Interviewed by Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date: 11/08/1998
Transcribed by Debbie Arnold additions by Jean Riddell Purkis
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1998.19
Interviewee: Queenie Norman (QN) and Denis Norman (DN)
Date: 11th August 1998
Venue: The Cedars, Bengeo Street
Interviewers: Jean Riddell Purkis (JR) Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Debbie Arnold additions by Jean Riddell Purkis
Typed by: Marilyn Taylor
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: If you could start with how you came to be at Haileybury, your father was an instructor there ..
QN: My father went to Sandhurst, then he went to India to teach the troops out there. Then he came back and he had his own gymnasium at Hove and he taught the nobility as well as everybody. In fact he taught Princes and goodness knows what there and then he had the opportunity to come to Haileybury and there we go.
JR: What sort of time are you speaking about here, what date would this have been? Approximately.
QN: Well I was born in 1919 and I was about two when we came to Haileybury. We lived not on the Roundings, we lived at the old part where there was a great big pond in Hertford Heath in those days just until they built a house and then we moved to the Roundings. [photo being shown] .. my dad was a real laughter man, I think that was the Queen, no the King and that was at Haileybury
JR: George the Fifth? That was the ‘20s I would think.
QN: Yes I think it might be.
JR: What are your earliest memories?
QN: My earliest memories ... Well all the masters’ children, my dad used to take classes in his gym which was down behind Bradbury Hall, opposite the tuck shop, behind the old swimming pool which is no longer there. I am going back a bit I know, and we had some lovely times here, and I found this, I thought it might interest you, and this is what my dad did.
JR: I think they called it PT then did they?
QN: Yes, I think they did. He also taught fencing and boxing. And he was under the medical officer for health and when somebody had a brakeage he used to do the therapy for them, you know, to get them on their feet again.
PR: So what date, roughly, would these be Queenie?
QN: I would say about the [19]30s.
JR: This afternoon Peter Ruffles and I are at the home of Queenie and Denis Norman at The Cedars, Bengeo Street and it’s an extremely hot afternoon, 11th August 1998. We’re looking at pictures that Queenie saved.
QN: Yes of Haileybury, that one came from the Lowewood Museum, Hoddesdon, it was in a paper.
JR: So, where did you go to school then?
QN: I went to the convent in Hertford, opposite the catholic church and we had the catholic priest come the other day to preach to us and I said that I went to the school opposite the church, and who was in charge then? I think Father Thornton. And I went all the way through, and it was lovely. I understand now that they’ve just started up an old girls’ get together thing, St Josephs in the Park which is something to get to, I haven’t joined as I am a bit older than the others. That’s a picture of me there and I was there in 1925 and went through until I was 16.
JR: It doesn’t name it here does it, it says ‘a mystery picture’
QN: Yes that’s right but it was St Josephs.
JR: This is a vista of it from the church school across the road.
QN: Yes this was the convent school, the other one was a council school. It was a wonderful education and I couldn’t have asked for more. I did a secretarial course there and when I left I went straight to the County Hospital as secretary to the Secretary and he said to me one day, ‘you know, my brother at Longmores, he wants a secretary’. So of course what did I do? I went to Longmores and I was there for several years then John Longmore sent for me one day and I thought ‘God, what have I done that he sent for me’. He said Miss Staddon, all the boys are going to the war, there’s nobody left here, we want to get you off war service so you can stop here, so I did! I had many happy years there through the war but of course I had to do war service too. I had the option but I joined the mobile unit.
PR: What was the mobile unit?
QN: Well, it was a group of people we used to sleep down at the clinic in Bull Plain on the floor Sister Brazier was in charge and we had a doctor and if something happened, off we used to go.
PR: So a medical flying service?
QN: Yes, that’s right and we were organised, the Dr would amputate and we had to sort of be ready to help out and do things. When Denis the other day had a slight operation at the hospital they said ‘would you like to come in Mrs Norman?’. I said ‘yes I would’, ‘are you sure you’ll be alright?’, I said ‘I was in the mobile unit in the war’, ‘oh, you’ll be alright then!’ Sorry! I’m gossiping, nothing that you want to know about!
JR: No that’s alright, it’s the kind of things we do want to know about because it’s the sort of things you don’t find in the books.
Now can I just go back to primary school, how did you get down from the college to St John’s Street?
QN: In an open-decked bus.
JR: You didn’t board there did you?
QN: No! I went every day. We went in a double decker and in those days they hadn’t changed, we had to go past Balls Park and if we went upstairs, you know the top deck, and when we got to Balls Park we had to get down otherwise we would have had our heads chopped off because of all the trees!
PR: Who knew what the hazards could be?! Around there...
QN: Oh yes, definitely but it was really good fun. The boys used to come down on a Saturday and do their shopping. One day when I was going home it wouldn’t work, the bus wouldn’t work. ‘Everybody out’, so the boys did and they pushed this double decker bus up the hill. And when we got up to the top of the hill it went! So a few memories there, you know.
JR: So who else went down with you?
QN: There was a girl called Carol Close, I think she has departed. I don’t think there are any more left now.
PR: Does she live in Hertford Heath? She wore an eye shade.
QN: She did. Because I.ve seen her a lot at the East Herts Hospital for her eyes but she didn’t recognise me then.
PR: I think she was a pianist.
QN: She was a pianist.
PR: I remember Carol Close, it was a long time ago.
QN: And she lived next door to the shop, you know the shop there, and next door to her was the Clerk of the Works, something Hodge, he was Clerk of Works at Haileybury.
PR: So she came with you to the convent, were you the same age?
QN: I think I might be slightly older, I don’t know.
PR: So contemporary .. you would talk to each other?
QN: Yes contemporary. There was a lovely togetherness there you know, now in fact she comes up to the Good Companions, in fact she brings her members up, Joan Pamphilon, you know Joan Pamphilon?
