Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Murkin, Charles & Connie (O2001.7) |
| Interviewee | Charles Murkin (ChM) and Connie Murkin (CoM) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 14/04/2001 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2001.7)
Interviewee: Charles Murkin (ChM) and Connie Murkin (CoM)
Date: 14th April 2001
Venue: Brookside
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
Starts with talk of who is sitting where
PR: What I have got to do is say where I am and when it is, its Saturday, Easter Saturday its actually April 14th year 2001 and I am in the home of Connie and Charles Murkin, Brookside. Connie being the sister of Maisie Ditton, well known to oral history fans.
ChM: Someone discovered that for the first time today, they didn’t know it.
PR: Did they?
ChM: Basil Bates and his wife they were talking about singing and I said oh I leave that to Maisie I can’t sing and they said, Maisie? Maisie Ditton, and I said, yes, she’s my sister.
PR: We’ve come here because you, Charles, have been on the list for ages for the OHG to find out about your life, but it had a bit more point to it when we discovered that there’ll be a little party for the OHG in a place you will have known in earlier years, the vicarage, then, and the Glebe House now.
ChM: When the property was sold, part of the conditions of sale was that they shouldn’t call it the Old Vicarage, they had to call it the Glebe House. That was the vicarage I knew up to just after the war when the diocese sold it and built a new vicarage in the grounds.
PR: Yes. What was the relationship between the Glebe House, the Vicarage and the geographic….
ChM: It was only pedestrian access really. As you remember, Hagsdell Road was an unmade road running between Mangrove Road and Queens road and there was a drive from Hagsdell Road to the house. From the church to the vicarage, it was up Churchfields, past Abel Smith School, but it wasn’t a vehicle access and this still exists in the new vicarage, the gate where you approach diagonally towards the Glebe House and that’s been superceded by a drive in for cars, the old gateway’s still there.
PR: So if you were the vicar, you came out of the vestry door….
ChM: You came up Churchfields, a narrow….
PR: With St. John’s Hall on your right….
ChM: That was, not quite certain whether the tennis courts were there or whether it was part of the allotments – the whole of The Chestnuts was allotments – and then you came through an iron rail with a gate in the middle which has now been taken away and on foot up the hill to a side gate to the Glebe House and the bungalows weren’t there.
PR: The gateway where the bollards are now was a pedestrian way.
ChM: With swing gates in the middle. Nowadays you come down the hill to get into Longmores School, in those days you approached from the road which was superceded by the dual carriageway, you approached Longmore School via Church Street.
PR: Shaved Minnie Fentiman’s back door. And then your pedestrian gate into the Glebe House would have been near the almshouses? (Yes) Another thing is, which was the true front of the vicarage?
ChM: it’s almost facing Hagsdell. I remember coming in the door and into a square hall, and on the left-hand side was one room and on the right hand side another room.
PR: Was the one on the left the study?
ChM: No, the study was across the hall as you came in the door. Looking across to your right-hand side there’s a staircase to the bedrooms. The study was straight across the hall. That was in the time of Toewnshend Ducker, I knew the house more then. Also across the hall, round to the left, was the Parish Room.
PR: Mr and Mrs Lawn, the present owners, the one you say was the Parish Room, has an ornate ceiling and that’s why they thought it was the study.
ChM: Having said all this, I didn’t find where the kitchen was.
PR: The kitchen remains where the kitchen was, but other rooms could have had other uses.
ChM: I got the impression that these 2 rooms as you went in, one was the dining room and one was the sitting room.
PR: You said you went upstairs?
ChM: I did once, yes, when Towenshen Ducker wasn’t well and at that time I was a server at All Saints and a general factotum and he wanted me to get in touch with Mr. McDonald, who was the chaplain at Goldings, who was planning to take the services and I was summoned up there because I was going to be serving with him. Townshend Ducker had thick black stubble, he hadn’t shaved!
PR: So, he was feeling pretty low.
ChM: He’d got quit a big family, 3 or 4 girls and a boy.
PR: I don’t know his dates, was he there long?
ChM: No, he came in 1936, after the death of Landulph Smith, to 1942.
PR: So the 4 daughters were, what sort of age?
ChM: Children, although I spoke to one of them about his memorial service at Oxford She remembered chasing round the bushes. She’s now a Swedish minister.
PR: Gosh, that’s a translation!
ChM: We spoke to them, Bill Kemm might remember more than I do; we were introduced to her.
PR: The gate opposite the almshouses, that would have approached the back of the house, would it?
ChM: The side, I remember going past gravel paths and the garden was tiered.
PR: On the right hand side, coming up from All Saints there was a good quality door and they wondered if that might have been used as a front door.
ChM: We might have gone in that way.
PR: Or, an earlier use, before your time.
ChM: And the garden was laid out, beds and various levels. And the bungalow, where Gerry Booker lives, they were all part of the gardens of the house and presumably when they sold the Glebe House as it is now that paid for the new vicarage and at a later stage in Reggie Haw’s time he found the gardens too much and he put in a plan – an idea of selling off land for this bungalow.
