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Transcript Title	Wiles, Harold (O2003.12)
Interviewee	Harold Wiles (HW)
Interviewer	Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR) and Eddie Roche (ER)
Date	28/04/2003
Transcriber by	Jean Riddell (Purkis)

Transcript

Hertford Oral History Group

Recording no: O2003.12

Interviewee: Harold Wiles (HW)

Date: 28th April 2003

Venue: 56 Brickendon Lane, Hertford

Interviewers: Jean Riddell (Purkis) (JR), Eddie Roche (ER)

Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)

Typed by: Corin Jones

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

[discussion] untranscribed material

italics editor’s notes

Monday 28th April 2003, JR here speaking from home, just about to go down to No. 56 Brickendon Lane to interview Mr Wiles about Gripper & Wightman and Eddie Roche (ER) is coming with me.

JR: Do you want to start by telling us about your early childhood, where you lived and so on – did you come from the town?

HW: My father was a postman in the days when the Fore St. P.O. was the Sorting Office as well, many years before the sorting office just off the main road. And the Sportsman pub on the corner of South St, opposite there now is a take-away.

JR: Kebabs, isn’t it?

HW: Yes. Long before that it was a house and my dad lived in there as a postman. His only problem was, if a postman never turned up in the morning and my dad was resting that day, they was up there and asked dad to go in. That was where we originated. I was born in the County Hospital in ’29. Because my father, through the First WW, had chest trouble he was advised the Cornwall air.

So we moved down to Cornwall when I was two years old and I was probably five when my father came back in this direction and moved to Eltham, my first school was in Eltham where I learned to talk and I talk a little bit like a Cockney and in the army they always looked at me as a cockney. But soon after five I came back to Hertford and we moved in the gaol first, Oak St or whatever. And my father still being a postman we then got a house in Davies St. Dad, when he left the P.O in London they presented him, because my father was into wireless, used to do wireless repair work for Dittons.

My dad was into the early days of wireless, used to build his own sets and when he retired from the P.O they bought him a big radiogram with a record player in the top – electric, and in the gaol there wasn’t any electric.

[Transcriber’s note: Three streets of small houses were built on the site of the old Ware Rd gaol in the 1880s. Now Baker St area]

ER: What sort of time did Pop retire?

HW: I would think just before the war because we moved to Davies St from the gaol and father having got rid of his radiogram because the gaol was gas, moved from Davies St to Cranborne Close in about 1938. And my father being a very keen volunteer for this, that, and the other joined the LDV – Local Defence Volunteer which was before the Home Guard and at the outbreak of war they called him up, all these elderly people who were too old to actually fight were called in to do guard duty on various places within the country and my dad was allotted with a few others to guard the Welwyn Viaduct and Tunnel.

When the Home Guard came along the LDV was disbanded, still got dad’s badges of LDV and what have you and his medals. And he went into 28 Castle St, the Army offices and what have you and he went there as a bit of a batman cum cleaner.

ER: When you moved into Cranborne close – newly built?

HW: That was first.

ER: The first part of this side of Brickendon Lane?

HW: The houses were always let in pairs, in other words, we moved into 12 Cranborne Close, Mrs Salmond’s moved into 10, Cliff Hansell moved into 14, but they were built in pairs and this side of Cranborne Close, the houses were still being built, the roofs not on. This part of Brickendon Lane, the same estate, there were still footings, but it was a brand-new house.

ER: So that was 1948?

JR: 1938.

ER: 1938 when they built this side of Brickendon Lane. When we were pulling in, Jean was asking me about the gulch, and I was trying to explain they had to leave the gulch there and build the houses over here so you’d got in a sense two Brickendon Lanes, one side of the gulch and the other side where the road does actually go into Brickendon.

HW: If I’m giving strangers my address I would say Brickendon Lane, Horns Mill. But the funny thing about it is, if you’ve got an equal [even] number you’re here, if you’ve got an odd number you’re up Brickendon. When we moved into Cranborne the top of the road was all a nutwood, hazel nutwood, we used as kids to play in there. This bit of ground here was an allotment, and 1947, when I went into the army they built this, National Service. When I came home ’49 this had all been built.

