Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Sawkins, Mrs. P (O2003.14) |
| Interviewee | Mrs P Sawkins (PS) |
| Interviewer | Baden Browne [a relative] (BB) |
| Date | 01/04/2003 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O2003.14
Interviewee: Mrs P Sawkins (PS)
Date: April/May 2003
Interviewer: Baden Browne [a relative] (BB)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
(The subject of the interview is Hertingfordbury Road. Poor quality recording: a lot is inaudible)
PS: I always remember her putting in the letter ‘a mother’s health shouldn’t come before a child’s education’.
BB: That was when Ware Grammar School was at the bottom of the hill near the crossing, where the college is now
PS: Yes, I got a scholarship, you see, I was 10½. The school put in for it and I was always higher than anybody else. You got in free but you had to buy all your own clothes.
BB: You were still living in Hertingfordbury Road then?
PS: And then to Ware [when the bus started] it used to pick us up in St Andrew Street. Used to get to Ware for 1½ d. And if you took a return is was 3d, so we took a return ticket. Used to come home to dinner and go back, I wouldn’t have school dinners. A lot of us used to come home to dinner because you had a couple of hours.
BB: So what number Hertingfordbury Road was that, 27? Who was next door?
PS: Scales.
BB: You were next door to the Scales family.
PS: And Mrs Compton Jones.
BB: Was that not the carpenters’ shop, where they used to make the coffins?
PS: No. Mr Day. It was built onto the house for him – his mother used to keep a mangle. Scales had a big house then the yard was the other side.
BB: I remember the yard because I used to go in when I was apprenticed to Ginns. I used to go into the carpenters shop and do a couple of hours in the evening, which was up the stairs and make coffins. 7/6d for making one and it’d take me two evenings. But I was earning 17/6d a week, and I got 7/6d for a couple of evenings.
PS: When I worked at Potters Bar on the farm – Grade A milk – Grade A milk was just coming into being – they had a herd of beautiful Friesian cows, but the government used to come down every so often, all in white coats and inject these poor cows and the milk used to be tested [difficult to hear – the farmer seems to have come into money and went to live in Italy and wanted PS to run the farm. She didn’t want to and went to work elsewhere].
Then when I went over the next weekend, burglars had been in. The funny thing was, that Friday the money came in for the milk and I used to take it straight to the bank, but was too late getting it so I couldn’t get to the bank. It was quite a lot of money, I’ll take it home, and that was the night they broke in
BB: Is this the A1 Dairies at Potters Bar?
PS: No, Oakley Farm.
BB: How did you get to Potters Bar?
PS: By train.
BB: Hertford North to Potters Bar [via?] …
PS: I told the boss I was going to leave. I said, ‘there’s not enough work for me to do the whole week’, so he said would I go 3 days a week. So I went 3 days a week, but it was too much, such a long walk from Potters Bar station. Sometimes the van would come down with the milk and pick me up.
BB: Who worked at Scales when Grandad was foreman? Fred Mills? He went on to work for
Grandad. Harold Pope, did he work for Scales first?
PS: I wouldn’t know.
BB: He was the one who had the bull terriers and he taught my dad plumbing at Collins, and then Jack Waller was apprenticed there, wasn’t he? Did they have the old steam roller when granddad was there? Or did it come after when Harris took over? I remember the old green steam roller. Who else lived in that row, can you remember?
PS: Well, next door to us was Mr Walls who was something up at Haileybury College at Hertford Heath, head gardener or something like that. The next to that was Butlers, in the navy- he was a captain or something. He was a big man, they had no children. Next to him was Jim Walls and Mrs Walls, he was an insurance man.
BB: Was that the one who had a son who worked at L D Engineering?
PS: No, that was Cyril [next part was inaudible] Then next to them was Aunt Emma Parker who was Dad’s sister. Then we had Dance and they used to do beautiful bouquets.
BB: Your dad’s sister and him, where did they live, what was their area in Hertford? Collins – where did the Collins family live?
