Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Vowles, Sylvia & Gordon (O2000.3) |
| Interviewee | Dorothy Paine (DP) Michael Paine (MP) Sylvia Vowles (SV) Gordon |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
| Date | 28/03/2003 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2000.3
Interviewees: Dorothy Paine (DP) Michael Paine (MP)
Sylvia Vowles (SV) Gordon Vowles (GV)
Date: 28th March 2003
Venue: 4 Boundary Drive, Bengeo
Interviewers: Jean Riddell (JR) Eve Sangster (ES)
Transcribed by: Jean Riddell
Typed by: Marilyn Taylor
************** = unclear recording
Italics = transcribers notes
[discussion] = untranscribed material
This is the second recording with Dorothy Paine, this time with her sister Sylvia Vowles. The first recording was with Dorothy and Michael, her husband and that transcript is listed under the Paine's name.
In this interview the women are sitting around the dining table with the machine and microphone. The men are some distance away reading papers. With this number of people it is inevitable that some over talking takes place and so it does at intervals
There is some forgetting on Dorothy’s part of what happened in interview one and she often lowers her voice to a whisper.
The recording was in preparation for the book “West Street, the first 2000 years” by Eve and “Alley and Ditch” by JR both HOHG publications.
JR: I am back again at 4 Boundary Drive and I’ve got Dorothy here but also her sister Sylvia, big sister Sylvia I was going to say, but she’s actually smaller! And Sylvia Vowles now lives at Willington near Bedford and she’s come for the afternoon to help with the tape about Castle Street and West Street. Now you were just looking at that photograph, and you were saying it shows the demolition of part of Nicholls Brewery which had the off -licence, so next to that you were saying there was a big gate.
DP: Horse went in and the working brewery was behind his house, then next to that, going towards Castle Street there was the twitchel going to Water Lane, to St Andrew Street, then there was a pub this end.
JR: The Black Swan was on the corner of Water Lane.
SV: Yes, this is the pub where Gordon’s father was sent (Gordon is her husband)
DP: Oh, that was near the war memorial.
SV: Don’t think so, we’ll ask him.
JR: There was another pub on the other side, down towards the town centre which was The White Horse.
SV: Yes, that was where Mrs Hart lived.
DP: That’s almost opposite where the icehouse is.
JR: Now tell me a bit about these houses that you were saying before Sylvia.
SV: I remember some buildings there, decrepit, really awful houses in Pegs Lane and I remember them in the very beginning of the war and there used to be two sisters living in there and we were always told to keep well away because they were prostitutes and I can believe it because there were very odd things going on there but the building here was obviously being demolished before we went to live there, it says 1929 so they were still there during the war and that joined on to the car showroom.
DP: Chaseside garage.
DP: Where the Jacksons lived.
SV: Yes, he was manager or….
DP: No, he owned it.
SV: Yes, and then it curved round the corner, there were several nice houses where the minister…
DP: Where the Rev Wood lived and as I said Mrs Cannon.
JR: We have got some photographs of those, that was Castle Stores and another one here, that shows the vista going down the road, so…
DP: Water Hall Dairy had a little shop for a while, that was Water Hall Dairy there.
SV: And Barbers before that.
JR: Was that the other side of the block where you lived?
DP: The other half of our house, yes.
JR: Going towards the bit where you go down the icehouse.
DP: Yes.
JR: That was a picture of what we call “Sentinels”, they’re not really but they look like two soldiers standing there, that’s the front door of that which is round the side.
DP: Yes, that the Rev Woods house.
JR: Which church was he?
DP: Congregational.
JR: Really? They used to have a house in North Crescent actually.
SV: They did, I remember them being in that house.
DP: that was him (shows photo) and he moved from our church, he was our minister all through the war, absolutely adored him.
SV: Everybody made a great hero of him
DP: After the war he married and moved away to Kingston-upon-Thames.
JR: One or two more you might like to, you recognise that, the gents loo.
DP: We were petrified of going past there, I worked in London when I first left school.
SV: That little lane was not very pleasant, it was not kept very clean.
DP: They used to lock the gate there, if I came along the alleyway from the North Station I could sometimes walk through there and I’d come in to our yard, but they used to lock that gate and I used to say to mother meet me there but sometimes she wouldn’t and I had to be brave and walk round the town.
SV: That was a lot of rot because there was nobody there at all.