PR: Yes, the Eames were in before, they were the first occupants.
ChM: Another thing about the Glebe House, during the war it was like the UN there. Townshend Ducker’s wife was Dutch, so during the first half of the war we had members of the Dutch government and on the top floor several people connected with the Russian Orthodox Church, because Townshend Ducker was keen on relationships with other churches and he was trying to make links with the Russian Orthodox Church, Dr. Nicolas Zernoff, a well-known name in those circles, and he and one or tow others were lodging in those rooms in the Glebe House. So there was a Russian community up there and then we had this man who was a member of the Dutch government, on of Queen Juliana’s ministers. And I remember singing in a Russian Orthodox service in All Saints. We had incense and sung a Russian mass, I suppose we must have had a Russian priest to take the service and one of his lodgers was the cantor.
PR: How old would you have been at that point?
ChM: I wads born 1923, so I was 16/17 I was confirmed by Townshend Ducker who came in 1936 and from then onwards he got us involved in the running of thee church. In those days we had 3 curates. One was a Dutch priest. Townshend Ducker took on the chaplaincies of Kingsmead School, County Hospital – with the money he got from these chaplaincies he paid for another curate, and Christs Hospital, as well.
PR: Were these curates living there?
ChM: No, they were parked out round the town, lodgings and as a result 2 of them married local girls. Alan Lovejoy married Doreen Waldock who lived in Queens Road and Ray Coates married Audrey Purcell. Ray Coates, he came with his parents and they took a flat in fore Street. He was one Ducker got from his parish.
PR: What was his churchmanship, what was All Saints churchmanship?
ChM: By comparison, All Saints was low church, evangelistic almost. We, as choir boys, wore black cassocks and white surplices. There was no cross or candles on the altar, just flowers. There were no altar frontals, just a white cloth, no processional cross, very low by comparison with St. Andrews, which we always thought was half way to Rome. He wanted to make the church what he called fuller, they never had servers in those days but he started and I was one of the first servers and I had a team of about 6 and so I had to arrange the rota. And then he introduced the cross as well, and I was the first one to do that and we used to process up to Hornsmill during the summer months for outdoor services.
PR: So he was quite dynamic…
ChM: He was young man by comparison, Landulph Smith had been there since 1910 and he’d died in office. Townshend Ducker was the son of the Chancellor of the Derbyshire Diocese so he was well versed in church law and he came to us in his early 30s and was full of enthusiasm to change things and upset no end of people, but nevertheless he weathered the storm for a little while and I can’t really understand why he left so early.
PR: You don’t remember where he went?
ChM: He went up to Derbyshire – Tideswell.
PR: The cathedral of the Peaks, it’s called…
ChM: He went up there and I kept in touch with him for some time. I went into the army in 1942, he was still in Hertford then, but by the time I finished my training courses, some of them were in Derbyshire and I went and stayed a week end with him, he’d only just arrived there then. It was a magnificent church,
PR: Yes, I’ve been to it, I can picture it – I went youth hosteling in that area.
ChM: I was stationed at Derby at the time and I used to go up by train and because he’d got a car and petrol he used to come and pick me up.
PR: Coincidentally Mowbray made a move in the same direction.
ChM: At All Saints you either spent a long time here and you die in office as Landulph Smith, then we had Toewnshen Ducker, Then Burges – he was here a long time, he died in office or just after he left. Then Chris Perowne, who went to Standon, who was not a well man. He stayed with us and died within 12 months of leaving us and he was followed by Reggie Haw. He died in office. David Mowbray was a younger man, he got out before he died. This why All Saints suffers, incumbents who either die in office or else they don’t stay long.
PR: It’s a very different parish, there’s nothing in common between Hornsmill and Foxholes.
ChM: We try to get a presence in Hornsmill – at one point we were renting the Cranborne Hall for Sunday School, although we couldn’t find anyone to run it. I think finally one of the free churches ran it but we continued to pay the rent for many years. There wasn’t a facility at Gallows Hill. Toewnshen Ducker sold off the mission hall in Bull Plain, next to the museum, that was All Saints and the Pioneer Hall in Ware Road, St. John’s Hall in those days, so the properties were sold to build the new one.
PR: So the two were running together.
ChM: So the church built the one, St. John’s Hall, but they never went into it as the war was coming along and the hall was commandeered in 1939 by the Army Dental Corps until 1945. They also put up the wooden hut by the side, which the church still uses! The church hall was finally completed just after the war and handed back to us. When the Dental Corps had the hall they put in steel girders.
PR: Can I take you back, you don’t really belong in Hertford?
ChM: Yes, I do. My father came from Cambridge and he started work in Stephen Austin’s before the First World War. He couldn’t find a home in Hertford at the time so he took a home in Ware and it was in Ware that I was born. Then when I was 7 or 8 we found a home in Townshend Street, no. 9 which we rented for 3/6d a week. We stayed there for 7 or 8 years and we moved across the road, we bought the house, no. 6 from Mr. Rowley, Cllr. Rowley. He died and his widow sold the house to us for £300. I was born in Rainsfoird road, Ware. The same house where Gerry Booker’s first wife was born in, after me. It was a big house.
