Interviewed by Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date: 10/08/1999
Transcribed by Side one Adie Mulford with additions by Jean Riddell (Purkis): Side two Mark Green
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1999.15
Interviewee: Patrick Comley (PC)
Date: 10th August 1999
Venue: Godalming, Surrey
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Side one Adie Mulford with additions by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Side two Mark Green
Typed by: Mark Green
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PC: .. Mimi and a girl by the name of Lambert who were bridesmaids at your mother’s wedding.
PR: Yes, yes.
PC: I’ll tell you a story about Lambert. I was sitting in a hut on Aleppo aerodrome, right up in North of Syria in 1944 waiting to go into Turkey, and this chap was round the table with about four or five others and he says “I know about you, I know who you are” and I said “yes so do I”. He said “no I’m not being funny”. He said “your dad drives CAR 50” (Number plate)
PR: Oh .
PC: I said “how the hell do you know”? He said “you’re talking about guts. Captain A.E. Holton, P.T. Master Hertford Grammar”. I said “who the hell are you”?
PR: Oh.
PC: He said “my dad is Landlord of the White Horse Inn, Hertingfordbury” and I went to see him about five years ago. He’s gone now.
PR: Yes, yes.
PC: That’s the first time I saw him since I was in the back of his lorry coming down from Aleppo down to Cairo which took about four or five days Aleppo, Beirut down to Israel across to the Sinai.
PR: John Lambert.
PC: John Lambert was it.
PR: Mm his brother is alive, George.
PC: George?
PR: Mm
PC: Now what happened to him after that? I think he went to Italy or somewhere after that.
PR: Well.
PC: He went to Italy I went to Jerusalem.
PR: Well there we are that’s um…
PC: So John Lambert, that was his name was it?
PR: Mmm.
PC: Driver Lambert, he was then.
PR: Ah.
PC: Can you not leave them in a box? After all, don’t forget we have the ex-mayor of Hertford here.
[Laughter]
PR: Well he can manage his Jaffa Cakes any way out of the packet really, that’s the normal way.
PC: And then after teaching. 38 years?
PR: 34 years. I’m still teaching. Still doing it.
PC: What’s your main subject?
PR: That’s English.
PC: Is it? Mmm.
PR: So yes that’s all that happened and I still live in the road that mother was, in the house that mother was married in.
PC: Yes, yes.
PR: You probably have it - 1962.
PC: Hertingfordbury Road, yes. Good Lord.
PR: So some things don’t change.
PC: No they don’t, they don’t, do they. Because your mum, Gwen George she was, wasn’t she? Yes, and she was in the Telephone Exchange and she used to phone up Mimi when she was on duty at the Exchange and they used to talk for an hour and a half. Didn’t cost us anything because she was phoning us. Then she would say, “just a minute there’s a call coming through, I must take it” then she would come back again and carry on chatting. An hour and a half at a time.
PR: Where had they met, do you know?
PC: Was she at Ware Grammar?
PR: Yes,
PC: So was Anne. So Mimi and Nora – Mimi as we called her. Eleanor Margaret. Yes. That’s what I was on television with. Ed Noels. College Regina PJOLB Queen’s College, Cambridge 1892 Patrick Joseph O’Leary Bradbury. He was not Irish. He was named Patrick Joseph O’Leary because his father who was a minister was a great follower of him from a very early age and he named his son after him. He got the wooden spoon for coming bottom of all three PRts of the maths tripos and passing in each section and the roadshow had never ever seen one.
PR: So that is the wooden spoon. It is the size of a garden spade. ( To Betty) Oh gosh, you obeyed instructions.
Betty: They are all for you.
PC: It’s a molten shovel actually. I don’t know what it’s worth. Queen’s College would like it.
PR: So, what’s your connection with it?
PC: He was my great uncle. He was Mum’s uncle. He was a director of education in Jamaica after qualifying. He was also chairman of the selectors of the West Indian cricket team when they came over here. The morning after selecting the team in Trinidad 1934 he woke up dead in bed and was buried there with a cricketer’s funeral. Yes, buried the next day of course.
PR: Yes as it would be hotter climes. Yes.
PC: There’s an old Hertfordian buried in Trinidad. Peter J Wilborne on the school memorial. Killed in the merchant navy at the age of 16. On his first trip out to the West Indies.
PR: What’s that Betty?
Betty: Sugar?
PR: No sugar thank you Betty.
PC: So you taught there and you are still teaching English?
PR: Mmm.
PC: Good Lord.
PR: Yes, for a little bit longer. I met you at the Mayflower not very long ago, just in passing.
PC: Lodge meeting?
PR: Yes.
PC: Which one do you belong to?
PR: London, London lodge. Been given the, but I’ve not gone through the chair. I’ve not done any of those, no, but I’ve just received this new thing you may have heard about in London called London Rank.
PC: Oh yes the London Rank, the London Grand Rank, yes, oh yes.
PR: It’s a sort of I mean London Grand Rank meant you had really to go through the chair.
PC: Yes, yes.
PR: At last, I’ll be in the second wave of people in October. I’ve got to go up for a little investiture. So that’s, and it’s the College Lodge except I’m the only teacher in it.
PC: What Broxbourne College?
PR: No, the Saint Mark and Saint John College, teacher training college in Chelsea.
PC: Oh yes.
PR: It was linked with the school, that they used in school, at the end of the last century. That was founded by Sir Walter St John, and the lodge is the Sir Walter St John lodge.
PC: Saint John in other words?
PR: Yes, Saint John, Saint John. So do you come as a guest to Hertford or are you a member?
PC: No I am a member of Old Hertfordian and I went through the chair there.
PR: Oh did you?
