Transcript Detail
Transcript Title | Berry, John (O2001.17) |
Interviewee | John Berry (JB) |
Interviewer | Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
Date | 06/09/2001 |
Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2001.17
Interviewee: John Berry (JB)
Date: 6th September 2001
Venue: 43 Windsor Drive, Hertford.
Interviewers: Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
JR: Can I start off by asking you where you were living at the time you went to St Andrew’s School. You weren’t up here?
JB: Yes, I was, round in Tudor Way.
JR: Right, so you didn’t attend the old St Andrew’s School?
JB: I had the option in my last year to go to the school in Sele Farm but I decided to stay the last year at St Andrew’s School, Hertingfordbury Road (some confusion here) because I loved it so much at that school. When the school was built in Sele Farm Estate the playground wasn’t all that big and it was tarmac (not) turf, when the school was opened, we used to walk from down there to Sele Farm to do our PE because they’d got a lot more, they’d got turf and 4 times as big as the playground we had down the other St Andrew’s School. Then we would walk back to the school.
JR: So, you went down there at 5?
JB: Yes, I walked it possibly if the weather’s pretty bad, bus it, outside the County Hospital and the last two years I was there I cycled and I even cycled home to dinner. And you’d go down Brewhouse Lane, an entrance which is still there today, 3 times as wide as it was then, it was all gravelly road and at the far end of that road is what is still there now, the scrap yard.
JR: Do you mean Wareham’s Lane?
JB: Oh yes, I beg your pardon. Yes, and why I mentioned Brewhouse Lane was, when I biked at the last part of the buildings of the school there was a little gate there, about three feet high and it led you into the back of the playground and beside it was a ditch we just basically went in the gate and put our bikes against the wall there was no shelter there or nothing. The crime rate wasn’t much at that time of day, didn’t put a padlock on or nothing. It was there when you came out.
JR: Did many of you cycle then?
JB: Possibly three. There was another boy and he had the same surname as me, Berry and he lived down Bentley Road. Father was a policeman, they lived in a police house and he used to cycle home dinner times. You couldn’t get no more than three bikes along that wall, anyway.
JR: What about the teachers?
JB: Yes, in terms of names, I’m surprised I don’t remember the names when I was five, the first class you went into, I don’t remember the name of the lady that took that class, when you were six, that was a lady, I don’t know her name.
I remember the other classes, you had a Mrs Culley who was in the penultimate class and the end product was you was in Mr Munns’s class. And they were very nice teachers and Mr Munns was the deputy head and you was in two classes for possibly a maximum of four years and at that time of day that was the main road then. A narrow path, because it was a red brick building, the school, it was a very narrow path there, there wasn’t a path on the other side. I’m talking about [19]’59, ’60 where there wasn’t so much traffic on the road then, but if you was in that classroom when a big heavy vehicle come by and what they do now, if they got a heavy load they’d change right down to a low gear and that used to happen a lot when we was in the classroom, the whole class used to vibrate, if a vehicle was not carrying a load it would possibly be third or forth gear but when it’s possibly in second gear, and you could hardly hear Mr Munnsy, he’d go like this, “I’ll be with you in a minute”, you know.
JR: You know he’s still…
JB: Yes, I asked Peter Ruffles, and well I was delighted that he’s still alive. I asked about his son and daughter, I can’t remember his daughter’s name but Bernard’s his son and at that time of day you had different toys in the playground, conkers, marbles, and near the ditch the tarmac sloped and there was a little drain there and we used to use it for marbles, you know, you’d want to get them in the drain and it wasn’t that easy to go straight into the drain, you had to do it at an angle I remember.
I had a bad ear when I was at that school and I was always going to the doctor and I remember Bernard, Mr Munn’s son he had a cap gun and he secretly had it behind his back and it was playtime. We was near the main entrance of the school and there was a metal frame thing what was inside the tarmac where you scraped your boots or your shoes on a wet day I remember. This Bernard one day, I didn’t know he had his cap gun in his hand, he put it right to my ear and let it go. I can still picture the sound, everything went numb, all I can say is they referred me to Bartholemew’s Hospital in London about my ear, finally and they had me in within two weeks, the surgeon up there, Dr McNab-Jones his name was to do with the ENT department and as soon as he looked at me he said you’ve got to come in, I was in hospital for 10 days and when I came out of hospital all bandaged up, my ear, and this was possibly June of 1960 and there was only several more weeks before we broke up for the summer holidays and that finished me at St Andrew’s School. I was 11 years old then.
