Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Phillips, Mollie (O2002.15) |
| Interviewee | Pam Lambert (PL), Mollie Phillips (MP), Edie Sadler (ES) [later] |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) |
| Date | 18/04/2002 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2002.15
Interviewee: Pam Lambert (PL), Mollie Phillips (MP), Edie Sadler (ES) [later]
Date: 18th April 2002
Venue: 1, Cherry Tree Green. Hertford
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR), Jean Riddell (JR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
(Recording impaired by a loud hissing gas fire)
JR: It’s Thursday 4th April 2002 and I’m at No1 Cherry Tree Green and I’ve got with me Mollie Phillips, Pam Lambert and Peter Ruffles and we’re going to talk about early memories of Sele Farm.
Mollie, you’ve been in your home for how many years now?
MP: I came up here in ’53.
JR: And how was it here when you arrived?
MP: The roads weren’t finished off and the back gardens weren’t separated out and we had no shops or buses. It seemed like the back of beyond.
JR: You felt that, did you?
MP: It seemed a long way because I had lived at the other end of the town.
JR: Where did you actually move from to here?
MP: Cromwell Road.
JR: Oh, so it was the other end of town, literally.
MP: We were hoping we’d get to Cockbush or as we’d come from Bengeo we hoped we’d get to Bengeo.
JR: So had you any choice when you were offered this house?
MP: No, they offered it and we were just grateful to have it.
JR: So how did it compare with the home you’d had in Cromwell Road?
MP: Well, we didn’t have hot water at home or a bathroom, so we thought we were really lucky.
JR: Did you have a garden?
MP: Yes, but you see we lived at home with my father.
JR: Had you been there very long?
MP: [her daughter] was born in ’51, she was 2 and a half when we moved in.
JR: So it’d been a bit crowded (yes) And Pam, you came up in…?
PL: At the same time.
JR: So you were just round the corner, back garden neighbours, really.
PL: I’d got Ann, she was six.
JR: So there’s quite a gap between your children is there?
PL: Seven years between her and Marjorie and three years between Marjorie and John.
JR: So John is the youngest, I thought he came in between. And where had you been?
PL: We’d been in Bengeo, a council flat in Revels Road. We had four flats in a block and there was no sound-proofing and we all had young children. As soon as these houses were available they offered us one and we took it.
JR: So how did you feel about becoming in effect a pioneer, about being the first people to live here?
PL: Well, we were glad to come, I think we had no roads, telephone or shops or buses. We had a big mound of earth outside the front gate which was eventually moved. That tree was there which was very convenient for Ann, she spent most of her time up the tree.
JR: Did you leave the estate by going down onto the Bramfield Road – was that the easiest way out?
PL: Yes, because none of Tudor Way, and the rest of Windsor Drive wasn’t there.
JR: So everybody went to town down Bramfield Road.
PL: Yes because the school children had to go down there.
MP: Because we all had young children, we had to walk into town with the neighbours. We used to know them all. The houses which were built before we came up were the actual ones around the Green and they were lived in before we came.
JR: Were they Airey Houses , or not, they had blocks, didn’t they, at one time.
PR: They’re not the normal Airey Houses, I forget the name of those. You can see the shape of it at Mrs. Hedley’s.
MP: She’s the only one there that wasn’t converted.
JR: There might be some information in the Borough Records. At the end of Cherry Tree Green, when you came up here to live, a farm?
MP: There were all fields about, I don’t know actually if there was a farm. There were two houses right at the end who I think belonged to, was it Woodhouse at Windy Ridge. His chauffeur used to live in one of them. The houses were built before this estate came.
PR: If you went to the end of Cherry Tree Green onto the Cut throat Lane bit and go just a little bit left there was a house in the fields which was a newish house, I suppose just before the war, that stood more or less on its own. It was not a very attractive house.
JR: So would that have been what they were talking about, a small farm?
PR: Well, he wasn’t a smallholder.
