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Transcript Title	Ditton, Maisie (O1994.4)
Interviewee	Maisie Ditton
Interviewer	Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date	16/02/1994
Transcriber by	Jean Riddell

Transcript

Hertford Oral History Group

Recording no: O 1994.4

Interviewee: Miss Maisie Ditton, aged 70 (MD)

Venue: 4, Millstream Close, Hertford

Date: 16th February 1994

Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)

Transcribed by: Jean Riddell

************** = unclear recording

[discussion] = untranscribed material

(Introduction by Peter Ruffles and arriving and sorting out sitting arrangements etc. not transcribed)

PR: Maisie Ditton, a very well-known Hertford person and from a well – known Hertford family ….

MD: Now take your ginger wine off - there's plenty more if you'd like it ….

PR: So having said that we've got the date and the time on tape, what else do we need to say? Nothing …. What I'd 1ike to do, Maisie, can you take a long view and sketch your family and who's who and how long? I'm not sure we need so much of Hertford Choral and COPs as street stuff and Hertford, school, shops and things - cover the ground. You're one of three daughters of George, Henry, John ….

MD: John, Henry ….

PR: …Ditton and Christina living at 37 North Road - all your life or started somewhere else?

MD: No, I was born in Ware actually. My mother came from a Ware family, well so did my father really. He came from …. his grandparents were Stanstead Abbotts and St. Margaret’s …. my mother's family came to Ware from London. My father's life really is quite interesting and a part of it not many people in Hertford would have known about. You don't really want to go into my family history but perhaps that picture up there explains some of it. I don't know whether you've ever seen it before?

PR: No, I haven't.

MD: He left home, just an ordinary home, not rich not poor, to join the army, the only thing he ever wanted to do, and he rose through and became eventually commissioned and …. I don't know whether this is good enough for you?

PR: Yes, just the job ….

MD: He served Egypt where he was commissioned and he became the Commandant of the Imperial Camel Corps School and met T.E. Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – and he was associated with him in a great many of his secret and dangerous enterprises which often entailed him having to don the Arab garb. At that time he was put on acting ranks as far as major and sometimes he was required to undertake ceremonial things like being …. representing the country at the birth of King Farouk. He knew such people as General Wavell and acted as aide-de-camp to those sort of people. No doubt he would have continued his army career which he had his eye on getting to the top, had he not after the war, been sent on a mission to Ireland where he sustained the damage to his leg which you will remember this ….

PR: Yes, yes.

MD: …. and this was sadly thought to be IRA activity or troubles in those days of the Black and. Tans and so on. My sister, Connie, whom you know, and I didn't know this myself until recently, the story is that he was being driven somewhere – by this time his acting rank had gone down to lieutenant - when a figure emerged from a tree, which was thought to be a woman - or at 1east in long clothes . But I think it couldn't have been a woman, well it might have been, I suppose, but a grenade was flung at the car in which my father was being driven and the driver was killed outright and in the resultant crash my father's leg was smashed up and I think it was only because he had very good medical attention that he was able to keep his leg. As you know, he walked with a limp and a stick all his life.

He was mentioned in dispatches - we have that document signed by Winston Churchill who must have been in office at that time in some capacity.

He was also awarded the Order of the Nile which is a very high honour in Egypt and has a lovely star which my sister Connie has at the moment. He was a Freemason in Lord Kitchener' s Lodge and it was a very starry time altogether. I think there are only about four of Order of the Nile medals in existence. I think one is at Romsey Abbey with Earl Mountbatten. All this sounds very starry and upstage, doesn't it, but in fact I think the only way my father could come to terms with his interrupted career was to go on as if it had never happened. He never even called or major the way he was mentioned in obituary and I don't think that very many people in Hertford know this, in fact we had not known much about it ourselves because he would not talk of it and I think that is the only way he could live with it. He had to literally come back a time when …. and had to look around and it was very hard for returning servicemen of any rank to get a job and he was not very good at working for anybody else and he was not a rich man so he just went into the radio business which everybody in Hereford knows him for.

PR: Yes, yes ….

MD: Faint echoes of this career used to reach us from time to time but we have never spread it around much because he wouldn't have wanted that. Only when he was much older did I sometimes get him to tell a bit about his time with Lawrence and one or two odds and ends. He was very strict and authoritarian. There was no second boss in our house but, always just and kind and generous. It was borne in on us very early in life that other men treated him with great respect ….

PR: Yes. I've seen all that, but that obviously was a consequence of his own style of ….

MD: Yes. Apparently he had a really good way with men. I'm very proud of the fact and I've never said much about it, because he only went back to being the simple sort of man he was before, but he did have a very good career which no doubt would have gone on much further if it hadn't been sadly for the same sort of thing that we're hearing about today ….

PR: Yes, in the news regularly. Do you know exactly where he was born?

MD: In Essex - I wish now - I've had to write this out for some relatives in Australia and I've written an account, including all this for Connie, who's a great one for keeping up relationships with cousins in Australia. I'll have to ask Connie – she's going to let me have a copy.

PR: How did he actually meet your mother then?

MD: Well, when he went back to Ware to live, mother's family moved to Ware from London, up from Limehouse where her father was a shipwright. They 1ived in quite a big house in Limehouse, but they moved.to Ware for some reason and when the furniture van arrived at the house next door to where my father was, they were a family of seven or eight and all the young sisters jumped out of the van, they were only girls, growing up, my father said that one is the one I'm going to marry! And sure enough he did! And that's how he met my mother - married the girl next door in other words.

PR: I'm glad I asked.

MD: Well that's it. They did go through a time because my father had to keep going for treatment. He had to live somewhere near a hospital in London and they - he wasn't a rich man - he didn't have masses of funds behind him and it's just that Mother was always a good manager and my father …. we were lucky that when he was blessed with three daughters when he would have loved a son, he was always one to encourage us I think he was determined that we wouldn't lose out on the things he would otherwise have been been able …. and so we all went to Ware Grammar School which was a very good school. We didn't all win scholarships. Guess who didn't ….

PR: Oh, Maisie.