My ear wanted rest, being a young fellow at the time, 10, 11 years old and by the time the bandages were taken off and I was going up to the hospital to see this doctor, McNab-Jones for him to give me the OK to circulate again it would only meant a few days to go back to St Andrew’s so my mother decided it wasn’t worth going back there so, if you like, I never went back to that school no more, I had my six week summer holiday and I started at Simon Balle School. And the pupils in not only my class but in the class down below, they sent me a get well card with signatures on it and I kept it for a number of years and as the years went on you have a bit of a clear out now and then. I did reprieve it and then I did throw it away.
JR: I think you can go on from that, tell us what games you played in the playground and interaction in the classroom.
JB: At five years old there were desks and chairs – they were different (from later) instead of having a proper desk with a top you pulled up and you had your papers in there, I think the pupils take them home with them now but at that time a day you left them there. And you had your ink wells, them big solid ones, the desks, about one inch thick and if you had your fingers there you really pulled it down.
JR: When you first started to write did you use pencils or slates?
JB: No at that time pencils and biros didn’t exist.
JR: So, what did you use?
JB: You had a pen, of course, it was a basic one a piece of wood like a straw.
JR: You mean a dip pen?
JB: Yes, and just a basic nib, and they were very long nibs, you just kept putting into the ink and writing. I was telling Peter about that, blending it in when I was possibly 11 years old and most certainly when I started secondary school, I liked the proper pens when you filled them up on the side of the pen when you had a little lever there.
JR: Fountain pens.
JB: Yes, the ones you squeezed in and out and when you went to buy one you had different nib sizes. I won a prize, not at that school the other one, for handwriting. Out of 1000 pupils I came third and may I say, in all fairness, the reason I came third out of the entire school was I was in a low class. I didn’t like what the, well I forget what she actually said now, but there was three prizes and when they give the first two prizes out it was just, well done.
But when it came to my prize being as I was in a low class they degraded me saying they didn’t expect it to come from someone in a low class could write so lovely. In my opinion, that’s me saying that, that’s my opinion but what I was going to blend in there was I seemed to think that if I was in a higher class I’d have come first. It wouldn’t look right if someone’s in a low class winning top prize. And I know I got it from my mother, that’s where I got my handwriting from, she was a beautiful hand writer. But to get back to St Andrew’s School.
JR: Can I just ask you, when you were at Simon Balle do you remember Len Green?
JB: Oh yes, I thought about him this morning.
JR: Tell me a bit about him.
JB: Well he was deputy head. [John Berry’s opinion of Mr Green has been omitted, it seems that for some reason he didn’t like him.]
JB: At that time a day and I’ll say this very quickly, they’re not allowed to clip ‘em round the ear today but that time a day they did, it’s like you get the local bobby at that time a day, if a kid was playing up they’d give it a clip round the ears and you respected that, whereas they wouldn’t get away with it today.
Sorry if you wanted me to speak in the other direction. No, I didn’t like him but to cut a long story short, he lived down North Road in Hertford and up to a few years ago I’ve seen him walking up and down that road with a stick and I felt rather sorry for the guy. But I’ll tell you what, I’ve got manners I have and I learned in school that if someone’s senior to me I always called them sir, and this fellow Green I felt really sorry for him, I knew who he was and I’m going to start talking to him, and I very politely – Hello Mr Green, he looked at me twice – who are you? Oh yes, he must be – he might have knew who I was and I quite enjoyed talking and of course he’s no longer with us now. If he had a been I’d done the same decision now as years ago – if I saw him around I’d say Hello Mr Green.
Getting back to blending that in with the Head Mistress at St Andrew’s School that Miss Smith. I think she was a spinster wasn’t she? (yes). At Simon Balle Mr Felts was Headmaster, the deputy head at St Andrew’s was Mr Munns, he was a nice guy, a nice fellow. At that time a day [at St Andrew’s] they had a lot of teachers’ pets, that was another thing I didn’t like. In Mr Munns’s classes you never wrote any forms out to say where you sit but it seemed to work that way at Simon Balle. Sit where your intelligence takes you. If you were not so bright you might sit at the front. If you was fairly bright you’d sit at the back so they could keep an eye on you as such.
[Sensitive material omitted]
JR: Did they have to change desks according to how well they’d done in their work?