JR: Yes, she’s done a tape for us, several in fact.
QN: Yes, has she, she’s a lovely lady. Yes, I had a clothes show twice a year, and even Father Liddle’s mother came and they went home with enormous great bundles that they’d bought you know. And Joan rang me one day and said ‘look, I am lumbered, will you please tell me what I can do with the Catholic hub.’ So I gave her my coach driver and places where I had been and all is going well.
PR: The Good Companions isn’t really church is it but does it have a church link through you?
QN: It has, I’m on the back of that magazine there, look, it doesn’t matter, any denomination, all denominations.
JR: So what was your social life like as a child, was it centred around Haileybury or did you find a lot of friends at the convent?
QN: Well, I found a lot of friends but I didn’t have actually a lot of friends in Haileybury because it was a different sort of set up, you know, and I spent lots of time on the Heath on my own and that sort of thing, you know, yes.
JR: You didn’t have childhood friends from ..
QN: Not really, except the lady next door, her father was in charge of the OTC and we were very friendly there and the Chantlers did go to the convent but one was much older than me and one was much younger so there wasn’t that much unity together. And of course Nella Chantler married Abbis the garage man but I don’t know what has happened now, I wouldn’t know where they are.
JR: Did you see much of the life of the school, the boys were living?
QN: Oh, yes I did, I went quite a bit, it was great really, they had a good life, and I remember a lot of buildings being made, I’m sure Denis will, I have a lovely picture of Haileybury in the other room which I will show you. I remember the dome being re-coppered which Ekins did long before I met my husband! Yes, I have some very happy memories there, it was lovely. I learnt to swim in the big pool and that sort of thing, it was great but I didn’t have any close relations to any of the other teachers so much.
JR: What about Peggy Pickles?
QN: Yes, I remember her and I saw her the other day in the town.
JR: Do you have much to do with her?
QN: Not a lot really because they all went to boarding schools in those days and, I’m going to admit this, my father could not afford to send me to boarding school but I did not lack education as such because I had a wonderful education which has stood me through the years. That’s about all I can say about it you know.
PR: So how and where did you meet Denis, was it a local chance meeting?
QN: You’re not taping this are you?
PR: Yes!
QN: Right! My Aunt left me £50, and I was living on The Rounding’s, and I was cycling up and down to Longmores and I was beginning to get fed up with this because so many people had been savaged at Jenningsbury and I remember my father saying ‘my girl, I cant have this, I’m going to teach you Ju Jitsu’ which I could manage, I could even get him down.
So I thought right this is my opportunity so I bought a car. I used to go with my friends next door, the Chantlers, I said ‘how do you fancy going to a Fireman’s Ball?’ They said ‘oh yes, that’d be nice’. So we went to the Fireman’s Ball at the Corn Exchange and I remember having this wonderful pale mauve dress. I drove Nella and her sister down and this gentleman in his evening dress came across the room and asked me to dance and, well, things never looked back.
JR: This gentleman was Denis?
QN: This gentleman was Denis, yes. He was very cross with me! He said ‘can I please take you home?’, I said ‘oh no, no you can’t’. He said ‘but why not?’. I said ‘I have my car in the car park and I’ve got to take my friends home’. He didn’t like that at all!
JR: Independent woman, yes!
PR: I think you might’ve pretended you needed a lift and then walked back for the car later ..
QN: What from Hertford Heath?!
PR: Yes!
QN: Would you have liked to walked with all these things going on, search lights and things dropping down?
PR: So what date is this, the beginning of the war?
QN: Yes that’s right the beginning of the war, yes about 39 years, yes, and we were married in 1943 and a very, very happy life together. We now have ten grandchildren, what more could you ask for?
PR: Has it been spent here all of that time or have you lived in other places? You’ve been here a long time.
QN: We came here when we were first married. In fact it was a wedding present for us. But we didn’t have the house to ourselves because in those days you had to have people in and we had the chief man of the Defence Forces and the ARP for the County. Otherwise we wouldn’t have had a telephone, they would have taken that away. And one day, to my horror, I received a letter to say that I had to have twelve Battersea Grammar School boys to stay with me! 12!! But life was very kind to us really and I became pregnant so that let me out of it! We didn’t have to have them.
JR: How many bedrooms do you have Queenie?
QN: I suppose seven if you really want to count the small one but it has been a wonderful family home because now the children, they don’t all live in England. We have a daughter who lives in California with two grandchildren, and another daughter in Austria with three grandchildren and when they come home we all congregate. It’s a family home, it’s been wonderful.
PR: It is enormous by 1990’s standards isn’t it?
QN: Yes, but you know the number of times people keep knocking at the door asking if we will sell the bottom of the garden! It’s all divided up between the family, we looked after that many, many moons ago just in case. But while we can keep going it’s lovely.
PR: As we sit here this afternoon with the window half open looking at the bottom half of the garden there’s the Bengeo Street garden going right to Duncombe Road.
QN: It goes right back to Duncombe Road, yes. Since Denis retired he took up raising plants for charities. He does the Castle Hall, for the disabled, he does the cottage gardens and he does several things for the church.
PR: Yes, I’ve bought quite a few things from outside the River Room.
QN: Oh yes, the River Room. They didn’t have one last year because the lady left in rather a hurry but I believe we will this time.
JR: You said earlier that the house was a wedding present?
QN: You’re not taping this please, I don’t want this on it?
PR: I can put it on pause ..
QN: Well there’s nothing else to say is there?
JR: Why are you worried about that coming out?
QN: Well, I don’t think one wants one’s private things like that talked about.
JR: Yes I understand but I think perhaps you should be very proud of it.
