Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Poyser, Owen & Clara (O1999.4) |
| Interviewee | Owen Poyser (OP) Clara Poyser (CP) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
| Date | 05/02/1999 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1999.4
Interviewee: Owen Poyser (OP) Clara Poyser (CP)
Date: 5th February 1999
Venue: 13 Duncombe Road
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Marilyn Taylor
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: Its Friday 5th February 1999 and I am at the home of Owen and Clara Poyser 13 Duncombe Road, Bengeo. I am here this afternoon principally to discover what Clara and Owen know about North Crescent, it’s now called 35 North Road where they lived when they were first married. Now Clara, you came from Northumberland.
CP: I was born in Stannington in Northumberland and my father was a master tailor. Do you remember there was a reformatory school near Chapmore End?
JR: Yes.
CP: Well my father came from there down here to this school to teach the boys tailoring and he was there until he retired, and I was three when they came down here and I lived there until I married in April ’39.
JR: You lived on site?
CP: Oh yes, the houses are still there, they’ve been enlarged, they stayed there until… well the war had started and my father wasn’t well so he retired and they came down and Owen was in the Army by then, you went June ’40 didn’t you?
OP: We’ll come back to that!
CP: They came and lived down there with me and they were there all the time until the war ended.
JR: Did they ever go back to the North East?
CP: No, no they lived down here. When the war was over, they eventually got a place further along Duncombe Road.
JR: So, they stayed in Hertford for the rest of their lives. So which school did you go to?
CP: Bengeo school.
JR: That was a separate school from the boys?
CP: There was the Bengeo Boys school and the Bengeo Girls School and then in Trinity Grove the little Infants school.
JR: I see.
CP: Then of course, they went, Mr Hyatt was headmaster of the boys and Miss Truss was headmistress of the girls and Miss Taylor, she’s a well-known Hertford lady, she started the Duncombe School. She lived just a little bit further along here, on the other side of the road until she moved away to Fordwich.
JR: So you’ve lived in Bengeo all your life apart from…
CP: Well we married in April ’39 and lived at 34 North Crescent then Owen went in the Army in June ’40, you were demobbed, ’46 it must have been, the war ended 45
OP: I remember I left North Crescent, having moved there in April ’39, I joined the Army, Beds and Herts actually in June the next year so I was there about 14 months, then I was in England quite some time and eventually I went to …
CP: You went to North Africa in ’42.
OP: I went to North Africa in ’42, November ’42 and four Christmases were to elapse before I saw Clara again. I came home having been in Africa and Italy after three years and then I was demobbed. I was abroad for three and a half years. I came back to 35 North Crescent. I can’t remember how long we remained there until we moved up.
CP: Well Colin was born august ’47 and he was 18 months when we moved up to number 27
JR: Right, so roughly lived out of this area for about ten years.
CP: I’ve been here since ’39, I’ve either been in North Road or Duncombe Road.
JR: (To Owen) You were born in Ware?
OP: Vicarage Road, I went to Musley Central School, eleven plus to Musley Central School. I took the eleven plus to the Grammar School and failed, as many people did in those days because a lot of them were being paid and there weren’t so many passes and the Central School was there to take up those who’d failed the Grammar School. The Syllabus was the same, you left at 16. It was a nice little school at the top of the hill. When Clara and I, we’ve got a diamond wedding in April, that’s 60 years but we go back further than that, we were going together for about 6 years before then, so I think when I first met Clara she was 15 and I was 17. So, we tag on 6 years to the 60 when we’ve been together.
JR: When I first came in, I said did you know Middlemore Poyser?
OP: Well he was father’s brother, I didn’t know him well.
CP: Oh. that was his Christian name Middlemore, I didn’t know that, I never met him.
OP: He was father’s brother and he had two children?
CP: Three because his son was killed in Singapore, there were two daughters
Transcribers Note: Some confusion here by Clara as Owen is right; Middlemore only had two children a boy and a girl both of whom died in England.
OP: We never have seen a lot of each other. He was older than my father.
JR: Did your father come from Ware as well then?
Transcribers Note: The whole family came to Ware about 1899 from Ashby de la Zouch where David Poyser the father had been a leather dresser. David is listed as a “Beer house keeper” in Priory Street in 1901, it was The Old Millstream and he was publican from 1899 to 1908. By 1911 in Vicarage Road and “No Occupation” so presumably retired. He died in 1912 his wife in 1929, Middlemore was a family name on her side.
