Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Bruno, Family (O2001.16) |
| Interviewee | Melina Bruno (MB), Tino Bruno (TB), Mr Bruno (MrB) |
| Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 15/10/2001 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2001.16
Interviewees: The Bruno Family: Melina Bruno (MB), Tino Bruno (TB), Mr Bruno (MrB)
Interviewer: Jean Riddell (JR) Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date: 15th October 2001
Venue: 74 Hertingfordbury Road, Hertford
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: It’s Monday, 15th October. JR here just doing the preliminaries before going across the road to No; 74 Hertingfordbury Road to interview Mrs Melina Bruno. I think Peter Ruffles will be joining us there. Mrs Bruno has lived in Hertingfordbury Road a very long time, but originally came from either Italy of Sicily.
MB: I came in this country 1951 and I went to work with a very rich family at Westmill. We was very, very happy there. Then when I was there 12 years, then I decided to move in Hertford because I had 2 children and we bought this house and moved in here. When we bought this house this house was in a terrible state. We had a fireplace in there, above the fireplace a gas light. In the kitchen was an old boiler. We tried to have hot water. We couldn’t get any hot water. We had an old sink, maybe 2 inches deep with a funny tap. We had an old bathroom with the feet like animal. Gradually, we did all up and we’ve been very, very happy here. We bought the house about 35 years ago.
JR: So when you came here you’d already lived in Westmill for 12 years. So before that did you come here to work or did you come here to get married?
MB: I come here to work.
JR: On your own?
MB: Yes because I was single.
JR: So did you meet your husband here then?
MB: No, my husband was in Italy. We used to school together.
JR: So he wasn’t working here as well?
MB: No.
JR: You were here and he came because of you?
MB: Yes. I went to Italy 3 years later and got married and I left him behind and 9 months later he came over here to work in the same house.
JR: Oh, so he was employed by the same people as you were?
MB: Yes the same people. He was Colonel Dennis.
JR: So did you have a tied house on the estate?
MB: We stayed in the house with them. We had 2 bedrooms and a sitting room in the main house, very big house. And the house, during the war, been used for a school for children, for people to shelter.
JR: Yes, and then you had both children there.
MB: I’d been working very, very hard. I started cooking there and my husband was a butler and then I had parted with one child, taking the second child in Italy for my mum to look after because no way could I look after both of them, it was too much work.
JR: So she went back to your mother, for how long?
MB: Four-and-a-half years. We never see that child for four-and-a-half years. We couldn’t go there and leave (visit?) her because we have a heart-breaking. When she was ready to go to school, we fetch her and she went into school up in North Road [St Joseph’s].
JR: How did she cope then, because had she been speaking Italian (Yes). So she came here with any English or –
MB: Without any English.
JR: And she went straight to school?
MB: She went straight to school, and I can remember when she went into school, she went to sleep, she always used to sleep at her desk (siesta). I remember the nuns said the child always sleep, and they tried to help a lot. Yes, then gradually she pick up English.
JR: (to Melina’s son, Tino) So when you came here, you were about 10?
TB: 7 or 8.
MB: Yes, when Frankie got killed.
JR: Oh, was that an accident?
T: That was my aunt who was living here. My mum and dad bought the house but they carried on working for Colonel Dennis, my aunt was here. They were still at Westmill and my uncle and aunt were here and it was a cousin who got killed.
MB: I’m sure Peter remembered.
PR: Mmm, yes I do. Several other accidents in the road as well.
MB: Another little Italian girl, she had an accident. She was on the bicycle, but she’s all right.
PR: And at the corner of Sele Road, a boy. It’s much safer now, more traffic.
MB: Do you remember when next door used to have an Alsatian dog and I don’t know how he managed to get out. He used to have him tied down in the garden and he managed to get out and he got run over by a lorry and the lorry take all of the skin off
TB: He got caught between the 2 wheels of the lorry.
MB: Then there was another one got killed exactly the same, 2 dogs got killed.
TB: We used to have no end of cats and then we got too upset and we didn’t bother with any more cats.
JR: Right, go on with the story, your uncle was living here. It was your dad’s brother that came to live in this house. When you were still over at Westmill and you wanted to come here, did you live with them (Yes). So you were all in here together?