MD: But my father was one who took enough interest to go and see the headmistress and find out why I hadn't. She talked to him - a nice person Miss Woodhead, a lovely name for a headmistress. But she was kind enough to say that that year she had been restricted on her number of free places and the area from which she had to take her scholarship girls was enlarged. If it had been the year before I would have been home and dry. I passed all the written part so my father was one of those who believed in fair treatment for everyone - no difference made. We were singularly blessed in our parents. They were devoted to each other and they treated us all even-handedly. So my father somehow raked up the wherewithal.

PR: yes, yes.

MD: It was in those days a very expensive school to attend. You had to buy every last book and since you had about fifteen mistresses in one term and they all wanted books and that's apart from tennis racquets and hockey sticks, I don't know how they managed to send four of us there because for four years of our lives, in childhood we had to have a cousin staying with us. Irene Bradshaw, mother's niece, who lost her own mother at eleven to come and live with us and come to the same school. I can remember my father lining us up and saying, she will be like another daughter ….if I hear anything …. she had to keep the same rules, and that cousin looks back today and says they were the four happiest years of her life!

PR: Where were you living at that stage then when you were at school?

MD: When Dad started the business at St. Andrew St. we lived over the top of it.

PR: What year was that?

MD: About 1937-8 we moved to the big house in North Crescent - the business expanded and my father had what was an ordinary house made into a shop front.

PR: Oh, he did the conversion ….

MD: Yes, he did the conversion of the shop.

PR: we'd better say where this is - next to the Three Tuns.

MD: Yes, absolutely opposite the Old Verger's House, Beckwith's now.

PR: 43, St. Andrew Street. What number were you in St. Andrew St. then?

MD: 36

PR: 36 and then went round to 37 North Road.

MD: Yes, that's right. Where they lived until about the last 3 – 4 years, last 2 years of my mother's life. She died in 1964 so they were there until about 1962.

PR: Did your mother move to West Street?

MD: Yes. she was only there for 2 years and then she died. The cottage belonged to Eddie Williams. He was a friend of my father and they had to move from that house because they rented the big house in North Crescent as well as renting the shop premises and half of the land around Hertford because my father liked fresh garden produce. He was a great one for fresh food. So all that area now around the castle bridges that used to be behind Mascall’s the antique shop, my father rented that with all the apple trees and we used to have the children there on Guy Fawkes night. Then when that was given up he rented the ground behind Fore Street, when you come out from All Saints' Church- it's all underpasses now. He used to have a man come to do that garden. My mother never had to worry about fresh vegetables.

He gave up that house when the new Rent Act came out. Everyone who owned. a house had the right to sell it if it was above a certain rateable value and most of the good old landlords, it was their only asset to sell it and they could offer it to their tenants first but …. my mother and father were in their 70s and you couldn't get a mortgage – 90% mortgages and people nowadays taking out mortgages and haven't got enough to keep them up: unless you could put the whole cost of the house down and the landlord could sell it. Older people like my mother and father had to find somewhere else to live. Fortunately my father had a friend, Eddie Williams, who had a cottage to rent. But my mother was only in it for less than two years and my father for about four.

PR: I thought he was a widower for longer than that?

MD: No, mother died in 1964 and father in 1968.

PR: Oh, I hadn't realised that. Three daughters, we'd better get the order right.

MD: Connie, the eldest, born in 1922. Then I was born in 1924 and Sheila in 1927.

PR: Right and all three of you now live in Hertford?

MD: Yes, Connie and I have always lived in Hertford.

PR: Connie Murkin, in case someone wants to know in a 100 years’ time, wants to look this up and say, oh that's …. (note Connie lives at 8 Brookside)

MD: Yes, I don't know why our family should be of particular interest, but you'll cut some of it out probably. But Sheila lived in Southgate. She married when she was 21 so that was from 1948 until 9 or 10 years ago, because her husband worked in the City.

PR: And she's called Sheila Warren ….

MD: Yes, that's right.

PR: Living now in Tanners Crescent, and Connie's up at Brookside.

MD: Yes.

PR: Right, we've got the long view, the perspective. What we ought to see is some of the things your father did in the town, generally and describe the shop and the years he kept St. Nicholas's Hall going, and he was church warden at St. Andrew's. What about the shop, what sort of business was it?

MD: He started in a very small way because he thought what do I know about? He knew everything about the army and military matters and really hardly about anything else because that had been his whole life and would have been his whole life to the end which I think would have surprised a lot of people in Hertford. He was very meticulous, too, about things - he wouldn't call himself Major Ditton, because he says that's incorrect - you shouldn't use your military title once you're no longer …. it used to make him smile when they used to talk about Captain Mark Phillips.

He had been at a school where they had to teach the soldiers signalling. There always used to be a joke when people got their words wrong in our family. He had a sergeant and the sergeant is a key to good order in the army. If you got a good sergeant you're home and dry. He had one but he never got his words exactly right. Asked about a new young private getting along, ”Well he tries but if you know what I mean sir, he ain't got no technical." And so in our family if anyone couldn't manage anything we'd say "you ain't got no technical."

So the only thing he really knew anything about was radio. Some friend said you'll have to go in something where you run your own show. So he started off by charging the accumulators. In those days you couldn’t get your radio transmission without an accumulator, it wasn't on the mains. People in town could only take them to a garage. They were not willing to take the small cells for wireless sets and were charging people quite a bit for something that's not going to last them very long and Father thought if you could charge them up and not cost too much - he was very generous with money - he wasn't one of those people who worry over every penny. He acquired a big charging machine with all dials on. Connie always says if one of us had been a son that business would probably be flourishing today, but it's not the sort of thing that girls, particularly girls brought up rather strictly knew much about.

So he started off by having these things to charge up and charging very much less than at a garage and it caught on until he converted the premises at St. Andrew St. into a shop: it had two good floors above it so plenty of room for a family as well - 5 or 6 hundred being charged a week. Then other things you need: valves, batteries, radio sets and radiograms and it flourished, mightily. Enough to put us through our education and fairly good treats and fairly good standard of life.

PR: He stopped the shop before television?

MD: Yes, just before television - in fact he could have made a lot more money than he did if he hadn't been so generous. He gave hundreds of pounds of free radios to The Wireless for the Blind Assoc. run by Miss Taylor. My father was much more at home with men than ladies in spite of being surrounded by females all his life. Miss Taylor was the only other lady for whom he had a lot of admiration because she was so good to the blind.