But I remained in Cranborne Close with my mum and dad and at that time I could tell you all the people that lived in the road, but now, I can’t tell you many people up here, I couldn’t even tell you the names of my next-door neighbours, they’ve been here about 12 months. There are so many problems nowadays that people try not to get too involved other than with their direct family. With my pastime as a bowler I can go all sorts of places and can be recognised by people which is – but I couldn’t commit a crime because people would see me going away from the site!

JR: What school did you go to?

HW: When I came back into Hertford I was still a toddler, just turned five and I went to Faudel Phillips School, near St John’s Hall. Then Abel Smith, Gerry Upton used to be the headmaster and after Abel Smith I moved to Longmore and in my first year at Longmore, the bomb fell in the playground between the old building and the new building and my schoolmaster was Mr Marks, we was in the ground floor, as you looked across at the new building I was in the ground floor, I think it was the science room above and I think it was the woodwork room, there was another. I’m not sure what was above that. But when there was an air raid warning people used to come from other classes, because there was a couple of huts in the same complex and sit all around our walls in our new building.

The bomb dropped something like 8 o’clock in the morning, demolished about half of the building. If we’d been in there, there would have been a lot of children if not killed, badly injured. What was rather peculiar was that half of the new building was demolished, the other side, where the bomb fell in the playground, the old building, just a few windows broken. In there was our gymnasium and the glass in some of the windows cut these ropes we used to have and because it demolished part of the school premises we then all went up to the Cowper School which at the time had been closed and we finished our time at the Cowper School. And the girls came from St Andrew’s School into Longmore [possibly he means Port Vale girls].

ER: Why had the Cowper School been closed?

HW: I would take the reason to be was that the lower classrooms were half underground. It was a bit damp. But in that day and age…

JR: Did you have Len Green as one of your teachers?

HW: Reid was my master in the top class in Cowper and when I left, he left and became the headmaster of Abel Smith School.

ER: Bill Reid.

HW: Bill Reid, yes. He was very accurate with a bit of chalk. If he saw somebody wasn’t quite paying attention and he was working on the blackboard he’d hit you from a great distance with a bit of chalk.

JR: What about Len Green?

HW: No. Len Green had gone in the service and his wife was teaching 1B, I think it was.

JR: What was she like?

HW: Never had much to do with her. Big woman from what I can remember, big, tall, big-built. I never went into her classes. There was very little sport when I was at school so basically the main sport was swimming, which Mr Marks, who used to keep 2A, he was the swimming [teacher] 25 yds, swimming distance, 100 yds.

ER: Where would you go?

HW: Down the old swimming pool, down Hartham.

ER: That was still functioning, I know where you mean.

HW: The old one, just before the Meads.

JR: I’ve got some old photographs of swimming at that pool with Mr Marks and the headmaster as well.

HW: Stalley. I think Stalley retired when war came about and they roped him back in. He lived in the house adjoining Cowper School. Whether he was living there when we were at Longmores.

JR: Yes, they had to build that house because when they built the school the underground bit was supposed to be the accommodation for the master and his wife who ran the girl’s section of it and it was so damp they had to vacate that and build another house for them. I think the underground wasn’t properly…

HW: damp coursed.

JR: Ok. So did you go straight from school to Gripper & Wightmans. You had National service – did you do that immediately you left school or did you go somewhere else first?

HW: I used to be an errand boy for Botsford & Wightman’s shop. It’s now Botsford’s shop but it used to be Botsford & Wightman.

JR: Is that the same Wightman as Gripper?

HW: No.

ER: Was that the one that caught fire?

HW: No, when I joined it was at the corner of Honey Lane and the one by the War Memorial – that one that caught fire burned out before I [worked for them] – that was the young lad pouring paraffin. When I was there paraffin used to be kept in a yard back of Boots – there’s still a double gate in Bull Plain. Anybody wanted glass there was a yard there where they cut the glass.

