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Transcript Title	Stevens, Phyllis (O1994.29)
Interviewee	Phyllis Stevens (PS)
Interviewer	Peter Ruffles (PR), Valerie Jenkins (VJ)
Date	29/04/1994
Transcriber by	Jean Riddell (Purkis)

Transcript

Hertford Oral History Group

Recording no: 01994.29

Interviewee: Phyllis Stevens (PS)

Date: 29th April 1994

Venue: not recorded

Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR), Valerie Jenkins (VJ)

Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)

Typed by: Susan Hunt

************** unclear recording

[discussion] untranscribed material

italics editor’s notes

Venue

Tape 1, side A

PR: Miss Stevens has taught in the Lee Valley for many years and has come into school today and has just taught a year 10 Key Stage 4 History Class, she’s going home and we’ve asked her and she’s very keen to do this and said how long is this agony going to last and I’m going to ask Miss Stevens if she could just describe to us one or two of the changes she may have seen in the time she has been teaching. We’ve promised Miss Stevens that this recording will have an embargo on it from release for a good many years ahead.

PS: 2020.

PR: 2020, and on the forms we won’t provide the personal details of Miss Stevens. She does live alone and it wouldn’t be sensible to advertise where she’s living. And we’ll probably avoid talking about individual’s personally but just talk about the changes that have happened in the time that Miss Stevens has been a practising teacher in this area and that’ll be the impact of our recording.

PS: I may choose to mention the name of one or two people.

PR: Yes, well at least we won’t run people down in the way Oral History sometimes does, because Miss Stevens never does, actually I might say that having worked with Miss Stevens for 30 years I’ve never known Miss Stevens punish anybody, I’ve never actually known you keep people in detention, I mean is that parts of your mystique and theories of education because you……….

PS: I think you’re mistaken, I have kept people in detention.

PR: I never remember you doing that.

PS: Oh, I have done, I think it’s essential, I think punishment is part of education. Reward and punishment I think are two of the essential ingredients.

PR: Yes, well we do, as a school do that but I don’t remember even over the years and we’re had some very rough classes having a lot of detainees as it were…..

PS: Excuse my interrupting, I don’t see how anyone can teach without punishing children occasionally

PR: But you had to do that here as senior mistress for other people from time to time.

PS: Oh indeed.

PR: Now Miss Stevens, I suppose we ought to say that you were born locally and went to school - primary school, locally?

PS: In those days it was called a junior school. I went to what was called then Chesterfield Road School, which is in Enfield Wash, 1926, until 1932 although I was living from about 1929 onwards at Turnford almost opposite what is now Turnford College, Hertford Regional College, where we had a shop, my father built.

PR: Did you choose to go to Cheshunt for a good reason or had you….

PS: Not Cheshunt, Chesterfield Road. Chesterfield Road is the turning oﬀ Ordnance Road.

PR: Oh, further south.

PS: Middlesex. The Enfield Authority.

PR: That was because your family had lived nearer to that quarter to start with?

PS: Yes.

PR: I was wondering what…..choosing. school is today a big problem for parents, choosing a primary and a secondary school, and when you were living at that distance I wondered why you chose to go to a school so far away from your home?

PS: Well it wasn’t so far away from my home when I started there. I began to go to school there and my cousin went. She was able to take me along to school and bring me home again for the first year or so until I asserted my independence and went on my own.

PR: How did you travel then to school?

PS: Well, shanks’s pony in the early days as everyone else did. AND home at 12 o’clock and back at 2 o’clock. 2 hours for lunch in those days. Morning school finished at 12, back in the afternoon at 2 until 4.

PR: And were they happy school days, were you always pleased to be at school?

PS: Oh yes, very happy school days, quite uneventful school days. The discipline was extremely strict. We lined up in the playground, no-one spoke when they lined up. Well I don’t remember anyone speaking in lessons, if the teacher was talking we were silent. It was a school with a tradition of army discipline. In the early days some of the teachers had been army schoolmasters. It had maintained that old forces discipline.

When we moved to Turnford, I think it was 1929, I remember it was election day and my parents went down to vote and the election was held in the school, I think we’d moved before the election and so were still on the electoral roll down there, and my father saw the headmaster whom he knew and he said we’ve moved to Turnford, I should like my daughter to continue at this school it’s in a diﬀerent county, is that all right? The Head, who knew him, said oh that’ll be all right, so I just continued to go there, which meant a bus journey from Turnford every day and I think I was one of the first to arrive outside the school gates in the morning.

PR: That often happens, I think, those who travel furthest arrive first .

PS: Sometimes half past seven, 8 o’clock, a long day

PR: And was it diﬃcult to …because presumably your next school was Ware Grammar School? (Yes). Was a transfer from primary school out of county to Ware a problem for anybody?

PS: Not a problem at school, the problem was where I went after I left the primary school because they made it clear to me that I should not be allowed to go on a scholarship to Enfield because I was living outside the county.

PR: I see, yes.

PS: And my father went to see the headmaster of Wormley School, didn’t know him at all, and he told him the problem, he said, just wait a minute I think I’ve still got a form, a form for entry to the scholarship examination outside the deadline. His name was Mr Reynolds didn’t know me at all didn’t know the family but he produced this form from his desk and he said just fill in the form and ask her to get a letter of recommendation from her head mistress and send it in, so, sent it in and I sat the scholarship for Ware Grammar School and I passed and when the announcement came through that I had passed, they’d sent a message through to the head of Chesterfield Road that I’d actually come top of the whole scholarship list from East Herts and that covered an area from Waltham Cross right through to Buntingford and beyond and I attribute my success to the education I received under the Enfield Authority.

PR: Yes, yes and that’s why it’s quite important to have mentioned that. I was going to start with your teaching, but in fact , going back and seeing where things began, those very important formative impressive years…..

PS: Absolutely, yes, a traditional form of primary school education which was very well- grounded in maths, very well-grounded in English in which we had spelling tests early every day, in which we were taught the old copper-plate handwriting which presented a problem when I went to Ware because we had to change our style; in short all the old traditional methods which had been developed over the previous years.

PR: How long were you at Ware Grammar School?