PR: Jean Ledger.
Side 2
ChM: I had two sisters who got married, and I suspect (just) mother and father, myself and brother moved into this little house in Townshend Street, which had gas lights at the time, we had electricity installed eventually. Father finished up as foreman in charge of printing the Mercury, he worked very had on Thursdays.
PR: So the sisters were older.
ChM: One was a reader at Stephen Austin, who married and went to Roydon, the other one, she eventually married and went to Nottingham. Her husband was Douglas Bundock who was closely involved with Gospel Hall, he was a carpenter. My brother, Norman, he’s two years younger, we both went to Hertford Grammar School, both scholarships from Abel Smith. I’m one of those who Len Green mentions in his book on the Cowper School. When I came to Hertford I went to the Cowper School and then the school was re-organised and one class went to Abel Smith School and I was in that class. Brother Norman, he started at Faudel Phillips school. I got a scholarship to the grammar school, the only one that got one from that school, the numbers were very small in those days. It’d only just moved up to where it is now – it certainly wasn’t overcrowded and the numbers were about two or three hundred.
PR: Would you have had Boggie Marsh, or Bunt?
ChM: Bunt was headmaster, lived in Highfield Grove, he was a very strong man, we daren’t misbehave, always wore school uniform, no hands in pockets, no eating sweets in the street, you’d soon be shouted at if you were seen.
PR: You didn’t have a history teacher called Davis in your time?
ChM: No, my history teacher was…. I think Bunt did a lot of history….
PR: So how did you come to be with All Saints Church then?
ChM: Well, at an early age, when we first came to Hertford, my mother sent me to Sunday School and in those days the girls’ Sunday School met in St. John’s Hall, Ware road, the boys met in the Cowper School and the two never met. My Sunday School teacher was Ruth Wren. She said to me, you’ve got a nice voice, why don’t you join the choir? I went to join the choir having had an audition with Mr. Comley. Most people sang the National Anthem for your test piece. It was attractive at the time for a boy because you got paid.
PR: Your parents didn’t go?
ChM: My mother would go sometimes but not very regularly.
PR: So, it was your own enterprise, encouraged by Ruth Wren.
ChM: My mother used to come to services occasionally, particularly evensong and when I joined my brother joined as well. But it was difficult going in those days because you had choir practice, the boys, one evening about 5 or 6 and the other time was in the school lunch time, most of the boys were in Abel Smith School.
PR: And Mr. Comley was a professional musician.
ChM: Lunchtimes were between 12 and 2, so that was all right while I went to Abel Smith School, midday choir, but when I went to the Grammar School the hour was different there, 12 to half past one, a lot of the boys didn’t go home. I had to miss out on the lunchtime one. We had to get time off for the Assizes, the choir were paraded for the judge – we were paid for that, an extra 6d.
PR: Who were the other people in the choir in those pre-war…..
ChM: Les Norton, he became an organ pupil of ‘Commley and he finally finished up as the organist of Ware St., Mary, related to Alec Crane. He was my best friend. And another chap I was friendly with, Ron Lamb, we had two rows of good boys, Comley said. There must have been about 20 of us because you had two rows and when we went into the church the end two seats underneath the vicar’s stall were just trestles. Vernon Hal extended the choir stalls, so we filled the choir up.
PR: Were the men like Freestone and the Culls…..
ChM: The Culls, yes, Frank and Reg, and Mr. Freestone, Willson the wine merchant – the screen at All Saints church was built in his memory – he lived in Queens Road. And Mr. Munnings was another man, of the china shop, he was the choir secretary, and Charlie Childs and a Mr. Nash of Ware road, his son became an archdeacon, and later on a man called Ruffles turned up!
PR: Oh, that would be after the war.
ChM: Amods Stockwell was another man in the choir, Vernon Hale, of course, they were the pre-war. Another pre-war was Jimmy Forman. We had a strong choir and with a professional musician we had a proper training. We used to say that we were better than the other churches and I think we were.
PR: I think so. Dad was very disappointed that Tom, my brother, and I didn’t go to All Saints. We wanted to go to St. Andrews for social reasons and there was an up and coming choir and it’s now very big, it’s bigger than All Saints. But it was always homespun and the musicianship was at All Saints.
ChM: We used to put on big choral works, and the carol service was big and I remember going down to sing at weddings and I certainly remember singing at funerals at Hertingfordbury, so we went round a lot.
PR: All Saints’ Choir was an important part of my dad’s life but I don’t know when he would have joined, after he was demobbed, or…. he was in Hertford a bit before the war when he met mother. Do you remember?
ChM: He had a fine tenor voice, he took over from Frank Cull. And we had another man called Mr. Voss. He used to sing solo. We had a men’s choir after the war. The Cecilian Singers – we used to go round to various charities.
PR: Oh, that was church-based, I thought possibly part of the Hertford Choir.