JR: This is another one of Water lane, this is the side of the Black Swan here and down there is a cottage and that’s a close up of the bottom of the cottage before it was demolished, rather dilapidated. One cottage there and one next to it.
DP: I can’t remember anybody who lived in there, though those cottages are still there aren’t they?
JR: Those on the other side, yes, (Castle Cottages) there’s a better picture for you to look at.
DP: Yes, that was Mrs Stackwood’s house, do you remember the three poles, we used to swing in those as children.
SV: Yes.
JR: This is Water Lane looking down to St Andrews Church and that bit there was demolished in the road scheme. But the others remained.
DP: Was that his new house then?
JR: Apparently, I didn’t realise it was new although it looks new.
SV: Well its new to us because we remember the old house.
DP: He lived in that then when we moved out of Castle Street.
JR: Here’s another one.
DP: Oh yes, here’s the pub, (Black Swan).
JR: I was lucky to find these.
DP: Very interesting, thanks for showing us. He kept that garden beautifully; he was a dear old man when I was a child.
JR: And he was a groundsman or gardener (to the Castle).
DP: Yes, they used to grow all their own plants.
JR: Here’s another one of Water Lane, a better condition one, a sunny day as well.
SV: Yes, you’re right, it wasn’t a very nice area, I remember being accosted down there. I must have been about 12 or 13 and I was walking down there in the evening and walking over the 2nd bridge where you turned left and went out to St Andrew Street and this chap came along and started talking. I was a bit wary and he was saying that he needed a friend, he was so lonely, and I thought yes, I can believe that. He was saying can I come home with you or can you come home with me, but I said I’ll take you to someone who will be a friend. I took him back to Mr Wood (the Congregational Minister at number 55 Castle Street). Mr Wood told me the next morning he had a good chat with him and arranged to meet him again if he wanted to join in with any organisation or felt really lost, but of course nothing ever happened, he didn’t want that at all! But it wasn’t very nice.
JR: It was a good move on your part wasn’t it.
SV: Very lucky I should think.
JR: Quick thinking, gosh, yes.
SV: Well we weren’t warned particularly.
DP: Mother did when I first started working in London. It was 1949 it was always very seedy then.
SV: Well people were always very wary weren’t they, of course nowadays things still go on.
JR: Although Water Lane itself is quite respectable now.
DP: I haven’t been down there for years.
JR: Right a couple more here which you might like to see. The Beer outlet here or off-licence at Nicholls, then there was a kind of barn or shed and then the Black Swan.
SV: That was the store?
DP: But the gate was that side of Nicholls Brewery so that must have been the gate for this pub (pause) he had a lovely house Mr Nicholls. He always wore plus fours.
SV: That’s right, he was a big man, he always rode this huge bicycle, it was a bicycle, not a tricycle and I know my mother knew him because I suppose she’d always lived around that area and when she was collecting, she quite often did collecting for charities in the street she would accost him and ask him to buy a flag or something, he wouldn’t buy it then but he’d say “come round to the house of the office and I’ll give you something” and he did. He was a very dignified sort of chap wasn’t he?
DP: I always remember when the bus came along there (Didn’t remember the bus in tape 1!) she used to say to the bus driver wait until you see me get off (Muddled but apparently she went on to the bus to sell her flags and kept everyone waiting)
MP: That Billy Nicholls finished his days by living in the Salisbury.
DP: He moved to a cottage in Villiers Street to live, then he ended up at the Salisbury.
MP: We know the other one, his cousin.
DP: Yes, his cousin lived in Queens Road.
JR: Did this co-incide with the brewery being demolished or did somebody else get the brewery?
DP: No nobody else had it after him.
JR: He sold it?
DP: Yes.
MP: It was a nursery school.
JR: Was it?
MP: Yes.
JR: So, it didn’t end its days as a brewery then?
DP: Good gracious and then they built ….
MP: My sister took Richard there as a toddler
DP: And then they built houses there, when the relief road went round, they built houses, that’s where Eve Perrin had a place.
JR: That’s right yes, she did, in fact they have still got the house (pages 17 and 18 of the West Street book)
SV: When would that have been, when Richard was at the nursery school?
DP: Now he’s late 30s so about 32 years ago (1960s).
JR: The seventies, Well I’ll just show you these extra ones, a couple more of the Black Swan, a very ancient pub, it doesn’t look it but it was.
DP: Gordon, do you see these of the Black Swan? Tell this lady when it was that your father came to live there.
