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Transcript Title	Ditton, Maisie (O1998.6)
Interviewee	Maisie Ditton (MD)
Interviewer	Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)
Date	16/03/1998
Transcriber by	Ann Troll

Transcript

Hertford Oral History Group

Recording no: O1998.6

Interviewee: Maisie Ditton (MD)

Date: 16th March 1998

Venue: 4 Millstream Close, Hertford

Interviewer: Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)

Transcriber: Ann Troll

************** unclear recording

[discussion] untranscribed material

italics editor’s notes

JR: Today I am hoping to get from Maisie, to get some memories of when she lived in North Crescent, at number 37. We are now at 4 Millstream Close, Hertford, which is not very far from North Crescent. I think Maisie, you started off living in St Andrews Street?

MD: Yes, where my father had a radio business. For a time we lived over the shop and that grew and we moved into the house in North Crescent, which my father rented. My father also rented the shop premises. There were three of us, three daughters and also a niece of my mothers who had to live with us for around four years. So we were quite a family and we needed to move into this house in North Crescent. I think I was about 13 at the time.

JR: Yes.

MD: Well what shall we say? I can tell you the names of some of the people who lived at North Crescent

JR: That would be very helpful. I might be able to trace few more people then.

MD: If we start opposite the Rectory with number 41 and go down.

JR: Yes.

MD: Number 41 was the family name Wigginton – I don’t know if they were anything to do with the people in the shop along St Andrew Street, he was a very old gentleman who was named Otho Wigginton. They had this lovely garden and their lives were really concentrated around the garden. They didn’t dare let anyone in. We used to say in case they knocked a leaf off a tree! But they were very nice people they had a sister who looked after them. I think it was Otho’s son that lived there with this sister – I am not too sure of that because they kept themselves very much to themselves – except in the middle of the war when they very kindly allowed people to come into their garden in order to practice doing stirrup pump.

JR: Oh did they?

MD: In case incendiary bombs came, which to them would have been a great disaster as it would have knocked too many leaves off the trees! [laughter].

Actually, when some boys from the Battersea Grammar School were evacuated here – some of them actually married local girls – the Wiggingtons then were very good hosts to two Grammar school boys from Battersea, who kept up connection with them right to when they were grown up men. But that’s about all I know of the Wiggingtons, but they lived at 41.

Then number 39 was occupied by Mr Northern and his wife, who was a builder. And very pleasant people they were.

JR: Can I just ask you, the Cedrick Northern who I have been advised to go and see – would he be their son?

MD: I think he was their son, yes.

JR: So what age would he be now? Is he retired?

MD: Oh well…..He would have been older than me – I would think – but that’s the sort of thing that I can’t be sure about…I was only 13.

JR: It doesn’t matter.

MD: Anyway they were Mr and Mrs Northern, and then we were in number 37. And, as I say, it was a lovely old house in a way, the front part was really almost rather grand. You went in down a long corridor. The main drawing room was on the right, then further down was a dining room on the left. Then you came to somewhere where something obviously had been added or built on the back. You went down two steps and came into a room, which we always called the kitchen but that was a misnomer because no cooking, or anything like you’d do in a kitchen was done in it. It was more of a sort of little breakfast room.

Then came the scullery which housed the stove and the copper and so on, and then it had an outside loo. But in the middle of it all, above where the two steps went down from the long passage was a staircase that branched out into two. One bit went into the old part of the house and the other part of the staircase went into the bit that was built on. In the middle of them somewhere was an inside loo, and then the old house lead to two very large bedrooms. But if you went on the other side then you went through a smaller bedroom and through that to a bathroom on the end, which had, you know, a geyser over the bath: it was quite a palaver. You know to go and have a bath so quite often, if the person in the little room was not awake yet, we’d go and arrange to have ablutions downstairs somewhere! Then we had a cellar – a very big, two roomed cellar which you went down and at some time had a well there. Because we could see where it had been bricked in.

JR: Was that in the front part of the house, the cellar?

MD: Well let me see, [[talks to herself] – it seemed to me to be on the main front part. On the old part. It was a very good place for storing things, you could keep ice cream and hang poultry and put apples. The other room had the coal in it, you know, coal and wood. It was a good shelter in the war time, I used to go down there in the raids.

JR: In fact my theory – which may not be true – but from the bit of studying I have done on this particular house, because I have tried to find out everything I can about all the houses, I haven’t finished by any means yet, but it’s my theory that the back bit you’re describing is, in fact, the older bit and was an old cottage standing in – the triangle was a kind of nursery garden at one stage in history before those houses were built. I think that was the original gardener or nurseryman’s cottage. And when they came to build North Crescent, they just built onto that to add a bit more accommodation.

MD: Yes, because, although it looks very much smaller at the front, it goes back much further. Yes, oh what else was I going to tell you…?

JR: In your house, how many rooms did you have in total? In that house, and how many bedrooms did you have?