ER: Glass, write netting, chicken netting.

HW: Ralph Dearman used to do a lot of work down there, he was a plumber for Botsford he ended cut glass between times.

JR: But that was all kept round in Bull Plain.

ER: Yes, you went in the gate and along the back and this stuff was all stacked up.

HW: Phil Botsford was the main man with the shop, Harry Botsford was the building man. And they had a yard down by the old …

JR: …bus station?

HW: the bus yard. The buses were all there and the open market used to stand through there.

ER: My uncle Harry used to call it the carpark depot. And they had another yard in Hertingfordbury Rd where one of the blokes lived and they did lawnmowers in a shed.

HW: Where Philpotts used to keep a Studebaker 5 cwt delivery van during the war, never used, the poor old errand boy that used to do the deliveries – Philpotts used to get the petrol coupons for using the van and used to put the petrol in his motor car. So that was a dodge. He had a delivery van for the firm but he never used it. And that yard you’re talking about, the bungalow, the little Studebaker van used to be in the garage there.

ER: I’ll tell you something – I had a ride in that. Harry Botsford had a [inaudible] because everything was shared, the old man was a dominating factor.

HW: He still lives with Harry up Hertingfordbury Rd.

ER: I can remember – I think Harry wanted to go and get some potatoes and he said I’ll get the van. And he said do you want to come?

HW: I remember your dad and Harry were very keen fishermen.

ER: So that was your first job after you left school?

HW: No, I’d got an agreement with Phil to work in the shop when I finished school, something like nine bob a week working after school and Saturday. Fifteen bob a week if we were on school holiday. So it was better for you to be at school because 15 bob for a week was hard graft, so 4-6 at night and Saturday (9/-). Then my father worked in de Haviland’s at Hatfield and he said there could be a good future for you there and I had an interview and I got taken on by de Haviland’s at Hatfield and you had to do the work from 14-16 general dogsbody and at 16 they’d grade you and you had to go into their training school.

I was graded for sheet metal work. I wanted to be a welder, actually. But welding they’d take you through a course for a month and you’d be a welder. In my latter days as a boy I used to help a welder and he was a very good welder, he could weld cast iron, aluminium and anybody, top brass from de Haviland, Jock Aladyce was a manager there, Westbrook was the ministry man there, if they had anything wrong with the car they brought in Alloy Manifold – it burned a hole in the one side – this welder who I used to help built it up with aluminium and aluminium is funny to work with, if the heat goes a bit too far it [inaudible]. And they had a surface grinder there that could grind flush and I wanted to be a welder but no, they wouldn’t train you for a welder unless they wanted one. Sheet metalwork – I did 10 months of the apprenticeship at Salisbury Hall which is London Colney.

ER: Mosquito?

HW: At this time I was at the factory I was working on Mosquitos – they used to put me on a bend to do [draft?] hammer trimming – to trim two end channels that were spot-welded into the inside of the engine cowling where the exhaust came out just to strengthen that hole. And I was doing that for a few weeks and I had a bit of trouble with the Union. I was earning treble time, being 4¾d an hour, and men who were getting 24 quid a week and more were only earning double time.

The Union man said I mustn’t do treble time and I said all right, I’ll come off the bench and I’ll go back to me running about. So that was my first experience of having anything to do with unions. And I never ever went into a union for the rest of my working life.

ER: Did that mean you stopped learning your trade as a sheet metal worker?

HW: From 16-17 learning the metal trade prior to taking up an apprenticeship, at 17 you took up an apprenticeship and at 18 they called you into the services. And I thought, it’s no good. And my dad who I told you had trouble with a bit of gas in WW1, he had to pack up work at de Haviland at about 51, my money then was 4¼d an hour – 15 bob a week now if I give my mother 10 bob I hadn’t got the money for the bus fare so I used to have to bike to work and I thought mother couldn’t manage with dad no longer working so I got a chance to go in the maltings and the maltings worked out at about six quid a week so..

