Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Dyball, Frank (O 2001.19) |
| Interviewee | Frank Dyball (FD) |
| Interviewer | Eve Sangster (ES) |
| Date | 08/01/2002 |
| Transcriber by | Eve Sangster |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 2001.19
Interviewee: Frank Dyball (FD)
Date: Tuesday 8th January, 2002
Venue: 16 Raynham Street
Interviewer Eve Sangster (ES)
Transcriber: Eve Sangster
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
This is on Tuesday 8th January. I’m at, Hertford, the home of Frank Dyball. Right, Mr Dyball, how old are you?
FD: I’m 83 years old and I was born in West Street in a house behind the pub on the left-hand side. It’s a big house stands back off the road.
ES: Was this 33?
FD: Numbers I don’t know because I was only born there, you see.
ES: Just have a look at this. So one side of the property was an exit from Wallfields Alley, Black Horse Alley.
FD: That’s right.
ES: So do you recognize that? These are cottages at the rear of the Black Horse. There were 6 or 7 and, in fact, they look a bit - This was just before they were pulled down.
FD: This house here was four-storeyed and it was the top right-hand bedroom, right at the very top, where I was born.
ES: Right. And it occupied the whole plot, didn’t it? Then on the west side was Bridgeman House,. That very old -
FD: Yes, it was. That’s right. And next to the pub there was another house. Facing the pub, on the left, was an attached cottage [No.29] ... Next to that was where Mr Moodey lived, the big house.
ES: Yes, 27. We live next door now, 25.
FD: And just beyond your house used to be a cobbler.
ES: Mr Silbey.
FD: That’s right, and then the Burgesses lived at the next house ...
ES: Marjorie Burgess still lives in No.11. This is rather strange. This property [No.33] has always been set back from the road and still is.
FD: And there was an alley went down behind it. You could go from behind the allotments on the green hill, round the back, behind the allotments on the left-hand side and you came down right beside the pub.
ES: When you say the green hill’, I’ve never heard that term.
FD: Well, going from West Street, you go along and you come to the allotments on the left-hand side.
ES: You mean just past the terrace.
FD: Just past the terrace. On the opposite side of the road now there is a Guide Hut. The whole field there used to belong to Miss McMullen who lived in the big house [Westfield], which is now a hostel, I think.
ES: No, the garden has been developed. There’s two big houses. It looks like a whole village in there. And the house has been split.
FD: Well, that was one house. She owned all the land right up to the river which separates the football field. And as you go round the corner where the allotments are on the right-hand side, that is the green hill. Now the green hill was where all the youngsters used to play football, cricket, etc., when they weren’t at school. And, following the Lea down, in the far corner used to be tennis courts, belonged to the Congregational Church.
ES: This is still on the right-hand side of West Street going down - ?
FD: Yes. You go down the footpath to the football field and on the right-hand side, the bottom of the field, there was tennis courts that belonged to the Congregational Church. Where the river bent round was what we always used to call cut corner’. Cut corner’ was a gravel-bottomed river, the Lea was a gravel-bottom, clear as crystal, and that was where all the kids used to go in the summertime when the parents knew where they were. That was cut corner’. And where the allotments are on the left-hand side, we used to play cricket and everything.
ES: That was green hill’. So green hill’ was where our allotments are.
FD: And it goes down -
ES: Very steeply to the river?
FD: And you bear round to the left a shade and you go down a little brew [?] (hill? brow?) into Horns Mill and on the left-hand side there used to be a cottage. That cottage used to belong to the Catholic church. Father McNamara used to live there.
ES: ... Was it the same religious bloke, Maseroni? He was the previous one, yes. Because he obviously got called macaroni.’
FD: That’s right. That’s right. That belonged to Leahoe, of course.
ES: This cut corners’ bit, I’m interested in that. That was obviously on part of Miss McMullen’s land.
FD: Yes, she was always, forever, getting the police down to turn us off ... Let us say, we were a thorn in her side. But the police were always on our side because they said the children were never interfering with anybody and they were always behaving themselves and everybody knew where they were. And, in the end, she just forgot. Put cows in the field, actually, to - But that made no difference.
ES: And, of course, over the bridge, going down the path to the football ground, in the early years of the last century, there was a bungalow lodge, wasn’t there, for Hertingfordbury Park?