JR: One or two people have said there was something at the end there but cannot remember, someone told me this morning Cherry Tree Farm. Perhaps that was just a name taken from the street. I just wondered if you remembered anything up here – remnants of anything else. How did you manage for things like shopping at first?
MP: Had to go to town.
JR: Were there deliveries?
MP: Oh yes, the baker came and the milkman, and they used to collect the rent, Mr. Hammond used to come up on a bicycle.
PL: And Sam did his grocery round, didn’t he. What was his name, John worked for him for a bit. Quite early on he was doing greengrocery.
MP: We walked to town most days, didn’t we with our prams. We didn’t have fridges in those days.
PL: Ann went to school at St. Andrew’s.
JR: So as soon as you moved up you were walking back into town. But your little girl was younger.
MP: Yes, she was two and a half. She went to Port Vale.
PR: She went to our Sunday School.
MP: All the little girls liked to go to Peter’s class.
PR: We didn’t give out lollies or anything, used to read them stories.
PL: You didn’t teach her to do needlework by any chance?
PR: Oh no, gosh!
JR: Other people said they had turns to take the children to school – somebody would bring them back and somebody else would take them.
MP: I used to do that with Mrs. Payne. We took it in turns in the morning and then we both used to walk down in the afternoon.
{Talk about unnamed neighbours.}
PR: Their Dad was very grey-suited and worked at County Hall.
JR: What happened up here – they were in the process of building all the other streets and houses weren’t they. Did you have a lot of workmen and machinery, were you scared to let the children out?
PL: We didn’t used to worry, did we?
MP: No. They used to play out because we didn’t have traffic up here.
PL: There were a lot of children and they all played together.
JR: And did they find plenty to do up here? You just let them out, did you? There was a time when one did that.
MP: I was looking at the photographs today that Mrs. Sadler gave me when the children were all in her garden dressing up. Mrs. Sadler – the only two original ones from the whole street., Edie and I.
JR: What age group is Mrs, Sadler in?
MP: She’s 81, much more sprightly than I am.
JR: Is it her nephew that I’ve interviewed, Norman Sadler?
MP: They were the coal merchants, they were the original Sadlers that had Sadler’s Farm on the Welwyn Road.
PR: Edie worked for Briden’s for many years.
MP: She wasn’t originally from Hertford but she walks down the town with us and she knows more people than we do.
JR: So she lives next door.
PR: Over the road.
JR: Over this road? This window’s at the side, isn’t it? I keep thinking it’s at the front.
MP: That’s my garden, and it’s at the side. I love my side window but I miss what’s going on out there. If someone’s coming to pick me up I can’t watch out for them.
PR: I suppose there are more houses like this?
JR: Across the road they’re not , are they, the windows are at the front.
MP: But they built these new ones on the corner. Because they named that Datchworth Court, but they numbered them 1,2 and 3.
PR: So you’ve had plenty of trips over the road.
JR: I remember you coming into the surgery, the councillors’ surgery!
MP: Oh, I didn’t remember you from there! I’d had so much trouble and one day I walked by the office and the door was open so I went in and they sent a council man up to see me and he said what do you suggest we do about it and I said number them A1 and A2, oh we can’t do that. We came to the decision that if he moves the signpost for Cherry Tree green, it was actually in their front garden, so they moved it out and put 1 Datchworth Court.
JR: We were quite worried about that, it was one of our first assignments! So, when you first moved up, you two, did you get to know each other straight away?
MP: The children used to play together, didn’t they?
PL: This was Ann’s second home, if I asked her to do something she ran round here to ask Mrs. Phillips if she could do it.
MP: The times they’ve sat at that table playing Monopoly.
PL: Do you remember the skirt, and she wanted it so short when mini-skirts came in and John [her father} wouldn’t let her have it so she kept coming round here and turning up a bit more and John didn’t see it. I remember that red skirt she had.
JR: What age was she then?
PL: I suppose she was 14.
MP: I remember you saying I never worry about Ann because if she’s upset she comes round to you!