OP: He came from Ashby de la Zouche, Leicestershire and then he worked at Allenburys as it was the, Glaxo, all his life.
JR: And Middlemore, did he come with him then? Did their father come?
OP: I don’t know, my son would know more about that because he is doing a tree
CP: I don’t think Colin has ever done that side.
OP: He descended? into Bullocks Lane and had three children up there. I think his daughter lives in Ware.
CP: One daughter lives in Ware and well, the other one died didn’t she…
JR: I see. Now when did you come here? When you came to 35 or where you in the town before that?
OP: No no, came to Hertford to live there when we got married.
CP: He lived in Ware until we married.
OP: You lived at the Training school, the old bike came in very handy in those days.
JR: Yes! Where did you actually meet? in Ware?
OP: In Hertford actually, that’s a story, but I won’t….!
JR: Where were you actually married?
OP: St Mary’s church, Ware, where I was a choir man and a choir boy.
CP: The whole choir were there!
OP: There must have been 35 in the choir, there was a good choir in those days, I joined St Mary’s choir when I was about 8 and my voice didn’t break till I was 15 that would be considered odd now, I had a very good boys voice. I was leading, whatever, for many years. When it broke I was expecting something special would come back but nothing special did come back so I wasn’t allowed to sing for two years. Something came back and I’ve sung happily all my life. But then I did go back to the men’s choir, didn’t I?
CP: Yes because you were at Church when Chamberlain…
OP: Oh yes that’s right, in the choir on the day war broke out and I was listening to the sermon and during the sermon the verger came in with a note and gave it to the Reverend Lloyd Phillips in the middle of his sermon and he announced it from the pulpit in St Marys church that war had been declared. I remember it very well.
CP: I remember I was in the kitchen at 35!
OP: Then I remained in the choir for some time after I was married.
CP: I don’t remember if you actually joined the choir when you came back?
OP: After the forces I didn’t. I joined the army, Herts and Beds on June 27th 1940 and I went abroad in November 1942 so I was in England from June ’40 to November ’42. I went to Africa and I went to Italy and I came home in’46. I well remember coming home because if you can imagine I hadn’t seen her for four consecutive Christmases. I remember coming off the North station, after three years, there was a leave one. I walked up and down outside the house, North Crescent, for some time but it was the most marvellous time because nothing had changed. But I walked up and down several times trying to pluck up courage.
JR: Did you know he was coming home at that time?
CP: Yes.
JR: You weren’t watching out, or you didn’t go to the station?
CP: No well it was dark.
JR: Oh, it was night.
CP: Yes. No, I wasn’t watching out because there was a bedroom at the front, and I didn’t know what time it would be.
OP: It was a month’s leave, I wasn’t too pleased about having to go back to Italy after that and do another six months.
JR: When you got married did you look at many properties to live in, what made you decide?
OP: Interesting really, we looked at houses to buy and that was out of the question at £595 but the firm I worked for, McMullens, they like to do something for their people.
CP: Not then dear, that was after you came home.
OP: Was it?
CP: Nothing in those days, they hadn’t got round to being…
OP: I thought they had, are you sure you’re right?
CP: No, because don’t you remember, because there were very few properties about, there was an estate agent on the corner as you went down to South Street, Mac’s weren’t doing anything, you just had to find somewhere to rent.
OP: There was no question of buying a house, not £595 on £3 and 5s a week.
JR: That sum is attached to North Road Avenue, that’s how much the houses there were.
OP: Well I can tell you exactly what we paid for rent, we paid 18 s a week and it was a normal 3 storey, and where they built up there was a sort of flat.
CP: There were three flats.
OP: Yes but there was a flat building next to it, well that’s been built up now.
JR: Yes it was lower.
CP: That was only one storey, there was only one room on that side.
OP: That’s right that was our drawing room.
CP: They’ve put one more storey on that.
JR: Yes they have put a false bit up there, like a castle, a castellation
CP: That was one lovely big room there
JR: But only one storey.
OP: Only one storey, but three flats there
CP: We had that room, the one the other side of the hall, which was the bedroom, the room behind that which was the dining room, a large kitchen and an old fashioned scullery with a brick copper
JR: So all the ground floor
CP: We were ground floor there, there was the middle floor flat, there was just the one room, two rooms you went down a few steps and up and a bedroom at the back and a bathroom which was shared and at the top there was another flat, because Mrs Hayden lived there after he came back, it was only about two rooms. The top flat when we married, there was a mistress from Christ Hospital School had that flat. Then when war was declared they had to go to the school to look after the girls, so she left when war came.