PS: Colemans Yard, St Andrew Street [now car park exit].
BB: You’re saying Parker, Dance, then one next to the school?
PS: Then we had Walford and he used to coach [drive] for one of the big houses in North Road. Then there was Walkers, then Wills, then there was Broadhurst, then the Dores.
BB: I remember Reg Dore, he was a machinist at Ginns, a great big wife, and he was a great bell-ringer, wasn’t her. On Friday when we were getting the pay-packets out she [Mrs Dore] would come marching down the yard to pick the pay packet up.
PS: Then Broadhurst, he was a gardener, then Jeffries.
BB: Remarkable that you remember them all.
PS: Then after Jeffries, 2 ladies. One was the manager of Squires drapers shop on Old Cross [these were the 2 Misses George, Squires was No 4 St Andrew Street] You know where Barbers used to be, there was a little shop next door to it. She worked there then, that was the end of the row. They were such a friendly lot.
BB: Was the Walls anything to do with the two brothers that ran the iron foundry?
PS: No.
BB: Little bit of gossip – you remember the Turnbulls – do you remember Anthony Turnbull, he is now the Cabinet Secretary. It wouldn’t be the Anthony that you and I remember, it would be his son, but he’s now Cabinet Secretary and I should think 4 times a week he’s mentioned in the paper. Cynthia’s [another relative of BB] been doing some research and she gave me a whole list of things to fill in, dates, deaths and everything that I could about father’s side. Jean Riddell, who wrote the book on Hertingfordbury Road – she’s left me some notes: remember the workmen at Scales, the Scales/Harris family. Now Knapp Harris was Scales’ nephew, the Misses George on the end, No 7/39 she’s put ----
PS: That’s the two ladies I was telling you about.
BB: Oh yes, the opposite side of the road, the Baptist Chapel, and No 10, once the Lord Nelson?
PS: Yes, the chapel, then there was a row of little cottages. I didn’t have anything to do with those people.
BB: You don’t remember the name or anything?
PS: No. Then the Nelson pub, what was his name? Tom? They kept the little public house. We would go in there, wherever Will went I was trailing behind. Mother used to say, ‘Come here, you’re not going with him’, but he said, ‘Let her come’’. So I used to go with all these boys down the road.
BB: How old were you then?
PS: Will was 6 when I was born so once I could walk I was his shadow.
BB: 4, 5?
PS: Oh before that. I remember trying to climb a tree. I can always remember that [I think she’s saying Will got into trouble with mother for letting her fall over]
BB: What sort of clothes would you wear then? Pinafore dress?
PS: No, a little dress with a bodice and it was frilled underneath, or gathered, cross stitch and all that sort of thing [probably a smock].
BB: Did Granny Collins make that?
PS: Oh yes, she was very clever.
BB: She’s the one that taught me to embroider. I’ve still got table cloths and runners and they don’t believe that I’ve done that. Do you remember the villas and step houses? – the step houses, that was on Cross Road [Lane] wasn’t it?
PS: No, the villas, I know several of the people. The first one was Thomas, because I went to
school with Grace Thorne. We went to the Grammar School together. The Wacketts used to own the ---
BB: Cycle shop. She says Mrs Knubbo Walls [confusion over the Walls on her side of the road and the Walls living in the villas] Does that come from Jumbo Walls, Jum?
PS: Jum, that’s what I used to call him. My mum was so friendly with the Walls and I can remember when they were married, I was very tiny. I remember a white dress. They had the third one up from us. And I can remember being in my mother’s arms and seeing this horse.
BB: If my memory is correct she used to come round and see Gran at 25 Cowbridge. I’ve got this memory of a little lady.
PS: She had Evelyn and Cyril [something about the book].
BB: Well, this tape is for Jean who compiled it with Evelyn. That’s why I’m asking you and talking to you now.
PS: Cyril was about the same age as me. He died not long ago.
BB: And they were talking, she says, about Scales top yard and a house called Grey Gables.