PS: 1932-1939, the traditional 7 years of secondary education. I took, in those days, the School Certificate Examination at the end of 5 years, 1937, I attained credits, I think in 7 subjects: English, Maths, History, Geography, French, General Biology. Which is the one I’ve left out…French? Did I say French? I got a grade A in French, Maths, History and Biology and with that I got the Matriculation exemption. Then we went into the 6th form and there were 5 of us taking what in those days was the Higher Schools Certificate. We took three subjects: English, History and French - we all did the same three subjects because administratively that was the easiest thing to do.

PR: That’s another change, really. Now we…..

PS: Absolutely, we had no choice at all. But the headmistress encouraged me to take Latin as well. It wasn’t an exam subject but just to take Latin - oh I forgot to mention I also attained a Matriculation exemption in Latin so she wanted me to continue with Latin so I continued to take Latin and in the first term we also continued with our maths and calculus, the 6th formers, as well as doing the three main subjects.

There was another girl who was in the 7th year Joan Norris, a Hertford girl, and Mary Ollis was a year younger than us, she wasn’t in our particular group and there was another one who was in our group who was a music specialist, Nora Comley. Her family specialised in music for years and her main interest was music, she lived for music, so there were 5 of us in the group taking her and other people as well who were pursuing other things and in 1937 we took the Higher Schools Certificate, all of us except one passed in the three main subjects and Miss Woodhead wrote a letter to my parents asking if they’d let me try for scholarship to Cambridge. And we discussed it at home, it was 1939, well actually the letter was sent before that in 1938 and things had been very uncertain, worldwide, one never knew what was going to happen I read articles in the papers saying that teachers were two a penny, they couldn’t get jobs, etc, etc, so we opted for the easier choice it seemed to us, a more practical choice namely of doing a 2-year training course and I said well I’ll do that and I’ll save some money and I’ll go on and take a degree later.

I went to see Miss Woodhead and she asked me what I’d decided and I said no, I’m sorry I’m not going to try for a scholarship. She said I think you’ve made a mistake but anyway she said if you’re going to do a training course, then you must go to Homerton, because you’ll get a better life there. So I applied to Homerton, went up for an interview and I was accepted by Homerton in 1939. Of the 5 who took Higher Schools Certificate 4 of us became teachers: myself, Evelyn Ingleby, Loretta Beale and Winnie Morgan. We all went to training colleges, I went to Homerton, Evelyn went to Eltham - Avery Hill (it’s “local”!), Loretta went to Whitelands - they were evacuated to Homerton during the war, I don’t know where Connie Morgan went, but she trained.

September 1939 came and of course the war broke to so we were delayed in going up to our various colleges, fortunately I was only delayed by about a fortnight, but of course everything was blacked out and the thing I remember vividly was the way in which we had to keep all the curtains drawn and go along corridors at night, not a chink of light showing. And at Homerton in those days a two year course consisted of a very full course. In the first year we had to train to teach any subject that was on the Elementary School Curriculum, in those days. My first school practice in the first year was at Ely and that was in January 1940 so we had togged up very early in the morning, snowing heavily with great, deep ruts of snow. I had a bicycle because I very soon realised you can’t live in Cambridge without a bicycle, so my father said to my mother you give her your bicycle and I’ll buy you a new one. So she gave me her bicycle. I’d learned to ride bicycle in the grounds of the house that is now the site of Hertford Regional College.

PR: Over the road from you?

PS: Over the road because we knew the gardener there because his daughter who used to go to Wormley School got a scholarship to Ware and her father was a customer of ours and because he was a customer became friendly, the family who lived in the house at Turnford bought an estate in Norfolk near Fakenham so they allowed the gardener and his family to use the grounds, to make use of the tennis court, used to play tennis over there in the evening with my friend and she taught me to ride a bicycle in the grounds. So when they moved up to Norfolk they sold the property because I think it was on lease from the New River Company. Actually our shop at Turnford was built on ground my father bought from the New River Company. Most unusual because they never sold their land. But he did manage to buy the land to have the property built.

PR: You may have said the name of the house opposite, on the site?

PS: Nunsbury - the family moved up to Thorpeland Hall near Fakenham in Norfolk and because we were such good friends they invited me up there to spend holidays. And although I learned to ride a bicycle in the grounds of Nunsbury I wasn’t proficient on the road. The reason I hadn’t learned was that in those days the A10 was so busy they wouldn’t allow me to ride on the A10 but it was diﬀerent up in Norfolk and my good friends took me out and I rode a bicycle, one at one end of the road called out when a car coming etc.

My first competent journey was from Snoring to Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk calling on the way at the shrine at Walsingham!

PR: Important pilgrimage visit!

PS: When I went to Cambridge I took my mother’s bicycle and of course went to see the Bumps and I rode it along the towpath and I decided that if I could ride the bicycle along the towpath I could ride a bicycle in the rest of the town which I did! I spent two years there.

To get back to the curriculum - the first year was a very general one. In the second year in addition to the subjects one normally teaches and which we continued to take, namely English, P.E. and Games, Psychology, Principles of Teaching, Speech Training, we had to choose an advanced subject and I chose History. Another subject to do to what they called Ordinary level. I chose to do biology and we had to do a practical subject, I chose gardening. So that’s how my course continued at Homerton.

PR: This is a lovely tape, Miss Sevens - no it’s still going, I’m saying this on the tape. I’m getting hot, I don’t know whether anyone else is? [conversation about opening a window] Not surprisingly, of course, you’re able to let it flow. Normally we have to keep interrupting and turning people …..

PS: I can pick up the flow again. Let’s get back to 1941. Before I speak about the end, I did have a lovely two years in Cambridge although we had to work very hard. We had the opportunity of going out into the town. We had a principal, Miss Gaycorn, she came from the Isle of Man, she’d been an inspector, a school inspector. One of her objects was to get the students to enjoy the life in Cambridge, although it was war time she wanted us to get out and about, she didn’t want us to stay in the college at the weekend Saturday afternoons. It was almost wrong to be seen in college on a Saturday afternoon.

I had to go out somewhere. I joined the University, the YHA and University Rambling Club, and they met at Drummer Street Bus Station on a Sunday morning. I used to go, so I used to alternate between going to church service and going rambling. I became the college representative for the YHA and Rambling Club, enrolled a good many members from the YHA and greatly enjoyed the rambles on Sundays. We used to go out to various villages, the longest walk we did was from Cambridge to Newmarket, about 20 miles. In the evening, after we’d washed and changed, we met in someone’s rooms in Cambridge where we had coﬀee and the person who’d led the walk the previous week had to read an account of the walk for the archive, what they called the Rambling Club Archive.

