Interviewed by Peter Ruffles (PR) & Jean Riddell (JR) (first interview)
Date: 22/04/1994
Transcribed by Jane Page
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 1994.12
Interviewees: Frank Chappell (FC) and Bruce Johnson (BJ)
Date: 22nd April 1994
Venue: Pond Croft, Rush Green
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR) and Jean Riddell (JR) (first interview)
Transcriber: Jane Page
Italics editor’s notes
PR Well, this is the Hertford Oral History Group’s work, and what we’ve been doing for about two years is talking to people about Hertford as they might remember it. We don’t worry too much about dates exactly, but just kind of roughly, and if anyone can think of little, you know, as it comes, little pictures of characters or situations or, you know, your shop window, that they, you know, a bit special, that sort of thing, rather than trying to remember what date it was when the doodle bug dropped, because we can look that up in back copies of the Mercury, but we can’t necessarily remember who wore shoes with no leather in the soles and then he wrapped them round with, you know, cord and all that kind of thing, we can’t remember.
BJ Names brought up as well?
PR Yes, yes, yes, you can be as cheeky as you like. And if we say anything that afterwards we think, well, perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that, we can separate it.
FC Take it away.
JR Take it out.
PR But it’s best, it’s easier just to talk, you know, say what comes, if anything comes at all. And then what we’ll do today is just cover, you know, a little bit of ground, and then, in a year or two’s time, we’re going to go back to people and say "now, when you mentioned your shop in Bull Plain, was Tommy Ellis’s opposite at that time, or not?" And you’ll say, "Oh, yes, we should have mentioned Tommy, and all that", so we’ll follow up on little bits we might have done.
FC Yes.
PR So, this is where the tape begins on Friday, the 22nd of April, and we have come up to 1994, 1994, we have come up to Rush Green, to the home of Vera and Frank Chappell, Pond Croft. A very special home, isn’t it really, just look at the view, fields up to the horizon, where my granny was born, just over the hill.
FC Is that so?
PR Mr Mead’s cottage.
FC Oh, yes.
PR Almost see her chimney pot from here.
FC I can only go back to Mr Childs (PR’s grandmother’s)
PR Well, that was her brother.
FC Oh, yes.
PR Will Childs, with a bowler hat.
FC Yes, that’s right, yes.
PR Bruce’s family remember him.
BJ I can’t remember Will Childs
FC Foreman carpenter in the joiner’s shop at Ginn’s.
BJ No, I can’t remember him, no.
PR Well, you do remember my grandmamma.
BJ Gwyneth?
PR Well, my mother, that was her mother.
BJ Yes, I can’t quite place her mother.
PR Well, no, she died in 19…, you would remember,
BJ When did she die?
PR 1952.
BJ Should have done, yes. Was that Becky?
PR Yes.
BJ Becky George, that was it, yes. Can’t place her face, but I remember her.
PR Yes, because Mrs Harding.
BJ Yes.
PR Jessie Eva Jane.
BJ That’s it.
PR Was her bridesmaid.
BJ Was she?
PR In 1900.
BJ Good grief.
PR So there is a, you know, a couple of family links. Anyway, we’re here on this particular day, just to talk to two people who have had businesses in the town, as well as a long history of a being a person in the town, and what we ought to do probably first of all is ask Frank or Bruce to just go through their family early life, and then we’ll work round to what it was like being a shop keeper in Bull Plain. But, where were you born, Frank?
FC Southend Cottages.
PR Whereabouts?
FC Stapleford.
PR Oh, country boy.
FC And my father had a farm, Upper Southend Farm, or smallholding, whatever you like to term it. It wasn’t a great acreage, not like they have farms today. And we used to have to muck in and help do that, in our childhood days. The first thing we had to do when we got home from school was to change, and there was nearly always some skimmed milk, that’s why I haven’t grown much, I expect, and a scone. My mother was an excellent cook, and we always got plenty of scones. And then when we’d changed, so we started our jobs. My first job was to look after the chickens for mum, and I didn’t get any wages until the Spring, and then, of course, all the chickens used to be hatched in March then, which was when the hens come broody, and I used to get a hen and thirteen chicks, and that was my year’s pay for feeding the chickens. And then, as I got on, I had to get more, heavier duties, you know: my brother had a lot of chickens; I used to help him with those, and used to have to milk and make myself useful. I could have gone to Oaklands, they wanted me to go to Oaklands, because I was quite handy on the farm, but they couldn’t afford, my people couldn’t afford it. Like I am now, all poor, and so we had to earn our keep, and then when I left school, I went to work at Sid Tottenham’s, next door, the poultry farm, and, of course, the wages weren’t much in those days, I did work on a Sunday, that earned me another shilling, but still it was, you know, an existence. I used to go down from six ‘til nine, I reckon, on helping Mr Peggs, down at Bleak House, do his garden, and I got nine pence an hour there, which was very good, you see, so that subsidised the wages a bit, that helped me to survive in those days. And then I always, I helped him with the milk and then, in the end, I got a job over at Great Amwell, on a milk round and I was five shillings better off by working at Great Amwell, to Mr Page, and they were always most amazed because he gave me a five shilling rise without me asking for it, and that was outstanding for Perce to do anything like that. So, then I worked there, but seeing the boys about all made up at the weekends, I thought, "why should I keep working Saturdays and Sundays", so I said I wasn’t very happy there, I thought I’d make a change, and my father was in the building trade, so I was sort of semi-apprenticed at Ginn’s for building, but of course my father was a bricklayer, and, although he had the smallholding, he always went out to work because he could earn three pounds, three pounds fifty or three pounds ten in those days, and you could get a horse groom for thirty two and six, so it was better for him. He used to work, he was a very hardworking man: he worked before he went in the mornings, and often, of course, when he got home at night – go back, do jobs what had got to be done. So, I had a little while at that, but I wasn’t keen on that. You was all mates, but as soon as you laid something down, some swine would pinch it.
PR This was bricklaying?
FC In bricklaying, yes, and the only subject that was conversed, the conversation all day was either the football or women. And so, I started to do the pools then, so that I knew what teams were what, so I didn’t know, I’d never took any interest in football, I’d always been at work. And so, anyway, I did Littlewoods to educate myself as to the teams, you see. I only did it for one year, but anyway, I broke even, I got four draws up about three times, and it was about sixteen shillings, I never went mad, I never was a great gambler. I took great care of what I got hold of. So that was that. And then, Colley Farm knew that I was in the area, they were in a muddle, and I’d done a little bit for them at odd times, and they’d said "would I come and help them" so I went up there and helped them because they was in a muddle, and in the end, I bought a milk round off of those, and we were doing about twenty-five gallon a day then, and it gradually expanded, we picked up. I think I had five vans on the road, the latter part of the time, and I was the last private retailer to sell out to the United Dairies in Hoddesdon, and…
PR Where was that based then, your business, where did you actually run from?
FC I was down at Bride’s Farm acting as a producer-retailer, and I only had milk from Bride’s farm in the early days.
PR Where’s, for our listeners, where’s Bride’s Farm?
FC Hertford Heath, down the Roundings.
PR Right.
FC That was when the Roundings was a common land. Now it seems to be requisitioned by the people living round it. Never would have tolerated the way that’s been commandeered with their bits in front of them in the early days, I don’t think.
PR Yes.