MD: Well only three, but two very big ones and one that was built on in the back part. Downstairs there were these four rooms…there was a drawing room, a dining room, this room, which I would have called a breakfast room – we did most of our living in that room and then a scullery which I think we would now call a kitchen. That’s four there, and then there was an inside loo under the division where the stairs went.

JR: And out at the back, did you have any outbuildings which weren’t attached to the house?

MD: Well we had a garden which was a normal sort of garden – a good length of garden. And I understand from my older sister – I don’t remember it – that there was a shed out beyond that. The access to the back was down what we now call Cross Lane but there was a turning to the left off at the back of Wiggintons’ house and a gate and you went up a kind of dusty roadway where you came to this shed, and there was a gate through to our back garden. That’s what my sister told me. I had to ask her about that because I didn’t remember it very well.

JR: In a way, it’s very much the same.

MD: Yes.

JR: Though I think it’s now a drive now for the garages.

MD: Yes and I personally don’t think number 37 has been lived in with a family or anybody at all since we left it.

JR: Oh?

MD: Because I moved out into the flat next door in number 35 because my mother and father were left in this big house and they got out into something smaller. I don’t know if you have ever heard of Eddie Williams who was a friend of my fathers and he had a cottage and they rented it from him. I was jolly glad because I wouldn’t have wanted to be left with a rented great big house like that to look after!

JR: Do you remember who you paid the rent to, who the owner was?

MD: Yes, well we paid the rent to some people named Bartleman who lived down in Somerset.

JR: Yes we have them down on the list, so they were the owners?

MD: Yes.

JR: So you went in 35, when you were still in 37, did anyone ever do any decorating?

MD: Only we did it, they were sort of absent landlords.

JR: Because in number 39 now, where Hilary Durbin lives, when they did decorating, when they had the wallpaper stripped off, there was definitely an archway on the landing and in the hall, as though it was once one house which went in – as it shows on that map – you went through the wall…[unintelligible]

MD: Yes I would have thought that was quite accurate but we were the only ones who ever did anything at all because they were completely absentee landlords

JR: Did you see anything like that on your side? Any blocked up door ways or…?

MD: No, I don’t really know. We were the only ones who did any decorating. When my mother and father moved out of there and into Eddie Williams cottage, umm, I moved into the flat at the top of number 35, my mother was very sad, she shed a few tears on that day, she hated it, you know, we all got on very well. But they realised I didn’t want to be left with that great house, you know, and I very much wanted to be free by then – by then I was in my 30s. I lived there in the top flat at number 35, and I used to say to mother, I waved at you out the top window!

Well that was 35, that was a big house, I don’t know who owned it, but it was divided into about 5 flats.

JR: Did you live in the main part or in the small, kind of annex part at the side?

MD: What, at 35?

JR: Yes, because all those houses seem to have a main structure, don’t they, and then a wing on each…

MD: No I think I was in the main part, it seems to be the only one along there now which hasn’t been painted up. And this puzzled me because I am pretty certain that no one has lived in number 37 as a family since we left. I know that’s a long time, but when we left the house, I was next door, you see at the top flat of number 35, so I could really see what was going on there. One day a blond looking lady came with a file of papers under her arm and went in and out quickly. And all the rest of the time I was in that flat up there and I was there for about 8 years, I never saw anyone else come there at all – no one came and did anything in the garden or anything like that, and when I looked through the front window it looked like someone had tried to make it into an office or something but no body came near.

Well then I moved down to get my first place of my own – because I only rented the flat in 35, I got my first place on my own, after my parents were dead, they had us rather late in their lives so we lost them quite a bit earlier than most people do. I was able to get my first place, right down the other end of the town in Fairfax road and whenever I came up this way, I would always have a look and never was there a sign of anyone – the garden was all overgrown. If you look at it now, it looks much the same.

JR: Number 37?

MD: Yes

JR: Well the people living there now, well they gave me a map actually, are a retired couple and I think they moved in there in the early 80s, or 1979, they have got children – whether the children were grown up by that time or whether they were leaving home or something but I think they did actually come and go into that house.

MD: Yes you’re probably right because I wouldn’t – when I was down at Fairfax Road, where I bought my first property, I wasn’t up there all that much, but then after that, I came up here and bought this place in 1982 and ever since then I have seen it in its dilapidated, uncared for state! And it puzzled me a bit because it looks as though they had all been repainted recently and I thought if there’s no one in there and no one touches the garden, they are not council owned houses, they must all have agreed to have them painted – I wonder who it was?

JR: The Norburys? They have lived there since about the same sort of time as you’ve lived here – Enid and … he was a teacher at Richard Hale School before he retired.

MD: It was just so strange how something which was so dilapidated could suddenly be repainted like all the rest. But my older sister, whom I have asked to try and help me with this, because she’s 2-3 years older and it makes all the difference, she said, and she felt she was sure, that Mr Northern the builder, took it over at one time, to be a kind of office or annex to his building business and I must say, when I looked through the window, it looked like as if it was going to be an office.

JR: I will find out.