GV: During the First World War.
DP: They had come from London, hadn’t they?
GV: Who?
DP: Your father and his brother
GV: Yes, suppose so.
DP: Went to live with the uncle that ran the Black Swan, there’s the alleyway down…
JR: So, you remember this as well?
GV: Well I remember this but not at the time of the First World War!
DP: Second World War is enough for us!
GV: My father was kicked in the face by a horse.
DP: What one of Billy Nicholls’ horses?
GV: I don’t know, when he was a child living there. He was from a large family, so these were Channings who kept the Black Swan at that time. They had no children, so they came to live there.
DP: They were related to your mother and father.
GV: It was an aunt and uncle.
JR: Of your father or of you?
GV: My father, my great aunt and uncle. After they gave up the Black Swan, they went to live at Hornsmill
Transcribers Note: Benjamin Channing born 1858 married Amelia Vowles born 1858. She was the sister of George Vowles born 1866 who was Gordon’s grandfather. Amelia and Benjamin both died in Hertford in 1940, she a few months after him.
JR: Oh good…Just another couple there you will recognise. The garage, that’s the other end of Castle Street
DP: They’re very clear.
JR: They’re lasers and I can re-photograph these if I want to.
DP: Where’s this? Or is this the Culls house (23 Castle Street) going down the bottom (number 19).
SV: Doctor Buckley lived there.
DP: That all went with the relief road, but this is all here (Longmore side) that’s where the old police station was, I don’t know what it is now, a friend of mine worked there.
SV: It was the County Education office at one time.
JR: Its some kind of trading standards now and next door is the solicitor, Longmore.
DP: That car (In the photo) that could have been Peter Ruffles’ mini, it was just like that. He’s mad on Mini’s ‘cos his old one is next door but one. And All Saints church.
SV: Yes, no not All Saints.
DP: That’s All Saints Church.
JR: Let’s have a look, no, St Andrew’s has got a very tall spire, here it is look (In a Water Lane picture) and that one, there are two more here, that one was supposed to be a smithy behind the Gladstone Arms.
SV: It was a wheelwright’s when I remember it. I remember going to see him do this, it was very interesting.
JR: Wheels for?
SV: Carts.
JR: There was still a demand for that?
SV: Yes.
JR: And that one was when the Black Swan and cottages were being demolished, Water Lane looking towards Castle Street.
SV: I am glad I didn’t see it then!
DP: I am interested in going in the library and having a good look round there.
Pause
JR: During the recording I thought the machine wasn’t recording for a brief time and I replaced the tape with a new one as we were nearly at the end of this side B and the machine was recording, something happened to the counter and it wasn’t going round which confused me slightly but the recording has been Ok so if you now go straight to tape 2 you’ll find the conversation and interview continue.
Tape one ends
Tape Two Side A
DP: The Miss Hilton I know was the sewing shop on Parliament Square.
SV: Could have been sisters.
DP: But you mentioned a school, Miss Hilton’s school.
SV: Well I can remember mum talking about Miss Hilton’s school but where it was I don’t know.
JR: I haven’t got a photo of West Street but it was apparently, it was across from between the Black Horse and where Eve Sangster lives at number 25 there were some cottages, well they were quite big houses, which they took down to build Westall Close it was one of those I think.
SV: Is that the name of the little lane, twitchell, Westall Close?
DP: No, that’s the name of the property there now, they’re flats, aren’t they?
JR: They demolished three houses I think, throughout the time they were standing there, they converted from 2, 3, 4 and then back again and they built some more flats which were right down near the river, which you had to approach by quite a long driveway, that was Westall Close, but part of it was also an alleyway going down to the river and cottages down there and they were called Ivy Passage.
SV: That was the name of the whole twitchell.
JR: This one here was Water lane but at the beginning of the 19th century I don’t know what this was called because Ivy Passage was called Water Lane originally so what they called this then I don’t know because this is quite an ancient thoroughfare.
SV: It went down to water anyway.
JR: Now what about your grandfather, I was going to ask Sylvia, can you give us a picture of your grandfather between you, what kind of man he was…
SV: He was a very learned man, very interested in education and keen on other people getting an education and he and other people probably of working trades in the town were running and organisation my mother used to talk about called Pleasant Sunday Afternoons (PSA) and evidently you were supposed to be allowed to go to this, you couldn’t go to other things on a Sunday, you were allowed to go to this because it was restful and not upsetting the church services, it was during the afternoons, probably they had talks, you don’t remember hearing about it?
