Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Richens, Charles (O2000.1) |
| Interviewee | Charles Richens (CR) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (JR), with Keith Neat (KN) present. |
| Date | 06/01/2000 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: 02000.1
Interviewee: Charles Richens (CR)
Date: 6th January 2000
Venue: 3 Peel Crescent, Bengeo, Hertford
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR), with Keith Neat (KN) present.
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: This is Jean Riddell and I’m at the home of Mr. Charles Richens of 3 Peel Crescent, Bengeo and he’s the uncle of Keith Neat, who is now my next-door neighbour, and he [Charles] lived for a long time in Wesley Avenue, off Castle Street. He’s going to tell us about living there and when he left etc. [Charles will be 85 in March this year].
Conversation about hearing his own voice
JR: When did you arrive in the town?
CR: I arrived in the town when I was demobbed. I used to work at County Hall, I say work at County Hall, I worked in the Treasurers Dept. and before the war all the departments were spread all over the place, and then they centralised it at County and that was completed in 1939. In September, that weekend we spent taking all our stuff up there to County Hall, started work on the Monday and on the Friday the TA were called up.
Because I was in the Territorials, as with most people of my age, under 30, they expected you to join a force which would become full-time in the event of hostilities and anyone over 30 went in the Fire Brigade or Special Police. Friday ..was called up and I had 5 days there, they didn’t see me apart from visiting, until I was demobbed in December ’45 when I returned to work in the February. Meanwhile the wife was living in Surrey with her parents and we had to think about coming north to Hertfordshire and the family moved up into Ware. It must have been 1944.
They advertised this bungalow and Wesley Avenue came direct from Castle Street, there is a gap, the only thing you can see [now] is the underpass. You had houses on either side apart from the south side which was an old police station and a bit of ground which is green, there’s the police station where you can see it and then a bit of green and then some new buildings. In between was this patch of green which belonged to the Friends and I think some of the Friends used it for bit of an allotment during the war. That part of it is still there off Castle Street you go down and through that gate in the Castle wall and that ground belonged to the Quakers and I had a friend who used to do his cabbages and things, as everybody was encouraged to do. I think there was an anti-aircraft shelter in there and then Wesley Avenue went straight up. [He is describing today’s Moat Garden, with the old ice House].
JR: This bungalow you had, was it a County Council bungalow?
CR: On the ground between Wesley Avenue and Pegs Lane, that wasn’t developed at all, there was a bungalow that had a back gate in Pegs Lane, then between Wesley Avenue and Pegs Lane it was all open to allotments which went right up to the border of the grammar school grounds with the lodge on the left. And I think on the corner was a Guide hut. This was all open and the council bought all that area as an investment because I suppose they thought they were going to build on it, but there’s this bungalow which was occupied by a member of staff. This became vacant at the end of 1945 and the Treasurer said we should notify wives of people in the services.
Fortunately my wife was pregnant with my daughter and she had all before her, 6 months gone, and I think that swung it. She went in, in December 1945, a few days before Christmas. I shall never forget that, I came straight from Germany and we were held up in the Channel because of a rough crossing and went up to Northampton for our demob suits then came back and I got to Hertford in the morning. I walked past and someone walked across, hello mate, he said, you just out are you? I said yes, I suppose I looked like it, khaki, with the funny little attache case. Do you know where Wesley Avenue is? Ooh, I don’t know, I think’s down there, Castle Street, got no name on it but I think that’s it. I walked along and saw this and it was surprising that people didn’t quite know where it was, the bungalow didn’t have a path onto the Avenue, you walked across the green verge into the road. I went back to work at the end of February, had three months leave. Apart from the caretakers lodge [Sgt. Maj. Inman]…
JR: So his property and yours were the only two in Wesley Avenue.
CR: Well, the property backed onto it. [In Castle Street] there were two or three houses and a pub there, the White Horse. From Pegs Lane there was a backway going into pokey little yards. There was a car park to the pub which was on the corner, the Gladstone. When they developed Gascoyne Way that was knocked down and they built the pub in Pegs Lane. Then going towards the town there was another house on the road, it fronted on Castle Street and their garden went the whole length of Wesley Avenue and up to the grammar school boundary. And then there were one or two rather interesting houses right the way round to the War Memorial. There was only one road that came out and that was Queens Road.
JR: Was the house called the Nut Walk there when you were there? On the corner of Castle Street and Queens Road.
