Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Sadler, Olive (O1999.22) |
| Interviewee | Olive Sadler (OS) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 30/07/1999 |
| Transcriber by | Dick Warn |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 1999.22
Interviewee: Olive Sadler (OS)
Date: 30 July 1999
Venue: 14 Russell Street
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Dick Warn
Retyped by: Marilyn Taylor (2018)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: This is Peter Ruffles at home in the scullery with the clock, sorry, on the 30th July just before I go and see if I can persuade Miss Olive Sadler to talk to us, I think I am going to be unlucky because she is reluctant but I will go and I want the tape set up before I get there so any talk that is coming from Olive I can get it without too much fuss and bother to start with. Olive Sadler lives at number 13 Russell Street and that’s where I shall be heading off to in a few minutes.
Transcribers Note: Peter says 13 but Miss Sadler actually lived at 14 Russell Street.
Tape stopped and restarted, Peter is fixing clip on microphones. Some discussion about them and where they will sit.
PR: Peter Ruffles speaking on the 30th July 1999 from the home of a very well known Hertford person, whose arm we have twisted to say a little bit, she is not too keen, but she may say “scrub it” later, Miss Olive Sadler, who I have known all my life.
OS: Yes yes.
PR: You have been a driver for a long time, because I used to see you waving out of the window. When did you start driving Olive?
OS: Um let me see now, can I just get me driving licence, look do you see it, have a little look. You’ll see when I passed me test an everything.
PR: You had to take a test?
OS: Oh yeah, is it that one? You’ll see there.
PR: Yes 1959. Did you learn to drive for the work?
OS: Bridens? Well that’s when I was, wait a minute, let me see, I was out catering, night time really. I mean that wasn’t my full time job at the time, but when my Dad gave up work, well he died, and my two brothers carried on, and we took that office on the…
PR: On the corner of … was it Old Cross or Cowbridge?
OS: Yes , it was Old Cross, and I run my other brother’s business as well from there, Fred. So then my brother George died, and John wasn’t up to it to carry on, and so we sold the business and it all packed up. Then I was out of a job, so I went on catering, Mr Skinner died and I got three years to go before I was 60. I managed to get a job down at Addis’s. It was only … I mean I was late in years.
PR: You had to be.
OS: I used to deliver rolls and cakes and that there, so knew the, um what was she? Miss Langham?
PR: Langham was it?
OS: Yes, Langham, she kind of sorted things out and she said “well, we’ll have a little walk round” and they tried to get me to do it in one of these, well, washing (up) where they washed the bristle or something and the chappie said something. I said “would I have to lift those boxes on my own?” And he said “yes”, so I said “when we was at Brighton, we never had to do that, we had two of us carry them boxes, the same type”
PR: Yes I know.
OS; Well he said “I don’t think you’re, you know, much as I want …” Well would you in that state?
PR: No, if I was 57, well about…
OS: Anyway so they took me then and they sorted it over, and would I like to be in the canteen, so would you like to come down and I see the cook and that, you know, and he showed me round and then I had to go back to Miss Langham and she said well, I ought to take you on. So I filled in a form and one thing and another and she said when could I start? Well I’d gone down there on my own bat, really.
PR: Oh ha ha. Yes well, are you comfortable sitting there?
OS: Yes when Mr Skinner died you see, it all packed up, and come the end of the month we was finished, so…there was the Royal Show, what we used to do the catering on, Well we was going to treat that like, just the one day was going to be like one of our days…holiday. Well I don’t quite know what happened , I’d been and signed on cause they said this is what I got to do and I signed on, come away, and after I’d been to the Royal Show, you know Bill Horsley well he told me he’d been trying to phone me for a job!
PR: Oh!
OS: So he said he’d more or less committed me that I should have been on the end of my phone, waiting for him. Well I thought to myself, well, 1’ve known you a long time, but you ain’t got to dictate to me what job I’m going to take. That’s what made me go down to Addis’s on my own and I was lucky, I got in there and the next day I had to be there at eight o’clock and I was happy as anything down there.
PR: How long did you stay?
OS: I had to come up to I was 60 see, that’s all. It was not quite three years, but I think to myself, well, I was lucky.
PR: And you knew people there anyway, and they knew you as it were.