MB: They used to live in Hoddesdon and they had a child. The lady where they lodging, they pushed them out because they don’t want the child there. And then we had a little bit of money, we bought this house and they live in this house for a couple of years, then we move here because we did the house bit by bit because it was in a terrible state. When the house was better we moved here with the children. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law stayed with us until the child was 7 and he got killed (Pause).
JR: How did you find the neighbours here, the locality – did you think it was a good place to live?
TB: Mr Berry who used to live next door, and Mrs Walls – she was a fairly elderly lady on her own. Mr Berry used to live with a lady that wasn’t his wife because we always thought, going back 30 odd years, that was a bit naughty.
JR: I don’t think I’ve heard the name Berry before – he lived next door
TB: Mr Berry and Mrs Walls (either side) – wasn’t she Gillian’s great aunt.
JR: So who did you immediately get more friendly with?
MB: When we first come here the first people who walk in the house to make friends, Mrs Wren, Alison, No: 70. One evening she knock at the door, she says, ‘Can we come in, welcome to our neighbours’. She explained to us who she was. Then we got to know Mr Berry with his er –
TB: Concubine.
MB: Then this lady here, she kept a little bit private. I remember every time we used to clean the kitchen, my sister-in-law used to put the mat over the fence, she used to knock it over the fence and she said to me, ‘I don’t like to see the mat’ and I said, ‘she is only put it there while she brushes the kitchen’. And one day when we had the wireless she said, ‘I don’t like to hear that rubbish’!
TB: She was a sweet old dear, but she was a bit ---. Mind you, we’ve all got our problems, nobody’s perfect. And the only other ones I remember was Gillian’s mother and father.
MB: Grandma too, the old lady.
PR: Tubbetts.
TB: That’s it
MB: Anna Maria, my daughter, and Tino used to go round Gillian’s house to play and they used to come around here.
JR: Oh, that’s how you got to know them
TB: Well, they used to go to the same school, they all used to go to St Joseph’s.
MB: Gillian used to go to the convent at Hertingfordbury because they used to have a brown uniform
TB: I think it was strange for Mrs Walls and Mr Berry to have an Italian family because if you take the houses along here, they’re Victorian/Edwardian, so to have a cook and a butler to move in, because they were all professional people on here, weren’t they. I remember Peter’s brother used to be a Mod. I remember thinking I want to be a Mod.
JR: So how long did you continue to be the cook at Westmill after you moved here, or did you give it up?
MB: Yes, I give it up the cooking because I stopped the work for the people and I went in the factory to work, Addises. Never like it there, never, then I went into hairdressing.
JR: Oh, that was later then?
MB: And I’ve been hairdressing since.
JR: You had a lot of clients, didn’t you? I know that everybody I spoke to seemed to come to you for their hair.
MB: I’ve been working down the town with a lot of people. I worked for Mina Brown and for her daughter, for Mr Roberts and I worked for Maison Jeannie (?), St Andrew Street.
TB: She got around a bit, didn’t she?
PR: Well everybody knows Melina.
JR: What did you think of it here when you came from Italy? I know you went to Westmill, not here, but generally speaking. I mean, the food’s different, isn’t it, and the climate?
MB: When I first came over here, all dark, almost every day was a foggy and I thought, ‘what is it with this country, no lights’, and I was missing my family because I was only 17, so I was a little bit unhappy. They tried to make me happy because they were very, very nice people. They’d got an Italian family in Westmill village, they’d been here during the war, and one evening there was knock at the door and Mrs Dennis said, ‘Melina, I’ve got your friend here’, and when I heard the Italian voice, oh my God, my language, and they used to come and fetch me almost every week, take me to their house and making me welcome.
Then Mrs Dennis got in touch with St Edmunds College, got some Italian nuns and Mother Superior there, and she used to walk all the way from St Edmunds College to the house in the country. And I used to go and see Mother Superior. One day, I took a risk coming to Hertford and on the way back I tried to tell the driver to stop at Westmill. It was in the winter, very dark. He took me all the way to Buntingford. On the way back he stopped at Westmill, very dark about 6 o’clock, I don’t know where I was, a bit frightened. Suddenly, I saw this light and this big house and I was knocking at the door and there was this big gentleman that came out. He said, ‘I know you, I take you home, you got lost’. I said to him ‘how do you know?’