JR: Did you have any more children. Mollie? (No) But you were a second mother to Pam’s.
PL: I had to go into hospital and Mollie looked after the two girls for me.
JR: Well it was easier when mothers stayed at home, they’re going back now, a lot of them. So when you were up here after a year or two you had Marjorie – so she’s never known any other..
PL: Well she came to Brookside with us. She was married from Brookside.
JR: So how long were you here then, about 20 years?
PL: We left here in February 1971, so 18 years.
JR: So were you a bit upset when Pam was going to move?
MP: It’s different, when you start getting new neighbours. Ann was married then. Ann was married before you moved.
PL: But then you had Mrs. Robinson, then Mrs. Foster.
MP: We used to have it in turns to have coffee mornings. Foster’s the fish shop (yes).
PL: Yes, she lived at no.2.
JR: 2 is Foster, 4 is you, 6 Threadwell and Jackson, 10 is Hart. (Windsor Drive)
MP: Then the two Mrs.Paynes, one moved to Bengeo and the other one’s in a Calton House bungalow.
JR: Yes, I’ve interviewed her actually – Kath.
MP: She’s the one who used to go in the mornings to take the children to school.
JR: I’ll have to listen to the tape again, one of the things she did tell me was that she won a cookery competition, she was very proud of, naturally, and it all started off in the Women’s Group she belonged to and she had to make up a recipe in a national competition and I think she got 2nd prize in that – did you join anything like that?
MP: Didn’t join that, but used to go to Young Wives at St. Andrew’s, we used to have a speaker and used to go once a year to a show in London. It used to meet at St. Nicholas Hall in a room at the back.
JR: Do you remember the beginning of the church up here, Pam?
MP: I’ve only been for the last four years since I’ve been on my own.
PL: John had an interest in the village of Hertingfordbury so we went there.
JR: On the original map of the estate, there’s one church suggested where Calton House now is. I wondered why they didn’t go ahead with it.
PR: It was assigned for church purposes for a long time but they decided they didn’t need a church at Sele Farm, People were going down to Hertingfordbury and it was a time when they were thinking about all the money spent on church buildings and not so much on church business, the early ‘70s. and then Calton House was built, a much more useful thing than a church building by the church.
JR: If it had been built would it have been ecumenical?
PR: I think St. Andrew’s had a sway because that’s how the…
MP: Because it used to be all denominations, the Catholics had it one week and the Baptists…
PR: I think it would be the same sort of thing for this, with St. Andrew’s co-ordinating. But just another building and not worth it when there’s the Community Association. I did come up with a priest – Hilton Nicholson who had ideas. Still after Calton House was built, still wanted to put a church building on Sele Farm and we went and looked where St. John Ambulance is, which is now the Community Association. He was the second one of two that died. Wesson was the first – he lasted three days, and Nicholson six months, and it was the six months one that I came up with, by that time St. John’s Hall was the site.
JR: The site? And would you have…
PR: Well, the Community Centre had gone, and that was the thought, build permanently but St. John’s Ambulance moved in, fed up with Durrant Hall.
{Pause, and possibly Peter Ruffles leaves at this interval]
MP: I came home one day and my clothes prop had been moved two or three yards further down (overtalking) John wasn’t a gardener so a small garden suited us. He didn’t take to gardening until he retired. I used to do the gardening. (Pause)
PL: I don’t know exactly when Marjorie moved up here but she was taken by coach
(to St. Andrew’s School.)
JR: As far as I remember the move was completed in ’61.
PL: That’s about when I would imagine. Ann never came to school here, they saw her out (at the old school in Hertingfordbury Road) until eleven. Now she was born in ’47.But Marjorie had a year in that school and then she came here and then I think she had to go back again.
JR: And that was because when they’d got sufficient rooms built up here they moved the infants up, they seemed to add to it in bits and when they finally got it all complete they moved them all up and I think that was ’61 but Sylvia Gibson who lives in Calton Avenue could see the school from her back garden, she moved in in’61 and she thought they were still building after that. I think they probably were, they’d all moved up but they were just putting extra bits on.
