Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Geering, Mary (O2004.2) |
| Interviewee | Mary Geering (MG) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
| Date | 02/01/2004 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) updates to verbatim by Marilyn Taylor |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 2004.2
Interviewee: Mary Geering (MG)
Date: January 2004
Venue: Garratts Close, Hertford
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell updates to verbatim by Marilyn Taylor
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: This is Garratts Close, Garratts Close is a new development close to Millmead school, Port Vale and I am at the home of Mrs Mary Geering who we have interviewed before and she is this time hopefully going to tell us something about Gallows Hill and its environs.
MG: I moved in with my parents somewhere between the autumn of 1934 and certainly before 3rd March 1935.
JR: So how old were you then?
MG: I was, I would have been three in December 1934 just three yes, father worked in print and he worked for Simson Shand in Parliament Square, my mother had been a school teacher before she stayed at home to look after me and eventually my sister and brother. We lived at number 37 almost at the very top of Page Road
JR: Where had you come from?
MG: Chelmsford in Essex
JR: So you weren’t the first occupants by any means in that house.
MG: No I don’t know when it was built
JR: I think it was about 1926, 27
MG: That sounds right
JR: So did you have wait to be placed in a house or did you get it straight away?
MG: No we had to wait
JR: Where did you live in the meantime?
MG: My father worked for a printers in Chelmsford and the slump came, it closed down so he lost not only his job but our home because we had a house that belonged to the company. My mother and I went to live with her parents in Hemel Hempstead my father went after two jobs, one in Watford and one in Hertford and he got the one in Hertford. For the first week he lived in The Salisbury, then he found a house we could rent in Villiers Street and I think we were there about 6 months and obviously he must have put us on the housing list and we moved in. When I said I thought we moved in, well I know it was in that time because my sister was born on 1st March 1935 and we were there by then.
JR: So your parents knew a little bit about the town, it wasn’t as if they had just come and landed in Gallows Hill
MG: No.
JR: They had been in to town many times probably.
MG: Oh yes in the first few months, yes.
JR: So got some background because a lot of people I think, certainly when the houses were first built, moved there from places like Courts and Yards in the town centre.
MG: I would think that’s possible.
JR: They went up to Gallows Hill. Stanstead Road and the roads off it.
MG: Yes I would think that is very likely. It was quite a pleasant spot to live. There were just 3 houses above ours and then there was a road that went across the top of Page Road and down in front of the back gardens. When you got to the top of the road there was quite a bank and we went up the bank and we could get into a field.
Before the war there were cattle in there, but it was ploughed during the war. I am not sure exactly what was grown. It was corn of some sort. There was another field beyond that and if you turned right there was Foxholes field with a terrific slope on it and we used to toboggan there which was great fun especially as there was a ditch at the bottom and if we walked along the top of Foxholes Field there was another wood and then you could go down onto the path by the ditch and over a style and if you turned left there was Foxholes Farm but on the left there were two more gravel pits and you could go across the fields to Hertford Heath, which we did.
We went blackberrying at Hertford Heath. Opposite our house there was a spinney again with a big steep bank. The front of our house faced south so we didn’t get a lot of sun in the house because of this big bank, but the spinney was full of hazel nuts and crab-apple tree and oak trees and a little holly, and an ash and there was a gravel pit at the bottom opposite Spinney Street and we understood that the gravel there was used to build the houses. I don’t know whether its true but it seems very likely to me. When we were up in the field we could see the clock at the top of Kingsmead School so we always knew when it was time to go home for tea or lunch.
JR: Quite a landmark that tower.
MG: Oh yes it was.
JR: Everybody says, even if they didn’t live in the area if they lived in Tamworth Road they could all see this clock.
MG: Oh yes.
JR: It was a good thing to have really.
MG: Oh yes, when you were going home you would look at the clock.
JR: So the whole… the area which wasn’t built on still had remnants of pits to a large extent.
MG: Oh yes there was one opposite Spinney Street, there were two in the lane leading to Foxholes Farm of… yes there were gravel pits there.
JR: Yes, because this is what I am finding in the research I am doing, that area was used extensively for the extraction of something, clay, sand and gravel, chalk in the case of a bit further east.
MG: Bit further along Ware Road, chalk there definitely yes.
JR: Brick kilns, tile kilns, lime kilns apparently. I am talking about way back before the building started. I think the fact these pits were probably worked out. Made the land less valuable to mineral extractors so they just turned it over to building. That’s my theory they turned it over the building this seems to be born out by what people say. So it was a nice place for children to live wasn’t it.
MG: Oh it was. There was very little traffic, the milkman came every day, the baker came round every day, before the war this was, you had groceries delivered. The coal man came. Apart from that there was almost no traffic. I think the man in the top house had a car, number 43, Mr. Playle he had a car.
JR: Playle, really, yes.
MG: And another man, further down the road, but on the Gallows Hill side, Mr. Drage, he had a car. But that’s all the cars I can remember. In fact my mother taught us to count. When we walked into town to do the shopping we had to count the cars – it was unusual to reach ten!
JR: Oh was it!
MG: In fact we… going to school sometimes, or coming back I’d meet a herd of cows being taken to the market behind the Ram pub. I always walked to school.
JR: You walked from there to Abel Smith?
MG: Faudel Phillips, then Abel Smith school, that was 5 miles a day – no school dinners in my day. My parents said it was a mile and a quarter there so five miles a day.
JR: So how did you get, let me think now because the roads have changed, all new ones. You walked along the Ware Road then up by The Plough.
MG: No, cross over London Road which was quite different then to what it is now, and went along to Rookes Alley and up Rookes alley. For Faudel Phillips you turned right and went past the cattle on the right and then into the school grounds on the left. For Abel Smith you went right up Rookes Alley there was a side gate on the alley, you went through that gate. That gates been closed I think. Last time I was there…
JR: There is a remnant of something there, they don’t use it.
MG: No they don’t use it
JR: Just to go back, I know I shouldn’t be talking about this because it is supposed to be talking about Gallows Hill but the Cattle Market extended right up there.
MG: Oh yes, right to Rookes Alley, Oh yes.
JR: You forget don’t you, when a road bisects, just what was in place before.
MG: What was there, yes exactly. But the Cattle as you looked at the market they were down the left hand side. There were pigs at the front and sheep behind. That was on a Monday cattle market on a Monday. You know there were two landmines in Hertford.
JR: Yes I do.
MG: Well, one night my parents looked out of the front door as they went up to bed and saw 2 parachutes in the sky. My father was in the civil defence, he was with First Aid Heavy Rescue. The sirens had not sounded. He immediately got his uniform on, got on his bike and went to his depot which then was at Old Cross in the Durrant Hall.
As soon as he got there he put down his bike and got in the ambulance because the sirens had gone and the mines had dropped. One, he’d cycled past the place where it’d dropped, before it’d had dropped. It dropped behind the Ware Road houses, between the Tamworth Road houses. They went back in the ambulance, they were there most of the night. The Salvation Army were there to and they provided tea and refreshments for the Civil Defence workers. The other mine dropped in the second field at the top of Page Road. You went up the bank, straight across the first field and it was over in the second field.
