Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Searle, Sally & Michael (O2000.4) |
| Interviewee | Sally Searle (SS) Michael Searle (MS) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR), Trish Goldsmith (TG) |
| Date | 16/06/2000 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2000.4
Interviewees: Sally Searle (SS) Michael Searle (MS)
Date: 16th June 2000
Venue: Badgers, St Mary’s Lane, Hertingfordbury
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR) Trish Goldsmith (TG)
Transcribed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Marilyn Taylor
************** = unclear recording
Italics = transcriber’s notes
[discussion] = untranscribed material
TG: We are at the home of Michael and Sally Searle, which is Badgers, St Mary’s Lane in Hertingfordbury, the date is 16th June 200 and we’re here to talk to Sally about life in Hertford. Sally isn’t really your name is it?
SS: No. My parents decided to call me Joyce Eileen, born in Hertford County Hospital and the nurse said “She doesn’t look like a Joyce, she looks more like Sally” but unfortunately the christened me (some inaudible additions).
TG: Were your parents Hertford people?
SS: My father I understand was about 13 when his parents moved here and they had the Singer Sewing Machine shop in Fore Street, Hertford and I believe they lived over the shop. But my mother came from Northampton and they were first cousins.
TG: So what year were they married?
SS: They were married in 1932 and I was born a year later.
TG: Were you living in Bengeo?
SS: Yes that’s right, daddy had the house built in The Drive (number 18) and that’s where they lived for 36 years.
TG: Who can you remember from growing up in The Drive?
SS: Mrs Bygrave next door, Mrs Wren, the Roberts, and the Meads. The Roberts had Betty and Jennifer and the Meads had two girls there was Brian Wilde opposite, but he was older than me so I didn’t really get to know him. Pat Skinner of course lived next door.
TG: Now Pat Skinner had the link with Bridens the bakers in Port Vale, was that her fathers?
SS: Yes, that was his business.
TG: Didn’t they have a shop in Hertford as well?
SS: Oh yes, yes. Later they became more caterers, they used to cater for the Royal Show.
TG: No real characters in The Drive, no unruly neighbours?
SS: Well, I don’t know really, opposite there was Mrs Gailer, she was a widow and she had a son, he used to grow tobacco during the war in the garden but unfortunately he died of cancer, he used to smoke it.
TG: Now I understand you had a dog and that there’s a story behind the dog?
SS: Well, Daddy was in the Home Guard and he came home one evening and I’d gone to bed of course and there came this banging at the door and he went to the door and in rushed this dog. It was about 10 o’clock at night I think. So he let the dog stay the night then he came up in the morning with a cup of tea for myself and my mother and he said “I’ve let it out so it will go home I expect” I was most disappointed because I’d always wanted a brother or sister, being an only child or a puppy or a kitten and every night for years I’d prayed for that so I thought this was the answer to my prayers.
So he let the dog out but she didn’t go away, she came back in again. I took her round Bengeo on a piece of string to see if anybody would recognise her, but nobody did. So we took the dog down to the Police station and if she wasn’t claimed after three months she was ours and nobody claimed her and I think Michael remembers Paddy and I think I was about 20 when she died.
TG: How old were you when .. (she came).
SS: I think I was about 5ish (Overtalking it seems there was a photo of the dog) She was a mongrel but she was lovely.
TG: You went to primary school in Bengeo?
SS: Yes I went to Misses Macklin’s a little private school and I always remember they had their mother living with them and she wore a long black dress.
Transcribers Note: The two Macklin sisters ran the PNEU school in Bengeo Street
TG: Was that a happy time, did you enjoy it?
SS: I did, various people I know in the town now, Peter Wells went and Michael Bland, Mary Webb, the Webb’s glove factory, that was at the bottom of Bullocks Lane. I do remember when I was there a V1, I think, bomb dropped in the fields in Bengeo and my parents were both in the town and they came rushing up.
Transcribers Note: Probably the bomb that dropped in Lys Hill, behind what is now Cowper Crescent.
TG: How old were you then?
SS: Well I was born in 33, I suppose I was about 6. Yes I was at school until the end of the war.
Transcribers Note: The V1 was introduced in 1944 so if it was a V1 then she would have been 11
TG: Then to Queenswood (Brookmans Park) at 11 or 12?
SS: 12
TG: As a boarder or a day girl?
SS: As a boarder, they were all boarders.
TG: Did you get home at weekends?
SS: No we got home at half term, you know once during the term?
TG: Pat went as well, was she the same age as you?
SS: Pat was 9 months younger than me and she went to Mymwood which was the prep school so she went before I went but in the same year.