ChM: No, Goshawk started it, he lived up at Woodlands near Ernest Powell who was the organist at the Congregational Church. There was a dozen or more of us in this choir. At that time, I was singing alto. I was head boy and soloist in the boys’ choir and I would have stayed in the choir but in the beginning of the war I got tied up with lots of other things and I wasn’t giving all my proper time to it so I had a row with the organist that was acrimonious. For years he never spoke to me, he wrote to my mother and said how rude I’d been. I didn’t go back to the choir; I went to the church. At that time, I was involved with the scouts.
PR: Time isn’t infinitely at your disposal at any age.
ChM: Musicians, they’re not all that tolerant at times.
PR: A lot of it is team playing, if you lose a player…. but when did Connie come into all this?
ChM: She started off in St. Andrew’s Church and she got on with Natty Gardner very well, then she had a change of incumbent there, Norman Smith. Then she started circulating round all the churches in turn, the Methodists, Congregational, Catholic church.
CoM: I was working in London, I went to London when I left school, and had lots of friends there and they belonged to different persuasions and this time when I wasn’t very happy with St. Andrews I thought I’d try what these others do.
ChM: We had a curate, Mitchell, who went to Lemsford eventually, who liked putting on plays, quite substantial, and a nativity play – “someone” got chosen for the Virgin Mary and I was the innkeeper and we got caught up on that to some extent, also, Burges, after the war ended, wanted to set up something at All Saints to welcome back people from the forces. Ducker had a strong youth fellowship before the war, Burges hoped he’d get them back into church, and to have a social gathering to come back to, he started a 20s club.
CoM: He was a very wise man. He said these people who have been in the forces are used to company, they have nothing to come back to so it’s up to you people who have been here to do something, so three or four of us, the two Jackson brothers at Chaseside and Peggy Worrin and myself, we got together and we decided to have a party as a start and we got invitations out inviting everyone in the parish of that age. We were decorating that hall when “someone” walked in.
ChM: I was caught!
CoM: And we were putting up decorations and he said, my father’s got some bunting in the basement and he went and got it. Then the curate put on a nativity play and I was Mary, then he put on another play….
ChM: “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and you were Lady Somebody.
CoM: Then I lived in North Road and “someone” said he would see me home sometimes and that’s how it started.
ChM: Bill Jackson was one of the leading lights in the 20s Club, his father started Chaseside Motors.
PR: Those Jacksons were not related to the one who was a bank manager?
ChM: No, this one emigrated to Canada and in WW1 came back to live here and stayed and started the Chaseside Motor Co. then Chaseside Engineering down Mead lane, and Caxton Hill -: Lantern.
PR: Chaseside was Enfield Chase?
ChM: Yes, and that’s where it is now. And the Jacksons lived in Wallfields – parish garden fetes in the grounds there. We used to have discussion groups in Ducker’s time, ’39. ’40. Couldn’t use the church because of blackouts so used to go there. And Jackson was Church Warden at that time.
CoM: Bill Jackson was to do with agriculture and St. John’s Hall was requisitioned by the Dental Corps and it stood in muddy ground and it was Bill Jackson that got us in the 20s Club, mainly the girls, and he planted potatoes, and ploughed that, and he said we’ll plant these potatoes because that’s the best thing to break the ground up and when the potatoes are harvested we’ll put them in bags and give to the more needy of the parish, which we did, and that left it nice and level and it was he who got it to what it is now, that nice greensward.
ChM: He was one of my team of servers that I taught earlier before the war.
PR: Colin Penny had a lot to do with the building of the……
ChM: Yes, he was the church wardens with Alfred Morris, Morris the furniture shop.
PR: Where the Queen and Princess Margaret were reputed to have come on a Thursday afternoon from Hatfield and ran around in the store.
ChM: Morrises were staunch supporters of the church. There’s another Morris who was also a sidesman, and then 3 sister Morrises who ran the private school in Ware Road. Mr. Hart who’s there now has changed its name back to the Old School House.
PR: Oh, is he a Hertford person.
ChM: No, but we picked him up for All Saints. But Colin Penny was the business man.
PR: I must ask about Reg Dye and the Dye family in a minute – get in a muddle with the initials and the name he chose to be known by – the vicar PFL Burges – which one did he use – Francis?
ChM: Francis, yes.
PR: And, was there a Mrs. Burges?
ChM: Oh, yes, she would come for the very last second before the service started, on her bike, and plonk it sat the back outside the door. The choir very often got in before she came in, we used to say she dashed down the aisle. They had no cars in those days, I can’t remember the Landulph Smiths or the Burges in a car either, Burges didn’t drive. In those days Minnie Fentiman did a lot of work in the church, the clergy did the visiting, Burges used to go round on his bike, I don’t know much about Landulph Smith but he (Burges) took over from Ducker and Ducker was so busy stirring everybody up – he insulted the Corporation at one of the Civic Services and he slated them over the delay in putting Hartham in order, they called the Bradford System. They raised the level of Hartham with rubbish. When Burges died, Perowne came highly recommended, he was made a canon when he was with us.
PR: Did he come from Standon? [at Standon 1934-47]
ChM: No, Barnet, I think
PR: There’s a road named after him in Standon.