ER: Back to happy Hertford and Gripper & Wightman.

HW: Then at that particular time malting was almost a winter job, summer job nurseries – that’s how it had been for a number of years in the malting trade. My first experience of one year was maltings winter, nurseries summer, then forever after that summertime when you can’t really do a lot in the malting trade they keep you on to maintain the premises, wash the floors down, lime-wash the walls, paint window frames and all that.

ER: The first year you were at Gripper & Wightman did they find you a summer job or did they say we’re sorry Mr Wiles we don’t want you ‘til next September?

HW: Yes. So I got on me bike, I got over to Hoddesdon and there’s a big estate there after you go past Hailey Garage, little roundabout, the 100 Acre Estate, well that was nurseries. There was a chap that owned quite a lot of things in Hoddesdon, butchers, ironmongers’ shop, nurseries.

I got a job on his nursery for a season and you had 2 x 200ft houses all with tomatoes in and that was your job to twist and grove and water them and coming towards the end of the season some of the lads used to go in – it was very hot to work in nurseries, a humid heat, you sweat a lot and some of the lads used to go in and sit down and read a paper and you found that if you didn’t twist and grove tomato plants all the shoots come out the leaves and grow and grow and eventually the plant falls down, so you can’t do anything with them – everything’s down low that’s going to ripen and it’s not going to ripen because it’s getting no water so the foreman said [indistinct but I think he wanted HW to repair the damage]. I said no and I came away.

JR: So you only had one season in the greenhouses?

HW: But basically that’s what it had been over the years. After that the maltings would keep you on to maintain the property. The roots from the barley as it grew became like a scum on the floor so when you washed the floors down you used water, some sort of chemical you put in the water and you had squeegees to get the water away – you done it once and it dried and it looked as though you hadn’t done it, you had to do it a number of times before you could get it clean. Gripper & Wightman, 14 Hartham Lane.

JR: Can you tell us how you get there today? We know it’s part of Macs but can you describe…

HW: The best way I can tell you, you know where the McMullen’s chimney is halfway down Hartham Lane, it’s now a metal chimney, used to be a brick one and they used to have a grating where they used to tip the coal but where that chimney is now our gateway was immediately below it on the right.

JR: I’ll have a look.

HW: Most of us had bikes and the entrance into the yard had little cobbles and big thick stones – quite a dangerous and a hazardous job to go in the yard. I was a bit of a sleeper and one time of day when I first started there, you started at six in the morning and eight or half past you went and had your breakfast.

You went back ‘til about 12 o’clock and then you packed up but you always had to go back in the afternoon to rake your pieces with a big triple rake and in my latter years I was what they called a head man so it was down to me to make sure my fires were alright. Basically, you could not leave the barley on the floor unattended for too long. The object of it being on the floor was to grow the roots out of the barley but not the spear, you didn’t want it to shoot as if it was going to grow and if it got too hot, if I went in there one morning and it’d got very hot during the evening I might almost [be able to] pick that barley up off the floor and roll it up because it’d all grown together, the spear, that’s the stalk, that’s the good part of the barley, which you don’t want to grow. So the object of the shovel turning, the fork turning, the raking was to continually allow the process.

ER: So it was a living thing, the barley when it came to you.

HW: No, from my initial work on it. The governors used to go to Mark Lane in London [London Corn Exchange] every Monday to buy, that was where barley was bought. That was Mr Bennett and Brigadier Hanbury who was a few years ago the Sheriff of Hertfordshire. They bought barley by samples. They used to have like a double system. They could get the barley sample into all little holes then they slide a blade across and then they could see inside of all the barley, all the little grains - they used to buy there. And then before I went to work there the barley used to come by barge but by my time it came in by covered rail trucks or by lorry.

JR: Gripper & Wightman backed onto the river, didn’t it? The barge would come up …

HW: You know where the Barge pub is, you’d come under the bridge, turn right and you’re at the back of Gripper & Wightman’s maltings. When I was a boy I’d scrounge a ride on a barge to Ware and hopefully scrounge a ride back on a barge to Hertford. They used to come up to Jewson’s with timber as well.