TG: So when you left school you came back to Hertford, was that when you started working for your father?
SS: Yes.
TG: He had two shops?
SS: He had a shop yes, in Fore Street, Masons and it was a ladies outfitting shop.
TG: With all the lovely pargetting on the outside presumably it’s always been like that ?
SS: Very old building.
TG: Does it go back very far? Are there premises at the back?
SS: Erm, it was one room behind and little old stairs that went up. It was like two floors that went up above. We had the downstairs and the next floor and the workroom was up.
TG: Is that where the alterations took place?
SS: (overtalking) we had our cups of tea and coffee up there.
TG: That was a staff room as well. How many people worked in the shop?
SS: At any one time about four of us perhaps?
TG: You sold just ladies dresses, coats…?
SS: Suits, costumes in those days, blouses, skirts, jumpers, twinsets were very popular in those days.
TG: Can you remember any particular customers who were either regulars or Hertford people?
SS: Well, people used to come in and say I’ve been all over London and couldn’t get anything and now I’ve got something in your shop.
TG: One of the things you remember, this is when you were a child, was when Bostfords had their fire, you were at home but you can remember it happening?.
SS: I can remember that I went in to Skinners and my Mum went down and helped them remove the stock into the building opposite because they didn’t know whether the fire would spread, very old buildings at the back, would spread to the shop. Our property was lath and plaster Anyway apparently there was more damage from the sparks which came over when they were removing it across the road.
TG: But you didn’t have any damage to the property?
SS: No I don’t think so.
TG: But then they had another shop in Hoddesdon?
SS: Yes, I forget what year he bought the property, a shop which was empty.
TG: So which was first, the Hertford or the Hoddesdon?
SS: Oh the Hertford.
TG: Then the Hoddesdon one came later. Whereabouts in Hoddesdon was it?
SS: It was in the main street and we had the bank on one side and I think there was a shoe shop on the other side and there was a restaurant over the top, Lord Street went up beside. So later on, when I had been in the Hertford shop for a little while, daddy took me over there, there were just two of us, myself and an assistant.
TG: Were you the manageress?
SS: No, but I was in charge.
TG: At what stage can you remember the Methodist church?
SS: Well, Queenswood was a Methodist school and I was received into the Methodist church while I was at school. I started going to the Ware Road Methodist church in the holidays, to start with and when I left school I started going full time there.
TG: Did your parents attend the church before you went to Queenswood?
SS: No, there was Methodism in the family but they were rather lax.
TG: So who can you remember from the church when you first started going there?
SS: Flo Beetham and Myrtle must have been there, Myrtle Pacey, the Rushes, they had a shop in Hertford.
TG: Where’s that?
SS: In the arcade, they had a leatherwork shop and Mr Rush ran the Women’s Fellowship/
Transcribers Note: Rush’s had a large shop on Mill Bridge that was destroyed by the bomb in WW2, there are stories of handbags floating down the river!
TG: Are they related to Flo Beetham, the Rush’s?
SS: I don’t think so.
TG: Obviously you remember the building of the new church?
SS: When I first met Michael, he came to our church to a missionary meeting in October 1953 and Flo introduced us and I said “Would you like to come to the Youth Club but somehow or another I wasn’t at the next meeting of the Youth Club and he came and then he said he forgot my name anyway!
TG: What bought Michael to Hertford because he’s not from Hertford (To Michael) So you came from Norfolk?
MS: I worked for the Post Office and I trained for two years in Norfolk, then did two years National Service. After National Service I was demobbed and started work in Kings Lynn and they said come to work in Hertford, which was a bit of a desperate blow really, I arrived on a bus from Bishops Stortford Station with my case in my hand, nowhere to stay, I’d just got three addresses of people who might accommodate me and I ended up in Sele Road with Charlie Bailey who worked on the Hertford East railway and lived there until we were married.
I worked in the Hertford Exchange and all round the area and I worked in the Hertford Exchange building that still exists, behind the present big one and the manual exchange upstairs for non local calls. There are lots of ladies who Peter would remember, Kath Dye was a supervisor and Janice Basham as she was then who lived opposite us in Sele Road and several ladies I still see around Hertford.
TG: What year were you married?
SS: 1957.
TG: You have two children, 2 boys, Christopher and David and they are both in Hertford?
SS: That’s right yes, David’s 42, Christopher’s 40 and David’s got a little boy now, Matthew and Karen who’s 10.
TG: I think I heard you talk about how you first got involved with blind people and I think this goes back to quite a long time ago. You have been involved with the Dora Taylor club in Hertford I know. I think some of the people in the Dora Taylor club refer to you as Saint Michael and Saint Sally.
