Interviewed by Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) and Eddie Roche (ER)
Date: 07/11/2003
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2003.21
Interviewee: John Draper (JD)
Date: 7th November 2003
Venue: 11 Admiral Street, Hertford
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR) and Eddie Roche (ER)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Corin Jones
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: It’s the 7th November and we’re at No11 Admiral Street. I thought you might begin by telling us about Lime Kiln Cottages [where John grew up].
JD: I was born in Kimpton and came to Hertford in the First WW, to Ware actually, then they got this house [at Lime Kiln] when I was about five. Norrises houses along there at that time.
ER: Can you remember - were the pits and the kilns in use at that time?
JD: Yes they were.
ER: Do you remember anything?
JD: Yes, they used to burn the chalk, turn it into lime and use it for plastering. Jack Abbot was one of them.
ER: The name seems familiar.
JD: He had quite a few children.
JR: Bengeo councillor?
JD: Yes, one of them was.
JR: I’ve interviewed him but he didn’t mention anything about the lime kiln.
ER: That would be his father.
JD: When his father was a young man, because he went to de Havilland, putting scaffolding up in the Second WW round the aeroplanes, then he had a rough end – he had his legs off and his daughter looked after him. She had the house and that was that.
ER: There was a lot of open land there then coming towards Hertford, was the Nags Head pub there?
JD: Yes, been there a long while.
ER: Were Lime Kiln cottages up on a bank – there were four cottages up on a bank weren’t there?
JD: There were four or five houses there, that is correct, Cakebreads were in one and Ginn, he was on the railways for years and his brother was manager of Fosters.
ER: Oh I know Bill Ginn.
JD: Yes, that’s right, dark-haired bloke.
ER: Did he play bowls?
JD: He might have done.
ER: So, were these cottages up on a bank?
JD: That’s right, yes.
JR: They’ve gone now?
ER: No, they’re still there I think.
JD: No, they’re gone.
JR: You know the flyover, that must have gone through the middle of the row of cottages.
JD: Yes, mine was taken down.
JR: Whereabout were the bank ones – up there somewhere?
JD: Yes, coming towards Hertford.
ER: There was a council depot there, that was all chalkpits wasn’t it.
JD: Yes, chalkpits – I played in them a lot.
JR: So where it’s all dug out now and you’ve got those little industries, that was all a chalkpit.
JD: That’s right, yes.
ER: It was quite a busy industry, the chalk.
JD: The chalk was, yes. They used to use it for plastering, with sand, I don’t know what sort of animal hair they put in it to bind it.
JR: They put cow hair, thick fibres.
JD: Years ago, yes, binding sand and lime mixture.
ER: That would have been about the time of the First World War?
JD: Just after, yes.
JR: Can you explain what a lime kiln is? Was it a building?
JD: They dug the chalk out, and the kiln was in the open air.
JR: We can probably find out how it was actually made. When you walked from that chalk pit could you walk over the brow of the hill into what is now the Pinehurst estate?
JD: Yes, the Pinehurst estate was the other nine holes of the East Herts Golf Course.
ER: The golf course was already there.
JD: Then the road, the A10, cut through it – that’s 25 years ago when they built that.
ER: But in your day you can remember that as…
JD: Open countryside, yes.
ER: Because there weren’t many properties in Ware Rd itself – if you walked from where you lived, to Hertford.
JD: It was fairly empty until you got to where the shop is now, Kingsmead School.
ER: When you were a little lad, it was used as a school.
JD: Yes, it was, backwards school. And it’s not all that many years ago, 25 years ago, they put the police station there. Moved it from Ware.
ER: So between you at the Lime Kiln Cottages and Kingsmead School.
JD: There weren’t that much, no.
JR: There are some cottages, aren’t there, the other side of the Police station which are quite old, a row of little cottages quite high up.
ER: On the same side as the Police station – a little row of older cottages, yes, before the turning to Burleigh Rd.
JD: Yes, they’ve been there a long while, before my time.
JR: But the land between the end of that row and the Nags Head, where you’ve got those garages now was open land.
JD: Yes that was open fields where Burleigh Rd is. Built up after WW2.
ER: Where Green’s Garage is, I can remember that as Taylor’s potato depot.
JD: Yes, it was Taylors and I think he still lives up The Drive, doesn’t he?
ER: Yes, Gordon does.
