Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Pooley, Alice (O1999.23) |
| Interviewee | Alice Pooley (AP) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 29/07/1999 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1999.23
Interviewee: Alice Pooley (AP)
Date: 29th July 1999
Venue: 7 Revels Close
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcribed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Marilyn Taylor
************** = unclear recording
Italics = transcriber’s notes
[discussion] = untranscribed material
[Unfortunately although there was only the two of them there is a lot of overtalking. Tried to unravel but there is some loss]
PR: Now this is Peter Ruffles talking from number 7 Revels Close, the home of Miss Alice Pooley, very well-known person in Bengeo and a friend of mine and my family’s for all of my life. And I’ve come here because she knew Miss Turnbull, Head of St Andrews school and Alice also worked at the hospital and went to school in Hertford. Actually its very pleasant in this room, it’s a scorching hot afternoon 29th Jul9 1999 baking hot outside, but in Alice’s front room…
AP: Shall I tell you where I got my blinds from. Yes I am quite pleased with them. They put a leaflet through the door and I phoned them up in Cheshunt and they came and measured, I’m very very pleased with them.
PR: One of those stories where it works out.
AP: I get the sun in here normally and it’s so overpowering on my eyes.
PR: So were you actually born in Hertford then?
AP: Yes.
PR: Where were you born?
AP: I should imagine, going back I think it must have been in Ash Street along the Ware Road
PR: The gaol area Oak, Ash and Elm.
AP: Now pulled down and made ready for the Red Cross.
PR: And your brother would he have been born there?
AP: No he was born in Foxholes Avenue, further up Ware Road, we’d moved by then. I was 6 years older than him and after we progressed, that’s what happened in those days, young people took rooms didn’t they and Mum and Dad went to live at 7 Townshend Street with the Carpenters, they’re an old family name. He was caretaker eventually down Hertford Grammar School and we stayed there for a few years and that became my second home. I always felt I could go there, they looked after me when Mum was in the hospital several times.
PR: So by the time you arrived it was the gaol area, straight up to Foxholes from there?
AP: No I went to Townshend Street then up to Foxholes, it was a chalky area, it was made out of chalk pits and it wasn’t very good soil, difficult to get a garden together. Anyway we survived, I was up there until the end of the war.
PR: Oh, so how did you come to Bengeo then?
AP: Mrs Brooks, who was mayor.
PR: First woman mayor.
AP: She was at the hospital and I knew her quite well and she got involved with having that place built on the car park for getting the over sixties club going and they built that place down there. She wanted some curtains made for every window. So, she came to see Alice, at the hospital. “If I get the roll of material” she said, “do you think you could make the curtains for me”. So I said “Yes that’s all right, that’s fair enough, I’ll make those for you. I made a silly mistake really, there was a little piece of material over, in excess, so in the last pair of curtains over the doorway I put in a width and a half in each curtain and of course the comment was, after that, they look better with more material in, could Miss Pooley have the curtains back she made single width as she was told to and put another half width in each curtain?
It was a fine old game because it was a trellis work pattern with roses in it. So, I had to undo the side and put the other half width in. Of course, when she came up to Foxholes once or twice to collect whatever, she was really impressed with the place because we’d only got one big sitting room and kitchen and mother had got her dresser with her ornaments on. Mrs Brooks was admiring it and mother said to her” What we would like is a bigger house, we’ve applied several times and we’ve had no luck. We’ve got a son and daughter and there has to be a put you up downstairs when he comes home from the forces. So, she said “I’ll see what I can do”. Really, truly it was only through Winnie Brooks that within a matter of weeks we had a form come in to say would you go and see the council for a transfer.
PR: Was that in to the Airey Houses?
AP: That was in the Airey houses when we come up here, on that corner.
PR: What number was that?
AP: Number 30, Its fantastic really, because if it hadn’t been for her goodness knows how long we would have stayed there. I always think it was very good of her to put our name forward and do something for us.
PR: Well, she’d spotted something she could do and that was the way of things. Now the club that she was starting on the car park, that wasn’t the Evergreen Club?
AP: Yes, it was called the Evergreen Club.
PR: With Dan Dye and ….