DP: No.
SV: I think they probably had political discussions not getting too excited, but it was supposed to be a restful, pleasant entertaining time. He liked to think that everyone had a chance to learn about their country and the way it was run, and he was keen on his eldest son, he was well educated as far as it could be done in public (state) schools.
DP: He went to Cowper School.
SV: He was an intelligent man and always interested in what was going on in the world, he lived until he was late 80s
DP: 87.
SV: He didn’t bother much about the girls! He had four girls.
DP: My mother being the youngest.
SV: They had just left school and usually went off to service, at least the three older ones did and mother was the youngest and she was spoilt a bit and allowed to stay at home and worked in the family shop. But my grandfather was a great character, always reading, a lovely collection of books and when we were young, before we lived in Castle Street we lived out of the town, up at Hornsmill and on the way, if we’d been into town shopping with mother, we’d stop at his house and probably visit him in the shop and have a chat with him and then go into the house and probably be given some refreshment by grandma, we would read, well I would read, I would find a book on the shelves.
DP: he was always fond of those books by Zane Grey.
SV: Zane Grey, the old-fashioned books. He had a lot of classic 19th century detective stories and other sorts of things which were well known then. Nothing terribly difficult to read. He had the usual sort of fiction and was keen that we would enjoy that too, so I read quite a lot of books there. And grandmother of course was just interested in cooking and housekeeping, but it was a strange house.
DP: It had two staircases where Marjorie Burgess lives now, one at the front by grandads’ shop and one at the back.
SV: The front one, it did go out of the shop didn’t it and went upstairs and just the one floor, three bedrooms.
DP: No bathroom. There was a brick building outside where they had a copper and a flush toilet, they called it the wash house.
JR: This was number 9?
DP: Number 11 West Street.
JR: I always get mixed up which one.
DP: Where Marjorie lives you see.
JR: Now?
DP: Yes.
JR: Was that once two houses then do you think?
DP: No.
JR: Well two staircases.
SV: No, I think that was just the custom. A lot of woodwork, I went once to look at Jane Austen’s house in the West Country somewhere and it reminded me of it somehow, maybe it was built about the same time, nice panelling and I don’t know how many staircases that had but it seemed to be a bit similar sort of style. And it was funny on the stairs when you went up by the back way from the kitchen it was quite a steep staircase you turned and there was one little bedroom overlooking the back garden and also looked over number 9, their gardens, with quite a high wall in between, then you walked through, no special passageway, just the door opened into the middle bedroom which was my grandparents bedroom and we stayed there one night didn’t we Dot, do you remember, we had to go and stay there for some reason, a night or two at grandma’s and it was a very nice house really, quite spacious but she didn’t use the upstairs at all for the last part of her life, he was always very badly crippled and he went around in this chair, quite happily and was well known in the town really.
DP: Grandpa used to repair the shoes for Christs Hospital didn’t he. Haileybury College.
SV: Not much.
DP: Yes, he did, and Ann and I used to push up and he used to let us have a ride down.
SV: When they were delivering shoes that had been repaired?
DP: Yes, they used to be in a sack in the well.
SV: You went right up to Haileybury?
DP: My mother went to St Andrews school (shows photo).
JR: Ah that’s lovely, may I?
DP: Yes you may (Loud background noise, I think Dorothy is pointing out that the classrooms had just a curtain between and that her mother was … but distracted by the noise)
JR: This one of the Geisha Girls or whatever is lovely.
DP: Don’t know if there’s a date on that?
JR: No, we can probably guess, what is she 10?
SV: Did you say they were practising performing something? I thought she said Madame Butterfly?
JR: It’s possible, someone’s bought a job lot of material and made up costumes the same! So, do you remember any other characters in the street? For instance, who lived in the house where the bookshop was? (Number 25) It was owned most recently by Mrs Checkley. There was a house in Castle Street opposite the entrance to the Castle grounds where the icehouse issued to belong to the Andrews family.
SV: Miss Andrews house.
JR: Was she living there when you were there?
SV: There was nobody with a book shop there.
JR: No, I think the bookshop came later on second thoughts.
SV: Miss Andrews was there certainly and then there were some, a man living next door, I don’t know who he was, perhaps a solicitor? And there was a family of little girls who always dressed in overalls, pinafores, rather like French children, they always looked like French children, we were told, dressed like that. They didn’t mix with the rest of the people in the houses round about, not that there were many houses then, I think it just came down to the house in the corner where the doctor lived (number 19).