QN: Do you? I am very proud of it. And when we first came here it was one of the conditions that we would keep it exactly as it was because before we came here it was the Chief Medical Officer for the County.
JR: Ah, a man of standing had it before.
QN: Yes that’s right and we’ve kept the garden just the same with all the fruit trees, the original ones you know, we are very, very fortunate really.
JR: Another thing you said a long time before the house, that I didn’t understand, you said your father didn’t want you to be savaged at Jenningsbury. What did he actually mean?
QN: Yes. Because people, young women, would be knocked off … I don’t think its as bad now as I think there is a light ..
PR: It was quite notorious.
JR: What sort of things?
QN: Robberies and assaults on young girls.
JR: Oh, I didn’t realise that.
PR: This goes back a long time, but it was notorious, almost like highway men stuff.
QN: Because there were no lights when you got to the top of the hill, until you got to the Townsend Arms.
PR: My family used to talk about getting past the ‘Jenningsbury Dip’. It was a landmark but also it was a bit of an ‘iffy’ spot
QN: It was indeed.
PR: So, is Denis about?
QN: I will rouse him, would you like to look out of the window? He’s done his homework, he has some books there for you to look at.
JR: So, you’re not native to the town are you?
DN: No, I was born in Woodford. My father came from south of the Thames born in Brixton and my mother was born in Colchester which is north of the Thames and they met in London it was a long time ago.. My father was with a building firm in south London, First World War, then after the First World War there was an advert, I think it must have been in the local paper, asking for a manager for a building firm in Hertford, which was Ekins.
JR: Ah right, your father started at Ekins.
DN: Yes he answered the advert for a manager and he got the job at Ekins. In those days Ekins was controlled by James Farley who was a major shareholder of the company. I should probably think he must have been interested in the company towards the middle to end of the last century anyway by his age I only met him when I was just a nine year old and he was a very elderly man to me when my father used to take me to the office look around on a Sunday morning and James Farley would come in and say “what is going on?”.
Yes my father moved to Hertford in 1919 and they lived in Ware Road, my father and mother. Yes he realised that Mr Farley was definitely interested in building, he had a number of other smaller shareholders Charlie Ward of Ware, Nicholls the brewer several of these people were shareholders but I honestly don’t know what shares they held.
My father came in 1919 to Ekins, he came with another man who was made a director and the other director didn’t turn out to be the best of chaps so Farley and my father got rid of him, it cost them quite a bit because a director in those days you had to give a golden handshake to.
Gradually he got interested in the firm first of all there was a question that Farley, being an inventor, a well known character as well, he invented the Farley Gear Company, he didn’t really make a go of it, my son said to me the other day, I’m using the Farley Gear Company’s letter heading (stamp) die as a paperweight. I should have bought it home to show you the letter heading of the company because he did invent the synchromesh gear before anyone else thought of it.
JR: Really? That’s important.
DN: Yes I can remember this gearbox made in wood because they always made models first of allin wood, to see the effect before they did casting of metals. Then Walls and sons who were local founders in Chambers Street made up the gearbox, but what happened after that I don’t know. It didn’t take off anyway.
Then he decided to have a go at another company which he called the Lavender Soap Company, producing a hand soap for engineers and people like that, something like Swarfega liquid soap and that didn’t really take off because Farley didn’t push it enough. He’d just say ‘oh I’ve invented something’ …..
Last month one of my daughters we were talking about this and I said “well, we’ve got essences in the basement still of various scents associated with these oils and she brought these bottles home three weeks ago and “can I open them Dad?” I said “No I am not going to open them they’ve been sealed for 80 or 90years, we’ll leave them”, so Ekins have put them down in the basement again where they were.!
JR: The museum might want to know about those!
DN: Lovely blue bottles, medical bottles.
JR: What was Farley’s connection, it was originally a family business wasn’t it?
DN: Ekins there is no real record, there was a Henry Ekins, I can’t imagine him being a founder as it is suggested it started in 1803, it would be interesting to know when it actually did start. That would be interesting to find out if there is any record any where at all. Henry Ekins passed the business over to James Farley towards the end of the last century.
JR: I’ll see if I can do some checking up because it might be mentioned in some of the old trade directories. I have quite a lot of the pages at home I don’t recall it. The Ekins I became familiar with was a woman called Roseanna Ekins.
DN: Oh yes, she was a, well you’d call her Miss Ekins, yes, she outlived Henry Ekins, she must have been alive at the turn of the century, I don’t know for sure but my guess is, when I was young we used to talk about a Miss Ekins, but I was only a boy at the time. I have an idea she may lived up Queens Hill, Queens Road.
JR: Would this make sense? I think she was probably born about the 1860s or was that too early?
DN: Yes, could be, she would have been Henry Ekins sister.
JR: Sister or daughter? Because her mother also a Roseanna and that one was born in the 1830s so I think we’ve got the right sequence here.
DN: Yes, going back to the original Ekins by the sound of it.
JR: There were definitely Ekins about in the 1850s but whether they had established their building firm then I don’t know. One of the first ones built the “Stone House” in St Andrews Street and that was in the 1860s.
Transcribers Note : Henry Edward Ekins was born about 1838 in Ware, the son of George Ekins a stone mason and builder. he married Rosanna Wickham on 29th September 1866 in Hertford where his father had started the second business with Henry and his other son Walter in 1860 we think at the “Stone House” St Andrew Street, which was a building similar to the father’s premises on Amwell End. It was demolished for Gascoyne Way.
They had two daughters Rosanna born 1872 and Florence born Dec 1873. By 1881 the firm was employing 33 men and 4 boys in Hertford.
Rosanna Ekins married Alfred Nicholls, Florence remained unmarried.