AP: Yes, all these people got together and thought Hertford’s older people needed somewhere ‘cos they were very conscious of looking after the older people . They got that building put up and Youngs did all the rose garden.
PR: That was the stall in the covered market, don’t know where the nursery was.
AP: I think Cheshunt way, out there.
PR: This is for people in 50 years’ time thinking which club is she talking about.
AP: After a period of time she passed that over to someone else and started a Bengeo one. Mrs Norman, when we went to a party on Monday, the annual service at St Leonards and then a party at Mr and Mrs Norman’s garden, there was a gorgeous cake and Mrs Norman announced that it was 50 years since it started. So it was quite an anniversary and the mayor was there and he cut the cake and it was lovely. Because she passed it over to Mrs Norman. Mrs Norman had worked with Mr Brooks in his office at the hospital many years ago and in time there was a post vacant during the war at Longmores and I think Mr Brooks brother worked at Longmores and he asked her if she would like a transfer to Longmores and she went to Longmores after that, she left the hospital. She’d got great interest in the Brooks.
PR: The Bengeo Branch of the club still continues. She’s made a tape, Queenie Norman.
Transcribers Note: This was Bengeo Good Companions closed a few years before Mrs Norman’s death as numbers dwindled. The party would have been held in the garden of The Cedars on Bengeo Street where they lived for many years. Since her death new houses have been built on much of it.
AP: Has she? Oh you’ll get plenty from her. She’s very interested in everything and so supportive of everything she does.
PR: Yes that was last summer before he had his fall. (Denis Norman)
AP: Yes that was sad, but he’s recovered, amazing.
PR: Now you were at Abel Smith School
AP: Faudel Phillips to start with, as a toddler, 5 years old.
PR: That was the school for Foxholes Avenue, a long way off.
AP: We walked back at dinner time, back in the afternoon.
PR: The great long flat Ware Road.
AP: We knew everyone that worked at Addis’s.
PR: So Faudel Phillips, then to Abel Smith, then to Longmore? So all your schooling was in that famous spot.
AP: That Alleyway (Rookes Alley) was where I learned to stand on my head.
PR: They taught you that!
AP: Oh yes, and my auntie came along when I was doing it and she was disgusted. She soon told them off at home, she said “Up there, legs up against the wall, all her bloomers showing!” We got out straight, that was very funny. Major Upton was up there, he was the Head Master, a tall military man, used to be in the athletics up there, all the games going and the swimming baths then all of a sudden the school doctor had me in, examined me and said “Cut that all out, you’ve got a heart condition” So suddenly I was jumping over the hoops, the high jump, everything stopped instantly.
PR: Nowadays there would be a different approach.
AP: That’s what my doctor said when I told him they stopped me from swimming, well he said that’s totally out of keeping.
PR: As long as its watched, swimming, totally relaxing.
AP: The doctor said at the time “If you are careful you should live to 99” and my doctor said well, you’re going on that way not too bad are you.
Transcribers Note: Miss Pooley actually died aged 79 in 2002
PR: So was the county hospital your first job?
AP: Yes, went up there
PR: How did you find out about it.
AP: Well there was a lady lived near mother who had worked up there I think, across Foxholes, at the top and she had worked there in service and she said to mother one day if you want a quiet job for her, sitting down, why don’t you try the hospital, they have got several posts up there, they might fit her in.
And we made this appointment, went up to see the matron one Saturday afternoon as we came out, in fear and trepidation I was. Poor old Father Nat was going in to take evening service. He was a little bit put out because we hadn’t mentioned to him that we were going to this interview, he liked to know what his children were doing, but anyhow, it worked alright, got the job, grand sum of five shillings a week. So what shall we do with five shillings a week? Split it in half, mother had two shillings and sixpence and I had two shillings and sixpence.
PR: Was that a Monday to Friday job?
AP: Saturday mornings as well.
PR: What were you doing? Did you do the same sort of thing all the time you were there?
AP: Well it was called a sewing room or linen room , what we actually did, I didn’t do it that particular time, I did the menial jobs then, but we were repairing all the linen that came down every week, repairs, making everything we wanted from surgeons gowns in the theatre, caps, all the nurses uniforms, right through, dresses, aprons, caps, collars, you name it we made it. We did the whole blessed lot.