PS: That was the one he had built down the road nearer the bridge [now beginning of Mimram Road] A big house that stood back from the road near the hayfields, he used to have hayfields.
BB: Was that where he used to have meadows and they used to run down to the river?
PS: Yes, they ran down to the Lea [Mimram].
BB: Yes, what is now called Mimram Road.
PS: I don’t know, when I came last to Hertford I didn’t recognise it.
BB: Do you remember Frogs Hall?
PS: That was in the town wasn’t ’it?
BB: No, that was where the Jehovah Witness place is now, just this side of Grey Gables. Do you remember my mum’s friend, Ruth, the Swiss girl? [Yes] I think she was an au pair there, when Cooper, who was an engineer and called himself Dr Cooper. And they were asking, too, about Wackett’s cycle depot. Did he just have the shop or did he have somewhere else where he put cycles.
PS: He had a workshop.
BB: Where was the workshop?
PS: That was all up that way.
BB: Near Frogs Hall, yes. St Andrew’s School, can you remember?
PS: I went to St Andrew’s School.
BB: Before you went to Ware Grammar School. I’ve got a lovely photo of mum, in St Andrews School. But you’re not on that one, are you?
PS: What, St Andrew’s School?
BB: You put a lot of names on it for me but you’re not on the actual photograph. Friends and teachers, do you remember the teachers there? Miss Hornby?
PS: Oh, that’s it. I was trying to remember, yes, she taught the infants, she was a lovely teacher. I used to go to sleep in the afternoon - she never used to wake me up.
BB: Miss Turnbull?
PS: She was the Headmistress of the school.
BB: Was that any relation to the Turnbulls that were part of the Browne family? One had Philip and Anthony and this would be the sister of the one that had Philip and Anthony. I remember an old lady in a black outfit and a black hat and her hair done up in a bun, the Misses Miller.
PS: They lived in what they used to call the big houses up the North Road. Scales, he built a nice row of houses – Sandy Lane used to go through North Road, what we used to call the villas, about 12 houses, I suppose. They were nice houses, had a toilet downstairs, indoors, not outdoors, but they had no bathrooms. I just remember when we moved to Cowbridge we had a bath and I wanted a bath every day and you had to hot the water up in the copper.
BB: Straight in front of you as you came in the door. Now these villas, they were in North Road
PS: No, they were in Hertingfordbury Road.
BB: Where were the ones where the old Walls lived and where the Turnbulls lived?
PS: Opposite was a big, big wall.
BB: And a garden behind it where old Walls used to grow his crysanths. And at the end of that wall was the Old Oak pub.
PS: The Oak was next door to Scales.
BB: And I was surprised to find that that was the original workhouse. The pub was built on the site of the workhouse.
PS: Scales was the last house in the row.
BB: Yes, and there was his yard and a big brick wall between his yard and the Old Oak, and the Oak had a big stable at the back, didn’t it.
PS: I wouldn’t know. I know there was a yard at the front where the children loved to play with skipping ropes. Mother said, ‘You’re not to skip near the road’. I can remember the first motor car chugging past. They used to put scarves on and sit in it, the ladies did, ever so high. They could walk quicker that the motor was going. And we used to take the numbers of cars and if we’d got 7 cars in a day it was marvellous and when you think now, 20 go past every minute.
BB: Do you remember much about McMullens, the coachbuilders?
PS: They were down the bottom of the lane.
BB: Yes, Warehams Lane.
PS: Baxters and Batemans.
BB: Two of the old Batemans boys are still about, and he’s kept cattle in the field opposite the North Station, he’s just given it up this year, I had a chat with him in the town the other day, because there’s no money in cattle. It’s very sad because he’s kept those water meadows and they’ve now got horses in them.
Another thing I was going to ask you, at the bottom of Molewood Road – turn from Nelson Street into Molewood or Beane Road, there was a builders yard there, was that Dyes or was Dyes down the other end – yes I remember now. But who had the shed there, just before the row of cottages – they all lean back because they’ve all gone out of upright [then another description of this location]. I know who’s got it now, a boy called Butler from Ware owns it.