FD: Right on the corner. Now that was the entrance to Hertingfordbury House ... The football field had a path, a roadway, a made-up road that went right the way through to the main house and that bungalow was, actually, the bungalow to the big house.
ES: Yes, it was the lodge.
FD: Yes, it was the lodge.
ES: Just going back to this [photo of rear of Nos.33 & 35] it’s rather strange this property because although it’s been demolished it’s incredibly well-documented.
FD: I don’t know who it belonged to.
ES: How long did you live there?
FD: We were only there a week. I was a baby.
ES: Oh, I see! You were only there a week!
FD: My parents moved to Bullocks Lane, right? And now, when we - My Mum used to say, "See that window up there? In that big house? That’s where you were born"
ES: Yes, I can just imagine it. So, you were born - ?
FD: 1919.
ES: 1919. For a lot of the time during the first quarter of the last century there were hoardings in front of this house, saying Guinness, Persil, and so on. Do you remember. You never heard from the family, your mother, and so on, did she ever tell you what it was used for?
FD: No.
ES: Because it was a collar factory at one stage and the other side of the road was a shirt factory - or vice-versa.
FD: Yes, the big house on the other side of the road.
ES: And at some stage it became the Reliance Laundry.
FD: Now, the Reliance Laundry. As far as I can remember, the Reliance Laundry moved into a new factory up at Foxholes Avenie. I know nothing about West Street at all, really.
ES: Just an accident of birth -
FD: - that I got there. As you went down - Green Hill extended right through to the junction of Bullocks Lane and Horns Mill. That was West Street right up to that junction.
ES: But you’re still talking about the right-hand side of the road as you go along West Street towards Horns Mill.
FD: Yes.
ES: So you’re saying you used to play down there, but you used to play down there when you lived in Bullocks Lane.
FD: Oh, yes, that was the whole area of Horns Mill.
ES: So you just remember Silbey the cobbler as you walked passed.
FD: Yes, well, my mother used to take our shoes there. A little low place, it was, a little low shop.... But it was right opposite the brewery, Nicholls Brewery.
ES: Have you any other memories of West Street?
FD: Only that I worked at the brewery for Henry Norris & Son whilst it was in operation. And Mr Nicholls used to be the brewer there.
ES: ... What were Norris’s doing there, then?
FD: ... I was a carpenter, an apprentice, at the time. And I had to do a cowling right on the top, on top of a big funnel.
ES: I was surprised - I’ve only recently seen a photo of it and I was surprised how much it looks like McMullens.
FD: He was a small brewer and I know he had one small pub up Port Vale, along Port Vale, the Rising Sun. That was his pub (?Rising Sun McMullens; Nicholls has The Two Brewers, Port Vale).
ES: That’s still there, isn’t it? (only the building, 2012)
FD: Yes, and that was a Nicolls pub. But he didn’t do any big brewing. You could always go there and buy - Because there was a little off-licencae where he used to sell -
ES: Like a tap.
FD: Like a tap, yes, quite true. And, of course, he was a colonel but he didn’t like the colonel part. So he was known as Nicholls.
ES: What year are you talking about when you were doing carpentry work there?
FD: About 1930 (mid 1930’s at earliest). Because, you see, at that time West Street was traffic up and down. It was til Gascoyne Way [came] and they cut the road off that traffic was stopped coming from Horns Mill.
ES: So did you ever use the Black Swan?
FD: The Black Swan was on the corner where ... Water Lane went through to Old Cross and St Andrew Street. No, I never used it because I wasn’t of that age, you see.
ES: But it wasn’t demolished until 1965. How long did you stay in Bullocks Lane?
FD: We moved into Bullocks Lane, as I say, in the December of 1919 and my parents lived in Bullocks Lane and I lived with them until 1940 when I went into the Army. I came out of the Army in 1947. I still lived there until we got married and moved away. So, I was there all that time.
ES: So, just briefly, what did you do in the war?
FD: I was 3rd Parachute Squadron. I was in the Royal Engineers and Field Company and when the 6th Airborne Division was formed, I joined that an an engineer and served through Europe, went through Europe, met up with the Russians on the Baltic Coast, came home, went out to the Far East, India, Singapore, Malaysia (Malaya?). Then there was a party of us - an officer, myself and 35 men - were loaned to the Dutch government . [We went] to Java (now Indonesia), came back from Java after 18 months and then got demobbed. Norris’s asked me to go back.