PR: Was she a Hertford …..?

MD: I think she was. She used to come in and tell my father stories about the blind people and he gave away hundreds in sets for blind. Sometimes men would come to work for him and he would pay enormous sums for little work. He would help any lame dog over a stile. When he heard that a lady named Mrs. Shepherd had started to keep her own little herd of cows up in Bengeo and was doing lovely full cream milk, apart from the milk that the milkman left, our father ordered a pint from her every day. His excuse was that it was healthy for the girls to have a drink every day but really it was for Mrs. Shepherd. Or any, literally, dogs that he felt were ill-treated. We had a succession of dogs and he was that sort of man. If he went down the town he'd come home with groceries and chocolate - he could have made a lot more money, but he thought that money was to spend, and if he could help people that hadn’t got enough…………

PR: We're overlooking your mum, but George's public face is of interest to people involved with the museum and the tapes. Across the road was St. Andrew's Church and the tower of St. Andrew and St. Nicholas's Hall - very big in his life.

MD: Yes, he became the churchwarden during Canon Gill's time ….

PR: Well, I think he started in 1947, before Canon Gill

MD: C.Norman Smith. (The Rev. C Norman Smith)

PR: And he was warden with Mr. Joys?

MD: That's right, because their initials are both on the clock bell. And he was a very avid bell ringer and he used to keep strict order in the belfry just as he used to keep strict order at home, because we were very strictly brought up.

PR: But also generously and kindly even-handedly. What one didn’t have the others didn’t have. But he was very strict with the bell ringers who always seemed to me to be a more cantankerous group of men. Reg Dore, Sid Rochester. There was a George Gray who reckoned he was a great bell ringer; Vic Neale, Geoff Freestone - young men then - who married a Wench.

PR: Eileen Wench's – Kath Wench’s sister-in-law.

MD: The trouble-maker was old Vic Neale - he lived in the little yard, the cottages near St. Andrew St.

PR: Yes, Victoria Place on the right - been pulled down this last month or two.

MD: He was a funny little man, very short and he was a plumber by trade and he always kept on the right side of my father because he knew he'd get the plumbing jobs for St. Nicholas's Hall. My father often used to come down after practice and he used to say to my mother, “d'you know, if I have any more trouble with Vic Neale, I shall put on my hat and I shall make my way down from the bell and I shall stamp out”. I often wondered how he would stamp down 130 stairs!

PR: Yes, yes.

MD: But my favourite story concerning old Vic Neale - he always thought he should be the one to do the calling - you know how they have to call Bob or Sid or something for a change round and it's quite an honour to do the calling and he always used to think he should do it and anybody else who ever did it was wrong and he used to be just one of those people who upset everybody. Anyway eventually old Vic died and my father met his widow along St. Andrew St. and stopped for a chat with her. “How are you getting on? We miss old Vic at the belfry.” And she said, “The bell ringing meant a lot to old Vic almost the last conversation I had with him when he was dying. As to the bell ringers give my respects to Mr. Ditton and bugger the rest of them!” At least I feel that old Vic wasn't a hypocrite. If I were St. Peter I'd open the Pearly Gates straight away, for old Vic for not being a hypocrite.

PR: For being straight! We're all right for tape. I keep checking this er machine. I'll bring it up in a minute. Then there was St. Nicholas's Hall that must have been a big problem.

MD: Yes, it was a problem because it was, after all, the war when you couldn't …. when everyone was after a job and the first vergers I remember was a Mr. and Mrs. Burfitt and Mr. B. was very much the right type for a verger and he was succeeded by Mr. Bassett who was not really the right type for a verger. I think he used to like a pint opposite at the Little Bell.

PR: That's further down …. no, where was the Little Bell?

MD: That's where motor cycles - next door to us.

PR: Number 40. (In 2015 Belles and Shears hairdressers)

MD: Yes, and he used to wander about with a cigarette on and always got a kind, a saucy word for the younger ladies but not to the older ones. I think he did the verger's job very well but he wasn't really the type. Well when he went away there was a time when it was very difficult to get a verger and there were all sorts of people left out of a job after the war and came for the job who were the most unlikely and unsuitable people. There was the Church Council pushing for a certain type of person and the only applicants he was getting were most unsuitable and it really was a headache. Then they decided to do without a verger.

PR: Mrs. Hebbes took over unofficially.

MD: We often used to get amusing bits of what happened at the C.C. meetings . It must have been in the time of old Natty (Revd. N.T. Gardner) because he came home once and said that Mrs. G. had been at the meeting and having a say about something and you know what a bossy overbearing lady she was. And he said all of a sudden, the Rector lost his temper with her, got up and said, “My dear you do nothing but talk, talk, talk,” in the middle of the meeting. Oh dear, you'll have to cut this one out - it wasn't from my father …. something about Doris Stocks ….

PR: Oh, right, that'll be all right.

MD: She was the Treasurer, wasn't she, for years and years and kept all the books admirably. Apparently it used to cause a bit of a nuisance at the C.C. meetings because she was most meticulous about keeping her books, but old Alan Maynard who had a peculiar sense of humour which used to upset a lot of people, though I must say he was a friend of mine and always got on very well with him. I have good memories of him and he used to say, in what to him was a joke, “Yes, well that's where you fiddled the books, Doris, that £50 – how much have you had out of the funds?” and this sort of thing. And she really took exception to that; she took it really hard and complained, and said she didn't want that sort of story going round the town. That reminds me of dear old Mrs. Pettit, Eileen Page's mother, and how much she amused me once after we'd been at some social affair in the hall and you had to put your money in the pot for coffee and no one could get near it because Doris had stationed herself against it and wasn't going to let anyone get away with it and it upset Mrs. Pettit because I know she said, “Oh, that Doris, she gives me the pip she's always moseying round the money pot!” Oh, you can't put that in your tape ….

PR: No, that's OK(????)

