Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Geeves, Albert and Ivey (O1994.6) |
| Interviewee | Albert Geeves (AG) and Ivy Geeves (IG) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 19/02/1994 |
| Transcriber by | Marilyn Taylor 2016 from earlier notes by Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no O 1994.6
Interviewee: Albert Geeves (AG) and Ivy Geeves (IG)
Date: 19th Feb 1994
Venue: 27 Temple Court
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Marilyn Taylor 2016 from earlier notes by Jean Riddell
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: The 19th of February and I'm in the home of Mr Albert Geeves 27, Temple Court, which we find hard to remember. We could remember 26, Glebe Road a lot more easily or even Water Lane number 12, and the reason for our visit this morning is because apart from being a Hertford person all his life, Albert went for a while to St. Andrews School and we're going to ask him a few quick questions on St Andrews, a few bits he may remember and we'll talk again about other bits to do with Hertford. Only a quickie as I've got to go off and do other things later today. Albert, thank you very much for letting us come.
AG: You're very welcome.
PR: The first question is, how long have you lived in Hertford?
AG: Virtually the whole of my life, except for a brief interval at the end of the war. With housing being difficult, we moved into Harrow.
PR: Oh did you. Who made the Harrow move, you and...?
AG: Well, I got invalided out of the Western Desert initially and eventually of course came back to this country and got early retirement from the RAF, and had to start thinking in terms of becoming domesticated again. So as I said, accommodation was in very short supply, and my father in law lived in Harrow and he had some space available, so we went down there and my second son was born in Harrow. But eventually we came back to Hertford and started to get re-established again.
PR: Yes, and did you go to Glebe Road first of all then, was that your first Hertford...?
AG: Yes, out of sheer necessity yes, although, we did live for a while until we sorted ourselves out, before we went to Harrow, we did live with my parents for a while. My first son was born in Hertford, and as I said, my second son was born in Harrow. But we eventually migrated back to Hertford, it was far better.
PR: Yes, not half. I hadn't realised you'd been away a little bit. Well, we ought to just mention the Geeves family, your father's father was the organ blower at St. Andrew's Church.
AG: Yes, for a while he had an assistant: me! Yes, I do remember those very early days. Sam, well my grandfather, yes he was a very keen man in St Andrew's Church circles. He spent an awful lot of time in and around the church, you know keeping it nice, clean, heated, and of course pumping the big handle to supply the air for the organ. Many a Sunday morning, 'come on young man, it's organ blowing time!' We used to get to St Andrews Church I suppose about 8 o'clock in the morning, and he used to keep the place warm as well. First he would light the fire.
PR: The stoke hole round the back by the vestry door, down the steps.
AG: Ready for the first service, and he showed me how to blow the organ. There was a big lever just inside as you went into the vestry. The last time I saw that lever was still there...
PR: Yes, it still is...
AG: However, he let me into a little secret. He used to leave me for a few minutes just pumping away. He let me into a little secret - he said 'if you hear a couple of thumps on the woodwork, that's a signal from the organist that you're not blowing hard enough. If you hear one thump you're going too quickly. So after a little while, they were hollow, there were cavities in that wall you know, no one could hear, being in that old passageway, and I got quite expert at the age of six or seven, something like that …but yes, they were quite good days, but he became ill eventually. I think he died somewhere around the age of ninety. Then Dad gradually took over.
PR: I wondered that, I didn't know whether your Dad had done that as well...
AG: yes, well eventually of course Granddad retired and as I say he did become ill, Dad took over. Then of course they electrified the organ by getting a motor blower for it and Dad was left then just with the boiler and he was a sidesman as well.
PR: Yes, well he was a sidesman right to the end of his life. Eight o'clock first communion was your Dad's great service. He did come at nine-fifteen after he moved up to Bengeo, I suppose getting up later, but he used to come to the sung service then but in the early years...
AG: Yes, he tried to keep the tradition going, but he had his ups and downs with illnesses. He had an accident at work one day. He had a variety of jobs in his time too. As a family, we didn't move into Water Lane until Granddad's more or less last days as it were. He became ill and of course in those days one member of a family who became ill was very much dependent upon the rest of the family to look after him. You see in those days, you know it was a big enough house in Water Lane, a large house really.
PR: So Grandfather had been living there previously had he?