PL: John, he wasn’t born till ’57 so he always went there. He went to Cubs and he said he thought it was in the hall in Hawthorne which is now St. John Ambulance. He thinks they had Cub meetings there.
JR: They didn’t have them off Burnett Square did they?
PL: Yes, didn’t they have Brownies in Burnett Square.
JR: Just off there, Glenfield Court’s there now.
PL: John went to a little private school round there in Hawthorn for a year and I had to pay about half a crown for him to go, a little nursery school.
JR: In St, John’s?
PL: Yes, I don’t know who ran it, I can’t remember. I know I paid half a crown each time he went. There was no other nursery that he could go to.
JR: Oh, I’ll ask somebody in Hawthorn Close that I know. I didn’t know about the private nursery.
PL: That’d be, ’60,’61?
JR: Hawthorn Close was complete pretty early on.
PL: They built Tudor Way. When I first came up here there were four houses in Tudor Way and the flats weren’t there because John used to park his van over there before they built the garages.
JR: I interviewed somebody called Dennis Corbett, no.13 Tudor Way and he said there was a big workmen’s hut on the corner of Tudor Way and Windsor Drive, in fact I think they used it as a rudimentary community centre at first.
MP: Yes, I’d forgotten.
JR: So it seems to me that the whole estate started from the Bramfield Road end and radiated down each road.
PL: But they did open the shops in 1954.
JR: Oh, as early as that.
PL: I can remember someone going along there at about the time Marjorie was born, and I couldn’t go.
MP: In case you’re interested, there’s my first rent book.
PL: It’s got how much you paid in there.
MP: And that included the water rates.
JR: I was going to say, if I could make a copy of it and put it out, it would be marvellous.
[At this point it’s worth saying that JR was to mount an exhibition in July 2002 which took place on the green outside Fleming Crescent, and wrote a small book “Sele farm – prepared for the Jubilee” which outlined the estate’s history.}
MP: The rent was one pound, five shillings and a penny a week, and that included water rates and rates.
JR: That would be very good to have because we hadn’t got any of these. Your landlords are the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of Hertford.
{Mollie shows a photo belonging to Edie – some discussion as to who the children are.}
MP: This is where they must have been dressing up in Mrs. Sadler’s garden. Leslie in the front holding out the dresses and beside her is Ian and the little dark-haired one behind Ian is Ann Hillier and those two at the end are the Crane children.
JR: That one would be a nice one to have [for the exhibition]. That’s lovely.
MP: She was turning out photographs because her son was one of the Scouts who went to America to a Jamboree.
PL: This is Ann at the same time. That’s Marjorie as a baby.
JR: Well, if I could again, borrow that one and get it enlarged so we can see it properly we could display it with the early children.
MP: I don’t know if you’d like to ring Mrs. Sadler.
JR: I could.
MP: I’ll give her a ring.
PL: There’s some more of the family but I haven’t got any of Sele Farm itself.
JR: Marjorie is very like you isn’t she. I can see her father in her too.
PL: Oh yes, she was still blond there.
Interval when Edie Arrives
JR: I’m Jean Riddell.
ES: And I’m Mrs. Sadler.
JR: I think I’ve been speaking to your nephew recently, Norman.
ES: Yes, in Farm Close? I can’t sit for long because I’ve got two artificial knees. You trying to do?
JR: I’m trying to do two things really, finding out what it was like to live up here in the very early days and also trying to find out, as in the case of your nephew, what was up here before the estate was built. He told me a bit about the chicken farm.
ES: That was where Sadler’s Way is. And behind there was Alexander’s big house. You know at the end of Farm Close you can walk down there and it brings you out at the cemetery – there used to be a big house there called Alexander’s.
JR: Yes (much overtalking by interviewees) But you know the cottage that’s at the back of the cemetery, that’s not to do with it, is it?
ES: Alexander’s house has been knocked down.