JR: Which doctor was that?
SV: Doctor Buckley at the beginning os the war and Doctor Eager before that, would he have been in the same house Gordon?
GV: Yes, same house.
SV: Yes, Doctor Eager, how you spell it I don’t know.
JR: Yes I know that, it was Gurth Eager.
(overtalking)
DP: (The Culls of number 23) the Culls of the sweet shop (Now Gays the corner of Church Street and Fore Street) Mary kept house, one was a solicitor (’s clerk) in Longmores, one kept the shop and one worked at County Hall.
JR: Yes we have actually got one of them on tape. But I mistakenly thought that house (23) was the doctor’s house.
SV: No, it’s the one right down here (19) (To Dorothy) Do you remember Miss Andrews who lived in the house before the entrance to the Grammar School?
DP: Yes, that’s now owned by the lady who was managing director of Danish Bacon, the lady who lived in Miss Andrews house, she inherited all of Cull’s things, Mrs Checkley.
JR: She had the bookshop.
DP: Yes with the door on.
SV: Wasn’t it the Culls who had those little girls who were always dressed in pinafores?
JR: There were some daughters as well.
DP: No none of them were married.
SV: No, but there were little children there, somewhere in one of the houses.
DP: Perhaps Mrs Checkley’s House?
SV: I don’t remember her.
DP: Oh no it wasn’t because Miss Andrews lived there, there were no little girls living in the Culls house.
JR: They didn’t have any sisters?
DP: The three men Cull had a sister who kept house, but she was roughly their age. Did I show you this one, the back of Marjorie’s house (or 11 West Street) that was my mother cousin and he was at Christ’s Hospital at Horsham. There used to be two milliners and they were in Church Street by the Salisbury (4 people talking at once) My mother was apprenticed there.
JR: Oh, good. Now anything else we need to know. What about the Castle Stores, what sort of …
DP: Where Mr Webber was?
SV: Was he there first, when we first came because there was a lady after, I didn’t know her name.
JR: Was there ever a Miss Whisk having a shop anywhere, somebody reported a Miss Whisk as having a shop in West Street.
SV: Might have been the person who took over, but that name doesn’t ring a bell.
DP: She might have been before Mr Webber. Mr Webber was there after the end of the war.
JR: We interviewed a lady named Win Titmarsh who was Miss Neale who lived at number 21 West Street I think and she didn’t work, when she left school she seemed to spend most of her time nursing people in West Street who mostly had shingles. She seemed to be a shingles expert, but she certainly went round to a lot of people’s houses when they were ill and looked after them and she reported that she’d do shopping at Miss Whisk’s for them.
DP: And SV: Miss Fisk!
JR: Sorry memories failed! That was Castle Street?
DP: That was Castle Stores.
SV: But which do you think came first?
DP: I think Miss Fisk came first then Mr Webber.
SV: So, you’re probably right, you were living there after me, I left before you.
JR: It was always Castle Stores in your memory? Not Camps. I’ve got an earlier photo on order which shows Camps, maybe a long time ago. Did you know anyone else down Castle Street or West Street?
DP: We only knew the Crow’s when we were little, but Miss Neale does ring a bell but where she lived, I don’t know and also Miss Docwra those houses up the steps on the left hand side.
JR: Somerset Terrace.
DP: That’s right, that’s where Dad was in lodgings when he met Mum, Miss Docwra.
JR: Was she to do with the builders? I can’t quite think what they do now, but you often see lorries going round, with Docwra on.
SV: It’s not an uncommon name, but she was quite on her own. She used to take in sewing to do to get a bit of extra money, as well as people to live there. But it was a hard life for her I should think. Further down there was Miss Waller, bigger houses, not far from our grandparents, she was a very nice lady, she was a pillar of All Saints.
JR: Did she have something to do with the school or not, are we talking about after the war here?
DP: No during the war.
JR: That was 25 then, Peter mentioned Miss Waller and Sister Cutts being in the same house.
SV: Sister Cutts was a nurse, wasn’t she?
JR: Church Army.
SV: Yes, she could have been with a title like that
JR: After Miss Fountain discontinued her school which happened just before the war.
DP: Miss Fountain not Miss Hilton?
JR: Miss Hilton was across the road from Miss Fountain.
