Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Geering, Mary (O1998.13) |
| Interviewee | Mary Geering (MG) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 28/05/1998 |
| Transcriber by | Susan Hitch |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1998.13
Interviewee: Mary Geering (MG)
Date: 28th May 1998
Venue: 5 Fordwich Close, Hertford
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Susan Hitch
Typed by: Susan Hitch
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: This is Peter Ruffles, and I’m at the home of Mrs Mary Geering, number 5, Fordwich Close, watch your handwriting otherwise it goes to 5 Fordwich Hill, 5 Fordwich Rise, as I’ve just discovered – and the date is May the 28th, Thursday I think, and we’re sitting looking at each other, and Mary’s thinking “Oh dear, what have I let myself in for ?” But she’s just had her photograph taken, by the fir tree and in a minute I think we could probably get – we might roll from here, mightn’t we, because we’re only chatting. Yes. Were you born in Hertford, then, Mary?
MG: No, I was born in Chelmsford the county town of Essex, and I came to Hertford when I was two,
PR: I always thought you were here from the outset, somewhere along the Ware Road
MG: Not quite, but I think I’m accepted (laughs)
PR: Ah. Well…
MG: The firm for which my father worked, the printing company, went on short time, because of the slump, and then it closed down altogether, and the house in which we lived belonged to the printing company. My parents would have been able to buy it after they’d worked for the firm for five years, but he hadn’t worked for them for five years at that time, so we lost our home, as well as my father losing his job. He knew of two jobs in printing, vacant, one in Watford and one in Hertford, and he got the one in Hertford.
PR: He didn’t have any other connections with Hertford before…
MG: Yes, there were some fairly distant relatives in Hertford by the name of Walls and two of them had an iron works of some sort in that road next to the Baptist church.
PR: Chambers Street?
MG: Chambers Street, that’s it, down on the right hand side. I noticed it’s gone now. I walked down there.
PR: They’re built on now.
MG: All built on. I think they were great-uncles of mine. I know they were quite elderly. And there was also an aunt, and she lived in the almshouses. We saw very little of any of them, and they’re long since dead.
PR: All Saints almshouses is that?
MD: All Saints almshouses, yes.
PR: Because Jimmy Walls, one of the brothers, had that iron foundry. Yes, the one whose – his wife, and then widow, was an All Saints person…
MG: Oh!
PR: Very posh
MG: Really?
PR: Mmm. His mother Mrs Walls wore a big hat. And she was a regular All Saints’er, so you actually came to a town with forbears as it were and a parish.
MG: Right.
PR: Yes, she was an inveterate All Saints attender. I don’t know that he was , I don’t think he went at all , but er… No, the Walls family is quite well known in Hertford, so your pedigree is good in that connection.
MG: Are there any of them left?
PR: Yes, generations down. The Blakes, Glynis Blakes whose mother was a Tubbitt (?) whose grandmother was a Walls, that little line continues. And then there are other offspring. There is Evelyn Hayden, Evelyn Ambrose, who was Evelyn Walls, and she is a cousin also of .. I think it was a cousin of the ones that your claiming were, so you’re connected. She’s 82…
MG: (who has been making sounds of surprise) I think it was on my father’s mother’s side, that connection, because my father came from Kent. He was born in Faversham. And then when he was learning the printing trade he lived in Hemel Hempstead, where my mother was born, and they met there.
PR: But you landed in Hertford…
MG: Well they hadn’t anywhere to live. My mother and I had to live with her parents in Hemel Hempstead. For the first weeks my father lived in the Salisbury Arms and then he tried digs somewhere (clock chiming has started) and after a while they rented a house in Villiers Street. It had ninety steps and one tap. Cold. In the basement. It must have been horrendous for my mother, it really must.
PR: Mmm. You don’t remember the number?
MG: I think it was 29. I can look it up if…
PR: Put it on the form if you’ve got it somewhere…
MG: I’ll do that. I’ve got it somewhere…
PR: It’s nice to keep tabs on, because they come up with old registers and other little bits of research…
MG: I can er… in the archives in the electoral registers at County Hall. I have got the number. And then after something like six months they moved from there to a council house, 37 Page Road.
PR: Ah, right
MG: Almost the last house in the road – 37, 39 – 42 was the last one.
PR: So you were beyond the roundabout…
MG: Oh right beyond the roundabout. Opposite the house was a small spinney, with a gravel pit a bit further down the road on the end of it, and the fields all round. So of course we used to play in the spinney and the fields, and the gravel pit, as children.
PR: Admiral Street, Clyde Terrace…
MG: Clyde Terrace, and Spinney Street.
PR: Interesting names.
MG: Oh yes. During the war we had an allotment. Down on Foxholes Avenue. That’s along at the end at the right (confused passage with both talking at once about police houses).
PR: So…
MG: So, we lived there. Our parents didn’t move from there until – oh, about 1967 or 68. When they had retired and I lived in a small house at Letty Green then. But we’d all married and left home by then of course…(Pause)
PR: Still, when you say all, Mary, who – who are…
MG: I’m the eldest, and I have a younger sister, and the youngest is a brother.
PR: Right. Very well known brother.
MG: Yes. John Cook he was a borough councillor for quite a few years.
PR: Yes, yes. He ought to have been the Mayor.
MG: Yes, I heard that bit! Rather unfortunate. Actually it was ambition from childhood, to be Mayor of Hertford
PR: Mmm. A very good one. Very firm and clear views. Speaks his mind.
MG: Yes, he’s not afraid of saying what needs saying.
PR: No, no. Sometimes it’s better not to, but (both speak together) but he’s, er, forthright…
MG: Yes.
PR: So, now Mary, what shall we erm...
MG: School?
PR: Yes, let’s do school.
MG: I went to Faudel Phillips School.
PR: Right.
MG: It was about one and a quarter miles from our house, and I walked that four times a day. There were no school lunches in those days.
PR: Gosh
MG: I must have started school either at the very end of 1935 or – no, I was five in 1936 – either the very end of 1936 or the beginning of 1937. Miss Baker was my teacher for the first year and for the second year there, and for my third year I had Miss Cracksford (?). She appeared ever so ancient. And the headmistress was Miss Fier(?). She was rather fierce. I thought she was rather fierce. One day she was going to come along and inspect our work in the classroom, and Miss Baker said that she would see if we joined our “o”s together and I announced to the whole class “I don’t like that woman”
PR: Oh! (Both laugh)
MG: My mother heard about it
PR: Well, maybe your territory - pass some comments., judgement even.
MG: At the time of the coronation of George VI, each child was given by the Mayor, who came to the school, a book, all about King George, a whole life – a biography – and I still have my copy. And er… it’s a very nice book.
PR: Presumably other schools had the same?
MG: I suppose so
PR: I hadn’t heard of that.