MD: My father was very much involved with the church. I've got a nice story that Clara Stocks told me about my father and the sort of man he was. He wouldn't have any nonsense from anybody and we were often on the carpet. He was a straight-talking person. Once, she (Clara) had got the job of doing the Easter Garden in the church and she'd never done it before and she'd no idea what the garden should look like and she'd done her best with some stones, sand and a few flowers. My father was churchwarden and he happened to come in the church whilst she was doing it. He came across and looked at the garden. She was shaking in her shoes and thought he might say she hadn't made much of a job of it especially when he said, “Have you ever been to Palestine?” She thought, “I know he's been to Palestine. I bet I've got it all wrong,” And said, “No!” And he said, “I really thought you must have been because that's exactly what the terrain looks like in Palestine Sandy like that with odd bits of stone. You don't often see an Easter Garden where it looks exactly like it should.” And she said, “I went out feeling 10' tall, but,” she said, “That's how he was, a mixture of being very hard sometimes and generous and, kind at others.”

PR: Yes, St. Andrew’s parish owes a very great debt to him. He carried the burdens during difficult years. The harder years after the war into the Norman Smith new rector thing - well that's when he started - into Canon Gill – it was quite a hard time and the hall was running into disrepair and not enough income.

MD: Yes, that's right.

PR: Soon after, I think once he'd stopped being C.W., he was still hall carer?

MD: Yes, he took on the hall for a long time. I think he knew what it was to have a starry existence and what it was to have to struggle. He knew both sides of what life is like. That's why he was so wise and good and just and strict. And you had to paddle your own canoe if he didn't know enough about it. The example of that was on my piano. Their piano it was. He always had it in good order when he knew I wanted to play and encouraged me. One of his lame dogs was a man who set up piano tuning and every time he came it seemed to be a bit more out of tune that it was before! In the end, I said, “This man's not doing the job properly. I knew from when I went to my teacher it was not as it should be, not when he'd paid out to have it tuned every 6 months or so. He said, “Well to be honest my dear, I haven't got much ear to whether these things are in tune.” He wasn't very musical apart from military marches.

He said, “I'm afraid if you don't think it's right you'll have to tell him yourself because I don't feel I'm competent.” And we always relied on him for everything. He did all the telling. This was an eye opener to me. I was about 14.

PR: Tall order he gave you!

MD: Yes and I said to my mother, “I don't know that I dare.” And she said, “Your father said you must and that's only fair. He would have done it if he could hear the difference but you must do it yourself.” So I told this man and oh, he went off the handle at me. “I shall see your father about this.” And I went off and said, “All right then.” I told my father what had happened and he said, “Good, I'm glad you told him yourself.” And he went to the trouble to find an expert tuner. The man who did everybody's round here and colleges and schools and made an appointment for this man to come and said, “We'll see now.” A lovely little man came really good and said, “This is a nice piano, but when did you last have it tuned?” From then on we had that man for ever more and, when this man complained to my father, he got a flea in his ear.

PR: Yes, when George knew what he was talking about ….

MD: No, he said, “My daughter is studying. She knows it's out of tune. I've had an expert and I'm not paying to have the instrument ruined.” That's the way he dealt with the men in his army career.

PR: Well, I'm going to turn the tape over now ….

MD: That's good, because it's getting too personal.

PR: Oh, no, that's smashing, because it's colourful. Nice bits of colour about people. When I've turned it over, it's almost got to the end, I'll let it run. I wonder if you could take us for a quick walk down the town and look at the shops …. and then we'll come on to the COPs.

MD: Yes, that won't take long.

PR: People or shops you remember down the town or characters from your childhood!

MD: Well I was just thinking the other day about what shops we had here before we had the new road. There were a whole row of shops from where the road divides.

PR: From the Ebenezer Chapel/Neal Court position.

MD: Well, first of all we'll go on the other side. There was a fish and chip shop, I think their name was Huggins or Huggett.

PR: It was Luca's towards the end of the time.

MD: That was a very nice fish and chip shop.

PR: Then there was your dad's rival I suppose, McRae's, a wireless shop on the corner there. That was another accumulator shop at one point.

MD: Then there was a very nice little sweet shop that used to call itself, 'The Lantern' I remember that's the only time I ever won something, an enormous box of chocolates, because at Easter time if they had some of those very big boxes they would have a raffle.

Side B

PR: After The Lantern then came Lawrence's ….

MD: Grocery and provision from whom we nearly all had our rations during the war. I mean he had the job of cutting up loz lard or 3/4 bits of bacon or tiny little bits of cheese. But he was very good at it and very fair and I think one of his daughters married a Haydon who was a cobbler. He had two daughters. I don't remember who the other one …. and then we had a Pateman' s which always had a swan with eggs in it in the window. They used to drive their cows along St. Andrew St., didn't they? It was nothing to see the cows driven in.

PR: Yes, where were they going to - I suppose 1, Wareham's Lane, was it?

MD: Yes, there was just rough old field behind there where people used to keep pigs and that kind of thing there and, that's where their cows went but it was a dairy. And there was Emmett's newspaper shop and there was a tall son of the house, Harry ….

PR: Yes, he went a bit peculiar in the head towards the end of his life - used to walk down the street and keep looking over his shoulder to see who was following. I always suspected he was feeling ….

MD: I think he suffered from a cupid's dart - an affliction of the heart ….

PR: Yes, a bereavement of the heart ….

MD: Then came Wackett's cycle shop and we all know Gladys and her father/brother.

PR: Yes, one of legend, Gladys, isn't she, in a way.

MD: She was my first Sunday School teacher and I can see her now putting those coloured pictures of Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee up on the board. Very much like our stained glass windows, they were, those sort of pictures. I'm very interested in our stained glass, not from the point of view of it being fine quality but the way it's worked out on a system in 2s and 3s. A lot of people don't realise that . And almost every episode of the Lord's life is done in 2s and 3s . And I often wonder what any rich person would put in the 2 spaces and like everything else that's done on a plan. You always get one that doesn't fit the plan. That's the one by the door as you go in, the main door of the church. That's got a lot of children giving praise to God. That ought to be another one of the 3 sea pictures - all in 2s and 3s. - 3 parables. 3 that said I am something - the vine, the shepherd, the light of the world. Even up on the high altar on one side, people who were connected with our history and diocese and the other 3 the same and the 2 baptisms over the font. I'd love to know what would go on the panel opposite the Annunciation. I can remember a time when the A. wasn't there and how wonderful I thought the day was when it appeared. There's the 2 where Jesus raised people from the dead, and the 3 where should be sea ones, but this odd one which sort of breaks …. 3 giving praise to God the Father in the chapel, and over by the vestry they're in 2s, 2 miracles and 2 of healing episodes of His life - not parables, but they're done on a system like that.