CR: Could be, because Queens Road comes down and it stops, actually it came down to whats that house there …..[Bayley Hall]. There were no big roads coming out from there until the Gascoyne Way and so there were houses right up to there, Victorian and Georgian houses. But the one on the corner whose garden was opposite mine, the entrance was in Castle Street [no. 25] and the garden ran up, was occupied by 2 ladies, the Misses Andrews, known as the 2 Andrews sisters.
JR: Were they still living there when you were?
CR: They were there, I think the old man, the father, was still there, they were missionaries, I think they rather favoured Wesley, chapel type people and they and their parents did missionary work in Japan, the northern island, and they knew a lot about Japan. They were little old ladies, used to favour black, and very, very sweet and a bit tottery, may we come and borrow your phone? They never had a phone and they were worth money, you know? And we got to know them fairly well and Wesley apparently stayed in this house. This house with the 2 Andrew’s sisters, I think it had been in their family some time
JR: It had, probably 200 years.
CR: Wesley had stayed with them, so they knew about that. Then there were one or two other characters along there, oh, yes, Culls! They were occupying one of the houses further towards the town.
JR: Did you know them?
CR: Yes, this Cull! There were three Cull brothers, none of them married and a Miss Cull. We never knew their names, one was Capper Cull, one was Trilby Cull and the other was Bowler Cull. Miss Cull was very, very nice I think they were deeply religious and too good to be true. Cull had a shop at the bottom of Church Street and I think Miss Cull used to work there and Capper Cull (Reg), they all wore hats, probably like me, bald you see!. Trilby Cull worked in the Education Dept in County Hall and Bowler at Longmores, he was one of the chief clerks there and that was the Culls.
JR: They’re well known in the town.
CR: That was when I came there. The tradesmen were all well established, they’d been there years. There was the Mayor, he was supposed to be the representative of Hertford, he was a chimney sweep, not that I’ve got anything against chimney sweeps, it’s a trade, he was probably better off than a lot of ordinary blokes, but as a town dignitary he wouldn’t be there now.
Then Wren’s the bakers seemed to dominate, and various tradesmen, they seemed to have been all their lives, father to son. It was a town with little different until the flood of County Hall types coming in just before the war. Other people came from the Surveyors at Hatfield, they all piled into County Hall and it became a commuter area and therefore the population changed. They were all very close, you were a foreigner, are you at County Hall? Oh, yes, of course. I found it a bit pathetic and insular, a Londoner in town. I can understand why people think “country yokels, I don’t like that because I was a first generation Londoner, my people were country people, they came from Essex and they were farmers, and I’ve got an affinity to the land, and I’ve always like the country. And then the road went round, Pegs Lane was very narrow.
JR: Were there any cottages there when you were there?
CR: From County Hall down to where the garage is now, that was all green and there was a house back there [Wallfields] and of course there were chestnut trees and elm trees all over the place and then it came down to the little garage, Chaseside. They had a bit of scrap ground round the back where they used to have cars for servicing or for sale. It wasn’t as big, but it’s just at that point where Castle Street bent round and chinked in again to West Street and on that corner was a shop, general provisions and sweets, and opposite there was a pub. The Black Swan. If you wanted to go from Castle Street to North Road there was just a pathway, like a twitchel, there used to be people occupying little cottages and they’d come out onto the path. You couldn’t run a car down there and then you came out by the side of the church.
JR: Apparently the cottages now there were facing 4 other cottages at the back if the Black Swan at one time.
CR: When I was there they had the maltings there, what was the brewery….
JR: Nicholls.
CR: Nicholls, I used to like their bitter beer, much better than Macs.
JR: Brewed on the premises. Did you ever go into any of the pubs, did you have a local?
CR: Well, the one there now, in Castle Street, the White Horse.
JR: What was it like in there?
CR: It’s not altered a lot, they had 2 little bars about the size of this room, one they called the Saloon and one the Public Bar.
JR: Has it extended since you left there?
CR: Oh, it was like that for ages and ages but I think they’ve extended, taken in another house.
JR: I thought that.
CR: I think that’s living quarters and they use upstairs because there’s a bar upstairs, up rickety stairs, but I think it’s quite good. It attracts young-ish types, students and it’s real ale, that sort of caper. Nicholls only had that pub and the Two Brewers along Port Vale, and the Warren House, up in New Road, Bengeo, I don’t know whether that was, it only had about three. I’m surprised because it was good beer over there. I like McMullens AK, if I’m going anywhere that had their beer, I have it.
JR: What did the Black Swan and the Gladstone have?
CR: Gladstone, that was McMullens, the Black Swan, I don’t know.
JR: A free house?
CR: I don’t know, there’s another one farther down West Street.