SS: I heard about blind people through the Reverend Daltry Williams who came and gave a talk at church and brought some of his blind friends with him. He had been blind but he regained his sight. His talk so inspired me I kept thinking about it, but the children were quite little then, I couldn’t get it out of my mind, then we moved from Fordwich Hill to Badgers and they were then 8 and 10 and I felt I must do something about this, so I phoned the Hertfordshire Society for the Blind and said I was interested to help in some way and they put me in touch with the club which Dora Taylor ran.
Dora Taylor was a home teacher for the blind, she was employed by the Blind Society and she went round assisting them and she also ran a social club and she said would I like to come along and help. I used to do transport for them and go on outings with them, the most wonderful outings, we went to Chartwell and all sorts of interesting places, to the seaside and she was a fantastic person. She wasn’t all that young and as time went on she became ill and there didn’t seem to be anyone much to take the job, so it fell to me to take her place really, then she died.
We at that time met at the Evergreen Club and that was on the old Bus Station and we met there. It wasn’t a bad hall but the facilities weren’t very good, the cupboard where they kept the cups was very damp, not ideal so I enquired at our church whether it would be possible for me to hold the club there and they agreed that I should. So we transferred to the Methodist church hall and that was a great help because some of the church members became involved in helping and we were there for many years until comparatively recently, we’ve moved to Christ Church in ware because the premises were being used for church activities.
TG: Does the blind club operate from quite a wide area or do people come from Hertford and Ware.
SS: Hertford and Ware, we have a couple from Dane End, some from surrounding area but mostly Hertford and Ware.
MS: Bramfield and High Cross.
TG: Did Dora Taylor have just the one blind club that met or did she start lots of blind clubs?
SS: Just the one, yes, when I took it over from her we were completely supported by the Hertfordshire Society for the Blind but as years went on clubs generally in the county became more self-supporting. I was on the executive of Hertfordshire Society for the Blind for 18 years, it was an interesting time.
TG: Any of the blind people that stand out particularly?
SS: Trevor Jackson of course and George and Margaret, George being Peggy’s brother (inaudible extras).
Transcribers Note: There was a family in Bengeo by the name of Darton where a number of the children, though not all, were blind and I think this is probably a reference to them. Peggy is probably Peggy Darton who along with her brother George were two of these children blind from birth. Her married name was Jackson.
PR: We must go and record Daisy Ansell. I’ve tried once or twice then when you go to see her she’s not very well.
MS: A lot of the members have lived in Hertford all their lives.
SS: We’ve had some characters haven’t we, made lots of friends and thoroughly enjoyed it.
TG: Taking you back slightly, I’ve missed out when you were first married you lived in Fordwich Hill, anyone particularly you remember from there , any good Hertford names?
MS: Harry Botsford lived next door but one.
TG: Oh right that’s Botsford of Botsford ironmongers?
MS: Builders.
SS: Harry was the builder.
MS: Mr Squires who worked for Loading Devices at Sele Mill, I don’t know whether he started the business (LD Engineering) Attawill? who managed the printers.
SS: Mr and Mrs White.
MS: Dispenser at Boots, well known Hertford character. There were two Stallabrass’s in Fordwich but the one near us was mad keen on animals and the house was in a bit of a state. We had various managers of Woolworths over the years.
TG: Was the shop, was it the house half owned by Woolworth (overtalking) billeted people there? Ok so what year did you move here, Hertingfordbury?
MS: [19]’68.
TG: This house is part of a group all built about the same time, but all different styles, is that right?
MS: Yes, they were all designed by Richard Hitch who now lives in one of them and they were built roughly at yearly intervals.
TG: So you moved here hoping to have your parents…?
SS: The reason we moved here was that my parents weren’t well, so they sold their house, we sold our house and bought this one.
TG: By the time you moved here you just had your Mum.
SS: No Dad was here for a year. By this time we were having an extension built for them to live in and my mother lived in it for many years.
TG: Ideal arrangement really. So what about people in Hertingfordbury, presumably you were in the Women’s Institute.
SS: Yes we moved here at the same time as our neighbours at the Rectory, Joan and Tommy Leach and Joan and I both joined the W. I. at the same time.
TG: So you got quite involved there were you on the committee? … inaudible… and Michael got very involved with the village show.
MS: That’s true.
TG: Village fete, involved with that, right opposite you can’t really not get involved. What about the village characters in Hertingfordbury, have there been any?