PR: Well!
AP: The theatre sheets and that , the abdominal sheets, the lobotomy sheets with the set of splits in for operations, we had to make all those. We cut the things out, stocked them in the cupboard until we’d got time. I worked under an elderly lady there, she was supposed to have been a Christian lady, but she was a very bitter spinster really and you wouldn’t dare tell her you’d been out at the weekend doing anything jollification (sic) because she’d keep on about it all the week, she didn’t like it, so you didn’t tell her in the end and that became uncomfortable really. But it was a case that we put up with it, we were only youngsters.
PR: Did she stay long in your time?
AP: 1939 I think she went, she had an accident and she retired and then they called me in to the office to see if I’d take over. So I was the youngest in the room and I was taking over all these people that were in their thirties! I thought the only way I’m going to get out of this is to go in the forces. So I goes to the labour exchange to see if I could get in the W.R.N.S., I went down twice, much to mother’s annoyance, but I did. They looked at all the particulars and then said about medication, that was the thing against me, and when I said about working at the hospital they said “Oh you’re in a specialised hospital post you can’t get out of it” (reserved occupation). My old lady up at the hospital she said, “The thing is Alice, if you do go in the forces it’s possible when you come back they won’t keep this job open for you” I came out that room skipping because that’s the first thing I want. If I get out of this job I’ll never come back. She could be very spiteful even though she was a Christian lady.
PR: You never know people’s backgrounds, what makes them….
AP: No well, she was highly regarded in the town, people spoke highly of her and everything, but you had to work with her and we all found the same us youngsters. So I stayed there as you know, I was there 47 years and you were there at the final thanksgiving.
PR: Yes I was. I’ve forgotten, I was the council chairman then.
AP: It was a bit of a joke I was leaving, going to pack it in, and something was said one day in the office, said about dignitaries and I said one thing in my favour, you must have been Mayor I think, I said “Well I do know Mr Peter Ruffles” that meant a lot, saying that in the office, they really all looked up…
PR: ‘course they would yes!
AP: …and no more was said and I got such a shock that day when you were there to hand me the bouquet.
PR: Well it’s all part of the fun and it introduces a nice friendly note.
AP: It changed a lot because they bought ready made things then being nationalised, the government came in, they got managers in and interest wasn’t quite the same. It was hard going for them really but we struggled, we got a training school, the first training school that I remember was up in Rockleigh, 2nd floor of Rockleigh (a big house almost opposite the hospital now demolished) used to train over there, the girls at the desks. Then they came over to the hospital, had the maids quarters right at the top of the building.
PR: Oh they were the maids’ quarters were they?
AP: And they put the maids somewhere else and they gave them the top rooms for the training school. They used to get the girls in there times a year. When they were going to build that new school down North Road (replaced by Nightingale Court) it was a wonder really, to think we’d achieved it.
PR: But that was all nurses training.
AP: But we came in to it so much because we dealt with them when they came for interviews to measure them and equip their uniform when they came and all those sort of things, different ranks, they went up to and we changed their uniforms and that. We met a lovely lot of girls really, specially in the nursing shortage, we got a lot of those, not Chinese girls, what were they, those little foreign girls came over.
PR: Fil..
AP: Filipino’s, but they were so short, I had an awful job to try and fit them up with raincoats, couldn’t afford to buy new raincoats for them short people! So a lot of tooing and froing, altering things, lovely little girls, they really were.
PR: It was a big family in a sort of way
AP: Oh very much.
PR: Would the Matron have been your boss as well then, in a sense.
AP: She was my boss, although we had the board meeting with Major Woodhouse and those people every Friday, but the Matron, she was really in charge.
PR: Of all the departments.
AP: Of all the departments and the wards sent their repairs down every week and it was all booked in to a ward book, she came down every Wednesday and sat at the table and went through everything with me
PR: Gosh!
AP: Had a look at everything and what was condemned threw it on the floor and she’d write in her book “Condemned” then she’d come down at 12 o’clock on the Saturday and check it all out and we had to take it all up the ward on a chair.
PR: What sort of thing would you have been repairing?