JR: The Black Horse, that was Greene King, but that might have been Wells and Winch before that.
CR: You go round and the something and Firkin [Blackbirds], that was a London brewer, Taylor Walkers, I didn’t mind that. I went in that a bit, and also this one round the corner which was Nicholls. About 4 of us used to meet specially in the first, just as I came out of the forces, January, February, March. We used to get there about 9 o’clock, all ex-service blokes, I was a sergeant and we used to use this as a sergeants’ mess! And we used to chat for about an hour. The wife never moaned about it she realised I was trying to wean myself away.
Of course when March came and the weather improved I had an awful garden to do. That’s another interesting thing about that bungalow, from the garden, from the bungalow and lean-to the bloke who originally had it before and sold it to County Hall was a bloke named Bill Archer and they were scrap-iron merchants. Well, he built this bungalow and blimey, no door looked the same, he used used stuff, mind you, it was built really solidly, but you’d get one door a bit bigger than the other and one wider or higher! When he found out it was occupied by me, not because it was me, he said, oh, I used to live round there. They’d got a place near Port Vale, round the back there, there’s houses there now and he used to put his scrap iron there, piping, in fact I got one or two pipes, poles and post, used to go there and he said, I know you, I used to live there. I thought, right, when I was digging this pace it was all asphalt, these lorries used to be kept there and this guy who kept an allotment he said you know old Bill Archer used to have a lot of scrap iron there and he showed me a photo of the scrap iron, it was a pyramid of scrap iron higher than the bungalow. I thought, my god. And he sold it to Germany in 1939, early part of 1939. The war was obviously imminent, everybody felt that two or three years before it actually happened, young blokes knew it was going to come.
JR: Do you remember the people who kept the shop on the corner, Canon?
CR: A fellow name of Swallow, I think there must have been someone there before but I can’t remember. But the Swallows I can, because they had a daughter the same age as mine and they used to toddle off together to school.
JR: Was there any one called Canon in that area?
CR: There used to be a Canon where I lived in Bengeo.
JR: The shop was on the corner of West Street and Castle Street?
CR: Yes, that’s where West Street finished and Castle Street started and then it was opposite the oast houses. Down there, West Street you’d got little lanes off and some houses faced on there and another one was on the corner.
End side one
Side two
JR: Somebody was telling us about a car which drove into the front of the Black Swan, came rather fast down West Street and straight into the Black Swan because the Black Swan stuck out a bit, didn’t it.
CR: I used to know someone who used to live on that side but not in those early days, what was her name, she was a mayoress of Hertford, they lived on the same side as the Black Swan, their garden backed onto the meads.
JR: The river, along West Street?
CR: He used to be chairman of the youth club, the oast house was taken over as a youth club, they had a committee.
JR: A recent mayor?
CR: Well, I don’t know if he’s still alive, a Mrs….. she was a councillor.
JR: Last year’s mayor, Jane Page, lives in West Street.
CR: Page!
JR: Oh, right, you mean her!
CR: Yes, and I don’t know whether her husband’s still about
JR: Oh, yes. I thought he did run a youth club in that maltings, but he’s transferred himself to the Pioneer Hall.
CR: They moved from there because they developed it into flats or whatever.
JR: John’s not retired yet, he’s still working. Those maltings, Robert Kiln took an apartment there, a big house there, that’s the biggest bit as you walk down there.
CR: I was there for some time, I was secretary and committee whatever. Mind you, I worked in an approved school, I got away from County. I was there for about a couple of years, used to walk up there an I thought God, am I going to walk up this flaming hill to the palace for the next 50 years. I was just mucking about with a lot of old women and a lot of old men. Then I went up there and became a clerk and a court officer and did all the after care stuff, reports and things and I did some visits and did the admin, the accounts as well, conferences etc. and I had extraneous duties which was kids outside hours, evenings, I thought it would be a bit of a tie, it was but it was part of your life and you thought nothing of it, far more interesting. There was a certain change in the population going on. One man left and another coming, and the court, and I used to take boxing for the boys.
JR: How did the boys get there, were they referred by a psychologist?
CR: Oh, no, no. they went to juvenile courts. They were committed for three years, like going to prison or to borstal. But they cut that lark out, used to have junior ones and intermediate and senior approved schools which were bordering on borstal. Borstal was a penal establishment as against approved school, which is a training establishment under discipline and I think they were very good things. A lot of people did descry them as militant , but this is what they wanted and what they want nowadays.
JR: Can you give me an example of what kind of misdemeanour they would have….