OS: Yes, that’s it, I was happy. I had one of these little trollies you know, I didn’t drive, but I went with someone of the name Prosper, he drove the thing. We went to the different factory parts and done tea or coffee, whatever they do as I say I was really happy there and I was in the dry, in the warm, and I had to do toilets, but they were all new and so they were marvellous. Then there was little luncheon parties held and they drew me in on that, you see. I used to bring gloves and a little apron I was really lucky. I never had it so good I mean the dry and everything really. I really enjoyed it but there you are it did come to an end.
PR: Let’s go back to your early days. Were you born in Hertford? Was it the end of the street? (Russell Street)
OS: Yes, yes I was there.
PR: Was it the Greyhound then?
OS: Yes and it was just a beer house, not spirit or anything just the beer. Did you go there?
PR: Love it, yeah love it, cause the Sadler family are so well known, it would be nice to say who and what order they came in.
OS: Well as I say, my Dad was very strict with us ‘cause us younger ones was trying to get away with it I suppose but he was very strict an that, he never hit us or anything, mind you .
PR: That was unusual wasn’t it?
OS: Yes it was. As I say, I lost my Mum when I was five, she died, well it was really going over the station, going to London…
PR: Oh.
OS: ….and they were hurrying my dad and my Mum they were hurrying and she came over queer, any rate, they were going to see an aunt there and my dad managed to get her to Farringdon Street, London, is that right? And he managed to get her there. Well of course, them sort of days a drop of Brandy, wasn’t it you know, but whether it was good for her or not, I just don’t know. But she came home and was taken queer again and she laid for there or four days. As I said my Dad was very strict and everything.
PR: Were you the youngest one?
OS: Yes the youngest of 12.
PR: Can you remember your mother at all?
OS: Well it’s a thing I don’t want to put it on anybody, I tell you. My Mum laid there, you never went to the room, unless somebody like took you. I suppose my Mum was very ill and my Dad picked me up and he took me to her bed and I kissed her goodbye and that stuck in my mind and I’ll never make that mistake again with anybody else.
PR: He probably thought he was doing the right thing and your Mum thought so, but it was hard on the child.
OS: Yes yes.
PR: So there were another 11?
OS: They were older so that meant to say they’d gone into service they hadn’t died., they’d gone in to service away from home.
PR: How long were they at the Greyhound then?
OS: Well my dad I believe was one of the oldest I think he came up higher than Mr Whiting at the Unicorn. My Dad was just a little bit younger and of course the Maltings was opposite, where the school was.
PR: Yes.
OS: Them men at the maltings would be at work I think they said at half past four in the morning, at six o’clock most of them (mumbles possibly finished work)
PR: Well we can rub it out later.
OS: But they used to be round the back door and want a drink. My Dad would say “anyone?” no way.
PR: Well that who as community and they won’t take his licence away, that was working with the people wasn’t it. So he’d been the licensee for a long time before you were born.
OS: Yes yes.
PR: I remember people called Rogers there?
OS: Yes who lived two doors up, yes, Charlie Rogers.
PR: Did they take over from your family then?
OS: Oh, no wait a minute, that was a different, sorry, he worked at McMullens, that’s what I am thinking, but that one came from Brickendon didn’t he? Rogers?
PR: I can’t remember where.
OS: But there was lots of people there really, because that Daphne Hillier you remember from the store? Well they took over didn’t they for a time. I don’t know…
PR: But your Dad carried on after your Mum died?
OS: Oh yes, yes, an’ my sisters were all having to work and I mean my sisters, two of them were dressmakers and they used to make my dresses and I used to do because they were new to dressmaking so naturally I had to be fitted three of four times, that got on my nerves. They used to have to give me oatmeal pellets to make me put it on, see, it wasn’t as though they were real head ones you know for dressmaking but…
PR: Just learning weren’t they and you were the tailors dummy?
OS: That’s it! As I say… yes I can remember that.
PR: Well then, the Sadler coal business, before Fred and George went separately, Dad had started. Did he start from scratch?
OS: Oh yes, yes, yes.
PR: Cause this afternoon you showed me those model trucks in the front room with Sadler’s railway sacks on it, so where did he operate from then your Dad?
