Interviewed by Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)
Date: 25/11/1999
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1999.28
Interviewee: Rene Robinson (RR)
Date: 25th November 1999
Venue: 32 Bircherley Court, Hertford
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: Thursday 25th November 1999, Jean Riddell speaking, and I’m at the home of Miss Rene Robinson of no 32 Bircherley Court right in the centre of town of Hertford and I’m going to speak to Rene this afternoon about her childhood in the town, in the ‘20s and ‘30s as well, and all her memories that she’s got of the town at that time. So if you’d like to start by telling us when you came to the town.
RR: I was 3 and my father came here to manage Eastmans the butchers at the corner of Honey Lane and we lived over the top and I remember in those days there was no tap in the living quarters at all, only the loo, and I could never understand that, why we’d got the loo but we hadn’t got any other water. It all had to come from a tap at the back of the shop. I always remember that my mother used to do her washing and carry it up three flights of stairs to the attic. My mother’s washing was really Persil white and I often wonder now how she managed it. We did have water in the end. The walls were lath and plaster. My brother and I were always told not to go near the walls because they moved. We’d been there a few years and they had new floors in the shop and offices at the back, so we were marooned all one Sunday and when they got back to basics it was all oak beams. It took 2 men all that Sunday to saw through one of the beams.
JR: So, the floorboards came up, did they?
RR: Yes, the floorboards came up and the joists underneath.
JR: Yes, so did you need new floorboards then?
RR: They put the new floor in, you see, put the modern stuff down. Standing on the bottom step of our stairs and being dared, don’t you dare walk off that step or you’ll fall through to the basement.
JR: So, did they get the floor in the shop done in one day ready for trading the next day?
RR: I don’t think it opened the next day because Monday afternoons the butchers always closed, Monday afternoons and Thursday afternoons in those days and the managers of the shops all lived over the shops. Gravesons didn’t, but the next shop was a jewellers, it finished up as Sykes jewellers but it belonged to someone named Garrett. His mother was very tall and Queen Mary was on the throne in those day, and this dear old lady used to remind me of her. She’d got beautiful grey hair and she used to have it done up on top of her head and she used to wear one of those wide collars like Queen Mary used to wear and she did used to dress like her and she was a very regal sort of lady. Being a child, I used to look at her and think you are like Queen Mary. And then, you see, where the Woolwich is now, that was the International and it went right through to Market Place and the manager lived over there, we lived over no 9, and the Old Coffee House Tavern, I can’t quite remember but they had sort of bay windows, if they opened them they could sort of sit on the window sills and it was such a short distance between the two. This window then was a bay window but it’s now flat and there was a seat all round that so we used to sit and open our window , they used to sit on theirs and we used to talk to one another.
JR: Just across the alleyway [Honey Lane].
RR: And there was a little boy there about the same age as I was and I was always invited to his parties because in those days kids didn’t have parties like they do now, it was a real high day.
JR: Was that in the Coffee Inn, or upstairs?
RR: That was upstairs, children weren’t allowed in downstairs.
JR: No, but I just wondered if in the afternoon they took it over for the party [then licensing hours were 10:30am to 2pm and 6pm to 10 or 10:30]. What was his name, can you remember?
RR: I think it was Greenwood. In the 1920s there was 5 butchers and 5 grocers in Maidenhead Street alone. And then there was one at the top of Honey Lane and one across the square. I think one of the earliest memories I have when I was first taken to the shop we had what they called a Tansad pram in those days and I can remember being pushed down Railway Street to the shop because ‘til the living premises had been redecorated we couldn’t live there so we had rooms in Villiers Street, no 15 and I remember there was nothing in this [living quarters] only a gas stove and it was in a little alcove and in those days stoves used to stand on legs and what did I do? Fall over and cut me head open on one of the legs. That is my first memory. My parents were very thrilled about it because it was the first home of their own because the living accommodation, housing situation was almost as bad as it is now.
JR: How much accommodation was there up there?
RR: Sitting room, that was a very big room, went right over the actual shop, it had a very old fashioned fireplace, but when I say went over the shop, not as the shop is now, the bit beyond this, which is now the smallest window before you get to that door, was the office. Then we had another room which we called the kitchen, we really lived in it, we only went into the other room when the day was done and then the loo was 3 steps up as you go to the next floor, no such thing as a bathroom. You’d got one very big bedroom over the shop and a smaller one, then there was the attic which was exactly the same, you could have used it if you wanted to but I don’t remember we ever did use it.