And it was Peter McMullen and he know me because I used to do cooking to Mrs Dennis. He got me in the car and took me to Mrs Dennis. When I got there they was all laughing and the lady said to me, ‘He’s a very nice gentleman, Peter McMullen, to bring you here, he know you, he’s a kind man’. And I find they’re very, very nice, English people. They’ve been very helpful, but it’s not like it used to be. And I remember one day we came to Hertford with a lady where I worked. She left me in Woolworths and she went shopping. I saw lots of chocolate in a pile up. 5d a bar of chocolate and I tried to give the money to the lady but she said no. I kept saying yes and she no. I didn’t understand why. I got all my money in my hand, why she no let me have a bar of chocolate? Anyway, I put my money in my purse and I give all my purse to her, she still said no so I left the chocolate and went outside the Woolworth, and I met the lady. I tried to explain, when she got home she looked in the dictionary and she said to me, ‘Ah yes, you should have coupons’
All: Oh yes, rations!
MB: Everything was rationed when I came here. I said I hadn’t got any, there was an Irish cook there, been there years, and she was retired from the cooking, and she gave my coupons to her daughter in boarding school where the Tescos is now.
JR: Christ’s Hospital.
MB: She thought she (MB) don’t know about this so she give it to her daughter. And the lady, she got very annoyed with the cook and said, ‘You shouldn’t do that because that is Melina’s’. Anyway, since then she give me these.
JR: So when you came into Hertford at that time did you think that you’d like to live here?
MB: No because I was not married then and I was happy there because the whole family there was kind to me. One day, Mrs Dennis’s son, Gerald, he went down the cellar and got some nice wine. He drop a bottle and said, ‘damn’. Now every time I was dropping something I used to say, ‘damn’. I thought it was an expression word and she said to me, ‘No, who teach you that word?’. I said, ‘Mr Gerald’. She said, ‘No, you mustn’t say these things, not very nice’. And when the Italian family come she explained to the Italian family telling me not to say that word again.
JR: How did your husband get on with them?
MB: He got on very well, he used to like it. Then he (Tino) come along, when he born they was very nice to him. They used to look after you.
TB: Mr and Mrs Dennis used to look after me. I used to call her Ma. First thing in the morning until last thing at night. All her sons were grown up.
JR: Yes, so she was like a grandmother figure.
MB: When I was expecting him she lost her son, 25 years old, in a car accident. Her son used to go to Goodwood.
TB: He was a racing driver.
MB: And he got killed Easter Monday?
PR: What was his name?
TB: Tony Dennis.
PR: So you were good news for her
TB: She used to bring me up, take me to school, take me to London.
MB: Everything she used to do for him.
TB: But I must admit I used to love her to death.
MB: When he went to school in Puckeridge, he was a little bit upset because first time the teacher said to me, ‘Don’t worry’. The lady was waiting for me in the car outside and I left him and he was crying. She said, ‘Don’t worry, he’s going to settle’. We got home, the teacher phoned the lady, Mrs Dennis, she said, ‘Tell the mother that the child is settled. He’s OK and not worry’. Then when we left this house, I forget which year we left to come here, no, sorry, when you went to school in Puckeridge, the children used to tease him because he was –
TB: Because I had a very posh accent
PR: Oh yes, Mrs Dennis.
JR: So you were bi-lingual then, I suppose you were?
TB: Little bit but it was being brought up by this Mrs Dennis.
PR: How old was she?
TB: Mrs Dennis? She must have been about 60.
MB: No, younger, Tino.
TB: 55?
MB: Yes, she was a younger lady, and he used to have his own business in London, he used to have his own office.
TB: You know who took that house, Colonel McMullen bought that house.
PR: Oh, has he?
MB: You know, the twins, Peter are the twins.
TB: Westmill House
PR: I knew they were at Westmill but I didn’t know ---
TB: Coles Hill House
PR: What happened to the Dennises then?