MS: Not a lot. I suppose when we first came the leading lights were Edith Tyre from Birch Green and Harry Barton – Norris who in those days lived in Chapel Lane and then there were the Tompkins and all the usual people, Sue Vigus of course, Frank and Doreen (Vigus)
TG: All very involved in village events. So you’d recommend life in Hertingfordbury?
SS: It’s an interesting village, lovely.
MS: We have been great friends with three successive rectors and their wives and we’re still in touch with those that are still around.
Pause
TG: I think I have come to the end of all the things I’d thought of. Peter can you think of anything else we ought to ask them?
PR: I’d forgotten about those Woolworth managers was there one called Marsh?
MS: Yes, the Marsh’s lived next door when we moved there and there was one called Meilton.
PR: Then there was one with a son called David Meilton.
MS: They had several children, no, no it was the Marshes who had several children. I can’t remember their names.
PR: Jeremy, I had completely forgotten the Marshes.
MS: I always remember when Sally was expecting David, I always remember Mrs Marsh saying to sally “Have a boy it’s much easier.”
PR: I’d forgotten, you reminded me. But what about the telephone exchange side of things. We once spoke to Pam Lambert and Joan Long who’d been at the telephone exchange before your time, when it was above the Post Office in Fore Street and they had to stoke up the coal fire while they were operating. What was the technology like, how much manual?
MS: All the trunk calls were still done manually. One of the last jobs I did, before I changed jobs working on trunk dialling for operators and by the time I left operators could dial all over the country. But it was thought that they wouldn’t open it up to subscribers because there’d be too many mistakes. I worked all over an area centred on Bishops Stortford, I didn’t just work in Hertford. Similarly at Ware there was an exchange office above the Post Office which had originally been an old magneto exchange where you had to wind the handle and in Ware there were successive ranges of equipment along the old switchboard.
PR: Well! So Kath Dye was supervisor?
MS: She used to go home for lunch, she used to live next door to us and she walked very very briskly.
PR: And very smart wasn’t she. Was she a bit of a tartar to the operators?or did she chum in with them?
MS: Don’t know really, I think she was well liked. Most of my work was downstairs.
PR: Yes, but you would have run in to her?
MS: Yes and Jackie Fisher as she was, was one of them.
PR: Jackie Tomlin now.
MS: I couldn’t tell you her name now. Janice Basham I referred to, she lives down at Hornsmill somewhere.
PR: Yes, Brickendon lane. Janice Hawes now.
MS: Her mother and aunt lived opposite us in Sele Road. Her mother was in Gravesons.
PR: Yes, I couldn’t place where you were living because next door to the Basham’s was Mr and Mrs Bailey.
MS: Yes, well we were number 27, next door to Morris and the Halls and we knew them quite well and in fact after we were married I shared half of Len’s allotment, which backed on to the signal box at Hertford North. It was funny because the year before I took over half of his allotment, he had a load of pig manure and years afterwards everything that I grew that was jolly good was due to this pig manure. But that was an excellent allotment and I used to trundle the stuff in a barrow over the bridge.
SS: Yes, good carrots.
PR: So there were two railwaymen living next door to each other, your Mr Bailey and Mr Morris’s father was a railwayman.
MS: Yes, well Pop Bailey, his wife Lily, it was their second marriage, she was originally a Parrot and her husband died as a result of the Fist World War. Lily had, I think, three children one of which is Eileen Cain, Ron Cain’s wife and there is another daughter who lives around the Sele Road area, I don’t know her very well, her husband’s nickname was Buster. Then there was a son who was out in Canada.
PR: I’d completely forgotten there was a Bailey on that side.
MS: By the time I knew him Pop Bailey was a porter at the East Station but he had been a guard on the railway all during the war. Told us some horrendous tales of night time goods trains, bombs descending and lines blown up and all that kind of thing.
PR: It was a very good road, Sele Road, it was a council road, there are still quite a lot of hedges there, but privet hedges that you don’t see in the older council estates and of course all at the bottom, on your side, near the little cul-de-sac that goes off on the corner of 31 is where George Darton’s parents were living.
MS: And that was interesting because Peggy who lived there then was a telephonist at the County Hospital and she used to walk to work on her own and it used to amaze me that she used to come down Sele Road where the railings are and navigate straight across that car park to the entrance to the hospital. She always did it though (Overtalking).
PR: Remarkable! She was in the paper the other week again.
MS: If ever we do anything its always Peggy who makes a speech of thanks.
PR: And George I noticed for the first time this week is in a wheelchair.
MS: I haven’t seen him recently, he used to be outside Woolworths.
TG: He’s had leg problems.
SS: Arthritis.
MS: For years, he and Margaret have done all Daisy’s shopping and when they got back from the town George used to walk round to Daisy’s with all her shopping, her pension and what have you.