SV: I have heard of Miss Fountains school yes, that does ring a bell. It wasn’t our time.
JR: It was before, David Fountain went to his aunts school during the ‘30s and it packed up about ’37 or ’38.
DP: I was only born in ’32, you were born in ’30. Lovely houses along there, that very end one that’s now been sold used to be something to do with music, County Hall.
JR: That was in your time?
DP: Yes
SV: Where is this Dot?
DP: Right at the end opposite Miss Docwra, same side as Mr Crow lived.
SV: What did you say that was used for?
DP: Something to do with County Hall.
JR: County Music Centre, the Miss McMullens lived there before that.
SV: The Burgesses lived in West Street.
DP: Oh well they lived next door to grandma yes, Mollie and Jone.
JR: What about that house on the other side, not quite opposite where Misses McMullen lived, but a little way towards the end of the street, just past the Black Horse there’s a big house there known as Bridgeman House. It had been a school at one time. I think it was divided in to three. No you don’t? it doesn’t matter, we’re doing that as well that’s where Bridgeman’s lived for a couple of centuries.
DP: Do you remember anything about that Eileen?? Bridgeman’s? No, she doesn’t she didn’t live in Hertford
(This really doesn’t make sense, but Dorothy did tend to lose track of the conversation and changed subjects at will and also repeated herself a lot.)
JR: Do you remember Gordon Moody at all.
SV: Music?
JR: No, Moody.
SV: Yes, but wasn’t he a professor of Music?
JR: Well he might have been but he was actually a graphics man I think he was a commercial artist, very interested in antiquities, a member of East Herts Archaeological Society and an authority on old buildings, he’s left some diaries in fact. Ok is there anything else you can think of? Any little incidents happening in the street, riots, fights?
SV: When the Queen came to County Hall not sure when that was.
DP: Before the war?
SV: No because they had hardly started building it.
JR: Did you hear any rumours about that because one chap called Nanna Thomas who was actually involved in the building and he said something about finding some skeletons.
DP: When you go up West Street beyond those cottages and you left and there’s a walkway down to the Football Club, there’s a walkway upon the opposite side up to Leahoe. Well there was a Convent, my mother said it was used for girls who’d been naughty and had their babies there and, I am only going on what she said, that walkway, either side of that pathway were the burial grounds where the babies were.
JR: Really?
SV: Which side, the side nearest towards me of the end nearest to Leahoe itself?
DP: There was an entrance to Leahoe at the end of West Street beyond those cottages
SV: We could walk up that one and down the other side, not a short cut but an alternative walking home towards Hornsmill.
DP: You came out by the Black Horse.
JR: Off Wallfield Alley. Almost opposite the bit that comes up from the football ground are some steps that go up, you can walk along the back of Somerset Terrace
DP: Well there was one parallel with that going to Leahoe.
SV: Was there? I don’t remember that.
DP: Well it was only just right parallel with it.
SV: High up on the hillside.
DP: It went up the back then to the side parallel with Somerset Terrace, came out at Leahoe, Leahoe was a convent or Nunnery.
JR: Where were the burials then?
DP: Well either side of that was a walkway, the other side of Somerset Terrace.
JR: The back of Somerset Terrace really?
DP: Yes.
JR: Oh there is a path there now but what you are say, right next to Somerset Terrace is there was a parallel path, was that nearer to Somerset Terrace or farther away?
DP: No, right next to Somerset Terrace. It linked up to Leahoe House which is a private house where the girls used to go.
Transcribers Note: This is confusing there is still a footpath that begins with steps in Horns Road opposite the football ground and continues all the way along the back of Somerset Terrace it does not go up to Leahoe House. If there was another higher up it will have been lost in the building of Leahoe Gardens etc. There is a path that links the lower footpath from the end of Somerset Terrace with steps up to Leahoe Gardens, so it was possibly in that area. Not sure that they actually mean parallel each time they say it, Dorothy particularly.
SV: My mother used to go up there and Auntie Alice for piano lessons, the nuns used to give piano lessons as well as looking after these girls. I don’t remember hearing about the girls.
DP: Oh, I do.
JR: So, what happened then were these little graves for the stillborn babies?
DP: I suppose so yes.
JR: Oh dear.
GV: Could you bury in un-consecrated ground?
DP: Well that went on.
SV: Perhaps it was consecrated it was part of Leahoe.
MP: I thought there was a burial ground up there anyway, one of these odd churches.
