Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Bilton, Amelia (Millie) (01999.05) |
| Interviewee | Amelia (Millie) Bilton (AB) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR), Eve Sangster (ES) |
| Date | 16/04/1999 |
| Transcriber by | Eve Sangster |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: 01999.05
Interviewee: Amelia (Millie) Bilton (AB)
Date: 16th April, 1999
Venue: Cecil Road, Hertford.
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR), Eve Sangster (ES)
Transcriber: Eve Sangster
Typed by: Eve Sangster
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
ES: We establish that Amelia (Millie) was born in Victoria Place, St Andrew Street.
JR: Your father was a Ketteridge – he lived in Oakers Buildings? (yes)
AB: I lived with my grandmother in West Street, 57. We were opposite the big house; the two Miss McMullens.
ES: Why did you come to West Street?
AB: I came to live with my grandmother.
ES: Why was that?
AB: I don't really know.
ES: Were you one of a big family?
AB: I was one of six.
ES: It might even have been because the family was so big?
AB: Probably, yes. They had a chauffeur and a gardener and Mrs Playle (Ellie Seeker). Mr. Skinner was the chauffeur. He lived two doors away from my grandmother. [No.45]. My grandmother was the first one on Somerset Terrace and then there was a large garden went right up to the alley at the back. It belonged to McMullens. I can remember Mr Skinner in his chauffeur's uniform.
ES: So how old were you when you went to live with your grandmother?
AB: I think I was about two.
ES: When were you born?
AB: 1920.
ES: Was your grandfather still alive?
AB: No.
ES: Your grandma lived on her own?
AB: Yes. She did the washing for McMullens.
ES: Did you have much to do with the houses? Did you go over when your grandma went over?
AB: No. I did wonder if anybody had mentioned the convent and the nuns.
ES: Well, you know who put us on to you? Nana Thomas and he said that Mr. Mead who lived in West Street had a small-holding over at Wallfields. Of course Nana's a lot older than you. He's 90.
AB: 89!
ES: Mead kept cows on Wallfields and Nana used to take the milk to the convent every morning.
AB: We used to go to tea with the nuns as children. There was Joan Whinnett. The Winnetts had a house in that alley at the back. You know the alley that runs along the back of West Street. You can go up by the pub and out, well, the Whinnetts lived in a house there. You can go right along and come down some steps. Well, getting towards those steps, back a bit, there was a house and the Whinnetts lived there. [Whinnetts' address in 1938 Kelley's Directory is Garden Cottage, Horns Mill Road.] Joan Whinnett later became Mrs. Creasey.
The nuns were very nice to us children and had us over for tea. Used to give us home-made cakes at night time. They used to keep pigs down the bottom there, inside the fence, by the alley, at the top of my grandmother's garden. And they used to come down with lanterns and mend the fence. We could see the lights moving about if we looked out of the window. We knew they were out there mending. They wouldn't come out in the daylight.
My grandmother had a sister lived a bit further up and she was married to a Charles Cheshire. When I worked at the museum – I worked there for quite a few years on the desk – there was a write-up about this Charles Cheshire on the wall and I knew. The Crimea War he fought in. And I just 'phoned Rosemary Bennett to ask her why it warranted a write-up. But she said it wasn't. It was the letter he'd written from wherever he was fighting. But he lived a bit further up. There was a famous painter lived in this street, wasn’t there?
ES: Yes, the Westall brothers.
AB: And that plaque? (on Nicholls Brewery).
ES: We found one person who went to Miss Hilton’s School and that was Peter Burgess.
AB: They had a private school but they also kept the wool shop near the Mercury Office.
ES: Do you remember the Burgesses?
AB: Yes I do. My grandmother also did their washing.
ES: Do you remember any other private schools in West Street?
AB: Mis Fountain, did she have some connection with Miss Silversides?
ES: Well, Marcus Silversides, who is a man of about 40 – he lived in Bridgeman House – he said his aunt used to live at 25, but there was also a Miss Silversides who used to live next to Miss Hilton in one of those two big houses.
AB: In there an alley still there?
ES: Well, Miss Hilton and the adjoining big house were pulled down in the 1960s to construct Westall close.
AB: Then there was Ivy Passage then 2 houses.
ES: Your auntie lived in which one?
AB: Nest to Miss Silversides.
ES: Do you mean your aunt lived in one of those two big houses?
AB: Yes
ES: What was her name?
AB: Cowlan/Cowley – she grew up in West Street, went to live in London and then came back when it was bombed so badly and lived there.
ES: Where did she live before she came back to there or was that always her house?
AB: She lived in 57. Where I lived. My Dad's sister.
ES: Do you remember anything about the houses numbers 33 and 35, just this side of the pub, where there's now another pair of modern houses?
AB: The MacBeans lived there when I went to school but my grandmother told me before it was a shirt factory.
ES: Did you know anybody in Ivy Passage? (no).
ES: Anchor Yard?