JR: I haven’t got 1939, I’ve got 1938 (Street directory) see if any of these names are familiar. Mrs Tuck, Miss Hinsby.
CP: Whereabouts? What numbers?
JR: 35 and somebody Stanley…
CP: Can you remember the name of the people, wasn’t he a grocer’s manager, before we went in?
OP: This is 38 before we moved there.
JR: Well I wondered if they might still be there, I haven’t got 39.
OP: No, well you’ve just said who was there, who was there when we moved in? Mrs Adams?
CP: Oh no she came during the war, the middle flat, but the top flat, I don’t remember her name because she wasn’t there long
JR: It wasn’t Miss Hinsley then?
CP: It doesn’t ring a bell, I mean I hardly knew her
Transcribers Note: On the 1939 Register there are only two entries for no 35, Owen and Clara and William and Lilian Saggars similar age to the Poyers and he was a master boot and shoe repairer
OP: A lovely big garden which only we could use
CP: It was a walled garden for the ground floor flat and beautiful soil, there’d been nursey people there at some time.
OP: Yes it was a nursery.
JR: I think it was once, before the houses were built.
OP: and a fig tree, I remember it.
JR: You know, next door to number 37, did you know the Dittons?
OP: Yes
JR: Well I’ve interviewed Maisie Ditton.
OP: Did she know me?
JR: Well I have seen her since I heard of you so I must mention your name to her and see what she says. I don’t think she mentioned you on her tape, but she might have done, but she lived at 37 and then later on I think well after you left there she took the top flat at 35.
CP: Did she?
JR: That I think was the early 50s but you’d gone by then.
CP: Oh yes. Oh I didn’t know that. I never knew where she lived, I’ve only seen her name in connection with the Company of Players because she’s…. I used to see the other daughter about but I haven’t seen her about lately, I can’t remember her name now.
OP: Who was the one that was in the choral society?
CP: Ah! That’s her cousin Maisie Ditton from Ware.
JR: Another Maisie
CP: Well Maisie Ditton is a cousin of Maisie, Mr Ditton, he had a limp, that was probably from the First World War. He had a little electrical shop.
JR: Radio shop in St Andrew Street near the Three Tuns. Yes she has a sister Connie Murkin, is that the one you mean?
CP: That would be Connie, that’s the younger sister I think
JR: They’re quite close in age, I think Maisie was, I think she was the older one
CP: Two or three girls were there?
JR: I think she was the older one and two followed her.
Transcribers Note: Connie born 1922, Maisie born 1924, Sheila born 1926.
CP: You didn’t see anybody in the back garden and so we really didn’t see much of them.
JR: They used to live over the wireless shop, the radio shop in St Andrew Street and it probably got a bit cramped with three girls and they moved out of there I think it was 1931 or ’33. I’ve just interviewed somebody called Peter Fountain and he lived there just before Maisie at number 37. He moved out for eighteen months and came back to the town. Number 37 I seem to have got hold of a number of people who remember living there.
OP: All three flats are occupied now are they at number 35?
JR: Has the hospital got them now?
CP: The Sisters lived next door to us (Hospital Sisters)
JR: Number 33?
OP: Yes. Sisters lived there.
JR: It looks fairly institutional now to me
OP: The old hedge is still there!
CP: During the war when they were collecting “Dig for Victory” (sic)* iron railings, remember Archers the scrap people.
*This was the grow your own veg scheme during World War Two
JR: I know who you mean yes.
CP: They came and collected the iron railings to take to make guns
JR: Yes who was your Landlord then, do you remember?
CP: Well it belonged to Miss Francis, have you heard that name?
JR: Yes.
CP: I think they lived at Southgate, but do you know, neither of us can remember how we paid the rent. We never had a rent book and in those days we hadn’t got a cheque book
OP: Did we have a bank account in those days?
CP: Not to draw cheques. People didn’t when they earned three pounds a week.
JR: Perhaps an agent came for it?
CP: No, nobody came for it. We must have had to send a postal order.
JR: I think those photographs which show what would have been the view across the road at one time, not perhaps when you were there, was of a nursery called Francis’ nursery and I think she was a remnant of that family.
CP: Is that the other side of the road? That almost looks like Mrs Medlock’s sister who used to live along here
JR: Of could be. Mrs Medlock lived in North Road House.