JD: Then of course he made a fortune by letting it out as industrial units. Quite a few in there. But it was all country then, you could see the meads there and tadpoles going through the streams. We used to go down the meads a lot.
ER: So can you remember the barges coming up?
JD: They used to take coal down and malt. Yes. I worked at Harringtons, where Braces shoe shop was, just over in the Folly.
ER: Yes, on the corner, where Coopers were. Now there’s houses and flats there and the Barge P.H. That was where you went to when you left school?
JD: Yes, that square building – I see it’s up for sale now. That used to be Harringtons, the malt people.
ER: You were living in Lime Kiln Cottages – you would have had quite a long walk to school.
JD: My brother – he lives up Bengeo by the way, he lives up Peel Crescent. He’s 80.
ER: One of my best mates lives in Peel Crescent.
JD: Yes, Bert Draper, his is a semi-detached bungalow – they go round in a crescent.
ER: I go there very often to my son’s house because I live on that estate.
JD: I went to the little school near All Saints Church.
ER: All Saints Infants?
JD: Yes. My mother used to take me, we had to walk, no buses.
JR: Quite a walk. Were you not nearer to Ware?
JD: We were a bit nearer to Ware, you’re right.
JR: But were you in the Borough of Hertford.
JD: We were in the Borough of Hertford, there, I don’t know where it actually finishes.
JR: About there by the flyover. And what about parish, which parish were you in?
JD: All Saints, I think.
JR: Were you, only Great Amwell Parish comes up nearly as far as there. It’s very complicated, parish boundaries in that area, because they had to create a new parish in the 19thC for Hertford Heath, Little Amwell, that was only a manor, which is slightly different. Little Amwell wasn’t a parish originally it was Great Amwell and St John’s, or All Saints as we know it.
ER: You would have had to walk from the flyover to school and did you come home for lunch?
JD: Yes. No lunches [at school] I don’t know how we survived it! And back again until about 4 o’clock. My brother had to take my brother along.
ER: Is he younger than you then?
JD: Yes, he’s 7½ years younger, so he was only a little ‘un.
JR: You were [by] then at another school – were you at the Cowper School?
JD: Yes, that’s right, which has been pulled down.
ER: So that would have been quite a lonely walk because there were no buildings, were there, only intermittently, only big houses.
JD: On the left-hand side as you were going towards Ware.
ER: So you went to All Saints School, then Cowper School – what was that like?
JD: Bloke named Stallabrass was the headmaster then we had a Mr Stalley, later.
JR: Stallabrass was before Mr Stalley – who did I think it was? I know it was a Cyril Stalley.
ER: What year would you have started at Cowper School.
JD: About 1923, I suppose.
JR: Was there anyone there called Honeyball?
JD: No, I don’t remember. I only remember some of them. Gudgin, there was a Green, not the Green.
ER: Who came in the 1930s?
JD: Another Green, a bit deaf he was, I was a bit afraid of him there was a Sharp there, used to be the woodwork teacher, there was another little building just below there. You know it don’t you?
JR: Yes, used to be the Green Coat School. That was a sort of annexe, wasn’t it?
JD: Annexe, yes, and then we used to have the woodwork and Mr Green used to come in.
JR: Len actually replaced him.
JD: Yes, because he only died about two or three years ago.
JR: Len would have been 92 now.
JD: Yes, I’ve got the book of Hertford there, but you’ve got it as well, I know. Both of you have got a good knowledge of Hertford.
ER: I was born here and I’ve always been interested.
JD: You’ve been here a long while, haven’t you?
JR: Well when I first met you I’d only just come [to Hertford] I went to live next door to Mrs Brace, Bet Brace, she introduced me to you, I’d only just come then, I came at the end of ’82, 2`0 years ago.
JD: A comparative newcomer!
JR: I am! I’ve had to learn all this.
ER You’re picking it up.
JD: But you’ve got a fair knowledge of Hertford.
JR: Well not as good as Eddie!
ER: Oh, she’s very quick(!)
JR: Thank you! Quick tempered too, I think! Can I ask you then, we were talking about the lime pits, did you ever wander over towards Gallows Hill, were there any working pits there?
JD: Yes, actually this place was a gravel and sand pit.
ER: Foxholes.
JD: Yes, Foxholes – you don’t remember that do you.
ER: No. So you could go across the back from where the chalk pits were and the hospital was there, was it not? Was it always called Stanstead Rd?