JR: Then you had a yard, did you?
RR: No, we didn’t.
JR: So where was this tap you were talking about?
RR: You went through the shop and across where the cellar steps were there was a sort of little outhouse, sink, the tap was there. I think it was something to do with the pipes, though.
JR: Yet they got water up to flush a loo.
RR: Yes, now I think my mother must have worked very very hard. She told me, when I was older, when I was doing some washing, she said you’ll never make a good washer, you don’t use enough water. (Pause)
JR: Now you showed me when I came in, 3 photographs – this is the earliest one.
RR: This is the earliest one I can remember.
JR: This is of Honey Lane and it shows bow fronted shop (windows).
RR: And this is the Coffee House, well this was Harveys, ironmongers, I suppose you’d call them, all that sort of thing, now this was a sweet shop and it’d got a bay window, 3 steps and we used to go there for our sweets and it was run by a family called Dewberry, one of their sons was a journalist for the Mercury, then this was a gentlemen’s hairdressers and then where [Evron Place] Halifax was, was a grocers and there was a doorway at the side of that which led upstairs but they didn’t actually live there, it was let to someone else, then what came next, Sindens I think outfitters, the other shop at the end.
JR: Botsford’s was there.
RR: Oh, Botsford’s, they came, they must have pulled something down between the grocers shop because Botsford’s built their shop next to the grocer’s shop, that was later on. This was Botsford’s as I knew it as a child.
JR: On the corner.
RR: Yes, and they kept that on as well. It hadn’t been opened long when the new shop caught fire.
JR: Oh, so that was a new building that burned down.
RR: Yes, not more than 10 years.
JR: It burned down during the war [1940].
RR: Wait a minute, I should say late ‘30s. Because the little girl who lived over the grocer’s shop, they had to move out and she was still at school and she is now 72. I can’t remember what was on the corner which is now a building society but it’s the work above that, have you seen it, it’s marvellous [pargetting] and there used to be a sweet shop as you went towards the Memorial I remember. Somebody called Swan and there were several little shops up there, one where Bruton House [Boynton House] became a ladies dress shop, in those days was a gentlemen’s tailor….
JR: Bespoke tailor?
RR: Yes, that was three, well they’ve still got the bay windows, those little shops along there that belonged to this man and that’s how Bruton (sic) House got its name.
JR: You don’t mean Boynton?
RR: Yes, one of them’s a hairdressers now, I think – all bay windows haven’t they?
JR: I think Bruton’s was the tailor whose premises had to be demolished when they built the War Memorial. We had a tape made by Pauline Sledge – she lived behind you?
RR: Yes, that was George Lines [chemist in Market Place] And did you interview ……she was Florence Fisher.
JR: Oh yes, Flo Beetham.
RR: Before she came to work there, there was a gentleman named Dr Sharp, whether he was a doctor of chemistry in a shop or whether it was a nickname he got, he was a dapper little man and if anybody’d got anything wrong they used to say oh go and see Dr Sharp, he’ll know what to do and I don’t know whether Adams came next or whether it was someone else but Mr Sledge’s mother and father came there – I think that’s when Florence worked there, I can remember her very very well when I was at school, she has not altered one atom. [Agreed, Flo was so youthful!] You asked whether we had a yard, no we didn’t but if we looked out of our loo window, it was like a square but it was right from the ground right up to the top of the buildings.
JR: Like a well, really.
RR: Yes, and they used to say whatever you do, don’t fall down there because we can’t get you out.
JR: Did anybody have access?
RR: No, the only way you could get out of it would be to climb out of Evan’s larder, or our loo window, but if you fell, I suppose they could get ropes.
JR: OK, then you showed me this other one, it’s a postcard of Honey Lane in the early ‘30s is that right?
RR: Yes.
JR: And there’s a picture of the shop which is Eastman’s, which I think Peter (Ruffles) has already got a copy of.
RR: This one, you can see the – what would you call it?
JR: Tiling?
RR: Tiling, you see you can tell the age of this picture by the car at the top.
JR: Oh yes it definitely looks late ‘20s, early ‘30s.
RR: Then Tabe’s was next to us, radio people.
JR: So, all those shop keepers lived above their properties.
RR: You see, it was like a little community of your own. In Maidenhead Street, the International, they lived over the shop, we lived over the top, the people in the Inn, they lived there. Now in the very early days, not long after we moved there was a butchers, another butchers, and it’d got a beautiful bay window, I think that closed down soon after we came here – Coopers came next.