CP: Then there was the Reverend somebody lived in the next one.
JR: Harry Evans, yes.
CP: And then there was another house looked a bit like that
JR: Oh I know the one you mean, that’s still there. This is father down, you know as you come down Cross Lane from Hertingfordbury Road, if you’re turning into the town centre it would just be across there.
CP: Straight opposite was there a Mr Jackson who used to drive the ambulance.
JR: Near there yes, in fact Peter Fountain thinks he remembers a depot there in his time and he’s talking about the early ‘30s , of Ibbotts’ dairy.
CP: I thought Ibbotts were along Castle Street.
JR: Well it might have been an early depot. It may not have been Ibbotts, it may have been another dairy.
CP: Well Ibbotts used to come round, because Joyce was a Ibbotts girl, Joyce Swallow, yes, you remember her.
Transcribers Note: We think she means she worked for Ibbotts, see later.
OP: Yes I do remember her she was quite worth looking at! I used to play cricket at Port Vale and she used to come down and watch us.
CP: Her parents used to live along there didn’t they?
OP: Do you know Rosemary Swallow?
JR: Yes.
OP: Well everyone knows Rosemary Swallow, well Rosemary married Bill Swallow who was married to Joyce.
JR: She was his first wife?
No reply
CP: Joyce, what was her maiden name?
OP: I should know her parents worked for Mac’s.
JR: Don’t worry.
Transcribers Note: William R Swallow married Joyce P Fuller in 1940 in Blandford Dorset. Then Rosemary Freeland in 1980 in Hertford. Joyce Patricia Swallow died in 1979 in Hertford. The Fuller family were living in Wellington Street, Bengeo in 1939.
OP: But I thought they built some nurses accommodation over there.
JR: Oh they did.
CP: One of those other big houses the nurses lived in. But I don’t think they were there when we were there, during the war, a detached house, then a new block of flats where Len Green lives, then another one of these detached houses built 50’s or 60’.
JR: Well now there’s a house of the ‘50s or ‘60s and in the middle where Len Green lives in his flat was a nurses training school. But that was well after the war (referring to old photos) the whole ground apart from there dwellings here, a nursery house and old building there, was ground which they cultivated.
CP: I don’t think there were any buildings opposite us.
JR: No I think by that time they may have gone.
OP: One of the things I remember about 35, sitting in that great big room, with that great big window was sitting and watching the buses come down from London, children who’d been evacuated.
CP: They came from the station as well all with their little cardboard (boxes with) gas masks.
JR: They were coming into the town?
OP: They were going to the North Station
CP: They were evacuated.
JR: They were children from the town?
CP: From Battersea.
Transcribers note: Slight confusion here, the evacuees may also have been returning to London
JR: Well we’ve got one famous evacuee, I can’t think of his name now.
CP: They were coming to Hertford, Battersea Grammar School came.
Transcribers note: Slight confusion again as Owen says they weren’t coming to Hertford they were coming to the station.
OP: I remember blacking out those big windows. I’m not a very handy chap and I had to make these big black outs.
CP: And of course I was there when the doodle bug dropped and we had our windows smashed
OP: Of which I know nothing, about doodle bugs or whatever not being here.
JR: We had someone describe that very well, what was your impression of it?
CP: It was 8 o’clock in the morning, my young brother, he lived with us because he’d been with my mother so he came with us and he was working on tanks at Wickhams and he was going to work on the Sunday morning and so he was up and we had French windows in the dining room and they were open, so the blast didn’t break the windows, but that big window, that broke.
End of side one
Side two
JR: And your parents?
CP: They slept, because we only had the one bedroom, so they slept there (Unsure which room) and my brother slept on a bed chair which we made up every night for him, so he was up, we were up but that big window and a lot of the panes were broken and it came shooting across the floor, but it didn’t come far enough to touch the bed because they were in bed.
JR: So a lot of those houses along there did have their windows broken?
CP: Oh yes, the bedroom windows weren’t broken. I don’t know whether the shutters were up, but that was all we had broken.
JR: Seems strange that the top windows were not broken.
CP: Don’t think they were because blast was a funny thing.
JR: And you were one of the farthest from the blast?
CP: Yes it was in the Castle grounds wasn’t it?
JR: It dropped into the river Lea.
CP: By Illot’s mill there.
