Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Sledge, Pauline (O1996.35) |
| Interviewee | Pauline Sledge (PS). Len Sledge (LS) also present |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 14/08/1996 |
| Transcriber by | Peter Ruffles |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no O 1996.35
Interviewee: Pauline Sledge (PS). Len Sledge (LS) also present
Date: 14th August, 1996
Venue: 13A Queens Road
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles
Transcriber: Peter Ruffles
Typed by: Jean Riddell
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: Now, I have to say a little bit to start with just so that listeners can hear where we are, but what happens to the tape is, I'll only just ask you one or two easy quickies, and then can come back another year to ask you to elaborate if it would help. We'll just today have a quick kind of skirmish. It goes into the museum. Somebody, in the end, will type it out. Then there's a paper here for you to sign to say you're happy for it to be used for research and the rest of it. Or that you don't want bits of it used because you've just said something about the next-door neighbours, or someone else, who might go in and hear what we said. You can section bits of it, and then some details about your place and date of birth. I'll leave that with you for later. It takes a long long time to get the transcript because they take ages to do. We're at the moment collecting tapes.
PS: Yes.
PR: Especially from the older ones, the nonogenarians.
PS: I'm not quite there!
PR: You're safe for a few years with him, so you're not an urgent one!
PS: Ha ha.
PR: Now, where are we? Oh, that's all on the tape!
(Laughter.)
Never mind, it doesn't matter.
(Laughter.)
This is Peter Ruffles, reporting from number 13A, Queens Road, Hertford. It's the middle of August, about the 14th, 1996 and I'm in one of the finest houses in town, which lots of people know because it faces them as they come into Queens Road along the new Hale Road link with Queens Road. It's a very very fine house indeed and it's the home of Len and Pauline Sledge, who also are very well known in Hertford in their own respective ways. And it's Pauline that we've come particularly to talk to because, Pauline, you were born in Hertford?
PS: Yes, I was born in Hertford.
PR: Where were you born.
PS: I'm pretty certain it was in the hospital, The County Hospital.
PR: In the Lacey's day, I suppose either Evelyn or…
PS: No idea! More than likely.
PR: But your family had the business in town at the time, then, did it?
PS: Yes. Father owned the chemists, Lines the chemist, and we lived over the shop.
PR: In Market Place.
PS: In Market Place.
PR: You're going to write it down later, unless you put a line through that bit on the form, but what year were you born?
PS: 1929.
PR: Oh, right!
(Laughter)
So you're old enough to remember the war?
PS: Yes.
PR: I think probably the best thing is to go back to the beginning for a moment and talk about how the business came your family way and then we can jump to the present for a minute or two and then go back to your childhood.
PS: Yes.
PR: How long had they been here? Is it an old established family?
PS: No. As far as I know father bought the shop from Mr. Lines, George Lines.
Transcribers Note: Mr George Lines had died in 1900 and the business was run by his son in law Mr Henry Alexander, it is likely the business was bought from him unless it was still in the names of his wife and sister in law George Lines daughters. George Lines had two sons who both died too young and predeceased their father.
PR: Because it was always called "George Lines".
PS: Yes, he kept the name. And he came here before they were married. They married in 1927 and I think he was here before that and then we lived there until they bought this house in Queens Road.
PR: So why would he have come to Hertford in the first place? As a chemist looking for work?
PS: As a chemist, yes. Where he bought the shop. It so happened. He bought the business, but he rented the premises.
PR: Oh, right. So who would have been the owner of the premises in those days?
PS: Guess who!
PR: Well there aren't all that many to choose from. McMullens or Lord Salisbury or Longmores or the Culls.
PS: CULLS!
PR: Oh, number 4. I got it on the list.
PS: And then when he retired he sold out to Peter Sheffield, but that was about '61 or '62.
PR: And Sheffields ran both chemist's shops for quite a while.
PS: Then Peter Sheffield sold that out. He had a manager in there.
PR: So did they
PS: Eventually he sold Sheffield's as well.
PR: Yes, but in the 60' s there were two chemist's shops performing the same function. It wasn't dispensing in one place and toiletries in the other.
PS: No. They were both the same (100 yards apart).
PR: So it must have been a strong business, your dad's.
PS: Yes. I think so. I think he built it up very well, he was quite a shrewd businessman, I think.
PR: Were you the first in the family?
PS: Yes.
PR: Any more after you?
PS: Yes, a sister two years younger.
PR: So your childhood days were spent overlooking the Shire Hall.
PS: Yes. Our living room overlooked the Shire Hall.
PR: Magic!
PS: (Laughs) (Chuckles).