PR: Old Gladys was very much part of St. A's all her life. Not coming from an intellectual leading family in church, she just stuck as a kid and went on to working in a shoe shop, Hilton's, her old man in the cycle business in St. A. St. and brother Fred. She looked after the Sunday School.

MD: Yes, I think most of her pupils stuck to it and went through to be confirmed. Lots of them remember her even now. She must have started us all off on the right path.

PR: And yet a rough diamond in many ways! She was not the C of E gracious lady ministering to the poor. She was one of the working people.

MD: Yes, well what happened after that. Eventually the shops stopped. There was a big house where one of the Assistant Curates* lived at one time, Spicer …. *( Canon Knowles-Brown see HOHG files)

PR: Yes, Hilda Whittaker's mother ….

MD: And there were 2 or 3 little old cottages which I think some very poor people lived in. I know that one poor woman died and the young cousin who lived with us thought it was so dreadful that she had to be buried on the parish and that only the parish could pay for a nightgown for her to be buried in.

PR: Which cottages were they, then Maisie - on Fred Wackett's side or the other?

MD: Further towards the town than F. W.'s. I'm not sure. There were yards there. On the corner of a yard! They were little old cottages rather like the two little old ones on the other side that still remain.

PR: Yes, next to Fred Roche ….

MD: And then we came to Mr. Mascall's house which stood back and was an antique dealer - used to have stone statues and pots standing outside - a big old House and he owned all that ground that now backs on to where you go through the Castle Bridges which my father rented and we used to have all the children there on firework night. In fact our parties were quite well-known round about because the business being next door to the Little Bell public house, the landlady and lord, they were quite nice people and they had a big club room at the back and they used to allow us to have it for parties. And my dad used to have an enormous Christmas tree and tell us we could invite 5 or 6 each and he used to have lovely parties in there for the children. My mother used to get out all the best cups and saucers - people did in those days, didn't they?

PR: Yes, yes ….

MD: So that was Mr. Mascall and when we got past him it was Scales the Butcher. I remember that. Then we're coming on to church and the Cawthorne ….

PR: And the town centre. We'll run out of tape if I'm not too careful ….

MD: Probably a lot of irrelevant matter! You'll have to edit it ….

PR: Yes, someone will do. They'll do a highlights, sort of index sheet and say Maisie spoke about this. Then she spoke about that ….

MD: Then we can get over that - don't want all about my family really ….

PR: Oh yes, we do because of George's public face and business. That's very valuable. But in case I get ticked off for missing it all together, your life in the cultural side of Hertford, of course, has gone on for a very long time. And it's dramatics and the choral and we've spoken to a little group, you know this but I'm saying it for the machine's benefit, about their early memories - Kathleen Tancock, Ama Maynard and the Hitches of Hertford Choral Society. We've not yet talked to anyone about H.D.and O.S. but could we ask you very quickly to mention those two then talk about the C.O.P.s?

MD: Yes. well I wasn't quite as early as Cleone Gardner and those you put on a little list you gave me. I came into it during the war years. I reckon I was 17 or 18. I don't know if I was still at school. I know Jessie Hopkins was still in her gymslip. They always said Jessie joined in her gymslip. I did it in response to a note in the Mercury that some people who'd made music before and it had come apart during the war, were trying to get it together again to do something during the times of blackout and bombing and if you were interested to go down to the Shire Hall. And I went to the S.H. Think the chairman at that time was a gentleman called Bernard Kay who had two daughters at school where we were and his wife belonged to this little group giving me and anyone else that went a marvellous welcome. They were really pleased that putting a note in the Mercury brought people along.

So to be brief about it. the first conductor I knew was a Mr. Frank Greenfield who came from Willesden and this in the days of blackout and bombing. And we just did very small concerts and parts with a piano and so on. And then we had someone called Harry Stubbs who was quite a famous man with a wife who was a famous singer. He for some reason came down from London but I think he used to spend a lot of time in the Cold Bath. We didn't do that side of the road did we?

PR: No.

MD: It was bombing and a lot of people couldn't come and he was very hard on us wasn't very popular and ….

PR: Now let's rescue the er …

MD: Has it come out?

PR: Well it does that from time to time .. I'll …. keep talking Maisie

MD: So we had him for a time but I think it took a turn for the better when the Haileybury masters and directors of music got interested.

PR: Oh yes.

MD: Because they'd formed an orchestra and they wanted people to sing and the first thing I ever sang with an orchestra was Hiawatha's Wedding Feast. It was a lovely thing and the whole poem is a great favourite of mine. I think people should read it through from begin to end and it would be better known than it is – beautiful. …. Anyway we had Haileybury masters for about 3/4 years but I suppose it turned into a really good quality choir when we had Stephen Wilkinson who was employed by the Herts Rural Music School which had its headquarters at Hitchin and there were only about 30 of us and his idea then was to make a real quality choir. His ideas were more like a Monteverdi choir or a choir of 16 and we often sang things 3 or 4 to a part.

We were the first choir ever in this country to do Domenico Scarlatti's Stabat Mater and in 10 parts singing about 4 to a voice. Because there were not enough of us to do things like the Passions and the Requiems we did rather music that was a bit in advance of Hertford's taste, I'm afraid, works by Couperin in Italian and commissioned a work by Anthony Hopkins, not the actor, but A.H. that broadcasts about music. He'd written several books. it was a work called Cutty Sark, very nautical and I shall always remember it because there was a Scotsman in the choir and he seemed to me, he was a bit of a nuisance really, he just sang what he liked and this Cutty Sark, well it sank without trace. it didn't catch on shall we say and he, on the night of the performance, had so much to drink on the way that he was more or less singing sea shanties and nobody knew the difference in the audience. Then after S.W left us with reluctance to work for the BBC but he had to because he had a big family and needed the money. And this Rural Music School was really only under private patronage which seemed to dry up and he went to work for the BBC and eventually became a director of the BBC's Northern Singers but I think if he'd been able to stay in London he'd have got even further.