Henry died on 27th June 1923. His probate of £15,589.12 lists him as of “Stone House, Hertford” and it was granted to Alfred Nicholls, artist, Rosanna Ekins his widow and Florence Ann his daughter. Rosanna died on 13th July so just two weeks after Henry, also of “Stone House, Hertford”. Her probate of £202. 17s 6d was granted to Rosanna Nicholls. After their death Florence moved to 36 Queens Road where she was living in 1939 with Henry W Nicholls her nephew born 1903 and he was incapacitated. Also there were two servants and 3 other people:, a Mr Gilmour a pathologist and possibly his wife and sister.
Florence Ekins died on 31st August 1950. Her probate of £10,506 14s 11d was granted to her surviving nephew Henry Wallis Nicholls. Henry Wallis Nicholls continued to live in Queens Road he is listed in 1969 as 36 Queens Road. He died in 1970.
Alfred and Rosanna Nicholls were in Hornsey in 1903 but by the time the second child was born, Geoffrey Carrington Nicholls in 1908 they were living at 137 Bengeo Street, Hertford at one time called Tonwell Cottage and now called Holly Villa. They then moved to Oak House, Morgans Road where Alfred died in 1924 and Rosanna in 1925. The younger son Geoffrey Carrington Nicholls died on 25th January 1932 aged just 23. His probate wasn’t finalised till 1950 but gave his address when he died as “Monteviot, 36 Queens Road “. His probate went to his brother Henry. Presumably the hold up was until the death of Miss Florence Nicholls earlier that year.
DN: Yes, they owned the Stonehouse until, actually I’m not sure when it was sold. I know it was in their hands in the 20s, I’ve never seen a record of it being sold and it’s been demolished, I’m not sure when it was demolished.
JR: 50s?
DN: After the last war, yes
JR: Sometime between the war and when Gascoyne Way was developed.
So what were their principal works, Ekins, in the town, what did they build?
DN: They had a hardware shop as well, I’m not sure where the hardware shop was. They did own offices on the corner of Hartham Lane where McMullen’s offices are. That was Ekins’ property at one time and at that time McMullens were around but not at that part, that was called Hopes Brewery. It was suggested that Farley did have part of the building of McMullens I’ve never seen any records of us building Mac’s, it could well be that we did.
Talking about Hartham Lane, it used to be called The Great Northern Station Approach, after the North Eastern Railway That land was fairground land, the only buildings on the site were some stables and old farm buildings and I think Ekins bought the land in about 1903, roughly that date, and gradually developed it and there was an understanding that the railway company, LNER, London North Eastern Railway, yes owned the approach to the station. That’s from where Hartham Lane branches off, they owned that, in our lease we got right of way over this land to and from with carriage or pedestrian traffic. In our deeds, Ekins deeds so that was all owned by the railway, but not the site itself, I don’t know why, it was a fairground, local space .
JR: I think originally the land there was owned by the Dimsdale’s and then the Gripper’s bought, it was Cowbridge House wasn’t it?
DN: Yes, that’s right it had a garden there, was that the Gripper family?
JR: The Grippers. The bit of it that still remains is the Hartham Chapel. That was the fragment they left but the rest was demolished (The rear of Hartham chapel).
DN: Oh yes, that showed on the 1891 survey, quite a nice garden over there.
JR: Yes it has actually. One of our interviewees who worked on the Maltings, Grippers Maltings down the back there, said that the family abandoned the house and left everything in it, it stood with all the linen and crockery there for years.
DN: Sounds a bit incredible to me!
JR: Yes it does.
DN: I can’t imagine it, I worked around Grippers when I was a youngster, I’d go into those maltings after the malt was taken out, it was like going into an oven, sweeping the rubbish and repairing the cement floor because the heat used to make the cement floor break up and it was one of our jobs to go in there and repair this floor when I was a teenager. So I can’t imagine, that but I don’t know - it may be right.
I knew Guy Gripper, you know about Guy Gripper? Of course he is one of the surviving ones, his wife is still alive Mrs Gripper and there was a Miss Gripper who lived with a Mrs Purkiss Ginn, that was Guy Gripper’s sister. I remember direct contact with the maltings, there was Gripper, Son and Wightman, Gripper would have been his father probably, he’d have been the son and Wightman that was Owen Wightman who lived in the Garden House in Warren Park Road.
JR: There’s another mystery that we found last year, that’s in this book, you’ll be able to see, you’ve got a copy of this I’m sure, in 1919 it says here, this one, if you look at this picture,
DN: Oh yes, Camps Field, I remember that (Now Sele Road) Ekins later modernised them.
JR: But the original estate, this is a picture from 1919 and Peter and I went up to Sele Road, Campfield Road, all around there and could not find houses of that style. So we wondered if it was a mistake in where it was. In fact we went around the town, Bengeo, Horns Mill, Stanstead Road looking for these houses and they were not to be found anywhere with chimneys at the end like that and we wondered where they were?
DN: Well, they could well be Ekins men, there’s no doubt there I think, that house is much older, that particular one but yet its nothing like the council houses. Well, it may have been houses nearby. I mean that house to me, looks 100 years old in that picture.
JR: Do you think so?
DN: Yes.
JR: Well, they are at the building site, I thought that’s what they’d just built.
DN: No, and yet that roof doesn’t look anywhere near as old as that building underneath.
JR: Those houses must have been demolished subsequently then because they’re not there now.
DN: Those windows are metal windows, metal windows were around in the last century anyway. Where did the picture come from?
JR: From Ekins records, Len Green.
DN: Len Green, he must have got them from my son then.
JR: Maybe its been wrongly labelled. Perhaps if you could remember you could ask your son if that one is still around, see if he agrees that it is not where it says it is.
DN: Yes, I’ll certainly ask him, yes. Camps Hill estate was one of the first estates we built in Hertford.
JR: When you say Camps Hill Estate, is that Sele Road, what we now know as Sele Road?