ES: What a war you had!
FD: Everywhere! Went out to India on a destroyer, came back on the Orantes, a big liner. Yes, I went out to Java. I liked Java. I liked Indonesia. But the weather was a bit humid, but ...you’ve seen Tenko on the television, I suppose, well we were transporting those ladies on to ships, and that sort of thing. We had a headquarters there and because a lot of those people speak English we were there to see that they went through.
ES: So, what was it like when you returned to Hertford? Did it seem very small, very quiet, or were you just very glad?
FD: Very pleased to be home but very, very quiet. Very quiet, indeed. Of course, everybody was getting demobbed, all the fellows I knew before the war. The majority of them, I must say, came home and we settled down. Had a call from Norris, Henry Norris, of Henry Norris & Son, asking would I go back to work. And I went back to work then and I worked until was 65. And then I’d had enough. I’d had two heart attacks, so I retired and that’s what I’ve been doing since.
ES: Well, going back to West Street, we’ve probably exhausted your memories of West Street. I didn’t realize ... that you were there a week.
FD: Yes, just a week. And, you see, Bullocks Lane, they built all the houses up Bullocks Lane and my father had one, my grandfather had one and farther on down the road my uncle had a house - because of the factory.
ES: Do you think they were in a way built for factory workers?
FD: Yes.
ES: Because they’re not unlike these. Substantial. They don’t look like workers’ cottages.
FD: The first house, with the double bay window, coming up from the bottom of the lower road, was where Webb, the original Mr Webb, lived himself. And then, whether he had them built, I would not know, but as they came empty he was putting his men in them and that’s how we got the house in Coronation Terrace.
ES: Which is where?
FD: Bullocks Lane.
ES: I didn’t realize that’s what it was called, Coronation Terrace.
FD: Coronation Terrace. A big plaque. Go up Bullocks Lane; half way up you’ll see over an archway that goes through two houses, there’s a plaque: Coronation Terrace, 1902.
ES: Of course, those houses actually facing the glove factory, they were built by the Andrews family and they look much more like workers’ cottages, don’t they? But do you think the Andrews family built the ones going up Bullocks Lane?
FD: I don’t know. No. Coronation Terrace was built by a man named Catlin and on the Lower road, Horns Mill Road, there was a shop and there was a little tap room and a pub and that’s where the Catlins used to live.
ES: You’re saying there was a pub then, facing the factory. Is it likely to be where that shop is now?
FD: Exactly there. That’s where the [pub] was. After the war, it belonged to someone by the name of Bethell ... It’s been altered. It was a jug place where you went with a jug and the men from the mill used to go across with a jug for beer.
ES: ...O.K. Tell me about the mill. First of all, was it a very smelly place?
FD: No. At times.
ES: ..Was Webb’s really a tannery?
FD: What they did at the very beginning, they used to make chamois leathers, right? And then they moved over and made gloves. There was two companies in the country, Dents of Yeovil and Webbs; they were the only two people who made these gloves at the time. And they turned the factory over from chamois to gloves and that’s what they did. All sorts of gloves; kid gloves; all sorts.
ES: But in the C18 there was a tannery in West Street ... just this side of Miss McMullens house. And I had envisaged it as a very smelly do. There used to be people called pure-finders who collected dog dirt and that was used in the tanning process. Well, when did that practice die out? And did they use the lime pits, and so on, instead?
FD: I know about the lime pits. I know about the frisers. My father was a friser.
ES: What is a friser?
FD: They used to cut all the fat off - Let me start at the beginning. There was a railway line which went from the factory to Hertingfordbury and the skins used to come from China - Chinese deer, English deer, that sort of thing. They used to come down the railway line, the siding, and straight into the pits. Now, there was a line of pits about 10' sq. full of lime and water. Straight into the pits to burn the hair off. And after they’d been in there a certain time, they were taken out into the frising shop. Now, the frising shop contained - if you can imagine elm trees, 8' long elm trees, cut down the centre, the insides cut out so that you have an area 4" wide of elm tree. It was let into the ground and a platform made and the friser stood on that and the friser had a knife - a frising knife about 2' long, a handle either end, with a metal blade in and that blade was sharp, believe me, it was sharp. And they used to put the skin over the top of the bench and scrape all the fat and all the hair and everything off. And they used to get so much - it was piecework - used to get so much a dozen. And then they used to put them on a trolley and they were taken out to the fields to dry. Have you ever seen a photograph of them?