PC: Yes, I did, I was steward. There was inner guard, semi deacon, senior warden, chair. My brother, he initiated me. He took me round on my second and third. He gave me my first collar and installed me in the chair.
PR: Oh.
PC: And I belong to a lodge here. Bramston Beach Lodge. 2101 that is. I’ve been through the chair there as well.
PR: So, that means you haven’t been a mason for a very long time.
PC: 1972.
PR: Because the lodge was founded in…
PC: 1966.
PR: Yes fairly late on.
PC: Yes.
PR: Yes, that’s when I joined, in 1966 but I’ve nothing to do with local lodges ever.
PC: Good Lord.
PR: Which is quite a good thing because I’ve never really wanted to get any suggestion of being in the ‘network’ because of my council work in particular.
PC: Yes, yes.
PR: And though I visit sometimes the odd council officer might take the um.
PC: It’s a right load of mumbo jumbo though isn’t it.
PR: Oh yes, yes it is.
PC: Of course it is. I mean the social side is alright and various things but I’ve just decided now, this year, having been in an office for something since about 1976 and I’ve been through all the chairs in Bramston Beach here, I did the lot. I have finally decided after November at installation I am not going to do anything. In fact that have asked me to do traditional history in September and I phoned up the preceptor the other day and said I’ve made my mind up, I’m not doing it. He said “I wish you’d let me know earlier” I said “it wouldn’t have helped if I had done because” I said “even if you asked somebody this evening they won’t open the book until three weeks’ time.
I’m chaplain at the moment and I’m not going to continue as chaplain next year because our previous chaplain went in the chair – he is London Grand Rank – has had to go in the chair we’re short of - so I’m not going to do – I’m charity representative and I go up to the charity meetings at Suburbiton (sic) and, but we’re a bit disillusioned at the moment. We’ve got a member who is in great financial trouble. He is on dialysis, his wife is a, what’s her religion? Jehovah’s Witness and she won’t allow a dialysis machine in the house so he has to go three times a week to the hospital for it. He’s in terrible financial trouble and he is four pounds over the limit for the Grand Lodge to make him any allowances.
PR: Oh.
PC: So I’m not very happy with them.
PR: No, no, well that’s a pity.
PC: Now what do you want to know about Hertford?
PR: Well I have to press some buttons and…
PC: Don’t worry.
PR: And kick off and in proper form and see where I am and that sort of thing. Let me see, just finish chewing – what am I eating? Some sort of …
PC: Those are Jaffa cakes and those are almond slices.
PR: Ah, almond slices. I’m just on the end of an almond slice. This is the first time I’ve begun an official recording for Hertford Museum on the end of an almond slice. Well this is the 10th August 1999. Peter Ruffles reporting from Godalming in Surrey.
PC: 14:35 hours.
PR: 14:35 hours. Extraordinary thing but I’ve come along the M25 and down beyond Guildford past the cathedral in order to speak this afternoon to a member of a Hertford family of great distinction I think we can say. Patrick Comley has lived here for 38 years. I ought to have spoken to his brother Puck or William Dennis Bird but I didn’t get round to it in time.
PC: He is decomposing.
PR: Yes he is now decomposing rather than composing and he had been the church organist at Hunsdon and various other places in the last part of his time in the Hertford area. I missed that. So I’ve come to Godalming really to find out a little bit about the family and any Hertford memories you have as an exile because Hertford Grammar School was important to you at one stage of your life.
PC: Yes, I first came to Hertford in 1916 when James Gregory who was the organist and master at Christ’s Hospital was killed in a zeppelin raid.
PR: Oh, the Hertford club in Bull Plain.
PC: The old cross and he was there with Mr Wilson the wine merchant and three or four others they fell down to the ground, Gregory didn’t and got killed and Dad took over from him in December 1916. Having lived in Kings Lynn, been organist of Saint Margaret’s, the longest parish church in England, was there for four years and he’d been bombed in Kings Lynn and then came to Hertford to be bombed there as well and there – do you want to know about the family?
PR: Yes, let’s just tidy that up a little bit. I mean, presumably he saw the job advertised did he, or was he..
PC: Presumably, I’ve no idea, no idea how he got the job.
PR: It doesn’t matter but…
PC: He was a fellow of the Royal College of Organists at the time and that was his qualification and he had been trained at Trinity College of Music.
PR: So it was Christ’s Hospital that he came.
PC: He came to Christ’s Hospital and All Saints Church which was a joint appointment.
PR: Ah.
PC: and it was a lifelong appointment.
PR: Yes.
PC: So the vicar, any new vicar at All Saints couldn’t say I’m sorry, I’m going to bring my own organist as Townsend Ducker wanted to do. He said to my father “I see I have to appoint an organist” and dad said “I’m afraid you’re mistaken this is a lifelong appointment. I am here” and that was it.
PR: So that’s where he came in 1916 and did he come to Ware Road, the address I remember.
PC: Yes 133 Ware Road and there he lived from 1916 until somewhere in the early 60s. The same house.
PR: Mmm.
PC: Where we got bombed at 9.18 p.m. on Monday 23 September 1940 and the house was blown up – part – I got poisoned, missed a whole term of school and I’m still waiting for some counselling!
PR: Ah, yes, bombed before your time.
PC: Right, so that’s where Dad came to Hertford. 133 Ware Road.
PR: Since you’ve mentioned the Talbot Street bomb really was it.
Transcriber Note: This was the Tamworth Road bomb
PC: Yes.
PR: The one that demolished some properties.
PC: Yes the aerial land mine came down.
PR: So you can actually remember the occasion, can you?
PC: Oh yes we were sitting listening to the news in the evening and Mimi said “I think I’ll go upstairs and have a bath” and I said “no wait until the news is over”, Nora said “I think I’ll go into the kitchen and make some cocoa” and Mum said “no let’s listen to the news. We all sat down listening then this thing went off.