DN: We called it Camps Hill. From where the hospital is there and they went right through to the Hatfield Road, yes right across, must be 30, 40 or 50 houses there all told. And we built the lot.
JR: Did you also build the Campfield Road estate? Hertingfordbury Road estate, a bit farther along under the bridge.
DN: No.
JR: It wasn’t one of yours, so you did what we now call Sele Road?
DN: Yes, what we called Camps Hill estate. Yes it’s the Sele Road.
JR: So it’s the only place ..
DN: We did other jobs in Hertford, but there’s no records of them I don’t think. We built, for instance, the Catholic Church in St John’s Street. We built The Prudential in Fore Street. We built the place on the corner of Honey Lane for Burtons. We also built all the ward blocks at Christ’s Hospital and several other buildings, in fact we built the majority of Christ’s Hospital at one time or another.
JR: But no other council estates?
DN: We built plenty since the last war of course, but not between the wars. We built a lot after the war in Hertford, Ware, Welwyn Garden and all around the County we built houses.
JR: Because we did wonder if that was a picture from Welwyn Garden City as it looks more like Welwyn Garden houses than Hertford
DN: No, it wouldn’t be, because those people in that photograph were in the 1920 type of clothes. Welwyn Garden wasn’t started until about 1917, just after the first world war, there was nothing there before the first world war. I can remember Welwyn just being started when I first came to Hertford, being built.
JR: Yes, I realise that, I didn’t see those houses as being older, you seem to think they are older buildings with a new roof on ..
DN: I can’t explain that one.
JR: It doesn’t matter, let’s leave it.
So you’ve told me some of the buildings in the town but what do you think Ekins greatest success or achievement was in the town? What do they think of as their best work? The Catholic church?
DN: I doubt it! I don’t think we thought of anything being the best, I suppose really our greatest achievement with regard to a building complex would be the Christ’s Hospital complex, we didn’t build it all by any means, as a lot of it went back much earlier of course.
JR: Yes, but the main blocks, yes.
DN: I’m trying to think what else we did.
JR: Because some of them are still there now aren’t they?
DN: Yes obviously, and they are very nice buildings as well.
JR: Did Ekins have to demolish the old blocks before or did someone else do that?
DN: I don’t know.
JR: That would have been about 1906 wasn’t it, I think, about that time.
DN: Wait a minute, we could have done, I tell you why because we built the Christ’s Hospital Chapel and we demolished the old chapel, we took it down to our yard and made it into our store building, it was a wooden chapel and we re-built it in our own yard as our stores.
JR: Did you? I didn’t even know they had a wooden one!
DN: That’s where our stores came from, the old Christ’s Hospital School chapel and that sadly got burned/blown down in 1938, I remember that being burned/blown down, it wasn’t any mystery because it was a very ancient building any way because in those days.
Otherwise in Hertford we built several private houses, we built one or two houses up Queens Road, I don’t know about them individually. There was a Mrs Baker who lived in Queens Road, a well known character, were they something to do with the Town Clerk, the Bakers?
Transcribers Note: Some confusion here. The later Christ Hospital Chapel that was demolished for Tesco was built 1910. If the wooden one was burned down they couldn’t have rebuilt it as their stores? It sounds like burned but must be blown!
JR: Yes I think that is a familiar name, yes.
DN: Yes I think it was. I know we built a house for Mrs Baker, that would’ve been for Baker’s mother probably.
We built Hertford North Railway Station, that was hardly any achievement!
JR: The 1924 one?
DN: Yes. That was soon after the tunnel was cut through.
JR: You didn’t build the tunnel?
DN: No, we’re not engineers!
JR: In the early days of the building firm were there a lot more craftsman?
DN: There were many more craftsman because you hadn’t got the machinery.
DN: St Edmunds College, Fred’s working there now, the chapel was already there but we modernised it and we bought a special fret saw machine, a power driven electric machine and it was my job to cut out all the tracery work, all the Oak tracery work, I was apprenticed to Ekins as a 17 year old in the joiners shop at the firm and it was one of my first jobs, to do all this fretwork.
JR: Did you enjoy doing it?
DN: I always have enjoyed working with my hands. I was engaged on a five-year apprenticeship. It was decided that I would do three years in the joiners shop and two years I’d go out on plumbing. So I did both joinery and plumbing and they were the subjects I was most proficient in. Both important jobs.
JR: So, where did you go to school?
DN: First of all I went to Miss Morris down Ware Road, there were two ladies, the two Miss Morris’. My first school when I was 4 years old and then I moved to Bengeo in 1921, when I was five, I went to Miss Hucks down Port Hill and then when I was ten I went to Hertford Grammar and then when I was twelve I went away to Berkhamsted, the other side of the County.
I was sixteen when It was decided that school wasn’t my line, I was more likely to be, I wasn’t going to be academic, I was more likely to be a person who used my hands more, so it was decided I would come out and go into the business in London, a firm of builders in London and also at the same time I would go to the Northern Polytechnic in Holloway Road, the building Polytechnic.
After I finished there I got fed up working in London, such long hours, said to my dad, I can’t stick this, especially as I had to leave tea in London and rush across to the Northern Polytechnic three days a week and didn’t get home till 10 at night. I had to rely on trains, anyway. Father came to Ekins in 1919 and Farley started selling him shares in the company. Farley died about 1933 I think, so father bought the rest of his shares off Graham Farley, James Farley’s son. James Farley put him in the business but he and my father squabbled over one thing and another, he wasn’t really interested in the building business. My father bought him out as well and he gave an ex gratia payment to the executors, just to show goodwill, that’s when my father gained control of the company in 1934. Prior to that James Farley had control of the company.
JR: Shareholding, private ledger. (Looking at the book)
DN: That goes right back to the last century, its quite amusing, starts when my father kept buying tea and sugar, like a tally man at one time.