JR: That was going down Maidenhead Street [towards The Wash] I just want to tell the listener that Rene was saying a cat could walk from one roof to another across Honey Lane, there were 2 buildings whose roofs almost touched overhead and you said earlier on about your window boxes.
RR: Yes, those window boxes were there when we came and so we didn’t know how long they’d been there but my mum put some plants out and it was a very cold Sunday morning there was a terrible crash and all this lot had all dropped down onto the path beneath and I remember this policeman coming and telling my father off, think yourself lucky it was a Sunday morning it it’d hit anybody you would have been in trouble, old boy. My poor father hadn’t been there long enough to know.
JR: He wasn’t the owner, was he, he was only the manager, it would have not been his responsibility, surely.
RR: No, the police, what they were like in those days I remember the policeman saying that. We never put it back again but there is a very very old photograph taken with a horse and cart and a little lad standing with a cap holding the reins and you can see that thing that blew down in that. Then Coopers didn’t live over their shop.
JR: What would Coopers be now?
RR: Well it would be where the perfumery shop is now next to the shoe shop. Then there was Drurys. It wasn’t such a big shop as it is now. Next to that was a very old-fashioned shoe shop, a couple of steps up and they used to hang the shoes on the outside of the shop, now what was that name? Grattons. Then came the opening it’s still an opening between Drurys and [MacDonalds] well there used to be that opening then next to that was a high class jewellers, his name was Mr Brett but everyone called him Unky Brett and up this yard he’d got the 3 balls hanging out because he’d got a ….
JR: Pawnbrokers?
RR: Yes, and then where Boots is now, a butchers shop called Stallabrass and that stood out exactly like Boots does now. And then we’d got the Green Dragon Hotel and a Mr Creese kept that and there was a shop on the corner where the betting shop is now and I can’t remember the name when I was a tiny child but I know the electric light people had it and the last people who had it were the Scotch Wool.
JR: I was interested in the Green Dragon – perhaps when it finished being used as a hotel the shops would have been let out at the bottom but, were there always shops at the bottom? Was the hotel functioning?
RR: Oh yes, it was a ground level. You can always tell. If you look round the bottom windows you’ll find that they’ve got green tiles, well the Green Dragon had quite a lot of those tiles, columns sticking out and if you look at the Green Dragon and the shop they were eventually one because it’s all the same. And of course, in the Wash round the corner, that was called Green Dragon Yard that was part of the Green Dragon.
[What JR was trying to ask was, was the Green Dragon Hotel above the shops or did it once occupy, also the premises now occupied by shops].
RR: Pratts were on the other side, it was a lovely shop knitting wool, pencils, they sold everything in that line, I’m almost sure they sold paraffin as well. Coming up Maidenhead Street next to that was a little wooden door and that’s where the Scoley children always came out of there. But Scoley’s shop was round in the Wash. It was a gentlemens’s outfitters and it’s the building – it almost looks to me as if it was Dutch [Mansard roof] their children always used to come out of that little door, I think it’s still there, and now the man’s shop next to it was a sweet shop. 2 ladies kept it, I think they were maiden ladies and then came Walkers Stores.
Side B
JR: So, you’re up as far as present-day Woolworths but it was the Maidenhead Inn.
RR: That was burned down one night, I remember that.
JR: The Maidenhead was burned down?
RR: The Maidenhead Inn, yes, very old. I remember that quite plainly because my mother came to me and told me to I’d got to get up and I said it’s the middle of the night and she said yes but get up and dress yourself because there’s a fire further down the street. So I got up and dressed myself and I should think it was 1930 because my brother was still in a cot and the cot was beside my parents bed, he couldn’t have been more than 3, my mother was getting quite agitated and I remember my father sitting on the edge of the bed. He was dressed, he was fiddling with his collar and tie because they used to wear stiff white collars in those days and I remember my mother saying to him Dad, what are you doing? So, he said I can’t get me tie right. And I remember my mother saying there’s a fireman down there in the middle of the road, trousers tied up with string, I’m sure no one’s going to know if you’ve got your tie on straight! But we didn’t have to get out, they got it under control. And then they built Woolworths. Any spare time I’d got I used to sit in that window and watch them build it. It’s bigger now than it was because between Walkers Stores was another man’s drapers called Hepworths and that’s how Woolworths extended you see. I’ve got to Woolworths now, haven’t I? then there’s a yard, Adams Yard.