AP: Sheets, blankets, it was a nightmare in the war really to keep them going because we were trying to make do and mend on nothing really. But we kept going. We had a limited supply of stuff and you had to assess what you wanted, had a meeting and all the firms would send in samples for you to look at and then we would have a day looking in the board room at samples and you’d choose what you wanted, what type of tray cloth, nurses had tray cloths in those days.
PR: Oh this is a marvellous tape you are making Alice!
AP: The Matron had quite a say over what she wanted, with a bit of our advice beforehand, then it was ordered during the year. Then we had record books to keep all that we made and how much we put back in. Then we did an inventory once a year, end of March, that was a nightmare, if there were two or three things missing, or you’d over counted, they’d go through it all again till they got it right.
PR: How many people were working?
AP: About 7. What came in at the end was all the curtains round the beds and the old screens went. You had people into measure the framework round every bed, you had to make all those curtains for every bed and a certain amount surplus for washing purposes. It was quite an achievement once you’d kitted out one ward with all the bed curtains, it was lovely because all they’d got to do was to just pull them round the beds, it was so much better.
PR: Than lugging the screens about. I suppose we ought to get a little plan of the hospital in our minds to say where you were actually working.
AP: Underneath Queens Ward.
PR: So you would go in the main door and go right down to the end.
AP: Then instead of going into Queens main ward you’d turn through the French doors down into the gardens, turn right into our room.
PR: So you had a little outdoor run in all weathers.
AP: Yes, definitely.
PR: So was it the size of Queens Ward, roughly?
AP: I think originally it was a store place and I understand that Major woodhouse, after one of these, he used to come Fridays and then he had a trick of coming round Saturdays and mooch around, having a look in general, shrubs and the garden, and one or two of the board used to walk round there and he got down there one day looking underneath there and he went back and said if we boxed all that in that would make an ideal sewing room. Well that was before I went there.
PR: Was Percy Brooks secretary to the board?
AP: He was secretary to the whole hospital. Because he was on that main corridor that was his office originally and the sewing room was next door. Well what they decided afterwards, the sewing room with all its ins and outs of business, it wasn’t really an ideal spot to have along the main corridor. That’s why he decided we would be better under Queens, out the way, with what we were doing and in the end the matron got our room, she had it for her office, Miss Taylor.
PR: Princes was in the front door, turn right just after the lift, up the slope, the X ray place is there now.
AP: Yes, there’s all sorts now and the theatre is built round the back of Princes. Behind Princes they built the ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat).
PR: Above Queens was Maternity.
AP: Yes, when it came to building another floor on Queens where we were they found the foundations wouldn’t take it, never got built. So they just built that little bit off maternity and never continued with the rest. The Prince of Wales came down and opened that place. There was a plaque on the nurses home opposite Queens and up in the old attic over Sele Lodge that was a glory hole really, all the doctors records were kept up there and there were files of things. The paperwork up there! If they wanted to go back in time to check anything, which occasionally Mr Bedford did, almoners and others had to get up there to find the paperwork. But we had a room up there and in that particular room there was a glass case and there was the trowel that the Prince of Wales used to lay the foundation stone.
PR: Now, Sele Lodge is down the drive to…
AP: Sele Lodge is on the hospital site (Shrouded rather in trees now to the left of the entrance). When Garratt’s were moving out (of Sele Mill opposite the hospital) and vacating that lovely big property on the side there, they offered it to the hospital on a three year lease, so that was quite good, matron was sent lover there to lovely apartments.
PR: But Sele Lodge is on the same campus between the hospital and The Rectory (43 North Road)
AP: On the right of that there was the mortuary. We made covers and curtains for that. Then another nurses home was built so it went right o the back gate. Before that it was all orchard there, I think, belonging to the hospital. The Rectory came there, they bought the house from Garratts and had a new Rectory there.
PR: I will tell you a slightly naughty story about me not catching on very quickly when Ron Lamb was porter. I think I’d been taking the books around the wards. Do you want to come and see Miss Bullock and Miss Bullock lived in the cottage at the bottom of the drive more or less facing you.
AP: Little lady?
PR: Yes, thatched cottage then to the right of that and I said yes I’ll see Miss Bullock and he led me off to the mortuary, laid her out and made her look quite alive.