JR: So this was his ledger, it wasn’t Ekins ledger?
DN: This was my father’s private ledger.
JR: To Darjeeling Company, 1909, March 29th.
DN: He and his brother started a little business buying and selling stuff.
JR: Tea and coffee? Because it says here ‘coffee on hand’.
DN: He would sell all sorts of things, coffee, tea, Darjeeling tea. He soon gave it up, didn’t last very long, a year or two
JR: The eggs account £1 5s and the carriage was 3d, that was a cheap journey.
DN: Its all about 1909 when he was a young man
JR: So who were the people when you came to this town, who were your friends and neighbours?
DN: A firm, Nash,105 Ware Road, Leonard Nash was the son about my age, I’m not sure but I think his father had something to do with the Territorial Army, I might be wrong there, but I think he was. The other side of us in Ware Road was a Mrs Stubbings, I think was her name, I’m talking about when I was a four year old you see!
JR: Yes what number were you living at?
DN: I was living at number 107, I think 109 was Mrs Stubbings, I always remember her, she was a lady with short legs, she had an upright piano and when she played this piano because she was so short she’d rock backwards and forwards like this pushing the pedals. Then we moved to Bengeo of course, we lived in 8 Church Road, at the back here. Our neighbours were Mrs Eccles, number 6 and I think she was the sister of Mr Roberts the Heating Engineer in Bengeo.
JR: Did you know the Summers-Gills?
DN: Yes, of course, I knew the Rev. Summers-Gill, he was rector at …. (see below) were in
Waterford weren’t they, or somewhere out that way?
Transcribers Note: Rev Summers-Gill was vicar at Letty Green It was the Roberts family that came from Waterford.
JR: I think it was Letty Green wasn’t it?
DN: Was it? Yes well Summers-Gill, the old chap, he lived opposite us, on the corner. His son never did really work hard, he died ten years ago, or something like that. He was a really charming chap but he seemed to live in another world.
JR: He was Sacristan at St Andrew’s.
DN: Oh, was he? When I was a kid my father could be rather outspoken about people! What they thought about them, he doesn’t put himself out, this was going back some, back in the 20’s I’m talking about of course!
Yes, on the other side of us, first of all was Sullock. Sullock who was the other Director, Farley had to ask to leave because he wasn’t efficient, it became a court case and he sued the firm for wrongful dismissal but Farley wasn’t going to budge so they paid up and paid to get rid of him. Then Hemmings took over the house, Ekins built the two houses 8 and 10, they built houses for Ekins directors in those days, to get people to work for you very often had to build premises and let people have the use of them.
Transcribers Note: The Hemmings were at number 10 Church Road in 1945, in 1947 it was sold to Charles Taylor the grandfather of Marilyn Taylor, typist of part of this recording!
JR: I understand, yes. You had somewhere to come to live you could settle in straight away.
DN: The Hemmings came, I never had much to do with them. He was Plymouth Brethren
which speaks for itself. It means people don’t have much to do with them.
JR: It’s a very strict religion isn’t it?
DN: Yes, he had two daughters who were not allowed to talk to Joan over the fence. He was a nice old boy. I’m not sure he worked, maybe I’ve forgotten. Hornsmill Glove factory? And then I’m not sure who came after him, Faulkner was there for some time, she’s still alive Mrs Faulkner isn’t she? Cynthia Faulkner.
Transcribers Note: Faulkner family lived opposite possibly Number 9 Church Road not number 10
[Chat between JR and QN … QN showing JR some pictures]
DN: John Warner School, I think we built that school. I’m not quite sure but I think so. We built one or two schools in Hoddesdon. Lots of schools were built after the last war.
[Chat between JR and QN … QN showing JR some pictures]
QN: The convent didn’t have any grounds so when we played hockey we had to go to Hartham which as just over the bridge by the Eastern station and then we’d go along by the river to ware then there was a big garden house.
JR: You’re talking about the Dicker Mill house where the miller lived?
QN: That’s when I was at the convent and that’s the garden house there and that’s me with Hoddesdon Ladies, used to play hockey on the field where there’s now a school.
JR: You were a keen sportswoman!
QN: I was down there one day and they had a searchlight station and these chaps came up and said do you think we could play. So we said “We haven’t got a match next week, so how about it” So we had a lovely match.
JR: There’s a programme of a concert at St Nicholas hall, the Convent High School November 2nd, 3rd and 4th 1943. Lots of adverts, Harry Harry the watchmaker.
DN: He lived in Hertford Heath.
JR: Arthur Sheffield, chemist, Quelch and Brown..ah..
DN: Mr Quelch, he lived, not this one here but the one through there, he used to come in the garden with his net and his headgear because he was collecting bees. He was always losing his bees. He was a funny man, I felt sorry for him, really, he had that illness where your mind goes as you get old, Alzheimer’s and he used to lean over our fence at night and shout like anything at us because our lights were on, he’d say you know you are not supposed to have lights on, there’s a war on.
JR: Living in the past! I see from this programme that one of the young ladies attending Kasim College in Ali baba in the ‘40s, somebody called Zulika was a J Tubbert. Now we interviewed her daughter.
DN: She used to live in Hertingfordbury Road.
QN: Joan Tubbert and I were in the front row in the kindergarten.
DN: Nice looking girl
JR: Yes, we’ve got a photo of her. Her daughter is Glynis Blakes.
DN: Local?
JR: Well Joan Tubbert married Mr Blakes, I think he was a Ware man. (Alban Blakes).
QN: She got one of these ghastly diseases.
JR: Joan?
QN: Yes.
JR: Well Glynis had polio, I though you meant her.
QN: Yes.
DN: There were a number of Blakes in this area, Tabby Blake, science master at the Grammar school, we built his house, Blake photographer.