JR: I didn’t know that, I have never heard that before.
MG: Yes that’s where it dropped
JR: That was the same night that the Tamworth Road one…
MG: Yes there were two mines on parachutes, my parents saw them and that’s where the second one ...
JR: Did it do any damage? Presumably landing in a field
MG: Yes thank goodness
JR: Would there have been a crater?
MG: Oh yes there was a big crater. My parents the next day wouldn’t allow me to go across and look at it, but we did go, with my parents, eventually, to have a look at it. There was a big crater. People went across there to collect nylon fabric and the nylon ropes.
JR: Use them as souvenirs
MG: Yes
JR: Did you have any windows broken or anything like that?
MG: I am not sure of that but certainly badly shaken. We did have other things drop in the area. There was a Molotov cocktail one night. That’s a big container with a lot of little incendiaries in and it explodes, and the incendiaries drop all over the place. Some houses were damaged, they had broken windows, one had a fire in its loft, I believe.
JR: Dropped was it?
MG: Well it scattered.
JR: Out of an aircraft?
MG: I suppose it must have done yes. They scatter from what they call a Molotov cocktail, it just scatters all over the place.
JR: People say incendiary bomb, it’s a fire bomb.
MG: It’s a fire bomb.
JR: There are lots of propellant parts to that and they all come out and I had the impression…
MG: They are separate, the incendiary is about that long I suppose and about that diameter (must show with her hands) I don’t know how many are in a Molotov cocktail, but they just scatter. I think most dropped harmlessly in gardens or fields. I know one dropped in a roof.
JR: They don’t explode they actually burn.
MG: It explodes in the air to scatter these
JR: I mean when the little bits come down the burn.
MG: Well they explode and burn.
JR: Because a lot of children have described bringing the burnt out ones, the spent ones, home to their mothers’ disgust. There were obviously a lot of them lying around.
MG: Well, I found 6 under a bush once. I went home and told my mother, she told me to go and tell the man who was the Civil Defence area officer. I am not sure what he was called, he was the head one for the area, that was Mr. Luce at number 41. And I went and told him where they were and he went across and I think he collected them, I think they were dead. So it looked like somebody had found them and hidden them.
JR: Where was this?
MG: It was on the bank which if you went down it, which we used to do actually, on the edge of Gallows Hill, fairly high up, before, if you are going up Gallows Hill before you reach the Isolation Hospital because that was the other side of the road of course. But after the houses.
JR: So somewhere near where the Gallows was?
MG: Yes my neighbour next door at number 39, my mother told me that she could remember her mother telling her that she’d seen the cart taking someone up Gallows Hill for hanging, it might have been, rather than her mother, it was probably her grandmother I think.
JR: A story passed down.
MG: Yes I think it was a story passed down.
JR: I have got a list coming to me from somebody about the hangings on gallows hill, and up to now I have only been able to discover the last hanging was about 1802.
MG: Well this woman she was elderly it could have been her mother or her grandmother. The woman herself didn’t remember bur whoever told her did. Mother or Grandmother.
JR: It might have been, I will get this list, somebody has done some research and has promised me, a friend of a friend, lets put it that way, has promised me a list, it may well be that they continued after that, so that may give us strong evidence. There is somebody in one of the tapes mentioned a closed black carriage going up Gallows Hill with infected bedding on the back, and the scarlet fever or diphtheria patient inside.
MG: Oh no, I had scarlet fever in 1942.
JR: Yes well I am talking about a period well before that.
MG: I was taken to the Isolation Hospital in a black ambulance.
JR: Looks as though that’s the successor to this black carriage.
MG: Oh yes. There was a nurse in it, in the back with me, she had a navy-blue cape with a red lining.
JR: Did you have your bedding taken away?
MG: No, Everything I possessed was put in my bedroom by an officer from the council. It was sealed and he lit some sort of candle in the room and then sealed the door behind him and this was to disinfect everything. My father had to stay off work for a week.
JR: Because he might be infected.
MG: In case he passed it on
JR: This was 1942?
MG: Let’s see. I was 10 in 1941…so.. I was still 10 because I wasn’t 11 till 1942. I was still 10, it must have been. It was the first year in grammar school. I went to grammar school in 1942. Yes I did go to Grammar school in 1942 so I was still 10
JR: Yes that seems to be how they coped with the germs then didn’t it. What about your sister, you have got a sister haven’t you? I don’t know your sister.
MG: No she lives in Letty Green.
JR: What is the difference between you?
MG: She was born in 1935
JR: Right so that’s….
MG: 3, 3 and a half year’s difference and John’s 18 months younger than she is.. 1936.
JR: So they didn’t… did they get it or?
MG: No they didn’t get it, nobody took it at all as far as I know, certainly none of the family had scarlet fever apart from me.
JR: Did you get it from school do you think?
MG: No idea, I never heard.
JR: You didn’t have any of your class mates in with you in the hospital?
MG: No, nobody. There was a young woman who was a student nurse from another hospital she was in the ward and there was another young girl opposite me, but she was very very ill and I never spoke with her at all.
JR: But you didn’t know any of these people at all?
MG: No.
JR: So did they take people to the hospital who were really quite seriously ill? And leave at home the milder cases? Or did everybody go?
MG: If you’d got scarlet fever you went. I didn’t have it badly and my mother said to the doctor that she could nurse me at home and he said, ‘yes I know you could, but there’s a risk of complications and it would be better for her to be in hospital’. So she did agree to me being in hospital.
JR: Can you, I mean you were ten, I did interview somebody who was only five, and although she was very good she couldn’t remember everything about the kind of treatment you had there, what did they do, did you have medication? Or more fresh air and getting better on your own.
MG: It was just staying in bed. They’d inspect you to see if your fingers and toes were peeling. Once they’d peeled, they’d know you were virtually better.
JR: You had a rash did you?
MG: There’d been a rash on my chest, not all over, and by the time the doctor came it’d had almost faded. He still preferred I went to hospital. I didn’t have any complications. What they did give us was liquorice in case we got constipation and of course we had to take our ration books in with us and they used to bring round the sweet ration and they brought round liquorice allsorts! (Laughs)
JR: Well yes.
MG: But the day before I went home I was taken to the bathroom and bathed by a nurse, and the water was only tepid, it wasn’t warm, only the chill off it. It was awful. My hair, and all over. I was bathed and dried and then put in a separate room, all by myself for the night until I was able to go home the next day.
JR: So you didn’t get contaminated again.
MG: We did have 2 cases of polio.
JR: I wondered about that.
MG: There was one girl down the road – I’m not sure if it was polio or meningitis, somebody since has said it was meningitis, and she did die. There was another girl down the road. She lived in a house, you know where the roundabout is, well she lived in a house that faced onto that roundabout, and she had polio quite badly. She did survive but she was always crippled. I used occasionally to see her in the town in recent years, she had got very bent, she died some years ago. There was a boy in the green-tops, the green top houses, he also got polio but not as badly, he survived but he was left with a limp.