ChM: He retired to Standon, his father was the Bishop.
PR: What about the Dye family who represented the people of the town?
ChM: The Dye family used All Saints, eventually Dan Dye became mayor, he was Church Warden for many years, Church Warden who appointed Reggie Haw – Dan was very much in All Saints and Reg took over from him and up until she died, Mary came to the church.
PR: She and her sister Olive used to come to St. Andrews evensong, regularly. She never lost the main link with All Saints.
ChM: And Joan Neal died recently, she was a Dye and she married to the Neals, another family who were involved with All Saints, George Neal who became town clerk, he was my son’s Sunday School teacher.
PR: Did they live in West St.?
ChM: Yes, 21 or 23, that was the Dyes house and then of course we had a Church Army worker…
PR: Sister Cutts, no, 25 with Miss Waller.
ChM: Miss Waller was the superintendent of the girls’ Sunday School and Cecily Silversides was with her.
Tape 2, side A (mention of incumbent-bellringer whose name had been missed off the recording.)
PR: Did you start bell-ringing because of your father?
CoM: Yes, I was only about 11.
ChM: Connie was reputed to be the youngest girl ever to ring a peal of bells. The record has been overturned. If you buy the appropriate Ringers World you’ll find headlines there – youngest girl to ….
CoM: [One of the incumbents, probably Landulph Smith or Toewnshen Ducker was a bell-ringer, not a very good one, but he rung at Cricklewood. Nevertheless, most Sundays he walked up there and spoke to the bell-ringers, the only clergyman I can remember coming into the belfry.
PR: He was a mover of things.
CoM: We had one or two elderly bellringers at the time, who weren’t all that keen, they had to stop their chatter and who thought his place wads down below. I started because of my father, I asked if I could come and watch, and took a fancy to it.
PR: Were you the only one of the three to ring? (yes).
ChM: I think father was disappointed, he was an army man and he had no sons, and I think “someone” here was a tomboy and she had to keep up with the boys.
CoM: I used to go to the shop. Accumulators and those things and mother used to think I should spend more time at home helping her. I always preferred that type of thing to the domestic side of it, that’s how I became a bell ringer. One of the bell ringers was a carpenter, Gorge Gray, who lived in Castle St. – he made a box because I couldn’t reach. I didn’t start again after the war, I rang right up to when the war started (during the war the bells were silenced and I didn’t start again because by that time I’d got to All Saints Choir.
PR: But George Henry went on and on ringing, didn’t he.
CoM: Oh, yes he went on after that, I’m afraid I didn’t go back.
PR: Our church staves are both in memory of your parents and the George one has got a rattle. When I was Church Warden I made sure I had your mother’s. There’s a little something loose on the badge at the top of it and as you walk in front of the bishop you can hear this.
ChM: You’ve only got wooden wands then?
CoM: Yes, we asked what the church would like.
PR: Well, in view of his years as Church Warden it was appropriate. And he had St. Nicholas Hall anxieties as well. We were just about to mention the wonderfully named Edith Fosdyke.
ChM: Her father was Church Warden and she was involved with the Sunday School at an early age with the other sister, Gladys….
PR: And Gladys became Mrs. Skerman…
ChM: Yes, then there was the other one who’s still alive and then the other sister, Anne, married Charlie Blake who was a teacher, then he went into the ministry. Edie never married, devoted herself to church work. She was in the Guild and ladies’ choirs; she was really more keen on her church work than other outside interests. He finished up running the Sunday School and she was also secretary to the PCC for many years. Eventually she lived in West St where she looked after an elderly aunt.
PR: Where were they living before?
ChM: Lived along the Ware Rd in, it’s a dentists now, top of Rynham St, big family house [73], father was something on the railway I think, Ware Rd in those days was a hive of activity, we had the Morrises, Marshall, who was also in All saints’ church, across the road we had Mr. Heal, All Saints.
PR: Used to be a little joke with more bite to it than was comfortable. If father was home late from choir practice at All Saints he would have been accused of talking to Edie, and that was, as far as I know, in the West St. direction, he’d have been standing around on a cold night and talking interesting things, nothing improper but there was just a little edge on it, she’d be looking to see what time….
ChM: After the war Comley was getting older, he hadn’t got the enthusiasm for the choir he used to have, particularly recruiting boys. I had a row with him, he didn’t get on too well with boys, he couldn’t, the congregation had dropped, there weren’t boys in the congregation so it got very low and he still wanted to do the same sort of music, then he recruited some ladies, ladies who initially couldn’t dream of being robed, they had to sit behind the choir, file in before the choir. The choir processed in but the ladies were only there for their voices. They supported Stainers Crucifixion, then the ladies said well, if we’re going to be the choir why can’t we robe, so he said there’s no money. So the ladies immediately raised money to buy themselves robes and that was the first time ladies appeared in the choir. The first hymn as they came in was “Who are these like Angels appearing?”
CoM: Mr. Mitchell was there, you line up in the vestry and the vicar gave out that, what hymn number and he said All Saints Ladies Choir.