PR: Right in the heart of the town! And you've never been far away from it, because this house is only a stone's throw isn't it.
PS: Yes (thoughtfully). It was near enough for them to go backwards and forwards you see. Ideal.
PR: You'd have gone through the churchyard and down by Minnie Fentiman's and down Church Street.
PS: Yes.
PR: Before Gascoyne Way.
PS: Existed. Yes.
PR: So. We've got you born and your sister and we've looked at the end of the business, the up to date bit. But, I mean, this house is such a lovely property, isn't it.
PS: What,this one?!
PR: This one we're in now. So, he bought it did he, while he was still renting the shop.
PS: Yes. Actually I think it was my mother who bought it but that doesn't matter. Yes. And then they were able to let the accommodation off as flats. They were allowed to do that.
PR: And did people live there all the time the shop was running? It was never a storage?
PS: No. no, no. It's got plenty of storage in the cellar, big cellar.
PR: Let's talk about that. We're jumping backwards and forwards but we'll come back to this house (Queens Road) which is what I was going to ask you about. Let's talk about the accommodation at the shop. The cellar went up to the shop window at the front, did it? Did it come right up to the pavement?
PS: Yes. Because it went back. Um. The bit on the corner that's now 'The Craft Shop' was Botsford's once.
Transcribers Note: Corner of Market Place and Honey Lane
PR: Yes.
PS: Well, when, we went round that and we had a door in Honey Lane into the house!
PR: Oh! I remember that door.
PS: It's still there.
PR: Oh, so it was your door!
PS: And it went, oh, there was a little bit into a shop on the left as you went in. But the accommodation went right over what's now, what is it, a clothes shop in Honey Lane. Yes. It was a radio shop, Taibs. Well, we went right over that. If you look up there's about three or four windows. Two floors there and then round the bit that was Botsford's and we were three floors over the shop.
PR: So it was very busy
PS: It was rambling, with lots of staircases.
PR: So your way in and out of your home was in Honey Lane, not the shop way in.
PS: That's how they got into the house for the flat's time. You could block off the shop door.
PR: That access problem is the big problem now when Councils are trying to persuade people to let off accommodation in town centres in empty places. It's security problems for the shop. But yours…
PS: That was all right. Yes.
PR: So the cellar. Did that take up a similar amount of space?
PS: Yes. It went underneath all that same area, except for a bit that was Botsfords.
PR: And then above the shop - two storeys.
PS: No, three floors above the shop. Two rooms right at the top. Then one room, then another one room, and then the shop. But we hardly used it all. It was terrible really, because I had a bedroom that was over the living room over the shop, and the toilet was right down a flight of stairs and the bathroom was up the other flight of stairs and along the passageway to the other end of the house. There were three bedrooms up there. And the kitchen and the dining room were on the first floor with various walk-in cupboards and things.
PR: It's a wonderful home really, from the point of view of anyone looking in from outside.
PS: Yes, but you don't realise how horrendous it was until you are out of it.
PR: So this house wasn't new when your Ma, Pa bought it, was it?
PS: No. It was about 20 years old, I think. Because it was built in the grounds of 13, 15.
PR: 15. That's where I remember Mrs. Jollands living.
PS: She lived there that side.
PR: Ah. The red brick one.
PS: That side. When we came, Bromleys used to live here. Then some other people, and then Dr. Jory had it [15?].
PR: Was it Bromleys who sold the land?
PS: No. I don't know who sold the land but the house was built by Braziers. I think it was Mrs Brazier who we bought it from.
PR: They had it built.
LS: Kemp built it. They built about four houses right at the top and this one, filling in down here.
PR: It's such a lovely spacious
PS: Yes. There's ever such a waste of space really. It's a bit similar to Cyril Brazier's house in Ware Road, really. I mean, when you've got a bedroom as big as this room, it is a bit vast and we've got three other bedrooms as well. Oh, yes. They're good sized bedrooms, but. And a bathroom that looks out over the front! Over the front door!
PR: So you and your sister both came here.
PS: Yes. Well, I was away at the time, but she came with them. She wasn't living at home then either. Although she…
PR: So, what age were you then, roughly?
PS: Well, they came here in '55. So I was 26 or so. But I was in Australia at the time.
PR: What were you doing in Australia then?
PS: WORKING! I was on a working holiday for two years!
PR: It's not where you met anybody we know is it?
PS: Oh, yes. It was, actually. Strange as it may seem
(Laughter.)
Yep.
PR: So, well then, here we are. Now in your childhood days! We've talked about the property and the business. What about the town, then, in those years? What are your memories?