JD: I knew it as Gallows Hill.
JR: Eddie, when they put the houses in they called it Stanstead Rd because the street directory.... [overtalking]
ER: We asked Tom yesterday and he said it was always Stanstead Rd but he was only born in 1935.
JR: It seemed to change about 1925.
ER: But behind the lime kiln pits where you lived over towards this way there were other workings, gravel pits…
JD: Just lost you a bit there.
ER: Behind where you were in Ware Rd, go up over the back there by the golf course and across towards this area. This was pits in this area.
JD: Yes it was, gravel and sand pits.
ER: And were there pits where they built the new estate just up the road?
JD: No, that was farm land and they dug it all out, Redlands did have it a bit for gravel because there was a bit of an argument about subsidence because they didn’t press the ….
ER: Compacted it properly.
JD: But there hasn’t been a lot of trouble. I’ve only been here 20 years, I lived on the ring first when I had a family.
ER: But these were all pits and the pits that are up the back here where the farm is. So you can remember this estate actually being built then?
JD: Yes, the front ones were built by Botsford when they first started up – Botsford, Vale & Wightman.
ER: When you say the front ones?
JD: That carried up Gallows Hill, there’s 4 x 6s’ actually.
ER: Oh the ones that are staggered, opposite the entrance to the police station. My father was very friendly with Harry Botsford, who eventually ran the building business. Botsford, Vale & Wightman – any idea when that would have been?
JD: No. Just after the First WW.
ER: About the 1920s.
JR: According to the street directory, 1925, 1926.
JD: That was the first part, then Miskins built this estate and County Hall. Miskins from St Albans they did County Hall just before the Second WW. Now it’s been extended and extended at the back. But they built that front and made a good job of it. Looks impressive.
ER: That gulch runs down the middle of Foxholes [Avenue] and the houses the other side of the gulch are they council houses?
JD: They’re private by Lee of Ware.
ER: And they were built after this part.
JD: The ones across were 1935, ?36. I used to do simple plumbing work.
JR: You worked for Lee’s?
JD: Bentley, they were a biggish family, he was Town Clerk.
JR: Oh, that Bentley, Harry Bentley.
JD: Yes that’s right, there were a few of them.
ER: Can we go back, Jean [Yes]. You went to Cowper School, and where was your first job – Harringtons?
JD: Harringtons.
ER: What would you have been doing?
JD: Office boy.
ER: You had to deal with the malt? You didn’t work in the malt?
JD: No. Used to take messages round to the different ones, there were quite a few in Hertford – there was one up West St, one St Andrew St by the Three Tuns, Brewhouse Lane, Railway Place – they’ve turned then into shops now. That was Harringtons Malting.
ER: The nursing home? [Priory St].
JD: Yes, that was.
ER: So, did you stay there very long?
JD: Twelve months, moved on, didn’t like being inside. But I wish I’d stopped. But I didn’t do too bad.
ER: Is that when you went into the plumbing?
JD: No, I did a bit of carpentry for people next door up London and Harry Northern.
ER: Oh yes, who had the yard behind the Cold Bath.
JD: Worked for him for a bit, I was only a boy then, about 18.
ER: I see his son occasionally, Cedric. He retired a few years ago.
JR: I tried to get him to do an oral history – he wouldn’t do one.
JD: Yes, we worked in the Cold Bath Yard.
ER: My dad had his first shop on the end of St Andrew St next to the Cold Bath and he was friendly with Harry Northern.
JD: Old Jake Chapman was there, you know Jake – he’s dead now, lived down Port Vale and I think Northern lived down Port Vale, too.
ER: I think at one time he lived at the top of St John’s St.
JD: Then I worked for Avis & Brooker, Hertingfordbury – just an old boy there then old Bentley offered me a job plumbing so I jumped at it.
ER: Did you do an apprenticeship.
JD: No.
ER: You learned as you went along. Bentleys they’ve been around a long while haven’t they.
JD: Yes, he came into it just after the First WW. He started up when they did the new bridge over the Lee.
JR: What, Mill Bridge.
JD: Mill Bridge, yes, he started on his own there.
JR: Was this the same.
JD: I don’t know when this was built.
JR: 1928. Are we talking about the Town Clerk’s family, or was he the owner of the business?
JD: No, the Town Clerk’s brother, yes, there were several brothers.
ER: Where was Bentleys base, then?