PR: Another person that father would refer to at home, little Audrey, and that was Audrey Mortimer.
ChM: Yes, there were 2 Audreys, Audrey Proctor as well.
PR: Yes, but this was Audrey Mortimer.
ChM: The other Audrey, Proctor, was also in the choir whose father was also Mayor of Hertford.
We understand at this late stage, she must be in her 60s or 70s and has just been married.
PR: Is she living in Hertford?
ChM: No, Surrey, getting married in Norwich Cathedral. The ladies choir has connections, Edie organized a reunion not so very long before she died and they still keep in touch with one another and there’s Ann Parker.
PR: Ann-Marie, she is.
ChM: Sheila Tyler, Corine Froude, Rene Robinson and Mavis Coles.
PR: I’d forgotten Rene Robinson, she’s made a tape. Edith Fosdyke, I’d missed her being ill but when you’re in work, your own circle that you meet routinely….
ChM: She had poor health for several years.
CoM: She did have Meniers.
PR: Then she lost her memory, didn’t she, or was that normal events?
ChM: Latter stages. She died in the nursing home at Ware.
CoM: Highfield. She was in the Malthouse for a little while.
ChM: The other one whose name was quite prominent in All Saints at the time was Elsie Rowan. She died recently in Kingfisher nursing home. She lived in Raynham St, I think they may have sold it now. She had a long history, more interesting really than Edie, who finished up at County Hall mainly as senior clerk. Elsie was secretary to Sidney Broad, County Education Officer. Prior to that she was secretary to Miss Wingate, of Balls Park College. Prior to that she was in the County Health Department, County Hall, Queens Nurses.
PR: One person I remember as a very frail driver, chiefly, was Miss Sworder.
ChM: Yes, well she was one of the old Hertford family of Sworders, Town Clerk or whatever he was. She used to drive Burges around.
PR: She looked a very fragile driver towards the end of her time.
ChM: I think as a result of her money, we were able to install electricity.
PR: Yes, because you had gas until very later on for a public building.
ChM: And that gas is the cause of our present problem.
PR: Yes, I hear, it was installed in 1919.
ChM: Anyway, those gas pipes will all be taken down, we hope it will be safe.
PR: One fell in the night on the choir stalls somewhere near where Bill Kemm would be sitting.
ChM: And it bounced off his pew and on to the communion table. There was one of those bookstands there and it badly dented that. That has now been inspected all round the church, others were in a dangerous state, they might well have…..we’re talking about 20 to 30 thousand.
PR: Although I’m at St. Andrews I’ve got quite a lot of memories of All Saints. Sometimes I used to come from St. Andrews to a choir practice Mr. Comley would be having after the service, father had to stay on and sing, presumably after morning service at about 12 o’clock, as a small boy I could go with him and stand on the seat. I once went to a service, I was only in the primary school still, and had the temerity, so my mother thought, of going in Dan Dye’s pew and I went home and told my mother I’d sat with Mr. Dye, and he had a box kneeler and he lifted this thing and from it took out a hymn book and gave me. He may have been the Mayor, or not long after his mayoralty, about 1950. Mother thought this was a bit too pushy of me. His brother, Bill Dye, lived next door to us, he wasn’t a civic person.
ChM: Everyone virtually sits in the same seats and if they are missing you can see they’re not here this week. At All Saints, under one pew, is a little wooden box sitting under the seat and there is a key for someone to keep their books in there.
PR: Someone I was working with at Broxbourne, the woodwork master, in fact, in the Salisbury one lunchtime, they lived in Cheshunt but happened to go to the Salisbury, and there waiting to have a meal towards the end of his incumbency, reading the Sunday papers, was Reggie Haw. And it was just like a scene out of Trollope, he went into the dark back of this grand old building, a Clerk in Holy Orders with a glass, half-glasses reading the Sunday papers, he thought he’d strayed years! Reggie was a character, wasn’t he!
ChM: Yes, he came with a remarkable record for running a team ministry, it must have been a very busy area and he came here thinking he was going to run things here much the same, and then he lost his wife fairly early, he was looking after himself, getting older. Then his own health deteriorated but he soldiered on. He’d got all his connections, he was very keen on masons.
PR: Conservative Party – most priests keep away from politics.
ChM: He was friendly with Nigel Longmore and he was interested in horse-racing – he was really reading the racing column! He was getting old and he’d been here a longish time. He wasn’t able to get around as much as he might have wanted to. He said quite clearly when he came here, well there’s only one of me and everyone knows where I am, they can find me in the church or vicarage. He did very little visiting.
PR: Whereas Bill Kemm is always……..
ChM: He’s always on his bike. He’s just had his bike nicked.
PR: Yes, North Station.
ChM: But I understand someone has given him one. But he said I’m still going to claim on the insurance to see if I can get it back.
PR: And also [he was] a distinctive personality – there are stories to tell, or there will be. He does an extremely good magazine opening and obituaries are good.
ChM: He knows the people, we act as voluntary vergers. Each funeral follows the same pattern except when he talks about the family and he’s obviously been to the deceased’s home.