PS: I don't remember much, really. Um. I can remember watching the judge come. With all the buglers and everything for the assize court. He used to go in that side opposite Gravesons, the door that was there.
PR: Facing you, sort of thing. I'd forgotten there was a door there. That's where they did the proclamation for The Queen - accession and things like that.
PS: I don't know about that.
PR: The opposite side to the one with the clock on.
PS: Yes, and there were big round steps going up.
PR: Yes, yes.
PS: So we used to watch him come with his buglers and things; every-whenever. Twice a year? Three times a year?
PR: What about characters in the town that you remember? Nobody you were frightened of? Or nobody who was a nuisance?
PS: Oh, I don't think so. No.
PR: No nasties.
PS: Not really, no. We might have had people coming in for a bottle of meths which wouldn't,
refused.
PR: But I remember you telling me that you went in to the Shire Hall.
PS: During the war. The cellars. They were allo…, well they weren't allocated. I don't know how it came about either, but all the people who lived over the shops and things around, went, they had a cell each and we used to go and stay there when the raids were on.
PR: Your personal, local, shelter. While some people were digging their own in their gardens
PS: We went down there.
PR: Did you go very often?
PS: Yeah, well, whenever the siren started we used to go down, put on siren suits or something - go down and stay, but this was Battle of Britain time. When they got more frequent we used to go to bed there, rather than get up and go down. So there was a bed made up and another sort of bed for mother at the side. Father was an air-raid warden. He was out all the time.
PR: So what did you see? People coming across Market Place.
PS: we just all assembled there.
PR: in their pyjamas?
PS: I can't remember who there was. There was Miss Ashman the tobacconist.
PR: Where was her shop?
PS: Next to Candy's (Possibly 16, Market Place). Then the people from Bon Marche on the corner. Then came Ginns who used to manage Foster's.
PR: Ah, yeah! I remember him. Used to live in Wellington Street.
PS: And who else? The sweet shop was always there, I think.
PR: No one living MacFarlane's side, or Howard Robert's.
PS: I don't think anyone lived over MacFarlane's, but someone lived over Howard Robert's.
PR: And presumably someone had the key to let you in.
PS: We just went in. I don't know how we got in!
PR: You don't take note of all those things.
PS: No, not when you're ten!
PR: Another world!
PS: As I say, when it got bad we'd stay there. We'd have had to pick up our clothes, all on a hanger ready to take over.
PR: And it was always the same cell.
PS: Oh, yes, as I say, because we had these beds made up. But then we had to get out when the courts were on. What we did then, I don't know.
PR: Chanced it, I suppose.
PS: Yes
(Laughter.)
PR: You can't imagine it, in the 1990s.
PS: These great thick doors, that were left open otherwise we'd have had no air. Ajar.
PR: Now all the time, I suppose, your landlord's shop was operating. Was the sweet shop, the Cull's, there when you were in Market Place.
PS: Oh, yes, yes. I used to go to Mr. Cull's. So did my old father. Somehow he saved his sweet coupons, illegally, to get boxes of chocolates for presents.
PR: And did you get special treatment as a tenant?
PS: Oh, I don't know. But yes, yes, the illegal saving up of the sweet coupons.
PR: What was the inside of their shop like?
PS: Like an old-fashioned thing with big glass counter, high. There used to. always be two. of them in there, I think.
PR: Brothers? Because the sister worked in there towards the…
PS: Yes, I think she might have been around as well.
PR: With their cellars.
PS: Yes. And their respective hats that never came off.
PR: What do you call these collars that Reg used to wear, wing?
PS: Oh, stiff wing collars.
PR: I keep getting interested and slipping down!
PS: (Laughter). A chair!
PR: So the Culls, that little corner. Did you pay the rent to the Culls in the shop. That wasn't a job you had to…?
PS: No, I didn't do anything like that.
PR: I wonder how it was done, because they owned a lot of property.
PS: I knew they did. We had the International next to us - International Stores.
PR: Behind you and next to you because, was it a walk-through shop?
PS: Yes, right through, both sides.
PR: I remember Mr. and Mrs. Jezzard living above it.
PS: Yes. That was later. Howard Robert's was handy though.
PR: We used to go there. Before we went to Cook and Drane. They both used to send someone round for the order. Mr. Drane used to come into the kitchen at home, pencil behind his ear, and after the old lady had given her list, he'd reel off his sort of check-list from his head.
PS: During the war we used to go all over. We used to get the sugar in one shop and the butter in another shop, all this sort of thing. If you were a regular you get the odd preferential treatment, when they had something in like biscuits. We were known for all the extra perks that came. The little man on the corner of Market Place (Salisbury Square).