MG: I’ll show it to you presently. Yes. And erm… I went to Abel Smith, when I was – eight, I suppose – no, nearly eight, probably, because the war had started by then, just started, and the playground – not the playground, the field was dug up first – air raid shelters, concrete benches…
PR: Yes.
MG: Yes. And when we were down there we usually practiced the tables or sang songs. I had Miss Peacock to start with. The next class was er… also an entry class was taken by Mr. Crossley. But he had to leave the school and go into the RAF, and I’ve no idea what happened to him, no idea at all. And Mrs Dewsbury took his place, and from Miss Peacock’s class I went to Miss Pick’s class, and then to Major Upton’s, the headmaster’s. And those two classes, Miss Pick’s and Major Upton’s, had a folding screen between them, wood at the bottom and windows at the top half, so they were going to be folded back when it was necessary for everybody to be together.
PR: Mmm, mmm…
MG: So we sat – when the screens were together we were sitting at our desks, we were back to back – we couldn’t see into Major Upton’s class, and they couldn’t see into ours, but I think the two teachers could see each other. But from there I won a scholarship to the grammar school.
PR: You’d be eleven then, would you?
MG: No, I went to the grammar school when I was still ten. I went in the September and I was ten in the December. In those days school changes occurred on the calendar year, erm… the calendar year when you were ten – eleven.
PR: Yes
MG: Rather than on the school year. Because the girl whose birthday was in January who was only a fortnight younger than I was, she had to stay a year longer.
PR: Mmm. So you were eleven in the December.
MG: I was eleven in the December.
PR: So you said goodbye to Major Upton – sounds a very grand name.
MG: Yes he used to be quite fierce, but I think he was quite a good teacher.
PR: And was he a First World War Major?
MG: Oh yes, definitely. He stayed at school. But it couldn’t have been long before he retired, because when my sister went to the school, and she’s only two years younger than I am, she had Mr. Reid.
PR: Mmm, Bill Reid.
MG: Yes, Bill Reid. He used to play the Dame in the local pantomime and he was absolutely wonderful!
PR: Oh, so Major Upton was a relic from quite a bit earlier. And had he been at the school a long time?
MG: I believe so, but I don’t actually know. But he lived up at Birch Green, I believe it was, and he cycled to school.
PR: Ah!
MG: He also had two evacuees staying with him. We had several evacuees in the school. He had Mary and John Baston (?). They weren’t in the same class, but they were brother and sister. And another evacuee was Gloria – I’ve forgotten her Christian name - her surname, but she had beautiful blonde hair.
PR: Ah. These were Battersea’s were they or…
MG: Er…no
PR: Or was it Battersea Grammar School came…
MG: Battersea Grammar School…
PR: But they weren’t in that – didn’t come with families or anything like that…
MG: No, they were with the boys’ Grammar School, and at Ware Grammar School we had – we did have evacuees there but I can’t – they came from Hastings.
PR: Ah!
MG: They came from Hastings. And at one time the schooling was part-time, with the Hastings girls part of the time and the Grammar School, the Ware Grammar School girls the other part of the day, but that was before I started there, I had full time teaching at Ware. We also had air-raid shelters in the garden.
PR: When you were at the Primary School and you were singing in the air-raid shelters, was that only when there had been an air-raid warning, or did you go there for practices or anything like that?
MG: Oh no, I don’t remember any practices, we went when the siren sounded. Which wasn’t very often because the siren didn’t often sound during the day. Most used to come at night.
PR: It was off you trooped and…
MG: Oh yes, we used to wear gas masks. And…they gave us bottles of milk, a third of a pint, which we used to have at school, and the milk came in one pint bottles so we always had to take a mug to school every day, so that every pint bottle was then divided between three children.
PR: Gosh. So how long would you have been sitting in the shelter on the concrete benches, obviously it would vary, till the All Clear went…
MG: I don’t remember it ever being very long, because it was daytime, and daytime alerts didn’t last very long usually.
PR: Did you ever see any enemy aircraft, as it were, or was it just a warning…
MG: Not when I was at school, but I did when we were at home. One day the siren hadn’t gone – it was a summer’s day, and er… my sister and I had just had our hair washed, it was a beautiful day so it was being dried out of doors – and we heard this noise above us, and a lot of aircraft were flying around, and we just ran indoors as fast as we possibly could. It was a dog-fight, it was called, between our aircraft and German aircraft.
PR: Chasing – one chasing the other off…
MG: Yes. The siren hadn’t sounded. Our air raid shelter at home was the coal cellar – well, it wasn’t a cellar, it was the cupboard under the stairs, where the coal had been kept, but it had been cleaned out, and erm… that was our air raid shelter – until very much later in the war, when we did have a Morrison shelter, which was a shelter built inside the house, of sheets of iron, or steel I suppose it was. And we had a double, so all five of us could sleep in it. I think my parents had the bottom, and my sister and I were on the top, and our brother across our feet. That was … the worst time of the war. They opted for…
PR: ’44…
MG: Yes, I think so. I think that’s when it was.
PR: Because Hertford knew quite a lot of raids in ’42-’43, I think towards the end…
MG: *** doodlebugs. We went in the garden when we heard a doodlebug, and we looked up and saw the thing, and we fled indoors as fast as we could, and Uncle **** happened to be visiting us at the time – he had been in the RAF but had been invalided out, in fact he was a police officer, and he said he had never seen anyone run so fast. There was a doodlebug coming! Fortunately the flames were still coming out of the back, so we knew it wasn’t going to land just yet, but we still fled indoors. And again the siren hadn’t sounded then.
PR: This Morrison shelter, was that – couldn’t have been to do with Herbert Morrison could it?
MG: I think it was… (speaking together)
PR: He was part of the coalition Government I suppose. He came into his own after the war
MG: I think it was named after him. I think there was a floor to it, which was a sheet of, I think it must have been steel. Then there was another sheet of steel to make the upper layer, and a third sheet for its roof, with angle irons at each corner, and the sides were covered in a mesh on a frame. We had to climb in and…
PR: It must have taken up a lot of permanent space
MG: Yes, it did take up a lot of space (laughs.) But… before we had that shelter, if there were a lot of raids we could sleep downstairs anyway. My parents brought their bed down, my father brought bunk beds in the corner of the living room, and my sister and brother and I had a camp bed in the kitchen.
PR: Mmm. So, what about the neighbours at that end of town, because you find Hertford has, especially in the, after the nineteen thirties, has its communities in various places, and they’re unknown to each other, almost like distant towns. I don’t know the Ware Road end at all.
MG: And I don’t really know the Horns Mill end.
PR: No, no. And were the neighbours established Hertford families, or...
MG: I think some were and some weren’t. One family came during the war because the house remained empty I think, and they were evacuated, and the father was a docker, went to London each day. But they had erm… I think they had just the one son. And although he’s now retired officially he still works in the fish shop.