OS: Well from Hartham Lane there that’s where Nigel tried to do that, its not quite right, if you know what I mean, but its not far out how he done it and as I say my two brothers , like, just older than me, Jim and John, they used to, when they had finished schooling, like, Friday afternoon, they had to go down there and help load up for Saturday morning. Me oldest brother that was, like, well you see them trollies? Well there’s one high frontage like and then the next one is only so high, well George wasn’t very tall, you see, so that’s the one he used to use. He went to, well, Gallows Hill and Foxholes Avenue and then Hornsmill started perhaps then.
But my dad he done Bengeo, he used to go along here then up. We had two horses and the hay cart. You see the hay cart thing? Well on Saturday morning, I don’t know if it was when he got the motor then, I can’t quite remember. I can’t tell you that, but my dad would go up to bengeo and he had his horse and cart and he’d take the other spare horse to get the load up the hill he wouldn’t….
PR: So he couldn’t…
OS: I had been up there, Byde Street there and brought the horse back, but that wasn’t very often.
PR: But it was the way he operated… this is lovely stuff on this (laughs) not many people could tell this story.
OS: Well another time I can remember, my Dad got up and we’d got a bad thunder storm and he was frightened of the horses being upset and he went…
PR: Where did he graze the horses then?
OS: What the stabling? Its behind here now, you can see it from here, I’ll show it to you later.
PR: What in Port Vale?
OS: No, just down the street and it’s the opening down the back of these houses.
PR: Just there?
OS: Yeah and I think McMullens perhaps built that for my Dad.
PR: Oh yes I know where you mean now, gosh, but down in Hartham Lane when we were kids sometimes we’d just be walking down and we’d see the odd lump of coal alongside the fence and we’d think Mum would like that but they’d lock me up!
OS: Did you really?
PR: So your dad really got it going, then the two boys did separate businesses in separate parts of town or…?
OS: Fred’s was different, he was bought up with the Fishers and they lived along Ware Road where the County Picture House is and that was the jail, what was name? Would be the governor lived in one of the big houses, yes! And when my two uncles and my aunt lived down there, there was like, they’d got roadworks they used to go on and Fred and Lily bought him up you see, Mum was cross about it afterwards I think, they took over, but it shouldn’t have been ‘cause he was getting the best and all my other brothers were working hard .
Transcribers Note: her mother’s maiden name was Fisher it was her family
PR: Yes that often happens, though, doesn’t it, especially with big families.
OS: Yes well there you are.
PR: They were quite good friends though weren’t they, Fred and George in business terms. In separate businesses, not doing each other down as it were.
OS: Oh no.
PR: I think we had Fred, I can’t remember.
OS: Yes you did, I can remember, Wolsey’s I think so, not 100% sure like.
PR: He was just Mr Sadler to us when we were kids I didn’t know which so much, I think it was Fred. So that went on and you went to help do the accounts for Briden’s.
OS: But of course we was doing our coal business from Dimsdale Street.
PR: Cor I had forgotten that, yes, the big house.
OS: We came out the pub, my Dad came out the pub 1943 , right, I can’t quite remember, but there was doodle bug bombs or something dropped over New Road one time, something else, here and the doodlebug came on the Sunday morning and we’d been around in our street only about a month I think.
PR: You got some effects of it there? That was the Millbridge bomb wasn’t it. Oh so you’d just, I had forgotten that, was that number twenty?
OS: Yes, we lived, yes of course both of those houses belonged to my brother Fred and my Dad wanted to come out of the pub because you know, it was all slack and everything and he was offered this at Dimsdale Street and that’s how we come and like I said we was there just a month when all these things happened. Ooh I must tell you, I got out of my bedroom and he come out and looked at me and I looked at him and of course it just happened – oh! (laughs)
PR: Did you get much damage to your things?
OS: Well it messed one or two of the windows but otherwise it wasn’t too bad.
PR: Its always funny with explosions, where the damage goes, some near places don’t get the trouble, somewhere far away does. So all your brothers and sisters have died have they?
OS: I’ve got two sisters left that’s all. One is at Epping Green, no not Epping Green, Bishops Stortford, she’s the eldest one now, then comes Hilda at Ware, yes she’s the next one then me, but the boys have all died and all that.
PR: Its usually men first, usually. So what about your schooling then, where did you go?
OS: I went to Bengeo School and some of my sisters went up there, my older ones went up there but Elsie she wasn’t very strong so she went to Dimsdale Street, what was it?
PR: The Cowbridge School.