AG: Yes, many, many years. I can't remember for how long and how he came to get there, but as I say, I obviously didn't pick up the threads until I was old enough to remember. But I think I was born in a little house in Cowbridge. He was a gardener and he eventually got a job in the glove factory in Horn's Mill and Mum went into service in those days she went into Bengeo Hall funnily enough, and Dad got a job in the glove factory so we moved house to Horn's Mill and I used to walk from Horns Mill to St Andrews School and back every day on my own, wet, rain, snow everything. But then of course in those days it was quite safe.
PR: Do you know where the Cowbridge birthplace cottage was? That's gone now has it?
AG: Well yes, it's all caved in. It was the little place at the back of the pub that has now closed..
PR: What, the Bell and Crown…?
AG: Yes, the back of those.
PR: Yes, the roof just recently has gone, hasn't it?
AG: Yes, that's right. I can remember quite clearly at the age of three or four, something like that, being thrown under the table when the zeppelin dropped a bomb on Old Cross in the first World War. I distinctly remember being thrown under the kitchen table when that went off.
PR: So, that Water Lane cottage had a round room
AG: It did, yes, and it had muraled ceiling too. Of course in its very early days it had several coats of limewash, then whitewash. Always some of the decorative murals still came through the paint, you could still see it however much one covered it up. Trying, you know, to uncover the history of those cottages, no one really seemed clear as to what they would have been at the time. They were built at approximately the same time I think as the gatehouse of the Castle.
PR: Yes yes
AG: But whether they formed part of the grounds, but what they were nobody was very clear about. The theory being that it could be, having that round room and the thick walls those houses had, it have been part of perhaps a family chapel or something like that
PR: Yes
AG: I couldn’t get any further than that.
PR: Very difficult to furnish a round room isn’t it! Anything with a square back to it.
AG: Also of course there were four alcoves in that room …. Recesses,
PR: Yes. A big room but dark because it backed on to another house didn’t it? The back…
AG: Yes it was that’s right one of four houses.
PR: Only one entrance then, the front door
AG: That’s all yes. I always remember in my early days all we had was oil lamps mostly, eventually of course we had the chance of having the gas laid on and I always remember the gas fitter coming along that morning and they started work trying to find a chisel long enough to get through one of the walls to let the gas pipe through.
PR: Ahh
AG: do you know, that chisel, they had to make up one in the end, it was nearly three and a half feet long at the point where they bought the pipe in.
PR: Yes
AG: Three and a half feet, it was colossal. Of course we had the usual clothes copper, boiler back in the kitchen. Extremely high ceilings, the stairs were very steep. But as you say we had only the front door.
PR: That’s unusual isn’t it, but the whole building is an unusual building
AG: Yes yes, now whether that little row, 1,2, 3 families lived in that little row there12, 14 and 16. Now again it was never made clear as to whether that originally was one whole building and eventually knocked into three cottages or whether it was one…… cause ours was the only house there with that kind of room layout.
PR: Yes
AG: Whether that was a chapel or sort of ……..and the other two cottages were for employees or whatever I don’t know. But I did spend a lot of time trying to, you know….
PR: I’ll bet yes
AG: Trying to find out just what the history was.
PR: Absolutely unique isn’t it really
AG: Now and again someone we knew perhaps connected with the church would bring a friend along just to have a look at that round room.
PR: Yes yes Were they all Lord Salisbury’s then? I presume as he owned The Castle and the grounds
AG: That’s right yes, that became Gascoyne Cecil Estates. Can I say they were extremely kind & generous landlord,
PR: Was he
AG: Oh yes yes he was very quick to get things done, he did anything that was needed very quickly.
PR: Was it hard to get a property in that way? Because it had been handed down in your family, but would you have applied to Hatfield House or would you have had to have a connection with the estate somehow first?
AG: Well as far as I know there was, my father, as far as I know had no connection with the estate. If my grandfather did then I never knew about it. As I say I never really knew how he came to get there as a tenant. Just as a matter of digressing a bit as a matter of interest I had a phone call one evening from someone who lived in Enfield and he was asking me had I ever done any research on our family history of the name, Geeves you see. I said no and apparently he had been doing some work trying to trace the background of the name you see. He said it’s a very unusual name for this area. I said agreed yes. There are far more people living in this area now with the same name than ever there used to be.
PR: Yes
AG: Now when I was in the Middlesex hospital in 1959 there was a french patient in the same ward and he eventually got to know my name and he said your family comes from Belgium. I said what makes you say that, well he said it is a Belgium name, spelt exactly the same way except for sometimes used with an apostrophe before the last s. Now he said there are slight variations of that on the continent with one e missing so its Geve's this chap came up exactly with the same thing who phoned me up. So it’s possible.