TB: They all went off to London
MB: Before the house in London was ready, they bought 2 flats in London, Kensington. They hire a house in Ware. When we left there Mrs Dennis said to me, ‘I want you and your husband to pack all the silver and copper. I want you to clean and pack all up in cloth to keep it clean, because maybe in the future we’re not going to live here’
TB: One thing I remember my Dad used to hate, my Dad used to have to serve me at the dinner table as butler. There was Mrs Dennis and Colonel Dennis and my Dad used to come past and clip me round the ear because he had to serve me, silver service. I used to get out after that to go to bed. I used to say to him, ‘Don’t do that’ but it was so weird because I could see that he was annoyed.
(Mr Bruno comes in)
JR: Are you going to join us?
MrB: In a minute.
TB: I used to have the mick taken out of me because I had a real posh accent. Even when I went to Broxbourne School, I couldn’t get rid of it. He’s got a plum in his mouth.
PR: Can you still turn it on when you need to?
TB: Absolutely!
JR: I hadn’t realised that it went to that extent where you were almost living with them. I thought you meant that when your parents were busy they just looked after you for a bit.
TB: Morning, noon and night. I used to go out shooting with them, horse ridin.g
JR: (To Mr Bruno) Nearly finished this side, just going to turn over. We’ve been talking about your work.
Side 2
PR: We must mention Melina’s work in the community with Katie Crocker. You’ve got to mention Katie because Katie’s made a tape and Melina’s been so wonderful, too much really, but not to muck up your order.
JR: I’m fine, I didn’t know quite what the order would be (to Mr Bruno) Can I just ask you your impressions of coming to live and work in this country?
MrB: I find it first time very hard, no language don’t understand very much.
JR: Melina, by the time you came to live here, could already speak English – so you found you were able to help your husband?
MB: Oh yes. He never found it so hard. I found it hard.
MrB: I didn’t understand things they were asking me and I’d go to her and ask her.
JR: Right! So what did you like most about working there at the big house?
MrB: I used to like the work I used to do, and to talk to them, they were very high people.
TB: It was a different culture club. In Italy in the ‘50’s poor, no money, no jobs, it’s a super little village, come all the way over here and you see all these rich people, so it’s a total shock. From one extreme to the other.
MrB: One thing, I had a very good boss, very good class people.
TB: He was a proper English gentleman.
MrB: And the lady, she’s really excellent, lady take Tino over and they spoilt Tino very much.
TB: I’ve still got the bad habits now.
JR: When you left, what did you do then?
MrB: When I left the house I found a job at Addises.
JR: Oh right, you both went to Addises?
MrB: There maybe 2, 3 years then went to Welwyn Garden City to Wetheralls, stayed there 1 year and then found a job in Roche Products, and I stay there 3 or 4 years and I go to Avdell and stay there 11 years and get redundancy. I stayed maybe 1-and-a-half years on the dole and then get a job at Enfield – Bell and Lee on the Cambridge Road and I stay there 9 years and got redundancy. And once [I reached a certain age] I couldn’t find another job so I get a pension.
JR: Oh, so you had a lot of changes. Oh well, that’s a good account of your working life. Now what about Melina, you did this hairdressing, is that how you came into contact with Katie Crocker, or was it through another means?
MB: When I was hairdressing I came in contact with a lot of people, I don’t know how I got on to Mrs Crocker, I think she came into the shop.
JR: Sounds as though it might have been (to PR) what were you thinking of in particular?
PR: Well, Melina does too much fine caring for all these people, she runs around sorting them out, and Katie Crocker…
MrB: She feels very sorry for people.
JR: Right. Do they come and tell you all their troubles while you’re doing their hair?
MB: Yes, some are.
JR: That’s where you learn it all.
MrB: She had a stroke and she go to Welwyn Garden City and we want to go see her.
JR: I see, so you went?
MrB: And she come better, we used to go there, take my wife over there because nobody go there really.
JR: But she had some family members living in the area, didn’t she?
TB: Yes, she had someone up here, Malcolm.
PR: Yes, Malcolm Kerr. He went up today, he doesn’t often go up, he’s got MS.