OS: Yes, she wasn’t very strong, so she was let off, but all us others I think went to …
PR: Why did you pick Bengeo because, was Port Vale going for a time.
OS: No it was a boy’s school wasn’t it?
PR: Yes I get muddled up
OS: If I’ve got it right ‘cause I think Jimmy and John went there and it was Mr Reed would it be? And then afterwards it was made into a mixed school I believe, no a girls school wasn’t it?
PR: Yes I must look it up in the book.
OS: And I was kind of near to school then.
PR: Oh that was handier, so you walked up Port Hill.
OS: I went up twice a day ‘cause I came home for dinner, in them days it wasn’t well you took perhaps sandwiches or summat but …
PR: So who would have looked after you at home when you were a little older?
OS: Older ones yes they wasn’t married or anything, see they had to work, and then the eldest girl she married and lived in Welwyn garden City and she would come oh three times a week, very often, to help out with the washing and everything. They all, you know, worked hard and there’s no doubt about it. Monday was a washday, I used to hate it! (laughs)
PR: That must have been a bit of a squeeze though even though some had left home.
OS: Oh yes but they were lovely big bedrooms there. The corner one, I don’t know if it had two double beds in there? There was a big cupboard, lovely walk in cupboard it was. Then there was this back room, that one that was facing the outside, that wasn’t quite so big but I think there was a double bed was in there where the brothers slept you see.
PR: So you were better off than a lot of people for space, even though it was…
OS: Yes, yes but of course it was a noted thing like Sundays they would come, because they were in service, they wanted to come home and of course it was like a tea party then again you know.
PR: So it was a good family life, even though you worked hard.
OS: Yes I must admit.
PR: You worked hard all your life, especially having the last two years….
Side one ends
Side two
PR: People today won’t realise how families were. Smashing. So you went up to Bengeo School and then down here at Morgan’s. What was the first job really after school?
OS: Well I think I went down to Horns Mill and worked and then the war came didn’t it and I just went to Bayford where my oldest sister, she’d been in service in Brickendon, but she was made to do war work more you see, so the big house at Bayford was turned in to a convalescent home for children coming out of London, Shadwell, is that right? So I went there just for a time, but I ….
PR: Was that Bayfordbury?
OS: No the Manor House.
PR: Oh I can’t think where that is.
OS: Well you come up to, through, which way would you go, roughly? Tell me…
PR: Well if you go through Brickendon, I suppose, past the railway station..
OS: Yeah well you come down the hill a little bit then up..
PR: Up along.
OS: The house is on the right hand side, you can see it from the road, like, But when you got up there it used to be, you turned right and went down a private road, the school was there somewhere, Mr Williamson, you went a little bit further and then you come to the Manor House, you know, gates and a big house and then you could go a bit further, it was a sports ground and all that down there.
Transcribers Note: Bayford Green at the junction with Ashendene Road and Brickendon Lane and Well Row.
PR: Oh so you did a little bit because of the war and all that and then you went after that, went into the family coal business.
OS: Coal business, yeah, yeah, Well I stopped at home I think to look after my Dad.
PR: Yes being the youngest daughter and that was then Dimsdale Street. I’d completely forgotten. I know you see but I’d forgotten because we used to come round and tap on the door and hand an order in to the house. That’s before the office on that corner. So how did he order his coal? I mean how did you get the coal in the first place?
OS: I think he must have been in contact with the people Ricketts, Mellon and Golders, they were Ipswich way, I think it was them that was doing the trade…
PR: Wholesale in a way.
OS: Yes and then you see, I suppose he had to have their railway trucks at the time and then came that he bought two trucks himself, which you can see models of. They were commandeered at the war, just took em you see.
PR: The coal would come in I suppose to the Great Northern Station, into the yard trucks actually came in to his or others…
OS: He would, they would work one truck a week see while one was up there being loaded, the other one was here and he used to agitate if it wasn’t down because they were standing still I suppose.
PR: Then they would sort it in the yard and bag it up. It would have come just….
OS: Loose, oh yes, and that’s what I say, them trucks what he bought or the ones after the war, see, he would only try and get the five plank, not the seven because they didn’t like you see, it was hard work, loading the bags and then lifting them, ‘cause you have to be careful of their heads and that to get the coal back out again (laughs)
PR: Its hard to imagine now isn’t it?