PS: I was born in number 11 Nelson Street.
BB: Were you? I thought you were born in Hertingfordbury Road.
PS: Molewood Road, 11 Molewood Road, and it was so wet the river used to come right up to the back door. I was born with bronchitis and nearly died of that. And Dad said they can’t live there and Scales had built them and they were all nicely furnished and Dad thought it was going to be a lovely new house.
BB: What was behind the cottages where you lived?
PS: Which cottages.
BB: In Hertingfordbury Road.
PS: Well, we had long gardens, then a stream, then behind that was McMullens carriages. There was Baxters Farm then further down the lane you turned left up to Patemans Farm.
BB: And they were all on that low-lying ground. Did they used to flood?
PS: Oh yes, they used to flood in the winter. We used to get very severe winters and they used to freeze and it was Bedlam. We used to have skating parties, we’d go down, I can see myself in a brown coat and hat and some boy dared me to go on the boys’ slide, and they sent me along the slide with another boy behind me and I fell flat on my face terrible. That lasted about 3 weeks, I think [probably the bruising]. None of them would say who’d done it. Another girl took me home, now what was her name. She lived in the little cottages opposite to us, she was ever so kind. I was a sight, there was blood all over me and I would insist on going to school because I liked school very much, I couldn’t even see out of my eyes. They used to sit me by the fire.
BB: Tortoise stove.
PS: Yes, and I would join in. And Miss Turnbull used to be our headmistress of the Infants School and she used to say, ‘This little mite knows more than all of you big ones’, because Will used to teach me, I was always Will’s shadow. He was a marvellous brother to me.
BB: Do you remember those meadows across there, do you remember a road being across those meadows? A road going from Hertingfordbury Road across to the Castle.
PS: A lane by St Andrew’s Church.
BB: Ah yes, that lane. No, I’m thinking of one going from about the walled garden, across the meadows towards there.
PS: No.
BB: No, it’s all right, just whether you had any memories about that. So behind you had long gardens then the McMullens coachworks and then the lane and then farms. Can you remember what the walled garden belonged to? Whose was that?
PS: The walled garden, that was further down.
BB: The other side of the Oak pub, I remember that wall. I remember it coming down and I can always remember going through there with my dad to pick up bunches of chrysanths that old Mr Walls grew there. They say that the garden belonged to the Castle, that’s why I’m asking you about any tracks from the Castle. Anyway, can you remember any of the landlords at the Oak pub?
PS: I remember a very nice man, because we used to skip in front of the pub and he never turned us away, not unless he knew he was going to be busy. He’d say, ‘You go home, the carts are coming’, and sometimes he used to give us great big biscuits.
BB: Big arrowroot biscuits, yes?
PS: One between 4 of us.
BB: He used to keep them in a big glass jar. You don’t remember his name?
PS: No, I can see him in my mind’s eye, ginger hair. We used to call him Mr Ginger.
BB: No, it’s great talking to you about this – Jean Riddell came up and looked through my books and then her and this Evelyn, was it, and Peter Ruffles- did you ever know Peter Ruffles? (No). A young lad and then a school teacher at Hoddesdon [Broxbourne] and became mayor for a while. He’s still around – gives a talk very similar to the one I do but he’s got all his own photographs which he’s taken over the years. which centred mainly on Hertingfordbury. Mine covers the whole town. I think you’ll enjoy that little book there, ‘cos I can remember as a boy working at Epcombs and St Joseph’s convent when they first moved up to Hertingfordbury. I can remember going to dances in the Mayflower as it is now when the old bull heads were on the end of the buffalo heads – it was old Quenby’s cattle came down the hill too fast and got their heads stuck in the wall, stories like that, that all comes back with. Do you remember me having the ducks at Frank’s (?) [Could be Frank Vigus]
Recording ends.
This recording was made after the publication of the book. It was intended to be made before but was delayed. Many of the questions were subsequently answered and included in the book
.