ES: I have, and Peter Ruffles has said what it looked like.
FD: When we’ve finished I’ll show you some photographs. And they hung out to dry. And when they’re dried and bleached, they went into the shop where there was big drums where they were stained whatever colour was on the go at the time. And from there they were dried, not by the sun but chemically dried. And from there they went to the glove cutters. Now the glove cutters was 5 men, glove cutters, and they used to cut them, work it all out, cut them and send them to the girls who made the gloves. And from there on they went out on to the market.
ES: It’s rather surprising, though, isn’t it, that the skins should arrive in that condition from China? You’d have thought they’d have done some of those processes over there.
FD: Everything was done. This was the idea of the lime pits, you see. And it was strong [smelling], the lime.
ES: But was that dangerous, the lime pit?
FD: Oh, yes.
ES: Did they ever have any accidents?
FD: No. Everybody wore clogs. No shoes were allowed. You went down into the changing rooms to change out of your shoes. But they all wore wooden clogs.
ES: Do you know whether the gloves ever were made for important people. Somebody told me that gloves were made, I think, for Queen Mary or Queen Alexandra.
FD: I wouldn’t know. But they were a very, very renowned name.
ES: And didn’t they make gloves or sheepskin coats or something for the pilots in the First World War?
FD: Yes, but that was only a sideline. You see, they had to do what they were told ... They employed a lot of people, But, on the other hand, the Webbs certainly looked after the people. They had a football team. They had a cricket team. They had their own cricket pitch. They had their own tennis courts. I mean, in them days unheard of.
ES: Yes, but a good bit of worker-relations’, wasn’t it?
FD: Yes.
ES: Although, he was a bit of a misery, old man Webb, wasn’t he, the last one?
FD: Yes. I wonder if he’s died now?
ES: I have an idea he has. He lived in The Avenue, didn’t he?
FD: I didn’t like the man. But, I better tell you this first, my grandfather was a foreman over the pits and over the frisers and he caught anthrax. Now, I can remember to this day him going out of the house, walking up Bullocks Lane and going to the County Hospital. He got to the top of the hill and he waved his hand to say good-bye, because I was standing with my grandmother in the window, and in 12 hours he’d died (cutting in file). Now, there was no compensation, There was no nothing. Didn’t get a thing. Didn’t know a thing. So then they said to my uncle, Uncle Perce, Would you take over? So Uncle Perce took over, see, and then he kept it going til he retired. But my father said, No, I don’t want any of the paperwork.
ES: So what was your grandfather’s name?
FD: He was William Ebenezer Dyball.
ES: Do you remember him being ill with anthrax?
FD: Well, he was working one day and he went to hospital the next day and the next day he died.
ES: So he caught that from the skins?
FD: Dad reckoned he caught it off a Chinese deer. But, in the end, there was three people left in frising shop. There was a man called Vales, a man called Reason, and my father. And they used to do Chinese deer only in the end because they built a factory where all this work was done by machine, you see, and the machine was driven by power from water which comes down the cut along the Lower Road, through the paddles, into the boiler and which drove everything in the mill.
ES: So it still was a mill in that sense?
FD: Yes, yes.
ES: And how long did that last, that it was powered by water?
FD: I think it’s in the book. I can’t remember. I think it was 1890 when it first started, when the water got through. Then they built a big chimney.
ES: So you didn’t go into the mill?
FD: No, my father said, AYou’re having nothing to do with this.@ So I went as an apprentice boy to Henry Norris & Son and, as I say, I served 5 years as an apprentice carpenter and joiner. Went into the Army, came out of the Army, went back and I did all the work for these Civil people, Heritage, and all those sort of people.
ES: They were very - Do they still exist, Norris’s?
FD: In name only. They went bankrupt. I worked and retired in the December and in the Easter, after I retired, they went bankrupt. They were taken over by the accountants and they are still run by accountants but they still run under the name of Norris’s.
ES: Well, they’ve got such good will and class attached to that name.