FC I went up Elbow lane to take the dog for a walk, and I drew up at the side of the road up there, and somebody come out and they said, "you’re on my garden". I said, "on your garden, I’m damned" I said. I said, "it used to be a gateway there" I said, "going into that field". He said, "it’s still there, you can see it". "Well", I said "how can it be your garden, if it’s the entrance to a field". But, to keep the peace, I moved on, but I was most annoyed. I reported it to Gerald Nix because both sides of that road, up Elbow Lane, the old Roman road, was open, it wasn’t anybody’s property, anyway, that’s by the way. So, we worked there and then I picked up milk from five other farms that I used to… as the business grew and we were using more milk, but the latter part of the time, you’d almost got to have a chemist on the job, bottling milk, so I bought it all ready bottled from Allen and Hanbury’s, which was much easier, because when you bought the milk raw from the farms, you, in the Spring you had more than you could handle, flush of grass, you see, plenty of milk; in the August, the farmers were harvesting, they didn’t want too many men in the cowshed in those days, so they were down on milking; the price went up in September, so obviously you’d get the Autumn calves so far as possible. And so, when you’d finished, you’d either got milk to take into Allen and Hanbury’s, your surplus, or go and collect some to make up, during the August months when you weren’t getting much from your own farms, as you might say. And I had that, and although I say it, it was quite a decent business when I packed up. I’d been in the area a long time, and a lot of people hadn’t rumbled me, although I’d been in the area a long time, and you know, it went all right, and so, when the United Dairies came in, we picked up ever such a lot of custom, and I kept putting more on the chaps’ vans, and of course, naturally, human nature, they moaned ‘cause they’d got so much on the vans, and I got fed up with the, you know, labour troubles, I thought "keep on" so then I sold it to the United Dairies in the end. I was going to continue, and I went over to Bishop’s Stortford Dairies, to see whether they would bottle for me, and I knew Jim, the manager at Bishop’s Stortford Dairy Farmers, and I said, "how long are you going to remain private?" "Well" he said "there’s a limit to what anyone can say no to", which was the thin end of wedge, I thought, so I nearly ordered my own name bottles again ready to start filling them over there for me, but, anyway, good fortune, I didn’t, and they sold out to the United Dairies, I think, perhaps, even before I’d sold out, so that was that. And then I went down Bull Plain to the shop there. Oh, I tried for a shop at Watton, because I’m no townie, as you can really visualise. I went for a shop at Watton, and I knew Roger Prince, who ran the Post Office there, and I would have anticipated taking over Wilson’s shop and getting the Post Office to help run it, and so, one of the agents in Hertford, who I’ve never got a lot of time for, because each time I went to more less sign the contract to take it, it went up £500, which was a lot of money in those days. So I found out through the grape vine who was bidding against me, and I rang him up. I said, "you know, us two are chasing one another, there’s no sense in this, we’d better talk, I’ll come and see you". So he said, "don’t come and see me, come and see my mother, Mrs Camp". It was Camp the Baker who was after it in Watton, so we met at Mrs Camp’s, and I told him I’d sold my business and was looking for something of that nature, and he said, "well, I’m up the road", he said, "and Abel Smith won’t do anything to my ovens". He was messed up, so I said, "well", I said, "to be quite honest", I said, "without any question of doubt, you’re the one who ought to have it", I said, "you’re in the village, the business is in the village", I said, "I’ll back out. You give them what we started off at, and if you’ll pay my surveyor’s fees". ‘Cause I’d had it surveyed, thirteen pound, and that was a stranger, I didn’t want anybody local, because everybody was local who I was dealing with. I thought I’d better have a stranger in the camp. Anyway so I backed out of them, and then messing about. When I sold out to the United Dairies I went there to prepare for a manager’s job, you see, but, like a lot of these big firms, the jealousy and the tittle-tattle between one department and another: if your van broke down fifty yards up the road, you couldn’t trundle a spare wheel along and change it, you had to ring up Nickelover, that was the people who… that was another department, and used to have to pop over from Ilford, and of course, that took five minutes or more. So there was the poor devil of a chap, waiting there to have his wheel changed, when it could have been done in half the time if common sense had reigned. I thought, no, this isn’t any good, so that’s what made me look for something different, and, in the end, Mrs. Webb was getting fed up with the papers, so I went down there, and took the papers, thinking I’d have it easier, ‘cause, although I say it, I’ve always lived a fairly active life, and worked fairly hard, so I thought I’d take the papers over, which would have been a tick over, you see. Well, we went down there and I took the papers over and the shop.
PR When is that, roughly?
FC 1960 I went down there, and you had to go up three steps to get into the shop. Well, that was no good if you’ve got a toyshop; they want to bring a pram in. So I had the floor sunk to the level, so they could push a pram in, which helped a bit, and we put a few toys on the shelves downstairs, and they began to move, and then we put some on the next floor, and they began to move, and then in the end we went upstairs and had it full of toys, and it come to life some, you know. ‘Cause I’d never done anything with toys, I don’t know as I ever wanted to, as far as that goes, I’d rather have been out on the agricultural line. I did have the offer of High Leigh Farm, ‘cause I used have fields, while I run the milk business, down at Amwell, and that’s how I got this bit here, I was renting this at one time. I could have had High Leigh Farm, but I was paying 12/6 an acre down at St. Margaret’s, I rented it off of Crofts, and it was 35 shillings an acre up at High Leigh. It was a big difference, admittedly there was more buildings and a house went with it, but even in those days there was 18 acres, I always remember that, set out for the A10 to come down there, the new A10, that was scheduled, as it did, and it come through and it really carved the farm up. I take my hat off to Mr Jennings, Mr Giddings, because he’s been there ever since, and he milks those Jerseys, which I always refer to as "yellow perils", because the only people normally who keep Jerseys are ladies and army people, you very rarely see a farmer keep a Jersey, because, you think of all the Channel Isle breeds that are about, there’s not many now, but you’d never got a farmer do that, because all your calves. You wouldn’t give a lot for a Jersey calf in them days.
BJ No yellow, yellow fat.
FC Yes, that’s right, yes.
BJ There was a place at Broxbourne, wasn’t there, that had all Jerseys and they got foot and mouth disease.
FC That’s right, well that was Giddings.
BJ That was Giddings, was it?
FC Yes, but he’s still up at the farm there, so I take my hat off to him. It’s Mr Giddings’s son I think who does it now.
PR Yes, Brian, Brian Giddings.
FC I don’t know him, no. I met old Mr Giddings, his father, down the market once or twice. Well, anyway, went into the shop after all that, and it came to life, and it was quite active, especially at Christmas time, quite busy. Then in 19…, when was it, 1980, I think, yes, that’s right, 1980, I packed up the shop, I could see I wasn’t really going to get properly established. I wasn’t going to make a go of it. So I packed the shop up in ’80, and just had the papers, and I carried on with the papers until they weren’t worth doing, come the latter part. You know what it’s like.
PR Sundays only, wasn’t it?
FC Sundays only, yes, and then we used to supply the local villages round, you know, Watton, Bramfield and Brickendon and that way, and as that gradually fizzled out, so I fizzled out with it, and so here I am scratching about here trying to make a shilling where I can now.
PR Right well, we’d better get over to Bruce.
BJ I don’t think I’ve got a detail as much as that though.
PR But, were you born in Hertford?
BJ Yes, yes, in Ware Road, number 25.
PR Opposite Addis’s?
BJ Opposite Addis’s, yes, the small cottages, terraced cottages.
PR Right.
BJ Year 1920.
PR And were you born into a butcher family at that time?
BJ Oh yes, yes, yes.
PR When had the business begun then?
BJ In 1876. Len Green has got a picture; perhaps you’ve seen it, taken by standing in the front door of the Salisbury Hotel looking towards Honey Lane, where the market is now. (Since the covered market was finished, they’ve come round there with the covered market.) Well, the first one on the right hand side on the top, it’s got "Peterborough". And I went to a Rotary evening, as a guest of Frank’s one evening, when Len and Collins, what’s his name, Baden.
PR Baden Brown.
BJ Baden Brown, yes, was projecting these slides, and they said "if anyone got any information or any queries about any of these pictures that we’re projecting, we’ll hold it". Well, when it came to this one, he said "there’s one here, we can’t understand it. There’s a stall here from Peterborough. What’s he doing, Peterborough doing in Hertford?" "Well", I said, "if you can blow that name up under Peterborough anyhow, and it’s Redhead, Redhead I think it was the name, that would be my grandfather standing there." Because, how we started in Hertford, was that he used to come down from Peterborough with the hampers of meat for this firm of Redhead, sell it on the market. He came down to the old North station, not the present North station, near Ekins, and he’d go back at night when he’d finished. Take all his tackle back with him. And there was no motorcars or anything then because that was prior to 1876. Well, he’d got a large enough clientele in this area to come and start his own business, which he did in Railway Place, which is now a motor accessory place, can’t think of the name of it. However, that was 1876, he started. They carried on there until 1934. My grandfather died in 1920, the year I was born. My father carried on the business, that’s right, with his brother, Herbert Johnson, who weighed 27 stone. My grandfather in the business weighed 22 stone. My father was five foot half an inch tall, and weighed 17 stone, and they managed, and they ran this shop there. I’m sort of jig jogging a bit, but they ran that shop there between my grandfather died in 1920, the very fat uncle I had, he died in 1927, at the age of 47, and then father ran it on his own, with us children who were born then and other staff, until 1934, that’s the year I left school, and he built the shop in Ware Road, which you’ve no doubt seen a picture of it, with Len’s book. Well, as we left school, we automatically… well he started us at work, as soon as we could carry mother’s shopping basket, he started us at work, delivering Mrs Smith’s Mrs Jones’s meat. And I know my younger brother and I used to fight like the devil, because one would give us a ha’penny and the other wouldn’t, and we used to strike for the one that was giving a ha’penny, all local, you know. And he started us off on the right foot. We had our own abattoir, which is opposite, which is behind, which is now Kennions. That was our slaughterhouse, or abattoir as you may call it. And we kept on average about 30 to 40 pigs in the pigsties there, and we used to draw on them, you know, slaughter them as we wanted them. We used to buy…
PR Was there much room at the back there then?
BJ Yes, quite a long run at the back. If you look at the gates beside Charlie Kennion’s, that goes a long way back, right to where Webb, the window cleaner, used to live. Miss Morris’s school.
PR Yes.
BJ Yes, well, the wall separated us from the school grounds. It’s very deep there.
PR Yes, I hadn’t realised that.
BJ Yes. We used to buy, or at least, my father bought the animals from the cattle market, which was then up behind the Ram in Fore Street, Hertford. We used to walk the cattle down South Street by the Eastern station, walk them home then, you know, to the yard, ready for slaughtering the next day. The pigs and the sheep we used to buy in the cattle market, we used our own van, our delivery vans, used to get a fine old mess, as you can imagine, but they were all aluminium lined, or zinc or aluminium, so they got cleaned out pretty well. How far ’ve we got now, we got as far as the…?
FC The market, you say about driving them home, if dad put anything in the market, we used to perhaps take three, drive three from Stony Hills into the market, same market, Ram yard, and you’d leave the one behind that you wanted to sell and walk the other two home, because you couldn’t drive one on its own, because as soon as ever that got away from you, back home that would go, like a homing pigeon, so you had to take three and then bought two back. That’s the way you had to get stuff to market.