JB: No, where we say we always sat. [the next passage has been edited to exclude sensitive
material]
At that time a day you had some old boys that come rather dirty to school, some of them couldn’t even afford a school uniform and they’d come in grey, rather unusual but it happened in that school. One boy whose parents worked like everybody else he came to school in a grey suit, grey short trousers, you know. I didn’t wear longer trousers ‘til I was 13 years old, I was at Cowper School, once I went up to big school I wore long trousers, I must say I was pretty glad to put them on, actually. Anyway, getting back [to the classroom] they thought where you weren’t so intelligent you say on the left hand side of the class and worked your way up to the right hand corner who they thought was cleverer than you the wall where they sat was next to where Miss Smith had her office, her office was wedged in between the two classrooms and there was a window above so she would really hear what was going on.
[sensitive material]
JR: What about other friends in the class, did you know John Kitchen at all?
JB: Yes, well I got to know his parents late in the day, they died young, his mother died at 64 and I think his father died at 71. I found them rather nice people – Abby her name was, John yes, I went to school with him, and one of his sisters.
JR: Oh, Rosemary, no I think she was a bit older, wasn’t she?
JB: There was a young one as well, I think she was behind me. She lived a Hertingfordbury Road, she probably would have gone to Sele Farm. What was I going to say, oh yes, behind Mr Munns there was a board which they much have made because there was a badge of St Andrew’s School and it was all done properly and there was holes in it and there was pins and if you’d done some good work in your book Mr Munns would say oh you’ve done some good work I think you deserve a point today, maybe two and when you got a max of three he put a star in your book, and he’d put those pins on the wall and he’d got all the names there.
JR: A record of how well you’d done. [JB recalls going to music lessons with Miss K.Smith].
JB: She was a nice woman, I’m hoping she’s still around but I haven’t seen her for a while. [sensitive material]
SIDE B
[JB describing St Andrew’s School – some editing here to avoid repeats and unclear material]
JB: Big heavy doors the main entrance, the same kind of doors you come in off the main road to go to the actual school. Big heavy wooden door, probably about 3” thick. And the catch, not the ordinary round handle but,,,
JR: A latch?
JB: A latch. Then there was a corridor – you could only go one way, right. The classroom doors were glass so you could see into the classes. If you stayed to school dinner you would have it where the five year olds were. And dividing those two classrooms up was a door what you pulled and it come folded up. A big yellow door and you’d pull it and about six sections and you might get a few more pupils stopping for school dinners than usual, or Christmas time when you had a Christmas party [he means the room could be extended by opening up the folding doors].
Every boy had a third bottle of milk [1/3 of a pint] you had old wax straws and Christmas time you’d have a 1/3 bottle of orange. And I don’t like Christmas pudding but if you paid 5/- a week [dinner money] you have a Christmas party before you broke up for the holiday, it’s a dinner but it’s a bit more because it’s Christmas. And you had Xmas pud and I hate Xmas pud and at that time a day they used to put 6d in and the only reason I had some was I wanted to find a 6d. When I found there was no 6d in there I palmed it off.
Believe it or not they had 2nd helpings and being as I hadn’t found a 6d in me first bit which I didn’t eat anyway I had a 2nd helping hoping to find 6d there but there wasn’t. There was somebody close to me what found one. There might have been a couple in there. They wouldn’t do that today because a 6d, some of the pupils might have been five years old, 6d, they could have swallowed that. Now outside that five year old class that was the only class out the four where it had windows from top to bottom whereas the other three classrooms had brickwork from about eight high bricks, 10 high bricks and then you got your window [windows were high up so pupils couldn’t look out].
All the paintwork was in red. There was a small (building) with a slate roof and on the back of where the girls’ toilets were and the kitchen, the school kept all their PE equipment in there, shinty sticks. Going back one way you had the boys’ toilets, going back the other way you had the classrooms. When you came in the main gate you had to turn right, you couldn’t turn left because threw a big wall there. And directly there was a double door. Miss K Smith’s class. Every other door was one door, so you could open half of it and dinner times and play times they used to sell biscuits there. What are we onto now?
JR: Shinty?
JB: Oh yeah, there was three trees on the lefthand side. There was a long seat there 10/12’, they was nice trees, big trees and if it was raining you’d get under one of them. And at that time a day there used to be a bungalow the other side of the wall and there used to be an old woman there doing her garden. It was a main road there but she had a lovely garden.
Shinty – I used to love the game. There was 4 colours at school – yellow, red, green and blue.
JR: Did you confine your shinty matches to the school or did you play other schools?
JB: No. I would say at a pure guess, being as we only had tarmac to play on, if we’d had turf we might have played hockey.
JR: Was it big enough for hockey?