MrB: But I don’t think they bother very much about her
PR: But all sorts of people come to Melina. I mean Gladys Wackett, she used to be here, Dorothy Austin from West Street.
MB: And Mrs Austin from Horns Mill, her husband used to be a teacher at Balls Park.
MrB: And the lady here, Alison.
MB: Yes, Alison Warn.
PR: What about next door and your relationship with the neighbours – did you know them before you came?
MB: No because they come from Sicily. We only know because they need to live with the sister-in-law, Lena. One day they met us they said, ‘maybe we buy a house next door to you’. We said, ‘we’d be very happy if you could’, and she did it, she bought the house.
PR: I don’t remember Mr Berry yet
MrB: She’s the second wife I think.
MB: She used to live with, no?
JR: She’s made a big impression!
PR: I’ll have to ask Tom, Tom will remember her.
MB: We always thought was his wife, we find out was not
PR: I remember Mrs Atkins, she wasn’t Mrs Atkins, and he was Mr Berry. It might be. Tom or Sheila will tell me.
MB: Where is Tom now?
PR: In Bury St Edmunds.
MB: I used to know Father Lisle (?) at St Edmundsbury. We know Father Vaughan, he was a student at Bury St Edmunds, then he came here to Hertford to the Catholic Mass, then he went up to London
PR: Ah yes, very popular priest.
MB: When our nephew got killed, we asked the priest down the Catholic Church is we could have Father Vaughan from London to do the funeral for our nephew and he did, he came.
MrB: The lady next to us, Mrs Wall, I thought a lot of her because her niece (was) Gillian, and she got very old this lady and she unable to clean the chimney and to cut wood to light a fire. And I cut wood for her, clean the chimney, shovel the coal in these long things (hods) light the fire. She said thank you.
JR: So did she gradually get more friendly?
MB: Yes, in the beginning it was very strange. But what happened, we used to send the children round to look after (to ask after her) and I used to come here from work on the bicycle, used to go round and make her tea. My sister-in-law used to be here and we used to send the children down there to see if she was all right, then when I used to come and see the children at 10 o’clock and lunch time and when I finished work.
PR: She was lucky to have you. You’d have thought the others might have done a little bit more.
MB: The only thing we been upset by, Mrs Blake, tell you why. I used to go round and the children go round then when she was ill she said to me, ‘not to come and see my auntie anymore, we’re all right now, we’ll look after’, because she…
MrB: She worry but we don’t take nothing.
MB: This old lady, she said, ‘when I die, I’m going to leave your children my desk’. She was always letter writing on the desk, ‘because you like the desk’ and the children used to say yes. So we never went round. Soon after what happened.
MrB: They take her to a home.
PR: I think she went to Queens Road, Abbeyfields.
MB: I went to see her in there. I brought a box of chocolates for her. When I used to see her she said, ‘my great grandchildren never come around to see me’. One day I came home to lunch and I heard a scream. I went around. She was on the floor, she tried to go get the coal and wood for the fire. I managed to pick her up, get her to the fire, put wood on the fire, then I came home and made her a cup of tea, and I used to make my own little cake, bring her that ‘don’t move now until I come back from work’, because the children was at school then.
MrB: But Mrs Blake and her husband, not say I don’t like, but very strange way, to never say hello to you and sometimes they in the front garden.
PR: But that was what the whole row was like. There used to be hedges in the front and not much talking.
MrB: This old lady next to us, I used to cut the grass in the front, to prune the roses at the back.
MB: Yes, because her husband was flower show(er)
PR: Yes, he was, chrysanthemums.
MB: Yes, lot of silver cups.
PR: I forgot, Jimmy Walls, he was an Arsenal fan. He had an iron foundry down at the end of Chambers Street.
MB: The house they built themselves.
TB: What this? These weren’t all built at the same time.
MB: No, I think different builders.
PR: (to JR) Were they the first ones into theirs or not.
JR: No, I thought they were later, about 1917.
PR: She used to live in, she was a Miss Britten, Mrs Walls, family lived in Ware Road and had a paper shop near where Pearces Bakery is and her mother and her sister used to run that. Then her mother came to live with her, she’d be over 90 and the older sister still ran the paper shop. There were 2 paper shops, next door but one to each other, one was bright and her’s was dark.