AP: Quite a shock.
PR: I didn’t confess to not realising what they meant, said what a lovely job they had made of the old girl in her coffin.
AP: It was the job of the porter to collect anyone on the trolley and take them over and then the problem was the cover they had got over the top. When they got in the wind the cover lifted up and showed the silver container, well they didn’t like that so they bought something more modern.
PR: Well Ron fell over once in the ice because it was a slope sideways on, taking a corpse across to the mortuary.
AP: Yes it was on a slope.
PR: He fell and the trolley tumbled and the corpse slid down the ice towards the main road. He’d got a gammy leg hadn’t he, Ron?
AP: Yes he was a little bit lame.
PR: And old Mr Jordan.
AP: Oh yes, he was another character.
Side one ends
Side two
AP: Mr Jordan came to me “I’ve got to get a mattress out Miss Pooley, can you take me to the stores and we’ll get it” Poor old dear. He’d got a piece of string he’d measured the mattress in the ward. Well when he got down to me in the stores he couldn’t remember which length of string and which was the other piece “I’ll have to go back” he said “ ‘Cos I’ve muddled the string up.” Yes, he’d been in service I believe and he’d got that manner of a butler.
PR: I went to his 100th birthday celebrations with the Hickman girls.
AP: They looked after him very well
PR: Now you say Miss Taylor was matron, was she matron when you first went there?
AP: Yes.
PR: I can only remember Miss Baker.
AP: Well Miss Baker took her place.
PR: So I didn’t miss anybody.
AP: You didn’t miss anybody and with the instructions I think at the time she must slackened off a wee bit, not be so severe with the staff because the other one was very military, everyone was in awe of her really. She was a nice person.
PR: I thought Miss Baker was a bit severe.
AP: Well she could be a little bit funny but she was a more relaxed person. She’d come down from Birmingham I think, got the post and then I think after that Mr Sharples appeared because he’d been in the same hospital as her in Birmingham and they were old friends. He got down there as a sort of understudy to Mr Brooks, Percy Brooks went up in the world because we did a big merger with QEII hospital, not QEII , the Harlow one, Harlow Hospital (Princess Alexandra).
PR: Oh Harlow was it, I’d forgotten that.
AP: No, it was Harlow and the relationship with Harlow was a very good and of course when those buildings were built the training school, he had a big office down there. Went up in the world really, in the group. He had a very good promotion Overtalking, I think Arthur (Sharples) was in charge of the Hertford hospital and Percy (Brooks) of the amalgamation. And Arthur was very thorough and business people I spoke to always said he was the best payer up of bills that they’d ever dealt with, he saw everything was paid up. Miss Hickman came there to help Mr Brooks and then she got deputy to Mr Sharples. Then her sister was up in the X ray department before she married the vicar.
PR: She used to visit people out of visiting hours, mother was in quite often for various things she used to say its amazing where a white coat will take you in a hospital. Over talking
AP: What was the other lady that worked up there. She lived in North Road somewhere near the Stapletons. She died and he was left on his own. But I was on the ward at the time and she came tearing down to me one Saturday morning and she said “tell you the news, tell you the news, Miss Hickman’s going to marry the vicar” “Oh” I said. She said “yes”. I thought it was the one in the office, never thought it was the other one.
PR: No, Peggy, polio.
AP: Yes, never thought it was her.
PR: That was a big buzz.
AP: They were in competition with the lady from Bridens.
PR: Yes, Pat Skinner.
AP: Three there, all in a line.
PR: Oh yes, he made sure he had got a choice.
AP: It was a little bit cat and mouse who he would chose.
PR: She married Mr Thorne, Pat, from the “council” the surveyor, in the end. He made sure he was surrounded by appropriate women. Miss Baker was large wasn’t she.
AP: Yes, very large.
PR: I remember sitting in the bus shelter when I was a kid at the bottom in the brick shelter at the foot of the hospital drive.
AP: They had that built for the hospital, had to send someone down every morning to clean it out.
PR: Miss Baker had crossed the road from where she was living at Sele and just begun to walk up the drive and whoever was sitting in the shelter said to each other, not me, “ I bet she feels the heat, a baking hot day like today” and she was walking very slowly up that hill and you could feel that remark, everything about her movement was too hot.