PR: Greeves?
PS: Greeves, that's right. We used to have tea from there, I think.
PR: Yes, it smelled a very 'tea' kind of shop that one.
PS: He was an old man, wasn't he!
PR: With a hearing aid and a great wire flex like you had the light suspended from at home. You had some quite steep steps to get up into his shop. No good for the disabled!
PS: Oh, no.
PR: You had choices all round you, without stepping far.
PS: And all places in Maidenhead Street as well.
PR: Yes, yes. But no trouble from The Green. I suppose The Green was about finished, pulled down by the time you arrived.
PS: Which 'Green'?
PR: Bircherley Green.
PS: Oh, that's quite modern.
PR: When the slums were there.
PS: Oh, no, no. I knew the bus station there and the Arcade.
PR: Yes, that had gone. There used to be fights and things round there, the far end of the Arcade, before 1930. Right - nothing else we ought to think of, Len, before we go?
PS: What about Botsford's fire? I can remember Botsford's fire, in Market Place.
PR: You'd have had a grandstand view.
PS: Yes. I wasn't allowed to watch it, either, in case things flew out. No, apparently they said there were not bullets go off - in the window. They were going to fly in all directions and could have come through our sitting room window.
PR: So you had to be kept away.
PS: It was sort of mid-day time. We came home from school - for lunch.
PR: I'd thought in my mind it was early morning. It was a cold time of year wasn't it? . ~
PS: Yep. It was February. I think it was February, but it was cold, because all the water from the hose pipes all froze - up Honey Lane! It was like an ice rink, a sheet of ice. You couldn't walk on it. My mother had been out – it must have frozen over perhaps in the evening - and she was escorted up - two or three men! To get her to the front door to get in.
PR: What started that fire? Do you know?
PS: Somebody filling paraffin in the shop and not outside at the back or something like that.
PR: During the shop working hours, and everyone was around and saw it start.
PS: Yes, and it deflected to half of MacFarlane's. I don't know how much of Howard Robert's, but the roof went. The roofs caught alight. I don't know how narrow it is, but if you look up above Honey Lane at those two roofs, what was Howard Robert's and what was Botsford's, next to us, there's a little gap at the top between the corner points of the roofs. And when that fire started and the roof caught alight.
My father began to worry. It could have gone across. He took all his prescription books and all his important things over to the bank. He told my mother to pack cases of clothes and all her jewellery, and get ready to move out. So she did all that, put all her jewel box, clothes for us but the only thing which to her were important were knickers. It was more or less full of knickers for everybody.
(Laughter.)
PR: Well!
PS: When she took it all back again, because we didn't move out, she put the jewellery box back on the dressing table. And all her good stuff was in the little boxes it comes in in the chest of drawers. Still there. She'd just picked up the box with the junky stuff in.
PR: I expect that's what we'd all do in the circumstances.
PS: Yes.
PR: A little lesson. No one has ever described that for us. Well they couldn't, no one was in such a position to see it, as you were.
PS: The people who lived over Howard Robert's were told to get out. And the shop people were told to get out. And there was a young girl, probably about our age. They came into our house while we waited - to see what would happen. We all had lunch.
PR: All this was happening out in the street and you were
PS: We weren't allowed to go and watch the fire. No. The cartridges might shoot out at us.
PR: Well, I reckon you'll be up in the museum on that, quoted!
(Chuckle from Pauline and Len.)
LS: Your father told the story when the bomb went off.
PS: Oh, this is going back. When he was an air-raid warden near the Woolpack somewhere. Oh, the Mill Bridge one. It was early morning, I think, fairly early morning.
LS: Well, he rushed down Maidenhead Street, and there wasn't a window in. It was all broken glass everywhere.
PS: He couldn't avoid walking on glass. He just went. He said, 'That's near. I'm going'.
PR: Sunday morning that was. James Barber mentioned that. He was living just opposite.
PS: Peter Barber was about my age. He was at the convent with us.
PR: But did it affect you - that doodlebug? At your property, can you remember?
PS: Not much. A few bits of cracked glass, that's all. The people came round to see what damage we'd had. We were up the side, you see, so probably the blast went straight down Maidenhead Street. We had a big cupboard in the kitchen. All built in like a dresser, with glass fronted doors. There was a glass crack on that, been there for years. We had that replaced. On the strength of the bomb! Yes. The broken window - the Honey Lane window at the bottom of the stairs. He said, “There's glass around. Put shoes on.” But he went. He helped at Russell's the chemist. That was badly affected. He went and helped them out and loaned them stuff so that they could carry on.