MD: But I don’t know if these people had it repainted recently, well, that’s all they have had done – they don’t appear to have done anything to the garden.

Anyway, number 35, where I lived at the top flat, that was owned by a Mr Hemings who lived down in Somerset – a member of the Plymouth Brethren he was. His two daughters came to the same school but of course they had to be excused from scripture lessons and they had to be excused by gymnastics because you had to show your knickers and they had to be excused from biology because you cut up a worm! But they were two awfully nice girls.

And Mr Hemings was a man who was very kind and good to people. He owned property in Hertford but he only wanted to do it to let people have it who needed it and on very low rentals and so on. He owned that house when I lived in the flat and the bottom floor was owned by or was rented by – was his name Hicks? He is a man who is both blind and deaf but owns a cycle shop.

JR: Oh I know! He was in Hoddesdon wasn’t he?

MD: Yeah – they had the baby while I lived there and he grew up like that and his parents took enormous trouble with him and he now could, and I remember his father saying to me he could read a motorcycle manual and all that and could mend a motorcycle with no hearing and no sight. And his father and mother taught him all the things you could do to teach with your hands. And so he lived in the bottom then, his mother worked in the same department, the treasurer’s department in the county hall where I did.

There was also a gentleman named Mr Smith who kept himself very much to himself. And a young man named Doctor Coddington – though what he was a Doctor of I am not sure – but he was very pleasant. And an old lady named Mrs Higson, and then there was also another old lady in there, Mrs Murray – a rather aristocratic old lady who was a bit of a nuisance because she waylaid everyone on their way in and out and tried to inveigle you into her house and she sort of hoped you’d all would – if she rang a bell, that you’d come to see to her in the night, which was really, well, gave a bad feeling in the house because, no one likes to be unkind but you couldn’t go in or out without being waylaid by this lady. In the end I’m afraid I had to tell her daughter. I phoned up her daughter who lived up in London somewhere and she said ‘well I do everything I can for my mother, I sent two bottles of sherry the other day’ – I said, don’t make me laugh with your bottles of sherry, you know!

There was one girl who lived in another flat who was a piano teacher who had to have pupils come, you know, that sort thing! Anyway that was the names of some of the people who lived or had flats there when I did. Well eventually the Hemings, Mr Heming, gave them up and another lady and gentleman became the landlord and landlady. They were awfully nice and good landlords, they were always there to see everything was alright. They were very nice to me when I moved away they said they hoped I would stay there forever because I was the sort of tenant they liked, which I thought was a nice thing to say but I needed a place of my own and was able to get one by then, you know. Well that was number 35.

Now we come to number 31 – er, 33. Now I think that’s the one which was a boarding house, run by a Mrs Franks – she was one, where if people wanted to stay for a week or two or be put up overnight. I understand from people that did so that it was quite good, well she made her living that way. I am not so sure as we get further down, but we did have a Doctor Shultz – a German lady doctor who was a very highly refused doctor lived in one of the houses, not sure if she occupied the whole house I don’t know but she had her surgery there.

JR: Was that 33 or … 31?

MD: Now I don’t think she was next door to Mrs Franks, I think she was 31, yes.

Then between there I have missed some out, there was a Mr Francis. He used to keep an eye on number 35, for Mr Hemings, which was where my flat had been – used to keep an eye on it for him because Mr Hemings lived in Somerset and if you had anything wrong you had to go and see Mr Francis – but he had to sort of wait til Mr Hemings could get up from Somerset to do anything, it wasn’t all that satisfactory but I remember that his name was Mr Francis and he looked after things for Mr Hemings.

JR: Was he anything to do with Francis nursery do you think? Which was over the road, wasn’t it?

MD: He didn’t have any appearance to be, he was a man who I think was about in his 50s, a grey haired man. Well then of course there was the house where I now think Mr Courtneidge lives.

JR: Yes, number 13?

MD: Yes, that was attached to the garage of the Sessions, or whatever it was called then – and I know that Mr Hemings, would have liked, it belonged to Mr Hemings at one time because when my father and mother wanted to move out, and were looking around for somewhere, he would have liked my mother and father to have had it but he couldn’t get possession of his own house because it was rented by Sessions Garage for a new manager coming who never materialised but the house stood empty and was getting damp coming in and Mr Francis was going in and saying oh there’s not been a fire in this and the damp and all that and I will tell Mr Hemings. He got onto the garage and said what about this manager of yours supposed to be coming because I have got someone I would like to let it too. You know, a family I have already had a tenant for, you know, and he couldn’t get his own house back because Sessions had continued to pay the rent year in and year out for that house, and he said doesn’t it seem ridiculous – they don’t seem to want it for the manager anymore. Two or three years it stood there with damp on the walls and no fires and I can’t get my own house back because they keep on paying the rent! So what happened then I don’t know how its history went on till Mr Courtneidge came in, I know he is there now.