PR: Oh! What, Claydon’s?
MG: Yes… I’ve forgotten his first name. His surname was Chapman
PR: Ah.
MG: Yes. I expect you know about…Albert?
PR: Yes. (indecipherable passage, partly drowned by striking clock) No, that’s fine. I’ll have to see if we’ve got anything on xxx in a minute or two, just in case…. If we have that would be an irritation.
MG: xxx (inaudible)
PR: Yes… No, nothing , it’s going on quite well. Erm – were there any other people that were troublesome in the neighbourhood or people that you looked out for, or did you get on with everybody?
MG: No, we got on with everybody. My mother was looked up to I think to some extent, because she was a teacher. She wasn’t working at the time, in fact when she married she had to give up teaching. Married women teachers were not allowed. But she taught us at home, of course, she gave us a lot of help. She was sort of…anyone with a problem would come and talk to my Mum. They always came to her for help.
PR: Was she a church person, was she…? At All Saints, or…
MG: All Saints, yes, and my father was a sidesman there for thirty years. Oh we went to church. And Sunday School. It was a long trek.
PR: Any movement from the Page Road end of town into the town centre…yes
MG: Half an hour. We allowed half-hour. Then the Sunday School didn’t take place in the church hall which is now the Pioneer Hall along the Ware Road. That was St. John’s Hall. The Sunday School was in there. It was in people’s houses. The children who went to Sunday School who lived in our area went to a house on our estate, Mrs. Stratton’s it was, and we had our Sunday School lessons there, and other children had them in houses near where they lived. The Pioneer Hall – there was another hall which the church had in Bull Plain, they were sold in order to build St. John’s Hall, which was built just before the war, but the church wasn’t able to use it until after the war because it was requisitioned for the Dental Corps, the Army Dental Corps.
PR: Oh!
MG: And they built that annexe next door to it…
PR: Yes, tin xxxxx huts…
MG: Yes, and when they left, they gave us the hut as well as giving us back the hall
PR: So what were they doing?
MG: I don’t know, I can’t imagine. Looking after people somewhere. Of course there was a barracks in Hertford, so, it could be that it was to do the barracks – I don’t know.
PR: Seems a funny kind of special unit, as it were…
MG: I know. I know, but I understand it was the Dental Corps.
PR: They’d make false teeth, would they, or act as dentists, or…
MG: (at the same time) they could, I’m quite certain they did
PR: Well, well. Erm… right, well I know you’ve jotted down a few little bits, I don’t want to stear them too much, but it’s interesting, that community at the other end of the town, that…
MG: There isn’t a small xxxxxx posh I should say it or not, but I think the principle doesn’t apply these days. Erm…the council had a policy apparently of sending the not such good people to Horns Mill, and the better type of person to the Gallows Hill estate.
PR: Yes, I think that was well marked, yes…
MG: Yes, you could see that from Mercury reports of those days.
PR: Yes, and I think a lot of it still continues – the Ridgeway took over for a while, in the later days of the borough and the beginning of these parts. But there was a housing pattern, I think that’s what housing officers prided themselves on, making communities that worked, and if you do that you put a certain number of dodgy ones in with the better ones. I’d be the first to admit that there are lots of very nice families in the Ridgeway, and at Horns Mill, but it wasn’t as comfortable I think, living next door to some of the neighbours at Horns Mill as it would be at Foxholes or Palmer Road or Parker Avenue in Bengeo, which were again …(indecipherable as both speak together)
MG: …all the children played together, went off together to the woods and the fields.
PR: Mmm. Now when you walked into the town you’d have gone past the jail area – opposite the Pioneer hall and some quite good families down there.
MG: We weren’t allowed to go down there.
PR: Did you ever go?
MG: Not as a child. When I was first working a girl in the office did live down there, and she didn’t turn up for work for two or three days and we heard nothing from her, so I thought that I would go and find out what had happened. So I did venture into the jail. I can’t remember what her excuse was – it’s gone completely, I think she probably hadn’t been very well and just hadn’t troubled to let the office know.
PR: But it’s – it’s quite an adventure, isn’t it, going into an area that had been – not yours and…
MG: And where you’re not supposed to go
PR: Yes. And there were always people hanging on doorsteps. It wasn’t like walking down – well, walking into the Folly today with all the doors closed and parked cars, it was just people spilling out of houses, in the jail, and the Folly and Gashouse Lane, always seemed to have the doors open, and various cooking smells and other smells coming down. You know Maudie Mead did you ever know Maudie who lived in that jail, she used work in McMullen’s wine shop.
MG: No, I didn’t know her.
PR: Quite a character…
MG: I doubt if I ever really knew anybody down there (laughs).
PR: But then yes, they were sort of… they remained no go areas but really because the people living there were proprietorial over there, weren’t they, it was their place…
MG: (Speaking together) with anyone going to the jail here, unless they lived there. It doesn’t matter where you live, you always notice if there’s a stranger around.
PR: Gas lights presumably, up in Page Road?
MG: Yes, they were, they were gas lights. They are electric now, but they were gaslights. They weren’t on during the war, of course.
PR: Oh no, of course, I was forgetting that.
MG: We lived in darkness.
PG: Oh yes. Gosh. Now where are you going to take us now Mary with – I’m going to turn the tape over in a minute or two…
MG: I can remember some of the names of Sunday School there was erm… Miss Weller…
PR: Oh, 25 West Street.
MG: and Miss Silversides and later on she was doing the Sunday School. And we used to have Sunday School outings and treats. The war came rather quickly so I didn’t have many of them, and Mr. Hale…
PR: Vernon Hale?
MG: Vernon Hale, he was the carpenter, and he left his work which is now in All Saints, and I remember once we went by train to Cuffley, for a Sunday School treat.
PR: Gosh!
MG: I can’t remember anything else about it, but we went by train to Cuffley, we went along to a field somewhere, for games. And on another occasion we went up to Balls Park, for games and a picnic.
PR: Mmm. So would – did Vernon Hale – was he the sort of strong man on the trip, would he have come …
MG: Oh yes, he came.
PR: Because he was in the choir, wasn’t he?
MG: Yes, he was in the choir as well.
PR: Mmm. Very little man…
MG: Yes, he was. He was a very little man.
PR: And what about Miss Waller? I can remember her when she was very old. Thin with turned–up toes in her shoes, that might come with old age, but her shoes were sort of boat-shaped with the toes sticking up at the ends (laughter).
MG: She was – she was fairly strict.
PR: Was she one of the wealthy All Saints people? It was a gentrified sort of church…
MG: Oh it was. I don’t recall that she was, because some of the better-off people left various amounts to the church for various reasons. Somebody left the money for the church to have electricity. Because it was gas light in All Saints.