BJ We used to have a problem with the dogs chasing these cattle round. You remember Barker, the ambulance man, do you remember him?
FC Yes.
BJ Round by Melhuish’s, the baker’s shop there, well, he had an old dog there, and every Saturday, I think the market was then.
FC That’s right.
BJ Used to be Saturdays.
FC Saturdays, that’s right.
BJ This blessed dog came out, used to chase our cattle, you see. So, old Fred Chapman, he worked for us for forty-three years, he was good with dogs, but he kept trying to keep this dog off, and eventually he chased him on his bicycle, and hit this old dog across the head and knocked him out, and he never chased our cattle any more.
FC And they say corporal punishment doesn’t work.
BJ That’s right. And then eventually, there were three sons of my father. I’ve got two brothers and myself, we all worked well before the war, in the business, you know. Most of our work was delivery, it was not shop trade, it was delivery trade. All the big houses we used to serve, and I’ve still got the records at home, the ledgers at home now, going back to the 1920s, and I’ll give you an example, we used to serve Barclays at Fanshawes; Fenders, P.G.H. Fender’s brother lived at The Grange at Brickendon, we used to serve there; Colonel Nicholson from Bayford, Nicholson, I think they’re the gin people. That was part of our job to deliver to them before we went to school in the morning, and get back by eight o’clock, otherwise father would eat your breakfast. He was dead for time. He’d got a set time for everything. And I know we used these heavy old trade bikes. I’ve only just given two of them, the last two, to my nephew, who’s in business in Brookmans Park, he’s restoring them. And they were made, hand made, for my grandfather in 1919. Heavy old things, 28 inch wheels, name plates on them, Johnsons, D.O.Johnson, butchers, family butchers. Anyway two of those are being restored at the moment. That’s the last two I’ve got. And, as I say, we used to go on those trips, one went one way, some came to Ware, some went to Brickendon, Bayford and back again, you know, delivering to these big houses. And, I say, eight o’clock was our return time or else your breakfast was gone because you hadn’t got time to get to school. However, we moved round to Ware Road in 1934, when that shop was built. Mr Addis senior, not Bert Addis, but his father, came across to my father, when Botsford, Vale and Wightman were building the shop, and said to my father "Mr Johnson, you’re making a mistake, you’re building your shop on the wrong side of the road". And I always remember, because I was stood there as a boy at the time, I was fourteen, and he said "Mr B.Addis, when I want your advice, I’ll ask you for it. You stop your side of the road, and I’ll stop mine". And they were like that…
End of side 1.
BJ At that time there was five of us, children, and mother and father in a terraced cottage, number 25. Well, we couldn’t live there, but 1930 father bought the tall houses on the Hertford side of the shop, tall Victorian houses, we were the one next to the shop, including the ground which he built on. But at quarter past three every Saturday morning, he was like a roaring lion coming down those stairs into the basement to get washed, fetching the whole household up, to be at work at four o’clock. And I can remember this, and I was still under fourteen at the time, and we were round in that shop working, getting all the orders prepared, and a chap we employed, or my father employed, was Colin Gillett. Do you remember Gilletts? They lived at the bottom of Villiers Street. There was quite a big family of them. One used to run the Smith’s paper shop at North station.
PR Oh yes, yes.
BJ Father was a retired policeman. Well, Colin was bit of a bouncy fellow, you know, and he came in at ten past four on this particular Saturday morning, and my father stopped him, "what game are you up to?" he said. "The clock stopped", he said. "Here’s your cards". He got immediate sack at ten past four. He was a bit cheeky, and he’d done it, you know, two or three times before, but he got immediate sack, and by lunchtime, God knows how many people we’d got there to try and fill his job.
PR Oh.
BJ Yes. So, as we left school, father wouldn’t let me go to grammar school. Buster Jeffries, you remember him?
PR Yes, yes.
BJ My uncle pleaded with my father to let me go, but "No, no, that’s all sport", he said, "Our boys have come into this world to work". However. As we left school I suppose in the thirties, we were lucky compared with a lot of boys to have a job to go to, so of course eventually, three of us sons were in the business, riding, using trades bikes and whatnot to these deliveries. Well, at that time we had a Hackney High Stepper with a box cart, which I’ve still got the photographs of, where they did the country deliveries. And the one who used to do it was Fred Chapman. He worked for us for forty-three years, never had a holiday, and didn’t want one. He was quite content. And he had a smallholding up at Caxton Hill, which was Braziers at the time, on the right hand side, where Addis’s have built that huge storage. Do you remember, up on the hill?
PR Oh, yes.
BJ Yes, well, this chap Chapman used to have that smallholding up there. I was saying, Frank, he worked for us for forty-three years, never had a holiday and didn’t want one.
FC Incredible, isn’t it?
BJ Yes, yes, however, we had this cart for deliveries, and it was… I suppose I was… what fourteen, fifteen… Tom was seventeen, no…I wasn’t much over about eleven then, about eleven years old I suppose it was. This Mr Chapman was delivering at the cottages at Clement’s Farm in Brickendon, where Joe Vigus…
FC That’s right.
BJ Well, we served all those cottages, and you go down that farm drive and there’s two cottages down beyond the pond at the bottom. Well, when he came out from these deliveries, the horse and cart had gone, and that was very early in the morning. Well, to cut a long story short, where they found it, the horse had gone down over Brickendon, down by Bayford station, just him and the box cart, and he’d come by the church in Bayford, and when you come by the church coming towards Hertford, you come down the hill and there’s a sharp turn. Well, he couldn’t get round the corner, so he’d jumped over the hedge, so he was in somebody’s garden and the box cart was in the ditch and the hedge in between them. So, my father said "we’re not going to have any more of this", so he bought a van. Well, Tom, my eldest brother was sixteen at the time, and the driving age was seventeen, as it is today, my father said, "you’ve got to take a chance, you take it" so he did. So, what he did, he said, "this van’s expensive", and I don’t suppose it was much over about a hundred pound, hundred and fifty pounds then. He used to load it up with cuts of meat: chops and breasts of lamb and all this sort of thing, and put the price on it, and he used to say to my older brother, Tom, "away you go round Welwyn Garden City and don’t come back until you’ve sold out, go and knock on anybody’s door". And we got a huge round eventually, round Welwyn Garden City, you know, from that start. However, this went on, I think three deliveries a week and also Brickendon, Bayford, Cole Green, Essendon, all those country places we’d deliver to, about three times a week. And on one occasion the police came down and wanted to see my brother’s driving licence, he’d had it for two days, so he just got away with it. He was seventeen then. That’s how things went along, until war came. I went away a fortnight before the war, I was with the Territorial Army, we mobilised in mid August. My older brother joined the Air Force, and eventually, my younger brother joined the Air Force. As you know, staff would be difficult then to get because so many youngsters had gone.
FC Oh terrible.
BJ And I think the worry of the shortage of staff, my father had a cerebral haemorrhage in 19…42, that’s it, 1942. My elder brother laid in Radcliffe Infirmary with his leg smashed up with shrapnel, the younger brother, he’s out doing his eighteen months tour, out in Accra. And I was, I’d come back from France in 1940, and I asked for a compassionate posting through the military so as I could come home and run the business, I was only nineteen, but to keep the business afloat. Any rate, they wouldn’t listen to it. They gave me a week’s compassionate leave and that sort of thing, but they wouldn’t listen to it. But eventually, to cut a long story short, we got through the Ministry, somebody to run the business and the cashier kept going as well, and they just managed to keep it ticking over. And I eventually was medically discharged in 1944, and kept the business going until my two brothers came home. They come home a year later, 1945. We signed up with …father was advised to clear right away, because being that he was born in the business and wanted to keep it going.
PR Agitated, further.
BJ Dr. Gregson-Williams, you know doubt remember him, said to my mother "get him away", and they went to live in Bournemouth, just before my two brothers came home. And we signed a partnership, an agreement, with him, which I’ve still got today, Si… Hawkes, you know…
PR Longmores.
BJ Sawkins.
PR Sawkins.
BJ Yes. I’ve still got the copies of it today. All the three, us three sons signed a contract with my father, partnership, for £4 a week, each of us, the four of us. He was the silent partner, down there, and if he hadn’t had his £208 at the end of the year; we’d got to make it up from our £208. So he said, "there’s the business, it’s up to you to get on with it", so this is how we started. I rented the house next door to the shop off him, being single. My younger brother was single. My older brother was married, and father wanted to contract with him through Sawkins again, but my older brother wouldn’t take it on, so me, being the next one down, I took it on, and I let my elder brother have half of it, and that was £2 a week, rates and full repairs, and our wages were £4 a week, and I still got it all in black and white at home, seems incredible, doesn’t it?
FC Yes.
BJ Any rate, that’s what happened there. My elder brother moved out after several years, and various other people had the half of the house. In 1958, my younger brother, Jack, who was in the business, left the business, bought one at St. Albans. Stopped there for seven years, eventually, he went down to Torquay, left a manager in it, went down to Torquay; joined up with Cecil Spriggs, remember him, the printer?
PR Yes.