JR: No, wait a minute, isn’t that leading to Maidenhead Yard the one next to Woolworths? Adams is the next one up.
RR: And then there was the Co-op, which was then their grocery, their butchery and their dairy and the manager of the butchery lived over the top. Now where do we go next, International? No, Home and Colonial came next.
JR: But you came up eventually to Dolphin Yard?
RR: No, I’m sure it was the Home and Colonial next, the one on the corner of Dolphin Yard was a butchers and it was called the B & A in the end it got Dewhurst’s name.
JR: Were you aware of people living down in Dolphin Yard? Could you see it from your window?
RR: No, I don’t know how many people lived down there, there was 1 or 2 very nice families lived down there. One family named Day, and Laws and another lot a very quiet little family. But not every Sunday afternoon but every now and again you used to get a free fight at the top of Dolphin Yard. There was 2 families living down there and they used to come out the pubs about half past two and they used to have a free fight, but next morning it was all over and when we actually moved in the shop at the corner of Dolphin Yard which is now part of Edinburgh Woollen Mill, that had been burned down before we moved. [Transcribers note: an ancient inn was on the site, converted to a shop, Arnold Thomas draper and burned down in 1917.] the shop that was rebuilt, Currys came to it, next to that was Yates, dyers and cleaners then Pearks then Hiltons and Boots, and in those days Boots upstairs also went over the top of the Oxfam shop, they did have a library, a very good library in those days and it was also used for the assistants rest room.
I was about 4 and I took it into my head that everything I had to eat had got to be in a bag. My mother took me to the doctor, he said don’t worry about it, it’s only a fad I’m sure, if you could find out why she wants it in a bag. Do you know why? Because I used to sit near our window and look straight into that window and the assistants used to bring their lunch and eat it out of a bag. But that bit has been bricked up, it is now part of Oxfam. I remember there was a fair at the bottom of Bull Plain, right at the bottom, because you see the Zeppelin [bombs] in the 1st World War came down there. I only remember it being there once, and of course the market was always in Bull Plain in those days and when it went from there it went up Railway Street. Did anyone ever mention the Welcome? [yes] Well they pulled something down next to that and left this big space and that’s where the open market used to be, but it used to be in Bull Plain. Where was the covered market and stalls in Railway Street as well.
JR: Do you remember the old disused pub in Railway Street, The Angel. [No]
RR: There were so many pubs in Railway Street.
JR: Well this was an especially big one. It housed a number of families who worked at McMullens. We [Oral History] have a book about that but not many people seem to remember it. [Transcribers note – possibly it was the building demolished for the market space]. So, what was life like in the town – did you socialise much?
RR: We were a little community on our own really. International lived over the shop, Garretts lived there, we lived there, then the next people were Stallabrasses they lived over the shop and the man at the Green Dragon, I don’t think anybody lived over Pratts, 2 maiden ladies in a little sweet shop.
JR: Did you actually go and visit each other, or go out together? Who did you play with apart from the little boy at the Coffee Inn.
RR: Nobody really. When you live over a shop your parents have to dress you and take you out and we used to go down to the Castle Grounds and if we’d got a bit more time we used to go down to Hartham. You see Brett’s owned their property, Scoley I presume owned his.
JR: But you weren’t allowed to go down and play on the street?
RR: Oh no. And then you started school at 5 and found friends.
JR: So where did you start school?
RR: I went to the Convent School to start with it was in St John’s Street, now at Hertingfordbury. It was Catholic and they used to have so much religious teaching and my father didn’t think I was getting on very well. It slipped out that when they were going to have Religious Education {RE} all us others used to have to go out and sit in the corridor and that didn’t suit my father.
JR: This was the actual Convent School, not the one attached to the church.
RR: Not the one that’s now up North Road, it’s the one that’s over at Hertingfordbury [In Rene’s time it was in St John’s Street, but opposite the church and church school].
JR: Was that fee paying?
RR: Yes, they sent me there because of my leg, I hadn’t had the operation then and I walked on my toe.
JR: Oh, what happened to your let?
RR: I was born with it 2” shorter than the other one. That’s why they thought it was a good thing, but I finished up at the ordinary school.
JR: Which school was that?
RR: I went to Miss Fears first – have you heard of that?
JR: No, where was that?
RR: Well, it was called the Infants School then – how can I tell you where it is?
JR: What’s there now?
RR: I’m not sure how many schools there are, there’s one right at the top of the hill – the Abel Smiths.