JD: Bentley hung out in Nelson St. He’d got a big old shed up there. I don’t know if you’ve been up that back road, takes you to Byde St. If you go up there you’ll see a big old shed on the left, that was his depot. We were mostly on the jobs though.
JR: That road to Byde St is that very near the old railway track?
JD: Yes, yes, they took a bridge down years ago.
ER: And did he have a very big staff?
JD: No, there were only three or four of us. The Wright brothers they lived up North Rd Avenue. Les Wright was the cricketer [Father of Laurie Wright?] his brother was one of the leading lights at Franks. There was a chap from Bengeo – Ron Childs and there was another one worked over de Havilland, there was three of them altogether and he took the business over, Ron Childs, after Bentley went.
JR: Did they originally come from Hertford Heath?
JD: I don’t think so, they were mostly Bengeo people.
ER: There were a lot of Childs in Hertford though, Hertingfordbury Rd and a lot in Bengeo.
JD: One’s along Ware Rd, back to where I am, Gilbert, dead now.
ER: Yes, because the one who ran Bentleys, he died not so long ago. So you had quite varied jobs. Were you still living down in the cottages?
JD: As the children came along I had to get out there and get a council house. When I first got married I had a house next door to mother and father. His house was in the middle of the bridge and mine was well. But they were only small cottages, two up two down.
ER: You still had quite a long journey to get to work – you had a bike by then did you or did you have to walk?
JD: Walk I think, couldn’t afford a bike, a bit poverty stricken! And now you see houses being exchanged for a third of a million pounds.
ER: So during your travels to work and to school you watched them virtually build Ware Rd.
JD: Yes, the ones that weren’t there.
ER: Botsfords built some of them.
JD: That’s right, Botsford built them that look out over the meads.
JR: Can I just ask – not the green roofs?
JD: No, they were Avis & Brookers. They were built 1935, ’36.
ER: I remember Horace Parratt, he had a shoe repair shop in St Andrew St, they lived…
JD: Yes, they lived in one just up the turn.
ER: One of the first ones.
JR: Did Norris have a hand in the building there too. People keep calling it the Norris Estate – Woodlands Rd.
JD: No, Norrises were all up, going towards Sele Farm.
ER: Ekins built, I think, Sandy Close.
JD: It was Ginns.
ER: That’s right, Ginns.
JD: There’s a lot of nice built houses up there.
ER: There was one of them for sale in the paper last week for half a million.
JD: Yes, would be, they’re really well-built.
ER: They was in your time; they built the railway at Hertford North.
JD: Yes, I think my father was on that railway.
ER: Sele Rd, Campfield Rd all that came in your time didn’t it?
JD: Yes! As I say, I could have made a fortune, how I’ve got nothing! Well I’ve got just a few thousand, but if I’d gone with property…
ER: Yes, but we didn’t know, did we.
JD: No. Actually the 20 odd years that I was at Addis, I get £71 a week pension from Addis and my rent was £70.
ER: So Addis are paying the rent.
JR: Is it, for this?
JD: Well I don’t get no rent rebate.
ER: So virtually you live on your old age pension.
JD: Well, I get assistance allowance, I’m not too bad because I don’t eat a lot.
ER: But sometimes you wonder. You work all those years and at the end of it there’s not a lot to show for it.
JD: No, I get bitter sometimes.
ER: So you left Bentleys and went to…
JD: After the war, I was in Italy. I was called up in 1942 to 1946. But I didn’t go until I was forced into it.
ER: Had you got children?
JD: I’d got one son. Geoff. I don’t believe in wars and you don’t like being called a conscientious objector. Fortunately I didn’t get into any fighting.
ER: 1942 – so the war was well on and you went in the army.
JD: Yes, and went to Scotland and up to the Shetlands - quite a nice place to go in the summer.
ER: What did you do up in Shetland then?
JD: Well there were no end of us up there. You can guess why. Germany had got the Norway coast and they thought they might invade that way. We knew there’d be a counter invasion the other way but with the Americans we beat them to it.
ER: So were you up there for most of the war?
JD: No, about six or seven weeks, and then we went back down to England and from there we went to Algeria, and then Italy and Austria. I’ve been to Austria since, and Italy – it’s nice to go back to these places. Have you been there?
JR: I’ve been, yes, I have, actually. I’ve been to a lot of places abroad because my two children for most of their adult lives have lived abroad, and I’ve been visiting them, but I went abroad before that.