JR: Well it’s three flats now – he is in the bottom one – there’s a lady – whose name escapes me in the middle – and he also had the top flat at one time, but he had to give that up – he had two – one at the bottom and one at the top because when his children came to stay he had the top bedrooms for them.

So where did the Sessions themselves live?

MD: Well where Waters garage, it was a garage itself, but not so big as they are now, Waters spread out more when they made the new road. But it was like right next door to where Mr Courtneidge was.

JR: So you have where John Courtneidge lives at number 13. Now there’s a house, squeezed in between that and the garage, number 11, I imagine it is – was that were Sessions family lived, in that one?

MD: I think it must have been.

JR: So they had the house next door, too, for the manager. Did anyone ever live over the top of the garage?

MD: I think somebody did but I am not absolutely sure, but it wasn’t as big as it is now. And then of course, there was the Ebenezer chapel.

JR: Was there, in your time, a house on the side of Sessions Garage – sort of stuck on the side like a wing, before you got to the Ebenezer?

MD: I don’t recall that….

JR: It’s ok, I just wondered.

MD: The Ebenezer chapel was there, and the most doleful singing used to be heard there [mutters]. I don’t think it ever had a very big congregation, but I think it must have had more than they have now because you can almost count them on your fingers now. They were always very annoyed with people – I think I have told this story before – because opposite, where all those cars now stand, you know, in front of where the new chapel is, was a pub called The Cold Bath and people used to say that was called the Cold Bath because of the total emersion baptism over the other side of the road as it was then and that they used to go in there and get baptised and come back over to The Cold Bath to have something to warm themselves up! [laughter]. But that was quite a big pub, The Cold Bath and had quite a big yard around it.

On the other side of the road, where of course, North Road House took up a lot of it, you know, where Mrs Medlock lived – now let me see, what happened…they were really big houses. There was Painters, you know, where Doctor Anderson lived, before they lived in it, the time when I was young, a man called Harry Evans lived in it, a strange old boy, he was. He used to stand at his gate and watch all the passers by and had been known to give people a cabbage out of the garden if he felt in a generous mood. And then it went up, because there was no Nightingale Court, no Swallow, none of those buildings, and I think the very next place then was – well there was Crescent Lodge where Mrs Buck lived, that was there. I always thought that that was where it said the Nelson pub on a sort of board at the top.

JR: No it’s The New Inn, the Nelson was behind.

MD: The Nelson was in Hertingfordbury Road, that’s right – that’s all I know about that, except that I saw a hoarding with The Nelson on it I seem to remember from my young days.

And then we went on and the next house I think was a really very nice house, I think was given to the church opposite the rectory more or less – a lovely house – it used to be smothered in magnolia in the right season and it was left by Miss Friar who maybe attended the church and lived somewhere up in Bengeo, for the use of an assistant priest.

JR: Yes that became the curates house, yes?

MD: Yes, she left it with that specific intention, and it was only pulled down, I think, because of, I think flooding. We were very flooded one year, all along the back of North Road, and I think they found so much wrong with the back of it that when they came to do something about the flooding, that they were advised to pull it down. But it was a lovely old house with the magnolia and a marvellous place for an assistant priest to live.

JR: Did someone keep an ambulance there in the garage?

MD: I believe they did, yes – I don’t remember it much, but I have heard that said before

JR: What happened then, if that was actually given to the church, did they sell it?

MD: Oh dear, I don’t know, I know that the Reverend Charles Harris lived in it with his family and he was the last one to do so – if you can find out when he was there…?

JR: Yes.

MD: That was at the time, must have been at the latter part of Canon Gills time, because he had to try and carry on after Canon Gill retired. In fact, the story of those three years after that, would make a wonderful comedy film I think really.

JR: Would you?

MD: It was after Charles Harris left that it was pulled down and I am sure it was something to do with the flooding, because I remember the back part of North Road there was all absolutely under water

JR: Yes that was the millstream…

MD: But I suppose they must have sold it to somebody. I know, it was during when we had the Reverend Hilton Nicolson, who was only with us for 6 months, before he died, he had the awful job of dealing with the sale of it, that’s right. So they must have sold it to somebody because he worried himself to death over it – because of all these things, you know, people coming and making offers for houses, they make an offer much less than they are really prepared to give and then somebody else comes along and then the first lot come back.

He was a man of great conscience and felt he ought not ask too much and try and let someone come in, you know because he was a priest and full of humanity and so on. He was up against estate agents – well you know what that’s like – they tell you one thing and then they are only on the look out for their own benefit and then other people come and say that’s all they can afford and then you find out afterwards that they could of afforded a lot more. I always remember it because he stopped me off the Old Cross one day and told me how worried, how the business of the sale of the curates house was worrying him to death – that someone had come and said the very last penny they could pay was so much and as soon as he tried to encourage somebody else to have it, they came back and could have paid another five thousand or something.

I remember talking to him like an old grandma and saying ‘you know when you come to buying and selling houses, there are kind of accepted rules that, you know, you always want to be careful about agents and remember that they have their own interests.’ I said people will always offer less than they can really give. People will often, sort of, the other way round – I don’t know how to express it but you know what I mean..they’ll offer less -- people always ask for a little bit more than they expect they will be offered.