JR: What years were these?
MG: During the war. Apparently, I never saw them, in the gravel pits, near the allotments, which are no longer there, it’s been built on. The allotments, you went along Foxholes Avenue, nothing to do with the new Foxholes estate,
JR: No, I know where you mean.
MG: You went along Foxholes Avenue to the very end, through the kissing gate that led into the field, then you went across the ditch, then you turned left and went through a farm gate and there was a great big field in there, laid out as allotments.
My parents took an allotment at the start of the war but on the far side of those allotments, towards the town, there were gravel pits and I was told that American soldiers were billeted there and it’s always said that it must have been the Americans that brought polio, but it sounds a bit far-fetched to me. I never saw the Americans and can’t confirm they were there. But I was told there were American soldiers there. But I don’t know.
JR: No, I have heard from somebody that there was target practice during the war at the top of Gallows Hill. Which side I don’t know, if it was beyond the hospital on that side or your side I am not sure
MG: I haven’t heard of that the sloping Foxholes Field, where we tobogganed had some deep square pits several yards apart dug across the top and people said it was for testing tanks which had been repaired, but I never saw a tank there, but they must have been for something.
JR: Well I will get in touch with Des Furze, he is the one I always go to about military matters he might know. I didn’t think, because there was nothing much to ask him, but one the target practice, two the incendiary bombs, three these pits is enough for me to contact him. Well that’s good.
MG: You knew there was a laundry in Foxholes?
JR: Yes.
MG: The Reliance Laundry at the bottom.
JR: Yes Mrs Yelland, who I have interviewed 13 Spinney Street, still lives there moved there in 1940.
MG: Yelland or Yandall?
JR: Sorry I always call her Yelland, Yandall you’re right.,
MG: Yes she is the corner house on Spinney Street.
JR: She said that the laundry caught fire
MG: Oh did it?
JR: They were there during this time, I don’t know which year it was, they saw from their house smoke coming out of the blanket room at the top.
MG: Really?
MG: Oh I didn’t see that, they were a lot nearer to it of course. Probably at night time, was it from bombing or…?
JR: No just caught fire, I don’t know what happened I just wondered if you heard about it.
MG: Between the laundry and the first Foxholes houses there was an alley. I expect it’s still there, with bars at the end and that was a short way up to our house. Instead of going along Foxholes Avenue and up Page Hill, we just went up this alley, which went into Clyde Terrace and then we could just go up the back road to our house. A lot shorted than going all the way round.
JR: What about your mother’s view of the house? Did she think the house was quite a good one? Was she happy there or…………
MG: Yes. We were reasonably happy there, it was an improvement on Villiers Street.
JR: You had a bathroom?
MR: We had a bathroom that was downstairs, immediately on the left of the front door. You went in the back door and there was a porchway and then you went in through another door. It was just a bathroom you went through the inner door and there was a door between the two doors and it was just a bath and a lavatory, no wash house, and that was the only lavatory in the house.
No wash basin anywhere in the house, you had to use the kitchen sink. My sister and I had a ewer and a basin in our bedroom. The ewer had cold water in it and my mother used to bring us up a jug of hot water every morning so we could wash, instead of all five of us trying to wash at the kitchen sink. There was a coal fire in the living room and that was the only heating in the house. No radiators. And that heated an oven to one side, which had got a smaller compartment above the oven where you could warm plates and that oven was quite good. She cooked very good cakes in it.
But of course particularly during the war, you didn’t light the fire in the summer except for having baths, so there wasn’t a permanent hot water supply, only from the fire. And the hot water tank was to the left of the fireplace, in the recess, the wall between us and the next house, came along and it came out into the room and along then back to the adjoining wall opposite so the fireplace stuck out and the hot water tank was there.
JR: Next to it?
MR: In the living room.
JR: This is the same as Spinney Street, Mrs Yandall, got it right this time! Showed us where it had been. That’s on the same pattern I think.
MR: Oh yes all the houses were the same pattern, I think some were left handed and some were right handed, some when you went to the front door the living room was on the right. I think in next door’s house, number 35, you went in the front door, and it was on the left, but, basically they were the same design. I think they’ve been altered now. I think the bathrooms have been put upstairs.
JR: Yes I think a small part of one bedroom was used but they have still got three bedrooms.
MR: Yes one bedroom always was small and the houses were rated as being for 7 people. I really don’t know how you’d have got 7 people in! Two rooms were doubles, my sister and I shared a room obviously. My parents had a room and my brother had the small room.
At the start of the war a man came round finding people who were prepared to take evacuees. My mother refused. This man said, well he could share a bedroom with my brother, my mother said no way and the man wasn’t very pleased. He sent another man to see my mother, this man was a younger man and he understood fully my mother’s feelings and said, no, you should not have an evacuee. Mrs Playle at the top did, because she had no children. She had an evacuee. She didn’t know a great deal about children and she used to consult my mother sometimes.
JR: They were children evacuees?
MG: Yes child evacuees.
JR: From London?
MG: London somewhere yes, I don’t know, I think Mrs Playle’s evacuee must have gone to Abel Smith I think. Must have done.
JR: I just want to check up on, I did ask you about the Isolation Hospital. What about the attitude of staff to patients. Was it kindly or was it a bit brusque or were they…, did they have time to spend with you?
MG: No, they didn’t spend time with us, they’d make the beds and bring us our meals and inspect us for rash and whether the skin was peeling or bring bed pans. That was a problem, because I was only 10 they thought I was a child they brought me a child-size bed pan. Then they complained when the sheets got wet! They learned, and they brought me an adult-sized bed pan.
JR: So you weren’t allowed to get out of bed to go to the loo?
MG: Oh no we were kept in bed.
JR: You had a mild dose?
MG: Oh yes.
JR: So you must have been getting better or a bit bored, what did you have to do actually, read or…?
MG: Well, I managed to read, my parents sent me magazines of some sort and the girl in the next bed, we played word games sometimes, you’d think of a town, and the other person would have to think of a town beginning with the last letter of the town she’d said… games like that, in bed of course.
JR: You got your meals on a bed tray?
MG: Yes, we weren’t allowed to get out to go to… oh no.
JR: What sort of food did they give you just out of …
MG: Plain ordinary food, I don’t remember it particularly but it was always perfectly alright, because of course there was rationing, they did their best with the rations, there was nothing to complain about.
JR: What about your parents? Were they kept at bay?
MG: They weren’t allowed to visit. No visitors allowed at all. They used to write to me and I could write to them but letters in and out were sterilised. You couldn’t seal the envelope on your letter, you had to hand it to the nurse unsealed and then it was sterilised. I don’t know what they did, put it in an oven or something, baked it!
JR: Now this may sound daft but I am full of admiration for these people because they were coping without much help from anywhere and the only thing they knew was to kill those germs. I admire them they were so meticulous, I really do. The pictures I have got of the Isolation Hospital show a very well scrubbed looking place. It is in the 1950s which is slightly after you but everything seemed to be to combat germs and disease.