AP: But she took up golf you know. She used to go to the Hertford Gold Club, used to be on the bus sometimes, going, when we went home from work, when she was off duty, probably went up there for exercise
PR: Sister lacey, she was a famous name.
AP: Oh Miss Lacey she was a famous character
PR: Her parents had been in contact with the hospital a long time before her.
AP: Well I shouldn’t think so much her mother, she lost her father in the war, I should think Miss Lacey. It was her grandparents, they were dentists along ware Road near the County Cinema that was.
PR: Related to the Stocks in some way.
AP: In some way, yes, they’re cousins. Mrs Lacey was the dentists wife and in those days they had to help and I heard from other people that she was the one that slapped them round the face with her cloth after the gas. Of course we had the poultry market just round the corner, ( At the end of Ware Road not far from the cinema) she was always up there when it was open, for the hospital, they used to have a list in the Mercury every week, who’d donated different things, they pout all those little things in years ago and she used to make sure she got her wack for the hospital out of all of them. She was quite a worker at the hospital, quite a character.
PR: Then you had gardeners?
AP: Oh yes, Mr Phipps that was a gardener from Brickendon and Colonel somebody from Bayfordbury used to come on a Saturday morning and look round, very dapper little man in a camel overcoat, he was head man ay Bayfordbury, you could see he didn’t ever do any work, you know, gardening, the boss and he used to scrutinise all these trees and the shrubs and see Mr Phipps was dealing with them, we used to see them walk by, they kept it in tip top condition.
Then there was a problem there when the Union Jack had to go up for Remembrance Day. Well we had to look after it when it came down. Poor Mr Hayter the head porter, he used to get on top of that building and got the Union Jack up. Well it got very dodgy up there to do it and of course one time when the Union Jack came down it was all bedraggled and torn. Of course it was rolled up and put in the cupboard. Well when they wanted it for next year my governor said we shall have to repair this Union Jack. So she repaired all the corner with its colours. The white material it was made of, she put fresh white material on it. What she ought to have done was use the old grey material. But of course our Union jack got up there and there were all these red and white patches. Of course in those days all these military people that were on the board had got a great knowledge of things, soon let the matron know that there was something wrong with that flag. So after that we had to buy a new flag.
PR: He lived in Sele Road Mr Hayter, didn’t he, at 85?
AP: Yes, Mr and Mrs Hayter, Joyce and Chris.
PR: The one who died in the swimming pool.
AP: Yes, I was going to tell you about that. One weekend a load of choir boys and him went out swimming and that was a tragedy.
PR: Was it in Hertford that that happened?
AP: No, I don’t think it was, I was just trying to think where it could have been. Poor Mr Hayter, he never really got over it.
PR: Chris Hayter was younger, whether they had Chris after the first boy died or adopted or….
AP: I don’t remember because there was a daughter.
PR: Joyce.
AP: She married a young Finch.
PR: Yes, so before we run out of tape…
AP: we haven’t got far. Colin Weale used to say I was hospital indoctrinated.
PR: Well how is it living in Ware Road you were a St Andrews Church family?
AP: Well I have got my old All Saints magazine with my Christening in it from Dr Landolph Smith, lovely old man and I was christened there then we went up ware Road. Mother and Father had friends that lived opposite the old police station Mr and Mrs Hill
PR: Now which police station am I thinking of?
AP: The old police station.
PR: Queens Road?
AP: Yes, when you come opposite the doctors there were a lot of little cottages there and you went down into them.
PR: Opposite Cook and Dranes?
AP: Yes, well Mr and Mrs Hiill, do you remember them?
PR: Corner one, by Millers yard.
AP: Yes, they moved up in to the houses by Water Lane, the builder left money for them to be built
PR: Kemp the builder.
AP: They transferred there but when we knew them, my dad had known Mrs Hill when he was a young lad and we had an attachment of friendship and Mrs Hill had a sister that lived up the Ware Road, in Cromwell Road, Mrs Trundall. They were old St Andrews people and she had a daughter Dorothy, she was a Sunday School teacher at St Andrews and then they had a daughter Mollie and as we got friendly with them they suggested to mother that I could go to Sunday School with Dorothy and Mollie on a Sunday and that’s how I started going to St Andrews.