BJ They were pals, buddies, they were, and of course, he finished up down there. And, Tom, my elder brother, he left the business in August, 1968, that would be ten years later, which left me on my own. Well, you know, then staff was very difficult to get hold of, especially trained staff. We were losing butchers through the industry, they were going as hod carriers, and earning a lot more money then, back in early, you know, 1970. Anyway, we struggled on, as best we could. I managed to rent some flats from my mother, who was still alive, and I used to let the staff have these flats free, three bed roomed accommodation. They could fall out of bed, and fall into the shop, but their main object was to get the flat. Once they’d got the flat, you could keep the job, and this went on for quite a time. The final straw was a chap that was in there, he’d got three kiddies, and a huge Victorian flat with a walled garden as well with it, he got it for nothing. He said to me one day, when he came in one Monday morning "I’m not coming to work today", he said, "we’ve had some soot fall down the chimney, and I want the day off to clean it up for my wife". I said, "well you can’t do that, we’re serving the Christ’s Hospital with meat", which was a big contract. I said, "no, I can’t do it". He said, "well, if you don’t give me the day off, I’m going to leave you". I said, "right, fair enough". So, what he did, he stuck in the flat, I paid the rent, he worked for Dewhursts.
PR Oh.
BJ Went to Longmores, though I took him to court, eviction order on him, and they said, "would I agree to him being in there six months, as long as he paid the rent and the rates?" He agreed in court, eventually after six months, I got twenty-five shillings off Longmores. He hadn’t paid anything. They said they could pursue him, to chase him and find him, but their expenses would no doubt outdo anything they that could have recovered. So that was the final straw, no more letting to the staff, and I pulled my wife into the business. What shall I say? The unfortunate part was that we couldn’t get staff, couldn’t get qualified butchers, not the ones that I wanted, the type I wanted, and the business got so big, it got beyond us. I remember saying in the shop one day, somebody asked me a question about staff, "well", I said, " we’re very stuck for staff" I said, " I’m full time here myself, Don Stewart helps me", a retired butcher from Watton-at-Stone, he was on the Parish Council I think for a time, wonderful butcher, he was well over seventies, and a marvellous butcher, and he helped me, part-time about four mornings a week, and I said, "also", I said, "I’ve got my wife here, she’s part-time". As I was talking to this person, and the response from her was "I’ll remind you that my part-time is seventy-six hours a week here", which she was. We totalled it up, and she was doing seventy-six hours.
FC I can quite believe it.
BJ Yes, and, of course, it was a seven-day week, very rewarding, but one got to the pitch "where do you go from here?" You know, from seven in the morning until half-past-ten, quarter to eleven at night I used to be there, and that went on Sundays as well, and eventually, 1980, I said, "well, enough’s enough". I didn’t want to retire, because we had such a lovely relationship with the customers. Some of our older one had seen me grow up, and some of the younger ones I’d seen them grow up. We knew them all by their Christian names, but we had a wonderful business there and I was very reluctant to pack up, but, you know, when you get to that certain age you think "well, where are you going, what’s it all for?" So that was it, and June 1980, a chap from Sawbridgeworth bought the business. He was a sales director of West Leytons, and he was in charge of two hundred and twenty odd shops. That was on the South side of the Thames. Well, when he came to my shop there, and took over, I hung on for about three weeks, he didn’t know his left hand from his right hand. He’d never seen a sausage made.
FC Incredible.
BJ Yes, and of course, the business just went to pieces, and that was almost the finish of it. Sad to see it happen. And even to this day, I walk through Hertford, and they’ll say, "Bruce, when are you coming back again?"
PR I bet. I bet. Now, we’re more or less up to…well, Frank’s into Bull Plain, as it were. Tell us about Mrs. Webb.
FC Oh, well.
PR I’ll go and get another tape.
FC I think that’s a bit unkind to talk about people.
PR No, no, no, no, no.
FC She’s gone on now.
PR She was quite a character.
FC She was indeed.
BJ Is that still going?
PR Yes, yes, yes.
FC Oh well, you couldn’t cover any ground with her, you know, that was the trouble. In the end I said to her, "look, either I take this lot over, or I, you know, I’m finished with it." And of course, she was saddled with it. Ron used to help her, but, oh my word, for a chap, you know, Ron Webb, he’d got no idea at all of doing anything, and she knew that he couldn’t. Bert was all right, he could organise anything, but Ron was no good at all unfortunately for her.
PR Bert was her…?
FC Son, and Ron was an adopted son.
BJ Adopted son, that’s right.
PR Yes, but how had their business started?
FC Oh, they started with the Sunday papers when Sunday papers, when it was a disgrace to take a Sunday paper, you were frowned on if you bought a paper when she started it, and it gradually went. Because when I took it over, at one time I believe I had twenty-eight boys, and so, you can well understand, you know what the paper trade is, with twenty-eight boys, you can understand I’m thin on top.
PR Yes. Well I remember you coming round into Farnhams, of course, on a Monday morning, picking up the sale or returns.
FC The unsolds, that’s right, yes.
PR Yes, I know about the newspaper trade.
FC Of course you do, yes.
PR A lot of grafting on that, but, did they sell toys as well?
FC Well, they sold toys, but they only did it downstairs, in a mild way. And, when we got there, I expect we tried to give people what they wanted, that’s why it grew.
PR I remember buying some goggles from…now Bert died, didn’t he?
BJ Bert died, that’s right.
FC Yes, that’s right.
PR Fairly…
BJ Young.
FC He was young, yes.
PR Which I’ve still got actually, they’re still in the back of my Honda 50. I went in there, and they’d got them. They were kids muck about goggles, with not one piece of glass, I think they’re probably quite dangerous to wear, a strap round the back. And I wanted them for my pushbike in the snow. It was snowing at the time, and you know when you’re cycling along it gets in your eyes, and I saw these kids goggles in there, and bought them from Bert Webb. And I hardly, you know, I’ve worn them, I suppose, about a dozen times in serious stuff, but I still carry them around with me, in case I’m on the motor bike and there’s a sudden storm. But they came from Bert, and I can picture them now in the window, you know.
FC They used to sell a lot of odd things that weren’t really toys.
PR Naughty, naughty tricks.
FC Oh, horrible tricks, yes, well I soon scrapped those, I’ve not had time for those sort of tricks, I thought they were nasty.
BJ That’s right.
FC They had to go.
BJ In wellies, didn’t they, go down wellies. Is Ron still alive?
FC No.
BJ Didn’t he move to Tamworth Road, at one time?
FC He did move to Tamworth Road, yes, but he died.
BJ Did he, and his wife died quite young. Bert was a, funny thing to say, attractive looking fellow, wasn’t he?
FC Oh yes, quite an active chap in the town.
BJ Quite smart, he’d got wavy black hair, jet-black hair.
FC That’s right. It was incredible; he came out as though he might have come from a palace, but it wasn’t exactly a palace when you went upstairs there. No fear. No.
BJ I tell you who I spoke to, Peter, who knows him well enough, Dicky Darton.
FC Oh, yes.
BJ Can’t he reminisce?
FC Oh, yes, well, of course, Dicky worked for…yes.
BJ Cor dear, dear, dear, and haven’t they done well, that family?
FC Yes they have. They must have been well…They must have had good parents. They’re excellent manners, all of them, aren’t they.
BJ Yes, well, the father wasn’t much good, because he was mustard gassed in the First World War.
FC Is that so?
BJ He never worked again.
FC But he must have had the right principles in life to have brought those children up like that.
BJ Luckily, they’ve all done well, haven’t they?
FC Of course they have, well, I always…
BJ We’re talking about Dicky Darton’s family.
PR Oh yes.
BJ Pavitt’s Yard, wasn’t it where they lived?
PR Yes, yes. Well, yes, they went up Sele Road then, didn’t they?
BR Did they? I don’t know.
FC They were in Pavitt’s Yard.
PR From Pavitt’s Yard to Sele Road, 31, next to Norah Phipps.
BJ Did they?
PR And he used to sit on the step up there.
BJ The father
PR The father. Mustard gassed.
BJ Mustard gassed in the First World War. I’ve been to meetings up at London with Dicky, as a guest, and come back, and he always reminiscing, always tears come down his cheek, how his mother suffered to bring all those kids…. Quite a big family, too.
FC Pavitt’s Yard, old Alfie Scales owned practically the whole of that Pavitt’s Yard, you know.
BJ Did he?
FC And Cocker Allen, he was bought up down Pavitt’s Yard.
BJ Yes, yes, Allen, they won all that money, didn’t they?
FC That’s right.
BJ In the Irish sweep.
FC Dad was in that house when they bought that fifty pence ticket, and they…
BJ Twenty-four thousand pounds, wasn’t it?
FC Yes, and they put two shillings in each, and he was on the verge, if they couldn’t have made it up, he’d have had two shillings worth so they could have bought the ticket, but they raked round and they got the ten shillings, fifty pence.
BJ They had no luck ever since, did they?
FC No.
BJ Tuberculosis, and one was killed.
FC That’s right, then Cocker did twelve months through knocking that child over up Ware Road, didn’t he?
BJ That’s right, yes, Cocker Allen, yes.
PR That was Cookie’s daughter, wasn’t it, the rag and bone...
FC I don’t know.
PR You remember the rag and bone man.
FC Yes, that’s right, yes.
BJ Yes, little girl, yes.
PR That was his daughter, that was…
BJ Killed.