CoM: A different priest all together from Reggie Haw, a different priest from David Mowbray.
ChM: We’ve been on fairly good terms with most of them, personally, Landulph Smith was before Connie’s time and before my time but I got well with Ducker, I used to go to his……and I went to his memorial service. Bill Kemm took that. Got on fairly well with old Perowne and we went to his house in Standon where he retired, Then Reggie Haw we didn’t get on quite so much with him until we were both Church Wardens – the latter stage when he was in ill health. Connie got on with him quite well the last time she saw him, and then David Mowbray, we got on very well because Con was Church Warden with Arthur Sandford and we went and vetted him and so we were very friendly with David Mowbray and went to stay at his house in Derby. Bill Kemm, we do things for him, I’m quite friendly with him. I go to the stamp club, common interest there. It’s very difficult at All Saints because so many commuters and transitory people – don’t seem to have the old Hertford families in church like we used to.
PR: I had to press the pause button quite s few times when I went down to Godalming where old man Comley’s surviving son, Pat [lives]. There was a particular reason so I motored down. He got onto the subject of his father and how his family didn’t speak to him after his second marriage. He kept saying press the pause, but for the historian the best bits are the naughty bits he didn’t want in ! They had a hard time with him throughout their childhood, mother was very much more motherly and gentle and stood between father and the four children. The sisters have all died now.
ChM: Nora was musical of course, Mimmie, whe married Charlie Blake. Mimmie was more tolerant, she was friendly with Sheila Hudson. Comley toured all the churches, he was very keen on masonic circles.
PR: I remember seeing him when he was quite old underneath a Ford car during his second marriage outside the vestry door doing a running repair, He was on the ground, I thought that was pretty impressive.
ChM: He was an early car driver, he had an old Ford he bought for £100, reg. CAR50 and he took me and Pat to Windsor for the day.
Tape 2 Side B
ChM: The school had only been started in 1932. I went there in '34. It was just about occupied. In those days it was mainly fee-paying pupils, more than half the school were fee-paying, so they had a prospectus which they published which set out all the facilities they offered and it also listed the uniform which was required: PE shirts and that kind of thing and you could only buy it from Samuel Graveson's so we went to Graveson's and my mother got it all and we didn't quite get to underwear, but there were shirts that you had to have, the summer outfit and the winter outfit and it was such a lot that at the time my mother thought 'this is a lot of money, can't afford all this' so we went and saw Samuel Graveson and negotiated terms...we paid it by instalments! And being a school such as it was, most of the pupils were well-endowed. Once I went there, I was in a different world, really, and I lost a lot of my contacts: children I'd been at Abel Smith with. I'm back to them now again.
PR: Yes, but you'd had the scouting...
ChM: Yes, I stayed with the scouts all the time...
PR: Would you have met some of your...
ChM: Not many, no. Certainly I'm now back to them all, Bruce Johnson for example, no doubt you've had a word with him...oh, Church, what's his name?
PR: Fred?
ChM: Fred Church, the sign writer. He remembers us taking violin lessons together at Abel Smith School where we paid so much a week or something. We also had a special insert we put on our violins where you put your fingers, so he remembered all that. I’m part of the other survey that's been undertaken, the Hertfordshire babies...you've heard of that one?
PR: Yes, I have.
ChM: We were involved in that survey.... babies who'd been born in Hertfordshire whose birth statistics are available and they've followed this for a number of years and we've taken part in several tests for the Medical Research Council.
PR: Why didn't your boys go to Richard Hale then?
ChM: Well, Connie was a product of Ware Girls' Grammar School and I was Hertford Boys' Grammar School and we thought, we've got two boys, we've got no girls in the family, we really think they'd be better if they grew up in a mixed environment. So we sent them over to Broxbourne Grammar School, Mr. Laydon and then it was invaded by a school next door, so we didn't know whether we did the right thing! (laughter)
CoM: It was purely to get a mixed school. I felt...I was happy at Ware Grammar School obviously, but I felt there were things as you got older in the school...I mean when we had the school party for instance at the end of the year, in the senior part of the school, it seemed silly, girls dancing with girls. And we hadn't got a mixed family, we'd just got the two boys, no sisters.
ChM: And another thing of course, at that time the standards at Richard Hale, or Hertford Grammar School had dropped quite a lot, Whereas Laydon, at Broxbourne, he'd got some very high standards. It was almost back to real grammar school standards. We had to go up to D.H. Evans to buy tweed suits and the like.
PR: Old D.H. Evans, yes, and of course it also had the benefit of a freshness...it was a new school with a founding head...
ChM: It wasn't complete, I don't think he'd got a full range...and he'd got all qualified, well I suppose the Hertford Grammar School had the same, but it was a mixed school and we had the facilities available where the County Council paid for train fares.
PR: Did you have ant trouble getting them in in the first place?
ChM: It might well have been that I was known because I remember Ian Laydon coming to see me when he was first appointed and I showed him how to keep his books, financial records.
PR: With Ian Laydon that would have counted, certainly, and those days when it could. He knew something about the stable.