I did actually. lead one walk, and wrote an account of it for the archives so presumably it’s still there. I also went to hear a debate in the Union on one occasion, the most memorable one was a speech given by Jan Masricht who was the son, I think of the President of Czechoslovakia, the one who was supposed to have fallen out of the window, to have committed suicide. I don’t think he did commit suicide, but that’s another matter. On the way back to college that night, we walked back to college that night, and there was an air raid and we had to sleep on the library floor. We could hear the bombs actually falling in the cattle market, very near the college, near the railway station and I think I’m right in saying that 6 people were killed that night in the cattle market in Cambridge. It became quite a memorable occasion.

Another occasion I remember vividly was going to see Susan Isaacs a leading child expert speak in the Combination Room of Trinity; I remember it not only because of the way in which she delivered her talk and she had a long necklace on and as she spoke she fingered the necklace. She was very impressive. Of course, there were no lights but it was moonlight and as we came down the steps of Trinity into the great quad, the great quad was bathed in moonlight, it was absolutely beautiful and something I shall never forget. To get back to the actual course; I’ll say it involved a lot of hard work and it did, because I had to write what you’d call now a dissertation but they actually gave it the grand name in College of a thesis on history and I also had to do one for biology.

The one I did for history was “The Higher Education in Relation to the Position of Women in the 19th Century”. I learned a great deal about Miss Buss and Miss Beale at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Florence Nightingale and all the people who became doctors, leaders of higher education, in the university field of the 19th century, because I used to go out to various meetings etc. and it kept me up working until the early hours to be finished on time! And the biology one I chose to do was on grasses. And I didn’t take my information out of books, I took my information from the actual specimens - in May-time when the grasses start to bloom. I laboriously picked the grasses and took them to pieces and through a lens drew them most meticulously and mounted the specimens on paper of course and then had to put them together again, that kept me very busy. So I completed those and I passed, I got a distinction in history and I got a credit in gardening. Gardening had always been my passion because when we lived at Turnford we had a large garden about 50 feet wide and it went right down to the New River at Turnford, 350 feet long and because my parents were busy in the shop, as well as my father going to work I was fully occupied cutting grass, weeding the drive, trimming round the edges, layering pinks, etc etc. Plus playing with the dog, we had a lovely dog, Rosa, a great companion.

PR: You didn’t tell Mr Bywater of your gardening skills, then

PS: Certainly not! You’re the first person who’s got it out of me!

PR: There used to be here, when I first came, because of the Lee Valley Nursery trade quite a flourishing garden running down from the end of the building behind us the 200 block running down to Cozens Lane. Mr Fiddaman worked there for a time, didn’t he, but Miss Stevens, of course, was Senior Mistress teaching English some of the time, and History, but the Headmaster didn’t know she was also a gardener!

PS: I found it a policy not to know anything about anything!

Tape 1 Side B

PS: Because we had such a large garden my cousin came to stay with me and we used to walk around the lanes of Broxbourne in the days when it was quite safe to wander around the lanes. They really were country lanes and I had several friends, one who lived in the house which is now Westside, Turnford, a friend Joan Dennison who also used to wander around the lanes with me on a Sunday afternoon and another friend from Ware Grammar School Betty Badwick from Cheshunt. She used to come down and we used to spend a lot of time playing ball in the bottom part of the garden which was uncultivated. Father just left it rough as a field so I had a house in the hedge and a long stretch of field when we were able to play ball without bothering anyone.

So they were very very happy days right through my childhood, days at Turnford right through to college were very happy days. Let’s go back to 1941. I left Homerton in June 1941 and went home. My parents came up to college to fetch me and go back home with me. The question was where should I teach or what should I do, I didn’t have a job. One of the things that has improved these days is that more time is taken now in advising people what they can do with their qualifications. We had virtually no advice as to where we should go or what we should do. We were told we could be interviewed by people who visited the college for interview purposes but I didn’t attend those interviews because I think some of them were from the midlands and the north because in those days a lot of girls at college actually came from the north of England and some were interviewed for Cambridge.

Now why didn’t I choose to be interviewed for the Cambridge authority? The reason is quite simply financial. In those days Herts paid scale 3 and Cambridge paid scale 2 so I decided I would apply to Herts. So I sent my name to Herts authority and in due course during the summer holiday there was knock at the door and the Headmistress of High Cross Junior School was there. My mother answered the door, she said she had received my name from the authority, she had a vacancy at her school and was I interested? So we invited her in and she explained that it was an infant post, I said that I had trained to do senior work but that we had had a course in infant method, Homerton was very comprehensive that our first year had also included art and craft in the junior school. She told me about the post, an infant post, was I interested? I said yes I was interested, I wanted to earn some money. So she said would you come up to High Cross, see the vicar and look round the school. I went up there, vicar interviewed me in the vicarage, I went into the school, she said if I were oﬀered the post I should be in charge of infants in Standard 1.

There were 2 rooms in the school, the main room and the room which opened oﬀ the main room, the infant room. I received a letter saying I was oﬀered the post, would I indicate whether I would accept it or not. My mother turned to me and said you’ll take it won’t you? I knew exactly that I would accept it, so in September 1944 (sic) I began at High Cross. [transcriber’s note: should be 1941]. And she said I was in charge of the infant class and of Standard 1. And she also asked me if I would take all the PE and Games. I couldn’t say I couldn’t do it because again we’d done PE and Games, 2nd year at Hometown. I’d been in the group, which shared with the Advanced PE people, so I’d had a good training in PE and Games although I never started out with PE and Games, far from it! I’d been in the first eleven at Ware Grammar School, but I’m not what you’d call a PE person - and would I be in charge of all the nature study including the nature study throughout the school. I agreed to do that.

There were no funds in those days for specimens and I pay tribute to my father who provided all the specimens for Nature Study, used the garden quite freely. There was a shortage of paper and one day he went out into the shed, produced a roll of wall paper lining which he cut up into books for me to use in school because we had to use slates or small boards to write on until the inspector came in one day and said that we should have books as some money was made available to provide actual paper on which the children could write. Nevertheless, it was, again, a happy time, I will mention the Headmistress’s name, she was Miss Dempson. In my view she was an excellent Headmistress for a village school. The children were extremely well behaved, you could hear a pin drop in her room. I was in the infant room and she was extremely helpful and we had the Wellbent Reading Scheme-children, about 20, had regular reading lessons, they simply came up to the desk and individually we went through the scheme together.