AB: Yes, it was the Yeastvite Company then the passage. There were some houses at the back of the pub.
ES: Were they still there in your time? (yes)
ES: Mean dwellings they were. Yes. Anchor yard was 14 or 16 West Street, next door to DLC Yeast.
AB: Then there was two houses, the big house where Mr Nealson lived.
ES: Where did you go to school?
AB: All Saints’ Infants and then up to Abel Smith.
ES: Did you have friends in the street? Who did you play with?
AB: Bette Saville. She lived down Water Lane [number 8] and Margaret Hart [number 10]. There was a lot of Harts down there.
ES: Are they the milk people?
AB: One of them was. One of the sons was a milkman. And Bette lived next door. And Drusie Mead, Drusilla [number 87], Joan Wiggs, her father was a sergeant in the police force. They lived [at number 41] the police house, Sergeant Wiggs.
Mr. Studman was quite a character. He worked at Graveson's.
ES: You said about the MacBeans being at 33 & 35. Mr. MacBean ran a tea-room there didn't he?
AB: Yes. He used to have a little stall there and sell bits and pieces.
ES: Oh, what, out the front? When would that have been? In the 30s?
AB: When I was at school,'yes, in the 30s. Did Mrs. Austin mention the cobbler, Silby [No. I I], who used to sit there repairing shoes? He sat inside the door. And one of his daughters married Mr. Halls who used to keep the bicycle shop at the entrance to the Castle grounds.
ES: Where did they have their tearooms?
AB: In the house.
ES: What did MacBean sell outside?
AB: .Oh, he sold make-up, for one thing, 'cos I can remember buying a little tin of powder, face . Powder. Ted MacBean, a postman.
ES: Is there anyone you grew up in West Street with still around?
AB: Some of the family of MacBean.
ES: Who did they marry into?
AB: Ted married a Miss Dye, her brother lives on the end here. They had a daughter who might know.
JR: We could look in a telephone directory.
AB: Nana worked with Ted on the post.
JR: On the way here I met Dolly Morris (Dudley) who said she was related to you (she married Milly’s brother).
ES: Did you use any of the shops in West Street?
AB: There was that little shop at the bottom and you could go in there for paraffin and firewood and your sugar and everything, all in the one shop. Wasn't there a baker's in there?
END OF SIDE 1
SIDE 2
The talk moves to the disappearance, long before the building of the Relief Road, of No. I.
AB: Mr. Durrant lived in the first house. Then there was the big house, which was Burgess's [No.9]. Then there was Jacobs [No.7]. I went to school with the girl Jacobs. And the end one was Mr Durrant [No.3], who kept the chemists in St. Andrew Street, which was bombed. And then there was a kind of opening and, I've got a feeling there used to be food, bread or something, baked in there - Camps Stores?
And then there was a little shop and some houses and an opening where Graves had their taxis.
ES: There was an entrance to Wallfield, wasn't there?
AB: There were two gates – my grandmother used to call that Pimlico Hall – and a little cottage on either side and then Chaseside Motors started up then on the bottom of Pegs Lane.
I know someone who used to live in one of them [the little cottages]. She lives along the road. Firman, her name was Firman, Jill Firman. I'm trying to think how long number 1 was there because my son was in the fire brigade then and he came home one frosty – the roads were very bad one evening and he'd got a little T.R. which spun round and hit the corner of the building and wrote his car off. So it was still there then. Used to be Cannons lived round there, a well-known family and Graves had their taxi business there.
JR: We don’t know whether Durrant lived at 1 or 3. Can I ask you about your husband? Did he come from the Bilton Family in Hertingfordbury Road?
AB: There's a connection. He came from Foxholes Avenue. Would be cousins or something. Wouldn't be close. Or his dad's cousin.
JR: There were Biltons for many, many years living in number 14. a small cottage in Hertingfordbury Road.
ES: So you were Amelia Ketteridge. Is this the Ketteridges who ran the vegetable…?
AB: Yes, that was my dad. He had one arm.
JR: Yes, he had a hook didn't he? I think he was living at one time in Oakers Building.
AB: And then he went to Pearson Avenue,
JR: According to one of our interviewees who lived in Brewhouse Lane, which is opposite where, down by the side of The Three Tuns, you know where I mean, he used to leave his barrow down
there at one time.
AB: He used to have a stable at the bottom and keep his horse down there and he also had another big building halfway down, where he kept all the fruit, a shed, really.
(Millie goes on to say that her husband's mother's sister was married to Annie Inman's brother).
AB: My husband’s mother’s sister was married to her brother. They lived in the grammar school lodge.
ES: She said that when she was about 10 her sister worked in the collar factory, she composed a song for the girls to sing.
Also, that her grandmother used to say that Somerset Terrace was built with materials salvaged from the demolition of the old gaol. [Probably only the last to be built: Somerset Terrace began 1876, gaol site sold for demolition 1879].