JR: Between Wickham’s (brewery) and Illot’s there, I think someone said had it gone into the land rather than the water it would have been much worse (pause) What was it like inside your flat, what sort of kitchen did you have, did you have a copper in there or was it fairly modern by the time you go it there?
CP: It was a fairly big kitchen, all we had was an old fashioned, do you remember Ginn’s the builders? Well the owners, they put in one of these big round boilers which was enough to heat a great big school, instead of something small. We put coke on there. We bought a gas cooker which we had in the kitchen and I used the gas. In the scullery was the old fashioned brick copper and the sink. We hadn’t got an Ascot, had we there? No I think all the water we had to heat because I remember boiling the nappies when Colin was born, for these days it was really primitive. And of course we had an outside toilet. And although there was a bathroom, we managed, we didn’t use the bath really, it was shared.
JR: So you could manage with your own hot water downstairs.
OP: Oh it wasn’t ideal but we thought it was wonderful.
JR: It was big, it wasn’t as if you were cramped up.
CP: Oh yes they were lovely big rooms.
OP: There was a great big bedroom and this big room with the flat roof.
CP: And there was a nice size dining room.
OP: With French windows on to the garden, it was rather nice really. I think Mrs Adams thought she ought to be able to use the garden at one time, it was a bit embarrassing
CP: She just thought she might, but it was always agreed it was ours.
OP: It was a very nice garden. I remember the fig tree and one or two apple trees.
JR: Could you get out of the back into the lane?
CP: Next door were the Sisters and next door (to them) was the original starting place of the Mayflower Hotel, I don’t know who runs the Mayflower now, but then it was the Kemp’s and there was a place down there near the Sele Arms, because, do you remember we went to dancing classes down there in that barn there? ‘Cos Cecil stayed in the Mayflower, he was Welsh and he came up and stayed there until he was married and had a house along Ware Road. But the Mayflower, that’s where it started. And then of course they went from there to where they are now.
Transcribers Note: Mayflower 1. North Crescent 2 present day Grange Close 3. Hertingfordbury formerly called Cowper Memorial Hall.
CP: Well, we hardly saw them, and we never saw the sisters. Now I think there was a Mr Chapman who used to be at Gravesons, got a feeling he lived, probably next door to the Dittons, don’t know if you’ve heard that name?
OP: I didn’t think there were any after the Dittons going away from Hertford.
CP: Oh yes.
JR: Let’s have a look, yes, you’re right, 37 is George Ditton, 39 is George Austin Chapman.
CP: Mr Chapman used to be in the drapery. Do you remember a Mr Furlong? He’s still about here.
JR: No. I know the person who lives at number 39 now, very well, and she thought that Gravesons once owned 39, so it’s possible that if they did they let it to one of their employees. and then at the end by Cross lane that’s a much bigger house, Wigginton’s, did you know them while you were there?
CP: I know the name.
JR: Maisie Ditton said they had Battersea Grammar School boys there during the war, maybe as evacuees. I don’t quite understand whether she meant they visited or that they actually stayed. What about further up the road, I have got here Beckwith number 21.
CP: Oh yes Mrs Beckwith she did live there at one time, but I don’t remember Mr Beckwith. Of course Beckwith’s Antique shop (was) on Old Cross
JR: Living history then!
CP: Not sure which one she lived in. Dr Shultz lived down there. She was either next door or one down from where the Mayflower started. Now who was there before Dr Shultz. My doctor when Colin was born, she died.
OP: Climo?
CP: Dr Climo, that’s right, she was there before Dr Shultz came
OP: That house, an awful lot of work has been done there, its up for £285,000 or something.
CP: £370,000
JR: That’s 23 isn’t it? Frederick Whiting according to this, was at 23 or 29?
OP: I wonder if it was.
CP: That’s where Anne’s sister lived there.
OP: Yes the kitchen people, it wasn’t at one time Dr Climo’s house was it?
CP: I think it was, yes, because it was a room that size.
JR: It’s a big house on the right there. I can’t think if its 29 or 23 or 27 perhaps I could tell you that they were built about 1824.
OP: They’re Georgian.
JR: Regency style.
OP: Are they listed at all.
JR: Yes recently.
OP: They’re rather attractive, when you look at them in that crescent.
JR: They still retain their character but a lot of them have been messed about. I mean that you were in, next door number 33.
OP: But how come they were able to build a bit on in the first place?
JR: They all did, every house has got a different side bit on it, except 41 and 39.
OP: Very ugly really because the actual street is quite attractive, that flat bit stuck on the side wasn’t very attractive.