TB: How long have you been here, Peter?
PR: Since the family (moved into the house in 1907!)
MB: We bought this house through Norris and Duvall and he told us who was in here.
PR: It might be Mrs Allcock. I can’t remember if there was a gap between you and Mrs Allcock?
MB: We bought this off an old lady, we never met her.
PR: Yes, she had a Scots father, Mrs Maclellan. She worked at the YHA Headquarters at St Albans
TB: I think it’s more friendlier now that the slip road has been put in than it was when we used to have the main road, because you couldn’t walk down and up, could you.
PR: People generally have changed, there are some private ones.
MrB: This house is 1911.
JR: Peter’s actually got the file now. I have actually got all the dates in that and who the first owners were or the first occupiers because sometimes people bought the houses but didn’t live in them, they rented out as an investment.
TB: It’s amazing how records survive.
JR: If you look in the County Records Office - it’s up there in County Hall, you can find a lot of information.
MrB: When I bought this house, when we came here ---
TB: Oh, those white things (gas lamps).
JR: Why don’t you invite Mr and Mrs Bruno into your house, Peter?
PR: I’ve still got my gas lights
TB: Oh, has he! It was terrible to remove it.
PR: But did you have the electricity as well?
MrB: No.
TB: 2 lights, one there and one there.
PR: Very nice!
TB: How about those little white things? (mantles).
PR: Yes, you can still buy them
MrB: There used to be the one on the corridor here.
MB: Excuse me, shall I make a cup of coffee?
JR: If you’d like to, yes.
TB: The allotments over there.
JR: Did you have one of those?
TB: No, but we used to go over there. I remember a wall somewhere
MrB: Oh, there used to be a very high wall there, red bricks very soft. Nice wall, nice to look at really.
JR: Did it make it a bit dark?
TB: The wall was the other side of the road.
JR: I know but the road was a lot narrower.
MrB: It was more near here.
PR: It was much closer than you’d think
JR: Something like the middle of the (present) road, pavement, 2 lanes and the wall was just there. There was no pavement was there (on the wall side)
MrB: Yes, a little.
PR: 2 flagstones wide. On this side was really narrow.
TB: The Old Oak pub, Scales.
JR: Did you lose any of the front garden in the road widening? Some people did, I think Glynis did.
TB: She was the first one.
JR: So up from there, they all lost some, but not you down this end.
TB: The guy next door, the police officer, he did.
JR: Yes these gardens are pretty small up there, these gardens are a decent size. Glynis was saying she didn’t get very much money, something like £200 and something compensation
(other muddled remarks and conversation)
JR: I’ve come in the door and I can’t quite remember, you’ve got a little drive, haven’t you?
MrB: No, parking only.
TB: We’ve got a side passage.
JR: But not for a car (No). Did you have a Morris Minor out there for a time?
TB: It’s gone for renovation.
JR: Oh, you’re going to have it back then?
TB: Well, it depends on how we go with this guy. Depending on what we find.
JR: It had been there for a long time
TB: 8 or 9 years.
JR: I remember seeing the tyres getting flatter and flatter
TB: You couldn’t part with it, it was like an old friend
PR: It had got the divided windscreen.
JR: I used to have one of those with a divided windscreen and you paid a separate windscreen insurance when I had mine but not the normal premium, because they said only half the windscreen would be shattered at one time
MrB: It was a nice little thing.
JR: You liked driving it
TB: He’s got one, hasn’t he, Morris.
PR: What, Muhr ? Alan. Yes, he’s got one.
JR: There are a number of them around. I’ve got a friend in West Street who’s got one, the type with the wooden ---
TB: Oh, the Traveller.
JR: They’ve had it renovated, it looks beautiful.
TB: All you needed was a screwdriver and hammer to work on the engine and that was it, so simple and straight forward
MrB: It was a pity that they pulled down, there used to be more houses.
PR: Just one, yes.
MrB: I remember that.
TB: What, at Cross Ways [Lane]
PR: Yes, just one house – there were some others the other side where the cherry trees are. They went early, but this side just one.
Interview ends