JR: Well they want to give it as a mark, they know what they will really want for it, they know they will be knocked down and hopefully they will get down to what they really did want for it

MD: He said well I have never bought or sold a house before, you know…like a lot of priests and I said to him well I think if you had you wouldn’t be worrying yourself to death now, you’d take everything you had been told, remembering these things, I said you mustn’t feel bad about things like that because that’s accepted parlance, you know, among people who buy and sell houses. I think that cheered him up because he was sick, he shouldn’t really have started work so soon.

JR: Was that still there – Francis Nursery - when you were? I have some nice photographs – do you remember that? It was, from where we are now, the other side of Cross Lane and on the other side of the road from 37.

MD: Are you talking about this nursery?

JR: Yes, Francis Nursery

MD: Well no, it wasn’t there then, there was 3 or 4 families lived on, where that was.

JR: Oh, in the houses?

MD: Yes – I could tell you the names of some of them.

JR: Well yes, alright then.

MD: Well there was Thomason’s.

JR: Oh was that anything to do with Bessie?

MD: Grace Thomason – and there was another family called Stokes with two daughters, Dorothy and Joan Stokes, that all went to St Andrews. We all went, all the children from around about from high and low and in the middle used to go to St Andrews Church school from round here, you went where your local school was and church were. And then there were Wareham’s but I don’t think Wareham’s Lane was anything to do with them, not sure but don’t think there’s any connection between them between Wareham’s Lane now and the Wareham’s who lived there on that part.

JR: Where the nursery was?

MD: Yes but I don’t remember this nursery at all ..

JR: The railings that were there until fairly recently, in fact, some are of the railings are still there I think, in front of the – there’s a house isn’t there, belonging to the – err Army Reserve, I can’t think what its called now…Territorial Army isn’t it? Just across the road now from 37 and 39, there’s a house, a modernish house. Where Nightingale Court is now, used to be a nurses training centre……I think it was partly on this Nightingale Court side and partly on the Territorial Army place, and then you’ve got the curates house next to that I think – so it was just before the Curates House coming from town, it doesn’t matter…

MD: I can remember a little old house, little old cottage, where, if you’re going in the entrance to the University now, you know the main entrance along North Road, a little old cottage with the family name of Wolford with a lot of girls who always used to emerge…I think they were a very poor family – used to emerge in the evening time, in the town with make up a plastered on their faces…

JR: Really….?

MD: Because I know my mother [laughter] when she used to see them go past – it used to horrify my mother and if we put on a bit of powder she’d say ‘for goodness sake girls don’t go out looking like those Wolford girls’…she used to say there must be something wrong with the lighting in their house for those girls to be going out like that [laughs]….! But that was only a little old tiny shack of a cottage and it was more or less on the main entry, of the University almost opposite where the chimney now stands.

JR: So yes, it was next to the mill? Yes oh I see…

MD: Their name was Wolford - but the Stokes, the Thomasons, and the Warehams I think lived on that where you was talking about was knocked down. My sister thinks those three families lived there. But there were other people who lived down Hertingfordbury Road, there were the Parkers – Dorothy and…

JR: Can I just stop you – if you go down the apex of the triangle, past the Ebenezer and come back down Hertingfordbury Road, in your time, was there some old cottages just behind the Ebenezer chapel?

MD: Well there was a row of old-looking houses along Hertingfordbury Road, yeah..

JR: But up right at the end, by the Baptist Chapel? There may have been two or three and then the old defunct Nelson pub?

MD: That’s where, I think I saw a notice saying the Nelson.

JR: Yes that’s where you would have seen it…that was there, and then there was a garage back by everybody’s back gates, then the cottages started.

MD: Yes, some of the people who lived along there.. what’s her name – Evelyn Walls, who is now Mrs Evelyn Ambrose – there was the Walls family, they were great church goers but Evelyn married a soldier in wartime I think, Ambrose and was then, very shortly afterwards, widowed – I see her about still sometimes.

JR: Yes she’s done a tape for me actually yes.

MD: Yes I think that’s how it was for her…then Dorothy and Elise Parker, we see them about still… one pushes the other one in a wheelchair – I think I mentioned the Stokes, they were on this triangle thing.

JR: Yes.

MD: And Wareham, Billy Wareham, known as Buster, Buster Wareham, which always used to made us laugh because, poor fella – he used to go to St Andrews School but he was absolutely cross eyed. They used to play cricket, the boys used to put up something, you know to play cricket and they always used to say that if they put Buster on bowling, instead of looking at the wicket, the ball would fly off to the side, or something [laughter] like that, you know…yes but they were – they always struck me as being very poor people along there, they didn’t have much of this worlds goods but they were very good, devout, honest sort of people, you know..?

JR: Because the nursery backed on to, well not exactly onto the back of your house – because there was a lane wasn’t there in between you and those cottages?