PR Yes, in Ware Road.
BJ Another thing I’ll bring up, going back, if I’m not upsetting things.
PR No.
BJ You remember Giddings, there, when we were talking about their Jersey herd, well, when my grandfather used to buy meat, he had the gas mantles in the shop, those brass things.
FC I know.
BJ On flexible things, and when he used to buy in the market here, often you might buy say a Hereford, or you’d buy a shorthorn, but one of its ancestors was a Jersey, and when you slaughtered that animal, when you skinned it, all the fat was yellow, bright, brilliant yellow, you know, as if it had jaundice, or something like that, so when you come unstuck like that, what he used to do, is, in the Railway Place shop, he used to put the shutters up on a sunny day like this, light the gas, and he would serve that. That would hide all that colour, it would take all the yellowness out of it. He would serve people, more or less, in an artificial light.
PR Yes.
FC Old Tebbit Hawes at Stansted, he bought a black Angus, it won third prize in the Smithfield fat stock show in London.
BJ Yes, yes.
FC And he would have paid a fair price for that, and when he got it home, that was just like yours, that was all yellow inside.
BJ Well, when meat came off the ration in 1954, because the meat ration was shorter after the war than it was during wartime. It got to ten pennyworth of meat and two pennyworth of corned beef, well, after the war, we bought the prize in the market in the Ram yard there, where they held the cattle market, and that was Aberdeen Angus, belonged to Bert Grubb, you know from…
FC Yes.
BJ From the Water…
FC Pits.
PR At Waterford, yes.
BJ That weighed thirteen and a half hundredweight, and that cost us £10 a hundredweight then, £135.
FC That was a lot of money.
BJ It was then.
FC Yes, of course it was.
BJ But when we got it home and got it slaughtered, had it done at Colliers End.
FC Oh, yes.
BJ I’ve never seen… it was yellow as yellow, and the fat on it. It’d got that thickness of fat all over it, do you know. And the hindquarters weighed two hundred and ninety-two pound, each of them.
FC By Jove.
BJ And you know those rails we’ve got round the window, where you hung the meat on, they would take the weight all right, but they had to get these down, and the hindquarter’s a thing, well, from here right across there, they had to get it down there to get it up, to hang them in the window and we did, and the chap who did it, went down to St. Austell, and he’s only just recently died. But oh it was a bad old thing. It was full mouth, eight broad teeth, you know, which you’d never think of buying, but, if you hung it long enough, and you could stand a bit of fat, that was a lovely flavour.
FC Yes.
BJ Going back, I told yes, I mentioned about my grandfather putting the shutters up.
FC When you bought these expensive things at Christmas, how many aitchbones could you get off of that same beast, because..?
BJ Only get one aitchbone.
FC I know officially, of course you would,
BJ Two if…(laughter)
FC (laughter) But it went a long way off those beasts when it was Christmas, didn’t it?
BJ No, you’d get two aitchbones. They tell me now, if you go in a butcher’s shop and ask for an aitchbone, they don’t know what you’re talking about.
FC Well, that’s what we used to have. We only had one joint of meat. Mead used to bring us our meat out, and he got it from Earl’s.
BJ Earl’s, yes, yes. Which Mead was that, then?
FC Pardon?
BJ Which Mead? Not the bookies?
FC Tommy Mead, no, he lived up at Little Gobions.
BJ Oh, yes.
FC He kept pigs.
BJ Yes, yes.
FC And, he used to …we were friends.
BJ Well, pre-war, a good aitchbone, 12/14 pounds, what four and sixpence, wasn’t it?
FC I don’t know. We used to have that, and that used to last us the week.
BJ Yes.
FC When he brought that. And then when his wife died, Mum always cooked him a Sunday dinner, and whoever’s duty it was to nip up from Stonyhills to Little Gobions, you know where Little Gobions is, don’t you?
PR Where’s that?
FC Little Gobions, up the old isolation hospital, up, come over the railway bridge at Stapleford into Hertford, and take the first turning on the right, and go up there.
PR Oh, yes, yes.
FC Because that was the old smallpox hospital up there.
PR Oh, was it? I didn’t know that.
BJ Was it?
FC And then you went on a bit farther, and there was this Little Gobions, that Mead had, and
BU Great Gobions.
FC Great Gobions that Hedley Morgan had.
BJ Hedley Morgan, that’s it.
FC Mr Hedley Morgan, he did me the best thing that he could do, because, when I wanted… I was going to another business over, and my father was going to lend me some money, and then, in the end, I decided not to, and then, in the end, I took this round over up at... old John Laird he trusted me, I hadn’t got enough money to pay him outright, and Mr Morgan gave me a reference, you know, that..
BJ Did he, Hedley Morgan did?
HC He thought I would pay in due time if I got on my feet, and so that was that. That’s how I started, and so, I’m always very grateful for Mr Morgan for standing that security for me.
BJ Yes, you don’t forget that kind of thing.
FC He was a nice man, yes.
PR Did you ever have anything to do with each other, when you were younger?
BJ No.
FC Yes, oh no, not when we were younger, but when I used, I used to keep pigs down here at one time, and, when I had pigs, I usually used to have perhaps Saddlebacks and Large White boar, whatever it was, and you used to like the blue pigs, as we called them, didn’t you?
BJ Yes, yes.
FC And, if I’d got pigs in the market, you would always nearly buy them.
BJ Yes.
FC Pigs in the market, the best thing of all was when Christmas time, old Harry Reid had an advertisement in the Mercury, where his beef come from such and such a farm, and the pork came from Chappell’s, and they were my pigs.
BJ Oh, were they?
FC I was very pleased as a schoolboy, because Dad used to let us keep a couple of pigs of our own, you see, because we was always on the floor, and so, we used to rear these pigs and do them ourselves, feed them when we did, but we had to buy our own food. We weren’t pampered. We had a potato clamp outside home one day, well very often.
BJ Clamp, did you say?
FC Clamp of potatoes, yes. Well, come April, they’d all gone, or earlier than April, of course, they’d finished. And Dad said, "If you like to dig that, where that clamp up is, and plant it with potatoes, you can have them". So, I dug it and planted it with potatoes. Fair bit of work, you know, dig a potato clamp up and plant it. Planted it, only a boy I was, so then when I got them to cart, I’d got these potatoes to sell, you see, so I said to dad, I said "can I put a hundredweight, or bushel, two bushel", because we hadn’t got weighing machines, used to measure bushels when you did anything. And so, I’d got these potatoes to go down to Mrs Cosgrove down at Training School, she wanted some potatoes. So I said, "could I put those on?" "No, you can’t", he said, "Mrs Cosgrove’s my customer, you must find your own customers". He didn’t help us, so I had to find my own customers, oh dear. And, of course, when we went to school, we never went empty handed; used to have to take the milk round the village.
BJ Before you started.
FC Before you started, on the way, and then bring the empty bottles home at lunchtime.
BJ Well, they did have errand boys on the go before school, didn’t they, then? You had errand boys; I mean flying everywhere, weren’t they?
FC In those days, when I was at school, I was always up at half past five.
BJ I know, my father was a humbug for the mornings too.
FC Well, when I had the pigs down here, many a time, I’ve been unlocking that gate, and it’s quiet in those days, you’d hear the Ware clock strike four, because I’d got to feed the pigs and be back up Bride’s Farm, because my milkmen used to start at five o’clock.
BJ Yes.
FC But, by being about yourself, you hadn’t got much trouble with late, because it was an accepted thing, five o’clock was starting time and you was about there, and everything was cut and dried, and they were there at five. Not like they’re humming and hawing, creeping about, rubbing their eyes here at nine o’clock these days. Well, it is.
BJ I know.
PR So, what about people in the town, you know, who sticks in your mind over the years as a kind of town, either walking round the town or running the town?
BJ Characters?
PR Yes, yes.
BJ What you mean, ordinary run of the…
PR Yes, any body.
BJ Oh, dear.
PR I mean, did you have any customers you would get out the back of the shop, and hope somebody else would serve when they came towards the door, or were you always nice to all your customers, and pleased to see them?
BJ Well, there was one particular one, this was in the latter days when my wife was serving, she was a very nice person in her way, but every time I saw her come round the corner, I used to say "oh, good gawd", and leave I used to leave it to my wife to serve her.
PR Who was that then, Bruce?
BJ Well, she’s dead and passed on now, Mrs. Mannier. Mannier, they lived Railway Place, on the corner of Ware Road, where Coles used to live years ago.
FC Oh, I know.
PR Yes.
BJ Opposite the Saracen’s Head, the opposite side of the road. Major Hudson used to live there.
PR Yes.
BJ We used to go and knock on his door, didn’t we, on Christmas? And start singing carols and we used to get sixpence off him, and the next night we went again and used to get sixpence every time.
FC Well, their garden ran down to your shop, didn’t it?
BJ To our slaughterhouse.
FC Yes.
BJ Yes.
FC That’s right, see I can remember…..
BJ Claude Marshall lived next to them, didn’t he?
FC Pardon?
BJ Claude Marshall lived…
FC That’s right.
BJ Yes, yes.
FC Oh, dear old Claude, he was a nice man.
PR What about Maudie?
(End of Tape 1, Side 2)
(Tape 2, Side 1)
BJ Used to go around with kindling wood, that’s what they used to go around with, yes.