PR: Yes, till fairly recent times really, yes. Lovely sound at Evensong, sort of talking to you contributing to the atmosphere in a very nice way…
MG: The poles on which the gas lights were hung down a very long way, and the upper two thirds of the poles are still there
PR: Ah, yes.
MG: They didn’t cut them off…
PR: That’s right, they’re just a bit of decoration now, yes. And there are still gas lights round the edges of All Saints’ church, aren’t there, in the side aisles.
MG: They’re there, but whether they work or not I’m not quite sure.
PR: You’ll have to test them.
MG: I have my doubts.
PR: You’ll have to take a box of matches on Sunday and see.
MG: I wouldn’t dare (laughs).
PR: I hope they do.
MG: Well, it would be emergency lighting if it was ever needed
PR: Yes – gather under a gas lamp again – rather good. Yes, you don’t think she was an upper-class lady…
MG: Well, she certainly lived in West Street, so she wasn’t a poor person, was she? But I don’t know that she was ever so well off.
PR: Didn’t she have someone living with her, a sister somebody…
MG: She could have done
PR: Sister Cutts.
MG: Now where did Sister Cutts live. I’m not sure, but I remember her. She was a church worker, wasn’t she?
PR: I’ve an idea she lived with Miss Waller.
MG: She may well have done.
PR: But I could have made that up.
MG: Could have done. And eventually I don’t know what happened to her. She died, I suppose. We did have curates before the war, and during the war. I remember there was a Mr xxx , Mr Lovejoy – not at the same time. Not long before the curates – of course we had a verger as well.
PR: Oh, didn’t we just…(speaking together)
MG: The Fentimans and Mr. Manson I think at one time.
End of side one
Side two
PR: We are about to contemplate Minnie Fentiman.
MG: Fentiman. She used to come to church – I think her little dog used to come with her sometimes, but I think it always behaved.
PR: Ah!
MG: Every time the Queen Mother came to All Saints’, she always stopped to speak with Minnie. And she knew her name.
PR: Did she?
MG: Yes, she did. She was an amazing woman. Of course her house was right next door to the mortuary, because they were undertakers at that time. Then after the last of the men Fentiman died, the firm didn’t exist anymore. I don’t know if it was taken over, it might have been taken over by Scales, I suppose, but it just didn’t exist any more.
PR: She used to sing from the back, didn’t she, like an alternative choir.
MG: Oh yes. She thought she might be an opera singer I think.(laughs).
PR: And she had the figure for it as well.
MG: Oh yes, she did. She was a charming person really.
PR: Yes, haughty and stately. And very generous with her bars of chocolate for the newspaper boy
MG: Oh, was she? (laughs) I didn’t know that.
PR: A little bit of information.
MG: The Victory Service was held in All Saint’s, after the war.
PR: Oh!
MG: And the church was absolutely packed, and you could only go in if you’d been allocated a ticket – my mother was most upset about it. All you could do was stand near the door and see people go in, and then see them come out
PR: At All Saints’ it was a very good gate I should think. I don’t know how many hundreds it…
MG: Well officially it can hold a thousand. But if they put chairs down the aisles, down each side of each aisle, so as to leave a space down the middle, then the children’s chapel, with chairs, and the Lady Chapel full up, and put people at the back, it’s been known to have a thousand five hundred.
PR: Mmm…
MG: Which is a lot of people. Of course the vicar when we were first in Hertford was Mr. Townsend Ducker(?), who I don’t remember particularly well, then it was Mr. Burgess
PR: Now he used, not the first of the initials in his name – PFL…
MG: PFL wasn’t it
PR: Was he called Francis Burgess, did he call himself? Did he use the F?
MG: I think he may have done, but of course in those days they were always addressed as Mr.
PR: Yes, yes.
MG: I think he probably did. One person who used to come to All Saints all those years ago was the late Police Superintendent. Superintendent Spicer, lived along Ware Road…
PR: Ah!
MG: I remember him very vaguely.
PR: And the Dye family….
MG: Oh the Dye…Dan Dye – I remember walking home with him one day after church along Ware Road – why he was going along Ware Road I don’t recall, perhaps to see somebody, but I was walking home by myself at that point, along Ware Road, it must have been after evensong, and erm…we talked about this and that, but then I suggested to him that Hertford should have a swimming pool.
PR: Ah…
MG: He wanted to know all about what sort of swimming pool I wanted. I said it should be covered, because there’s an open swimming pool at Ware, and if Hertford has a covered one, all the Ware people would come to Hertford in the winter.
PR: Mmm.
MG: He nodded very wisely and said he’d see what could be done, but of course it was years and years before Hertford had a swimming pool, and then it wasn’t covered…
PR: No.
MG: It is now, but erm… it‘s a great pity we didn’t have one, it should have been covered to start with.
PR: Mmm.
(Both speak at once, and break off)
PR: It was very much their parish church, from the Folly and the Railway Street area, the whole Dye family saw it as, well Lydia has just died, hasn’t she…
MG: She’s just died. And there’s Nellie Dye, who has a daughter Linda and they live on Sele Farm, I think they must be related to the family.
PR: When I was a boy, quite young I suppose about eight or nine, I went to All Saints’ on my own. I don’t quite know why, whether Dad was singing a special anthem or something like that, and I went and sat in Dan Dye’s pew. Now whether he was churchwarden…but I somehow got in without getting a hymn book. And he had a box, a kneeler, and it was a wooden box, and he opened the lid of this box that he was about to kneel on, and found my book in it. And when I got home and told them – I think perhaps he was the Mayor at the time (laughing) the Mayor – his own personal kneeler, it was shock, horror, you know – too intrepid you know, too forward. (MG laughs.) And then I got to know him quite a bit better, because of my interest in local government. In later years, a few years later. But his brother lived next door to us, but I never saw Dan visiting his brother. Knowing that they were brothers gave me a special interest in Dan – his brother Will, both chimney sweeps.
MG: Because there was Reg Dye as well…
PR: Yes.
MG: Was Dan his father?
PR: Yes.
MG: He was, yes…
PR: Yes, I think that’s, I think Dan was…
MG: He carried on the business then… of builders or…
PR: Yes, he had his own separate business then, one step removed from father, I think he founded his own building business.
MG: He came to All Saints, and he was churchwarden for a very long time. But now churchwardens can serve only four years and then they have to take a break, don’t they?
PR: Ah – yes, you’ve got that system. Very sensible.
MG: I think it is.
PR: Yes, there was the Dyes, and then you had – Queen’s Road obviously was a profitable road for the church, wasn’t it, a few people turned in from – the gentry, Miss Sworders.
MG: Miss Sworders, yes…
PR: Still driving that car when she could hardly see over the wheel, she’d lie down to drive, didn’t she, shaky, poor shaky thing…
MG: Yes. There was Mrs O’Connor, along Ware Road, she used to come. She lived at the Spinney I believe.