Then I had to give it up for about 3 years because I was studying for a diploma in Municipal Admin on Tuesday evenings to the class, so couldn't do two together. It took 3 years to get that. And then I think we had someone else from the Rural Music School. Then eventually we had Mr. Kelynack, the master at Hertford Grammar School and I think he was really responsible for turning us into a real choral society to do the big works and increase the membership. He was rather schoolmasterish with us but nevertheless did really change from a specialist choir to a really good full-sized choral society. After he gave up and retired we had somebody named Ed Wilson who was director of music at East Herts College and he was very good, too. After that we had Derek Harrison and I think I can say without preamble he is far and away the best. He's like Stephen W. was, on the same level but he can deal with a vast choral society which Steven didn't do. We just can't express our admiration for him. He's an absolute tyrant. We come home worn out but he's the nicest and sweetest person there ever was. He'd do anything rather than hurt anybody and as for the sarcasm you usually get from music directors, this is not in his nature. He wouldn't hurt anyone at all, but he'll lose his temper when people don't attend properly. And always this question comes up about auditions, but he says this is for the town. He's not going to deter anybody who wants to have a go. He wishes that young people were more attracted to choral societies. They don't have the right sort of image for young people. It's like ballroom dancing. They either don't do it at all, or they spend all their time doing it. Or they all want to be Simon Rattle and direct great orchestras but Derek being a singer, semi-professional he is, spends half his time on a job and half on professional recordings with St. George's Canzone artists …. done a great many professional recordings and being a singer himself, he's very, very meticulous. He'll make us sing the same note about 20 times which seems to us to be in tune but it isn't to him. We just can't express our admiration and liking for him. But he says it doesn't matter about not having auditions because it works itself out. If you can't go and do what he asks nothing could be more tedious and boring, so he's very willing for everybody to come and have a try ….

PR: I think he's very wise - that must be the case ….

MD: He says he's not going to debar people. He does direct two or three chamber choirs and for these he does want auditions and will say quite frankly …. and he does sometimes threaten us and say if this doesn't come off, I shall come round everyone but that's half, jokingly but only half jokingly.

PR: Yes, you hear the threat.

MD: You really have to pull your weight otherwise it must be a nightmare if you don't.

PR: Then HDOS - when did you ….

MD: Well it was through being in the Choral Society that I got in HD. Because in those days, about 1952, I was towards 30ish before I ever did anything. I was a great supporter of these things but they did the sort of musicals where you needed a body of singers, like Lilac Time and Student Price and Desert Song. You had to learn all the music first. You had to have sopranos, altos, tenors and bases and a change in those sort of shows came with things like South Pacific, where as long as you had one girl to sing 'I'm gonna wash that guy right outa my hair.' All you needed was about four or five other girls. There was only one chorus number in it and that was for all the men singing 'There's nothing like a dame.' And then you got things like Oliver. As long as you got someone who could belt out 'As long as he needs me.' But in those days I'm talking about, you had to have a proper body of singers and people who understood music.

I just happened to say to Jessie Hopkins one day that I would love to be in one of these shows. Though I wasn't either the figure or the face really for it. And she said, “Well why don't you come down they have a get-together once a year, come down but you'll have to have an audition and sing something.” I said, “I don't know anyone.” “I'll be down there to meet you,” said Jessie, “And I'll introduce you. So I did and I sang something out of Schubert , The Lilac Time, based on Schubert and I got in - first of all in the chorus of The Desert Song. I was so happy the day I got a letter saying I was in the chorus of TDS and two or three of those. But it soon became clear that I was better at doing acting. I used to go for the parts that wanted acting rather than singing & I actually helped the producer to produce one or two and that's how I got in and the acting really took off. I joined HDOS. I joined Ware and for the church and anyone else who asked me. I can remember for a period of 15- 20 years I was often rehearsing two or three plays at one time.

PR: Crumbs!

MD: And I think I must have played all the character parts: Juliet' s nurse and the old lady in the Ashburn Papers and all those great character parts except that I would never do and I definitely would not do Lady Bracknell, because everybody expects you to say, '.. a hand bag?' and I thought never will I do that because you’re always going to be compared to Dame Edith Evans. So I counted up the other day and I think I've been in about 58 straight plays, apart from the musicals including the modern ones. You know, ones where there's an old girl who's drunk and mad and her son is a homosexual. I thought you've got to do anything that comes. Ayckbourne, I don't like him, but while I was the right sort of age and type for these things I did them. Now it's been a long time because very few plays have any parts for a woman over about 40. Many other ladies my age are in the same boat. There are just not the parts. There's no sense in going for something you don't look or are not right for or doing. Things about two lines which young people coming up, or somebody else would like to have a try at in their middle age and would rather come on and do the maid, “Your tea, sir.” or something like that. It's no sense. It's not fair on them if those of us who've had a good run go for those parts.

PR: You've had a wonderful run to the benefit of the societies in the town, haven't you?

MD: The split came from the COPs. A lot of nonsense was talked about bitterness and quarrels between people. It was really made too much of, it was purely a financial matter really. A lot of p people would wonder how the COPs got going. I don't know if that's of interest. Do stop me if ….

PR: No, no ….

MD: But at one time there was just HDOS. There were no COPs. All the musicals and the drama and the pantomime was all arranged by this same committee and they always knew that on the big main musical, if they were going to be able to break even, you needed a complete orchestra. You needed a tremendous amount of costumes which had to be hired. It was something that if you filled the old Corn Exchange which is where it was then every night of the week you knew you would still have a big loss on the main musical, which used a whole lot of people in it, about 40 or 50 in the cast. So that was their main expense in the year and then they always reckoned that they recouped quite a bit of it on the pantomime, because you only needed two pianos and a rhythm section and I know they had to hire costumes, but all sorts of people who'd never taken an interest in anything else at all would always buy tickets for their children at Christmas for the pantomime, and they would recoup a bit of it there but never completely. Well, then the dramatic side was a poor relation.