JR: No, I am not sure whether, when they were first built they all consisted of a big portion and a little portion or whether they were divided up even then, when they were built, one big house and a little one next to it and some of them knocked them in to one house. I am not sure and it seems to me that the main house was the same all the way along but the side bits, the extra bits were all slightly different, I don’t know why this is. I don’t think I will ever find out now, I have reached the bottom now, of the research.
OP: You come to see us you have reached the bottom!
JR: Well this is memory, this is quite different from the history of it! So you worked at McMullens then?
OP: I worked there for 49 years and 9 months.
JR: Was this job kept open for you during the war?
OP: Yes I started coming up at 16. I should have stayed at school until I was 16 but there was a bit of a slump on then and my parents knew somebody who worked at Mac’s and I got a chance to go there. Six of us were interviewed for that job at ten bob a week and I started off as office boy in accounts. I did all right later on, but pretty late on, finished up as company chief accountant, only late on, most of the years I was there I was a poorly paid account clerk.
The only promotion I got came late on. But I do remember David McMullen saying to me “Owen, of course you’ll want to stay and do your 50 years” I said “Oh David, 50 years sounds ever so much worse than 49 years 9 months!”
CP: Well of course nowadays you don’t stay.
JP: How old were you when you retired?
OP: 65 I have been retired nineteen years! I was happy there.
JR: Were you working there too?
CP: No, I worked in Sinden’s (Market Place) where Gravesons materials are, there was a very high class ladies shop there, milliners and that’s where I went to start with and then I went to Harradence’s in Ware.
OP: It’s a strange thing when Clara was married, no question of staying on and and working, you weren’t allowed to stay on and keep your job. You just didn’t you just left and the men got the jobs.
CP: I went back during the war and helped in the canteen, was it Bayley Hall?
OP: I know you did that but you did a job as well.
CP: At Harradence’s. Another little thing, but where the Mayflower started, that was taken over by the army and they used to have troops there, then they went, then one early morning some of the 51st Highland Division came home from El Alamein and some of them were billeted there in that house, where the Mayflower started.
JR: So they were next door but one to you, because we were trying to work out (which house).
OP: I didn’t know they came there, I’d have been worried!
JR: You didn’t tell him?
CP: You knew we’d got troops in the Alamein because they had a church parade and they wore their kilts and they’d got sores, you see, on their legs.
OP: Well I never knew they came to 31.
CP: Yes I don’t know where else they were (also in Ware Road) but they were there and then of course they trained for D day and I used to help at the canteen. I used to go there once a week in the evenings. Oh, an awful lot of those were lost at the Normandy landings. We had the Royal Worcester’s in.
OP: Oh were they at 29 or 35!! How many would they get in one of these houses?
CP: You should know, you had a lot in when you were in Bedford, used to sleep on the floor.
JR: One of the interviewees, John Kemp, bell ringer.
OP: I didn’t know he was a bell ringer, he’s a bird watcher.
JR: Oh is he?
OP: I didn’t know he was a bell ringer.
CP: Where does he live?
JR: He lives up here, a new development, Templefields.
CP: Watermill Lane, up that way.
JR: He lived in North Road Avenue and he says he remembers coming along as a boy seeing all these 51st Highlanders hanging out of the windows at number 31.
CP: Oh well they’d call out to the girls as you went by.
OP: I am learning new things all the time aren’t I !
CP: I was a girl in those days you see!
JR: They called 31 Kingussie Court, they nicknamed it apparently.
OP: What’s the connotation.
JR: I don’t know I haven’t quite got to the bottom of this yet. His brother said rather darkly, he knew what it meant but didn’t tell me. I’ll try and find out what it means. His father died when he was a boy. 11 or 12 and the brother was just a little toddler and apparently when the funeral cortege came along these soldiers came out and saluted, he was quite moved by that.
OP: John Kemp’s a bird watcher.
CP: And of course his mother, she was a lovely woman, she lived until she was very old.
JR: And his sister married a Wingate. I did ask him about that, but he didn’t have a lot to say. I think they were into the Amateur Dramatic circles.
CP: Well Mrs Kemp used to play the piano when I belonged to the Womens League of Health and Beauty.
JR: Oh do you know Elsie Summers-Gill then?
CP: Oh yes.
JR: I didn’t interview her, she’d had a stroke and couldn’t really.
CP: Oh you’ve been doing this a long time then?