JR: Yes, Norman couldn’t remember that house.
ES: Well, I don’t think Norman was married then because my father-in-law had that coal yard then it was the eldest son’s chicken farm, but Alexander’s place was knocked down before that.
JR: Oh, so that’s why he doesn’t remember it. The chicken farm is still there isn’t it (yes). When was that built, do you know?
ES: I don’t know if it was built in the war or just after the war, about [19] ’46.
JR: So it’s comparatively recent then. Not as new as the estate, but after Greenways then. And what about that other house down there, Sandy Nook.
ES: That was built some time before the war and Garrratts, they bought that piece of ground off my father-in-law because the coal yard entry went up the side of that.
JR: So your father-in-law was Mr. Sadler. He actually owned it, he didn’t just rent it.
ES: He owned that field and when he died Albert Sadler took it on and then he more or less had to sell it because he knew it would be compulsory and he bought a farm at Tewin.
JR: No, Norman thought that he didn’t know too much about what went on before that. Now they’ve named the two roads after Alexander and Sadler, but how does Chandler come into it?
ES: No, I wouldn’t know.
JR: A chandler in the old days meant a general merchant, so perhaps there was (once) a store there or something.
Side Two
JR: There’s a book been written about the street names but it was mostly common sense rather than doing a lot of research, and I just wondered whether Chandler was a person.
ES: Well, not to my knowledge.
JR: Well, thank you. It’s certainly tied up a lot of loose ends for me.
ES: This all used to be gravel pits – well – part of our land was gravel pits when father bought it.
JR: The old maps show a piece cut out, somewhere near where Sandy Nook is now. A piece cut out as though it was part of a gravel pit there, and there was a brick kiln down there somewhere at one stage, and I think over by the back of the cemetery where Tony Stubbs’ cottage now is, that’s marked as a gravel pit. I’ve been in contact with a Mrs. Grimes whose mother was a Miss Alexander, so she was one of the farmer’s daughters. Mrs. Grimes lives in Hitchin.
PL: That’s my grandmother’s name, and she was born in Port Vale.
JR: Well, this Mrs. Grimes, her mother was an Alexander, and her mother was a Zoller, and apparently her husband lived on Port Hill.
PL: There were some in Bengeo. Those books by Joan Hessayon – there were some Grimes in there. And they were shoe repairers and of course my grandmother’s people were shoe repairers. There must have been some connection, I know the Grimes lived in Hertford.
JR: Well, when I meet Mrs. Grimes – I’m hoping to meet her soon. I’m going to have her over for lunch and then we’ll walk round where the old house was. She doesn’t know it first-hand but she knows it from what her mother’s told her. I’ll ask her if her husband was anything to do with Port Vale.
PL: Eventually they went to live at East Green, somewhere there. He was a cooper down at Horns Mill, used to make barrels. He used to walk there across the brickfields, which was near the football ground. When they sold out, to Webb’s, they moved to Strood. But my grandmother had already started work as a nursery nurse at Panshanger and she began to court my grandfather so she didn’t go with her father. Then they set up home in Ware, because he was a shoe repairer. { The Rogers family was the grandfather’s family – David Perman wrote an article about the two Rogers brothers – the good brother – teetotal – the naughty brother who liked a drink!} I met Mr. Perman the other day for the first time when I went to have a look in Ware Museum.
JR: Did you tell him who you were?
PL: Oh yes, I introduced myself.
JR: He knew of you though didn’t he?
PL: We’d spoken on the telephone several times, yes. There’s a book of pictures of Ware and there’s a picture of my grandparents in there which is one I took when I was about six years old and he printed it.
JR: Right. So you three knew each other from way back.
ES: I used to work with Mollie’s brother at Briden’s and I knew Mrs. Lambert because your father-in-law kept the White Horse at Hertingfordbury and Mr. Skinner (owner of Briden’s) used to lend him a hand to do the wages. I remember when your eldest, Ann, was a baby and used to sit in the high chair.