PR: Oh yes, father talked about her…
MG: I think she lived at the Spinney, or else at the big house. Because at one time Spinney Cottage was the sort of gardener or handyman’s house for the big house. The Heals lived in the big house at one time, but I don’t know who they were. But I knew the gardener who lived in the Spinney Cottage. But eventually they had to move because the Heals left I think.
PR: So where did you meet Les then, was that through All Saints?
MG: We – we were in the infant school together.
PR: Oh!
MG: And we were allowed to sit together, not that that meant anything just at the time. And erm…he sang in the choir, and I can’t sing anyway. And we just knew each other as school colleagues really, and then I was in Brownies and Guides and then eventually Sea Rangers, and then I became too old for Sea Rangers, so I joined the Youth Club at All Saints. And Les was already in the Youth Club and ermm… I think he was probably on the committee. We were both on the committee eventually. One year he was chairman and the next year I was chairman. (laughs). Well, we just got to know each other er – well, better shall I say, in a gentle sort of way. Just grew together I suppose.
PR: Mmm. Was he living in Park Road?
MG: He was born in Port Vale actually. His father worked at Neale’s Garage, where he was foreman, and they moved to Park Road. I don’t know how old he was when they moved there, but his mother died, and he was – in fact he was nine when she died, and eventually his father remarried when Les was fourteen, and his father died when Les was twenty-one.
PR: Oh, so his stepmother has lived on..
MG: Yes, she died in 1991, aged 93.
PR: So, that was hard for a boy...
MG: It was very, very hard. His father had fought in the First World War, and life was pretty hard for him I think. The house had only gas lighting, and that was only on the ground floor, with an outside toilet.
PR: People were frightened of being gassed in their beds, weren’t they, and didn’t have gas upstairs.
MG: No bathroom in the house. They’d got an Ascot water heater in the basement. If they had a bath they managed to get enough water to put in a - what was called a tin bath. No, it was a very very hard life. But he won a scholarship to the Grammar school, and his brother did. And I think that was really what helped him.
PR: And were languages his thing then?
MG: No.
PR: Oh!
MG: No, no. Maths.
PR: Oh, I thought, following your time abroad, he would be having strong languages.
MG: He was chosen, asked to go to Airbus in France as an aircraft designer, and – he knew a certain amount of French of course because he’d learnt it at school to some extent, as I had. What they teach you at school isn’t – well, it’s a basis, and you need to speak when you’re out there, and unfortunately Les was deaf in one ear, which affected his learning of spoken French. We worked very well together as a team in France actually – he usually understood what was being said to him, but he couldn’t manage to reply. I could manage to reply.
My French did improve considerably while we were out there – but he went as an aircraft designer, and the language of Airbus was English, and all meetings are supposed to take place in English. But of course the Germans would have a little confab together on one side, and the French would have a little confab together on their side sometimes. It was useful to know French. But maths was his very very strong subject. He could turn anything into figures and he could do maths in his head very very quickly. I think he knew his times table up to about – I think he went up to nineteen, and he would have known the twenties as well. Just like that, and convert things into decimals or fractions, so quickly. Of course in his time, when he started, aircraft were designed with pencil and paper and slide rules. By the time he left, retired, of course computers were being used to design aircraft, and he mastered the computer, and he devised his own programmes for the computer, which surprised the people at Airbus who had to look after the computers, because people of his age didn’t usually master computers. But he did.
PR: Did he –was he an early retired…
MG: Yes, he took early retirement. He said he’d been in France long enough, and he wanted to come home and live in his own country and be near his family. And I’m very very glad we did.
PR: Yes, you got some good time in…
MG: Just a little bit of time before he went.
PR: Yes. – Don’t lose your mike things. I think it’s going all right but er… Yes. When he died he was actually working for the church, wasn’t he?
MG: When he died – we had Saturday morning do-it-yourself maintenance on the church, and that Saturday morning Les was going along, and he went, and there was a drain blocked somewhere, and they weren’t sure it was blocked, so Les was helping to rod drains. And very late on in the morning, twelve – after twelve noon, he didn’t feel well. And he went into the vestry and saw the man who was in charge and said he wasn’t feeling well and I think he asked for somebody to actually drive him home, didn’t feel well enough to drive.
And Brian duly drove him home in our car, and somebody else followed, so he could take Brian back. I’d been putting plants in in the garden, but I’d come in because I heard the phone ring, and I finished the phone call, looked at the time and thought “Oh, I haven’t got the lunch on”, So I put the tools away, came back in and was washing my hands, and there was a ring at the door, so I went, and there was Brian, and he said he’d brought Les home because he was feeling unwell, so I went out to the car, and we both walked Les in – we each took an arm, and he walked in.
PR: Yes.
MG: And he didn’t want to go upstairs, so we laid him on the sofa and Brian said “I think we should call a doctor” and I said “Yes, I think so” and Brian left – phoned the doctor and was given another number to ring, and I phoned that number, it was the answerphone so I left a message. Neither of us was unduly worried. We knew he wasn’t well, but he had no symptoms, except that he just didn’t feel well, he really didn’t want to walk upstairs, so we weren’t particularly worried, although we knew he needed a doctor.
So I brought a bowl and washed his hands for him, because he’d been rodding drains, made him as comfortable as possible on the sofa, I mean - talked quite normally, and then he said he felt a bit cold, so in fact I fetched down a sleeping bag, which I put over him, because it’s a lot lighter weight than a blanket and very warm, and he was still talking quite normally and suddenly his head just fell to one side, he was unconscious. So I dialled 999, and the paramedics were here within – probably no more than five minutes. I’d lost track of time. And they worked for an hour. I was taken off to the kitchen, told to stay there; I know they laid him on the floor, and they were working for an hour.
Another ambulance came bringing some more equipment, and then Les was taken in the first ambulance, and I was taken in the second ambulance, off to QE2. And I was taken in – the ambulance man handed me over to a nurse, a sister, and had to give name and everything at the desk, and then I was taken into the relatives room, and I asked to see Les, but she said “Not just yet, he is critical, and the doctor’s with him. Wait there and I’ll come back and let you know.” But she came back with the doctor, who said he’d had a massive heart attack, and they’d been unable to save him. Which for him was a wonderful ending (both speak together)… for the rest of the family.
PR: …for anybody else. But the alternative (speaking together) and then never really feeling confident, if you do – you know, pick up and do things – wondering when the next…
MG: When the next attack would come.
PR: Much the best way, but what a surprise.
MG: Oh yes, having to phone the children and tell them, not easy. And of course – the sister did ask if I’d like the chaplain to come, because I had to stay at the hospital, the coroner’s officer had to come. The chaplain did come, and they waited for him, and she helped me to – sister helped me to make some phone calls, and Les’s brother’s wife answered the phone, for which I was very thankful, and she said that they would come over straight away, which they did, and of course eventually they were able to bring me home.