JR: Yes I don’t think this chap is any relation to those other Blakes. Queenies name is in here for the Mandarin, Soh Fah she’s called, Chinese lady, the other ones Doh Ray Me, E Melton.
DN: I didn’t know many of those young ladies, were they a Catholic family the Tubberts ?
JR: Yes they are. The orchestra’s Mr Negus, Mr Barber, James Barbers father?
DN: Yes Tom Barber, he was very much to do with Hertford Dramatic, very keen, he spent his last few years in Bengeo, moved up to the back of Bengeo here.
(Peter Ruffles arrives and Jean tells him about Joan Tubbert)
DN: Were they welsh? Glynis is a welsh name.
JR: No I don’t think so, a lot of people called their daughters after film stars.
DN: Oh I see.
JR: Might have been Glynis Johns or someone.
QN: I know the name.
JR: A film star in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
DN: Not to do with W E Johns?
JR: No I don’t think so, she might have been!
DN: There was a family of Johns lived in the Ware Road, could have been the same family.
JR: Probably was because Margaret Collins, W E Johns niece lives in the Ware Road now.
JR: So are there any funny stories from Ekins that you can tell us?
DN: The main thing for posterity is that all we always had a good name and we are trying to keep our good name and finding that labour wasn’t as efficient as it used to be, if I can put it that way. We have got a good name, Marian showed me a letter the other day a small job we’d done in the Ware Road, kitchen alterations to a private house, thanking us for the quality of the work we’d done funnily enough, how pleased they were with the work. I said to my son’s wife isn’t it nice to have a thank you, it doesn’t cost you anything. It’s a thing that’s lacking these days.
JR: Do you ever do any restoration or renovation work? Where you’ve found anything?
DN: Yes, we’ve done restoration work, where we’ve found things.
JR: Like shoes in chimneys, that kind of thing?
DN: Well, when we rebuilt Burtons, used to be a coffee shop*, we found an ancient old spoon in there, amongst all that rubbish, its in that cabinet, it’s not silver as far as I know.
Transcribers Note: The Coffee Tavern demolished 1938 on the corner of Honey lane and Maidenhead Street.
JR: So you think it was a spoon from a cup and saucer?
DN: No, just a spoon, a teaspoon, it was in the rubbish when we demolished the coffee shop. We restored the Friends Meeting House in Railway Street. It was a difficult job.
JR: That was a major job.
DN: (Looking at spoons) there the ones, I think they are pretty ancient, three or four hundred years old
JR: Oh they have got a little crest on.
DN: I have been meaning to look up the create.
JR: So tell us about the Friends’ Meeting House.
Transcribers Note: The friends Meeting House or Quakers as its sometimes known in Railway Street has just been given Grade 1 listing status in 2019.
DN: Yes, the Friends’ Meeting House had been neglected for a long while, I suppose there wasn’t money available, the Graveson family did a lot to support the Society of Friends.
We completely re-roofed, re-tiled, put in new beams to carry the roof, a certain amount of underpinning as well and repointing because it has some lovely brickwork. It was a very nice job. I can’t remember the name of the architect now.
PR: I was just wondering who it was, because it was controversial really wasn’t it, it was still the Friends’ Meeting House?
DN: Yes, they had the gallery across…
PR: To introduce the metal frame … I think it was good ..
DN: Was it controversial? I didn’t know that?
PR: Yes, because it was largely timber and brick and I suppose a foreign material, alien to the period, I think it works very, very well and simple like the basic structure of the building.
DN: Well, I can see your point but I would never have thought of timber plates to strengthen it. I can see its not sympathetic with the original building.
PR: No, but it didn’t pretend to be a masking of …
DN: No, it was there for a very good purpose.
PR: It shows care as its in the same mood as the rest of the building
DN: If I remember rightly I wouldn’t object to it, no.
PR: I know people were very interested in it to see how it would work out, with fingers crossed because it was a very bold idea.
DN: I can’t remember who the architects were now, I’ve forgotten now, he was there when we had the opening ceremony.
PR: Can I just ask Denis one quick thing, a personal thing as usual, the paper shop at Farnham’s, I used to deliver your papers here from Farnham’s but there used to be a regular, a really nice chap called Jackson.
DN: Oh, yes. Jack, Jackson lived in 6 Hartham Lane, he was our machinist in the joiner’s shop. We used to call him Jack, he lived up in Sele Farm, yes he lived up there,
PR: He had one daughter.
DN: He used to live in the house adjoining our office, I’m trying to think when he moved, Yes, he had one daughter, I’ve forgotten her name now.
PR: A very glamourous lady, Wendy, we used to tease her a bit, she was a bit too smart and too fashionable for the paper shop really. And a very nice gentle wife.
DN: Yes, a very quiet lady. We used to let this cottage at the end of the office for two reasons, one because we had a caretaker for nothing, secondly because we have our own water, we have a well and he was responsible for making sure the pump was switched on when the water ran low in the tanks. His main job was ensuring we had a water supply.
PR: So are relations between you and McMullens alright over the water.
DN: No, a little bit upset about that at the moment because when McMullens put in the new bore a few years ago, 10/12 years ago I’m not quite sure. They wanted a new bore; they’d already got 1 or 2 bores. The authorities approached us and asked us if we’d got any objections, we said we’d got no objections provided it doesn’t affect our bore hole so they said well in that case we had better put a test on McMullens on one bore to find out if it aggravates your bore hole, our water, anyway.
They put 2x4 hour test periods on pumping and it affected our bore by half an inch so as far as we were concerned at the time we were not fussed in that case within the tolerance that we accepted. We do cross swords sometimes with different things but not in that case.