They tried to put on two plays a year but this same committee would not allow the drama producers of where there were very good people, like Jim Mitchell, Eddie Williams. Kath Blakes, Bill and Vi Wells, Joan and Geoffrey Lee, Joan Forrester, Robert Ferguson. These were all very, very, good actors, Philip Jackson - the ford/ forge - and W.A.L. Jackson. They were very good actors and they wanted to do good plays, but this same committee would never …. they were more or less turned down …. because they'd only want something that'd bring in a lot of box office but in fact, the plays never brought in the same box office as the main musical and pantomime.

This in the end got to a ridiculous position, because a lot of new young people came on this committee including, and I think you'll have to turn your thing off here, one David Sparks. He came on and he was going to run the show. He could act better than anyone else. He knew what people liked - better than anyone else and he caused a lot of trouble on the committee.

In the end, the like of Jim Mitchell and some people said we are not going to be told after we've kept things going for years, we're not going to have the like of David Sparks. But it was only, it was made a lot more of …. but I think the crunch came when they were willing to spend, oh, so many thousand on some musical and when once they had got the play, they asked for a very modest amount to put a few posters up and it was overruled by such as David Sparks. So in the end they said that there was not a lot of real bitterness and personal animosity. The drama people said, “Let's form a company just to perform plays because you just can't do all these things under one umbrella when you know you are going to make a big loss on one thing.

PR: Yes, where people are going to be vying for supremacy.

MD: It doesn't matter if you belong to both. There was not a lot of personal animosity. That was all trumped up, a matter of a straw breaking the camel's back.

PR: Now, what is COPs?

MD: Company of Players. The first two or three years, Jim Mitchell was the real driving power behind it. Without his vision, and without him being a bank manager, who was able to know the best things around financially, great integrity. I don't think we'd have had a theatre today, if it hadn't been for Jim. At first we didn't have a theatre and in the first two or three years I didn't do anything. I still belonged to HDOS. You could belong to both and I was tied up in musicals for the first two or three years. They had nowhere to play, the COPs and they went round village greens and they sometimes had St. Nicholas' Hall, when that was still available. But it was obvious that they needed a theatre of their own. Jim, who used to produce our plays said, “We've got to start off with a very good standard so please allow me to pick the cast for our first play,” and, ”I think we should invite people to belong to this new company and if I can do the first play I will pick my cast. but thereafter we will do it very democratically, by audition for anybody.” And you had to be vouched for by someone. I think it was the greatest honour of my life when I got a letter inviting me to belong. As I say I didn't do anything for the first two or three years, when they had nowhere to play, but then came along our benefactor, Cyril Heath and he found this old hall behind the demolished Christ Church. It was only an old schoolroom.

PR: Yes, it was the school room and it was 3rd Hertford Scouts meeting place for a while.

MD: And he said, “why don't you try and rent that?”, so we did. And Jim Mitchell put on his first play there, because I have kept a record of every play, every cast and every producer that's ever been in that company and he produced it in Dec. 1969. But of course, it looked very different to what it does now because we just had to rig up a makeshift stage. The front of house was pretty scruffy. You know tear down old posters and put a lick of paint and all we could do. Those of us who were invited to appear in this first play, to ask a few friends to come, that's how it started. I suppose the cast list of the first play, 'Tilly of Bloomsbury', was quite interesting, J. Eric David, that's old boy from Ware, Pop!

PR: Yes, from Ware. He was acting when he was 90, wasn't he still?

MD: Yes, almost had to put the tights on him for a period and oh, golly, had to get him on the stage, but he was all right once he got on; Tony Co1e- Hamilton marvellous performance still - recently in Shadowlands, they did recently; Mel Davies who is now Mel Aubrey; Susan Hitch - oh, we had a laugh – Susan, old friend of mine ….

PR: Yes, from the Choral ….

MD: Bill Caulfield - now he was very instrumental in the building and helping because he was in sort of an estate agent/architect sort of business and he and Raymond Wingate. They gave of their time, which we would have had to pay for. We all contributed and people loaned us money, Mary Wingate, Nicho1as Chapman, who you see going up and down here - lives in Sele House - rather plump he is now it was his friends in the COPs who induced him to buy that little flat in Sele house because he was living in a caravan, but something happened to Nicholas, I don't know whether he was ill. He was a very good actor and in a lot of plays, but then he suddenly packed it all in. He doesn't go anywhere or do anything except have a chat to me sometimes in the road. I don't know why he gave it up.

Georgie Dover - she's moved from the town, lives up north now. Graham Kilner - he's still with us. Elizabeth Cope - she went on to have a good singing career. Vi Wells - just died. Francis Courtney - well, he was one of those I call birds of passage. He was very good whilst he was in this district. Then young men tend to move away with their careers. Maisie Ditton, Donald Cameron, who was also in local government and did a lot in those days. Keith Thompson who was very much a star. He's in demand all over the place. He's been in one or two recently and Jack Davies who was Mel’s husband, but that was in 1969.

Well, we went on renting it then, and, it belonged to the Church Commissioners. We gradually had all these things done, and made into what it is now. You just wouldn't recognise it for the same building and kitchen, and enlarged the stage, and we got together the money through loans. Jim Mitchell was instrumental in helping us with that, being a bank manager, knew where to go for loans, which I think have all been paid back now. And we asked the County Council if we could buy it and they let us have it, though other people wanted it, because we were not going to use it for business purposes, but as an amenity in the town.

Eventually we were able to buy the land and build all that row of houses that are there and we made it a condition that it should be called Christ Church Place so people wouldn't forget that there had been a church there and we've gone on developing it and still developing it. The question came up as to whether we should be licensed but because we had to operate as a club, we are not allowed to advertise or take money at the door. You've got to do it through joining a club. It was all gone into, but apparently there were so many things that had to be done, conditions that just didn't apply to that little place. It was going to cost us an awful lot and wouldn't provide us with amenities because we just couldn't have them there, car parking for one thing, and so we decided to go on and operate a club but we are in difficulties now, certainly not with money but because we cannot accommodate all the people who want to come and see the plays. You see, people join the club and pay one membership fee and, they want to bring four people with them and, it's hard to know how to get round that problem.

PR: A nice problem, but it's just as much a problem as the other way round.