I went round to Talbot Street (Tamworth Road) afterwards and there was Mr Bunt, Head Warden, and they were bringing people out covered in blood and all sorts of other things and I stayed with him until about three o’clock in the morning. The family went up to Mr Cook’s house further up the Ware Road to Ware and went in their cellar and in the morning when we got up in the bathroom the full sliding sash was inside the bath and the cooker in the kitchen which should have been there was at the other side of the room standing upright. All the upstairs windows went in. All the downstairs ones came out and we were out of that house for three weeks while they repaired it and redecorated it completely, top to bottom.
PR: There is one person living in Ware Road today who is still trying to claim some compensation from the damage.
PC: Yes the War Damage Commission.
PR: She was, Susan Brown, her name, Quelch and Brown.
Transcriber Note: Her father was partner in the shop in Fore Street which in 2020 is Albany Radio. There is a recording of her taking about the war damage.
PC: Oh I know, yes, Quelch and Brown, Susan Brown. “Overly” her house was called.
PR: Yes.
PC: That’s it. Yes.
PR: And she is having structural difficulties stemming from that occasion which they very well might.
PC: Probably could. But she’s on gravelled soil might be any amount of movement there.
PR: Yes. Your sister was also involved in the doodlebug wasn’t she?
PC: Mimi was in the Old Cross one in 1944. July 1944 and that landed in the river and the building collapsed. It was the Report and Control Centre. The RP. Shorn up by nine-by-nines and goodness knows what and she and I believe a girl called Joan Whittles, but I’m not sure if it was her, crawled out from underneath it covered in black muck. They were the only two in the building at the time and Dad went down and said to the policeman where the burial was oh my daughter’s in there and he said “Oh I’m sorry Mr Comley but you can’t go through anyway. So he wasn’t allowed through but she came out covered in filth and muck.
Transcriber Note: Probably Hazel Suckling not Joan Whittles, she has done a recording of the incident.
PR: M
mm, gosh.
PC: Probably went to work the next day.
PR: What was she actually, you know, what were her duties in the ARP?
PC: Oh, she used to set off sirens. She used to press the button to set off sirens. Receive the message, you know air raid warning, yellow, purple, red. When it was red you set off sirens, and air raid warning green was the all clear, and she used to set off the all clear as well.
PR: So had she had any warning of this or was this a surprise?
PC: I don’t know. I was in, July 1944, I was in Cairo and your dad was in Algiers. He was there when I was there.
PR: Oh was he!
PC: I was, I landed in Algiers on 27 July 1943.
PR: Well, well.
PC: Never saw your dad there.
PR: No, but yes he did serve in Algiers. I know. Now when I came about half an hour ago you said to your wife that you had been present at home in 1940 when my mother announced her impending marriage.
PC: Yes they came round to arrange the service, the hymns. That’s what they came for and your Dad, I believe, was either Sergeant or Sergeant Major. What was he in?
PR: RASC, whatever that is.
PC: Royal Army Service Corp. Yes he was in uniform.
PR: So he came to your Pop.
PC: Our house, yes. To arrange the hymns.
PR: Ah but the service was not at All Saints but at St Andrews.
PC: Was it? Ah I didn’t know that. Oh well, that’s nice. That’s Wheatcroft’s Church, Mr Wheatcroft.
PR: Well it was, yes. I’m not sure whether he was organist at the time or whether your father would have come over and played, he may have done,
PC: Could have done yes.
PR: Because St Andrews was our family church.
PC: Was it?
PR: It’s because of your father that my father was a member of All Saints choir for 34 years.
PC: He was yes.
PR: Only he wasn’t, he had nothing against St Andrews except that his worship was through music and music was provided by your father.
PC: Yes.
PR: And as the centrepiece of it all and…
PC: Yes.
PR: And so Dad all those years went to All Saints to sing and we went to St Andrew with occasional times when I would go into, they used to have a rehearsal after the service at All Saints sometimes.
PC: After the service.
PR: And so, mmm, perhaps that’s polishing up the evening anthem or something like that.
PC: I never knew that, yes.
PR: And I remember going in through the vestry several times as a five or six year old to go and stand next to Dad in the choir stalls while he practised and your father came out of the chancel and conducted the…
PC: With the Cull brothers. Mr Freestone. Mr Willson the wine merchant.
PR: Oh was he there?
PC: Yes he was a great wit. Dad went to Hertford as I said and then he was called up in 1917 to the Royal Engineers and he went abroad, I don’t know where he was stationed, I’v been trying to find out but he was stationed in Bedford at one time and Mr Line who lived in Queens Road, went off to war together from the old Hertford Station, no longer there, bottom of Port Hill.
PR: Yes the Great Northern.
PC: And they went off and dad went through France and ended up in Cairo then up to Jerusalem.
PR: Was the Line the chemist family?
PC: I’m not sure, Mr and Miss Line, brother and sister, lived in Queens Road and Geoffrey Jensen who was a Battersea Grammar schoolboy. I still keep in touch with him, he’s a parson, lives down in Hornsey, was billeted with them and his brother Freddy.
No Dad went out to Jerusalem and it was whilst he was there that he was sent for by the chaplain one day. Dad was a squaddie and he went in and flung up a salute and the chaplain said “Oh don’t worry squaddie, you’re organist at All Saints, Hertford and I’m curate at Christ Church, Ware and I’ve got a job for you. The General wants some after dinner music on Sunday evenings up at the Kaiser’s Hospice at the Mount of Olives which is now the Augusta Victoria Hospital. Go up and see the General and make arrangements.”