SV: Further along was the Roman Catholic church, yes, it must have been a church, do you remember Father Maseroni lived up there.
JR: Oh, I think he lived in the lodge of Leahoe didn’t he?
SV and DP: Somewhere up there.
JR: But he was at the Catholic church in the town.
DP: There wasn’t a church up there.
JR: So, you think you remember a burial ground at County Hall or that way?
MP: I thought as you went up the hill, I thought there was a small burial ground for some sort of sect.
DP: You’re thinking of the burial ground going up Port Hill.
SV: Would there have been a burial ground for the nuns?
GV: What? You can’t just bury people where you…
SV: There was a convent there
DP: Yes. there was, Leahoe.
JR: We seem to have started something. I think we need to make some investigations here because it might have some bearing on what Nanna Thomas was saying about excavating for County Hall.
Much over talking re County hall but not coherent
MV: I did have it at the back of my mind that there was a burial ground up there (Pegs Lane)
JR: Well I did comb through the Mercury for the years they opened County Hall and were building it and found nothing at all.
MP: I am not saying I am positive.
DP: Michel didn’t live here then he didn’t come till ’46.
MP: County Hall opened in 1939 but it wasn’t officially until after the war. I know County Hall was opened just before the war my father worked for them and the Queen came just after the war.
GV: It was the Queen Mother who was there.
MP: I seem to remember a ceremony just after the war.
GV: I have never seen a woman with so much make up on.
Lots of overtalking
JR: Oh dear (tape paused) So unmarried mothers had gone there to have their babies.
SV: Then I suppose they struggled to keep them alive, poor little things, didn’t they?
JR: I had no idea, I didn’t know Leahoe had that as one of its offices and also I had no idea about the burials along this path, we need to look for this path, must be part of the woodland now, it didn’t actually come down into the road, it went to Leahoe.
DP: It came down on the corner as you come up West Street It turned the bend then Somerset Terrace was up there and Leahoe was there.
SV: When we were going up home from the school at All Saints up West Street towards Hornsmill we could go up one way, along the top where Whinnets lived and then down the other side which was opposite the football ground, we could go up, along and down.
DP: Well that’s Somerset Terrace.
JR: That’s the path we are talking about.
DP: The path next to it.
JR: There is no path next to it now.
DP: Well there was a path next to it, there was another entrance to Leahoe there.
SV: That was parallel with the one from West Street to Somerset Terrace.
DP: Yes.
JR: Ok we’ll have to look at some maps I think.
DP: We were taken there as children, a short cut from school, Faudel Phillips School and then Abel Smith school and we used to come to West Street and Castle Street and call in and see Grandma, go up past where your father had lived as a youngster along West Street. Up Somerset Terrace down along as a short cut we were opposite the football ground.
SV: It wasn’t a short cut it was a diversion, a change from walking along the road.
Discussion about no path or pavement on Somerset Terrace side of the road
JR: There isn’t now.
SV: But there was a footpath up the hillside and across the top (Wallfields Alley)
DP: I will tell you who lived along there too, the Creasey’s
JR: Along the path nest the Whinnetts?
DP: Yes.
JR: How many cottages were there along that path?
SV: Whinnetts was quite a good size house but I don’t remember Creasey’s
DP: No I think it was before our time but mother said Reg Creasey was just a little boy then
Transcribers Note: 1936 Whinnets address was Garden Cottage, Hornsmill Road
End of Tape two side one
Tape Two side two
DP: Creasey’s wife was a Whinnett.
JR: Eve has talked to the Whinnetts but I just want to get somebody else’s view on it in particular on the location of these cottages because if you go up there now, one of the modern ‘50s houses has got a bit of what we are convinced is the Whinnetts cottage embedded in its holding wall.
DP: We ought to walk up there one day.
JR: Sometime we could come up there and see where you think this path is. Perhaps Eve could come and get you in the car and take you up there.
DP: Who is Eve?
JR: The lady who came before as I don’t have a car anymore, Peters got mine, but Eve has a car and you could show us where it actually was
DP: Does Eve live in West Street then?
JR: Eve lives at 25 which was Miss Fountains school and Miss Waller and Sister Cutts all lived there.
DP: It was she who said she could see our Dad’s shed from her house.
SV: The only people I remember on the other side in West Street was this D C L Yeast place.
DP: The Wyards, Doreen. Doreen is still alive she is married a….
JR: Peter’s interviewed them.. a Mr Wingate she married.