TG: In town every day! I saw Margaret without George it looked most odd, not near enough to say are you alright and the next time I saw her he was with her. He did say he had a bad leg that’s why he walked so much to try and get it exercised.
PR: They suffered a minor domestic tiff outside Woolworths. George was sitting there in his wheelchair, first time I had ever seen him in it and Margaret had gone in to but something to cook some eggs in, I don’t know if it was a frying pan or egg boiler. But she’d come out with a watering can. Mixed message eggs, watering can, not being able to see.
We must get to Daisy Ansell, she was born in the Green where your Evergreen Club was and Kath Dye’s uncle Dan Dye founded the Evergreen Club, we’re talking little Hertford here.
MS: On the engineering side of the house one of the real characters was old Fram, old Framlingham from Ware who did all the maintenance and he always had an excuse. He knew everywhere in Hertford and he used to come back to the exchange telling us he’d tested all these lines and we knew well he hadn’t and one of the lads once removed all the instruments from his case and he filled it up with the equivalent weight and he used to come back and tested all these lines. But he seemed to have a habit of being able to knock out faults just from long experience. Nearly all the younger staff came from Norfolk. At that time the Cambridge telephone area stretched from North Norfolk down to Epping and they were suddenly confronted with Harlow New Town and a ginormous defence job at Kelvedon hatch and they’d got no staff. So a lot of us, well three I was at school with, were all uprooted and sent down to Hertford. I think they are all dispersed now, I don’t think they are in Hertford now.
PR: You had a good reason for stopping!
MS: Yes, I eventually decided to stay.
PR: But how soon before Myrtle took you to her bosom, because your voice and her voice there must have been something of an affinity between you. Did she spot you quite early on Myrtle?
MS: Don’t know really, well it was Flo who introduced us, despite me forgetting her name. (overtalking and laughing)
PR: But the village here, in the time you’ve been here, a lot of key people have died, haven’t they really, who were central to this little community.
SS: Helen Thompson McCausland
PR: Yes, Helen Thompson McCausland, we nearly got to record her, Dorothy Abel Smith was promising and promising she would try and she telephoned me once or twice. It was a no, no but it was tomorrow or the day after.
MS: When we first came there were lots of characters. Arthur Vigus who worked for McMullens. I think he was their carpenter.
PR: Bushy white hair, on his bicycle, where was he living then?
MS: One of the street cottages just at the beginning of the lane.
PR: Between the churchyard and?
MS: Well Alan Stratton was in the end one.
PR: It was one of those?
MS: Yes, I think probably the middle one. Another Character was May Barton a blind lady and she’d lived in Hertingfordbury for many years but when we got to know her she was Campfield Road, number 5. She xxx and she was really a fascinating character had been a postwoman for many years, although I used to take her to the blind club and she was a really fascinating character.
PR: Oh was she a rural postie, I don’t remember her in the town.
MS: Out this way possibly, but she’d had a very hard life.
PR: And did she live on the corner of Campfield, one of the bungalows.
MS: The one that Sheila……………..
Sudden change of subject
PR: Oh yes, lower down. Was Rayment’s as a shop still (in Hertingfordbury).
MS: Oh yes they closed the same week that the relief road opened, which was ’74 or’75. The relief road was building in ’74, I think it was ’75 by the time it opened and they shut the same week, a minor tragedy because they baked lovely bread.
PR: Yes, and there was the Canon living this way (near Rayments) Secker from the Amores.
TG: Then Marjorie Mablethorpe was on the corner.
MS: Cyril Mablethorpe yes and then between the Mablethorpes and us was Jill Fasola.
SS: She was an Illot, Illots mill.
Transcribers Note: Josephine Mary Ilott daughter of Edmund and Kathleen Ilot married Eric John Christopher Fasola in 1943.
PR: And links with the books on the table one or two steps removed.
MS: But I was never sure whether the two halves of the family were (whispers) . Lobs Lyrics is all about Bengeo Home Guard.
Transcribers Note: Lobs Lyrics is one of a number of books published by Percy Ilott who would have been her uncle, her father’s brother. His house was called Lobs Wood in The Avenue Bengeo. Sally’s father was a member of the Home Guard and mentioned in the book.
PR: So where did the Home Guard operate from, where did your father go off to?
SS: They went up the water tower, they observed from up there.
PR: Oh!
SS: Yes that was one of the places.
MS: And the Drill Hall.
Transcribers Note: The Drill Hall was opposite The Reindeer at the entrance to Hartham from Port Hill
SS: Yes the Drill Hall, bottom of Port Hill and The Reindeer came in to It I think.