FD: Norris’s were always thought of as the elite. If you had apprenticeship papers with Norris on it you could get a job anywhere. They were doing a lot of work in London for Haringey Council where they were going down street after street refurbishing houses, bringing them up to a standard which was recognized. And the money never came through. And it never did come through. So when the suppliers didn’t get paid, or that sort of thing, they got foreclosed.
ES: And there was no redress? Extraordinary.
FD: They lost the money and that was it. You see, many years ago, before my time, they owned three parts of Hertford, the Norris’s. All these houses down here, all these houses, both sides of the road used to be Norris’s.
ES: I didn’t know they were property owners.
FD: And at one time, every house this side of the road, right down from top to bottom, was occupied by workers from Norris’s. They belonged to grandmother Norris, not to the firm, to the mother.
[some more unproductive chat about Wallfields Alley]
ES: Where did you go to school?
FD: Cowper School. I went to Faudel Philips, the infants’ school. It’s still there and from there I went to Cowper School.
ES: Where is Faudel Philips?
FD: Right the back side of All Saints’ Church ... And there was a headmistress who was a woman by [the name of] Miss Baker and she used to live in - I’ve known her all my life until she died. She lived in the next street.
ES: Wasn’t that a bit chastening for you, keep seeing your old headmistress?
FD: No, no.
ES: Well, you must have been a very good boy.
FD: Well, thereby hangs a tale. I was late going to school because I was in hospital 12 months.
ES: Oh, why was that?
FD: I had gland trouble and I was stunted in growth. I had a cut down there and a cut down there [indicates both sides of his neck], 6 months either side and I’ve got no glands in my neck at all.
ES: But you recovered your growth?
FD: Oh yes. The man who did it was a man called Smith. But I can always remember it because they had ether and they put cotton wool over [my nose] and they put ether on it.
ES: Did it work?
FD: The operations were successful. And I’ve had so many medicals now, during the army, that I don’t even think about it.
ES: Strange, isn’t it? So you were a year late going to school, were you?
FD: Yes.
ES: Were you a bit of an invalid when you did go?
FD: No, I was fully recovered. Wasn’t allowed to play and I wasn’t allowed to go swimming and that sort of thing but I caught up.
ES: And were you a good student, then? I suppose you must have been if you caught up.
FD: I caught up and, I suppose, the education you got at the Cowper School was second to none. It was brilliant. Len Green. You know who Len Green is? I can remember Len Green coming to the Cowper School, the first class he ever had was No.3 in the Cowper School. Oh, he was a brilliant ? Well, all ? There was a Mr Green, he was a tartar. There was Mr Booker, who used the cane a hell of a lot. There was Mr Budgen, was a very good friend and then there was Len Green and there was a lady who was in charge ? They started a science block there and there was a lady there. I can never remember her name. Well, they were so good.
ES: I think Len Green wrote a book about the Cowper School, didn’t he?
FD: He has written a book, yes. And also he’s done a book of photos.
ES: And so, who were your best friends when you were at school?
FD: There was Johnson, who had the butchers shop.
ES: Oh, [Bruce] Johnson. We’ve done a lovely interview with him..And are you still pals?
FD: No. I used to play football. Used to play for Little Berkhamsted because I was friends with friends from Little Berkhamsted. I used to play cricket for Hertingfordbury. And I played football for Hertford Town when we got married, after the war, for two seasons. Got an injured back and cartilage trouble so, being married, couldn’t afford to have time off from work, so I gave football up but still played cricket for Hertingfordbury, which I played until I was 55, maybe a little bit longer.
ES: ... I suppose I was asking why you were no longer friendly with Johnson when his shop is just round the corner.
FD: We moved in different circles.
There was Les Stagg, who was shop foreman at Norris’s and he used to play cricket. You see, all my friends were out at Hertingfordbury, being that’s where my family started from, Tewin and Hertingfordbury, that’s where my friends were, you see.
ES: I should have asked you where your family originally came from.
FD: My mother’s ? Well, my great grandfather was head gamekeeper at Tewin Water.
ES: Oh, and who ? Which family was that?
FD: Sir Arthur Beit ... German person. And my Uncle Bill was head gamekeeper at Panshanger. So they had the whole of the area, really. But my father, well, Grandad came from Carshalton in Surrey originally but farther back than that we don’t know. They say we came from France originally.