Two of my children – well I didn’t phone my youngest son because I knew he was playing hockey up in Basildon, somewhere, so I didn’t phone him from the hospital. I phoned my other son, and left a message on the answerphone telling him to ring me, telling him to ring me at home in the evening, because his Dad had been taken ill. And I had to leave a phone message for my younger daughter on her answerphone, and my elder daughter, her husband answered the phone, I didn’t ask where he came from, and they in fact did come to the hospital that afternoon, but after I’d left. But the chaplain then came, and he was extremely helpful. But we did go, Les’s brother and wife had arrived by then, so we did go and see Les.
PR: It is important in a way (interjection by MG at same time) – that was the way of things in the vicinity in these days. In fifty years’ time it may be that someone listens to this tape and they’ll think “Gosh” you know “That’s how they did it then”. But – I mean, you had a very good experience.
MG: Yes, it was good. They were very helpful, they really were.
PR: But you wonder what the future will be for care and action…
MG: The coroner’s officer was very very good, because he had to ask some questions. But he was very very good. And eventually I asked him if there would be a post-mortem, and he said it would be up to the coroner, but he thought it likely. And I said “Well if the coroner wants it I agree, because I want to know”. And there was a post-mortem, and they phoned me with the result on the Tuesday. There was talk of an artery blocked by chalk. And I don’t know the cause of that. Because my own doctor came to see me on the Thursday, and I hadn’t asked him to come, although I was going to go and see him, but he came – he just came, and he stayed with me a long time. And he told me that the doctors here are very happy with the paramedics, and he said that all that could be done was done, in fact nothing could have been done to save Les. And he said they don’t know yet the cause of this chalk blocking arteries. And the doctor was shocked when he was told that Les had died apparently. He didn’t tell me that straight away, he told me that much later. Because his xxxx was all right, his blood pressure was all right, he didn’t drink to excess, he didn’t smoke. So he was quite shocked.
PR: Mmm. What age was he?
MG: Sixty–two.
PR: Good job he got those years of an easier life, as it were, running ….
MG: Yes, I’m very glad he was home, and we had done a few of the things he would like us to do.
PR: Oh ah. No that’s – handy, that little report, just saying who called you up and how things were done, and the fact that we – a few years earlier it would have been out own hospital just here, no difference I suppose.
MG: Yes, I said to the ambulance driver as we went I said “Where are we going?” and he said “QE2” and I said “I wish it was the County” and he said “So do we” It wouldn’t have made any difference. In fact I asked the doctor whether it would have made a difference if Brian had taken him straight to the hospital – because Brian asked Les “Do you want to go home or to the hospital?” Les said he wanted to come home. And of course Brian was desperately worried, he said perhaps if he had taken him to hospital it would have made a difference. But I did ask my doctor and he said no, he probably wouldn’t have made it. So I told Brian and of course he was greatly relieved.
PR: But you had to do what the patient wanted.
MG: Oh of course, absolutely.
PR: To have done anything else in any case would have agitated Les – against personal wishes, so…
MG: Oh yes, very much so. And as my doctor told me, the last thing Les knew was he was at home, with me. And that was a comfort to me.
PR: (After pause) Well, we’d better get down – are you near the end of your…
MG: Mmm, There are a lot more things I can talk about. (laughter)
PR: I think I’d better let you fire away Mary.
MG: There used to be a forge in Hertford, did you know that? A forge, where they shod horses.
PR: Where?
MG: At Old Cross. There’s that hairdressers’ called Dead Swanky…
PR: Yes, yes…
MG: That was the Co-op butcher’s shop, of course – go a bit further and then there’s the curtain shop, I can’t quite remember what that was, and a wee bit further than that there was a forge, where they used to shoe horses.
PR: (indeterminate sound of surprise) Golly.
MG: Yes. Yes, there was. And in Maidenhead Street of course there were several small shops where now is MacDonald’s. Before MacDonald’s it was Fine Fare, a grocer’s shop
PR: Yes…
MG: And to build Fine Fare those little shops were demolished. There was a small jeweller’s, and I think there was a butcher’s shop, and there was Mr. Joyce the shoe shop. He sold shoes but he did repairs as well. You had to go up two steps into the shop.
PR: Oh, that wasn’t the Blue Boots…
MG: Blue Boots Stores.
PR: Blue Boots Stores.
MG: Mmm, Mr. Joyce’s Blue Boots Stores.
PR: That would have been down near to Drury’s would it, that er…
MG: No, the other way.
PR: Oh, oh the Castle gates…
MG: Castle gates. But that was demolished as well, to build Fine Fare. And the corner shop, which is now a betting shop, was the Scotch Wool shop. And the opposite corner used to be the Co-op drapers, but I can’t remember what it was before that.
PR: Pratt’s.
MG: What were Pratt’s?
PR: Well, whether they were drapers’ or a general store I can’t remember, I think it might have been a draper. But I remember it being referred to as “Pratt’s corner” but I don’t actually remember the shop – it was the Co-op...
MG: Co-op draper’s. And there were several other grocers’ shops along Maidenhead Street, as well as butchers’, and what is now Oddbins was a greengrocer’s.
PR: Ah.
MG: Ah, but during the war it was a bookshop, Rose’s Bookshop. And that’s why it‘s still called Rose’s Corner, because – I don’t know what dropped on it, or near it, during the war, or something dropped there. But it’s still called Rose’s Corner, till it became a greengrocer’s, and now it’s Oddbins. And that big café, Café Uno? Opposite the Shire Hall, that was Neal’s Bon Marche.
PR: I get muddled up with its new name as well. Café Uno.
MG: Yes, so do I. It’s the only one I know.
PR: Yes, I know – yes, yes.
MG: And Neales Bon Marche – they were household linen, and clothing – quite a big shop, and they did toys at Christmas as well, they had an upstairs. But when you paid, you gave the money to an assistant over the counter, and she put the bill and the money in a little pot, a little wooden pot, which she then clipped on to some wires, which were attached to the ceiling and ran across to the cash desk. And she pulled a lever, and the little wooden pot shot across the ceiling, on the wires, to the cash desk, where the cashier took the money and the bill out and put the change in, and sent it back again. (laughs)
PR: Was it just to keep the assistant’s hands clean, do you think? Like butchers’ shops had little desks where you paid somebody else, not the butcher.
MG: Yes, they often did, didn’t they?
(The following passage is mostly spoken by both at once.)
PR: And I didn’t know quite…
MG: xxxx I’ve no idea why
PG: So one person…
MG: xxxxxxx
PR: xxxx treasurer;
MG: The boxes used to shoot across the room…
PR: Were you a customer in there then?
MG: Oh yes, we used to go to Bon Marche for some things, definitely.