ER: Did Garratts have a wharf down there just downstream a bit from being opposite to the Barge. In latter years it became a carpet warehouse – there was a hoist over there, at the end of the car park.

HW: I remember the Wide Waters when they used to have the coal chutes, yes [overtalking]…

JR: Back of Waitrose?

HW: Back of Waitrose, yes.

[He explains the process of malting – it’s not always quite clear to the layman what is meant but will be clear to the malting industry]

HW: All barley was bought by quarter and the barley came in in 2cwt sacks and two sacks became a quarter. When you’d completed the barley turning into malt it became 2cwt and half bags, for a quarter, so in other words you’d lost a cwt through the process. A quarter of barley was 4cwt a quarter of malt was 3cwt. And we used to have to carry them 2cwt sacks on the shoulder. If you climbed up any ladders into a strange area, the ladders had very small rungs, the steps were just little tiny ones.

Barley was moved around the malting area because there was a, what we call No6, No7 was a big one, 2 kilns, then there was No8 and No9, which I used to work, there were four maltings there. Barley used to basically go into the big maltings, 7, but it was blown around the other three maltings by an air system that had a blower machine down the river end and a system of 6” pipes went all round the maltings. And the concertina–type 6” pipe they could push it back and move it from there to there, or that’s going into No6, or its going into No8 to move it about, but it used to be blown.

JR: Did it need raking if it was being blown?

HW: No. They would blow the barley into storage bins above the cisterns that they were going to drop the barley in to take the water.

JR: Oh I see, before …

HW: So that was the method – most of it would go into the big maltings, No7 and as I say, it was delivered by sack but there used to be a hopper just beside some of the railway trucks – they would empty a sack into the hopper there would be a chain link running along in a box container and the chain would be square and little flat bars on the bottom that would carry your barley along to an area where [overtalking] but it would all be within a box, and that would drop it into a blowing area where your air is blowing and that would shoot it off into a direction where you’d already planned it to go.

We would steep – we used to call soaking the barley in a big concrete area, we would call that steeping - 35 quarter of barley each time and we would have a measuring stick that would stand in this tank and we would have a mark for 35 quarters and we would soak that barley in water 60-65 hrs according to what our manager said. If that barley was moist when it came in we wouldn’t take it in because barley, if it’s warm and if it’s stored, in your museum you’ve got a long stick with a metal probe on the end that would be used for testing the temperature or the heat of barley that’s being stored well down in a pile, if it’s too hot it will combust and set light so you didn’t want barley that was moist because rather than dry out when its half dried it would combust, and you’d got a problem.

So we would then drain after the period we were asked to soak 60-65 hrs we would open a stopcock drain and basically the water would go down in the [inaudible]. You then got in there, two of you, and chuck it all out. We would use tin shovels and at all times in the maltings you wore canvas boots with string bottoms, you never had shoes or boots as we know them, we had canvas boots which they used to issue us with, rope soles. We would chuck all the barley out over the wall and we’d got a ground floor, middle floor, top floor and we’d got to spread an equal quantity of that steep on each floor and down the cistern end we used to have a big wooden piece in the middle of the floor, could take that up on floor 2 and up on floor 3, then we’d got a hoist you could put down through the floors, we used to use a basket on three wheels on top there was a triple chain and a loop.

We would fill the basket, wheel it under the hole - whatever floor you were putting on - your partner would be standing there controlling the hoist and would lift them up and the trick of the trade was the hoist worked on a cam system, when you pulled the string down that moved the drive wheel up against the [inaudible]. And if you didn’t let go of the string the brake didn’t stop the wheel so when you’d been there a while, you got the hang of it you pulled up the hoist, as it came through the hole you just eased it a bit. It’s done on the centric cam so when you pull that down that throws the drum drive up against the drive, soon as you drop the rope the brake goes down and stops it, but if you just ease it like that the drive is still going but the brake is not working, so you have barley on three floors and the first one can go way down the other end, the second one in the middle and the third one.