CR: Oh, well, non attendance at school, punching and stealing, arson, one or two; destruction, but that was a prank. Undisciplined kids roaming the streets and of course parents aid it’s not my fault my kid’s like it, it’s the company they keep. Well, of course, every parent says that. But I quite liked them, they were untrained likeable boys.
JR: What age did you start with?
CR: They came from 11 to 15.
JR: And did they stay the whole time?
CR: Well it was 3 years and if a boy came at 13 he’s got 2 years to leave at 15., that’s school leaving age, he’s got another year, that year would be on licence, he went to work then after that 3 years there were 3 years supervision if the lad was there at 12 he’d done his 3 years for which he was committed then we’d have him on our books for another 3 years on licence. They were then visited by welfare officers, Home Office welfare officers. They were attached to our school and sometimes I went out there especially for new boys When they went on leave I’d take them home and have a look at the home and see what they were like. Then parents used to come on specified days.
JR: Did any of them ever go on to further education?
CE: No, not while I was there, some may have gone into intermediate School.
JR: Mainstream?
CR: Yes, but by and large I thought it was a success because there was a lot of criticism when I was there from the powers that be, directives from County Hall, silly things, if you have trouble you mustn’t touch them you should counsel them – I said what the hell did they know about it and why didn’t they come down and try it .
How do you counsel somebody who’s got no idea of what was right and wrong. The wrong thing was to get caught, that was it. If they didn’t respect other people’s property, they’ve not bn brought up to respect other people’s property, if you say how would you like someone to pinch something from you? Well, they wouldn’t like it, that they understand, they ought to take more care of their stuff, nothing wrong. You can’t counsel boys if that’s how they’ve been brought up. We had a psychiatrist, there, a pain in the neck, he was, the first one was not bad, the next one was silly. He’d look at a boy after interview, give a fair summing up, he’d tell you what the boy was like, but he couldn’t tell you what to do.
JR: Did you live in the bungalow all this time?
CR: No, there for about 11 years when ewe moved to Bengeo. My daughter was 11. Went up there and took over a shop, I thought no way am I getting money like this, so the wife didn’t think she ought to go to work, and we took this shop for 5 or 6 years, general provisions. It’s not there now, do you know Fanshawe St. do you know Byde Street? It was on the corner of Fanshawe And Byde Streets, you can see the big windows. I think originally it was a Mac’s pub, well, it was Mac’s property and they didn’t get the licence, they got one up Sele Farm when that was developed. Well, I got a house and a car out of it. Then we moved across to Fanshawe Street, houses that look over the Beane. It was interesting (the shop) it was worthwhile, what was I, 45-50. I’d got my house paid for while other people were slaving away.
JR: Then you moved to Fordwich?
CR: Yes, 6 years there, 13 in Fanshawe and 21 years in Fordwich until the wife died about 4 or 5 years ago. Daughter thought I ought to have a bungalow instead of that, the garden was very demanding, we had a kitchen garden and I built it up. Fanshawe Street was on a slope, I took 2 years to terrace it and then Fordwich Hill, I couldn’t move for blinking rose beds and God knows how many trees. I don’t like chopping trees but I had to clear a space and breathe. I had that and an allotment in Hertingfordbury. Now it’s as much as I can do to wash up these days!.
JR: Can you manage to do your garden here?
CR: Well, it’s a big lawn.
JR: Just to return briefly to the area we’ve been talking about – do you remember anyone else living down in West Street, were there any shops down there when you were there?
CR: I don’t think so. I used to know one or two there, Page, a scout commissioner for this area used to run scout concerts like….
JR: Ralph Reader? CR: As you go along, the houses are on the pavement till you get to the pub, then you find they go up a little bank,
JR: Did you ever know Gordon Moodey, no., 27, he was a commercial artist and was very knowledgeable about architecture and he was also a staunch member of EHAS
CR: Oh, interesting bloke.
JR: He made lots of notes about buildings, particularly in? West Street, all his memoires, diary jottings are in the Record Office.
CR: Funny you should say that, old Len Green, he took all his photos on Sunday mornings before the traffic was around and he said you know, one of the lost fascinating things, along St. Andrew Street you notice, look at the roofs of all the houses, and the pitches and the tiles.
JR: Different chimneys as well, and he said the bet time to photograph St. Andrew Street was quarter past 6 on Midsummer Day morning, the light is excellent then, apparently. He has given one of his cameras to he group a camera with special lenses attached to it, you can photograph photographs so if there’s anything that you’ve got that you wouldn’t mind, I could come up in the daylight.
The interview ends with Charles going off to look for photographs.