PR: Is that where you met Eileen?
AP: Yes, that’s where we met Mrs Pettit and Eileen
PR: She was mother’s friend and they formed a friendship with poor Mrs Buckle and they used to run the Mother Union stall.
AP: Christmas time, it was our stall. When Eileen and Vic got married and had children they asked us if we’d like to be godparents. So that’s how we became closer.
PR: Yes, your Mum was always there at special events.
AP: At the Women’s Fellowship on a Monday when they had that, Mrs Bone the doctors wife used to run that, Mrs Odell used to run it. Mother was in the Christmas parties and pantomimes.
PR: I suppose Mrs Walls, Evelyn’s mother .
AP: Oh Mrs Walls was a great one. Mrs Walls was always on the teapot, whatever happened, a trestle with the tea cups. Nobody else dared touch the teapot. Oh Mrs Godfrey, yes, Stan Godfrey and daughter Gwen
PR: She still comes to 8 o’clock.
AP: Yes I think she comes to your church now more than Bengeo because she’s nearer isn’t she?
PR: Even so, she’s got a long journey down. Mrs Godfrey was still riding her bike down Port Hill.
AP: I should think that was a museum piece.
PR: Used to let it go on Port Hill even when she was 80. Did your mother also have links with Bengeo when she came up here then? She died at Bengeo.
AP: She died at Bengeo yes, she used to go to the Thursday morning Holy Communion, mid-week service. She had been poorly, she’d got a heart condition and that. She went up to a service one Thursday morning and during the morning Miss Hickman came down to tell me ‘you’re wanted up at the front door. We’ve got some bad news for you’. Of course in going up to the front door she put her arms round me and told me that Mum had died in the church at the end of the service. She just went sideways and fell over the lady next to her and just collapsed. She’d just taken Communion. Couldn’t have been better really.
PR: Perfect, perfect really, but then the shock and then did your Dad live longer?
AP: Yes, over 7 years. 1970 she died and father lived to 1976, that’s right.
PR: I’ve got a picture, a rear view of your Dad looking at some buildings in St Andrews Street when they were demolishing them, opposite Fred Roche’s. they were pulling down one side of St Andrew Street to put Gascoyne Way through.
AP: Yes of course a lot went then didn’t it.
PR: Leaning on his bike, watching the men.
AP: He was a great one for watching points in Hertford and what was going on.
PR: I remember him at Miss Turnbulls next door.
AP: I used to do jobs for her, sewing jobs and that and that’s how she told me he used to sit in the kitchen and talk and have cups of tea, I said just get out and do what she wants done.
PR: She’d rather have the company, it was as useful.
AP: Of course he could go over old days when he knew them at school.
PR: So was he a pupil of hers then?
AP: No he was working then, he had so many jobs in Hertford, doing errands, taking things round to the shops and his sister a lot younger than him and one day she was late for school and he put her in the basket and he rode her up there. Put her in the playground in the basket. She never forgot that.
PR: So that was a Turnbull story as well. I don’t know how she picked up with your Dad again, but, somehow.
AP: Strange really, because at church we always knew Miss Turnbull and her family and Philip the vicar but didn’t have a lot to do with them really. After father started going up that end of the town gardening, we were terrified when he got up that end because he was a real one for chopping things about and wondered what damage he was going to do really. Anyway he got on all right with them. The lady next door, she lost her legs.
PR: Mrs Cozens.
AP: He went there and then through him going there he got mother roped in to see if she could help her in any way but she was a very independent woman.
PR: She was very private and independent.
AP: I know mother said to her one day, hasn’t anyone ever done anything for you? She’d got that feeling that she wouldn’t accept it if anyone tried to do anything for her. Mother was helpful to her in lots of different ways. But she was very determined right to the end. After she died the will was read, she’d left mother £50. She didn’t want her to do anything for her, nothing you see, she was determined.
PR: We got the same. I used to take the dog for a walk, then one day she asked Mum to go in and have a look at her leg and se saw something on there that looked gangrenous, dodgy and that was the first personal service she’d asked for, a second opinion, have a look at this. But from then on she was much more…… we used to take a meal or two in to her and things like that. She lived alone with arthritis in the spine and no legs and in those days there weren’t the mechanical and electrical things.