PR: There were various shops that you patronised, and you were a loyal sort of patron, weren’t you?
MG: Oh yes. My mother always went to the Co-op, and we were registered with the Co-op grocers and the Co-op butchers in the war.
PR: Ah. So you came right up to Old Cross?
MG: Yes, right up to Old Cross.
PR: Though you had butchers’ shops on the way? That’s loyalty.
MG: Of Course, on a Saturday we would cross the road to Hugmans to get some sausages off xxx which weren’t on the ration.
PR: Weren’t they?
MG: No, no. There was always a queue at Hugmans. But of course the Co-op butchers’ had beautiful tiles on the walls, of pigs. And when the Co-op butcher left there I was really quite upset, because a lot of work was going on inside and I was terrified that all those tiles would be destroyed, so I got in touch with Mr. Melville, who was xxx Hertford Preservation Society I think it was, and he said he would find out about it. Anyway, I understand – I understood at the time from him that the tiles were not being destroyed but they were being covered over with a wooden wall or something, so they’re still there, hopefully.
PR: Behind the walls…
MG: Behind the fresh walls
PR: Fresh walls at Dead Swanky.
MG: Yes. Well, I certainly hope they are.
PR: Well, that’s interesting. That’s just around the corner of Wiggintons, and Barber’s covered up the sign “Wiggintons” (both speak together) in years to come they’re going to find pigs.
MG: Find pigs on the wall and wonder why. Well it’s the Co-op butcher’s shop – one day we were in there, my mother and I and Major Upton was in there, and we were looking at the pigs on the wall, and he asked me if I knew how they got the bristles off the pigs’ skin – of course I didn’t, and he told me the story of how they dipped them in boiling water, and they could get all the bristles off. (laughs)
PR: Oh, so he did a little bit of…
MG: Just a little bit of teaching, and a bit of teaching in the butchers shop.
PR: Yes, yes, xxxx yes
MG: They certainly were lovely tiles.
PR: Mmm. We’ve been talking for an hour now.
MG: Have we? Ah… Before the war there were quite a lot of deliveries. Milk and bread were delivered, and if you took your order into the grocer, the groceries would be delivered.
PR: Aha…
MG: And the butcher…
PR: Most grocers did that?
MG: I think so. I think so. And the butcher’s boy would come I think it was twice a week on a bicycle with a big box container on the front (clock chiming).
PR: Oh yes, yes.
MG: And he would take your order, and the next time he came he would bring your meat order. And then you would give him your next order, and that would come the next time he came.
PR: But you didn’t put it in the fridge?
MG: Oh, we didn’t have fridges in those days, my mother had a meat safe, which was a wooden cupboard, with erm… a very very fine mesh in a frame, all round it. The door frame had mesh in.
End of side two
Side three
PR: Now – Peter Ruffles again – we’re just going to finish with a little tiny bit more with Mary at Fordwich Close, and we were just talking about tradesmen and deliveries, and we got on to the interesting topic of no fridges, and er, having forgotten that er – I had at any rate – that there hadn’t always been fridges, and when the butcher’s boy came with your delivery it went into the meat safe. But where did you keep the meat safe, then Mary?
MG: It was in the pantry. The house had a proper pantry in it. And our kitchen faced due north, and there was a concrete slab at the back, and there were wooden shelves round, and the meat safe stood on a shelf, and that room was cold. (laughs)
PR: Yes. And the meat would be cooked fairly soon anyway, would it?
MG: Oh yes, oh yes.
PR: It wouldn’t be there for the week, waiting to be…
MG: No, oh no.
PR: Where would you put the cold meat after having eaten some of it, as it were? Back in the safe?
MG: Back in the safe. Oh yes, oh yes.
PR: And butter and milk and…
MG: Butter would have gone …mmm…butter would have gone in the safe. Milk was a problem. In fact sometimes it was stood outside the back door on the concrete path there to try to keep it cool. But in really hot weather my mother would boil the milk every night. And then next day you’d have boiled milk on our cereal and boiled milk in our tea, which wasn’t very nice. Coal was delivered. Because we had a coal fire – that was the only heating in the house, a coal fire.
PR: Where did you keep it then – in the war you requisitioned your coal store…
MG: Yes we used the coal cupboard as a shelter. We had a – built a wooden coal holder, a bunker outside, next to the house. But of course during the war there weren’t any deliveries, of groceries or of meat. Milk was still delivered, but the town was zoned, and we no longer had our regular milkman, who used a horse and cart, we had Sparks, from along Ware Road, we came in their zone. Bread was still delivered, and I think that was zoned as well, but I don’t really recall.
PR: So you didn’t, couldn’t choose your trader.
MG: You couldn’t choose your supplier, no. Before the war, an ice-cream man used to come round sometimes, on a tricycle, a stop me and buy one.
PR: So Page Road was a good area for him, was it?
MG: Mmm – I suppose it was variable. We couldn’t have ice cream very often (laughs) It was a treat. Erm – I belonged as I said earlier to Brownies and Guides, and Sea Rangers, and during the war Mrs Addis let the Guide movement use a room in Addis’s. I think it was one of the staff dining rooms, and we met in there. Because the Guide hut was requisitioned , I don’t know why, probably for Civil Defence. And that Guide hut was in the grounds of the boys’ Grammar School, now Richard Hale school, next to their entrance on to Pegs Lane.
PR: Yes, yes.
MG: And after the war they would have the hut back. But we gave Mrs. Addis what was called the Guides Thanks Badge, which meant that if she needed some help, every Guide was supposed to help her. (Both laugh). And we could go back to the Guide hut, but of course there’s now a new Guide hut along West Street.
My father during the war was too old for Army service, but he did have to go into Civil Defence, he had no choice, he had to go, and first of all he was in Air Raid Precautions, and in the garden of a large house along Ware Road – the Miss Mansfields lived in it – there was a corrugated iron building which was a curved shape, with a door at each end and he had to sit in there for his turn of duty and blow the siren, which was planted next to it, when told to do so by telephone. But he was trained - during that time he was trained in First Aid, and he was transferred to the First Aid and heavy rescue section. And his depot then was at Mill Bridge and er… Durrant, erm…he had a drinks factory there…
PR: Yes , mineral waters and…
MG: Yes, and Durrant was the superintendent, John Ambulance brigade. And erm, one night my parents were about to go up to bed and they just opened the front door and took a look out and saw two parachutes coming down. My father immediately jumped on his bike and went. The sirens had not sounded. And he cycled all along Ware Road to the depot, and soon after he passed the point where one of them dropped, the other one dropped. One dropped at the back, in gardens between Ware Road and Tamworth Road, and quite a few houses were damaged, including the Miss Mansfields’ house. And the other mine dropped in – not the field immediately above our house, but the field beyond that. I don’t think it did any damage to our house…
PR: (speaking over her) So what kind of actual…there was a parachute…
MG: Mines. They were mines. So when my father got to the depot he put down his bike, got in the ambulance and went straight back along Ware Road. And there were several people injured and I think…(pause) there was either – I know there was one killed, I’m not sure if it was two. I’ve forgotten the woman’s name, but there was one woman killed.