JB: You know, when you was a kid it does seem rather big. Up the County Hospital, the waiting room up there when I went about me ear, what a big waiting room, but when I went up there a couple of years ago how titchy it was. That was possibly (the same with) the playground of the school. It was rather uneven because it went uphill a bit towards the ditch end. It was a good game, we had a couple of goals. I really loved that game, but I used to be put in goal and I hated that. [The colours seemed to correspond to local rivers – yellow was the Lea, Mimram red, Beane blue, Rib green.]
Mr Munns put me in goal, I didn’t like it, he used to be referee, with a whistle round his neck. Each teacher had their own colour Mr Munns was green, Miss K Smith was possibly red. Mr Munns kept the whistle in his mouth most of the time. And I let in two goals in the first few minutes because they were too high, in shinty it hasn’t got to be above the knee. It was a wooden ball, not as hard as a cricket ball and when I let these two goals in I was (sure) they were above the knee, but Mr Munns would have nothing to do with it, no, he said, it’s a goal. I was so furious I kicked it out , and I didn’t mean to, and it was going towards Mr Munns, and I said the ball’s coming towards you and he ducked down and it went over his head and I never let no more goals in after that. I think it was another half hour, and eventually I started playing in the field. I never really seen a hockey stick, I think they’re got leather on them.
JR: It’s flat on one side and rounded on the other.
JB: The other hockey, ice hockey’s like that. This was like a walking stick upside down. We never played other schools but what we done we played each other’s colours and when there was a match on, when you got in the main entrance there was a little window and they used that to put the shinty signs in there so if yellow was playing red, it’s like sport today, you had to be selected by your teacher in that particular colour and you’d hear they were putting a team up and it would be a diagram of the actual pitch then they would put your names there, it was a complete surprise to you you’d go there dinner time, like, hoping your name would be up there.
JR: Were the matches in school time or after school?
JB: In school time.
JR: Did everyone come out to watch them?
JB: Yes, they did. It would be a kind of sports day, as such. You knew you were representing your colour and pupils although they’re not playing they help their colour in supporting you. [Each class had shinty as part of PE lessons and the promising ones were chosen for matches.]
JR: What age did you start the shinty?
JB: From seven upwards to eleven. We had a lot of nature lessons in the ditch at the end. Used to be a lot of wildlife in there, frogs and what have you, that was really nice that was. It wasn’t running through there all the time, only if you had a lot of rain, most times it was dry. If you were throwing a little ball and it went in the ditch, there was only a fence about two feet high you didn’t climb over it because a teacher would tell you off, you’d got to ask permission and there were a lot of stinging nettles in there. What else?
JR: St Nicholas Hall?
JB: Every Friday am after we’d done register at 9am we’d all walk to St Andrew’s Church and have a proper service in there. Duncan Dormer – I mentioned his two Christian names.
JR: Duncan Dormer was his Christian name and surname.
JB: Oh, big fella he was.
JR: It wasn’t Canon Gill?
JB: No, it was a big fella, always remember him, tall and the entrance to County Hospital, he lived in there. And every Friday he would take it for us, that was good that was. St Nicholas Hall, yes, I think we done a bit of PE in there in wintertime when we couldn’t do it in the playground.
And there was another classroom there at the back and it was very basic. A beige colour paint, but there was toilets in there believe it or not. And at the back of the stage, at that time a day I think it was used by the Amateur Dramatic Society it smelt a bit dampish like, they had big curtains up all mildew like. And the ladies’ and gents’ toilets there used to be a pelmet with a curtain and tassels down the side. So, I suppose they had a real live audience in there.
It was a lovely little place that. When we came out of school there was some place what done building materials, then there was a bungalow then there was another bungalow then there was a fish and chip shop then there was an entrance to them houses [Castlemead Gardens] then you had a green grocers, then a sweet shop, then a dairy, another sweet shop, archway, then another sweet shop, access to some houses which Which? Magazine is now [Pavitts Yard] a family called Lakes lived there, David Lakes was in my class, he was a nice fella.
As you went under the archway there was a building there and it was burnt out, and it was just left. Then just past there was this 6’ high corrugated sheet where the council place used to be. [Housing Office.]
[John was born in Spencer Street. His brother had a bad chest because of dampness. His parents applied for a house on the Sele Farm Estate. They had an interview to find out if they could afford the 12/6 a week rent.]
JB: I used to love going every Friday to that church. I loved that church.
JR: You didn’t go on Sundays?
JB: No, on Friday with school.
JR: You didn’t ever go to the Ebenezer did you?
JB: No.
Tape finishes