So dad went up and met the General. General Allenby was the chief, that was him, Sir Ronald Stotes, Governor of Jerusalem, commonly called Pontius Pilate and General Chetwood and various others. And dad went up on the balcony in this lovely room which I’ve been in since, went in there in 1980 and played Gilbert and Sullivan, he said “that will do splendidly. We have dinner in the mess with the men and after we have dinner you can come and play”. And Dad said “I’ll do it if I am not on duty” and the General said” I am the Commander in Chief and you are on duty” that was it! And then one night Dad was on guard duty and came out of the tent and three Arabs came “which is the way to General Chetwood’s house”, he said “that house up on the hill with the light on” when he got back the sergeant said “You know who that is?” he said “No” He said “that’s Colonel Lawrence” so he watched Colonel Lawrence and two others go up to the Generals house. Then he came back in 1919, moved back to Christs Hospital and All Saints, in the meantime Dr Cook of Southwark Cathedral did the teaching. My mum took on the teaching because she’d been at Trinity College and she taught Cyril Bates among other people and she took on his piano pupils. Dr Cook took on the Christs Hospital singing I don’t know who did All saints. Then Dad came back after the war. Then my sister was born in 1917, Mimi February, Nora was born in January 1921 only one of the family called her by her proper 1st name and I was born 6.30.
Then of course after that things got a bit difficult, the slump came. Mum had 12 weeks without any housekeeping. So Bates came round and “said why are you not ordering?” And she said “There’s no money” and he said “You put your order in every week, we shall deliver and when times are better I know I’ll get my money back” and she paid it off. She kept the 6 of us on £3 a week (Bates was in the Egyptian House, Fore Street, in 2020 it’s a restaurant) and the Sunday joint cost six shillings from Dewhursts and she fed 6 of us on £3 a week and if the bill from Bates was 10/6d she’d pay 11 shillings. £25 we owed them and when she died on 1st April 1953, a month or two before that she said “ I’ve paid off Bates bill.” That was the slump, no social security, nothing. I couldn’t be a paper boy, you just couldn’t do it in those days.
Now Puck went to Hertford Grammar, 1915 he was born. 1927 or 1928 he must have gone there. He left in 1934 and because of the slump he took this job on the railways. And then he was called up in 1940. He had to go to work to support the family and my sister went to a secretarial college in Victoria and she started work in 1937 in the National Provincial Bank in Princes Street and she travelled there from 1937 to 1950. Working there all day, at the report centre almost every other evening or every third evening or whatever it was and back to the bank in the morning. Got bombed out on the Monday, she was back at the bank on Wednesday morning, working again. We were tough in those days.
PR: Do you know how your parents met?
PC: Mum’s grandfather was Thomas Bradbury, a minister of Grove Chapel, Camberwell and he died in September 1907. Now Dad’s father was a monumental mason in the Fulham Road and Dad had to go and see Mum about the gravestone, which was in Forest Hill Cemetary. Dad had taught himself how to play and was organist of St Saviours, Brixton Hill and St Margaret’s, Upper Norwood and he also had lessons with Dr Cook at Southwark Cathedral, Dr Edgar Cook whom I am named after. And he went to see mother who said why don’t you try for a scholarship and he didn’t know what a scholarship was, so he went to Trinity College for this scholarship. He played something three times and played it wrong every time and they said didn’t your teacher point out to you that you played it wrong and he said “ I’ve never had one, a teacher” and he got the scholarship, that is the Music TCL. Then after being at Hertford he studied for his Bachelor of Music at Oxford as an external student and he got that in 1925. And that’s how they met (shows a photograph)
PR: Manifestly the same chap in the 1960s he didn’t alter much.
PC: No he did his Oxford degree and got his B Mus and Oxford FRCO. Mum didn’t do any teaching only in WW1 she took over his pupils.
PR: I remember your Mum quite well, she always seemed very quiet and gentle, was that the sons image of her as well?
PC: Oh yes, she had a great sense of humour about various things. (shows photo)
PR: Did she have ill health?
PC: I think what started it, she used to take aspirin to sleep during the war and she went downstairs to get Mimi her breakfast and when Mimi went down there she was stretched out on the kitchen floor, a heart attack, and we had a Battersea Grammar School boy billeted with us at the time called Barry and he was a right tearway and very hard to control so he had to go. And then the next time she had trouble. She died in 1953 and in 1951 she started with the heart trouble. She was organist at the County Hospital, she played for the dancing classes at Christs Hospital. Member of the Women’s Branch of the British Legion
End of Side one
Side Two
PC: That was mum's grandfather and grandmother, Thomas Bradbury, who started work about the age of 6.
PR: Yes, I see. I mean you can always see likenesses if you are looking for them, but there is a face...
PC: Oh yes, like Mimi, his cheekbones look like Mimi.
PR: Yes. Yes.
PC: Yes, now let’s so [sound of tearing in background] the gravestone, HMS Majestic, Atlantic Ocean. Oh, he was a hell of a preacher, before you switch the tape on I will read you something.
PR: So, what is the book?
PC: The Life and Times of Patrick Thomas Bradbury, and I am Edgar Thomas Patrick after him.
PR: Yes.
PC: Here is his memorial in the church, born March 1831, died 27th of September 1905 aged 74. Now Mum was 20 then, and she and her mother lived with them, grandparents because Mum's dad died in 19, in 1893, when Mum was 8 and they went to live with them. And she supported herself and her mother. She was qualified from Trinity College of Music. Her name, she was claimed to be a direct descendant of William Byrd the Elizabethan composer, and there's the gravestone they made with JB Comley written on the bottom of it.
PR: Oh it is, yes, yes, reproduced in this little illustration.
PC: I've never been to see it yet and I'm hoping one Sunday to motor up there.
PR: I'll sort you out with that, it’s a complicated. Wow, look at that.
PC: Yes.