MS: They came into the Reindeer!
PR: But he wasn’t a practising Methodist of a serious kind.
SS: No he wasn’t I am afraid.
MS: For some reason we don’t know , Sally’s father in that book is referred to as “Dash” maybe it was that he didn’t swear, I don’t know.
PR: Old Fred Crane, yes, he was from Duncombe Road.
SS: I believe so.
PR: Yes he’s got a chapter to himself.
MS: He had a brother in Ware.
PR: The nurseryman?
MS: Yes, involved with one of the Post Office gangs??
PR: Musley Lane wasn’t it, might be, yes. So did they keep watch from the top of the water tower?
SS: I would think so.
PR: This is in really good nick this old Lobs Lyrics. Do you remember Alderman Mansfield living in Tower Street?
SS: Certainly I do.
PR: He was a lovely old chap.
SS: Yes, very smart.
PR: And his daughter lives in The Drive ( Mrs Hilda Saggers number 29).
Note from Marilyn the typist: My father Gordon Taylor was also in the Bengeo Home Guard, he told many stories of fire watching from the top of the Tower. His father Charles was also in the Home Guard but refused to go up the tower! My father often told the stories of no facilities up there just a bucket and one of the men emptying it over the side on to their bicycles at the base of the tower. If they ever saw anything their instructions were to run down to their bikes and cycle as fast as possible to the telephone box at the end of Gosselin Road. Gordon Taylor also features in Lobs Lyrics as he was blown up while training in the Drill Hall when a supposedly dummy spigot motor went off.
End of Side One
Side two
PR: Yes, Alderman Mansfield he was a printer wasn’t he? He was a good working class councillor. Early days Independent and became and Alderman but he was more for the people than the ones who were his contemporaries. Since then it’s got a bit better. There were no pavements in Bengeo, he told me when he was first elected, saw that through.
SS: Oh really. Of course Len Keeble was an Independent wasn’t he, he lived in The Drive.
PR: What, no, were you in The Drive?
SS: We were number 18.
PR: Oh yes, he would have been further up, the other side. He had a lamp post I thought he might have nicked a civic lamppost, in his front garden. Little Haven the house was called. It was a converted gas lamp. I’ve got one at the end of my garden which came the same way. I paid for the delivery but not for the lamp, they gave me the lamp (Overtalking)
MS: When we first lived at Fordwich Hill there were still gas lamps.
SS: They used to come round an light the lamps.
PR: Did they? Older streets, back streets in the town, but (didn’t realise) Fordwich would have been gas lit (Overtalking)
MS: Sally’s washing used to collect all the soot from the trains of course.
SS: We had steam trains quite near, below us.
PR: Well it was all because of the interests of posh Fordwich that the County Hospital when it changed from coal fired boilers under the entrance to a boiler house built at the end of our garden, oil fired, that they put this enormous chimney up and we said why this great high chimney and it was to take the soot away from Fordwich! We watched it being built my brother and I took pictures and we also had the great pleasure of watching it come down. You’ve never met Pop Geradine from the signal box when you were on your allotment, I suppose he had retired by then?
MS: Well Myrtle’s husband Alf was a signalman at Hertford North, a good old fashioned reliable man.
PR: Yes, he looked like a railwayman as well, portly but not fat.
MS: He died about the same time as Sally’s father which would have been about ’69.
TG: I know, she said recently that she’d been a widow longer than she’d been married.
PR: I think he died suddenly didn’t he?
TG: Very suddenly, they had just come back from a holiday on the Saturday and I think he died on the Monday morning.
PR: One of our earlier tapes with 90 year old Pop Geradine who had been a signalman and he lived in the last house in Campfield Road which was immediately opposite the signal box and the other side of the tracks. He’d go down the garden, over the fence, across the tracks up into the box. We got him in time for some stories of bombing in the war, the Queen in the tunnel. We’ve bobbed around nicely on people. I’d forgotten about Arthur Vigus these names are important aren’t they. Used to ride a bicycle.
MS: I think he was the commissioned officer in the Home Guard.
PR: He was to do with the militia of some kind, did he have a twin sister?
SS: I think he did.
PR: All this is dredging up now. Yes I think he had a twin. He was at the bottom of Port Hill where you were, the Drill Hall quarter, yes, he used to go there.
SS: Oh yes.