JD: Oh you’ve travelled.
JR: I’ve travelled quite a bit, yes. Now when you took a job with the building firm Bentley….
JD: Yes, then after the war I thought there’s a lot of work here running about, I wasn’t driving at that time, all over the place with tools.
JR: Yesterday, I was speaking to Anne Marie Parker did she not say that you put all the plumbing in in Woodlands Rd?
JD: Yes I know her, yes I did do that.
JR: Who were you working for then?
JD: For Bentley, subcontracting for Avis & Brooker.
ER: So you were putting in bathrooms and ….
JD: Yes, with Les Wright and Ron Childs they were doing more than me but they’re both gone now.
JR: I sometimes look at Woodlands Rd and wonder why they built the houses that they did because they’ve got such steep approaches, haven’t they?
JD: Yes, but you got to remember that they hadn’t got the [machinery to level it off] it was mostly all pick and shovel. It happens all the time with older buildings.
ER: Any idea why they put green roods on them?
JD: I don’t know. Somebody had an extension put on and they couldn’t get green tiles to match so he had to have the red.
JR: All the ones in Woodlands Rd have got green roofs have they?
JD: Yes, except this one that had the extension.
ER: I bet that looks a bit odd then.
JD: But it’s at the back.
ER: So you lived down in the …
JD: I lived in the ring.
ER: Is that where you came when you were married.
JD: Yes, and I’d got the three little girls as well as Geoff and then the boy, the youngest boy. I did it all wrong!
ER: Well we can all say that! My Mum and Dad, there were six of us.
JD: And you still got some alive?
ER: One brother was killed when he was 10 [pause].
JD: It’s interesting talking to you because we know what we’re talking about.
ER: Because we’re interested in this area because there are not many people who can go back to what this was before it was a housing estate.
JD: It was gravel pits because sometimes in summertime instead of going along the Ware Rd we’d to up this way and then round, across the golf links and then down.
ER: People don’t realise in those days there weren’t those roads. You had this narrow track from the bottom of Gallows Hill which went to the Amwell crossroads, I think there was perhaps a turning down to Hoe Lane. But it was narrow.
JD: And up to Hertford Heath.
ER: Yes, Downfield Rd.
JD: We tried to get up Hertford Heath one day four or five of us old boys and we met these old boys coming down from Hertford Heath and they wouldn’t let us go up there.
ER: Were there gang fights were there?
JD: More or less. Threw a few stones at each other but you wouldn’t think it, would you?
JR: No, territorial …
JD: Territorial, that’s right, very territorial.
JR: What about Hertford and Ware – you were right on the edge of Ware, did you have any problems, gangs?
JD: No, they did it mostly in football.
ER: Once a year they’d have a bit of a punch-up in one of the football grounds. It was a bit of a myth, this Hertford and Ware. I used to come to dances at the Ware Drill Hall one week and the Corn Exchange the next week. There used to be a bit of trouble.
ER: Where you lived in those cottages you had a lovely view across the meads, Ware Park, and where Allenburys are there now. Gorgeous countryside.
JD: Yes, nice countryside.
ER: Did you ever go up on the golf course looking for golf balls?
JD: Yes, we used to get them.
ER: And take them to the club house – things people wouldn’t’ do nowadays.
JR: When you were young, but old enough to be allowed out, where was your favourite play area?
JD: Meads and the golf links, yes.
JR: Your parents weren’t worried about you getting in the water.
JD: No, the water, the Lee, is well over, isn’t it? It’s right near the end of the flyover.
JR: Nowadays you can see that the meads flood under the flyover, was that the same in your youth?
JD: Yes, yes, it’s always been flooded, low-lying. It used to have a sewer works down there near what they call Hopkins Crossing and they run it from Stevenage and Harlow to Rye Meads, all the sewer works, it runs down the Beane Valley.
ER: That gulch that runs down Foxholes, that takes you down to where the garage is, Dave Morris’s, and into what they used to call the Ditch – they used a word for it.
JR: Manifold.
ER: Manifold, and the boys would climb into this tunnel when it was dry in the summer – crawl all the way down this tunnel, under Ware Rd and come out. Must have been very dark.
JD: Oh yes, don’t suppose they got any torches couldn’t afford them.
JR: What kind of distance was that then?