PR: How many teachers ——how big was the school?

PS: I think there might have been between 20 and 30 in her class, in the 20 in my class, it varied a bit because we took more children in as the war went on, in fact at the end of my time there we took in some four-year olds and three-year olds and I really didn’t feel that this is what I’d been trained for.

PR: How many teachers, classes there?

PS: Only two, the headmistress and myself, a very close relationship. There were aspidistras in her room and I remember at the end of afternoon school regularly she had her little watering can and went round watering the aspidistras and as she went round we had long long chats. It was almost like a mother and daughter relationship in the school. She had a week or so oﬀ one with the ‘flu and I was in charge of the school. Her sister popped in once or twice to see that things were going on all right. If parents had any problems or wanted to see us they just walked into the school in the lunch hour or after school, it was like a large family the whole village was like a large family!

PR: How did you travel to High Cross?

PS: Oh, I cycled 6 miles there and 6 miles back

PR: Fenland country where you’d learned to ride…..

PS: My school practice the first time was in Ely, next one was in Sawston village college - these were all teaching older children of course, 11 years up to 14 in those days. I remember teaching maths in Sawston village college, we just went into a school and we taught whatever was required of us whatever the subject was.

PR: But you would have cycled up Ware High Street presumably?

PS: Oh yes, yes and my third school practice was at the Central School in Cambridge. But to continue or jump the years to High Cross, I didn’t cycle up the last hill I think I pushed my bicycle up from Wadesmill to High Cross in all weathers, snow and ice, rain - there wasn’t much fog - some of the rides were quite grueling, and cycled home again. I had one very….I had one miss anyway, someone actually saw it and a lorry came along and how they missed me and someone said I thought you’d had it that time - just missed me by a hair’s breadth, when I came down the hill one day. To continue about High Cross, there were no school lunches so I had to take sandwiches up to High Cross. No central heating so I had to feed the fire in the course of the lessons, no indoor sanitation it was an open bucket in a shed arrangement outside. Then one day I left my sandwiches behind and my good mother cycled all the way with the sandwiches to High Cross.

PR: That’s super, but it’s teaching really, more than Broxbourne.

PS: Is this still on? (yes) I say there were no school lunches. I left High Cross in 1944 but before I left, school lunches had been introduced and they were provided, the children paid for them but the Head Mistress’s sister and elderly mother were responsible for overseeing the working of school lunches and although it was war time they were truly excellent more than you could eat and truly Victorian in the sense that pearl barley was used….

PR: Oh, lovely!

PS: And excellent nourishment, really good vegetables. They were excellent lunches, lovely steamed pudding - no stinting of the food whatsoever and they were very very cheap.

PR: Where were they prepared then, the meals, on the premises or in the home of the……

PS: They must have been prepared in the home of the Head Mistress who lived next door in the school house.

PR: Yes, well well!

PS: 1944, my parents were getting a bit anxious by this time. They’d had to pay my fees to go to Homerton, it had cost them quite a lot to keep me at Ware Grammar School until I was nearly 19. We had to buy all our books when we went to the Grammar School, no books were provided except for a few text books in the 6th form, they’d had to pay my fares to Ware. It’d been an expensive time and then they had to pay my fees and support me while I was at Homerton, this was one reason why I decided not to try for university scholarship. If I’d gone into teaching it would have meant 4 years and it was estimated that it would be £1000?

Anyway the expenses would have been considerable, even if I’d got a scholarship although Miss Woodhead did say in her letter even if I got a small exhibition, my fees would be paid for. In those days, finance and the cost of education was a considerable factor in deciding what you did, especially in view of the depression. Fortunately my father never lost his job, he kept his job. Until I was 17 they’d also had the shop and that additional income. But nevertheless bearing in mind always the fear of redundancy and we had seen the depression, seen the Jarrow marchers along the road at Turnford coming for water, carrying jugs and there are numerous articles in the paper about hard times in various parts of the country. Travelling on the bus through Edmonton you would see the men queuing up outside the unemployment oﬃces in those days. Although we didn’t personally suﬀer this, we were very aware of what it meant to be out of work, not to have enough money to keep going as it were. You did think and take steps which would ensure you’d be fairly certain of getting a job.

I’d always wanted to teach but there was a thought at one time that I might go into oﬃce work at one time and my parents did actually pay for me to have shorthand lessons privately. Someone used to come to the house and teach me but when I asked at school if I might take typewriting I received a letter to say it wasn’t recommended that I should consider oﬃce work; I should think instead of going into the 6th form and going on with my education instead of leaving at 16 and going into oﬃce work. So I didn’t actually learn to type. And I didn’t have a typewriter so that idea was dropped. By 1944 3 & 4 year olds were coming into the school. My parents were getting a bit anxious, they’d spent all this money and was I really doing what I’d been trained for and what I’d hoped to do so I looked in the educational papers and saw that there was a post at Broxbourne Church School in the holiday of 1944. So I applied for the post which was advertised as “general” work at Broxbourne. There were two schools at Broxbourne in those days, the junior school - Head Mistress Miss Cox - and there was the senior school. They were separate schools, they were not departments - senior school Head Master Mr Bancroft. I applied for the post, I came up to see Mr Bancroft. He said it was general work which meant that I should have to take a particular class in the school and that I should have to teach them what was on the timetable which broadly speaking was English, Maths, History, Geography - is there any other general subject that one could think of? No, there was no Science in those days but would I be prepared to take the girls’ PE.

It was war-time and I should be the only young woman on the staﬀ, could I say no? I wanted the job and I wanted to stay at home - the answer’s no, I couldn’t say no! Oh, I know the other subject was Religious Education because it was a church school and RE was very important. In fact the first lesson of every day - there was daily assembly followed by an RE lesson. I had to see the vicar and he asked me one or two questions, yes I was baptised in the Church of England, my parents were married in the C of E so that was acceptable. So I was oﬀered the post at Broxbourne. I came 1944, the first lesson I took was a maths lesson, oh I think it was RE, Maths, then English and that’s how I continued until the war ended. Things did change after the war ended because one of the teachers had been in the RAF and of course he had to have his job back so one of the teachers who’d been on the temporary list, an excellent teacher, actually, she resigned because she’d had a temporary appointment and Mr Broad came back from the RAF and there was a little bit of a re-shuﬄe - 1945/46.