PL: Ted Suckling used to make a fuss of her. Yes, and I see George as well (brother-in-law) every week.
MP: John’s aunt used to work for you at Hertingfordbury. Aunt Ada, she came from Birch Green.
PL: She used to work there, she did the vegetables. Who was killed, the daughter or the granddaughter?
MP: The daughter. She was only about nine. She ran across the road to Guides and she got killed at Birch Green. (Pause)
JR: Briden’s was owned by Skinners.
MP: Yes, my brother used to work for them, he did the catering.
JR: Who actually was Briden – a previous owner?
ES: There was a Briden before John Skinner bought it but he kept the name.
PL: Was he related, or did he just buy it?
ES: No, his father and mother lived in George Street.
PL: He just bought it. I knew him quite well.
ES: His sister lived right opposite in George Street.
JR: Is that the first house after the pub?
ES: No, he lived about four houses up. She’s still alive.
JR: The first house in George Street after you’ve gone up the side of the Two Brewers I thought somebody said had a bakehouse attached to it. That’s why I wondered if Skinner lived in there.
ES: The first house on the right-hand side, not the pub side, that’s got a bakehouse behind it , because John Skinner used to use that for bread baking.
JR: There’s not much room at the back there because you’ve got that little Russell Court.
ES: Yes, but this is in George Street. The house runs back and then the bakehouse was at the back of it. There was no garden. All the other houses up there have got gardens at the back. And my father(in-law) had a pub on the other corner , the Greyhound, in Russell Street. And my grandmother used to live in the cottages along Port Vale and they had little gardens in the front and where Port Vale School is was my grandfather’s allotment. Well, that’s going back a few years!
JR: What relation is Olive Sadler to you?
ES: She’s my sister-in-law. She lives in Russell Street.
JR: She lived at the Greyhound, didn’t she?
ES: They lived at the Greyhound and had the coal business as well, and at the end of the war moved to Dimsdale Street and we had the coal opposite the brewery.
JR: I got very slightly confused and thought the coal office was by the East Station, then Hartham Lane and then Old Cross, and I wasn’t sure if these two were the same, those last two.
ES: Well, we had a coal yard down by McMullen’s, the old East Station by Hartham Lane. {This was the old North station commonly known as Cowbridge.}Then McMullen’s bought it out so we went to the East Station and had a coal yard there, but the office was at the Bear’s Ear, Dimsdale Street {this was the old Great Northern Tavern – building still there – corner of Cowbridge and Dimsdale Street.} (Pause)
JR: Let’s go from Gunners again.
ES: Gunners had big double doors and they had the blacksmith’s, then there was a little place where a lady used to weave baskets years ago before the war. The lady and her brother used to run this business and when they gave up Sadler’s took it over as a coal office.
JR: Oh yes, well the basket people I have heard of, and they moved round to Villiers Street was it?
MP: Was their name Bullocks?
JR: Bullards.
ES: Then there was Miss Pharaoh’s sweet shop.
JR: Yes, I didn’t know whether Hartham Lane and Old Cross were the same place. But not quite. So they’ve had three moves really. Tell me a bit more about the Greyhound and Russell Street.
ES: Well, John’s Mum and Dad had twelve children. She had a little shop on the corner, then there was the pub. But it was only a beer house.
JR: No spirits.
ES: Then he used to keep his horses, you just went up Russell Street and down the back of the house, it’s still there, was the stables, they used to keep the horses that pulled the coal carts.
JR: So all those twelve children lived in the Greyhound. What sort of size is that?
ES: It’s got big bedrooms.
JR: One of the other Sele councillors, Bob Hodgson, lives opposite that, in the newer houses.
ES: That used to be a garden.
JR: Yes, and when he took it over he had to promise not to open a beer house or a pub there because it would be a rival to the Greyhound, that was an old condition. It was just one of these anomalies that come along. Norman showed me a big picture of all twelve of them, they all survived into old age.