ER: Well, that was from the bottom of Foxholes Avenue where we turned in and it went down Stanstead Rd to Ware Rd, down by the garage [to the ditch].
JR: Where would the ditch have been.
ER: Well the Manifold Ditch started just below Cromwell Rd.
JD: Open ditch, still open now. Because they stopped the traffic coming through there. They came along Tamworth Rd – any strangers – so bollards.
JR: Cycles?
JD: Yes, cycles and walking.
ER: Down that road by the garage.
JD: Rowley’s Rd.
ER: By David Morris’s garage, turn down there, you come to Cromwell Rd. It used to go down to the level crossing – they don’t open those crossing gates do they?
JD: No, it’s only walk through there.
ER: All that site changed – where the gas works …
JD: Yes, yes there was a big gas works there. Could get coke for nothing then, used to have to take a bag – well, you remember that.
ER: I’m talking about after the war – we had to buy it but in your day they’d let you have the coke.
JD: Yes, if you took your wheelbarrow, or put it in a bag on your bike.
ER: Why did they let you have it?
JD: Well, they wanted to get rid of it. The [coal] was used for making gas.
ER: I can remember going down the coke yard with a sack – it was about 1/- in the 1940s.
JR: Can I ask you, what was in place between Kingsmead School and the Isolation Hospital, before they built Wheatcroft School, was it just a disused pit? Looks like it on the map.
JD: I can’t remember, I know where you mean.
JR: Can I just ask you about this gulch – where did the water come from?
JD: Off the fields from Hertford Heath.
JR: There wasn’t a stream?
JD: Yes there was a stream. They filled it in last 40 or 50 years, that was open right the way down there but it’s filled in now or course.
JR: Is it underneath there still?
JD: Yes.
JK: It’s culverted then.
JD: Yes. A lot comes down there because they’ve got all this new estate, I dare say when heavy rain comes down. There’s lots of it because so much concrete around now. We have had trouble when ducts over flowed, in Foxholes.
ER: Very similar to the one they’ve got up Brickendon Lane.
ER: You didn’t go to your first house on this estate when it was new, did you?
JD: No, it was about 40 years old then. My youngest daughter is now 49, she was two, 47 years I’ve been up here. And they were built in the 1920s. Yes, my youngest girl, she’s good though, she comes and sees me a lot. Generally find one good.
ER: But you moved here because this was a smaller…
JD: Yes, smaller, and then or course the wife [pause] she took ill, Alzheimer’s. It’s 7½ years now.
ER: Of course you walked over to Highfields?
JD: Sometimes. A favourite of mine is across to Hertford Lock and over the other river, up Ware Park and then I can do my shopping in Ware and it’s only 50 pence from Ware Grammar School [now Regional College] to here.
ER: You’re still pretty fit then.
JD: Yes, I get about a bit. I’m slow, but I’ve got the endurance to keep going. Fruit and vegetables, plenty of them and not too much of anything else.
JR: One more question, the laundry in Stanstead Rd – that was there before the houses were built?
[John doesn’t know but his sister-in-law had worked there before marriage, about 65 years ago. He adds that her father, Mr Sapstead, kept goats in the field bordering Beane Rd, near the North Stn].
ER: There was another laundry down in Tamworth Rd.
JD: Yes, Clark’s. [Snowdrop Laundry, the Reliance was in Stanstead Rd] there were two laundries in Cromwell Rd. A lot of laundries then – no washing machines!
ER: It’s like where Addis was, that was the Hertford Steam Laundry before Addis bought it.
JD: I can just about remember that. I can remember the hoardings up, about Addis Brushes are made here.
ER: Do you remember Reg O’Smotherley who drove the lorries (yes) he had a book of the history of Addis and he lent me it after he retired and he said to me one day I’ll give you that book. And he didn’t, and I often wished I’d got hold of it.
JD: That’s all finished now but I expect they get the money from the patents.
ER: They’ve still got a factory at Swansea and I think they’ve got one at Haverhill.
JD: I think that finished, at Haverhill.
ER: They were big employers – I should think you worked all the hours God made at Addis.
JD: Well sometimes on the maintenance there was nothing to do, then it was all rush another time.
ER: So Addis had a shift of maintenance workers.
JD: Yes, and model-making. Bob Blanchard from Hertingfordbury. He was pretty good at it. Then they’d work the plastic out from the shapes.
JR: I suppose like a prototype and they could take all the copies from it.
Recording ends