JR: But I used to visit her every week for about 3 or 4 years in her last years.
CP: How long is it since she died?
JR: Two or three years.
OP: Its usually double the number of years you think of!
JR: I think its about three, because John Summers-Gill died.
CP: Did he die before her?
JR: Yes.
CP: She couldn’t have looked after herself could she?
JR: Well she had a home help that came in two or three times a week.
CP: They lived in a cottage in George Street, they moved from down here.
JR: Yes they did. His sister died and I think she left half the house to a nephew in New Zealand so they had to sell the big house and with their half could afford this little cottage in George Street but I think it was a big upheaval for them.
Transcribers Note: The Summers-Gill family home was number 1 Church Road on the corner of Elton Road, built by their father c 1898 along with surrounding houses he rented out.
Rev John H Summers -Gill the father died in 1942, his widow in 1957 the unmarried sister Eileen in 1983 which was when the house had to be sold, John died in 1990 and his widow Elsie in 1996.
CP: It must have been after living in that big house.
JR: So he lived another, some years down there and then he died. He fell down the stairs one day and died that night and she was living there for another 5 or 6 years then she died.
CP: She didn’t get out at all?
JR: I think she could have got out but she didn’t have the confidence to walk out, she needed somebody with her.
CP: She was very good at Health and Beauty.
OP: Is it still going strong, this Women’s League?
CP: I don’t know that there’s anything in Hertford now.
JR: There is a keep fit class which I think is a successor to it now at St Andrews.
OP: Where do you live?
JR: I live on Willowmead which is off the Hertingfordbury Road.
OP: I read for the talking newspapers and we record the Mercury once a month. There’s four groups, Bengeo, Hertford, Ware, and Buntingford, some record each week and we used to record down there in Burnside (The next estate to Willowmead) That’s why I know where you are. We don’t do it there now, somebody else does it.
CP: Zillah Driver.
JR: I don’t know her but I know the name.
Transcribers Note: Zillah Driver later did a recording for the HOHG
OP: I do know where you mean because this Burnside, you could see foxes running about on the other side of the river. lovely, he’s recently moved, he misses the view, very nice house. Used to walk there from here, used to take me 25 minutes, latterly it was taking me half and hour, I think I am slowing up!
JR: Now where did you do your shopping? Did you have local shops whish catered for most needs when you were living in North Crescent
CP: Well I just went in to the town. I think there were about ten grocers’ shops, there were a couple along St Andrew Street, International, Home and Colonial, Walkers Stores…
JR: Yes a good choice.
CP: It was in those days, all the little grocers stores and milk was delivered and there was a fish shop where the motorbike shop is (Cowbridge) got my fish there.
JR: When you walked round you would have passed that (photo) the Ebenezer Chapel.
CP: Didn’t they have a chapel built further back? Near where they built some flats?
JR: On that side of the road, right opposite where they were, on the site of the Cold Bath.
OP: One of Mac’s free pubs the Cold Bath, there was the Little Bell.
JR: The Little Bell was one side of Dittons.
OP: No that was further into Hertford.
JR: Yes but I don’t remember if they were on the town side of the Little Bell.
OP: Town side, Macs had 50 pubs in Ware and Hertford when I joined, 28 in Hertford and 22 in Ware. I think Ware is famous and notorious perhaps for the number of pubs in Ware.
JR: I don’t think it is as notorious as my home town which is Deal in Kent, which had 76 pubs at one time.
OP: Well no but I think this is tied up with Ware being a malting town and the barges that used to come down on the river. I remember barges being towed by horses on the river, along that towpath when I was a lad. But I think because of that and the maltings they drank a lot of beer in Ware.
CP: How big is Deal?
JR: Deal’s slightly bigger than Hertford, about another 5,000, but its got, like Hertford’s got Bengeo, Deals got Walmer next to it and although it’s a minor place its spread out, lots of houses there, but there were not so many pubs in Walmer proportionately as in Deal because every other house was a beer shop, not in my time.
OP: You don’t go back far do you!
JR: No I don’t! But you probably saw that on the way in to town, that’s Hayden’s yard.
CP: That was a grocer’s shop was it? I can’t think of a grocer before.
JR: Lawrence.
CP: Yes, Joan and ….. the other daughter married Harding.
JR: That’s right she’s the one we’ve interviewed, Joyce isn’t it?
CP: The driving test, he tested didn’t he?
JR: Bob Harding.
Tape ends