Now you must keep them three separate on the floor and you worked through every season with three steeps on each floor so you continually turn them and it was only lunchtime today I realised [that he eats with knife and fork the other way round] and that the barley laid on the floors, you turn the barley and spread it and you work your way across taking loads about like that. Then you don’t walk back and go again that way. Once you got across this side you turn round and you [use] the other hand in.

And you took great pride in spreading it as evenly as you could. The idea was to keep it at a level thickness. The colder the weather the thicker you work. So when you’re getting into a little bit of warm weather, before you pack up, you’ve got to get down to about that thick. In the winter you could finish up with probably a foot thick. So you’ll probably do seven or eight days each piece. The barley would be shooting little roots, little whiskers on the bottom.

You didn’t want the spear which would be the actual plant, it’s no good then. So the wooden shovel we would use most of the time. The funny thing is, the one you’ve got in the museum is more at an angle, but considering you go one way then you go back the other way I can never see why they wear like that because you do ‘em…

JR: Both sides.

HW: Both sides, yes. It’s a shame really, the wooden shovel, we then had a wooden fork, very long tines and that used to be used if it was growing a bit tight to spread it with a wooden shovel.

JR: Would it stick to the floor?

HW: Not to the floor, to each other. I used to have a fellow work with me, my mate as he was called, and Saturday PM and Sunday PM somebody’d got to go back and rake the barley. I said what do you want to do, Sunday or Saturday – I’ll do Saturday and so I got in Sunday AM and I said you never come in, did you – Yes, I did. Because you rake it this way, now. You come in Saturday PM and you rake it this way and so if I come in Sunday AM and it’s still been raked that way.. he didn’t come in!

Oh, I raked it the same way [he said]. If the temperature changes, you got a problem. Once it spears they’ve got a problem, they could have lost the goodness out of the grain of barley so that’s the idea of keep checking.

ER: And how long would that process go on?

HW: You could have a piece on the floor for 7-10 days, as you worked it to the other end of the floor, you’d got a bucket elevator with a little tiny mouth like that, when you could man-handle it into it, it goes up and it drops in the chute and falls onto your kiln, then you’ve got to go in and spread it over your kiln. You dry it 3 days. Cure in the 4th day when it’s on the kiln you still got to go in there. We used to have what we called a paddle – a bit of shovel with a nylon broom handle and we just used to drag it through the floor to keep it loose, and you would cure that on the 4th day, go up to 12 or more. The higher it went the higher colour you got in your malt. The higher colour you got so it became stout or Guinness. The light ales were low colours.

ER: So the process of taking it from when it comes off the boat to what you were just talking about, what, two or three weeks?

HW: I would think so, the whole process. You’d have three steeps on the go, one progresses through so your floors are moving up, it’s a continual process. At the end of the curing system the governor used to supply Ansell’s of Birmingham and Taylor Walkers, London. He had his own lorries and he used to weigh it up, they would have a trip system on the flat, shut down the feed into the barrel.

ER: But they didn’t supply your next-door neighbours?

HW: No. Macs had their own malting down Port Vale.

ER: That was where they got their malt from?

HW: Yes. It was peculiar really; throughout my life I’ve usually managed to move on before things crumbled behind me. I left the maltings and went into tipper driving. I was six years at Gripper & Wightman.

JR: Did you go there about 1950?

HW: I went back there ’49 and had two years in the National Service, I must have been there ’46 went in the Service ’47-’49 then went back in there when I come out of service in ‘49. Done about another five years there.

JR: 1954?

HW: Something like that.

JR: Macs took Grippers over?

HW: Macs took it over and I can’t remember how long they worked it for, a season or more, but then it became their bottling plant.

ER: So where the bottling plant is today was where Gripper & Wightman was.

JR: Were there any remaining members of the Gripper family, or Wightman family there?