MG: Yes it was, the cleaning was admirable, a lot of cleaning.
JR: Yes, so when you were able to get out of bed, convalescence period, did your parents visit, I have heard that people came to the gate and waved and so on and shouted?
MG: No I was on the ward then bathed and put in a room on my own overnight and my family, I am not sure who fetched me the next day. Yes I can’t remember precisely how I got home, but a man down the road probably came for me in his car, with my father that’s all I can think.
JR: How long were you away from home?
MG: I was in there three weeks and after that I was sort of in quarantine for six weeks. My mother had to keep all my cutlery, plates, cups, separate from everybody else’s, wash them up separately and have a different drying cloth. But otherwise I was allowed to be with the family. I couldn’t go back to school, I didn’t go back to school until after Christmas.
JR: So you missed that long time then?
MG: Yes I did.
JR: I meant to ask you were there teachers at the hospital?
MG: No.
JR: So you got back to school a bit behind did you?
MG: I must have been a bit behind. It was my first term in the grammar school, yes of course my first year I missed… must have been several weeks.
JR: When you got back did you hear that anybody else had had it?
MG: No.
JR: Strange that no one else had it, because they would have come to that place from Ware, because Ware …because it was the Ware Isolation Hospital as well wasn’t it.
MG: Oh yes. No I didn’t hear of anybody else, very strange I think. It was very infectious, they think it was very infectious obviously from all the precautions they took.
JR: It says a lot for the hygiene and care of the time which, wartime was a very difficult time. Perhaps people were more meticulous with washing and ironing, I mean Ironing is quite a good thing because it does kill germs as well. Washing up etc. Right did you have any more things before I launch on to another topic.
MG: The boys at Kingsmead School used to come to All Saints’ Church sometimes and they walked in a crocodile all the way Ware Road with a master.
JR: Boys?
MG: Yes only boys.
JR: Were there any girls there, I just wonder, I couldn’t think if there were girls at that time.
MG: Just boys.
JR: They boarded did they?
MG: Yes, they boarded there we never saw them. They had got grounds of course. I suppose they must have been taught, I think they were, I think these days you would call them educationally sub-normal.
JR: Yes maybe you would, they were boarding there but did they go home in the holidays or did they stay all the time?
MG: I don’t know, I never noticed, I don’t know.
JR: No, I just wondered. They took them along the Ware Road from there…
MG: Yes to church sometimes.
JR: Quite good I suppose.
MG: Oh yes, let them out.
JR: Did they go out in the town at all?
MG: No I don’t think so. I don’t think they ever went out alone.
JR: No no.
MG: They always… the only time I ever saw them was when they walked to church.
JR: They had quite a lot of area round them.
MG: Oh yes, there was a lot of ground, there was a great deal of grounds. Because it’s a different shape now from what it was. There’s a roundabout at that junction, Ware Road and Gallows Hill but it used to come down more and there was a triangular island in the road, it wasn’t a roundabout, it was quite a big triangle island in the middle of the road and the Kingsmead’s grounds came down almost to a point and after the war, I am not sure what they are called, the local air force cadets.
JR: ATC
MG: Yes they had a building in there and there was an aircraft there, I can’t remember what it was, but there was an aircraft on that corner as well.
Transcribers Note: It was a Vampire 5 it eventually rotted as it was mostly wood so was not able to be moved when they left. It had to be disposed of.
JR: What, an English one?
MG: Yes, can’t remember what it was, might have been a Hurricane but there was some sort of a plane there, it was there for a very long time. Then of course eventually Kingsmead was demolished and the police station built.
JR: I was going to ask you about… just checking on this tape. It’s Ok there is a bit more. When you looked at the Kingsmead School, it was fronting the road wasn’t it, there was a longish, big building.
MG: Yes. Big building.
JR: With a big tower, but, I mean I know you are very observant did you notice any other buildings, not perhaps attached to out? That were of an older age?
MG: No, I don’t remember seeing any. There was quite a high hedge round it. No I don’t remember any other buildings in there. It was a big area they had, there could have been other buildings but I didn’t see any.
JR: I am going to stop the tape for a bit because there is something I want to explain to you but I don’t want to bore the listener with my voice so I will just stop it.
Tape stopes and restarts
JR: The clock in…
MG: Kingsmead clock is in All Saints tower now.
JR: That’s right but that was a fairly recent…
MG: Oh yes.
JR: That was after it closed down
MG: Yes it was when it was demolished
JR: 1970s or so.
MG: Must have been, I don’t know when the police station was built there
JR: I think it was 1970s I will have to… [confirmed, 1970]
MG: I think it must have been. Yes because I wasn’t living there by then. So I wouldn’t have noticed it quite so much.
JR: But the police station was in Castle Street wasn’t it?
MG: Oh yes.
JR: At one time…
MG: Before that it was in Queens Road.
JR: It moved then.
MG: Yes, it was in Queens Road, then across to castle Street, then it went to Ware Road.
JR: Yes, we that a good indicator of when, I think it was the 70s. Now there was something else but I have just forgotten it. I have some more things to ask you.
MG: Oh yes, do, oh I do remember something as you go along Stanstead Road, you come to the green top houses and then before the Woodland Mount and Road there was a large area left as field and a steep bank, those green topped houses have got a steep bank. It was said that people wanted a church built there, a pub had been suggested, but they didn’t want a pub, they wanted a church, a Methodist Church. But the war came, so nothing was done. And that big bank and the field stayed like that for a long time but I saw that it has had houses built on it now.
Transcribers Note : Now Mount Sorrel.
JR: It that where Mount Pleasant is or not?
MG: I don’t know Mount Pleasant, its faced on to Stanstead Road, Gallows Hill, before the ditch, Woodlands Mount goes up that way its that bit of land parallel with Stanstead Road. Then there’s the green top houses and this blank piece of land which has now been built on, they are recent houses. I think the style is different to the green top ones.
JR: I will listen to that bit on the tap again and get my maps out and check and see. In fact I have got some homework to do on this area. I have to keep looking at the maps, I must do a walk about up there one day and have a really good look and make notes etc. and try and get a picture of it.
MG: My parents went to look at the green-top houses when they were being built. They were thinking of buying one, but, I think they had just, well they hadn’t recovered from the slump and war was threatened and they didn’t.
JR: No, I personally, they are not terribly big inside, the ones I have been in are not and the access is not wonderful is it, you are either going right up or right down. The person I visit with my bike sometimes, I just don’t know what to do with this bike, you can hardly carry it down this steep big lot of steps.
MG: Those places have got those steep concrete steps at the front. They have got a back access but those steps at the front I think are dreadful.
JR: This is because they were all built in that area where there were pits I suppose.
MG: Must have been or it had been dug out to make the road I suppose. The other houses haven’t got all those steps, but most of them have got steps of some sort. ********** Stanstead Road.
JR: So do you remember then as a young child these houses being built?
MG: Very vaguely yes, I think we were looking at them before I started school, I probably started school in, the beginning of, I don’t know I wouldn’t have started till the January after I was five would I? which would have been 1936 wouldn’t it. Those houses were built in the 30s early 30s.