DP: She was a young girl then, she had a younger sister.
GV: Hazel.
SV: Doreen Wyard used to dance didn’t she?
JR: Yes, she was quite a leading light in amateur dramatics.
SV: Yes, was it Miss Silverside house that had a large building in the garden where we used to meet for Sunday School? You don’t remember that?
DP: No, I know she taught at All Saints.
SV: I was her School Secretary for a while and Miss Waller had a class there too for older ones and I think she had, I am sure we went there one day and dressed up in saris, an Indian performance, we were supposed to be learning about India. It was like a big summer house place in her garden. How far was her garden back it wasn’t far back from the road.
DP: The houses were on the street weren’t they.
SV: That’s it, you went in from the steps up into the house then you went left out of the house into the garden and there was this nice big building there.
JR: Alright I think we’ve got a lot.
DP: There was a lady here this morning who’d heard you speaking at the U3A and she found you very interesting.
JR: Oh, thank you.
[Transcribers Note: Jean doesn’t recall speaking to the U3A]
DP: Eileen Burns her name is she used to live at Stapleford.
JR: Yes, I probably know her by sight, yes have been a couple of times with different slide shows.
Discussion about memories generally led to Mill Bridge V1
JR: Did the Millbridge bomb affect your house.
DP: It blew our back windows out. We had a particularly lovely stained-glass window at the back of the house, and it blew that out. We couldn’t replace it.
JR: Win Titmarsh nee Neale, she said that her back window at number 21 was blown out. It seemed quite a distance.
SV: That was very frightening because you could hear the thing stop, it was coming over, making its queer noise and you woke up and heard that and then it stopped and you knew then you had only seconds and then it would come down and demolish an area and we didn’t know where it would be.
(Incoherent speaking)
SV: The one at Tamworth Road was nasty.
DP: That was at the beginning of the war I remember mother going down there because your friend Margaret Thomlinson lived down there.
SV: What did she go down there for?
DP: To bring Margaret up to us to stay, she said it was some hours later the only people helping down there were the Salvation Army, they always were very good, they still are.
SV: Yes that was horrible because this friend of mine, she’d come from that end of the town, we were in the same classes all the way to the top in junior school and we were always going to each other’s houses for tea parties and things and I knew her mother and father and her brother, a little bit, he went off to join the army at the beginning of the war and when the bomb came down it killed the father because it came, blew down part of the house and some furniture in the upstairs part of the house came down, he was sitting downstairs and he was crushed by some of the furniture and beams and was killed and Margaret came to live with us, don’t know what happened to mother. She didn’t stay very long and she didn’t come to school for a bit and when Margaret did come back to school, she said her mother had killed herself. Margaret went off to live with an aunt in Scotland, the brother of course was in the army so he was no help and she was in a pretty upset state, she was only about 10 and we didn’t know any more except that the brother had married a florist in Hertford.
Transcribers Note: There is some error in memory here as Mr Thomlinson was a widower his wife died in 1939 before the war started and his sister came to be housekeeper for him and the two children. There is no evidence that Mr Thomlinson was killed by the bomb, he may have been injured, the family probably went back to Northumberland where he came from. His death is not verified but he may have died in 1941 in Penrith. Margaret Blake married George Thomlinson in Hertford in 1948. Margaret married a Mr Jones and died in Florida in 1998. George died in Cheshire in 2012 and his wife Margaret nee Blake in 1990 in Cheshire.
DP: That was Blake florist going towards Ware Road.
JR: Was that any relation to George Blakes?
DP: Yes, no not the photographer.
JR: So what was this girl you were friendly with, what was her name again Thomlinson?
DP: Yes.
SV: Then about 1950 I was walking around shopping in Hertford, Parliament Square and a young woman came up to me and said did I know where Sylvia Halls (that was me) lived? It’s me! And that was Margaret. She’d come back and she was looking for me and I took her home and we chatted, and we arranged to meet in London. I’d just finished training as a teacher. She was in the first year of her training so I went up to London one day and met her, went up to the college and we spent the day looking around and walking about and I didn’t hear any more, didn’t keep up the correspondence and from the sister in law, Blake, afterwards only about five years ago I heard that Margaret had died.
DP: Her brother lived in Hertford, at that age in your 20s, you’re busy, getting married.
SV: There you are, that happened to us, we didn’t think about keeping up these old associations.
JR: Ok then.
Recording ends