PR: Yes, and then your brother, Puck, was…
PC: Yeah, was William Dennis.
PR: William Dennis Bird.
PC: Bird. After yes. Should have been B. Y.R. D. but it was B. I. R. D., got corrupted yes. I haven't proved the connection yet. I have got back to 1695 with John Byrd, married a girl believed to be Mary Brooks, 1695, Mary Brooks. I am going up to the Mormons place some time to see if I can get before that, but William Byrd was 1540 to 1620, buried in Stondon Massey Church in Essex. He had two sons, Christopher and Thomas. Thomas didn't marry but the son Christopher had another son called Thomas, and I believe he is the father of the John Byrd I’ve on the family tree. And the house that they lived in, is now, got another house on that site, in which Steve Davis lives, the snooker player, in Stondon Massey. Yes.
PR: Well.
PC: Fascinating. We have been there to a William Byrd memorial service, Puck and I, have years ago.
PR: Yes.
PC: How far did we get, did you get?
PR: Well I think...
PC: Or do you want any more?
PR: I, I think we ought to get into your personal education.
PC: Right I can tell you that. I started at Miss Morris’s in 1930 when I was 6.
PR: And was that…
PC: Liz, Em and Flo, Elizabeth...
PR: Were at 55
PC: Emily…
PR: Ware Road?
PC: Yes, and Florence. Elizabeth and Emily were the main teachers, Miss Florence was the arty one, arts and drawing, and their brother of course had Morris’ shop by the war memorial.
Transcribers Note: A large furniture shop. Deco in 2020
PR: By the war memorial.
PC: Stayed there till 1934, December, and then I went to Hertford Grammar in January ’35. Form 2A.
PR: Now did you have to pass an exam to…?
PC: No, I had to sort of, I was paid for £5, 14 a term, and I had to go for an exam to see what form I’d start in.
PR: Yes. So they did an assessment.
PC: Yes.
PR: And then accepted the fee.
PC: Yeah.
PR: Yeah, I forgot to ask Gerry Betts that I spoke to the other day about that, he was a little earlier than you, but that was a thing I should have asked him.
PC: This is something Clouting told me. He said we never knew which boys were fee-paying and which ones weren’t. I always thought that they did, but they had no idea, whether a boy was fee-paying or was a scholarship boy. [Transcribers note: Frank Clouting Deputy Head of Hertford Grammar. See transcript Revd. Tom Gladwin (O2003.22)]
PR: Yes.
PC: Yes. And in the form when I started there, I can remember one or two of, one was Michael Cubbage, who lives not far from here, who I still keep in touch with. The other one was Clapham, Clapham Dwyer, Clapham’s son, lived in Broxbourne. Don’t what, often wondered what happened to Clapham. Dwyer was alive until a few years ago. Now the Hertford Grammar School was, Bunt was Headmaster, Clouting was Second Master and various others including one called H E James.
PR: Yes, he’s referred to by people generally but before my time. The others,
PC: Well, I’ll be tactful about James. He was an absolute swine.
PR: Hrm.
PC: He got the Form when he walked into the room was absolute deathly silence. He had the most frightful temper and he, I said to Mr Bunt one day, when I was at his house in Southend, I said the one person who ruined my life at Hertford Grammar School was H E James. I said he should never have been allowed to teach, he should never have been allowed inside the school gates, so Mrs Bunt said, ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear you say that Patrick, he was our closest friend and best man at our wedding’. I said, I don’t care what he was, he was an absolute swine of a man, he was a vicious man. After the war, when I got to, came home from abroad, I tried to find him, to tell him what I thought of him but he had managed to escape before other ex-servicemen got back.
PR: What did he teach? What subjects?
PC: Latin.
PR: Oh…
PC: and geography.
PR: Oh, he was Bunt’s age though, a contemporary or...
PC: Probably, yes. But the other masters they were, they were quite good. He married, he went for two years to New Zealand on an exchange, and in exchange we had a Mr Britten who came to teach. He was very, very good, and he gave talks and things, I don’t know if anyone’s in, on the flora and fauna of New Zealand and things like that. I went there ‘35, then the war started in 1939. In ‘38 Mr Bunt wrote to my Dad and said your son is 14 years old and we are looking for messenger boys, can he join the ARP. So I did. And I was in that from then until 1942 when I was called up, and occasionally after school Mr Bunt would say ‘Oh, Comley’, he said ‘you on duty tonight, at the *** Report Centre’. I used to say no, or yes, whatever. He said ‘Well, will you come down and do some fire-watching’. So, I went fire-watching with Applegate, and Mr Sadler the maths master. Cyril Sadler.
PR: Cyril Sadler.
PC: Cyril Sadler.
PR: Yes.
PC: And I got fined, I was in the library one day with Applegate, and the Warden coming up Pegs Lane saw a shaft of light down the side, and we went outside and turned the light on. He said, you boys been in the library, we said yes, then turned the light on, went into the library to see the shaft of light and the following week it said, in the Hertfordshire Mercury, Mr C N Sadler, master of Hertford Grammar School has been fined ten shillings in Hertford Police Court for showing a light at Hertford Grammar School during the Blackout.
PR: Gosh.
PC: About 20 years ago I took him two florins as my third share of his fine. [PR laughs]. He was as chuffed as anything.
PR: Yes. He was living in Fordwich...
PC: He was.
PR: ...Hill, then.
PC: He was, and he died, yes. And that was that. Called up in ‘42 with no school certificate, nothing. Well the war was a bit of a nuisance because we were up almost every night being bombed or planes going over or something like that. School life was completely disrupted with Battersea Grammar School, Civil Defence duties every other night, fire-watching some nights when you weren't on, and there was a lovely, I don't know if you want to put this in it, but I phoned up old Brian Wilde one day, and I said did you do fire-watching at Hertford Grammar? He said ‘Oh yes, I did it with Molly Field’.