JR: Yes, yes they were. It is surprising how little there was in building there. All along the Ware Road on that side
MG: Exactly.
JR: Before the war.
MG: There was very little before the war. Do you know the entrance to Spinney Cottage on Ware Road? The Spinney it’s probably called now.
JR: Yes.
MG: Well from there to almost the green topped houses there was a big field, Miss Kemp’s field it was. She kept a horse in there. I always liked to look at the horse when I walked home from school and sometimes there was another horse in there she lived opposite.
JR: She was a builder’s daughter.
MG: I don’t know.
JR: Of that family?
MG: Of that family, the Kemp family yes. On the corner of Fairfax Road there was a chicken farm. But they have built a house there now as well.
JR: On the corner of Ware Road.
MG: That’s right on the corner of Fairfax and Ware Road. Chicken farm, well I call it a farm, it was quite big, big area with the houses. And you know Addis’s new building, not their original one but the new building, that used to be a small-holding, there was an orchard and they grew a lot of other things as well and there was a little shop that sold things for cars I know it sold tyres. They had a stall next to the shop and sold things from the small holding. When we’d been blackberrying, mother sent one of us along there to buy some windfall apples so she could make blackberry and apple jelly. Then Addis built on there after the war.
Transcribers Note: The small holding was Newlands
JR: Yes are you talking about the entry point the older one is 1937
MG: Yes, the one with the clock on the righthand side, that’s the first Addis building the other side of the entrance is a much later building.
JR: But they weren’t there when you went for the… oh they must have been.
MG: The first Addis building was but the second one wasn’t. That was a smallholding.
JR: Is that the Woodland families.
MG: I don’t know whose family it was.
JR: Because I think, is it Woodland? Because when they were naming the Addis site, they looked for names, which was Addis in anyway I know that, Wisdom Drive is at the top. Somebody wrote in and said their forbears had a nursery there. I was going to say it was Woodland, its something like Woodland. I wonder if this is what you are talking about?
MG: Oh it must have been.
Transcribers Note: Newlands Gardens
End of side one
Side two
JR: Can you remember the name of the chicken farm proprietor?
MG: No, no idea.
JR: No I just wondered if it was a local family that we knew about?
MG: Could be but I have no idea unfortunately.
JR: Now a question, now… not exactly about the laundry but next to the laundry there appear to be one or two older houses. Not Stanstead Road, Local authority but different. Is that? I must go and look.
MG: Yes, going up Gallows Hill. Immediately behind the laundry the next down from the laundry, there are … oh…
JR: That’s alright.
MG: There were some houses that were a bit different
JR: Yes I think they were in place before Stanstead Road proper came to be built. I would like to check up on that.
MG: It’s a long time since I went that way but you are right. There are one of two houses there that are different. Don’t look like the council houses.
JR: No. The other thing is between Kingsmead School and the playing field, well perhaps it wasn’t Kingsmead school playing field, between Kingsmead School and the Isolation Hospital they have now built Wheatcroft school haven’t they. What was that area, was it a disused pit in your time there? Or did Kingsmead school playing fields extend into that area?
MG: I think they did. I don’t remember a pit being there.
JR: No I think it was a pit in olden times,
MG: It might have been a long time ago it looked like it had some trees and bushes on it I think,
JR: I mean was the back of it, did it rise steeply at the back?
MG: It did as it went up hill it did rise yes.
JR: Did you know of some kind of path that went over the present Pinehurst estate and past a barrow and down across to the Nags Head.
MG: Ah, it was a golf course in those days.
JR: Yes the golf course.
MG: There was a path, we used to walk across there on Christmas day after lunch and the neighbour who faced the bottom of our garden they allowed us to use their path we went in the back gate, past the house and out their front gate. On to our lane, the path by front of those houses and then we went down on to Gallows Hill. Up Gallows Hill, turn left into a little lane, and then on to the golf course I think there was a stile to get on to the golf course. We walked across the golf course and went down onto Ware Road.
JR: Near the Nag’s Head.
MG: That’s right, that where it was near the Nags Head. Then we would walk home along Ware Road and went back home the other way.
JR: Ok you go up that path where the Nags Head used to be, there is still a path going up there to Pinehurst
MG: Is there?
JR: I want to follow the course of that because The Nags Head was apparently quite a land mark because I haven’t looked up the documents yet but it seemed to be there in the 1600s called The Nags Head so…
MG: It was quite early.
JR: I want to see if I can find some sort of history.
MG: The path was virtually straight across the golf course,
JR: Yes …what diagonally across to the barrow was it?
MG: The barrow? I don’t remember seeing that the only thing we saw sometimes was people playing golf
JR: I mean this Tumulus type thing, maybe it was mistaken for a…,I was going to say bunker but that’s not the word is it,
MG: Yes bunker I think
JR: Is it, I wonder if people thought it was a bunker but it was actually a barrow.
MG: Oh I didn’t know that. That’s interesting.
JR: When you went across you were actually walking on the property of the golf course
MG: Oh yes.
JR: It wasn’t partitioned…
MG: Oh no… actually on the golf course but it was allowed it was a public footpath.
JR: Oh I see they couldn’t prevent you from going. That’s good because I think, I am not sure exactly yet, but I think that path you are describing was possibly the course of the old Roman Road.
MG: Really?
JR: Yes it came down from the back of Hoddesdon, carried on over Hertford Heath and then on by Rush Green farm and then eventually across to Broadmeads in Ware.
MG: Makes sense.
JR: It could in itself [have] veered slightly away from Gallows Hill at some point but that path I am talking about is probably still on its course …but that’s another day’s research for me
MG: If, instead of going over the stile into the golf course one turned right, at that point there was a path along there called Walnut Tree Walk.
JR: Oh was there?
MG: It did have Walnut trees along there.
JR: The one that…
MG: It went to…
JR: Did it go to Great Amwell?
MG: I think it did, yes.
JR: Yes because that’s still called Walnut Tree Walk.
MG: It met this path there.
JR: Its funny because looking at the boundaries of Little Amwell parish, that’s the parish that was inserted into St John’s and Great Amwell parishes because St Johns, although it was an amalgamated parish it still had its own identity in history. It wasn’t just All Saints and St Johns, it was St Johns parish, All Saints’ parish, and Gallows Hill was partly in the St Johns, the lower half of it, it and partly in Great Amwell, and then when they got the church in the 1860s, Holy Trinity at Hertford Heath they decided they wanted their own parish.
They took bits of these two and possibly All Saints as well, so I have been trying to find the boundaries of this parish exactly as described and it did say “Walnut Tree Walk” but it was so convoluted this description I gave up on it.
MG: Well that’s where it was.
JR: Yes I couldn’t work out where they meant when I look at the map so you are saying that it puts me slightly more in the picture, in the 1840s they had very loopy handwriting.
MG: On the allotment we had, we used to find oyster shells so that indicated that Romans had been there didn’t it. There were a lot of springs there as well.
JR: Foxholes had the Roman corn dryer.