PR: Waller was…
MG: No, it wasn’t that, I can’t remember her name.
PR: Yes.
MG: When they opened the sideboard there was a bowl with eggs in it, completely unbroken. They worked there for – well, all the rest – all night, and I think all the next day. But the Salvation Army were there, with their tea van. And ever after that my father always had a soft spot for the Salvation Army. They always turned up to every incident.
PR: We nearly got Katy Barbrook, we wanted – she was a leading Salvation Army person from childhood. Lived in Gashouse Lane. I did once go and try to persuade her to talk, and she wasn’t feeling very well, and then I never went back. She lived quite a long time after that, but… That’s the kind of thing we could have heard, because she would have been around at that time. She joined the Salvation Army when she was four, and she lived to be ninety, so she was in the right…
MG: The right age group…
(Pause with some murmured reflections)
PR: Well, that was a – quite a family story, wasn’t it? Happening to look out of the front door.
MG: It was fortunate. And if he - if my father hadn’t gone until the siren went, he could well have been passing that spot, you know, when it dropped. At one time several of the Civil Defence people from Hertford were sent to Norwich, to relieve the Civil Defence people there, because they’d been virtually on the go for I think it was over a week without a break. And erm… they were sent as a relief so that those people there could have a break, and the day after they came back and something dropped on where they’d been billeted.
(Pause)
PR: When you – did you ever see – you say he had to blow the siren. I know that doesn’t mean “blow” like a trumpet …
MG: (at the same time) blow – that could be a button he had to press I think…
PR: Did you ever see it? Did he ever show you as a girl…
MG: I did go in that hut, occasionally I’d go down so he could practice bandaging on me, you know, practicing slings and bandaging sprained ankles. Because he had to pass exams of course, to become a qualified First Aider, practice was the thing…I think there were two buttons, one was the warning and one the All Clear.
PR: One often wondered how it was actually made to sound, yes.
MG: (at the same time) I think that’s how it was activated. An awful sound .
PR: Yes I can just remember it, I was a baby, or very small at the time. But they did sound after the war as well, didn’t they, for some years for testing purposes…
MG: Yes, I think they did.
PR: …until quite recently. But in the immediate year, I can remember the sound instilled in people who were around then… but I think they must have been at the end of the war when the emergency was over…
(indecipherable passage as both are speaking at once)
PR: We used to have lots of other sounds of hooters and whistles in the town in earlier years.
MG: Oh yes, when it was going home time in factories and things, the sound of the hooter…
PR: Yes, you could hear a twelve o’clock hooter and a one o’clock hooter from various… I can’t think where they would have come from, was it Mead Lane and that sort of area?
MG: I’m not sure.
PR: It was a different working world, wasn’t it.
MG: Yes, it was, very different. Addis was the biggest factory.
PR: Did they have the hooter? I can hear it, in the mind, at home.
MG: I don’t know if they did or not. I wasn’t particularly aware of hooters. But certainly, firms did have hooters. (Pause) My father worked for Simpson Shand in Hertford, because that was the job he got when we came to Hertford, he worked for Simpson Shand for many many years, well, until he retired. He had to leave them during the war of course, but they took him back on after the war, and he stayed there till he retired. He was reader for them.
PR: Yes.
MG: He had that little office right in the top left-hand corner. If my mother was out shopping and she happened to go that way, she could stand across the other side of the road outside Christine’s Café and he happened to look out, she could wave to him. (laughs.). Of course it’s the Job Centre now.
PR: Mmm. And the end part’s been pulled down, hasn’t it? And er… the shape of the building is still there, but I think there’s…
MG: There’s been some rebuilding. The left hand end is a bit different. But the left hand end with little window, the smallest window at the top, that was my father’s room, and that part is still there. But I think it had altered a bit – I don’t know if they had gates across that entrance or what it was, it’s certainly altered a bit there.
PR: That’s Bryant the bell founder’s yard
MG: Yes
PR: Made All Saints clock as well as the bells…
MG: The clock at All Saints of course was on Kingsmead School
PR: Yes.
MG: I can remember Kingsmead School
PR: I bet, yes.
MG: When we were playing in the fields we could see the clock saying it was time to go home (laughs)
PR: That’s what clocks are for. I wish we had more of them…
MG: The boys there sometimes they used to be walked along Ware Road to come to church.
PR: Hmm. The normal Sunday service.
MG: Yes, the normal Sunday service, yes. I don’t remember it happening very often, but it happened sometimes. I think they were…mentally subnormal, or – they couldn’t learn
PR: Slow learners.
MG: Slow learners of some sort .
PR: Yes, yes. They weren’t naughty boys…
MG: No, they weren’t naughty boys, no. It must have been a very dreary life for them I think.
PR: Yes. Well, thank you very much (clock striking). Four o’clock.
MG: Yes it is. I think that’s … I think I covered all my notes anyway.
PR: Well, thank you very much indeed, Mary
MG: I’m glad you are taking notes of what people remember, because there’s so much will be forgotten. So very much.
PR: Well it’s especially valuable where people aren’t inclined to write because of age, but we’ve got to come down the age range
MG: Course you have.
PR: Because you can tell a tale sometimes better when you’re sixty than when you’re ninety – not always…
MG: Just something else I remember was Billy Cooper’s calves being walked along Ware Road to go to market.
PR: Where did Billy Cooper keep his cows?
MG: Foxholes Farm. His fields opposite our house were his fields. And the cattle were walked a long way round to the market behind the Ram. And that market extended as far as the alley outside Faudel Phillips School. So every Monday …
PR: Rooks..
MG: Rooks Alley. So every Monday when I went to Infants’ school I could see the cattle market. And there were the cows, or heffers, and sheep and pigs…
(indecipherable passage)
MG: We learnt to count by counting cars.
PR: During the summer, when you’ve got – when you’re gardening and doing odd jobs – still on – and you think of anything
MG: I’ll make a note of it
PR: Scribble it down.
MG: I’ll make a note of it.
PR: Any little story, like floods, or the doodlebug and things like that. You may stop and think “Gosh, I remember those towers or gosh! Something will jog your memory – like the steam engines at Hertford East station and – things you don’t often think about, but they come to you, especially in the summertime when you’re doing jobs. You tend to do more outdoors, that’s when I…
MG: Things do come to you all of a sudden, for no reason.
PR: Anyway, we mustn’t depress the transcriber too much, going on just when she thinks we’ve finished.
MG: No.
PR: Thank you very much indeed.
Tape ends