MD: Well yes you go down Cross Lane….

JR: Well I mean at the back there was this right of way you had to get to your back gate and that came to the backs of those little cottages?

MD: The only way you could get down to our back was to go down Cross Lane and turn to where this shed was.

JR: Yes, when you turned up to where the shed was you were sort of sandwiched between the backs of your houses and the backs of those cottages .

MD: Yes I suspect so, I hardly ever went along the back. My sister had to remind me about the shed because she said – my father used to give everything away gave the shed and the tools – he was no good at anything like that – to somebody, then turned out the tools were a lot of very valuable tools of some kind…well there you are! Well that was that, well what else was there…?

JR: Well we have come down…you don’t remember anyone else in the little cottages – because Evelyn moved over there when she married….she lived on the other side of the oak…

MD: Who?

JR: Evelyn, well she’s now Evelyn Hayden – you knew her as Evelyn Ambrose.

MD: No Evelyn Walls…ummm

JR: She was Evelyn Walls when she was a girl, she married Ambrose first and then Hayden second.

MD: Oh she married again?

JR: She married again…

MD: Eden, now that was another family….

JR: She lived opposite those little cottages on the other side, the ones which have now come down by the Oak, at first…

MD: I remember up further up Hertingfordbury Road, on the other side, was some family called Harris who had a son who was sort of mentally deficient. That was another name, and of course, the poor old boy used to get laughed at but what happened to him I don’t know…

JR: What was his Christian name, do you know?

MD: I don’t know his Christian name, but everyone used to call him GooGoo because he used to go along saying goo-goo, you know….it was very sad really. But I just remembered the name, they would have lived up, more or less, in a cottage where the Jehovah’s Witness place is now.

JR: Yes there are still a few cottages there actually – I think about four.

MD: They were in one of them, had a little garden gate and garden and I think his parents looked after him alright, you know but I think he was really a mentally deficient boy.

JR: Was there anything at the end of Mimram Road, a big house there called the Gables – when you were young – where that first factory is now, that faces the road, just by the bridge?

MD: I don’t think so, we didn’t go up that way very often we always went sort of down the town this way…

JR: Yes.

MD: It used to be the Mayflower Hotel here, where we are now.

JR: Yes well that’s very good, do you want to tell us about the comedy film: the three years between…

MD: The comedy film?

JR: Yes you were talking about some events, at the end of Canon Gills ministry …

MD: Oh dear oh dear…I think I would probably upset too many people I think.

JR: No that’s true, right…I will put the pause on for a second.

I was thinking when I started this project that I would try and find out about history of that triangle and I’d try and find out the landowner, the original land owner, and I managed to do all those things but what I cannot find out is who actually built those houses which is a difficult thing for me to try and conjecture, except that there’s a tythe map with numbers on it and a key of 1838 and it does show who owns the land and it does show who occupies the buildings and some of the landowners. And it’s all divided up into strips for each house, some of the land owners were, at the time local builders, so I can only guess that they built the houses, but it wasn’t one builder who built the whole lot, it was about 5 or 6 different builders who I imagine were building them to the same kind of pattern – but not exactly the same pattern because they all are slightly different, aren’t they?

MD: I really don’t know who built them…

JR: No I don’t expect you know but they thought they were built around 1825. In fact if you look in St Andrew’s vestry minutes you can sometimes see the odd name and that they were rated at about that time – first rated about 1825. There was a woman called Miss Heysham who I think was in 37 all the time – she was on of the first to be rated.

MD: Well that’s Victorian, they were always referred to as being Georgian by everybody weren’t they?…

JR: They were just Georgian – Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and these were about 1825 so about 10 years before Victoria came. The land was originally owned by the Dimsdales, which was the whole triangle really…and some of them, the ones like yours, where you can get in to them from the back but there were some in the middle, probably 33, maybe 31 was the first one, 33 possibly, 31, 29 and I think the next 2 who didn’t have any means of getting any coaches round the back because on the back of them were the little cottages

MD: Yes there would have been.

JR: And the person who lives in number 31 now, Betty King, you might know her, she goes to St Andrews, she thinks you drove the carriage into the smaller part of the house, and that was a kind of carriage or coach house and someone lived there with a topper which was part of the house, on the top and the horse was put out to stable somewhere. But the other ones had stables at the bottom of the gardens, and you’d get into them from Hertingfordbury Road.

MD: Yes that’s how that gate came there…

<END OF SIDE 1>

MD: I can’t understand the diagram, I’ve got one of those things that fixed it to the end of the table – but I can never understand a diagram and put it into practice and I am struggling to see what this diagram…[inaudible].

JR: After we’d sorted out the problem to do with Maisie’s little device to put on the table to make a mug, we came back and sat down, and I had put the microphone off because we didn’t want to waste the battery because we were about ten to fifteen minutes doing that. I omitted to switch the microphone back on again so we missed only a minute or two I suppose. In that time I asked Maisie if she knew, I think it was George Beckwith (or William was it?) who had lived in North Crescent and I wondered if he was possibly to do with the antique business – she didn’t.