I think they’d like to acquire our site you know! Unofficially we’ve already been approached by them. I remember once that I approached them to try and buy Conrad’s site on Cowbridge which overlooks part of our premises anyway, the short answer was we’re not sellers we’re buyers, so that shut me up of course! I think they are of the opposite attitude now, they’re more like sellers now!
PR: I think they may be of leases of public houses, I don’t see them giving up much land.
DN: They gave the land in Port Vale.
PR: Yes, of course, that’s a very big development.
DN: And the ones by the river there, by Cowbridge. I don’t think they demolished those three houses there, the cottages that are all joined up.
PR: Well, the planning permission given, they are in a conservation area but they are not listed so they could quite easily come down but we talked them into a scheme that allowed the buildings to stay.
DN: They’re nice looking, white gault bricks. I remember those because a chap by the name of Heffer used to live in one.
PR: The first one by the river.
DN: And he was a Communist bloke. During the war we built the new aerodrome for DeHavillands, at Holwell Hyde, he was one of our carpenters there and he tried to preach his Communism to our workmen there and I told him if you don’t shut up I’m going to have to sack you. He was an awkward cuss!
PR: That probably happened more than once in his working life!
What about that lovely classical statement of the building of Ekins, was that at the very beginning?
DN: I’m not quite sure, I think those columns, they’re Purbeck stone columns, I think they came out of some other building but I can’t be sure. They weren’t made deliberately for Ekins Offices I think they must have come out of something that was demolished or reclaimed and used them in their frontage there. They didn’t come from Christs’ Hospital I don’t think. We did a lot of work at Christs Hospital. We took their (Old) chapel down and used it as our store.
PR: Even in the early aerial views of the town they are, I suppose it depends where the aircraft is at the time it takes the photograph, there’s a 1920s aerial shot and its quite a wide area but the Ekins columns show, some people think it’s County Hall!.
DN: The reason why its such an elaborate building is because in the days that it was built at the turn of the century, the Hertford North Station wasn’t there and the Great Northern Station by us was the main station and was used by the gentry for business in London, commuting up to London from the station by our works. And as you know that linked to Welwyn Garden where you’d pick up the fast train to London. You could get to London in 20 minutes in those days on the steam train.
PR: It doesn’t take any less time these days, in fact maybe a bit longer!
DN: We used to laugh, I used to go to work in London by the workmen’s train. Joking aside, the reason that building is so lovely is because it was there to show our wares, we were not only builders but we were hardware people as well, I can’t remember where we had the hardware shop, I’ve forgotten …
But anyway that whole area was a showroom, Wallpaper, Toilet requisites, bathroom fittings, fireplaces ….. in those days fireplaces were the in thing there was very little central heating about, it didn’t come in until after the First World War really ..
PR: No, I suppose probably the 20s in just a very few properties.
DN: Yes that’s when central heating first came in, and of course also lighting. We had our own electrical firm. My son said to me, I think they’re starting an electrical business, so I said, it’s been a long while since we’ve had an electrical business We used to deal with L G Bland, that’s the father of (Michael) who’s just recently retired. So he’s taken on an electrician and started this business, he’ll be responsible for the electrical work and he’ll have his own right to select his materials for clients. He’ll get a bonus on his turnover.
PR: In house, it’s not really a trade that’s going to die is it?
DN: Talking about electrics, when I was first at Ekins we used gas lighting, what they called carbide gas lighting and they had this powered by a gas machine outside the basement at the back, it was quite an elaborate thing, on the principle of the old bicycle lamps, the water jets coming on the carbide.
JR: Did that produce a gas?
DN: Yes that produced a gas that lit our offices.
PR: You’ve got just up the road from Ekins, the last gas lamp column in Hertford, with the bar for the ladder to go up. Its been converted to electricity for a long time.
DN: We’ve got one in the garden here!! Your people (council) took them all down to the old sewage works. £3 for the lamp head and £6 or £7 for the column. So I bought a couple of lamp heads and one cast iron column, couldn’t afford two columns!
PR: Well, there’s one in the street still, the last municipal one, its just before Ekins on your side of the road and its got a chunky bar for the ladder, there are quite a lot of bases but none of them with the arm.
DN: This one in the garden has a bar on it, to put your ladder against.
There’s a bit here about buying land but Denis says he doesn’t want it on tape
PR: Because at that time, you had some serious rivals still.
DN: Oh yes, Norris and Oliver at Hoddesdon, Crook Brothers of Ware, Hitches of Ware, Botsford’s, old man Botsford, I always admired him the way he could estimate.
PR: He used to go around to oversee his jobs, I don’t know how officially or just out of interest, until he was well into his 90s didn’t he?!
DN: Yes, yes. He was a stickler for work being done nicely and Harry took it on from him because during the war Harry was the Clerk of Works for the Air Ministry.
PR: Oh, was he? Because I thought he would have come up from under his father’s wings …
DN: No, no, he was Clerk of Works for the Air Ministry and he was Clerk of Works for the job we did at De Havilland’s. He was a friend of ours, I am not saying we got away with murder!
PR: Smooth the edges a bit! Old man Botsford’s wife and sister, Flo Bunyan, kept a sweet shop along St Andrews Street near to Bland’s, so there was the building business going on …. Flo Bunyan and Mrs Botsford!
QN: Because I belong to the Women’s Health and Beauty…
JR: Was it Gladys? Elsie Summers-Gill was part of that and she was very friendly with Gladys Botsford.
PR: I think that’s daughter in law.
DN: Harry only had the one daughter didn’t he?
PR: Yes, I think it may have been Harry’s wife or Harry’s sister in law that you’re talking about. The sweet shop was kept by Harry’s mother.
DN: Of course as you know, Phil was the other brother and old man Botsford said he didn’t want two brothers working together. He said, they’ll get in each others way!
Chatter about the grandfather clock (chiming in the background)
Tape ends