MS: You touched on the village show which has now ceased to exist for about 10 years or more, when the village show packed up we had no difficulty in getting rid of the balance in hand and there were numerous vases which we distributed to the W.I., but we still had, which was something of a problem, a very fine silver cup, which was originally, prior to the show, was associated with the Working Men’s Club at the Mayflower and if you look carefully you can see the previous inscription on it and what to do with this cup is something of a problem, because it’s too valuable and historic to get rid of and we’re in a quandry what to do with it, the committee in desperation suggested putting it in the church safe but we think there’s not much room. I wondered if it could be stored away in the Museum?
PR: Well I think you might have a little problem because they have got so much stuff and only last night I was at a meeting at the Museum and all the Herts and Beds Regiments, actually the Herts portion of what was the Herts and Beds, but the museum wants funding from the givers to insure it. The Regiments offered £1000 which would only insure it for 20 years. At the end of that time, problem back again. Worth asking but you might get a yes if you insure it which you could probably do as safely in someone’s living room.
MS: I’m not telling you where it is now.
PR: No, otherwise all our listeners, all the crooks that are going to listen to this tape. Who was the oldest inhabitant in the village in your time? Mrs Thompson McCausland’s got to be I suppose?
SS: I think so.
MS: The Vigus family would rate.
PR: Yes, they would go back.
MS: William and Tim of course with their respective farms down in the West Country.
PR: But as individuals I remember her coming, I remember the people before the Thompson McCauslands at Epcombs, used to be a Mrs Leslie who went through the streets in a wheelchair but she turned like bicycle pedals in front of her (Possibly with her hands) a black, a nice sedate chair, she used to come up that very steep bit of the hill which must have been good for the shoulders, Mrs Leslie, then the Thompson McCausland’s. But Wilk Tompkins mother?
SS: Oh yes, she was elderly.
MS: Cottage at the back of the Price (of wales).
SS: Oh yes, she would be 100 when she died.
PR: She was a no publicity lady. She mowed her own lawn didn’t she, right through to the end of her life. I remember seeing her one spring when she must have been in her late 90’s . The first mow of the new season. It was only a little bit of grass I remember. I think that I need to get ours out when I get home.
MS: I don’t know when the Thompson McCauslands first came to Epcombs, they were at Amwell during the war, well previously at Amwell and Tommy Leach, he became our rector, was at Amwell during the war. That’s the connection how Tommy came to be our rector in 1968. It was interesting in one particular week, Tommy’s induction service was on the Monday evening, he moved to Badgers ?? on the Tuesday of the same week and we moved Sally’s parents from Bengeo to here on the Thursday of the same week that’s why we became very good friends
Transcribers Note: The Thompson McCauslands were at The Grove in Great Amwell in 1939
PR: Was the chap Cleobury here in your time?
MS: Before Tommy.
PR: He had scholarly famous links.
SS: He had a son who was in charge of music at Cambridge.
TG: Two sons, Nicholas and Stephen (rest lost in overtalking)
PR: You are probably right.
MS: Tommy Leach’s wife Joan is still alive and at Canterbury and she still comes to see us.
SS: She’s coming in a week or two and she’s 90.
MS: She’s got a fantastic memory for names and people, back to Amwell and all the people
SS: One thing we didn’t touch on were all the characters around Fore Street when we had the shop.
PR: Tell Trish about the Cull’s.
MS: Three brothers and a sister and they ran that sweet shop which was later called Gays on the corner, Sally’s father used to reckon that half the business in Hertford was done in that shop. One worked for Longmores and he was registrar for marriages and when we were about to get married at the Methodist church we had to go to Mr Cull at Longmores to get a licence and Mr Cull was a great character with a bow tie and we went to his office and it was just like something out of Dickens, great big tall desks and we started filling in the details, he got to Sally’s occupation, Oh yes, costumier’s assistant and Sally and I had great difficulty in containing our laughter. He went out of the room to get something and we just fell about I’m afraid. It was very embarrassing.
TG: So what were the other members of the family?
MS: I think Peter could tell us more about that.
PR: I did a little recording with the last surviving, Reg Cull, when he was in his late 90’s.
MS: One with a flat cap and one with a trilby.
PR: The last survivor was the one you would least expect to survive. If you’d lined all four up thirty years earlier and said which one’s going to be the first to go, you’d have picked the one that lasted longest. Tall, xxxx rather than just the town centre? in and glasses you couldn’t see his eyes through, very frail chap but he lived to be 97, Reg. Did you have your customers around the area then, did people come in like the Mrs Abel Smiths of this world, a very upmarket affair was it?
SS: I don’t remember really where they came from, apart from the fact they came in, yes.
PR: Yes, you wouldn’t have had too many from Sele Road, Hertingfordbury Road really, a bit upmarket.
SS: Masons?
MS: That’s a fair comment.