During the war of course we had air raid sirens and the children had to go down into the air-raid shelters. I remember walking along the corridor one day, one lunch hour and seeing a cloud of smoke, when the landmine came down at Enfield Wash 1944. The war ended 1945 - celebrations - now, what can I say about the war years - there was a bomb in the road. I was on holiday in the Lake District, my father was at work, my mother had been sitting the front room, sewing, underneath the widow, father said he would come home early that day, he usually came home fairly late because of the war and mother thought if he’s coming home early I’ll go and put the kettle on, so she went out of the room to put the kettle on in the kitchen, when the bomb fell and all the windows came in on the settee where she’d been sitting - so if you don’t call that providence, I do.

PR: Where did it actually land?

PS: In the middle in the road, yes.

PR: I knew there had been an indent there, I thought it had been on the airfield strip behind.

PS: Ah, no, a glider I think came down in the field - no-one was hurt.

PR: In the made-up road itself, in the street as it were. It’s absolutely super, Miss Stevens it’s just a lovely flow, and it’s got a pattern to it - they will be delighted with this! We’re not used to people who can actually ’talk’ if you know what I mean.

PS: You should have heard my father - a friend of ours described him as the best storyteller he’d ever heard. I can’t tell stories like he could that’s how we kept our trade, we sold sweets and tobacco, mother held the tobacco licence, and teas, tea and coﬀee, used to be open ’til after 11 o’clock at night. People came in, they came from London, he was in the shop, he’d come home from work. I’ve never seen anyone so quick in preparing things - he wouldn’t allow me into the shop. [then a request to switch oﬀ the recorder]

PR: I’ll turn on and you can begin picking up the threads, we’ve been oﬀ for a school lunch.

PS: I think I’ll say more about the war years. First of all, during the war, when I was up at High Cross the vicar of Great Amwell at that that time was the Rev’d Leach (he) asked me if I would start a Guide Company in Great Amwell. Reluctantly I think because I knew very little about it. I hadn’t been a Guide and being asked to take on the Captaincy of a Guide Company was bit of a jump. Anyway I said I would start them oﬀ - I didn’t know how long I could continue - I had other plans. So on St Patrick’s Day 17th March 1942 the Company duly began.

We began with the girls who were sent to the vicar’s room in Great Amwell. We had no funds, no uniforms. I consulted the lady who lived next door who’d been a Brownie leader and she told me one or two things about Guiding so with that little bit of information we began. It turned out to be a very happy company and I think we achieved quite a bit. I had to buy the uniforms which meant I had to collect a sub from them every week and when they’d paid enough money I went up to Buckingham Palace Road, The Guide Shop up there, and bought the uniforms and the necessary books.

It entailed a bit of First Aiding so by various ways and means at college the Hygiene course and something at Ware and a man who lived down the street and did an Elementary First aid class in our front room, I did know enough about it to do the necessary instruction there. And I did take them to camp at St Albans - Gorehambury Park - and we did folk dancing and fortunately one of the teachers at Great Amwell was a good pianist and so she was able to come in and play the piano while we did the various things that Guides do, such as dancing. And at Christmas time we put on a Nativity play and the Head Mistress of High Cross was very co-operative and she lent me most of the costumes and the rest we provided ourselves, the sheets, and so on. I think that was a very successful production.

Tape 2 side A

[Now to speak of Miss Woodhead, Headmistress of Ware Grammar School]

PS: There, Miss Woodhead played a very significant part in my career.

PR: Can I just say that Miss Woodhead, after she retired became the first Liberal woman to be elected to Hertford Borough Council, for just one term, maybe a second term, in her retirement as spearhead of the new Liberal movement which revived at that time and has led towards the Liberal Democrat Party. Certainly she was a very important figure in Hertford during her years of retirement leading that Liberal revival locally.

PS: I should like to add to that, Mr Ruﬄes [!] I don’t wish to be associated with the Liberal Democrats or any other party.

PR: Oh no, no!

PS: I’ve never belonged to any political party. I’m not exactly apolitical, I do have strong political views but I don’t wish my name to be associated with political parties, I’m speaking non-politically.

PR: Oh yes. But it is the same person [Miss Woodhead] and people may be interested to hear that on retirement developed her life in that…..

PS: Well, I have taken a very strong interest in the political scene but have not been actively political.

PR: Well, it’s diﬃcult anyway, for a teacher, although some are. That's a just a by-the-way on Hilda Woodhead who’s living in Fordwich Rise and represented Bengeo on the Borough Council for a short time. So, you’re going back to Miss Woodhead?

PS: Yes, speaking from a non-political point of view I can say that she was a great influence educationally . So I went to see Miss Woodhead and I said I wanted to go on with my studies, and she said well, Phyllis, you’ve got three subjects in Higher, if you were to take Intermediate Latin that would give you Intermediate exemption in the BA examination, and you could then go on to your finals, because in those days you had to have Latin in order to take a BA final examination . So I wrote to a correspondence college and got all the course work.

In the evenings I followed the course through, sending my work to a correspondence tutor and had it marked - I think I began this in the Autumn of 1943 and took the exam in November 1944. When I decided to take the Latin exam I realised I couldn’t go on with three things: teaching, and running a Guide Company and studying for an exam, so I decided I would give up the Guides which came, I’m afraid, as something of a shock to the vicar because we were in full swing, and going very smoothly. I’d just received my warrant and Miss Page-May, the commissioner, had suggested that I do a training course to further my work in the Guide movement and I had to send back my warrant and say that I couldn’t go on because I wanted to continue my studies. She sent me a very nice letter, thanked me and said she hoped I might resume another day and said it had been a very happy company in Great Amwell.