ES: Yes, it is an unusual name, isn’t it?
FD: We’ve tried on the Internet and we’ve tried all sorts of things but we can’t find any details. There’s a lot of them in Suffolk but they’re not the same. The name’s the same but ?
ES: Do you know Peter Ruffles?
FD: Yes, very well.
ES: Yes, he wanted me to ask you what powered the little train that went from Hertingfordbury Station to Horns Mill on that little branch line.
FD: It was a little steam engine. ... Well, say a little one’. It wasn’t one of those great big steam engines. It was a smaller one. What class it was, I don’t know. But, you see, not only did they bring down the skins, they brought down the coal for the boilers. And another thing they used to do, they let the people who worked for them buy the coal cheaper ... You see, there was no cars or anything, at all. Everything used to come down by rail into the factory.
ES: It was a siding?
FD: A siding. It was called the sidings....The only reason you’re here now is because someone wanted to know about Hertford Castle and my name was brought up.
ES: What is your connection with the Castle, then?
FD: I did all the big alterations, I’ll show you. [brings two books of photos] The cutting, which comes from behind the Harts Horns pub, the cutting which went through to the factory, that was dug for the sole reason of supplying water from the Lea to the factory.
ES: I find all that very confusing, what the Lea does there.
FD: Now, by the viaduct that goes over the road, they built on a little bit of ground, a boathouse which had docks on it and they transferred water. They dug the cutting right the way through to the factory and the Lea goes round the back of the factory and meets up again with the cutting near the football ground. The factory was on an island, you see, and whenever they wanted more water they used to send a man up the river, walk up the side of the river, turn the wheel and the Lea produced the water.
ES: It was like a little lock.
FD: Yes, like a little lock.
ES: Did you ever go into the Harts Horns pub?
FD: We used to use it as a lad but the landlord there was there for years and years and years.
ES: You see what used to be the workhouse is just being converted. Well, it’s been cottages for years, and it started off as cottages, and then became the Liberty, Brickendon, workhouse. But, do you remember those cottages when you were young? No. They obviously were on the way to the pub but you just walked passed them, as you do sometimes.
FD: Ah, the ones you mean that’s just been renovated, right next-door to the pub. Yes, I do remember them, yes. They’ve just built on the garden, as well.
ES: ... Those cottages are actually on the brink of the river. But is that the cut or the river?
FD: ... That’s the cut. It goes under the viaduct right the way through to the mill then it goes under the mill and comes out the other side, where they had a turbo in it and then it joined up again about three or four hundred yards into the Lea again. They came to a point and joined up again.
ES: When you were young, was the Lea a different sort of river? Was it deeper? You say it was crystal clear.
FD: The Lea was a sandy gravel bottom right to the factory, right the way down, round cut corner, to very nearly B We couldn’t go round that way but people from St Andrew’s used to go swimming round the further [bend] from the other side and that was always clear, crystal clear. But in the winter it used to rise and rise and rise and I’ve seen 3' of water on Hertford Town Football Ground.
ES: Really! One reason I ask you is because a newspaper cutting refers to a young girl who drowned from Ivy Passage and it speaks about the river being 8' deep. And I thought, AWell, something’s changed between now and then.
FD: ... No, I can remember the river and we used to dive in there. It would be 3', no more, in the summer.
ES: You don’t remember any fatalities on the river?
FD: No. There was one young lady, a schoolgirl, caught something out of the river just this side of the factory. She was very ill but she recovered. So there was no death there.
ES: Was there, then, no pollution from the factory into the Lea?
FD: No, no. The water they pumped out came out of the boilers and the water was - No, there was never anything in there.
ES: I mean, you wonder what happened to all that gross material that was scraped off the skins. Where on earth did that all go? I mean, these days it would be somehow liquified and just pumped into the river, wouldn’t it?
FD: Yes. Or they wouldn’t allow ? They couldn’t have pumped that ? What happened to it, I don’t know.
ES: ... Do you remember anything in particular about the Hertford Football Club?
FD: Yes, after the war they started again but it never took on, really. There was never enough backing, never enough money.
ES: Who ran it? Where did they money come from, such money as there was?
FD: A man called Mr Green, who was a manager for Norris’s used to give his time for nothing, voluntary, and there was a lot of people like that. Dye’s, the chimneysweep, they used to supply a lorry, with a canopy over, which used to take us to the away games.