PR Yes. She never got strong with you. I don’t suppose she was a customer, was she?
BJ No, no, no, no. And then you had, from up the other end, you had old Wright, Wright with his rabbits.
FC Oh yes.
BJ You remember old Wright going round, "Netted rabbits" he’d call, and "rabbits", you know. Ten pence for a netted rabbit, and nine pence for a skinned rabbit.
FC Barkers, that’s right, yes.
BJ And he’d come in the kitchen and skin it for them, didn’t he? And then you had old Bossie Taylor coming round with his…on his head, that thing on his head, with crumpets.
FC Yes, that’s right, I can only just remember it, I was in Hertford, one Saturday afternoon, and he went down Railway Street, ringing his bell.
BJ That’s right. Ringing his bell, that’s right, yes. He lived up North … St. Andrew’s Street, on the right hand side. (Port Hill?)
BJ Oh, I’ve got no idea, we was only children then, yes.
BJ Near the old pianist up there, used to give piano lessons, can’t remember his name now. (James Moulton)
FC And then there was old Studman.
BJ With Gravesons, yes, he was a character
PR Reg.
FC Yes, that’s right, Reg.
BJ Lived in West Street, didn’t he?
PR Yes, last house in West Street.
FC That’s it, Reg. Old Mr Ellis…
PR Tell us about Reg. Tell us about Reg.
FC Oh, he used to come over for the evening paper, but I can remember we always had our suits made to measure there.
BJ That’s right.
FC And they fitted, he was a good tailor, you know, there’s no doubt about that, and then there used to be Mr. Clarke, he used to…
BJ He had the shoe shop.
FC The shoes, and they had a basement in Gravesons, used to go down, and he had his part, and I can always remember, we always had Little Duke shoes, funny how you remember these names, isn’t it? Always Little Duke, we used to have, yes.
BJ Little Duke, yes, well, Jim Bird’s wife, Eileen Fowler (née Farrow), worked there, didn’t she, his assistant?
FC That’s right, yes. Well, when I was at school, I got up to half-a-crown a week, pocket money, and I used to have to put a shilling on Graveson’s clothing card, and a shilling in Munning’s Post Office, and I had sixpence to spend. And then, when I left school, I was earning this fourteen shillings a week, and mum said, "are you going to give me the fourteen shillings, and I’ll give you some pocket money, or…and clothe you?" "No", I said, "I’ll pay you housekeeping money, and I’ll clothe myself". So, I think I gave her ten shillings, whatever it might have been, and I had four, and so I said, one of the things I said "I’ll fill Graveson’s clothing card up and then I’ll save my money", I said, "I can keep a shilling, and then I can go where I like, where I can get best value for my money", which I did, and so, that was one of the decisions…
PR Graveson’s weren’t the cheapest, were never the cheapest.
FC Oh, no, no, but you always got a square deal, yes, which is the main thing, yes, I think in life. You don’t what to chop and change about. I said to someone about the garages, you know, I said, " the best thing" I said, " is to ship around", I said, "these old garages’ll fleece you if they get half a chance". So, they said, "well, where are you going now?" I said, "I go to Haileybury Motor Works". They said "how long you been going there?" I said, "since 1937". They thought I’d done it long enough to know whether they was all right or not. I still go there today. I think I’m their longest serving customer.
PR Yes.
FC Yes, they always treat me fair today.
PR What about Clifford North?
BJ Clifford North in Davies Street?
PR In Davies Street.
BJ I saw him this morning.
PR Heard him this morning, you mean.
BJ No, saw him; he was coming along as I was coming out of Townshend Street, that’s right, yes.
PR He usually makes a great noise, doesn’t he?
BJ Makes a lot of noise, yes, yes Cliff North. Ex-territorial, isn’t he, artillery?
PR Right. He lives in Davies Street.
BJ Davies Street.
PR That little secret street almost, and he works at Graveson’s, doesn’t he?
BJ Does he?
PR I think he, I think he folds up the cardboard boxes.
FC Oh, I know that chap. Yes, that’s right, oh he’s always got plenty to say, he has.
BJ His son lives in Ware Road, doesn’t he, now? They got permission to build a house, didn’t they, in Davis Street, on the ground, round the back there, where Mrs. Ramsden used to… you know, where Mrs. Ramsden lived.
PR Two cottages, on the way in.
BJ Yes, on the left hand side. It’s one house, I think it is.
PR Is it, just one?
BJ I think it’s one house, yes. The son, he lives at 33 Ware Road, which used to be where Ramsdens lived.
PR Old Cliff, yes, he must be a decent age, isn’t he, Cliff?
BJ Yes, his wife died, Hetty, was his wife, wasn’t it, she was a waitress at the Mayflower, you remember?
FC I don’t think I do. You’ve been going to the Mayflower longer than I have
BJ You know Hetty, yes, she died. She always worried about him.
PR She would be the aunt to Shirley. (Shirley Edwards, née Hopkins from Ashley Road)
BJ That’s right. You’ve got it, Shirley’s aunt. Shirley…um.
PR Shirley’s mother and Hetty were sisters.
BJ That’s it, yes, you’ve got it.
PR Ah, right, I’ve cracked that.
BJ Shirley, I can’t think of her name, now, lives in Tudor Way.
PR It was Hopkins before, she was Shirley Hopkins before.
FC Yes, that’s right.
BJ Well, you know Shirley, you remember her.
FC Yes. Going back to the day I was up at Hertford Heath, old Mr. Thurston, they kept it, when I first started to deal there, and the old man always came out when you stopped for petrol, rubbing his nose, and they had funny old petrol pumps, two half gallon tubes up top where one marked full up, and the other siphoned it out, so the measure was accurate, of course. But the little clock, it was only about as big as this, on the side, used to gain about a quarter of an inch on each gallon, so I had five gallons and it registered nearly six. So his grand son was there, he said, "Granddad, you’re giving him a lot of petrol, more than five gallons". "Always good measure from this pump, boy".
BJ Always what, Frank?
FC "Always good measure from this pump".
BJ Good measure.
FC I’d only got the five gallons, or whatever, of course. "Always good measure from this pump, boy", dear, oh dear.
PR Are they related to the Hertford Heath Motors are they, in some way, the Haileybury, or are they not?
FC It was Thurston’s and then they called themselves Haileybury Motor Works.
PR Oh, yes.
FC They still do all the college mowers and everything now. Old Mr. Webb, he was there in the early days, really, old Mr. Webb, he was the blacksmith at ESA at Stevenage.
BJ Was he?
FC And then, I think he had an accident at some time or other, and so he got a job locally, up at the garage, because he’d sort of got a mechanical sense of mind. He an accident at Hertford Heath once; he was sailing up there with the sun in eyes, and hit the butcher’s cart, and of course smashed the cart, and the horse went trotting up the road. He didn’t see it ‘til he hit it, because of the sun in his eyes.
PR Who was your sort of rival, was there a rivalry, nothing unpleasant, in the butchery trade, because there were a lot of butcher’s shops around the town?
BJ There were a lot, yes.
FC Old Harry Reed controlled most of them.
BJ Yes, it was the money, wasn’t it?
FC Yes, yes.
BJ There was Sissie Stallabrass, he was…and Earle’s, Earle Brothers.
FC That’s right.
BJ Harry Reed used to go down there each week, to get a bit of cash what they owed him.
FC He put a fair bit of meat into a lot of the butchers. Old Harry Read, didn’t he?
PR Harry Reed is…?
BJ He was a pork butcher, and he was where that…, you know where the Bookworm is…the restaurant there, used to be Cook and Dranes, well, prior to Cook and Dranes, and after Harry Reed, was a chap named Arnold came into that shop, Arnold.
FC I can’t remember that.
BJ Arnold was a pork butcher.
FC Oh, yes.
BJ He took over, and I remember Fred Chapman, a chap that worked for us, who had the smallholding, used to sell a few chickens, and he came back and he said to my father, "I hear there’s a new butcher coming in Hertford, he’s taken over Harry Reed’s shop, and he’s going to have a game with all the butchers in Hertford. He’s been left £24,000 or £26,000". So my father already knew, he’d got the wind of it earlier, he said, "thank God for that", he said. "We could do with a few more like him in Hertford. I’ll give him six months." He went up Fordwich Rise. He got tangled up with another woman, six months, he’d gone. And then Cook and Dranes opened it, as grocers.
FC He had his slaughterhouse up that little road opposite, on the corner, where the estate agent is. You went up there, on the bend.
BJ Who?
FC Harry Reed.
BJ Didn’t he use Earl’s, down by the…?
FC No, no, the thing that…
BJ He did eventually, yes.
FC Oh, well.
BJ He used Earl’s down by the Three Tuns, you know going down there,.
PR Brewhouse Lane.
BJ That’s it. Brewhouse Lane.
FC Well then, when I was taking stuff, chickens, used to go up there. And I can picture the old poleaxe; there was a lump of wood in the middle with a ring on it…
BJ That’s it.
FC That you used to pull the head down, to poleaxe them.
BJ Do you know Frank, I’ve got a brand new poleaxe at home, never been used? There’re illegal now.
FC In the end, old Harry Reed lived down Hailey Lane, you know.
BJ That’s right. He had a daughter, didn’t he?
FC That’s right, yes. Well she was there too, with him, she kept house for him. When old Harry Reed, he used to keep a few pigs.