PR: Ah.
PC: I said you rotten sod, yes. So they were. 1942. Joined up, November and in July ‘43 I was in North Africa, the Royal Corps of Signals.
PR: So, describe Mr Bunt’s dual role then, Head of the School which accommodated Battersea…
PC: He was Headmaster, yes, yes, no, but Battersea had their own staff.
PR: Right so…
PC: Mr Ellis was the Headmaster at Battersea.
PR:..so he needed to co-operate nevertheless….
PC: Yes, oh yes.
PR: ...closely with.
PC: He had the prefects’ room, did Mr Ellis the Headmaster of Battersea, and Mr Bunt kept his own room, and Battersea, we used to go there in the morning.
PR: Was that, I'm sorry I'm interrupting you, but the prefects’ room was immediately above the Heads study?
PC: I believe so, I'm not quite sure, but I believe it was.
PR: It was in my day and it could well have been right, could well have fit in because we, when I was head boy that year, or perhaps the year before, we managed to persuade Mr Jack as, as it had then become, to let us have a coal fire in that room, so it was the kind of room that was apportioned in four. I mean it would have suited a Head to operate from. We had to do the grate up ourselves, but Sergeant Major Thorpe would bring, would bring the coke up and we can then light the fire and toast our crumpets on it that someone went into town to buy, but anyway that is just a digression, I was curious to know...
PC: The Sergeant Major when I was there, was Inman. Sergeant Major Inman and of course he was in charge of the OTC with Harvey.
PR: Yes.
PC: And by then Holton had left I believe, and he went to the Isle of Wight or something. Married one of the teachers from Christ Hospital after his wife died. She died in, and of course his son Kenneth is on the school memorial. Flight Sergeant in the Royal Air Force on bombers, and he came and spoke to us in the Masters study one evening, half a dozen of us, all about his training in Canada, Kenneth did. You see there are 57 names on the memorial panel isn't there? 17 were my contemporaries, yes, yeah.
PR: You were just going to explain, I interrupted you because of the Battersea confusion, but Mr Bunt was the town's ARP…
PC: He was the Head Warden
PR: The Head Warden.
PC: Bunt was, I believe, yes, Head Warden.
PR: Were any of the other staff involved?
PC: Oh yes. Mr Baird, K A Baird commonly called taxi, he was at the report centre. Cyril Sadler was at the report centre, and Jenkins. So it was History, Maths and English were at the Report Centre, the three of them, and what we did when the siren went, cycle down there.
PR: Where, where are? Let's locate the…
PC: Millbridge, that was in 1940.
PR: Where the offices was, in the same place, yes.
PC: In 1940.
PR: In Wickham, the back of Wickham’s Brewery…
PC: Something like that…
PR: ...and Durrants the chemist.
PC: ...yes, opposite the library almost. And used to go down in the evening when the siren went and there would be the maths master, history master, English master, and we would start about half past one and we would go out to the chip shop and get some fish and chips or something. Things got quiet at half past one. We got our camp beds out, put our heads down, got up at 8 o’clock, went home, washed, put school uniform on instead of the blue battle dress we were issued with, and the first master, the first class would probably be with the master you've been up with until one thirty in the morning. So you carried on then. Amazing.
PR: It is.
PC: And that went on for weeks
PR: I'm very glad I've come here to Godalming this afternoon.
PC: That was school. Then I was called up and I went to Africa. I had nearly 3 years there and then I got home on a month’s leave, went back again to Benghazi, and then I had another, nearly another year there. Came home, time expired, was posted to the War Office and billeted in number 94 Eaton Square, South West 1. I had a big L-shaped first floor living room with two others as our bedroom and used to go cycle down to the War Office, go on teleprinter duty as a teleprinter operator and wireless operator as well. And then, when I wasn't on duty I used to get on the train, go to Streatham and spend the afternoon skating at Streatham ice rink. 19, that was it, and for a month of that I wanted to be an architect, and I got released for a month and work with a firm in Sackville Street, Piccadilly for pre-vocational training. And I finished there on the Friday or Satur...yes, the Friday. Went back to the billet and I was demobbed on the 9th of May 1947 at Woking. St Johns, Woking. So I started at Deepcut near Aldershot and finished within 5 miles at Woking.
PR: Yes, yes.
PC: Yes. Unfortunately, you know, 6 months in the Gulf or 6 months in some other country, everybody comes back with tears, and down their faces. We in the war came back after 3 years, foreign service and went back for another year. And what did our families say ‘Oh, yes, he's gone and gone abroad again’. Full stop. That was it.
PR: A different generation.
PC: A different generation.
PR: A different way of behaving. I expect the emotions are much the same really, but handled in a different way.
PC: When I got demobbed, Dad said what are you going to do? I said I want to be an architect, he said go and be one. That was the help he gave me. So I went to see Aslin, got a job at the Hertford County Council, got a letter from him, who was President of the RIBA later, and also from Mr Scott of the Northern Polytechnic in Holloway Road and got elected a probationer of the RIBA. That was in 1947. I worked in Hertford, then I worked in London, and started at the Poly in 1950. Got married in 1954, I finished at the Poly in 1955. Moved to Frinton-on-Sea in Essex and studied every night and weekends for four years, and the first examination I ever passed in my whole life was the final architects exam. That was it. Since when I have done 3 or 4 ‘O’ levels.
PR: Yes. Was your father pleased about all that, did he show his....
PC: No, I don't think so. It was just taken because Nora went to the Royal Academy and the Royal College and she has got a graduate of the Royal Schools of Music GRSM, ARAM Royal Academy, LRAM of Trinity.., of Royal College of Music, she got those and then she was under the orchestra under Henry Wood. Mum got her LTCL, my brother got his Diploma in Municipal Administration and Mimi was a secretary at the bank and then various schools after that.
