So I had a word with Richard Purver, his son in law who was the financial director, and I said I’m concerned about my future because I’m just turning into a typing pool. So they must have had a little consultation, one of the chaps in the sales dept was retiring so I said I’d like to go over onto the sales side. So I took over his job and I had rather big accounts like Boots, Woolworths, Avon,. Govt. Contracts to deal with.
PR: What about the Addis family then, Robert was the senior, presumably he wasn’t the first.
ZD: No, the first was William 1780 – this is a Wedgewood plate 1780-1980. So he was the first one and he was in the east end of London……..
PR: And in your day he’d become 65, but was Robin……
ZD: Robin was my Mr. Addis’s son. There was Robert, Mary (Purver), Oliver, then Juliet. Oliver started off on the sales side, when I first started on the sales side and I think I was able to help him. But then he went to Australia. We had facilities all over the world then. Robin, when he was 18, was apprenticed to Alfred Herbert, the big engineering firm in the Midlands and he did 2 years of his apprenticeship then his father made him come to Hertford to finish off his apprenticeship in the works here. Robin was a very shy boy, very quiet boy and to be plummeted into an engineering works like Alfred Herbert must have been absolute agony for him. Anyway he came back and when he was 21 the apprentice finished and Mrs. Addis junior came into the office and said where’s Mr. Addis and I said he’s going round the factory with Robert, and she said Mt. Robert, if you please. So the poor lad, from being Robin to Tom Dick, Harry and John one day, the next day he was Mr. Robin. Mary married Richard Purver of course (Bill) I shall never forget, Bill used to belong to Thundrige Players, they used to put a play into Hertford Theatre Week, Bill Purver was a chicken. I’d never seen anything so funny in my life and it was very difficult not to pull his leg when I was at work! The other thing., towards the end I was very much against the use of Christian names. When the sales manager was Henry Solly, Timberlake and at work it was always Mr. Timberlake, Mr. Solly, but outside, fair enough. But by the end of my time there people in the office calling them by their Christian names and even calling Robert, Robert.
PR: Were you too late for the Mrs. Addis, Caroline Maud Addis on the council?
ZD: When I first went there we started work at half past eight every morning, she lived in the big house next door, there was a connecting door and everywhere was wooden floors, she’d come in at 8.30, sit down with Robert and they’d open the post and discuss letters, they were put in piles, export, toiletries, complaints – that was my pile. She’d walk around and you could hear two footsteps, then the tap of a stick, even in the fact if they were chewing a sweet they’d quickly swallow it or take it out, because if she caught you…….
ER: Old Mrs, Addis used to make overtures to Fred Roche. They always walked everywhere, didn’t they, but she had this old Lanchester pre-select gear-change car which she sometimes would leave outside our shop and she’d come in and sit. We always had a chair by the counter. Where’s that boy? He must bring the shoes down, now come on Fred, isn’t it about time you did some local council service for us, there’s a vacancy in the ward. He didn’t feel that politics should come into business, he was a member of the 1937 Dinner Club and he was a member of the Hertford Club and he would never put up political posters, but old Mrs. Addis, she was most upset when he refused, she’d even got all the papers to sign.
I always found Mrs. Addis a very kind lady if you didn’t poke and pry, she did her kindnesses without people knowing. If I walked down there in the pouring rain with shoes, she’d give me a comb she’d picked up in the factory and when I joined the Air force she gave me a pair of hair brushes. I had to go down there though, to the house in Ware Road. She was a formidable woman, but you don’t become successful without being a bit that way, the very nature of a lot of people that they employed, they couldn’t afford to be slipshod at all, it had to be a strictly-run operation, because a lot of them you had to treat like soldiers.
PR: Were they good employers of the working people of the town?
ZD: Yes, until the union. They were a family firm going way back. When they came here in the 1930s [1920] Miss Somebody would come, Mr. somebody would come and they would perhaps marry and they would work there, then she would go away and have one baby and she’d come back to work and possibly when the girls grew up , got to 14/15 left school and they’d come and work for Addis. Yes, it was a family firm and they would come generation after generation. Every year we had £100 bonus at Christmas and a rise on 1st January, not very much, but adequate. Then the unions got into the works and after that was when things started to slide downwards. I’d always said the average English workman was lazy and greedy, they started demanding more money, less hours, more holidays, I don’t know where they think the employer is going to get the money from.
PR: They did have choices in town, Addis were not the only big employers.
ZD: No. Macs, Chaseside, Shands, Simson Pimm.
PR: Were the family not held in awe, a bit?
ZD: Oh, yes, Robert, if he saw a couple of screws on the floor he’d pick the screws up.
ER: Old Mr. Robert?
ZD: My Mr. Robert. I didn’t know his father, his father bought the factory to Hertford in 1930s [1920].
PR: The Ranson printing, was there a link between Old Cross Post Office and some Ranson people living in Dimsdale St, and they both died on the same day?
ZD: That’s right. The two in Dimsdale St were Uncle Fred and the eldest sister. My mother-in-law, Flo Driver was their sister and there was another sister, Dot, who was Curtis. And Bill [father-in-law] was Pop driver. I knew them in Luton when he was in the motor trade. He was connected to Hertford Motors and Ware Garages when he came to Hertford but he was with a big firm in Luton. Then he married Flo who was a Ranson and then moved to Hertford just before we got married and they took over the Old Cross Post Office, and they had the Post Office and the shop as well because I used to serve in the Post Office, then when everything went wrong, we were married in 1948, Bill went off 1850/1, Uncle Fred gave the shop next to the Chocolate Box in Bull Plain, bill ran it, he just disappeared and for 9 months we had no news or message of him and we had a little bungalow at the top of queens Road at the time and I was left there and had to go out to work, but while he was away his father took over Rose & sons and ran it, then when Bill eventually came back he didn’t go back to the shop he got a job as a circulation rep for Odhams Press.