BJ Did you?
FC And I used to supply him with his pigs.
BJ Did you?
FC Yes, and when I was a lad, I bought some chickens off Thakes. He was a bit in a muddle with them, so I said, "Oh, I’ll have those", you know, we agreed a price. I bought these chickens. So I thought, I’ll try Harry Reed, see what he’ll give me for them so Harry come and looked at them, he gave me a price, and so I said, "is that the best you can do for me?" He said, "that is". "Well", I said, "I’m keeping them". I said, "you know", he said, "well", he said, "I don’t blame you boy", he said, "one thing", he said, "you’ll never want".
BJ But there was a lot of rivalry in butchers in Hertford, you say we had so many of them. I was just going through them: Scales…
FC Oh, yes.
BJ They had their own slaughterhouse then, which was Frosty’s, wasn’t it, Frost’s eventually. There was Scales; there was Spencer, Dewhurst’s, L.C.M., which finished up as Baxter’s.
FC Yes.
PR Wallie’s.
BJ Wallie’s, Stallabrass.
PR Bonser’s.
BJ Yes, Bonser’s.
PR Now the fish and chip shop.
BJ Yes, the Co-op, our own down Ware Road.
PR Yes.
FC It’s shocking to think there’s only one, isn’t it?
BJ It’s amazing, yes. When we were…after the war, because the ministry took control of all the meat, we were known as the Hertford Buying Group, and we were all in the same…
FC You would do, yes.
BJ I know it included Don Stewart of Watton, but that was fifteen butchers. But the competition pre-war was terrific, because if my father knew that somebody’s delivering to somebody at half past seven in the morning, he’d do his best, my father, to get us up in the morning, early enough, to deliver at quarter past seven. And I remember delivering up Stansted Road, that back end of Stansted Road, on the Foxholes estate there, and old Mr. Reynolds, you remember the Reynolds family, do you, he worked at Morris’s the furnishers, which is now the electricity showrooms, was the electricity showrooms, and I remember him, the times he leaned out the bedroom window, you know, I was knocking the door to get an order for meat to take back to the shop. "For God’s sake, go off this time in the morning". You know, it was dark.
FC Do you remember when….
BJ We used to get the order in the morning before we went to school. And I think I had somewhere about fifty-two calls: that was Tamworth Road, the side streets and up Foxholes and back again. And those orders would be cut after breakfast, and delivered back, we were at school then, by one of the older members of the staff, in time for that to be cooked by midday. That’s the service we gave.
FC Do you remember when Morris’s had their storerooms on the left as you go up Caxton Hill?
BJ What, in the old skating rink, as it was?
FC Yes, in where the garage is.
BJ Behind the garage there.
FC Yes, there.
BJ Wooden building, used to be a roller-skating rink.
FC Did it, yes?
BJ The War Ag. had it during wartime, they tell me, Sid Salmon was the manager, War Agricultural, War Agricultural Committee, and I think they eventually went up Brickendonbury, didn’t they?
FC That’s right, they did, yes.
BJ Yes.
PR Sid, oh no, I was thinking of Ted Salmon. There was Ted Salmon, lived in Raynham Street.
BJ Ted Salmon, lived in Raynham Street, that’s right.
FC Ted Salmon, wasn’t he the post office?
BJ Yes.
FC Oh, I can remember Ted, yes.
BJ He died at the Mayflower, didn’t he?
PR Did he?
FC He did, yes.
BJ Up on his feet, I think, speaking or something, and just phased out, yes.
PR He had been ill, though, hadn’t he?
BJ Yes, he wasn’t all that.
PR A stroke or a heart, or something.
BJ Yes, yes.
FC A very good neighbour to Mrs. Spackman.
PR Oh yes, yes. Spackman with the gaiters that used to be…
FC Ah, that was…
BJ That’s the son, isn’t it?
FC No, that was his brother, Joe was Fred’s brother.
BJ I thought you meant old Mr. Spackman, that was the father, he had a three-wheeled trike he used to come round on. He used to come into the shop, "morning Bruce, got a few oddmedodds", you know, when meat was rationed, a little bit of suet or a few bones to make a little bit of gravy. There was no waste in those days.
PR But that Joe with the leather gaiters.
BJ That’s right, he was a little bit backward, wasn’t he?
PR Yes, he always used to tell me about his father on the Council.
BJ That’s right, he was.
FC Yes.
PR Was he on the Borough Council, then?
BJ Yes.
FC One of them was the mayor, wasn’t he, some relation to them? (possibly a confusion with the unrelated Councillor Vince Packman?)
BJ I don’t know if his father was the mayor, or not.
PR Probably might have been.
BJ We used to call him nicky whiskers. because he had a tight beard, you know, shaved rather short.
FC Tessa would know, Tessa Chestnutt would know.
PR Yes.
BJ Yes.
PR Yes, I must ask her.
FC I’m pretty certain one was a mayor, yes.
BJ That was Tessa’s granddad.
FC Yes, that’s it, yes.
BJ He used to have a three-wheeled trike. You had somebody up the other end of the town had a three-wheeled trike, up your end, I can’t remember his name.
PR Yes, St. Andrew Street opposite Brewhouse Lane, the hairdressers.
BJ If you ever get the chance, if you haven’t already done it, get old Dicky Darton going, you know.
PR Yes, we’ll have to, we’ll talk to him.
BJ The mischief we used to get up to as boys. I forget the name of the chap there, used to come round with whitening, you know, when ladies used to whiten all their steps. They used to bring it round in a donkey and a cart, and when he was in there selling it to some woman, Dicky Darton and his brothers, they’d get the donkey and take it up the road. He’d come out and his donkey and cart had gone.
PR Yes, we ought to do that. So, tell me about, we must go in a minute, your family, Bruce. Mrs Harding, who I know well, I’ve actually got a recording of Bob’s mother.
BJ Have you?
PR Yes, not for an Oral History one, she just happened to be in bed one day with bronchitis, when I went in with a tape recorder.
BJ Yes, yes.
PR Now, how is she related to you?
BJ Well, she’s my mother’s sister.
PR Right.
BJ My mother’s younger sister.
PR So your mother was a Jeffries.
BJ That’s it.
PR Was your mother born in Hertingfordbury Road, then?
BJ As far as I know. It was number nine than, and then it went to forty-one.
PR Yes, two up from the school.
BJ That’s it. Now, it’s not there now.
PR Yes.
BJ Miss Hornsby, was it, the headmistress there (sc. ‘Head’ of Infants, i.e the infants’ teacher).
PR Yes.
BJ Because I went to that school. I used to walk from Ware Road opposite Addis’s up to that school, back again at midday, and back again for the afternoon. I didn’t go to the Faudel Phillips School. That was a good old haul for us kids.
PR It was, yes. Miss Turnbull was the head, and Miss Hornby was the infants.
BJ Yes, that’s right, yes, and we used to have a Christmas…
PR Why did you go to that school, Bruce?
BJ Well, I suppose it’s because my mother… all her relations on her side are buried in Hertingfordbury churchyard. Yes, I don’t know, but my sisters went there, we went there, and I went straight from there to the Cowper School. I never touched Abel Smith.
FC Going back to old Fred Spackman, this was the last garden he walked round. He came and had a look round here one day, and he was taken ill, and he gradually sunk from there.
BJ Did he, oh? Nice old boy, Fred.
FC Very nice old boy, yes. He used to look after the Home Guard, didn’t he?
BJ Did he, what, wartime?
FC Well, Marques was in charge, he was the big noise. (note that a Clifford Marks was a teacher at Cowper School, but Marques may be the correct spelling for this man, who was related to "the concrete people" (see below)).
BJ Who, the teacher, Marques? C.J.S. Marques?
FC No, Marques…
BJ The concrete people?
FC Yes.
BJ Oh, Concrete Utilities.
FC The one who lost his eye.
BJ Yes.
PR Yes.
FC Well, he was in charge, but old Fred, he was the works behind it all.
BJ Yes, yes.
FC He never did anything; Marques didn’t, unless Fred was there to supervise, because Fred was a military man, wasn’t he, and a very good athlete too.
PR Yes.
FC He used to win a lot of prizes.
BJ You talk about C.J.S.Marques (Marks? see above), I remember him coming to the Cowper School, as a teacher, when he started.
FC Oh, old Cliff. Yes, I remember Cliff, yes.
BJ And I know I met him at the Mayflower several times, and I said, "I’ve got something to show you one of these times", when I came over to one of the meetings over there, I bought all the reports that he’d given me, while I was…
FC Oh, yes, well I’m blowed.
BJ He married a relation of mine; he married a Miss Crane, didn’t he?
FC That’s right, yes.
BJ That’s it, yes.
FC Yes, there was Crane and old Wilfred Braybrook, they was all in the same family, weren’t they?
BJ Yes, there was a Crane lived down by where you were talking about just now, Salmons, Lil Crane.
FC Yes, I don’t remember Lil Crane.
BJ Her husband…that was her maiden name, and her husband was Gordon Bennett. He was a bus driver.
FC Oh yes.
BJ Gordon Bennett. Anything else you want to know about Mrs. Harding’s side?
PR Yes, yes. What can you tell us?
BJ Not a lot.
PR Oh.
BJ The relationship between my family and the Hardings and my mother and grandmother…
PR Were up and down, yes, but...