PR: Yes yes interesting. So Samuel was nearer possibly nearer to a Belgian …
AG: Well yes he was suggesting that there is a slight hint about the name coming over with William the Conqueror.
PR: Yes
AG: For what that information is worth.
PR: Well yes interesting, what other families were living in Water Lane when you were associated with it.
AG: Next door to us was a family by the name of Tilcock the first family right on the end was Mr. Castle lovely old chap had a housekeeper who was an extremely good cook now there was a family going back of course to the 1920’s by the name of Saville. The next house to those changed hands fairly frequently. That’s right, when the war broke out there was a family there whose name I never knew. Carrying on up the lane there was a 'unique pair' - a newsagent and the other was a photographer. Now the photographer had very bad eyesight, very keen on the mechanics of radio sets. Oh dear, the name, I can’t remember now which was which but one of the had a surname Fowl FOWL and us kids used to call him Bill Chicken.
PR: Oh yes yes
AG: The other one, the newsagent, they operated from the same house he used to rise a tricycle delivering newspapers, magazines and so on and he was a well… because of the regularity of course he was well known round the houses.
PR: Yes
AG: Sandwiched right in the corner between us and the Savilles, who was a postman, was a family Hart.
PR: Yes
AG: On the other side of the lane were their parents the older Hart family. Very l;arge one, he was well I suppose a labourer for builders or some such.
PR: Yes yes
AG: Then another family Moore I never knew quite what he did, then at the top of the lane was a family called Corbetts, that was a fairly large family, in fact I think the grandchildren, or one of them, Terry he is still living locally as a plasterer.
PR: Ah I have seen the name on the van still, yes
AG: One of two of course migrating to Canada was very popular in those days. I had an uncle who migrated to Canada. Again our family lost contact during the war, you know, I was abroad and of course Mum and Dad used to get parcels from him but as I say we lost contact eventually.
PR: That was always a jolly good call for the paper boy your family home, in my day, years later, Saturday morning I used to collect the money from your Ma and it would be just on a little shelf inside the door, open the door and take it off this broad shelf and there would be a bar of chocolate as well, very often as well. Which was a very generous sixpence, I know that sounds… two and a half pence doesn’t sound a lot. I am not going back anywhere near as far as you but there always used to be one or two good generous calls. Minnie Fentimen at the end of Church Street
AG: Mum was like that
PR: Regularly not just at Christmas time always a little extra put out knowing you were calling.
AG: Yes on Saturday mornings of course we had … well quite a large number of relatives living in surrounding villages my mother came from a Standon family, Bridgeman, and her brothers and sisters seemed to centre themselves around Tewin village. Tewin and in those days of course they would walk in to Hertford shopping and walk back. Our house in Water Lane was halfway house, a cup of tea, cake, biscuits, sandwiches, sometimes a meal. Even their children, well Saturday more I mean Saturday really the house was full. You know with our relatives but they all had something.
PR: Savilles, that’s Margaret Everett’s family
AG: Yes that’s right
PR: I don’t remember, my grandfather worked at the post office and Mr Saville was a postman wasn’t he?
AG: That’s right yes.
PR: I know they…I have heard tell at home about Mr Saville. I remember Mrs but I don’t remember him he must have died…
AG: Again a nice man, I had a battery driven radio and it wasn’t playing at all well because we didn’t have electricity in the house in those days. Everything was battery driven. We didn’t meet all that often as children, but, however he always appeared to me as a child well even after I left school as being rather standoffish but however one day this radio went wrong and of course I was interested in electrics and electronics as they were then, in a very elementary sort of way, however I began to take an interest in radio and I said well can I have a look at it for you and a radio set in those days was a very jealously guarded piece of property, so he said, well if you feel you could do something without doing and damage he said yes. Anyway I went in there and just one of the batteries flat so I hurried down the town and bought a new one back put it in, perfect. He was as pleased as punch, almost had a second father from then on.
PR: Yes
AG: Always welcome
PR: The Hart family dominated Water Lane didn’t they?
AG: They did yes
PR: Both sides
AG: They did yes, Tony the milkman would have been I suppose dubbed a local character. He was well known, there was an old lady kept the Castle Cash stores the other side opening to West Street and the old lady regularly used to feed his horse. Delivering milk with a big churn on the back, that’s how the name “Skim” came around, as a nickname.