ES: Olive is the youngest of twelve and she was eighty three weeks ago. And the mother died at 49. The eldest girl took over and they brought the family up like that.
JR: I remember Olive in her tape, I think Peter did the recording, she was taken by her father to see her mother when she was dying. She was only about three.
ES: She was five when her mother died. Jimmy was seven.
JR: So they were all motherless. But they’ve all done quite well in their business.
ES: He died, but Fred had a coal business.
JR: What about the ones that went to Tewin? They’re both dead now, aren’t they> But they’ve got a son, have they, there?
ES: They had two sons and a girl. The eldest was the girl, Mollie, she’s died last year and she had a boy. So he’s taken over the place – the Rose and Crown pub.
JR: So what’s his name?
ES: He’s Sadler. Father-in-law had a brother Sadler, lived in West Street and he was Sadler by name and saddler by trade. He had a saddler’s shop down Bull Plain, and he used to do all the harnesses for the barge horses.
JR: This is good isn’t it? I must tell my friend Eve who’s doing a book on West Street. Right, yes. So, every Sadler in town is likely to be a relative?
ES: No, there is another Sadler family. Joan’s mother’s name was Fisher before she married a Sadler. What’s that pub called up Ware Road, now pulled down – the Ware House, it’s now an office block. Before the Plough was built they had a big house there. The Fishers and they used to do all the contract work for the council with horses and trolleys, road works and all that, haulage contractors. There was one Fisher married and lived down Dimsdale Street, I think all the others were mainly bachelors, they were a big family.
(Transcriber’s note: The Plough was an ancient hostelry – the Fishers’ house must have been near, rather than on the site. It could have been the former gaol Chaplain’s House, next door. )
PL: Joan’s family, they had a lot, she was a Fisher. But I had a feeling that they lived at the Three Tuns, opposite St. Andrew’s church.
JR: It’s called the Thirsty Brandons now! (A short-lived name – soon became a Thai restaurant.)
Do you think it’s the same family then?
PL: I’m sure she said there were a lot, if not in her father’s family, the ones before that. Her sister’s Mrs. Tomlin.
JR: Yes. Oh, it’s a very small world, isn’t it?
ES: Well I think the majority of people years ago in Hertford were related somewhere along the line. Eight brothers and sisters and the descendants, you can’t keep track of them can you. It’s impossible. One’s just died at 106 anyway!
PL: They had big families, eight or nine children, but they all seemed to marry into the same family. Two or three of the Felsteads married Hutchings – I’ve got lots (Pam’s family) of cousins, in fact somebody told me the other day she’s got it on her computer, and she thinks she’s got up to 1,500 people all belonging to Hutchings of Albury. She’s trying to put it in a book. She said it just multiplies each generation. It’s getting too big to handle, One of the Felsteads had nine children, it was my great-grandparents who had all those.
JR: That’s good going isn’t it?
PL: My mother was 86 and my grandfather was 84 so I’ve got hope! [Pam lived till she was 97]
ES: If our generation don’t ask our mums and dads it’s lost, isn’t it.
JR: At least we’re trying to redress this imbalance by recording. It doesn’t really matter what you say, even if it’s not quite accurate, it gives an idea of what was going on and these will be kept in the museum.
MP: How long have you been doing this?
[JR: explains when Oral History started and about Pam’s son-in-law John Kitchen putting the taped interview onto CDs.]
PL: I wondered if he’d done George Lambert and George Flunder yet.
JR: I think he will have done. I think they were in the last batch. We went up to – I think it’s 200 and – well, it’s a round number, then I’ve got the last few like this one, the last five or six which he can do at another time. I just want to ask Edie where you started off life.
ES: In Devon.
JR: I thought you weren’t entirely local!
ES: My mother was born in Port Hill, the second house. Have you heard of the Ransomes? Miss Ransome and Snowy Ransome .[No] They were an old Hertford family, they lived in the first house.
JR: Past the Reindeer?