BJ Where will this recording be played?
PR That will go to the museum, so don’t say anything unless you want it to go in the museum.
BJ I’ll tell you when it’s switched off.
PR Mrs Harding’s mother.
BJ Mrs Jeffries.
PR I do remember Mrs Jeffries, and talking about the last time, you know, you see people, you do tend to remember. I remember her going up to Botsford’s by the war memorial, the one that’s not long closed (re-opened and still trading in 2012), for some paraffin…
BJ Did she?
PR In her thing, and that was the last time I remember seeing her.
BJ Yes. She had three boys there, didn’t she? She fostered them.
PR Ah, did she?
BJ And I met one of them not many years ago somehow. I don’t know how I come to meet him, but he was working at the bottom of…something to do with the water supply at Essendon, isn’t there a pumping station or something there?
FC Yes, there is one.
BJ Yes, that’s where he was working, because he was asking me about Buster’s…Buster Jeffries, which was my uncle. He knew that he’d died, but Gladys, you remember Gladys, his wife, you knew she married again?
PR No, well, I’d forgotten.
BJ Bill died, and there was Bill and Gladys, uncle and auntie of mine, were friends with two other people, husband and wife, and Bill died, and the wife of the friend died, and they got together and they married, and she was about a month off of eighty years old, I think it was. She’s still ticking over. She’s living down at Ringwood, and we were going on a bowling holiday next week, which I’ve had to cancel, otherwise we were going to drop in and see her, but she still contacts us.
PR What sort of age is she now?
BJ Well, she’d be about eighty-six, eighty-eight now, I should think. She worked at Small and Burgess’s for years, didn’t she, which is now Cousins in Fore Street.
FC That was a marvellous shop, they used to pull a chain and it shot up to the cashiers.
BJ That’s right, yes, the money, yes.
PR Bon Marche.
BJ Bon Marche, yes. And then she worked at Bournes, is it Bourne and Hollingsworth’s in London? Gladys. When it’s switched off I’ll tell you this tale Peter. It’s a sad tale really, but perhaps it’s just as well if it isn’t recorded.
PR Yes, well we’ve covered the ground very well, and we’ve done a tape and a bit, we only reckon on doing one tape, but we’ve done half…
BJ Well done, I didn’t know quite what you were going to ask, you know, but it comes back to you, these old times are much clearer than what happened yesterday.
PR Yes.
BJ You find that don’t you Frank?
FC Yes, I can remember what we did.
PR How long have you actually been here, then?
FC Only thirty-five years.
PR It’s a lovely house.
FC It’s all right.
BJ Well, you say it’s a lovely house, we were on a senior citizens luncheon club, on a holiday, and, I don’t know where we were, Frank, somewhere Scarborough or other, and Margaret, what’s her name, Scotty Waller’s sister?
FC Who?
BJ Margaret, she…
FC Lake.
BJ Yes, Lake.
FC Lake. She was asking you, Frank, "where do you live now?" And you tried, he was sitting down, explaining to her, we were down Torquay or somewhere or other.
FC Yes, that’s right.
BJ She was taking you so serious, "well", he said, "you know you go up Gallows Hill and you turn round", and she said, " well, I don’t know what it’s like now". He said, "well, if you come up there", he said, " you can’t go wrong, come up Gallows Hill turn to the right keep going straight and you’ll see some houses. It’s the one where the rats are in the thatch" and she felt so sorry for him. Do you remember?
FC She always greets me well today, and I greet her well, there’s no ill feeling. Oh dear.
BJ Poor old Frank.
FC I remember that, that was Torquay.
BJ Oh, her face dropped, poor old Frank, living in them conditions.
PR You’re not two nice old gentlemen, sitting by the fireside, are you, at the moment?
FC No.
PR How do you spend your time, then, in 1994?
FC Well, this week: Monday night it was Rotary Community Service, I’m not really on the…when they put down which committee you’d like to serve on, so I put down membership, because if we don’t get anybody to join we don’t have any meetings, so that was that. But then they co-opted me on, that’s the only one I’ve been on, I’ve always served on community.
BJ You have, yes.
FC And I tend to look after the old people, and I took on George Burton’s job on, of representing Age Concern. So it was Monday night Rotary committee meeting, Tuesday night, where was I Tuesday night, got something on, meeting somewhere, then Wednesday it was… Oh, I think Tuesday; yes Tuesday it was Cranbourne Hall, because they want to put the 414 across the top of the meadow, up there.
BJ Oh, yes.
FC That was that, and then Wednesday it was Age Concern, and last night it was Ware Chapter, but I’m not out any more.
BJ No, no.
FC Not this week. Next week, first free day I’ve got, or Vera and I have got, is Friday, and we’ve got to take then one of my old staff out, because he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and he can’t drive or anything, he’s old, poor old boy, he’s eighty-two or so, and we take those out next Friday. So, that’s next Friday booked up plus during the week.
PR You were off to Brighton the other day, when I …
FC Oh, yes, I pick up two of the youngsters down there, she was eighty and he was eighty-eight. You know what it’s like when you get up in these??? They were very good company. He was a marvellous chap, yes, if I can go like him when I get eighty-eight, I shall be very happy. He went well, he did, yes.
BJ It’ll soon get you, Frank, the way the years are going by.
FC Yes, and then, unfortunately, I went to poor old Ron White’s funeral, last Thursday.
BJ Thursday.
FC He was a nice man. I palled up with old Ron from the farm walks and talks and we remained good friends, another one of those lucky friendships, because he never rumbled me, and we remained good friends right up to the end, and I went and saw him about a week before he passed on, poor old boy. He said, "thank you very much for coming and seeing me, Frank, it’s very much appreciated".
BJ I remember you saying.
FC I liked old Ron.
BJ But, the Mercury got it all wrong again.
FC They said he was Boot’s longest serving employee. He’s Boot’s British Isles longest serving employee. There’s never been anyone work for Boot’s as long as what Ron did.
PR Oh really, not just the Hertford???
BJ Did he tell me a few weeks ago was it sixty odd years or something he worked, sixty-four years was it, I think, he worked for them?
FC Oh, I don’t know, it could have been. He started with them when he was fourteen.
PR And he was working well after retirement age.
FC Oh, a long time.
BJ I think he told me, not many weeks ago, I was talking to him at the luncheon club.
FC We used to go, I remember going down to, we were walking down to catch a train to go to a meeting in London, and we’d both got a little brown case, and we were much about the same height, because he wasn’t very tall, if you remember, and old Mrs Mardell was down "and where might you twins be off to?" she said. I’d gone up left the car up his place. I liked old Ron, he was a very nice man.
BJ By the way, Peter, as it’s still recording, when I left school, I was fourteen year old and a couple of months, I weighed six stone four pounds. I’ve still got the record at home, where we sat on the jockey scales, down at Clacton, and up the back there, it’s got September, 1934, six stone four pounds. "Mr. Shrimp", my father used to call us, "aren’t you ever going to grow?"
PR I’m afraid there’s one more ordeal for you.
BJ Yes.
PR I’ve got the camera in the car.
BJ Oh dear.
FC Oh dear. I wish I’d have put a collar and tie on. Oh, no, don’t take it today, Peter, really.
PR Oh, you’re looking marvellous.
BJ Vera’ll have a fit, "you’re too lazy to dress properly". Oh dear oh dear, I’ve got this old red nose. Don’t do it today, no, she’d have a fit, "whatever made you get yourself like that".
BJ Is it still being recorded.
PR Yes, it is.
BJ Shows you how he’s fearsome of her.
PR Yes, you can see who’s in charge. Now I’ll go and pop to get the camera. You’ll have to face up to one quick one, Frank.
FC No, I can’t.
PR I’ll come back another time and take a second one, do the first one now.
BJ That’s it, Frank.
PR Hi Vera, Vera’s about.
FC Dear, oh dear.
JR You’re relaxed now, you look as though you’re enjoying yourself.
BJ Yes.
JR So have it done now.
BJ I’m not quite so busy as I was, Frank, because I’ve had a rough old winter, as you know.
FC Yes.
BJ I retired in…is it still being recorded?
JR Yes, carry on, though.
BJ No, I retired in 1980.
JR Yes.
BJ And I did ten years driving for the Red Cross, you know taking disabled people here and down to coast and up to hospitals, and that sort of thing, but once you get to seventy, you’re automatically, you’ve got to pack up. But during that time and afterwards I did meals-on-wheels. I didn’t join the WRVS, but I did meals-on-wheels for them for quite few years, and once you start on that, as you know, Frank, Mrs what’s her name, from Bengeo… Mrs …disabled, she’s on you.that picks up the disabled for us, you know…
FC Er…
BJ You remember the woman...lives up Port Hill…you and I drove for disabled people, didn’t we?
FC Did we?
BJ Yes, you did, you took them down the Red Cross hall.
FC Oh, yes, yes, yes.
BJ Mrs… what’s her name, lives up…he’s a Sir somebody…up Bengeo.
PR Melville.
BJ Melville, Mrs, Lady Melville.
FC Oh yes, oh yes.
BJ Yes, I did that, and once they get you, the blind club got me, and then the disabled club, and that’s how it goes on. And are you still the chairman of the Evergreen Club, because you took over from me, didn’t you?
Tape ends.