OS: Well yeah that’s it, that’s it.
PR: Well nearly all his customers were ordinary domestic customers perhaps and I suppose…
OS: Well yes, I suppose, but there was like one or two perhaps big houses and that but not really, not them days much.
PR: Each customer would have a… you’d have to know where to put it in each house, some in a bunker, some down a chute.
OS: Oh yes ‘cause it was a noted thing, they knew where they’d gotta go and everything. You know I think they worked hard and enjoyed doing with it and I mean Saturday afternoon they used to work. The younger brother when he came out of the army, there wasn’t enough for the three of them to do the coal business so Jimmy went and worked at Glaxo’s ‘cause he got a good job, he was only on the big lorries and one thing or another and eventually he was a chauffeur. Well of course he got up you know, posh hands, and everything. John and George ‘course Saturday afternoons they had all people crying out for coal and of course a lot of people wouldn’t stock coal. They’d wait until they were out of coal.
PR: Then they would want it all of a sudden.
OS: Well this is it (adjusts the microphone). Well you can imagine, he didn’t care about his own coal, but he had to help out.
PR: Yes keeping the business ticking over. Well that’s what family is about isn’t it. So how did you come to be here in this house?
OS: In this house, well I was at Dimsdale Street and you know “Nutty” and Pam Head, this was Miss Murray’s house, Mary lived next door.
Transcribers Note: “Nutty” Head’s real name was Albert, also worked for Briden’s, his widow Pam still lives at 10 Russell Street in 2018. Mary may be Mary Martin nee Chapman who lived opposite at no 13.
PR: Oh did she? And getting married
OS: I’d only been up here in the October and she was married December. I remember, Oh , one night, coming home she was used to locking the gate because Miss Murray and it was still regular like when Miss Murray died and I moved to here, I’ll go back on that, and she’d locked me out. So I thought what am I going to do? I wasn’t used to going in the front door there. Dimsdale Street I did and I managed to look up and I saw a glimmer of light and I managed to make her hear and she came down and she never locked that no more!
PR: This is such a lovely place, it just fits you. You’ve moved along.
OS: But the thing was when “Nutty” and Pam (can you cut this out) they wanted, they tried for this, Nutty’s brother had been and had a look ”Oh it cost too much” you know, They’re still rented, paying rent now, because that belonged to my sister in law, Johns wife. Dennis Laby lived there for a little while, did you know, well then they got married, that’s thirty odd years, thirty -six years yesterday. They got married, Dennis had moved out somehow and they asked for it, you see, so of course they got it. Well they thought this wanted too much doing and I said to John Skinner I said “Mary me sister who was in service at Bayford, she thought she was coming to live with me. My eldest sister had warned me, she said “Don’t live together”.
When they turned this down I said to John Skinner “I wouldn’t mind that little cottage” so he said “leave it to me, I’ll see what I can do” and of course he came and had a closer look and got cracking and I managed to get it. As I say I moved in the October, they’d got a flood somewhere hadn’t we then?
Transcribers Note: Possibly the flood of 16th September 1968 when the river Beane flooded Cowbridge, most of Port Vale and the end of Russell Street, Chamber Street, the Baptist Church, etc..
PR: 1968, 1969 yes.
OS: I was moving my stuff here and I was still at Dimsdale Street, my brother John was putting his lorry he had, round there. I think I’d been to the market that day, on the Monday and they said “the river’s come up you won’t get home” and I wouldn’t come home with John Skinner’s car ’cause I knew he’d been at the market where it was a little bit higher. That made the woman who I’d got like, Peggy Strike and got to Cowbridge and of course the water was well up wasn’t it? Down Chambers Street and old Archer was coming across with his tipper getting people in it and I then, as I say, was on the point of moving, like, to come here, but my eldest sister had come to live at Welwyn Road, at the bottom there and I used to go there and sleep you see at odd times or help her out because she was the eldest of course. I know I went back in the town right up North Road and I can remember coming across Beane Road later that night and seeing all the water across there, but we weren’t back to …
PR: Was it safe and dry here or did you actually get water in the house?