ES: You haven’t got any photos of that, have you? But do you remember, for instance, games with Ware? Were they kind-of grudge matches?
FD: Ooh, grudge?? When I was a youngster, my father used to play in goal for Hertford and you could guarantee five or six hundred people down there at Hertford when Ware played and one lot used to get down one end of the ground and the other lot used to get the other end of the ground and daggers drawn’. Always has been. Not now, because it doesn’t happen but in them days, yes. And my father played in goal and one day he came home and he’d got no front teeth. Somebody had knocked him, ball and all, in the back of the net and broken his teeth off. And he said, Well, that’s it! and he never played again.
ES: But when they had these local Derbys, was there any trouble in the streets afterwards?
FD: No, no, no, never. You see, football in Hertford, there was so many junior leagues that we all played each other. We knew each other and on a Saturday night and a Sunday night there was a continual stream of boys and girls walking round the town, always walking round the town. And we all knew each other because we played football against each other and there was no animosity at all.
ES: When you say the boys and girls were walking round the town, were they - The girls had an eye for the boys, and so on and so on? Were they really out to pick someone up?
FD: Yes, yes. It was a meeting place. I mean, the girls used to come from Hoddesdon, Ware, and places like that and the boys the same. I had friends at Ware as well, you know. But they used to go round and round, never any trouble, never any fights or anything. The police used to come down and providing you were walking C Or if you stopped and talked, they kept an eye on you and if they come round again, they’d say, Come on, move on, and you moved on. And there used to be a little sweet shop in Railway Street, right opposite the -, how can I put it?
ES: Was it The Welcome?
FD: The Welcome. ... That was the meeting point. In the winter he used to have lemon, orange, ginger ale, all hot drinks, and in the back room he had a pin table, where you had to slide in quietly, shut the door, play with the pin table, then slide out and somebody else would slide in ... and, of course, if the police caught him with a pintable and taking money but nobody ever bothered about [that].
ES: So is that where you met your wife, strolling around Hertford?
FD: I was wounded on the Pegasus Bridge, in Normandy, with the Parachutists and I went into hospital in Macclesfield. My wife, being a nurse, she happened to be in the hospital and it developed from there. We’ve been married now 52 years. That’s how it all started.
ES: And are you one of a large family?
FD: No, there was just two of us, myself and I had a sister called Freda who died of leukemia 20 years ago. There was just two of us.
ES: Did your mother go to work?
FD: During the war, that’s all, when everybody was expected to so something.
ES: That’s right. My mother went to work during the war.
FD: She worked at the Home & Colonial that was in Maidenhead Street.
ES: Oh, I remember that. Happy days!
FD: Yes. She did the cashier’s [job]. Other than that, no.
ES: And was she a good cook?
FD: Yes, she was brilliant. Garratt’s Mill along North Road, my mother was head cook for the Garratts there before - I was only thought of. And she was a brilliant cook. She was brilliant.
ES: So what do you remember of her cooking?
FD: Well, if you consider that my mother’s brother and father were gamekeepers. We never went short of meat. There was always meat there. Granny used to cycle from Tewin. She died when she was 98. Grandad was 103. She used to cycle in to the market every Saturday morning on an old bike and she called at our house in Bullocks Lane and she used to bring rabbits, pheasants, eggs - because they had a big house and the food was there. We were never short of meat.
ES: So you’re talking now about your father’s -
FD: My father’s father. My grandfather. And then they had - I’ve got to get this right. There was my father. There was Perce, the oldest one, then there was Oliver, then there was Fred, my father, then there was Eddie, Lil, Rhoda. Now Rhoda, do you know-- There used to be an author by the name of Storey. He used to write in Punch. He had a film made out of one of his novels. ... He moved away.
ES: Why, did Rhoda marry him? Are you saying -
FD: No, Rhoda married his father ... He made his living at writing. Yes, there were 7 of them, altogether.
ES: So you lived pretty well.
FD: We lived fine, even during 1926 when everybody was on strike, and that sort of thing. Food never bothered us. It was always there.
ES: Was there a strike at the glove factory?
FD: When there was a General Strike, everybody was out. And they used to queue up at the labour exchange, which was then opposite the eastern station.
Interview ends