AP: When her nephew and his wife came she was very critical about them sometimes, they were trying to over ride her about things and after she died he came and saw me up at the hospital at the front door. He said “ I don’t know how we are going to manage all this . She’s left different things to different people. I don’t know whether there is going to be enough money to do it all. He came up there after me, there’s nothing I could do. Then when mother got the letter from the solicitors and she found out she’d got this money she was terrified that father was going to say when Miss Turnbull told him, because he went there more than mother did. She didn’t want him to feel hurt over it.
PR: She was a Miss Richardson of the shoe shop.
AP: Yes, that shoe shop round by the Mercury. Nice class of shoe shop then Mrs Cozens had another sister who was away in a home.
PR: Edith, she used to go out and walk, there was a telephone thing in the pavement one of these manhole covers, oblong and she used to walk round and round this tapping with her stick. As children we were frightened of her at first but Mrs Cozens told us not to be and she’d sometimes be leaning over the gate and she’d stand back and let us in and just follow us and she used to come to stay occasionally.
AP: Used to be very fond of her and have her there when she could. I think she was actually there when Mrs Cozens was taken in to hospital that last time, because I went up to the ward to see her and she asked me to go back to the house to get some things and I think Edith was there then. I don’t think she went anywhere from that hospital. She didn’t want to live, she’d had enough.
PR: Gardening from a wheelchair with no legs, pulling weeds and things out with a long pole.
AP: When I used to go down to St John’s on a Friday evening to the youngsters I used to pop round to see her before I went. She found out that I went down there straight from work and I never had any tea. Suddenly she laid a tea out for me. Well I naturally felt I had to clear up afterwards and see everything was straight and it was a bit of a job. She was very kind but she did suffer a lot poor soul.
PR: Oh we’ve covered a lot, we haven’t mentioned Peter, your brother.
AP: Pat, he was six years younger than me so he missed the war. He got called up at the tail end. He came up to Bengeo with us and he was at De Havillands and Hawker Sidley and then Aerospace and he got his 40 year clock from them.
PR: Did he retire?
AP: No, he was ill. He had two bad hernias that he’d had for years and he went in to have those done and then he was poorly after that and they suggested early retirement so he retired at 59/60. It was a good time for him to get out. It’s thanks to him that I live as comfortably as I do because he always said what I’ve got is yours. He never made a will so I had all that to see to. But that’s the sad part because I always wished he would have said something he’d liked done for different friends. I’ve done things since that I think he would have approved of, I squared it up and said I think that’s what we ought to do. I left him a letter with what I wanted him to do whether he would have found it I don’t know because I just slipped it in a notepad in the writing paper case. But he never left me anything to say I’d like you to do so and so and so and so and I said to him what about that shed over there, there’s enough junk in there of fathers, old tools, what do we do now? Are you going to clean it out and get rid of some of it? So he said “I’ll take it that you’ll do that if anything happens to me” and by jove I had to do it, too and the old tools father had got from his father and I thought whatever am I going to do with these? Got initials on them. I had a grand turn out there, I was giving them to whoever wanted them. But I never thought a shed could hold so many memories.
A chap came to mend my mower just before Pat died and he made a good job of that and he said “Shall I put it back in the shed for you” and I said “That’s very kind of you”. He came back and said “You know you’ve got an old copper kettle hanging in that shed, what are you going to do with it, sell it?” “No” I said “When I get time”, it was green,” I’m going to clean it”. Eventually I cleaned it and I gave it to my cousin and they were thrilled to bits. It sat on their fireplace, beautiful.
PR: Yes, you don’t know how your parents met?
AP: Mother came up from Kent, she had been ill and she had to take a lighter job and she was offered a job at the Isolation Hospital, the old fever hospital.
PR: Gallows Hill.
AP: Gallows Hill, she was housemaid to the matron, like a lot of girls in those days, that was the job that she took. Like at the County there was no end of girls up there in jobs when they left school. So mother came to Hertford I think fathers sister worked up there as well.
PR: Living in Ash Street.
AP: Yes
Tape ends