PR: Oh
AG: Skim Hart you see. Of course the horse could always be seen across the path, with its head in the shop doorway, waiting for an apple or a bit of sugar or something like that. Quite often when Tony was walking along West Street delivering milk the horse would automatically follow him. Oh yes without any guidance you know.
PR: He did a bit of boiler stoking as well at St Andrews he stoked the coke, he was the last person to do that..
AG: Was he
PR: Before they went round to the new electrical Power blow hole Eve Hart and …
AG: Oh Eve yes that was a very large family
PR: So you were living in Hornsmill when you went to St Andrews School. On the Hornsmill Road or…
AG: On the Hornsmill Road, the council estate then hadn’t been built, that followed hot on the heels I think of Gallows Hill. Sele Road was I think….
PR: Sele Road was the first yes
AG: That was due to the slum clearance on Bircherley Green that was. Yes, Sele Road, Hornsmill, Gallows Hill then I think Bengeo got built.
PR: But you were there when it was the end of the town really I suppose nothing much passed it.
AG: Yes indeed
PR: The Harts Horns
AG: That’s right
PR: Further up and the Hornsmill Glove Factory.
AG: That’s right yes
PR: Full stop
AG: Getting back a bit, cause dad had to leave that job, because the leather working process began to make him ill, he got a job with Wallace & Inns as a labourer at Cole Green, you know that old chap used to walk four miles there and four miles back.
PR: Did he?
AG: Yes and his excuse was well it’s a “bigger shilling” there than I had at Hornsmill.He used to walk it, now and again he used to get a lift on a horse and cart and eventually a lorry or something but he had an accident there and that bought about his early retirement. Again Mum was in service actually for the owner of the glove factory in those days days I think it was the name Gauley they emigrated to Australia very many years ago. Funnily enough I was reading a newspaper article about someone by the name of Gauley in Australia, I can’t quite know what surrounded that, you know, the reason you know but the name Gauley struck a chord and I was wondering you know if it could have been the same family.
PR: Yes I only knew it as Webbs factory.
AG: That’s right yes, Mum was in service for them and Dad used to do some gardening for them in his spare time.
PR: There was a Mr. George lived at Hornsmill, next, on the same side as the glove factory, he was a foreman there or something. Town side, it went before the mill I think, but there was a house just, I don’t know if he was related to us in any way, he used to come to St Andrews but he lived in a, more of less a villa that kind of house I live in. But I have never traced whether he was any connection because my Mum was Gwynneth George. We were all Hertingfordbury Road as a family, grandad was born 26 Hertingfordbury Road and then next to the school, he was bought up next to St Andrews school by Warehams Lane. There was a man called George living within the glove factory.
Transcribers note: He actually lived opposite at 26 Hertingfordbury Road; his sisters moved to the house mentioned here on the corner of Warehams Lane, originally no 9.
AG: I don’t know that one.
PR: I must try to find out one day
AG: I can remember that loop line being built.
PR: Oh can you?
AG: Yes
PR: That changed the view at Hornsmill.
AG: It did yes, that was Hertingfordbury Road, when we left school and engine had come off the lines at the viaduct in Hertingfordbury Road, slid down the bank.
PR: Cor!
AG: That was quite exciting that was, watching the workmen getting that back. Of course Hertford was absolutely flooded with Irishmen.
PR: The Navvy’s
AG: Navvy’s yes, anyway it was part of our after school expedition to …. There were fights all over the town …..in those days there were 28 pubs ….
End of side one
Side 2
AG: It was nice it was sort of very cosy sort of atmosphere you know, they were all female teachers Mrs Turnball. Mrs Turnball was headmistress. Peter and Anthony, two sons they also went to St Andrews, Peter eventually left school to become a clergyman.
Transcribers note: It was Miss Turnball not Mrs and they were Philip and Anthony her nephews not her sons!
PR: Yes
AG: Anthony I don’t know what happened to him …
PR: He became a scientist I think with Nestle, you know, but he went in to industrial scientist. I have just been down to see the parson earlier this week, yes.
AG: Really, where is he living now?
PR: He is living on the south coast in his aunts bungalow but is actually in a nursing home, he has had a stroke but yes he’s….I must take a machine down there and talk to him about **** because his aunt of course was the school mistress.
AG: Then there was a Miss Rutter there was a Miss Kelway, oh there was another one, younger cause we had influences there as well.
PR: Yes, did you start in the infants
AG: Oh yes, I remember being dragged off to school by old Mrs Hart I didn’t want to go. Although I don’t remember so very much of the early days there.