OS: No never got nothing here. It was down the pub, it had come in their cellar and they said some of the crates and that were floating I think down there somewhere…
PR: I can’t remember whether Dimsdale Street got it? I think…
OS: Well there again my brother Fred was there and he got his lorry there, he’d got meal, you know, chicken feed or something. I can remember him I don’t know if this was the particular time of the floods, but I’ll go back on that ‘cause it was as plain as anything to me! He bought this chicken meal load on a wheelbarrow to my Dimsdale Street, so that it was that little bit higher. I suppose it could come up through his drains ’cause it was that little bit lower and I can remember, I think my Dad went to bed that night but my other sister, Joe Parcell’s wife, she was stopping here, I think he was on late work maybe in the bakers. I forget that but she was stopping with me and we was up and I can remember coming down Dimsdale Street near Miss Ransom’s because that’s where the water had come up and that was just coming across the road, that had got half way across and 2 o’clock I think it went down and that’s when we went off to bed. So there have been two floods for us here really.
PR: I had forgotten the Ransom’s. They both died on the same day didn’t they?
OS: Yes, he was ill and the poor old girl well Drivers was there did you remember Drivers? Well they were about and there was another sister.
PR: They had Roses didn’t they? And Old Cross Post Office
OS: Yes you’re right. They.. well, where was I?
PR: I remember the news that brother and sister had died on the same day.
OS: That’s right, he laid ill & all three or four of them, all the sisters were about, she come down and sat in the chair and she died, Oh they were crying, you know, out in the street, I didn’t like it, you know what I mean. They were upset I suppose. That’s what happened, it was a double funeral at St Andrews.
PR: St Andrews was it I don’t remember that, but I was in this shop, Farnham’s, when it came through. So there were all these people that you’ve known around.
OS: Well, that’s it as I say I shouldn’t really move from Hertford. I can go down the street and say hello to people. I can stand and have a little jaw, but if you move somewhere else you don’t know them.
PR: Where do you keep your car then?
OS: Mine’s standing out here, that’s mine out here now, see. Well ‘course, when we finished…Saplin’s (or Sapling’s) come and took over the pub, yes that’s it…course they were a large family weren’t they?
PR: Yes that’s another good Hertford name. Yes there were lots of little shops and off-licences in Nelson Street weren’t there and the shop in Port Vale that’s just beyond Christ Church and on Byde Street corner Post Office, another half way up the hill and of course Bridens. Now when you say John Skinner, is that the person you call Jack Skinner?
OS: Yes that was his real name, John Skinner but some of us called him Jack.
PR: You know a nice little tape once with Mrs Smith that lives next to the two brewers. I remember her budgies she’s got a little budgie in there.
OS: The one next? … not the other boy’s mother?
PR: No, didn’t have a… no, the orchard, a room with a view. No this was the Mrs Smith, she didn’t have children.
OS: Yes I know the one you mean.
PR: Her house was really smart, always washed her curtains and things. She talked about Port Vale and some of the people, the residents in it. That was a good recording. Anyway weve’ sorted the Sadler coal business, which is very important. Who were the rivals? because Barber’s ….
OS: Charringtons
PR: Well they came a bit later, I think there were only Barber’s and Sadler’s … in the main town that I can remember.
OS: Sometimes you’ve got Page’s from Ware, but we didn’t have a lot to do with them though.
PR: A town of this size could support several, really, couldn’t it, because lots of people had coal fires. I notice that you’ve got rid of your coal fire.
OS: Well I can go back to it. I got coal down there, got wood down there, I can’t do without it. If it came to it, like. Well I’ve really realised I’ve got central heating and I’ve got double glazing put in.
PR: It’s clean central heating isn’t it.
OS: That’s it, as I say, the one in the front room, the carpet really comes right across. That would have to be cut if I really wanted a coal (fire) in there.
Telephone call interrupts
PR: So, who used to be called Mr Ball that used to have a big loud voice?
OS: Oh yes he lived along Port Vale didn’t he.
PR: I can remember him coming in to Farnham’s, but I didn’t know where he lived, I don’t think we delivered.
Transcribers Note: This is Bill Ball famous as the man who looked after McMullens dray horses which were stabled behind the maltings in Port Vale. His booming voice was often mentioned in recordings. One of the horses collapsed in the middle of Port Vale and sadly die. He was seen to cry he loved them so much.
OS: It was opposite Briden’s.