JR: Oh, up there! It wasn’t All Saints Infants was it?
RR: Yes, well I don’t know whether there’s another school between Abel Smith and the churchyard or not.
JR: Well, yes the first one along there was the old Grammar School.
RR: Yes, and when they moved they turned that into Longmore School and that’s now a teachers’ something.
JR: Whether it’s still what it was a year or two ago I was doing some research and I went up there and it was a centre for children who were excluded from school, they were there to give them a bit of extra attention.
RR: Then you see opposite St John’s Hall there is another school. The house that stands there that was part of the Infants School.
JR: It became Faudel Phillips, didn’t it? Then further up there was Abel Smith School which was for girls.
RR: Yes, I went up there. That was between 8 and 11 I think. Then I was just the right age when they opened Longmore and I went there.
JR: By 1931 they decided to have secondary and primary schools. It is confusing because all these changes in education came at that time. So, you stayed at Longmore’s?
RR: ‘til I leave.
JR: When you went to school who were your friends?
RR: Daphne Foster, she lived in the Folly, it was a big family and I used to go down there and then I had a friend called Kathleen Head and her father was the manager of Singers in Fore Street.
JR: Sewing machines.
RR: It was a greengrocer’s recently. Now they lived over the top of the shop and if ever I got in any trouble it was always connected with that girl, she must have mesmerised me, if she told me to do anything I’d do it and yet I wasn’t that kind of child, I’d got a mind of me own. I remember we came home from school one day and it started to rain when it started to rain at the corner of Church Street. Well, I’d only got to cross the road and go down Honey Lane and I’d be home. She said you’d better come to our house and fetch umbrella. And I went, right up to that house to fetch an umbrella when I could have gone home. When I got there her mother wouldn’t let me come home because it rained so much.
JR: Yes, and that was before telephones.
RR: I got in trouble when I got home because my mother was worried where I was, father went up to the school. I got a telling off at home and then when I went back to the school I got another telling off.
JR: So, who else did you know, she wasn’t your only friend?
RR: No. then they moved away. There’s a gentleman comes to Evergreen Club downstairs. He came up to me one day and said you don’t remember me do you Rene. No, sorry I don’t. My name’s Prior/Pryor he said, we were in the same class at school. I still can’t place him.
JR: You haven’t got any school photographs, in class?
RR: No. I’ve got one of the whole school. I don’t quite know where it is.
JR: I just thought you might be able to spot him on that.
RR: The one I’ve got was when I was at the girls’ school. But you seem when we went to Longmore’s School the boys used to come from Bengeo way, that end of the town and the girls used to come from this end of the town.
JR: What about church, did you family go to church?
RR: Oh yes, I’ve been going to All Saints since I was 3 until just recently when I can’t get out. Easter my mum used to decorate the font because in those days we all went to church. And after we’d been to church on Good Friday morning my brother and I used to go with my mother over the fields to collect moss because there wasn’t any of the foam in them days. Used to put moss at the bottom of these troughs to put flowers in to keep watered.
Then what was the next thing I did? I was confirmed, that’s right. It was the Revd. Landulph Smith. You used to have to go to classes for it in them days and we used to go up to the vicarage. He was a very tall gentleman and if you were a minute late getting there [inaudible] but I give him his due – he didn’t keep you a minute over time, he used to have a watch on a chain, he’d take it off and put it on the table. And he prepared us for confirmation. The week before we were confirmed, the last time we had the class he gave us a little book. He died in that week before we were confirmed and in those days your vicar always went with you to the Bishop, and our little curate, he had to take us and I think he was more nervous than we were.
JR: What was his name? [Rene cannot remember]. Where did you have to go for your confirmation?
RR: All Saints. Yes, and what did I do next? During the war I was a Sunday School teacher because we weren’t allowed to hold them in the hall, so mother allowed me to have them at home.
JR: How many [children] did you have?
RR: I suppose we had 12.
JR: Were you still over the shop?
RR: No, Villiers Street by then. We moved from Maidenhead Street when I wasn’t quite 16, that would be 1935, ’36.
JR: So, you started off in Villiers Street. Temporarily.
RR: Then we moved back to no 11, 2 doors away and then we stayed in Villiers Street until I moved, we’d been there 57 years. We moved as a family and I’m the only one left.
JR: Do you know the Osbornes in Villiers Street [yes]. I interviewed Mrs Osborne before she died.