PR: You probably had Miss Hornby did you have Edie Hornby?
AG: Yes I do, that’s one of the names I could never remember Hornby that’s right yes Miss Hornby oh yes that school I liked very much it covered most things. Course there were no technical subjects then really but you know for a Church of England School I thought it was good, very good. When I used to get up, was it Thursday afternoons, I remember the Rev Gardner coming along to give us a little talk. There was haymaking in Baxter's field in the summer.
PR: Ah
AG: Nature walks, drawing classes that I used to love I used to love drawing, I never followed it up but in fgact I have still got a certificate I was awarded for the head of an alsatian's dog I did whilst I was at school.
PR: Oh
AG: Oh I had several certificates like that for various little achievements for school work. There was that kind of encouragement.
PR: Any bad experiences and bullying and that sort of thing in those days?
AG: None whatsoever no, there were girls as well as boys
PR: Yes two of the send their love to you last night I was with Rosie Crane & Flo, Florrie, Everett
AG: Yes oh yes
PR: “Send our love to Albie,” they said.
AG: Oh there was Peggy Fry there was a girl Farrow and there was the Cranes from Hertingfordbury Road, the Thomsons from Hertingfordbury Road. I suppose the most immediate character that jumps to mind was a Dolly Fitkin who used to live with her father who worked at Ilott's Mill, lived down Hattam's Yard and she always, whether it was her father’s interest or not I don’t know but she had quite an assortment of animals, small ones you know. Some sort of local things like, now and again she would come to school with a mole and a little monkey that sort of thing. She came to school one day with one of these, oh what are they called, the big versions we saw on seaside piers at one time, you know you turned the handle and it had a series of cards
PR: Yes cards that flick over yes
AG: Gave a moving image to it all. She bought along one of those and cause it was handed all the way down through the class you know. Sometimes they would bring their pets along which of course turned out to be a nuisance after a few minutes. “Would you mind taking that home” of course none of us had got very far to go in those days you see. Oh yes I like St Andrews very much.
PR: What sort of, I mean there was no uniform was there, would you have worn boots?
AG: Boots, knickerbocker trousers and a deerstalker jacket if you could afford it. Long trousers of course were never worn til long after you left school which was 14 then officially.
PR: Yes yes
AG: Truancy was very small. Now and again we had the rebel, those who couldn’t be bothered to learn anything but they were few and far between really.
PR: And yet it was a poor parish, it wasn’t a wealthy end of town.
AG: It was
PR: Everyone is saying that it was a happy school, rough times and big classes.
AG: They were indeed but we kept ourselves clean you know. Generalising a little bit, boots and shoes were hard to come by. Plimsoles in those days was the cheapest form of footwear you could have. Most children wore those.
PR: Yes
AG: Except in the dead of winter of course, when a lot of effort had to go in to the parents trying to find reasonable boots and shoes to go to school in, and I do mean boots, they were heavy hobnail things with steel studs to make the things last. Jumping in and out of puddles was just as popular then as it is now! And footballing of course.
PR: You had the three lime trees in the playground, still there today, the school’s gone but the trees are still there. Miss Hornby had told me that the end one of those trees in the ditch at the bottom nearly died when put in, and they thought it was a goner but it did survive and now looks the strongest of all the three of them. They had some rough treatment in the middle of the playground of a school packed full with kids. The boys’ toilets down at the very end.
AG: They were primitive! (laughter) especially in the winter oh dear. The playground was partly asphalted and traditionally the girls had that part and we had the graveley part.
PR: You had down at the ditch end did you? And the girls had up at the top.
AG: Thats where the toilets were of course in the corner.
PR: Yes and the pile of coal because of coal fires
AG: That’s right, oh that was another thing yes, when I, or when we migrated to I think the last class, the class contained 7 and X7 so there were very few of us but it was mainly 7 the catch was to do very well because it was nearest the fire in the winter. That was the front of the class you see so we really……you moved up into it
PR: was X7 the brainier ones then?
AG: Yes that’s right, the ones…
PR: The ones that might get up to a …..
AG: Well yes there was a possibility of graduating to the grammar school from there.
PR: Yes
AG: I always remember my Dad being asked had he thought about this possibility, was it Miss Turnbull… Miss Turnball came round to Water Lane I think, yes I mean it was always a thought, but we couldn't afford it do that.
PR: No no. Got to have the were with all for books and everything. Yes
AG: That was the end of the matter, there were no tears shed
PR: No
AG: Would have been nice
PR: You get on with life and you take what coming your way don’t you. Were you an only child then?