I did the course, and this relates to the war years because I took the exam in November 1944 in the time when the rockets were falling over London and it really was quite hair-raising going and coming back in the tube. I took the exam, I passed it and that together with my three higher subjects gave me intermediate BA exemption. I was working at the time - this was 1944, again there was a change because I resigned my post at High Cross at the end of the autumn term 1943 and began teaching at Broxbourne in January 1944. So it was while I was at Broxbourne that I actually sat the Latin exam. By the time I’d done that I was really into the swing of teaching at the old Broxbourne School. And as the years went by the workload increased because when the war ended the HCC got into the swing of things and put on a lot of courses, for teachers, actually in the school. So there was a tendency for a great variety of courses. There was a craft course at Hertford and by this time I was also teaching art. The Headmistress wanted someone to teach art. Again I was asked if I would do that in with all my general subjects, and PE and Games. We developed a netball team and we started to play hockey.

PR: Would those courses have coincided with Sir John Newsom.

PS: Sir John Newsom became the oﬃcer for Education in Hertfordshire and he was very go-ahead at that time and wanted to put Hertfordshire on the map, educationally. Although I’d had an excellent education at Ware Grammar School I think it’s fair to say that, in the county generally, it was a bit behind the standard in London, London and Middlesex, the LCC had a good name in those days, Herts was a little bit out in the sticks as far as education was concerned and Mr Newsom wanted to develop it and so a lot of courses were laid on and it was looked on favourably if one did fall in line and go to these courses.

So I’m afraid any hope of continuing my studies rather went by the board for the pressure of school work, marking PE and games and all these things and a full timetable with regard to English and I taught maths for 5 years and with the more academic subjects it meant a lot of marking. Although people say we didn’t do exams, we did do exams, and we had exams every year, tests at the end of term. Books were always marked, so there was a lot of work to be done. And of course the education system developed apace because there was the 1944 Education Act which became operative 1947 and secondary schools were to be divided into three groups, Grammar Schools, Secondary Modern Schools and Secondary Technical Schools, so the old senior school at Broxbourne became the Secondary Modern School.

PR: Was there a raising of the school leaving age?

PS: There was a raising of the school leaving age - that’s another thing, from 14 to 15, and the taking on of more staﬀ, there were a lot of changes at that time and we just had to adapt and live through them.

PR: You actually had a visit from the Minister of Education

PS: We did, Mr Tomlinson, who came down. I’ve got a photograph of digging with a couple of boys in the school garden, with Mr Fiddaman in the background. Yes, he came down and there was a TV crew…..

PR: I must interrupt to tell you this: one Christmas, 2/3 years ago I asked Mr and Mrs Fiddaman what I could get them for Christmas, some little thing but we were looking through a magazine and saw advertised a video-tape recording of each year - the suggestion in the advert was that you might order the year of your birth or the year of your marriage and each of these were Pathe News which went on the cinema screen. Margaret Fiddaman said I’d like the Coronation Year 1953 and the year of the wedding of the Duke of Edinburgh and The Queen. So we ordered 1947 and 1953 and saw one of them on Christmas afternoon on his TV at Hertford Road while we were looking at this came onto the screen this clip and Mr Broad was teaching and we saw Mr Tomlinson arrive in. It was a very short news item and Fid standing at the doorway as he walks through. We had no idea that was going to come up and he was so startled to see himself the own TV screen all those years ago.

PS: No, that is absolutely true and I have a magazine at home a photograph of one of the classes, I think Mr Broad is teaching and I think someone abroad saw it and I think he wrote to the school and asked about one or more of the children, so it did have a world-wide circulation! Where did we get to?

The old secondary modern school 1950 -1957 yes? So in those war years I was talking about proposals for further study and to go back to Ware Grammar School - everything centres around Ware, one way or another and the fact that I’d been able to do Latin, now that ties in two things that I must mention. One is the garden. It was the garden at Ware Grammar School that every pupil of those years remembers, it really was a beautiful 18th century garden. I remember when I came home from my interview I said I want to go there, it’s a beautiful garden and we just fell in love with the garden. There’s no more to say than that. And if tribute has to be paid to anyone, I won’t say his name because I’m not certain of it but the man in charge of that garden, who kept it going all through the time until he retired.

PR: I have heard of him before. The school premises were right on the road weren’t they, at Amwell End, facing the level crossing and the garden was immediately behind?

PS: It was behind the 18th century building which faced west [north I think - garden at south side?]. so the rooms at the back the classrooms, got the afternoon sun and the teachers who had free time were able to sit outside the french doors of the staﬀ room in the shade because there were a lot of trees there, in the shade and the sun and mark their books there and teaching seemed to be an idyllic occupation!

PR: Yes, in a grammar school!

PS: And the children were well-behaved, classes were in their 20s, keen to learn and. the teachers had the opportunity to sit out in the fresh air in a beautiful environment and mark.

PR: Yes, it really was another world, a primary teacher at High Cross was living another life

PS: Yes, although we worked very hard there weren’t the same kind of pressures, we were more relaxed. The 6th form, one of the 18th century bedrooms was for the 6th form with lovely window seats and below the window there was a magnificent magnolia tree and grapevines so you could sit on the window seat when we weren’t being taught and free, and sit there and look across at the lawns and magnolia tree.

It was in that sort of environment that I learnt Latin. Connie Morgan did it for a time until she took an exam and then I was the only person doing it and I had the teacher to myself, sitting on a garden seat outside that lovely 18th century building learning latin so you can just imagine we had every encouragement to learn. There was no ‘if you don’t do it you’ll stay in or be detained’ so we got to 1952 while I’m still at what has become by that time the secondary modern school.

PR: But still in the same premises?

PS: Still in the same premises, still with the same headmaster, Mr Bancroft, still with some of the same members of staﬀ. I must mention Miss Rutter because she was in the classroom next to mine and so we were often to be seen in the corridor chatting together, we shared all our sorrows and joys together in the corridor.

PR: Miss Rutter is well-documented in Hertford because of the time she spent at St Andrews School and many of the former pupils now in their 80s refer to Miss Rutter’s teaching as people much younger (do) but she often comes up one way or another and that was the same Miss Rutter as here at Broxbourne

PS: I decided by this time that I did something more about my original plan. I wrote to the external department of London University - they had an external adviser - and asked advice and it was suggested that I should go up for an interview I went up for an interview and I asked about the possibility of external work and the gentleman there said have you heard of Birkbeck? No, I may have heard of it vaguely. I suggest you go round there and get an application form and see if you can get in there because if you do that you’ll be able to take the exam internally.