MD: Well this was of him, almost next door, there was a yard was an old barber named Mr Whitby.

JR: Hmm, Harry.

MD: Oh you’ve got him?

JR: Yes well…apparently, and I didn’t realise he was the one – I thought he was another one further down, apparently he was the one who nipped over the road in the middle of a haircut to get a drink.

MD: Yes my Dad used to go and get shaved by him everyday and when our hair needed cutting when we were little he used to cut ours too.

JR: I have got here, in 1937, next door to you was someone called Austin G Chapman.

MD: That’s right, yes, he was there for a time. Now he was something in the drapery line I think.

JR: Right.

MD: He was quite well to do and had a housekeeper called Mrs Allum [spelt by MD].

JR: Really?

MD: Yes – well I think it was drapery, I am not absolutely sure about the drapery business but he was quite a well to do gentleman and a nice gentleman. He lived there before the Northerns.

JR: Yes – he was nothing to do with Gravesons was he?

MD: Yes I think that’s what I was thinking of.

JR: Ah right.

MD: Yes that’s what I had in the back of my mind.

JR: Hilary thought that the house was once owned by – her house – that’s 39, was once owned by Gravesons so it could have been, could have been, that he was in his employer’s house

MD: Yes I am pretty sure, now you have mentioned that, that rang a bell. And his housekeeper was Mrs Allum.

JR: Allum. There’s a Mrs Allum I met recently up at Sele Farm, in Charlton House – she was living there. I did a slide show there recently and she said she would do a tape, she was Mrs Allum – she may have been some relation?

MD: Some relation, because this was an elderly lady..

JR: Maybe a grandmother-in-law?

MD: She sometime chatted with my mum over the fence. I always hold her in great remembrance because my mum was very shy, she didn’t mingle much. She was a lovely person – much loved by the few people who did know her, you know, like the poem The Violet by the massive stone. I always remember Mrs Allum saying to me, after my mum had died how sorry she was to hear it – she said such a gently spoken sweet lady your mother was, I thought crumbs, you know, I have something to live up to!! [laughter]

JR: Well..

MD: She would say the odd bugger, like I do sometimes if I drop something – you wouldn’t say damn or blast – oh dear, she’d think, the wrath of heaven!

Strangely they were very happily married, very different – my authoritative father …very different, she was very gentle and he very authoritative, very strict and authoritative but they loved each other dearly and of course, being three girls, my father would never hear the word sex or you know, I mean, have it mentioned in the house, it was utterly forbidden, we were not supposed to know anything about that [laughter].

When I first became aware of people being homosexual, which I think really came about after reading about roman slaves, and how the boys were not allowed to lift anything in case their beautiful skins were bruised I remember thinking well there are not there to serve the dinner up are they? Well that’s how I first got my…well I didn’t understand you see, having no brothers, no males in the family at all, except our father I couldn’t see how it was done geometrically speaking…so I thought I had better ask mother. And she who wouldn’t hear the word damn told me exactly what happened….I can hear her now…I tell everyone don’t tell me about the westerns no, my mother said, well my dear [whispers] they go up the back passage [laughter] and that was my mum who would tell us off for saying blast…[laughter]

JR: Oh.

MD: Anyway…

JR: Yes…..

MD: I never saw my father like that of course – that was before he was married. I have got a picture of him as he was as we all knew him at St Andrews…in here somewhere…[rummages]

JR: Yes he was quite a well-regarded man wasn’t he in the church?

MD: Well yes..

JR: Church Warden for many years.

MD: I have a signed apron upstairs with Lord Kitchener on it.

JR: Have you?

MD: Because that’s whose lodge he was in…[rummages]..yeah…Flora Blake’s husband, who was a photographer took it…

JR: OH!! Oh yes…[looking at photo] I didn’t envisage…I haven’t seen him before…I didn’t envisage him to look like that…

MD: That’s how he did look when he was with Lawrence of Arabia….

JR: Oh I have the wrong specs on, that’s nice isn’t it?

MD: There’s another one…

JR: Yes yes.

MD: He was so authoritative that just one look from him was enough but he was a good kind fair father I couldn’t have found a better one…had all girls though!

JR: I was reading a little article in the paper about this and it said they did some scientific study recently and the found that, not always by any means but generally speaking the macho authoritarian type fathers did produce girls and the less dominant fathers produced sons and it was to prevent the male strain getting too dominant if they kept producing more and more dominant yes – it’s natures way of taking care of that apparently – I don’t know whether it’s true – you do often….in fact this survey had been taken at an army head quarters and a lot of the officers had produced daughters – yeah…

MD: Yes well he had three! And then my young niece had to some and make home with us for about four years and she always said that they were the happiest years of her whole life. I can remember father lining the three of us up and saying she would be like another daughter and if I see any remarks made or anything like that, there’ll be trouble! While she is with me she will be like my daughter and she always said it was the happiest time of her life with my mother…she was my mother’s niece really..