MG: Yes indeed.
JR: The source of water as you say, because the springs come out from…
MG: Oh there were several springs on the allotments.
JR: Yes, would have come via Foxholes Farm I would think. The blue line suggests it is higher. I am not sure where they actually originate whether its Jenningsbury or…
MG: I don’t know but the springs on the allotment, they didn’t have a stream, they were just a hole in the ground, they always had water in, so some allotment holders had their own water supply. The council did put in taps, there was a row of taps along the path. But we did find oyster shells. So my Mum said that shows there were Romans here.
JR: Could well be unless it was just a rubbish tip .
MG: Well with the corn dryer having been close by I think they were Romanoyster shells
JR: Yes came to the surface a bit later, yes. One of the nice books we have found while we have been looking for books on this area was by one of the masters of Haileybury school who published in 1920. A book called Haileybury but it was really a handbook for the boys telling them what they should be doing with themselves at the weekend, and what the geology and the natural history of the area were like.
Where to go for nice walks and the history of the area as well. It is a very nice little book and they describe Gallows Hill as part of this area because it is actually, particularly geologically, part of that area they describe the chalk pits of course. They also describe finding bones up on Gallows Hill which they assume were from the hangings, buried in unconsecrated ground, obviously. But Edgar Lake told me the bones were actually found on the Isolation Hospital side of the road whereas the gallows were on the other side of the road. So we surmised that perhaps they buried them across the road but our next job is to look up the building works of the Isolation Hospital to see if they found many bones and things when they were doing that.
MG: I never found any bones.
JR: Probably the boys from Haileybury had removed them all by this time, put them in their top hats and sold them off. Its going to be quite an interesting, if a bit limited, apart from when the building work started on that side there isn’t much to say about it apart from the pits and the geology and the natural history that’s it.
MG: Oh yes, when I woke up in the morning I sometimes hear a woodpecker tapping in one of the trees. Occasionally heard an owl, it was a nice spot to live really, quite a long way from the town I know but quite nice.
JR: Did you have a bus service at all?
MG: Not on the state no. But we had to go down to Ware Road to get a bus.
JR: And walk back up the hill afterwards!
MG: Yes, during the war, you know it was hard work because mother went in to town for the shopping and she usually walked back, nothing was delivered, apart from milk. The baker used to come and the coal was delivered.
JR: Who were the tradesmen who were particularly involved here? Do we know?
MG: One or two, we had a milkman before the war, who had a horse and a milk float. When the war came the town was divided into zones and each milkman was allocated a zone and we lost our milkman and we had to have Sparkes, who had a shop along the Ware Road opposite the Methodist church. I can’t remember what that shop is now, almost next to the end of Addis’s.
JR: No the Spar, there’s a kind of Spar shop
MG: Yes I think it is.
JR: Bit like Sparkes, Spar.
MG: It belonged to the Sparkes family, we had Sparkes as our milkman then and he had a motorised vehicle of some sort. He delivered the milk.
JR: So he looked after your end of the town.
MG: Yes, I don’t know where our horse and cart man went to.
JR: He was probably allocated somewhere else.
MG: Must have been yes. It was to save fuel obviously so the milkman didn’t have to go all over the town he just had one area to cover.
JR: He had milk floats did he this chap, Sparkes?
MG: Yes I think it was, he didn’t have a horse and cart, it was definitely a motorised vehicle.
JR: If you are saying then. It couldn’t be battery run but perhaps it was. It doesn’t matter. A grocer who was he?
MG: There were no deliveries, it was the Co-op who did grocery deliveries but that stopped during the war so mother had to go into the town for everything.
JR: Oh really?
MG: The butcher used to deliver before the war.
JR: Who was that?
MG: That was the Co-Op butcher. Their shop was at Old Cross.
JR: Oh yes.
MG: Its something else now I think it’s a hairdressers.
JR: Hairdressers, that’s right.
MG: And on the walls he’d got beautiful tiled picture of pigs. When I saw that shop being altered I contacted Mr. Melville [Civic Society] because I was desperately worried about these pictures, I didn’t want them destroyed. But he went down, they didn’t destroy them, but they are covered over, which is an awful shame.
JR: So they left them.
MG: Yes they are still there. She [mother] would go into the butcher’s on Saturday for the Sunday joint and order what she wanted during the week and a butcher’s boy would come up and bring what she wanted during the week.
JR: I see
MG: It stopped during the war. She just had to do everything herself.
JR: Yes,
MG: Milk and bread was still delivered during the war. It was all rationed, though.
JR: Yes I mean quantity wise it wouldn’t have been very heavy shopping bags during the war. A lot of people grew their own vegetables.
MG: We did, we grew all our own vegetables. We had a garden and we had an allotment, we grew all our own vegetables and some fruit and my mother grew soft fruit in the back garden.
She had raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants and in the front garden we grew tomatoes, and lettuce and cucumbers. Also in the back we had the peas and the runner beans and some rhubarb at the bottom of the garden.
JR: Now I haven’t tapped in to other people yet, neighbours, how did you get on with the neighbours, were they all co-operative or was there a kind of community spirit during the war?
MG: Oh yes, everybody helped everybody else out,
JR: Can you give me any incidents where, perhaps, warnings were passed between people on news or any disasters.
MG: People would borrow from each other sometimes
JR: What money or…
MG: No if you ran out of coal someone would lend them some coal, until the next delivery came, then bring it back. We used to go wooding during the war, up in the fields and the woods and bring back logs which helped eke out the coal ration.
JR: Did you go with other people or did you go as a party?
MG: No just our family used to go.
JR: What about the growing of vegetables - did you pass them among the neighbours?
MG: Not a great deal no because everybody grew enough. Our next-door neighbours did have chickens, but I don’t recall they ever gave us any eggs. They might have done, but I wouldn’t have known. The egg ration was very small. I think it was only one per week per person.
JR: So you didn’t lose, I shouldn’t say this having had chickens during the war, but I wasn’t involved with the ration books really. So you didn’t lose your egg ration if you kept chickens?
MG: I don’t know, you might have done. I don’t know, I would have thought they were probably in addition. Probably, somebody else opposite had also got chickens. I know one year they did give us a cockerel and my father made a small run for it and we fattened it up for Christmas. The man next door killed it for us.
JR: What did he do?
MG: I don’t know where he worked but he was an iron worker and I think he must have worked in one of the forges in Hertford where they used to shoe horses.
JR: Oh, like the blacksmith.
MG: The blacksmith, one of the blacksmiths but I don’t know which one.
JR: Name?
MG: Chipperfield, there are Chipperfields still around.
JR: Oh really, Peter’s next door neighbour is John Chipperfield. Yes, he is local I think, need some more investigation on that.
MG: Could well be from that family, quite easily.
JR: Do you know about Mr Draper? Was he up there with you?
MG: Drage I remember.
JR: Oh no, John Draper didn’t go there as early as that, I’m sorry.
MG: We had Playle, Loose they moved eventually and the Lyles moved in there, I think they had been in Admiral Street or further down Page Road. Then there was the Chipperfields then us, the Cooks, our name was Cook.