CoM: There were several other children in Andrew's class at Abel Smith who went to Broxbourne... a little clutch of boys at the same time. He wasn't the only one and the year above him, Peter Slade, he offered to take Andrew the first day, so he'd know where to go, and there was Martin Castle, there was that Valley Close girl...
PR: Robb, Eileen Robb.
CoM: All those were at Abel Smith together.
PR: Where was Peter Slade living then?
CoM: In Raynham Street...only saw him on Saturday.
PR: He's having a... he’s fifty...would that be right?
CoM: I suppose so.
PR: I've got to go to his birthday tomorrow.
ChM: Andrew will be forty-nine, you see.
PR: I didn't teach your boys, but I met them on the corridors after we'd come over, as it were from next door.
CoM: We were very happy with the school.
PR: They did well, didn't they, academically very well.
CoM: We were concerned when Andrew started, because he'd always been a bit of a job to get started at school. He was a sorry little soul first at Faudel Phillips and then at Abel Smith it took him a little while to settle and I thought, 'oh, dear, are we doing the right thing?' but funnily enough he settled, just like that at Broxbourne, he got in with two or three boys all similar sort to himself and the funny thing I felt at the time, Martin Castle who we've known quite a lot, he was the cat's whiskers at Abel Smith and had always gone into school just like this, whereas Andrew had always been timid at every move, I thought 'oh crumbs, what will happen now, how will Andrew come home?' Andrew went into Broxbourne like that without a single complaint of any sort, met up with some boys similar to himself, I suppose, and was as happy as a sand boy. Martin, on the other hand, had a difficult start, his mother said he wasn't happy.
PR: Did he live in Cromwell Road?
CoM: Yes. Whether because he'd been the big boy at Abel Smith he felt that.....this shouldn't be on there by the way...turn that off....
PR: Oh, no, well we'll live with that.....
CoM: Why don't you put it off?
PR: Oh, no, it's on!
ChM: Andrew was a bit difficult to settle, although he never settled really after he left school, but that's another question! Brian, he sailed on quite happy. I think being a second son makes a difference.
Transcribers Note: This is what is said but it may be a reference to pre Broxbourne days.
PR: But Martin...yes, I only knew him at Broxbourne in his final years. By then he was in his stride and athletic and he was my house captain, so I had to...I had quite a lot to do with him then, when I took over Bronte House.
ChM: He's gone into local government now, he's on the parish council up at Buntingford.
PR: Buntingford, yes and he and Eileen were sweet on each other for a long time.
ChM: Yes they were...separated now, aren't they?
CoM: I think so, yes.
PR: But they were married for a long time. It all started in... well, it may have started at Abel Smith. I don't know, it was certainly flourishing in school days.
CoM: I think the Robbs came along a little later...they weren't at Faudel Phillips.
ChM: I didn't have anything to do with school in those days. You (Connie) used to meet them and take them home.
CoM: Martin was a very popular boy at Abel Smith.
ChM: Of course he was very athletic.
CoM: He was athletic...a very nice boy too.
PR: But having been central to things, that's something, that's probably...yes....
CoM: But then he found it more difficult perhaps even to be the small one in a big pond.
PR: Then he would be one of a hundred.
CoM: Than Andrew, who would go expecting to be......
ChM: Involved...
CoM: They were all sort of science mad.
ChM: Half a dozen of them, Storey and....
PR: Oh, Storey, yes, was that the Hertford.....the Storey boy?
ChM: Storey lives in Hagsdell...he worked with our friend Franklin Simson, that's where Storey
worked.
Transcribers Note: The Storey family lived in Ware during David’s school days, afterwards living in Hagsdell. Mr Story worked with Aubrey Franklin at Simson Pimm, envelope manufacturers
PR: Seems very cerebral, as it were.
CoM: Then there was Stedham.
ChM: Stedham, yes.
PR: Forgotten him, yes.
CoM: Then there were three or four, somebody Sargeant, Steven Sargeant?
PR: Yes, yes, lived in Bell Lane, near to the school.
CoM: Those four stuck together for a very long time and Andrew's godfather to one of David
Stedham's children.
Transcribers Note: Jenny and a brother Anthony, both younger
PR: Yes, there was a girl Stedham as well.
CoM: Yes, Stella was it?
PR: Compton, Stella Compton was in that quarter?
ChM: She went to Oxford, didn't she, Laura?
Transcribers Note: Some confusion here, Mr Stedham married Stella unsure who Laura is. Jenny Stedham went to Oxford.
PR: Yes.
ChM: Andrew, he never pushed it, he never went to university, well, he went for two terms and he came away.
PR: Well, that's a fairly normal pattern.
ChM: And Brian went to Imperial College....Director of Finance for the Institute of Directors.
PR: That's the one! If sometime we can get a photocopy of your prospectus.....
(Some talk about where this is)
PR: Better organised household than mine would be.... I couldn't put my hand on a relic...
CoM: He's fairly good like that. I thought you'd got it off when we were talking about.....wipe it
off...it's not fair to talk about other people. I thought you'd got it turned off.
End of recording