JR: But he took his responsibilities seriously didn’t he, by the sound of it

MD: Well her father had gone to pieces when he lost his wife, married again after some years and took her and wanted to take her back, she had another year to go at the grammar school, but my father would have liked her to have stay and finished it and stayed with us for always but he couldn’t really go against her own father.

JR: Where did they come from then?

MD: They were from Essex. Dagenham.

JR: Hmm, yes it was far enough then I suppose. Well it would have been nice if he’d left her, even just for her to finish out her time at Presdales.

MD: He always said if he had if she’d had – because she didn’t have a very happy life, she didn’t make all that a good a marriage, then she had to look after her husband when her husband had Alzheimer’s disease from quite a young time really and then – but she always remembered in great detail everything about those four years which my sisters and I have forgotten. Do you remember – she used to say to us when we visited – she died about three years ago – she’d say to us – do you remember we used to – Uncle George used to bring us that particular sort of coffee crisp - do you remember? Well my sisters and I don’t remember a coffee crisp and she always said, and she told me – she loved him better than her own father…but yes he was a wonderful man, but there was only one boss in the house!

JR: Yes.

MD: Yes. The men would often tip their hats like that, you know, at the bell ringer and that, I suppose it was getting in the army and getting where he did and it was only the IRA that put an end to it otherwise we would have been in Egypt and not living in this country at all…!

JR: Have you got any...I didn’t bring the notes but I was going through some registered this morning at the record office and I think Edgar Lake has mentioned this to me before, had you got any other relatives in the town?

MD: Me?

JR: Yes, Dittons?

MD: No other Dittons, the only the Ditton left, in this country is a cousin of mine in Ware, she was in the same school year as me – her father was my father’s brother - Irene Ditton – and she lives in Ware and that’s the only relatives we have here at all.

The other – two of my father’s brothers emigrated to Australia and we have cousins out there but they broke off all connection with this country, its only here and there, you get a letter. My sister who likes doing all the family tree has followed by and we get a letter instigated by her 3-4 years ago. But no the only other Ditton left, is this cousin of mine, who is unmarried like I am and the same age living in Ware.

JR: So any Dittons I come across are not likely to be related – I thought – no – maybe I am wrong…

MD: There’s something about someone called Dillon…but that’s nothing to do with me, us.

JR: No this was Ditton, I was looking at the congregational register this morning for some reason and I suddenly saw this Ditton. Going back to these names, the other names I have got here for number 37 are TW Muskett at number 15 and Frederick Palmer, was he the shopkeeper from …

MD: Palmer…the only Palmer I remember down St Andrews Street was a shop called Palmers, a sweet shop with old Mrs Hold in there…

JR: Yes.

MD: But I don’t remember a Palmer, or a Muskett not at all…

JR: These two seemed to share the house, Muskett and Palmer. Number 15 was one of the small ones.

MD: Ginn, those were the councillors and mayors.

JR: Yes in fact the Ginns, Emily Ginn, lived in that house, in the last century but not in…And the other one I have got down, at number 11, where I thought the Sessions might live, but I have got down Arthur White for that one, so, but I don’t know who he was…

MD: No No, doesn’t ring a bell.

JR: The only other ones – I haven’t got them all – in 27/28 there’s mention of Frederick Hemmings in 13 – you mentioned…

MD: Yes well he owned the two properties along there… they were Plymouth Brethren– but very good people – you know, he liked to help people out if he could.

JR: Yes. And one of the other ones – number 17 – appeared to be a house of the congregational church…because they had ministers going in there, every time the minister changed he had the same house so they must have bought it at one time for their minister or leased it…

I’ve got O Wigginton at number 41. But I haven’t got anyone for 37 in 1929 because you hadn’t moved in then had you?

MD: No, I was 5 then. I was still with my grandmother then I think.

JR: Chapman I’ve got …

MD: Well no, I’d just started at St Andrews School at 5 – I spent a little of my babyhood with my grandmother because my mother got ill, and you know she’d already got my older sisters and her mother took the baby, you know like you would do sometimes to give her a bit of a spell. It seemed to me as if I was there 2 or 3 years, one of my unmarried aunts taught he to play the piano but my elder sister said no it wasn’t it was a matter of months – she said time when you’re little like that, a week seems like a year don’t it?

She reckoned it was only a few months. They did come round to see me, my mother and father and my little sister, every week, and they would tell me I would come home soon. I can remember my mother saying I want her to be used to being at home before she starts at school, you know…? But my early memories are all with my grandmother and my unmarried aunts, one of whom played the piano and showed me how to do it..

JR: Yes yes.

MD: But mum had a kind of nervous thing and she was inclined to be like that – you know, one of those kind of things that happens after you have had a baby sometimes, and her mother took me just to give her a bit of a spell you know…but I went back quite a while before I started school.

JR: So no more people you remember in the Crescent?

MD: No – but if I do I will contact you…

TAPE ENDS