JR: Yes I know.
MG: Williams, Best, then the next two houses I am not too sure of, there was a chap, Albert (Chapman) in the fish shop, and the Weavers. Somebody moved before the Chapman’s moved in I think because they were evacuated from London, I think Albert’s father worked in the docks.
So I am a bit confused about that. I have got Chapman, then the Weavers, then there were Catlins, and Wallers at the bottom house. Verina Waller she lives in Bengeo now, I do see them occasionally I can’t remember her surname, Goodrum, her name’s Goodrum now. Dennis Catlin the son emigrated to Australia or New Zealand, I am not sure which, he was an only child and he emigrated.
Certainly the Weavers, there was a Douglas Weaver, and the Chapmans there was Albert. I don’t remember any children of the Best’s. the Playle’s didn’t have any children they had an evacuee during the war. The Looses they had a daughter, she went in to the WRENS during the war but they moved soon afterwards. The Chipperfield’s there were several children there.
JR: It looks as though he might be a family descendant doesn’t it
MG: Oh yes.
JR: The Looses… how do you spell the word Loose?
MG: LOOSE, I don’t think it was Loosey I think it was just Loose, I think it was.
JR: No I have got them mixed up with someone else.
MG: He sort of spoke to everybody, “Good morning” or “Good evening” or.. I knew a few on the other side, the back side, you know their houses were on Gallows Hill and their gardens came down towards ours. The road, I knew a few of them. There was the Duffins near the top.
JR: Did you have any friends living there to play with?
MG: Very few young people of our sort of age, there were the Woodwards, opposite. I used to play with Janet Woodward sometimes but she didn’t go to the grammar school.
Verina Waller went to the Grammar School, I knew her, but she was several years older than I was. I used to play with Janet Woodward and Doris Newman lived in Clyde Terrace and the three of us used to play together in the fields sometimes or we’d ride our bikes.
JR: What about Ann Marie Parker was she around?
MG: Yes. She lived in Woodland Road I think, yes I do know here, she is a little younger than I am but she did go to the Grammar school and I still see her occasionally. But she didn’t come and play with us.
JR: Did the Woodlands Road people come over to play generally with you or did you go over there ever?
MG: No.
JR: They were separate?
MG: They were separate yes we were separate.
JR: Was that out of choice or…
MG: I think one didn’t stray off one’s own estate really.
JR: Just because of the geographical position?
MG: Yes, they were private houses and we were council.
JR: Did that matter?
MG: It seemed to matter in those days, but I was on good terms with Anne. The year her brother had polio, I was to have gone to her birthday party but her mother changed it and she took us to the cinema, the County, and we saw a film and we had some tea there, which was nice, Anne and me and another girl, Sheila Tyler.
JR: Oh really Sheila Tyler, did she live up there then?
MG: No, she lived in Spinney Cottage. Her father was a chauffeur and handyman for the people that lived in the big house I can’t remember their name.
JR: Spinney Cottage was then the cottage for a bigger house that was up in Beechwood Close? I am not very good on these.
MG: Well you get to it by going up the lane to Spinney Cottage, first to the Spinney Cottage and the big house was over there, a bit behind and to one side.
JR: So if you wanted to find where it would have been now…
MG: I would go up the road, well the drive to Spinney Cottage and it was on the right, it was quite a big house.
Transcribers Note: Sounds as if Spinney Cottage was where The Spinney flats are now and the house is now Copperwood flats, both off Beechwood Close. There seems to have been three houses there in 1945, Spinney Cottage, The Spinney and The Beeches. In 1939 The Tylers were there and The Spinney seems to be the big houses which was occupied by Mr and Mrs Heale with two servants,, Mr Heale was a company director for a confectioners.
JR: Sheila Tyler I was introduced to her many years ago by another friend.
MG: Yes they moved to Tamworth Road eventually.
JR: She was the one that got married very late in life wasn’t she?
MG: Yes she did. She lives in London I have got her address. Somewhere in Chiswick.
JR: Oh it’s the right one then, I hadn’t realised she lived in Spinney Cottage. Which I do know a little bit about but not…oh. Then Tamworth Road.
MG: They did move to Tamworth Road, I can’t remember why, whether her father retired of what it was? But there was some reason they had to move out of Spinney Cottage eventually. the people in the big house helped them find a house in Tamworth Road.
Transcribers Note: They had moved during the war as they were there in 1939 but Tamworth Road in 1945.
JR: Didn’t she finish up in one of the side streets there? One of the little roads?
MG: Yes she did, after her parents… or it might have been while her parents were still alive in Railway Street I think it was.
JR: That’s right.
MG: Railway Street.
JR: Yes then this unexpected marriage came about and she moved I remember. It was Madeleine Rooksby who introduced me to her. They were selling their house at about the same time.
MG: Oh yes. Oh were they?
JR: I think so or maybe Sheila sold hers just before, Madeline was thinking of moving and she did eventually move
MG: She lived in Park Road didn’t she?
JR: Yes next to Mrs, oh next to your step-mother in law, yes, I was going to say Mrs Geering but that’s you, that’s right it was either Mrs Geering or Mrs Penney.
MG: Well Mrs Penney was next to Mrs Rooksby,
JR: She was in between the two of them, your step mother in law and Mrs Penney.
MG: Yes. That’s right.
JR: She was in the middle.
MG: Yes. That’s right my step mother in law was number 5, so Mrs Rooksby was 3, Mrs Penney was one, that’s right.
JR: Mrs Penney’s house was bigger.
MG: Oh yes it was.
JR: That was, I think Madelaine said it was the builders house or something and he built the rest and he lived in that one. I think it was a Street, something to do with the Street family wasn’t it?
MG: Could have been.
JR: The coach people.
MG: Yes the coach people.
JR: Ties up in the end doesn’t it.
MG: Oh it does. It takes a lot of digging to get there sometimes.
JR: I think we have done quite well on Gallows Hill but I have got to now try and find something more on the Gallows, I think people will go for that quite well in that publication.
MG: Because the Gaol of course, we always called it the Gaol but it was Oak Street, Elm street and Ash Street wasn’t it?
JR: Yes it was.
MG: The WRVS are down there now aren’t they? And there is some other hall,
JR: Red Cross
MG: The Red Cross.
JR: Used to be the Salvation Army but I think its now WRVS.
MG: Yes that’s where the Gaol was.
JR: Yes it was on the car park apparently.
MG: Yes there’s a big car park there now. They were taken from there, in a horse and cart as I understand it, along Ware Road and up Gallows Hill.
JR: Now we had another story which I don’t go for, that said there was an underground passage built to take them to Gallows Hill.
MG: Oh no.
JR: But the amount of money required for excavation and the impracticability of it makes me think it is just somebody’s imagination running riot.
MG: Oh it is, if they had had an underground passage it would have been within the prison wouldn’t it. To take them out of the cart or something like that, it wouldn’t have been to get to Gallows Hill that is totally unreasonable. I know it was a horse and cart was my neighbour whose forbear had seen someone going there had seen the horse and cart taking them up there.