RR: Yes, they’re Hertford people, I knew her sister in law that used to live at the top. Then we used to go fire watching from church during the war. By then I’d joined the youth club. Then I finished up, 16 years as voluntary verger.
JR: What were your duties then?
RR: Oh well, you didn’t do anything on a Sunday you had a rota you had your turn about every 4 months you just did things in the week like a wedding, funerals, but now you see I can’t get there unless somebody fetches me. I don’t think I’m all that religious but you see in those days you were brought up to go to church it became part and parcel of your life. When I first started Sunday School I was over the shop.
JR: So, do you remember anything about your dad’s job, did you have any funny stories about the customers.
RR: Yes. My father was a very meek and mild man. I remember one day the lad who was training as a butcher, widows, old people, didn’t have much money in those days and I think my father was serving some old lady, I assume it was a Saturday, and after she’d gone out this lad said to my father, Oh Mr Robinson you spent a lot of time with that old lady and she only spent half a crown. So, my father said she’d only got half a crown to spend. She’s as much right as anyone else to have what she wants for Sunday lunch. You must remember she comes in every Saturday and spends her half a crown. People like her pay your wages and mine. ½ dozen people like her come every week and its more beneficial to us than someone who comes in twice a year and spends £50 and you never get the money. And he said if you want to work in here, son, you’ll have to remember that. And I’ve never forgotten it because I stood at the bottom of the stairs and heard it.
I remember the General Strike in ’26, so I must have been 6. Being a General Strike the military used to have to come out, the man with the meat they had to have a soldier with them. And it must have been late because it was dark, I was in bed, I must have been awake and he got me out of bed and he wrapped me in a blanket and he carried me downstairs, out of this door and onto the pavement. An old van with a canvas top and in the front seat next to the driver sat a soldier and my father said to me there you are my duck that gentleman is a real soldier and it was the first soldier I’d seen. I don’t know what else I can tell you.
JR: Well, we’re coming to the end of this tape. I’ll switch off and then if you want to put another one on, I will, and if not I can come back another time.
RR: I don’t know if all this is of any interest.
TAPE 2
JR: Even though you moved to Villiers Street your father stayed running the butchers.
RR: They sold that shop soon after we moved and then my father went to Hoddesdon to work for Dewhurst.
JR: And what did this then become after it stopped being a butchers?
RR: I know Findlay’s had it because I think there’s a photograph about but I don’t know whether they took it first then there was a cake and bread people named Notts. Then it became Seasons. I don’t know what it is now, a jeweller’s?
JR: Yes, so when your father left there to go to Hoddesdon, did he go on the bus?
RR: Green line.
JR: Yes, and you didn’t feel tempted to move to Hoddesdon?
RR: No.
JR: When you left school what did you do?
RR: Well, I got a job at Munnings the china shop in Fore Street and the Saturday before I should have started work I developed mumps. So, I sat in the County Cinema and felt mumps come up. I don’t know how long I was away but I did work for Munnings. Mr Munnings was a very tall gentleman and he was in the choir at All Saints. Well, I’d got to be confirmed and I’d got to ask for some time off so I asked him and he said as it’s for confirmation, yes, you may go. There was an open fire in the actual shop. The dear old lady next door would come and light it, used to have to keep it going all day. He had 2 sons but one was out in Australia and he came home and I must give Mr Munnings his due, he said I’m sorry, there won’t be enough work for you when my son comes back but, he said, I’ve been to see my cousin who kept Old Cross Post Office. His wife had the fancy shop, been there donkey’s years, and he kept the Post Office, so I give Mr Munnings his due, he got me a job.
JR: Were you in the Post Office or the other one?
RR: I used to be in both, she was one side and he was in the Post Office but I used to notice that whenever I went and did anything in the Post Office, Mrs Munnings, she used to be a bit awkward, I came from a home we didn’t squabble or anything and I couldn’t stand the atmosphere.
JR: What was she doing, then, just watching you?
RR: She wanted me to do something for her – she’d got that side, the fancy goods shop – I went there as a general assistant, you see and if things got busy in the Post Office he used to say [he needed help?] and she didn’t like that. And of course, being a Post Office you were always doing overtime, I never knew, because after he side had shut, you see, she didn’t mind. I remember we used to have to count all the pension slips, had to count the money and make it come right and I couldn’t settle there. So, I suppose people would say I lowered myself – I loved shop work and still do. I sought around for a job and I found I could go to work at Woolworths 2 days, Friday and Saturday and I’d earn more there than I’d earn in a week. I know people didn’t think much of people who went to work at Woolworths but I was very happy there and in those days they were a very good firm to work for, they paid the biggest wage. I stayed there until the beginning of the war. When I first went there I wasn’t 18 and in those days if you were under 18 you were supposed to work only so many hours a week and they kept open until 9 on a Saturday so I was allowed Thursday morning off because Thursday afternoon was early closing anyway. Used to have the whole of Thursday off and the other girls used to call me a baby.