AG: No I had a younger brother, next in line, we lost him during the war, in fall of Singapore and then came two sisters: Evelyn who is still alive living in London she lost her husband two years ago, Kathleen the youngest is living in Hertford in Woodlands Road, Gallows Hill. In fact she was here just a few days ago.
PR: Married sister
AG: Yes she has four children. I was the eldest. Again a well-knit family really.
PR: What about Courting and things like that, where did people go? I don’t necessarily mean you but I mean when you were looking to court a girl, I mean was it a walk round the town or I suppose the pictures were…
AG: Well yes I suppose, well shall I say as young men played the field and there were dances you know Saturday night hops for one and six, two bob, half a crown was quite a good dance and one always had a live band, you know there was always a popular place on a Saturday evening to meet someone, always,
PR: Would that be the Corn Exchange
AG: Corn Exchange yes and the better-quality dance was held at the Shire Hall. The Police force had a regular Ball at the Shire Hall, my father was a member of the Foresters, Ancient Order of Foresters Society often had their own social evenings there. Every Christmas function, Dad used to go along and help decorate the Shire Hall, the ballroom part.
PR: Yes.
AG: Till eventually he got in on the Police Ball as well and we used to go to that. Sometimes I used to go to the Corn Exchange for the regular Saturday night hop as we called it. The MC was the manager of Fosters' the clothing people in Fore Street in those days.
PR: Ah
AG: Very good too. The band leader came from Hertford Heath. Trying to think of his name now, …. But shall I say courting a girl in those days, well, pubs weren’t really the right sort of venue dances were.
PR: Yes
AG: The Drill Hall in Ware used to have a lot of dances where you could meet one another. But it has to be added that meeting a girl in those days was much more formal than they are now. Saturday nights, even at a dance you were on your best behaviour, you went in, you know dressed reasonably smartly, same with the girls really. I met my wife in the middle 1920s when I was running the old Regent Cinema in Market Street.
PR: Oh you had a hand in that…
AG: We advertised for an usherette and I had had a hard day and the matinee had just finished and I had closed the front doors no sooner than was my back turned than the doors started to rattle, anyway, although one was un bolted, for some mysterious reason the door opened inwards rather than being pulled outwards you see. So of course I was ratty and I said “Well the door will open the other way you know” so very gently it did and there was this little girl. “Are you advertising for an usherette?” To cut a long story short yes she got the job, she had such a nice personality.
PR: I can imagine yes
AG: Lovely really was and I married her, but that was it you see. It took seven years to do that!
PR: She was, was she living here.
AG: Yes she lived in Byde Street
PR: Ah right
AG: Yes she was living with an aunt. As I previously mentioned her mother and father lived in Harrow.
PR: Yes the Harrow connection, I wondered how she came to end up in Market Street.
AG: She wasn’t very well as a baby and the doctor suggested that she lived out of Harrow. We weren’t in Harrow long, it wasn’t atmospherically, because of factories in the neighbourhood, in the winter the smog was terrible.
PR: Yes, she knowing Hertford wouldn’t have been drawn to stay in Harrow would she thinking it was your place and her place as well.
AG: She didn’t want to stay there
PR: Who was she living with in Byde Street? What family was that?
AG: Her aunt Wellman by the name, her maiden name and her grandfather.
PR: Oh yes, that’s good isn’t it they will be very pleased with this……I haven’t run out have I? I get carried away. Someone has got to listen to this and then what they will do is they will type out a summary of odd bits like you mentioned the Regent and they’ll index it. Then someone going into the museum interested in the social life of the town or whatever it might be will look down, oh the Regent, they will playback Albert Geeves.
AG: I started my working life at the old Castle Cinema as a projectionist.
PR: Ah so you have had this electrical, technical, keenness from the very earliest..
AG: Oh indeed yes but 20 odd years before my retirement I was at Hatfield Polytechnic in the electrical engineering department there. Again that was good.
PR. The Castle was a bit rough wasn’t it? The Castle Cinema
AG: No
PR: It was towards the end it got…..compared to the County.
AG: Oh probably did yes compared to the County yes. But when the Castle Cinema was owned by the Skipp family and as you know ..
PR: Hertford Motor Co. wasn’t the …
AG: the same family at one time they also owned Ware Cinema, yes and then they had the Hertford Motor Company and the Castle Cinema. It was managed by a man by the name of Ernie Carpenter, a very keen golfer, a very nice man again, in those days it was a very well run cinema.