ES: Yes, there’s two houses and my grandmother lived in the second house. Their name was Harwood which is quite an old Hertford family. And then my mother went to Devon because she was a cook in a big house and met my father who was a farm bailiff in Devon on an estate. But my grandmother lived in Russell Street after my grandfather died. When she died my mother took over the house. My mother when she was a little girl and John’s mother, Mrs. Sadler, went to school together, so we’ve always been connected with the family. And I used to hate old John when I came up here to see my grandmother, couldn’t stick him. When I got older I married him!
JR: So this is how you know all about the Sadler family.
ES: Then we all came up here to live.
JR: Where did you start out married life then?
ES: Well when my husband came home from the war we lived with my mother for a little while in Russell Street and then I live at Trinity Grove, in a flat where our brother was underneath. Belonged to John Skinner. These houses weren’t finished when we came up here.
MP: I’ll have to go and unlock me gate to let the window cleaner round.
JR: Say a bit more about these cottages, we said about them earlier. Who did we say lived in those two cottages?
ES: They belonged to Windy Ridge Farm.
JR: I wonder whether Dennis Corbett said anything about that. You have so many people telling you things and then you begin to put it together but it takes a while.
PL: And not having been born here you don’t know the people. We can recognise their faces probably or have some idea what they looked like. Mind you, I didn’t because I didn’t come to Hertford until I was married.
ES: I was at the County Hospital this morning to get my eyes tested and there was a woman in there and I used to know her ever so well, she used to come in Briden’s shop, but I couldn’t tell you what she was called.
JR: But if somebody said the name you’d know. When you mentioned to me Ransomes, if you’d been talking to an old Hertford person’ they’d immediately have said Oh yes, they lived at…
ES: Snowy Ransome. I think one of the girls used to have Old Cross Post Office. Driver, do you remember Mrs. Driver? Well she was a Ransome and they had one son, and he married Zillah.
PL: And he committed suicide, didn’t he?
MP: Yes, but she’s still about, or she was.
ES: I used to see her at Bengeo Flower { Show}. She used to put a flower arrangement in. She’s got a sister, hasn’t she?
PL: What were they to do with Mrs. Foster?
ES: What, Mrs. Fisher at the fish shop? Well, Mrs. Fisher lived at the fish shop by Dimsdale Street. Ransomes lived in that house that was built at the other end on model cottages.
PL: She was something to do with the Drivers because she’d been godmother, and they lived at no.2. And apparently Mr. Foster’s sister married my cousin. That’s what my aunt told me. Because Aunty Peggy used to come with the little dog.
MP: I know they were friendly with the Ransomes – their house looks onto the river.
ES: Ransomes had that built.
(The talk returns to Sele Farm and Scouts, Scout hut.)
ES: Ian went from Cubs to Scout and he was picked to represent the district at the World Jamboree in America, he loved it. And John used to take them in the coal lorry, all the tents and all that, down to Vigus’s farm at Hertingfordbury, camping.
JR: So from up here they went down there, camping.
ES: Well yes, it was only a weekend camp, just to get them used to it, they used to sit on the back of the coal lorry, with the bars.
JR: I heard from somebody this morning that the Scouts gave that bit of land to the developer who built the houses in exchange for building a new Scout hall opposite.
ES: Once Ian gave up the Scouts I gave up the committee side of it. Mr. Britcher was the scoutmaster and his wife was Akela.
JR: Was it purpose-built, the first hut, or was it a barn?
ES: No, no. Well, it looked like a barn! But it wasn’t as good as the 3rd Scouts got at Port Vale, that’s really something.
JR: Well, the one they’ve got now is pretty posh, have a look one day, it’s bricks, not just a wooden one. You must think I’m a bit dim, but I have to ask these questions because I’ve got no knowledge beforehand.
ES: Well, it was just a field really. We worked hard to get all the equipment. But I didn’t think we’d got a scout group there now.
JR: Again, someone was saying this morning it’s mostly Guides use it and not just from the estate. They are from all over the town. Very few boys use it.
Recording ends