I stayed there till the beginning of the war and of course I was the right age to be called up. They wouldn’t have me in the Forces because of my leg so I thought where can I go. Living over the shop opposite Boots, I’d always wanted to work at Boots, any rate there was a vacancy there and I went and she said oh yes Miss Robinson, you’re just the sort of person we’re looking for, as far as I’m concerned you can start work on Monday but don’t build your hopes up too much because I’m afraid they won’t let you come. I forget what it was, but if you were at the right age they controlled you. Any rate I applied and they turned me down so the next thing to do they sent to Addises because part of Addises in the war belonged to Murphys of Welwyn Garden City and they used to make wirelesses for the planes. Old lady Addis – ‘cos I’d never been in a factory in my life – went into this hut place and these girls putting this [inaudible] and I thought I could never do that and she took me outside and said this isn’t for you is it, Missy? She said I think I’ve got a little job for you in the factory, it’s still war work, you’ll be alright.
In those days Addises used to make the brushes for the War Office to go out to the troops, stamped with W.O. So, she got me into the filling shop where they were doing these, they used to do them in boxes in grosses, they used to bring them to me and I used to have to record each one. Then right at the end of the war my mother died, so, I stayed at Addises. I’d no intention of staying at Addises but living just over the road, they used to pay you for the hours you did, I didn’t do full time. I stayed at Addises for 37 years. When I was first directed there I said to my dad, I don’t know how I’m going to stick it and said well dear I’m afraid until the war’s finished you’ll have to. When the war’s finished I promise you, you can leave. But as my mother died and I’d got a brother 7 years younger than me, I stayed there.
JR: Was your father still alive?
RR: Yes. My mother was 51, he was 52, when he was 60, he had a stroke and he was semi-invalid for the rest of his life and died at 81.
JR: Oh, so you had him to look after. What about your brother, did he stay or get married?
RR: He’d got the looks and he also got the brains because I used to say I must have been behind the door when they were given out. He won a scholarship to go to the grammar school and he wanted to do architecture so he studied. Because in those days you didn’t go straight from school to college your parents had to pay, we weren’t rich and we weren’t poor so my brother took a job. He went to County Hall first and then he got a job in London because he could go to night school in London so for 3 nights a week he used to walk from the North Station at 12 o’clock at night. Any rate he got through his exams all right, got his letters for architecture, then he dies at 50.
JR: He died at 50? But did he get married and have a family?
RR: Yes.
JR: Have you got some nephews and nieces?
RR: I’ve got one nephew and one niece, that’s my sister in law, brother’s wife.
JR: Oh yes. Who’s the man with the grey hair?
RR: That’s my nephew and he’s the spitting image of his father and that’s his young lady. No, this is my sister in law’s new husband [grey hair]. My brother had been dead 20 years when she re-married. She’d been married before my brother so this one’s her 3rd husband. This is my niece.
JR: How long ago was that taken?
RR: About 12 months ago. I felt a bit guilty putting that up, I thought I’m not being very loyal to my brother. Well, he always used to say when you’re dead you’re dead. My nephew and niece have grown up and living their own lives I should think it’d be a good thing to do [to re-marry] because you’ll be lonely. She did her bit, she brought my brother’s because Francis was 4 ½ and Ian was not quite 3, so she’s done her bit.
JR: Yes. To go back to your like, when you were first working what kind of social life did you have, did you go to dances.
RR: No, I’ve never been able to dance. I used to the Hertford Drama Week and it used to be in the Grammar School in those days or Richard Hale as it is now.
JR: So, you went to watch, you weren’t taking part?
RR: Oh no, I used to go and watch.
JR: Has your leg seriously impeded your…
RR: I went to an ordinary school but I always found I was a little bit behind everybody else, and there were certain things in PT I couldn’t do.
JR: But you could walk to school and back.
RR: Yes, until a few years ago I’ve been able to walk unaided, that’s what gets me now. Really, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to do it.
JR: So, that was one of your interests, going to the theatre, not the cinema? Pictures?