PR: What has happened to your sisters?
PC: Nora died on the 8th of October 1975 and Dad died on the 21st of September 1975, three weeks beforehand. Mimi died 19…I'm not sure when she died. 1995 might have been, four years ago. She had Alzheimer's.
PR: Yes, I remember that she had it quite a long time didn't she, yes.
PC: Yes, she died.
PR: Yes, yes. I am just asking for completeness on the tape.
PC Yes, she died then and then that was Dad, Nora. Pauck, he died a year ago, didn’t he? A year ago last January.
PR: Yes, I should think so, yes, about yes, I should think probably so, yes.
PC: Had his funeral at Hunsdon Church. But he was organist at St Andrews, Bramley, tsk, Bramley, Bramley is near here, Bramfield, St Andrews Bramfield, which was Thomas Becket’s first church.
PR: Yes, and he was playing at Wareside when I went as Chairman of the Council.
PC: Was he?
PR: To a Wareside service.
PC: And he was also at Port Hill.
PR: Oh yes, Christ’s Church
PC: Christ Church. The vicar there was Major the Reverend Hill [deepens and broadens his voice]
PR: Oh [laughs].
PC: Yes. Major the Reverend Hill. There we are. At Bramfield he had Mr Bradney, Samuel Bradney.
PR: A very cheerful little chap. Oh I mean a little chap, that's patronising,
PC: But he was.
PR: He was small of stature and...
PC: He was. And very learned. Now he, um, my godmother, who was the wife of the rector of Waterford, Gaylor Davies, and she never paid any attention to my spiritual upbringing. My Godfather was Dr Cook of Southwark Cathedral, likewise. And there we are. So, Hertford Grammar, then the army, and then qualified as an architect and worked in London various firms in London, Frinton and Walton Urban District Council. Then I qualified and worked in Eastbourne and then I came here to Godalming, at Hambledon Rural, and in 9 years we did 600 houses and three old people's homes, group flatlets, me and a quantity surveyor.
PR: Gosh, so your memorial like Christopher Wren is…
PC: Got them all around the town here.
PR: Yes, and your father held his post at All Saints for a very long time.
PC: Oh, he did.
PR: I can't think how old he was when he finished you probably won't remember that.
PC: 89. Yes. oh, I used to go up into the organ loft and see him, *** I said oh no I'm enjoying it da, just love listening to the organ. Yes, I used to love that, because his voluntarys that he played were tremendous. He used to rattle the timbers. I went into St. George's Cathedral Jerusalem one day in 1944 when I was stationed there, and I walked up and watch the organist and he said ‘why are you interested in this?’ I said my Dad played this in the 14-18 War. He said what name, I said Comley, he said ‘oh, William J, All Saints Hertford.’ I said how on earth do you know? He said ‘Well, of course all his articles in the musical opinion in the Rotunda’. He was known all over the place you see, for that.
PR: Now Brian Bromley of course was a latter-day famous people, I mean he's Brian…
PC: He had a choir of about 30 something, didn’t he?
PR: Yes.
PC: And a football team he got together. I don't know if it's still doing such things.
PR: There is a football team, yes.
PC: They only had 5 or 6 when he finished, but at 80-years old it was a long time to be, over 50 years.
PR: Yes, that's different. Brian of course carried a great light because of the inspiration that your father was to him.
PC: Yes, he taught him did he, yes Brian.
PR: And certainly choirmaster when Brian was in the choir, so his music has...
PC: And Brian's mother was Joan Sharp who lived in Highfield Road, and then she went to live at Glengarriff [Number 55 the former school] in the Ware Road, and their house in Highfield Road was haunted…
PR: Oh, was it?
PC: ...by a chap on the top floor, yes, and they used to hear him walking about.
PR: Oh, I didn't know that.
PC: Yes, and her sister was, was Healing, Mrs Healing. What was her surname? And he was an architect and he was Agent to Lord Essendon, and in 1937 we went over to Vine Cottage Essendon. Had two garages, together and all his train set between the two of them which is most of it which he set up and made himself. And I thought well that's a good job architect, I think I will be an architect, design houses. That is when I started, when I was thirteen, I decided to be it.
PR: Their son Steven is a teacher at Sele School.
PC: Is he?
PR: He may just have retired but I am not sure.
PC: Nancy Healing, that was it, Nancy Healing, was there.
PR: Now, you mentioned earlier a chap you are in contact with from time-to-time who was a Battersea boy in Hertford…
PC: Geoffrey Jameson.
PR: ...now do you think he would be prepared to talk to us?
PC: If you don't mind going down to Hornsey, yes. The Reverend Geoffrey Vaughan Jameson [?]. I used to go and stay with him and his family at Gracefield Gardens, Streatham in 1941. ‘42 now…
PR: That's an address, I mean you could perhaps…
PC: ...I can tell you somebody else who was there.
PR: It would be an interesting line, wouldn't it, to get a Battersea boys view of this place they arrived at.
PC: The Right Reverend and Right Honourable John Yates, Bishop of London, now retired was a Battersea Grammar School boy. [Transcribers note: John Yates was Bishop at Lambeth]. He was also the Drum Major of the school band. Now he lives in London. Now there's John (Richard in fact) Chartres, now he is now the present Bishop, if you phoned him he will probably give you John Yates’ address and that might be easier for you to see. John Yates, and then there’s, of course there are three other Bishops from the school aren’t there?
PR: Yes, they are younger in a way.