JR: So we might know when it ceased but I do know that they had public executions, about 5, in front of the gaol.
MG: Oh did they?
JR: I mean that Thurtell case in 1826 that was all done out the front. It wasn’t until about the 1860s it was done more discreetly behind very often.
MG: Because that gaol closed down and there was another one where the Corn Exchange is now, wasn’t there?
JR; No the other way round.
MG: Is it the other way round
JR: The one closed where the Corn Exchange is and they went to the bigger site out on the Ware Road. Then everybody, in the 18… well before those streets were built, Oak, Ash and Elm they moved everybody to St Albans, the gaol there which is no longer there any more. So that ceased to be and I suppose if there were any executions, if there were any after that they took place in St Albans.
MG: St Albans, yes.
JR: Apparently the term Gallows Hill is a fairly common one in towns, a lot of towns had a hill and the gallows was on it so when you are looking up Gallows Hill on the county computer you get all these different towns come up, you have to be a bit careful which one you are talking about. Let’s stop for a minute then.
Tape stops and restarts
JR: What about the little waterway going down Foxholes Avenue?
MG: The ditch.
JR: Yes.
MG: Oh well it was an open ditch,
JR: Now that was rainwater?
MG: It came along Foxholes Avenue, it drained the fields, I think, and where it went under Stanstead Road, which is at the bottom of Gallows Hill there was an iron grid on it to catch all the rubbish that came down with it you know broken branches and things rather than have them going under the road.
We used to like to walk across that grid, highly dangerous thing to do really, but we did walk across it sometimes because the bars were quite close together we would walk across and come out the other side.
JR: So it was, this grid was at the side of the road was it?
MG: It was over the ditch, actually on the ditch.
JR: I will have to go and look at it again.
MG: Its been covered in.
JR: It has.
MG: I think its been piped.
JR: Its been covered in, you can see the course of it because there’s some greenery and stuff, you can see where it was running down the road. But the end of it, I can’t quite picture how it ended up going under the road. It went under the road then it went down under…
MG: It must have gone under Kingsmead grounds, under Ware Road then it continues down Rowleys Road its called now isn’t it?
JR: Yes.
MG: Down Rowleys Road it wasn’t called Rowleys Road then
JR: No I think it was a relatively late name.
MG: It was called Mead Lane wasn’t it?
JR: Yes.
MG: The ditch was between Foxholes Avenue and Woodlands Mount.
JR: Yes I guessed it would be.
MG: At that end?
JR: The grating was over there.
MG: The grating was over it there.
JR: Before it went under ..
MG: Before it went under Stanstead Road, just came along, there was the grating, went under the grating and disappeared under the road.
JR: Yes I can picture that more now.
MG: There was a fence along the path so that one didn’t fall into the grating. It was usually, it did get dry sometimes.
JR: Did they throw rubbish in it or where they quite good?
MG: No I forgot about that. We collected flints from it [the waterway] when my mother re-did her front garden after the war so she could plant it up with roses. It had had just a wooden plank all the way round it, but wood rots eventually so instead of wood she went to the ditch and collected flints, and she had a flint border all round. We went into Foxholes Field and down into the ditch and collected flints there.
JR: There were a lot of flints there were there?
MG: Oh yes. One year when I was tobogganing a boy went down on his toboggan in front of me and I followed him down and he went straight into the ditch and I followed him down, I stopped my toboggan, I knew how to stop it, I knew how to steer and I knew how to stop it and I went straight down into the ditch and got him and his toboggan out.
He was a younger boy quite a bit younger than me and bought him out of the ditch, he wasn’t hurt, actually. It hadn’t much water in it, but there was ice between the stones but he wasn’t hurt.
JR: Were there a lot of winter sports taking place when it snowed then?
MG: There was a lot of tobogganing and snowballs. We flew kites there in the summer actually, we had a kite and went to the bottom of Foxholes Field you see and it flew quite high. We were standing at the bottom.
JR: The part now built on, the new Foxholes estate, that was fairly flat wasn’t it there. Or did they level it?
MG: I am not sure because I haven’t been up and looked round the Foxholes estate, I have seen it from the road there’s the A10 isn’t there goes along one side of it.
JR: Because you have got…
MG: It is certainly a flatter part Foxholes Field. Where we tobogganed was very steep, the other side of the ditch there was a field which was fairly steep. The allotments were fairly steep but not as steep as Foxholes field that really was steep.
JR: I think more bordering the Stanstead Road was flatter there, on the top.
MG: Oh yes it was.
JR: Do you remember somebody called Bill Cooper?
MG: Billy Cooper, oh yes, the farmer.
JR: Now he had which farm?
MG: Oh, Foxholes Farm.
JR: Ok not Rush Green farm? That’s a separate farm isn’t it?
MG: I think so yes. The lane goes from London Road right along to Foxholes Farm
JR: That’s immediately opposite Jenningsbury?
MG: Yes along that lane, that was Foxholes farm along that lane, that was Billy Cooper’s farm.
JR: That the one he came from?
MG: Oh yes.
JR: You could get to Foxholes Farm from the top of Gallows Hill could you? Was there another lane up there?
It has been reported to me he went home up Stanstead Road after he had had a few drinks at the pub, singing at the top of his voice and got in a back entrance somewhere at the top there. I assume they probably mean, you know the roundabout, the very big roundabout as you go down to the A10. Over diagonally you have got Rush Green, that little settlement over that side, if you are coming up Stanstead Road its over that way. You now go all the way round to the bit, the road that links you up with Amwell Roundabout. You can either go off down Downfield Road or you can carry on a few more yards and go down Hoe Lane well that settlement that you approach from the Downfield Road end is Rush Green and there was, or is the remnants of a farm there. I have to go in to this a bit more I am not sure. There’s a lane which I think is the aborted end of the Roman Road but that’s where you then connect up with… I mean all this has been demolished hasn’t it for the road. Its difficult to picture it if you were not actually around when it was like it was. Anyway but he must have got in up there somewhere.
MG: He may have been able to unless there is another way.
Transcribers Note: It was later found Billy Cooper’s family had both farms, one father one son, so it is more likely he was going home to Rush Green farm.
JR: There are two entrances there, I went up with Eddie Roche and we parked the car and looked and there were two faint remains of entrances in there from the road that goes to, from the little road.
MG: Well we always believed that Billy Cooper lived at Foxholes Farm.
JR: Yes I am sure.
MG: Certainly the fields at the top of Page Road were his, it was his cattle there.
JR: Yes I just wanted to check it was called Foxholes. So Foxholes may have been a later name for it but its been known as Foxholes for some time. Right well there’s Gammels Hall of course up there as well isn’t there?
MG: Somewhere yes, I don’t know it.
JR: Well that’s all very close by actually, although its separated now it doesn’t seem to be part of the Gallows Hill scene, it is.
MG: It is really.
JR: Ok well than you I think we will give it a break now.
MG: Well I hope I have been helpful.
JR: Oh absolutely. Its been good.
Recording ends.