PR: Oh did he? Was he to do with the horses at McMullens. I know his voice used to echo from the top of the street. Great booming voice. Any other residents you can remember, special characters of Hertford? There were no troublesome people down here? or nice old timers
OS: Oh oh no I mean you could walk down the road here and say hello and everything an’ they knew you, used to go to Parsell’s the milk shop.
PR: Oh yes, I’d forgotten that. That was just a bit beyond….. yes shall I stop it, (the recorder)
OS: Another time when the old dog we’d just got by the Baptist Church, there was a lady fetched a hanky out of her thing, and she took it out to open it, you know, and my old dog knew her, next time, I do remember that.
PR: Do you remember in Chambers Street, a lady with a round face that used to drive a little Austin Seven called Archer? I’m sure I can remember someone called Archer in Chambers Street, and when she was quite old driving one of those little tiny...
OS: Oh yes, yeah, she lived in that house where, now you don’t remember the war then do you?
PR: Not much of it, no, I was only a baby.
OS: That was where all the iron was loaded up, wasn’t it…
PR: Was that Archers the scrap merchant?
OS: Yes, where the garage is now, but along the side, there was a house which goes back to the (river)..
PR: Creamy colour.
OS: Colour, yes, that where that Miss Archer lived, right.
PR: She always looked a character to me but I never spoke to her.
OS: But that used to be all iron and of course, when the war came, they sold it* I suppose, I can remember that were taken over by the army and my brothers. Two brothers had to do, well they were, oh, what do they call it, the age 18, yes the call up. Yes and they had to go to Bedford, you know, and then Jimmy he got transferred to London. Wantage somewhere and he was in the Royal Rifle Corps. That’s a quick moving regiment, 140 odd steps in a minute or something like that ever so quick. He got permission or he got a pass and he got near the Archers ground there which was taken over by the Army but, well they had him in because they thought he was a…. not a spy, what do you call it…getting away from the army, you know what I mean
*Transcribers Note: This could relate to a story that’s told that Archers had sold a lot of scrap iron and thousands of old horseshoes to Germany in 1938/39 but it was never exported. It is possible that’s why the army were there.
PR: Absconding,
OS: He was there some minutes you know, anyway he eventually got back to Russell Street and the bottom of the park and that.(laughs).
PR: So they weren’t going to let him pass.
OS: No, no so that’s what happened there.
PR: Well that’s great. So now there’s a form, we haven’t said anything dodgy, have we, about anybody?
OS: No I don’t think so.
PR: There is a form, I don’t know whether you will be able to see it. I could leave it with you, for you to put in any personal particulars, that you don’t mind going with the tape. Then, it may be a year or so, someone will type out what we’ve said, you have a look, it could be 12 months away so don’t get excited because it takes so long to do them then you can say, “yes that alright, stick it in the museum” or you can say “cut that bit out, don’t want that bit”. There is nothing there that’s in any way private. So we needed to know a little bit about…oh what we haven’t said….
Transcribers Note: First transcript took 4 years, but then nothing was done with it until it was retyped and proof read for the archive in 2018!
OS: I have got the book here
PR: Yes there’s a picture there.
OS: There’s my dad coming down from Sandy Hill field up at Sele, there’s the dog and that house there is Alexander’s house and Titmuss’ about three girls took that over. As I said my dad had a bit of an allotment that he dug ready, there’s a well…
PR: Now, Rosemary Bennett’s book “Hertford Street and Place Names” Sadlers way, built on Sadler’s chicken farm, not very…. Annie gets cross about this, so what was it really, then, that land was your…? It wasn’t a chicken farm?
OS: No it was my brothers that had that accident, coal, you know going, I told you, Letchworth, he was. It was him that started that chicken farm up and he had mostly the bottom of it.
PR: Right yes, That’s all they remember about it.
OS: Well, that’s it you see. But Albert then had that house built, that my Dad said “What are you going to call your house”. So Molly, that was the girl, the daughter who was stopping with me ‘til the house was there and he said it was the field that was Welham’s, so that’s why the house has been called Welham’s but you see...
PR: A chicken farm, you see, someone being clever without researching it.
OS: It was Desborough’s and I mean there’s the Fisher’s you know my uncles, I told you, they have got a field I should think at Thieves Lane, from where my Dad says…
PR: Now were the Fisher’s your mothers…
OS: Yes my mother was a Fisher.
PR: Yes, you’ve explained that they were uncles and I was assuming that was what it was…..
Tape ends.