RR: Oh, ah, tell you now. I was 7 when my brother was born but until then (inaudible) Castle Cinema was in The Wash and when we first went it was silent pictures. There used to be a very tall lady who used to go down Maidenhead Street about ½ an hour before it started and she used to play a violin.
JR: What was her name? [cannot remember].
RR: And the seat, they’d got backs at the top, this bit was open and the seats used to spring up, because I was a frail little thing in them days and we went to the cinema on a Thursday afternoon because it was Dad’s ½ day. And I must have been playing about, I must have moved so the seat sprang back with me on it and I went through the back and finished up on the man’s feet behind.
JR: Oh, you went right through!
RR: Always getting my parents into trouble, I was then you see, the talkies came and I think the first picture I saw in talkies was – man who used to black his face.
JR: Al Jolson? [Yes!] who are your favourite film stars then?
RR: Oh, I like the old ones. People’s voices fascinate me. I used to love to hear James Mason talking. He used to send me – he quite handsome too. And Clark Gable and Diana Durban.
JR: My mother used to like Douglas Fairbanks.
RR: Yes, of course they really had to act in those days, they’d got nothing to help them, had they. Diana Wyngard I used to like.
JR: Were you pro-British films, or did you not mind what you saw?
RR: I prefer British.
JR: It was quite a popular pastime was it, a lot of people went to the cinema?
RR: Nothing much else to do.
JR: Was that the best one to go to?
RR: The Castle when we lived over the shop was the best one, then there was one in Market Street, it was called the Regent, everybody called it the flea – pit. When you were about 15 or 16 if you got into the balcony you’d think you were somebody. They used to say there was a balcony there.
JR: In the Regent?
RR: It was a piece of wood abut that height from the floor and the first film I saw there was Nelson Eddy and ….
JR: Jeannette McDonald?
RR: Yes, in the Student Prince? No, Red Shadow?
JR: Wasn’t Brigadoo, was it?
RR: No, she’d got a lovely voice, that was the first film I saw there.
JR: They had people entertaining in the interval. Somebody told me about Pecker Farrow playing the drums.
RR: Didn’t he play the Jews harp?
JR: Yes, it might be, and somebody called Mrs Bridle – Lake.
RR: Ooh, yes, she was a singer.
JR: I know that the Regent, before it was the Regent was the Premier Playhouse so I’m not sure if people are remembering it as a music hall or as a cinema, when they say Mrs Bridle – Lake came and sang. It’s possible that they did have this interval when they changed the reels. Who was the Manager of the Regent?
RR: I didn’t go to the Regent much. When you’ve gone I shall remember all the things I should have said. The Judge of the Assizes came and if we were having a meal it was the only time we were allowed to leave it. Usually we’d got some idea when he was likely to be there, if not we used to chase up Honey Lane and round the corner. And before they altered the town hall, opposite George Lines there used to be 3 steps and a door that’s gone now. In very early times he used to come with 2 footmen standing at the back [of a carriage] all in …..[pause]
JR: All in? Livery?
RR: Livery. Then there used to be a trumpeter and as he started to get out the [carriage] the trumpeter used to blow his trumpet. He used to get out all in his robes and go up 3 steps and in by that door. That used to happen 4 times a day.
JR: Where did he stay?
RR: Bengeo.
JR: What, Revels Hall or Bengeo Hall?
RR: I could find that out ‘cos I know someone – the people that lived there had to evacuate it, he had all his own staff. Nobody was allowed to contact him.
JR: No, he had to be neutral. Did you ever see any prisoners going in?
RR: I think I did once, they used to come out the door – there are cells underneath, I used to stand watching, it was terrible, I couldn’t imagine it, a different world to what I was used to. The shop door there now’s a proper door but it wasn’t {Rene explains that the door she knew was protected by a mesh outer door – the door was taken off in daytime and the mesh left]. This was the only door, we had to come through the shop for everything. Now there’s a door here and that leads straight to the staircase.
JR: You could have done with that door.
RR: We used to have to take everything through the shop and when we moved they had to take this window out and furniture had to come out there.
JR: Where did you father keep all his meat, were there any refrigerators or cold boxes?
RR: Towards the end there was. I can remember them bringing the slabs of ice but not what happened to it afterwards. My father was a crack shot, he belonged to the Hertford Rifle Club [if they were shooting away he brought the rifle home and he left it on a wide stair ½ way up]. My brother and I were so scared we used to jump that step!
TAPE ENDS.