PR: Oh, they carried on business fairly quickly?
PS: Fairly quickly. Yes. It took the whole top storey off that property in the end. It had two storeys above the shop level at the time. Was it called? It was called Russell's.
PR: Was it, at the time? I'd thought it was Durrant's then.
PS: I thought it was Russell's.
PR: Ah, Russell's from Letchworth. In addition to the shop you've been part of the cultural life of the town, 'The HD and OS'.
PS: Well, I was brought up with it, wasn't I? Because the parents joined it. Well, my mother was always a singer and the first thing that we can find from the HD and OS records that she was in was in about early 1931. She did a few shows. She was part of this concert party they had during the war. Then after the war they started doing all sorts of things. They started the pantomime up and all that. My father was part of the scene shifting crew. He was the stage manager for years. So, at the Corn Exchange.
PR: I was going to ask about the set-up. When did it happen? Did you join first as a child?
PS: Yes. No. They joined first. We both joined when they wanted chorus people for pantomimes, and that sort of thing, even though we couldn't sing. It didn't matter! They just needed people to get it going. (Laughs.)
PR: And you mother's singing. Was that a thing that she'd been trained for earlier?
PS: Yes, she'd had training. Other people will tell you about her. They said she had a good voice. but I was so unmusical, I didn't appreciate it. She was from a musical family, you see. She:brought it to Hertford with her. They came from Cambridge.
LS: She was a Miller. Do you know Miller's of Cambridge. The music shop.
PR: Oh!
PS: Which was my Grandfather's. There were six children in the Miller family. Father's father was a chemist in Cambridge. But they originally came from Wales. I think Grandfather came here. I'm not sure why he came from Wales to Cambridge but it was when my father was a very young baby. They lived there all the time. Len Organs.
PS: Oh, well, that's going back on Miller side. I'm talking about the Evans' side.
PR: So HD and OS was quite young, was it? I've forgotten when
PS: It's now about 77 years old. Founded in '23? or something like that. So it was fairly young.
PR: They produced shows in the Corn Exchange to start with. Did they have a headquarters?
PS: No. I don't know where they rehearsed then. The time when I joined they used to rehearse in Crozier's playroom in their garden at 'The Twitchells'.
PR: Now, let's just explain where Croziers house is. How did you get to it?
PS: Well, there was a gate from the alleyway. The main way was from the bottom of Mangrove Road, where Greencoats comes in. Right next to there. There was a huge garden. And they had this big playroom there.
PR: Until somebody got the land in Pegs Lane. There was a board up there for years while it was derelict. It said
PS: 'Property of HD and OS'. Yes. I don't know how it was acquired. And I'm not certain whether it was actually donated to the Society or the Society bought it. But following that they bought the place in St. Andrew's Street.
PR: C.A.W.G. Hall - was it?
PS: Yes. Behind the antique place.
PR: Yes. About number 27.
PS: Something like that. And they owned that and that proved to be quite valuable of course. When it was sold.
PR: And all that time from your childhood, you've had something, some business with them.
PS: Yes. So whenever they did this first pantomime which was in '46 I think, was when I joined.
PR: And have you held office?
PS: Oh, yes!! I've done all sorts of things. Yes. I was President in about '77 I think or '75.
LS: You mother was President, too.
PS: Yes. Mother was President one year.
PR: I only ask the question to make Pauline say the answers!
(Laughter.)
PS: Yes!
PR: Well, I think we've got enough there for someone to type out, bless them.
PS: A side and a half of tape! (Chuckle.)
LS: Interestingly, when we were first married we went to live over the shop as well.
PS: In one of the flats, yes. Just for a little while. Not for that long.
PR: And then, when did you come here?
PS: We had a house in Bengeo for a while, but we came here. It really all just happened, didn't it? We went to Australia for about three months. Let the house in Bengeo while we were away - came back. Father wasn't too well then, was he. We sort of came back - and just stayed on after he died.
PR: And your mum had died first, had she?
PS: Yes. She died a few months after we were married.
PR: Was that a sudden…?
PS: No. She was ill. She had cancer and she'd been ill for quite a while.
LS: We lived in Raynham Street.
PS: Yes. But that's nothing to do with this.
PR: Old Sparkie. We must get someone talking about old Sparkie.
PS: Perhaps Adrian will speak to you.
PR: It's a prejudiced view when it's your dad. He was a character - and he got about. He got on the Council. Public meetings in the Corn Exchange.
PS: Everybody voted for the milkmen!
PR: Independent! Topped the poll! A town character.