PC: Gladwin who is at school at Guildford here and his wife Audrey Gladwin used to live up the Ware Road. [Transcribers note: Bishop John Gladwin was born in Hertford and was Bishop of Guildford 1994-2004. He is married to Lydia Elizabeth Adam, not Audrey. Reference is made in an interview with the Revd Tom Gladwin to Audrey, his Great-Aunt, born c.1910, and who may have been related to John Gladwin. See HOHG transcript Gladwin, Revd Tom (O2003.22)].
PR: Do you see anything of them?
PC: We had them to tea and I see them occasionally at some do, or at one of the churches I see old John, I tried to get him to come and play golf but, at Charterhouse I used to belong to Charterhouse, but he is seething with energy and busy, he and his wife.
PR: He is always referred to in the Church Times always on. Another one up towards Ware Road.
PC: Yes, well that was, he lived at 244 Ware Road, and Bill and Sheila Hudson lived at 248. Who’s the only people in Hertford I know now. The only people I know in Hertford are the Hudsons and Brian Wells in Ware. They are the only people I know now from school or from home, after living there 30 years. Born, bred, blown up and bombed there.
PR: Yes. Well you have made a very useful contribution to our little archive.
PC: Battersea Grammar School I don't really know about, but you'll get the best information about that from Alan Merriman, because he was there from ‘40 to ‘46 before he joined the Air Force. Air Vice-Marshal Alan Merriman.
PR: So was he a Battersea boy?
PC: No, Hertford Grammar.
PR: Yes, yes, but he would know about how the two schools cooperated?
PC: Oh yes. I met him in London and had a chat with him and it was very useful, because I had to give a talk to the local Probus club here on family history and family life and stuff. and I met old Alan to get background information on how the school knitted in with Battersea. We in the morning, part of the afternoon. Battersea part of the morning and all the afternoon, and then they worked that way. Now, if you went to the archives of the 75th Anniversary, there was a photograph, my photograph of Battersea Grammar School and Hertford Grammar School. There is one of the old OTC in 1931 when my brother was in it, and another one, three of them I sent to Charlie Malyon which I am waiting to get back.
PR: Well, it was a wonderful exhibition.
PC: It was. I couldn’t have been…
PR: In the library, the new library as it were. Tabby Blake, Ray Vanner, Taphouse…
PC: Ray Vanner, Tapper, there was Bunt, Palmer, S D Palmer, Sid Palmer whose real name was Stanley,
PR: I never knew that until recently.
PC: I keep in touch with Gillian, his daughter, occasionally. Who is now a grandmother and he was very proud of being a great grandfather. Lived in Bradford on Avon.
PR: Is it Gillian? I thought it was Sheila. Sheila Palmer?
PC: I don’t know.
PR: That's somebody else.
PC: Now Gillian, we used to travel back on the train from London, we used to get on the train at twenty to ten at Finsbury Park, and she was at some training place or something, and we used to get out of the train at Hertford North at nearly half past ten. And the bus of course drew away just as the train was coming in, so you couldn't catch ..and she and I used to walk all the way up the Ware Road at half-past ten, quarter to eleven at night.
PR: Oh, he lived in Woodlands or something like, yes, yes, I’d forgotten he moved to Hertfordbury, in his last years of teaching.
PC: He did. Now my best friend at Hertford Grammar School was John Elliott, who lived at 8 Stanstead Road, fourth house along and he was killed on the gunsight on the 14th of February 1945 by a phosphorus bomb or shell, and he was an only child, John was. Ginger haired he was in the ARP with me.
PR: That’s the houses with the green roofs.
PC: Green roofs, yes. Oh, John. Awfully nice chap and he got killed then, on that gunsight, and he was just going off to get a commission to become a regular soldier, John was. [John Elliott is listed in the Richard Hale Association Second World War Book of Remembrance as a gunner in the Royal Horse Artillery and died when his plane came down and crashed in Belgium. He was buried in Belgium with the rest of his crew].
PR: I talked to someone last night in Bengeo whose brother was killed a week before the end of the war, and she received the telegram at home, she was at home with her mother, to the sound of the celebratory bells in Holy Trinity...
PC: May 8th, 1945, yes.
PR: ...and, as the bells were ringing, the doorbell rang and she was given this telegram just at that…
PC: Who else was there, oh, I knew a lot of those Tybjerg, Marius Tybjerg, I believe he’s the Gurkha regiment or something, so I'm told. [Transcribers note: Marius Tybjerg died 15.3.1944 in Burma. He was a Major in the 9th Jat Regiment (an infantry regiment of the British Indian Army)].
PR: Yes. These are names only to me on the board at school in my day.
PC: Yes, oh these are people I knew; you know.
PR: I tended to think it was much much earlier, but it was only a few years before in the early 50s was it, really, it just seemed two generations back more than just a decade, less than a decade.
Tape ends
There was a second recording done with Patrick some years later but it is not fully transcribed as much of it is a repeat of this. The summary is as follows.
There are references to the landmine that was dropped 1940 and which killed 5. There is also reference to the Millbridge VI which severely damaged the Report Centre where his sister was working and she had to crawl from the wreckage. These are covered above.
He talks of Fairfax Road, the bus garage and bus routes.
There is some family history (including being thrown out of Hertford in 1954 by his father's second wife).
There is an interesting story about his mother and how she coped in the great depression - Bates allowed her a weekly food parcel in the knowledge that she would pay the bill when she had the money. The bill was finally repaid in full in 1953. Again covered above.
There is reference to his war service fire watching in Hertford before being conscripted then north Africa/Mediterranean, getting a Maltese George Cross (though with no sense of what for) as before covered above.
And somewhere in the middle of all this is a comment about the Queen Mother shopping at Rose's in Bull Plain and on occasion accompanied by younger members of her family including the current Queen. But that is all there is - just a comment that the QM shopped at Rose's and that the Strathmore's live at St Pauls Walden.