PR: Yes
AG: Especially when it was the only cinema in the town and then the Regent came along before the County did. And that was run initially by a man named Howard oh now where did they come from…. Howards, they came from East Anglia somewhere Norfolk or Suffolk. That was taken over by a man by the name of Goch. The Castle Cinema, the Skipp family sold the Castle cinema to a company Shipman & King, who had a very large chain of cinemas I can’t recall the name now, they completely reorganised everything, they bought in their own staff and so on before the last war. Of course I was made redundant that is the term used now but literally I was 'fired'. So that how I came to get to the Regent. They wanted a projectionist so I went round there. Then that little cinema changed hands and I ran it, the owner lived at Sheringham. I ran it right up to the outbreak of war. Then I went in to the RAF. As I say I was on a mobile fighter squadron and got invalided out of the western desert back home. Then we started all over again.
PR: Yes ha ha that’s super one day, not too soon there is a good chance someone will come back and say could we just ask you about this or that in the summer, one of the ladies, I just said I would spend a bit of time at half term collecting some bits and pieces but then of course I have got school and I get sunk.
AG: Yes
PR: That’s absolutely super
AG: good, well done
PR: pictures. If ever you, if anything comes to mind, just ordinary little bits like we have been talking about and you scribble it down.
AG: I will indeed.
PR: I mean don’t make a burden for yourself and don’t write it all out neatly, just as it comes on a bit of paper that would be…
AG: I mean yes obviously there are things that will arise, my Dad building a truck to take to his allotment, when he made it he couldn’t get it out of the gate! That’s sort of rubbish.
PR: Yes but its rubbish…it’s not rubbish really you think of it as unimportant but go 50 years ahead and get people looking back at us and they are going to love that colour.
AG: I think personally it was a unique period really in between the wars. We have seen an enormous number of changes scientifically as well as social, we have, our age group
(Ivy had just joined the men)
IG: Do you want coffee?
AG: Do you want coffee
PR: We haven’t talked about you too much!
IG: I thought you were still...that’s why I haven’t been in, don’t know what they might be saying!
PR: Well we’ve covered the ground haven’t we?
AG: I think we have covered a bit!
IG: I bet you have.
PR: Been to school, you were mentioned once or twice,
AG: Dad rescued two boys over that river you know.
PR: Did he?
AG: Dad did. I remember that river being flooded in my youth too. Water coming up that garden path almost to the house.
IG: There’s a starling on my nuts!
PR: Oh so there is, yes
AG: I dragged a baby out of the river with a fishing line
PR: Crumbs, yes of course that was a risk straight at the end of the garden. You used to have that gents’ toilet sort of came in to the garden down toward the river end didn’t it? A public toilet that had a street lamp which shone both ways.
IG: **************down the bottom for the house too I might tell you. If you wanted to go in the middle of the night it was awful.
AG: That was a trek
IG: Oh it was awful
PR: Where were they then right down the end of that long garden.
AG: Down the end of the garden yes, it intruded into the garden you see the brickwork…
PR: Yes
AG: Just before you went over the bridge, the first little bridge.
PR: Yes but your own house toilet as it were was..
AG: It was a continuation of the public one
PR: Oh I see yes
IG: When you think of it now………..
PR: You had to think ahead really didn’t you, before you went to bed.
IG: I daresay you did!
AG: Mum and Dad, well we all used it actually. As I say we had oil lamps in those days and dad had a small one that we used to trot down the garden with (laugh)
IG: Do you want a coffee
PR: I’d love one but I don’t think I ought to cause I’m going to talk to ……yes I’m booked, not desperately but I have got the coalman coming and I want to make sure, well I left the key out so he can go down and rake it in.
IG: Which coalman do you have?
PR: Well Sadlers,
IG: Oh yes Sadlers we used to have…
AG: Is he still working?
IG: We used to have Charringtons
PR: yes so did I for a bit but when he moved from here I went back to Sadlers, used to have Sadlers in the old days
IG: We found Charringtons were good for compost and all sorts of things you know.
PR: Yes
IG: They would deliver it with the coal.
PR: I am trying to get a bit extra in before the fuel tax goes up. I have already got a lot of smokey coal but this is smokeless stuff for the ………….. so someone ought to be there to rake it in as it comes down the chute otherwise it will pile up.
IG: We don’t have to do that, thank goodness, he used to do that every morning at home.
PR: Ah yes that behind you. What I can’t, what you were saying earlier, I can’t think how deep that house went back. That lovely circular front room everybody knows about and then, was there a window in the room behind?