SS: Simply yes, people came in if they’d got a special occasion, like a wedding
(Much overtalking unable to transcribe)
MS: You did try to sell a woman her own hat!
SS: Oh, that was at Hoddesdon. You remember those Kangol berets. These two ladies came in and she wanted a brown Kangol beret you see. She must have laid her own beret down at some stage and I was, we had a deep drawer with all the berets in and I got them all out and I couldn’t find a brown one anywhere and then I thought, there’s a brown one, and it was hers! So that didn’t work very well!
PR: It was shops like yours in earlier years that made Hertford the county market town that people don’t xxx anymore, well they mostly go off to Stevenage
SS: There weren’t the supermarkets were there. When we first married there was Howard Roberts.
PR: Grocers where the fire was next to Botsfords.
SS: And Bates, the International, there was the International.
TG: Was that in Maidenhead Street then.
SS: It was in Maidenhead Street.
TG: It was in Maidenhead Street when we first came here.
MS: It went through from Maidenhead Street to the back of the Shire Hall.
Transcribers Note: It stretched from Maidenhead Street to Market Place now William Hill bookmakers.
TG: Oh no, it was the other side of the road I think when we came.
SS: Boots was on the corner where the jewellers is now (Hinds).
MS: The Home and Colonial in the arcade.
PR: No that was in maidenhead Street near Woolworths.
SS: Another old fashioned shop was Coopers ironmongers in Maidenhead Street.
MS: I think when I came to Hertford there were only three places you could get a cup of tea. Mrs Bennett’s, not far from the Corn Exchange (Regal café).
SS: Christine’s opposite my father’s shop and Maison Carton.
MS: The Wiltshire Café might have been going.
SS: You could park anywhere in Hertford in those days, couldn’t you when we had our shop. I used to collect the car from the bus station which was a car park in those days and come and park outside Evan Marks, dad only had to walk across the road to the shop.
PR: You still had to watch what day of the week it was in Maidenhead Street though because parking in Maidenhead Street was Monday, Wednesday and Friday on the right hand side, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday on the left. There was a big disc sign up. Because it wasn’t fair to the shopkeepers to park outside their shops all the time.
SS: Do you remember Nightingales the barbers. My father used to go in there. My father didn’t have a lot of hair, he just had a bit on the edge, he went one day and he’d put his prices up, Mr Nightingale and Dad said you shouldn’t charge me so much I haven’t got much. He said I have to charge for looking at it, finding it!
PR: We’ve run out of time Trish. Jean Riddell will be very pleased you are transcribing this.
TG: Why?
PR: Because it’s a long one!
MS: Another character was Sister Major.
SS: I had Sister Major for Christopher, David was born in Hertford County Hospital.
MS: Sister Major was marvellous for the mothers but she terrorised fathers and doctors.
PR: She had an adopted daughter who married, for local reference, the son of the station master here, Hertingfordbury station called Flunder, so Jill Flunder is sister Major’s adopted daughter, I may be wrong about the adopted bit. Sister Major married a man called Teddy Bugg and they changed their name, he became Teddy Major. Not quite sure of the order of these things I just remember Jill and various people saying.
MS: Mrs Flunder was still in Hertingfordbury when we arrived. She used to do dressmaking. She used to walk past here to go down in to the town, get the bus from the village with all her work.
PR: Yes, it was a station house for quite a long time. I think she was active as station mistress. I think the husband had been on the railway generally. Yes Sister Major she was the midwife when I was born or if not the midwife the after nurse. I had to dig the hole in the churchyard for her ashes, so I was able to say she pulled me out and I put her in and I still have by the sink at home the plasticy kind of mat from her house when it was turned out after she died, whether it was given to the church for a sale, I thought Oh this was Sister Major’s.
MS: She was at 100 Ware Road wasn’t she? And that’s where Roger lives.
PR: She had a colleague, I don’t know whether they were related, called nurse Pont, I think they were probably just colleagues.
SS: Well she did have someone with her when she came to me.
MS: Yes but that was rather a nice young Welsh lady I remember.
PR: So, I’ll do another photo with you in it. Oh look there’s a reference in this Home Guard book to a Spigot Mortar and we found one of these looking as if it was still brand new in the bushes at the bottom of Welwyn Hill. So you could point the gun at the North Station or up towards the cemetery. Its Stainless Steel, it looks new.
Tape ends
Note from typist Marilyn: From what my father told me there were several places set up to take the spigot Mortar gun and the Home Guard could take it to any one of them should it be needed. The accident happened when they were practice firing it inside the drill hall with a so called dummy shell. They should not have been doing it inside without it properly fixed to one of these bases that Peter describes on the North Road!