MD: It is. Because if you do something like they did something like 'Agnes of God' - I prompted that one - which was a very controversial play and could have offended Roman Catholics I suppose. I mean, it was pretty hard hitting, but it didn't shock me because so long in drama. Nothing shocks me now. But on that you see, you played to a half empty house because nobody can see a poster, or go to the door and we are the victims of our own success because I think if people pay to join a club, they should be able to get a ticket.

PR: Now, Maisie, I'm going to run out of tape ….

MD: Yes, I'm sure ….

PR: I wonder whether you could put your eye along the back row of that - this is going back to St. Andrew's ….

MD: Yes, I think I've got a copy of this somewhere.

PR: And tell me any names you can think of. I've got a chart here and I've got to put them in.

MD: I don't know them all, I must admit.

PR: You might know half that I don't know. The back row at left ….

MD: The one on the end is Stan Carter and he was the bell ringer. I think the one next to him is a youthful Alan Maynard. I seem to remember seeing a caption ….

PR: Oh, yes, it could be, couldn't it?

MD: Because he altered a lot before the end, poor old Alan ….

PR: Right, so that's possibly A.M ..

MD: I think the next one is Mr. Pettit …

PR: Charlie Pettit!

MD: The next one I don't recognise ….

PR: Then John Frampton.

MD: Yes, I didn't know him. Next one, a familiar face ….

PR: I've got two gaps next ….

MD: Then Bill Mole, isn't it. That one we didn't recognise, the short one. Then it looks like Bert Hebbes.

PR: Yes, that's what I thought.

MD: The next one's such a familiar face. Was he not one of the councillors or Ginn or one of those people? I didn't know him. The next one is Thorne, John Thorne.

PR: Married Pat Skinner.

MD: Married again now.

PR: Is he?

MD: Yes, because I remember I, in my career, helped him out over his pension funds and every time I used to see him he used to say I'm glad I took your advice and I used to talk to him about his garden and one day he said I must confess something “I've decided to go in harness again,” he said. Oh! we get on all right, and I said, “Good for you!” Lost his first wife. And this one on the end. I'm going to get my magnifying glass out ….

PR: Don't go too far with your lead, will you ….

MD: What this will sound like, I don't ….

PR: Here is it then?

MD: In here! I really hate the sound of myself on tape. So that's why I stock/stuff up on ginger wine, good for that! Now, on the end, no, I don't know him.

PR: No, you're not expected to know everyone, Maisie, it's not a quiz for ….

MD: Shall we go back to the left again - that's Vic Neale.

PR: He's in front of Stan Carter, I suppose.

MD: Well, he's right on the end here in front of a tree. The next one is a young lady named Frances Martin who was at Christ's Hospital for a time and while she was at Christ's Hospital she did some bell ringing. Then next to her is Mrs. Grey, can't think what her first name was, but her husband was a bell ringer and she came up bell ringing with him. Then my sister Connie, then my father! Who's this? Jim Buckle! That one I think's Hubert Finch. Carry on across here. Was there someone named Aubrey Mason?

PR: Could be ….

MD: I think that might be Aubrey Mason. I'm not sure. Oh, whoever's that? Oh Philip Turnbull Who's that standing next to him right behind the crozier with glasses? It wouldn't be Philip. No, because he'd have clerical gear. Don't know that one.

PR: No, that was a gap for me.

MD: That's the man who carried the mace.

PR: One of the Mansfields, is it?

MD: Yes, that's him, Mansfield. Now that little man I think that's Mr. Joys.

PR: I've got that with a question mark.

MD: That fellow, I don't know, looks like the young Lawrence Olivier. Don't know this little man, bell ringer. The next one to him is Joe Ladley. The little man with the moustache is Joe Ladley, because he had one thought on his mind. A good bell ringer but he always used to ask, “What have they got in the sandwiches tonight?” Ring the bells! Now who that little lady is next to him, I really don't know ….

PR: Not anything to do with the verging thing? ….

MD: I don't think so. I really don't recognise her. That wasn't Miss Vines was it? No.

PR: Thank you very much Maisie. Who were the characters of your childhood you remember around town then?

MD: Well I think they were more often the shop keepers. We didn't. Characters around town. Well there was poor old Rose, Rose Dunnage who used to run along and be drunk.

PR: Yes, Campfield Road ….

MD: My mother couldn't stand that. If she heard anything when we were in St. Andrew St. premises, if she heard her coming along, my mother would go up in the bedroom. My mother, she was a lovely person, she was never valued at her true worth because she was self-conscious and very nervous. She didn't like thunderstorms but she had a lovely voice. It was her love of music really that got me started. She used to sing round the house beautifully because all her sisters used to sing in Christ Church, Ware Choir and she was given an opportunity to be trained. She had a lovely voice. “Ooh,” she said, “I would never have had the nerve to stand up in front of people.” She was very, I mean, she'd tell us off. There used to be a spat sometime between her and my father. She wouldn't be trodden on but she was very self-conscious and was never one to go out and do a lot of social mixing, but she was the real hub of the family. Her house was always full of her nieces and nephews. In fact, her niece got married from her aunt's house rather than her own home. She was a very great favourite with the family. She always put everybody's convenience before her own, which used to annoy her daughters when they got older. We used to say, “For goodness sake, Mum, have what you want this time.”

PR: Mother of a family, yes.

MD: And she would have loved six children. She always used to tell me that. But she said, “I suppose that I'd had my lot by the time I was 35 or 36.” She was engaged to my father when my father was out in Egypt. Then she had to wait until he came back. She wasn't married until she was 30. By the time she had her three she was about 35 or 6 and was very disappointed that she didn't have morel And she was really lovely. Oh, she'd tell us off at times. I think she was the only female that my father I always think it, he was rather like Rumpole. 'She who must be obeyed'. Everyone else was under my father's thumb. But they were devoted, and he would do anything for her. I know once when he thought we weren't helping her out enough in the house, that was the big house in North Crescent, and he got on to us, there's no reason why you girls shouldn't dust your bedrooms. So when she was out of the way we all went up, because we wouldn't dare disobey our father, and dusted our bedrooms. When my mother found out that somebody had been doing something in the bedrooms, then my father was in trouble. “I have not given up the reins of the household yet. When I want those girls to do something I'll ask them!” And that's the only other time she really told Dr. Mortis off ….

End of Tape