So I went round there, got an application form, completed it, and went up for an interview - Professor Darlington accepted and began work on a three year BA course at Birkbeck - subject - History. I was still teaching at Broxbourne. I used to go up to London at least three evenings a week, follow the lectures, do the work, take the exams, they were all written exams, no written assessments in those days. We had to write essays but they didn’t form part of course work to be assessed, we were assessed on tests and examination results. To cut a long story short, I did that for three years. At the end of the 2nd year I thought I had saved enough money in order to take time oﬀ in order to do it full time in the last year. Professor Darlington suggest that I see another gentleman on the staﬀ who in turn suggested that I should try for special scholarships.

I went up for an interview - the was Professor Mace who was head of the Psychology Department and lo and behold he recommended me for a special scholarship which was exactly £100. And that was the total funding that I received for my degree work, £100. Nothing from the county council, mark you, the state, just £100 from Birkbeck. I didn’t take the whole year oﬀ, actually, I did.. I taught during the September because the academic doesn’t start until October so I stopped teaching just before the beginning of the academic year and I took time oﬀ until I had taken my exam in the June. And then I came back to teaching in the July. Some kind person had left me all the exam papers to mark. I had no funding, I had to support myself entirely, pay for all. The travelling expenses, my books, everything and I also had to pay full National Insurance contribution which in those days were at 10%, and buy my National Insurance stamps and I always remember when Professor Mace interviewed me about the scholarship he said how are you going to finance it? I said well I’ve been teaching for 13 years. Well he said some people come up here and expect it to be paid for.

PR: Well it’s interesting - that that was his view at the time?

PS: Also remember that he said what are you going to do after that? I said go on teaching. He said you want a school in a nice country town, so I came back to Broxbourne - they’d kept my post open. I did actually ask if I took time oﬀ would they be prepared to give me leave of absence without pay? I didn’t want to put myself in the position of not having a post.

PR: No, and having to re-apply.

PS: The governors were very kind and agreed I could have the time oﬀ - leave of absence without pay. So I got my degree in History, came back to Broxbourne and continued there - this was 1956, I continued into 1957. I was wondering what I should do now I’d got my History degree, how I could use it to forward my career and saw an advertisement in the paper for the senior mistress post at Tibbles [Theobalds] Park - I call it Tibbles - the old pronunciation of Theobalds.

It was a secondary modern school run by the Enfield Education Authority. The Headmaster of that school, Mr Hendle, had actually taught at Chesterfield Road to which I had originally gone so he was very favourable towards me and I got the post. That was a specialist history post. My testimonial from Homerton had said that her teaching of English has shown particular merit and I had taught English throughout at Broxbourne so at Tibbles it was a specialist History post with English. It was diﬀerent from Broxbourne, there was a rough element there. There are two elements. There was a very genteel element, very well-behaved children from one part of the area. There were very nice children from the other part and there were also one or two tough characters.

So the classes were very diﬀerent. Some classes you could walk into and you could hear a pin drop and. They’d stay like that throughout the lesson. In the third year there was one class in particular with very very naughty boys in it. But the Headmaster was very good and he was very understanding, strict in his own way, tall and commanding and he was a good teacher himself so that held the situation together because it could have been diﬃcult because you knew there could have been damage on doors and the sort of thing. It was an 18th century building and he took a great pride in it. If the children did damage anything he made them clean it up and polish. Another Headmaster in that position would have found it very diﬃcult. I did admire him, they appointed someone who could manage the situation. As I say, there was a very genteel element to the children who did very well who were in classes that suited their temperament and their ability very well and their attitude towards life. The grounds are beautiful in Tibbles Park, beautiful setting, a beautiful house, 18th century staﬀ room but there was one big disadvantage, I was put in charge of the girls’ First Aid throughout the school. So I was called out of classes time and time again. You could never say when you went in to teach history that you were going to be there for 40/45 minutes.

PR: How big was the school?

PS: Was it 300? It wasn’t over large but I suppose it meant 150/200 girls and you could be called out at any time. Occasionally the PE teacher would come in and help out.

PR: But it would be illness as well as injury?

PS: Yes. Again the Headmaster was good, anyone taken ill he would take them home personally.

PR: Now of course at Broxbourne School we have a matron sitting waiting and have done for some years, not when I first came here, that was the senior Mistress’s job.

PS: I just took it over from the person whose mantle I’d take on. It meant I never had a lunch hour free, I never had a break free, called out any time. I made certain after that I’d know nothing about First Aid. Fortunately I never had any unpleasant incidents.

Tape 2, Side B

PS: My mother had done nursing, she’d nursed at Winchmore Hill when it was a children’s convalescent home. I never had any training in the medical field so I wasn’t going to pursue that line of the business. So you see how I’ve not been forced into things that led to situations!

PR: Yes, and how long were you at Tibbles?

PS: Not really very long because the new school at Broxbourne opened, the Red House School, it became to be called the Bass Hill Secondary Modern, in 1959 and when they advertised (it was) the post of Senior Mistress, Head of English. There’d been a change of Head before I left the old school at Broxbourne. Mr Bywater had become Headmaster and he put me in charge of fourth year English which was the top class in English. In those days there was no fifth year and I was in charge of English in the third and fourth years but I’d become responsible for the English under Mr Bywater at the old Broxbourne CSM school

PR: And then it moved into the buildings on the High Road near the New River Bridge between Wormley and New Broxbourne

PS: Yes part of what is now the Broxbourne School so I applied for the post of Senior Mistress Head of English and was duly appointed to begin when the school actually opened, Easter 1959. It wasn’t oﬃcially opened then but it opened as a school at Easter 1959. And that I continued to do until about 1953,1954, when you came on to the scene. I think you came when there was change-over.

PR: Yes, I can’t remember what’s happening here just before I came, I ought to have known, but yes it was probably ’64. And I was invited to come having done my training at Chelsea and having been the paper delivery boy for Mis Bedington who was the Divisional Education Oﬃcer for a long time. I asked her advice about who to apply and there were two vacancies advertised to teach biology which was really what I …..one here and the other at Sele School.

And Sele School was bit too close to home and I had no real reason for not going there other than the proximity and Miss Bedington advised me not to come to Broxbourne if I wanted an easy passage because she said there are some diﬃculties because the staﬀ didn’t stay very long, a year, 18 months or so, a big change of staﬀ in that smaller school. I can’t pretend it was an unhappy time because as a new teacher you’re full of ambition, prepared to take anything but I recognised some challenges which I put down to a teacher who was having, I may be wrong, diﬃculty at adapting to the new demands on a Head running a subject based school.