But then the Drivers took over Middletons which is where the Bouquet is now, next door to Scoleys, so they were running the two. They’d given up Old Cross Post Office by then and they were running the newsagents and then Bill came back and we moved out to a farmhouse at Watton at Stone, then we went into this little house in Townshend St and he was working away nearly all the time. He very rarely came home but he finally left me completely in 1955 and I was still working at the shop, Rose & sons until the day in July 1956 when the police rang up to say that B ill had come up to Sandpit Lane between St. Albans and Harpenden in a van and put the hosepipe from the exhaust and that was that. So Pop and I went over to St. Albans Police Station. I’ve always regretted that I didn’t go down to identify him but Pop went down. He’d left me 6 months before so his death didn’t hit me as hard as it would have done if everything had been normal, and as it happened I was due, this was on the Tuesday, I was due to go off on holiday on the Saturday on a Mediterranean cruise. The Drivers helped me - we’ll look after you, and I didn’t know what to do, but oh, no, you go on holiday, we’ll look after things. So, I went. When I came back a fortnight later there were my cards and a week’s money and a letter from Pop saying they were very sorry but they couldn’t offer me any future and it would be too embarrassing to have me in the shop.
Although we lived in the same town I’d no contact with them for 8 years. I saw her once or twice but she just walked by and looked in shop windows. But after 8 years., it was when HD&OS, the first County Day in Hartham, and they had a big marquee and did Music Hall and Mother and Pop used to love going to these old time music halls. I was waitressing and I saw them come in and as usual my stomach churned, they were on my patch. I just went up and asked if they would like a drink, oh, yes, they had, quite abhorrent, to tip everybody. To go off on a tangent, before all this happened when I first knew them Pop was a mason so we used to go to ladies nights in London, big hotels, the first time I went I was petrified because I didn’t know what I wads going in to, but before that every Thursday was early closing day and we used to go up to the wholesalers in London and order etc. and always go to Lyons Corner House for dinner. He had this awful habit of, after he had the meal, called the waiter over, gave him a pound note and my compliments to the chef, then you’d see the chef come out of the door with his white hat, Mr Driver! And Pop would stand up and I used to want to crawl under the table in embarrassment.
ER: He was a bit larger than life, wasn’t he.
ZD: So after I’d spoken to them and passed the time of day, at the end they didn’t go and she turned her head to say come and see us and that was in the September. I didn’t know what to do, I thought, do I start it all up again, so I talked it over with a very good friend and she said go, you can’t lose anything. It took me till the January to do it but I rang and said I will come and see you, yes, come to dinner on Thursday. Then I went there once a week to have dinner and Pat Thompson, she used to know Mrs. Driver and afterwards she told me that she was very lonely, was full of remorse, didn’t know how to put it right. Then she was ill, went into hospital, had an embolism, sent her home, pop was trying to look after her, he wasn’t too well. They had a woman who came in every day and she found him a couple of times on the floor but they had a Danish girl who used to live with them when she was single [She married and went to live in Denmark, the Drivers visited etc.]
I went there one day and she was on holiday but a few weeks later she was back again and Pop had some lovely glass in the cabinet and they went to the cabinet and said Gita can have this, we’ll put that aside and I said what’ going on? And she said oh, we’re going into a nursing home. When she was over before she’d been going round the countryside looking for a nursing home. When they came back from Denmark they used to bring beautiful candles and he packed up a box of 6 by 9”candles and said you can have these. Next time I visited a woman opened the door and said they’ve gone, the next I knew the house was up for sale. All I got was my big pussy-cat lamp. When they were in the nursing home they took that with them, they were in a place at Hitchin.
She died, and he hadn’t a soul in the world, I went once a week to see him and deal with his paperwork, pension and his will, He said there’s a copy in the drawer. There were an awful lot of bequests to people who were hangers on. I said we’ll get the solicitor to deal with it. So I did. Six months later he wanted to look at it again. There were all these names and then I saw he had made me an executor and when I turned the page over he’d left eh residue of the estate to me. There were two nieces of he's who could have contested the will so I thought I’m having nothing to do with this. I got the solicitor again and let him deal with it all. And that’s how I had the wherewithal to do all my travelling [lists holidays]
PR: You haven’t mentioned HD&OS, your years as president
ZD: 71-2. I started off by being membership secretary when Mrs. Jackson gave it up. I was assistant secretary to Cyril Brazier, then he gave up and I took over and I was secretary for 15 years. I was also secretary for 15 years for Hertford theatre Week, the n President ‘71/2. [Hertford County Hospital] I’ve got a tape – Hertford Radio in the early days I used to go round to each department and say what do you want [played]. I gave them £100 for records, and second time 100 head sets for the hospital and Robbie interviewed Eleanor McCloud, who was area manager and I’ve got the tape. I’ve been doing the tea for 20 years.
(Recording concludes with talk about niece Alison’s tape – see Alison Goodman – and the youth experiment and Zillah’s delving into her family tree research, not Hertford, and which is incomplete because tape runs out.)