AG: At the back, yes it overlooked the corner house where Tony Skim Hart was that window was very convenient for Mrs Hart and my mother to hold a conversation
PR: Right so somewhere near their front door
AG: Yes up the stairs you see and it looked over to her front door, Mrs. Hart had no facilities like a garden or whatever
PR: No little passage, little yardy bit leading in
AG: That’s right yes
PR: But Savilles next door to her did have a front garden and Corbetts
AG: That’s right cause that row, I think that row of cottages did belong to the Castle estate there were stables at one time.
PR: Yes
AG: the backs of those houses as I say there were stables
PR: Yes I can picture how that would have been. Cor dear, thank you verey very much
AG: I can tell you about the riotous Sunday School treat at Hatfield House, we were taken over there in McMullens' carts, you know the drays
PR: Oh, did you?
AG: 20 or 30 of us children all jammed on two carts, all the way to Hatfield.
PR: Did you have Gladys Wackett at the Sunday school?
AG: Yes
PR: Fred’s…
AG: Fred Wackett, I haven’t seen him lately,
PR: Oh he’s about yes yes, still cycling
AG: Is he?
PR: Still cycling, he lives in Russell Street now.
AG: We used to meet in Waitrose at one time, but I haven’t been able to get out and about much now.
PR: No no
AG: Not as much as I used to
PR: Tell you what I haven’t asked you to do and I should have done, fill in one of those forms, I will pop across and, sorry I left all my gear….
AG: Do you need to take it with you?
PR: Well if you have got the time and the energy there are 2 actually. If not I’ll pop back but …..it’s a bit of personal detail. I think I’ll have that cup of coffee - is it too late? (Laughs) I have just thought of some forms for Alberts to fill in.
IG: It will take him a few minutes. Here you are sir, would you like a biscuit?
PR: Oh smashing, I had a job tracking you down.
IG: Yes how did you find us?
PR: Well, I had to do a bit of sweet talking
IG: What to Gladys next door
PR: No , I could have done but
IG: I don’t know if they know where we are
PR: No I didn’t, I didn’t think of that. Oh no wait a minute I don’t know that I want to….
IG: She told us when she came up that you were going to help them, they shouldn’t have been put there, we shouldn’t have been put there and then she said in the end no you told them it wasn’t your territory.
PR: No that’s right.
IG: She had got to go up ……..
PR: I used that as an excuse, I had to, because I’ve moved Gladys all over the town helping
IG: I know the other one had
PR: Well no, yes
IG: Oh, I forget her name
PR: Cocker, she was at…
IG: Kerr
PR: Mrs Kerr
IG: She was all over Bengeo
PR: Yes she’s Palmer Road now Palmer Close, no in the end I said it was someone else’s territory that was my excuse
IG: Well she told us, he can’t help us any more, I said to go to Roger Martin, I’m pretty sure he would have done. Got something else to do.
PR: Oh she’s alright in small doses, you can’t just keep chopping about when there’s so many people with serious problems.
IG: Well this is it, people homeless, he said to us they have to do the homeless first.
PR: Yes
IG: But who she has got there now we don’t care because if they make a noise good luck to them, nobody could have been quieter than us.
PR: Well no
IG: She was telling people that we made her life a misery, terrible really it was, people knew us
PR: Well I mean you are safe aren’t you because everyone would know
IG: Well everybody knew and they came and told us you see.
PR: Yes well somebody else, a stranger, there is a young woman in there with kids
IG: Yes well she’s come from Woodlands Road Albert’s sister said she lived 3 doors from her and he worked for McMullens and he left her so of course they had to get out.
PR: Yes
IG: I am glad she’s got kids, that’ll shake her! (Laughs)
PR: That’ll startle her
AG: Our son always wanted his own place, you see he is unmarried and he lives with us and he was considering it before we left Glebe Road, getting his own place, he wanted a flat you see. Anyway we hung on there to see what, when they started building those new flats in Revels Road there, he waited to see what was going up there, so eventually of course they were about to start on our old houses, so of course we had to move out of there although we could have stayed but that would have been too punishing really to live in a caravan for about 5 months…
IG: at least 5 months
AG: So anyway the first one got finished so we moved in there but then we became aware of just what the future held for us there…
PR: Yes
AG: Of course, to compound things (Dennis and Margaret?) was put next door which gave Stuart incentive to get his own place. We talked it over between us for quite a long time didn’t we?
Tape ends.