I knew he expected us to teach as you’d done professionally, any subject if a teacher was absent, which wasn’t what I’d been trained to do, I was expecting to teach the subjects I was qualified in. It always seemed to me that Mr Bywater was trying to run what became quite a big school of two form entry on primary all age lines - things that would have happened quite successfully under one roof in a small school, but I may be wrong. But I did enjoy those years. I worked sometimes next door to you, you were in charge of History as well as being Senior Mistress but had just stopped teaching English and I quite enjoyed those times, taught Biology for a bit, with some English.

PS: Yes I remember that.

PR: It was girls only for Biology, the boys did physics with with Mr Fiddaman, then two people came and left in a short space of time. One was a Mrs Cameron-Coles and the children were a bit unkind to her and she had a long time convalescent in Torquay after tension breakdown. She was away for weeks on end and oﬃcially in Torquay for medical repair reasons, so that meant, because I was the other English teacher a part- timer called Mrs Muriel Brown. I was doing a lot of English work and a little bit of Biology, mostly English to keep the library going as well, then Mr Braden Parks was appointed from somewhere in London, came out here to teach, and he resigned towards the end of his first term but carried on to the end of the year, he was going to come three days a week which I think he fulfilled virtually, he wasn’t dependable on attendance, but he was a nice chap. He found the children more diﬃcult than he’d been used to, and I think he found the head more of a challenge than he’d expected.

When he left I asked Mr Bedington whether he thought I should apply for Head of English post, it was an arrogant question but I felt justified because I’d actually been doing the work of the Head of Department that was very timely for me from my career point of view because after having been given that job, shortly after that we learned that we were to be merged with the Grammar School on the same campus and like you, we were involved a little bit in the forming of the New School and the pattern it might take, by consultation.

Mr Fiddaman wasn’t, you weren’t, I was, as a very young and junior Head of Department. And then I was asked to be the first year teacher in the first intake in the fully comprehensive school. That was a fortunate arrangement because I’d only been here four years and although year tutor isn’t a senior post in a sense, it’s one that does involve you very much in the workings of the school. I’d then switched to completely doing English, as I still do today and various other changes have happened which has meant I’ve ticked over in a hum drum way but I haven’t felt the need to go elsewhere, I’ve enjoyed the increasing pressures and changing times. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the recent years but that’s all to do with external influences, key stage 3 and key stage 4 on the National Curriculum and a change in the exam pattern yet again.

PS: There have been so many change since the 1963 time. Before I changed over I was doing Senior Mistress, in charge of the library and Head of English which was an enormous undertaking and I thought seeing that I’d specialised in History, my degree was in History, Head of History and Senior Mistress was probably a more sensible combination. The other thing, because the library took up an enormous amount of time, I don’t think we ever catalogued all the books, when I came over the books were uncatalogued, I took a course at Turnford College on cataloguing, it was just an impossible amount of work.

And to go back to Biology, I had actually started up a Biology course in the school along by the river. I think I drew up a first list of requirements for the science course, and I took the Biology and I think Mr Fiddaman took the Physics. We embarked on a Science course at the old secondary modern school that was before I took time oﬀ to do a History degree. I remember when I came back to interview for the Senior Mistress post in 1959 one of the questions Mr Bywater asked me was would you be prepared to take Biology? And of course I said yes hoping against hope that I wouldn’t be asked because I really wanted to specialise in one subject. I’d spent time and money in taking a degree course in which I could specialise in one subject, interested though I was in the other work, I could see the way that action was developing along diﬀerent lines and what it really meant was a system of specialisation where one teacher was a specialist in one subject devoting time to that particular subject and I ended up as a History specialist.

PR: And then you retired?

PS: And then I retired.

PR: You had quite a gap really as far as school was concerned ?

PS: Well not entirely because I decided to learn to type.

PR: I was going to say that, you continued your own education in retirement and the typing which you’d once had a semi-abortive attempt to do and then went on to do your Master’s - more treks up to London?

PS: Yes, sometimes 5 nights a week.

PR: We never actually had, for many many years in the Broxbourne School supply teachers coming in, but union pressures, I suppose, we had, where there was a need, and where there was funding available, to employ people to cover for absent colleagues. We didn’t did we, Mr Fiddaman, all the time he was doing the job I do now, and then suddenly there were pennies to do this.

PS: And if I may interrupt there, pennies which I earned doing supply work helped to fund my course in London, I paid all my own expenses, fees, maintenance, so a few days’ supply work came in very handy to fund that.

PR: Yes, and we call you in quite often, now in 1994 how many years since you first started?

PS: I’ll leave you to work that out.

PR: And that is why it’s very valuable to have recorded your career and while you’ve been talking - just to save time, I’ve got to go and teach now, I’ve labelled up the tape A “Teacher’s Career”.

PS: At the end of the 20th century.

PR: Still coming into school and taking classes which are big, we still have classes of 30s here with altogether diﬀerent demands from earlier times at High Cross Infants and it’s an extremely good thing to have that ongoing link and this morning you took the Head of Lower School’s Mr Jones Key Stage 4 History Class.

PS: 2nd World War, a familiar subject.

PR: And of course, something somebody said the other day, of course Miss Stevens is nearer to the student world than many of us.

PS: I was at Cambridge on Saturday, I had a lecture on brain repair.

PR: I remember when a child in the - several years ago now - stopped me in the corridor said do you know Miss Stevens taught both my grandmas and both my grandpas, which is a super thing really, it’s a lovely way of showing how an individual has touched the lives of people.

PS: That is the essence of teaching, that is the reward, the satisfaction that you may, may have had some beneficial (eﬀect) from the academic point of view on the life of some individual, that they may have been encouraged or nurtured towards learning.

PR: Yes, with all the heaviness and all the drudgery of it and the hurt when children don’t respond in the way you think they’re going to do, or don’t do their homework when you think you’ve stimulated them well, all the down sides are compensated for by just the occasional realisation that someone has remembered something you’ve said or been influenced a little bit.

PS: An occasional ray of sunlight.

PR: Just a little occasional thing but it’s a very big compensation Well, I’ll pull the plug now and thank you very much indeed.

The tape finished with a reminder that this recording had an embargo until 2020