HW: Not to my knowledge. The only governor I ever saw was Brigadier Hanbury, no relation to Allen & Hanbury’s and a manager who was a Mr Bennett. Most of it was hand work, very little machinery in a maltings and quite a lot of it was done in temperatures and there was a worry about dust after you’ve cured the malt there was a certain amount of dust. We used to have to strip it off the kiln into a loft and once we got a pile in the loft we’d got to get in and shove it all further back and then when you’re moving stuff about usually when you’re coming up to the top of the storage area and malt is coming into that area you’ve got to have someone there moving it away from where it was coming in, so we used to get a certain amount of dust.

Nowadays, the washing facilities then would not have been up to standard because we used to get coal trucks come in and we would get 2/6d a ton if we unloaded a coal truck onto a pile outside and if we had to barrow it down the yard 3/6d a ton and a little bit dirty job, when we come to wash we had to get a shovel full of hot cinders out of the fire and drop it into a bucket. That was our washing facilities and we never screamed we wanted showers and all that business.

ER: [to JR] I was trying to show you where the siding went across Hartham Lane and that’s where it went into your yard.

HW: It only came up to Gripper’s yard, it didn’t go any further. We used to get the coal trucks up there and even with the lorries, having bought barley in London, as I explained, Mark Lane, when it used to come in the dealers used to try and do a switch on them (?) they used to have a young fella go out and he’d probe several of the sacks with a little copper tube and have a little bowl and take a sample of the barley out and he’d take that in and he’d check that sample.

ER: He was a scientist wasn’t he?

HW: It that was what they buy, they’d take it in if it wasn’t …

JR: They didn’t rely on the first sample?

HW: No. whatever come in, right off load it and they’d go round with this probe. Not every sack but take a few sacks. And then they had to go in the office and sample it in some way or another and come out and say yes you can unload it all.

ER: Gripper & Wightman didn’t last much longer after you. Would that be because of competition?

HW: I think chemical beer. Malt seemed to disappear. If you go in the McMullen’s Brewery, all I’ve seen in there in sacks is hops, no barley. Immediately opposite Gripper & Wightman’s gate in McMullen’s yard there was a passageway and an iron tank where they used to put all their granules when they’d finished soaking them and a bloke used to go in there with a lorry and shovel them down for animal feed.

ER: Was that the job that old Bill Ball used to do at one time?

HW: Bill Ball used to do the coal. Remember Barkers coal yard, when I said to you the stone chimney, the brick chimney, that was a coal burner, Bill Ball, after one of the old white horses died which he used to use with the big old car, they kept him on shovelling the coal, they had the coal trucks in Barbers yard with a little tipper cart which was …

ER: We used to watch him because I used to walk through the Folly from my grandad’s house and I thought he shovelled all this scraping off the floor into his cart and he used to sit in the corner of the cart and then go off down to Port Vale.

HW: He’d shovel the coal from Barbers coal yard to that coal-burning…

ER: Where Macs new brewery is, Jean, that was all sidings, and correct me if I’m wrong, different [inaudible] had a coal yard there a bit like they did at the East Stn so lorries came in and they dug the coal out and you could go down there and buy coal.

HW: In the mornings I used to go to Barbers, 1cwt of coal and push it home, on my bike. Under the crossbar I had a [inaudible] and eventually that crank at the bottom broke away from the two [inaudible].

ER: My dad sent me down there with a truck with pram wheels, I’d get perhaps halfway up St Andrew St and the wheels’d collapse and perhaps some kind bloke come along and say I’ll call in and tell your dad and he’d send somebody down and dragged ‘em as far as the shop.

JR: I just want to show you this – the lines come up here to the various … there’s the railway line.

ER: There’s Hartham Lane.

JR: Yes and you get all the sidings coming here.

ER: There’s your siding coming round there then the train went round…

HW: Hertford Brewery and Port Vale and Marshalswick, St Albans.

ER: There’s the river and there’s Port Hill that’s a good map Jean, where d’you get that?

JR: You can get them in the museum.

ER: Can you? Oh I must get one.

JR: You have to get two because it’s in two parts.

ER: Doesn’t matter.

JR: One’s south and one’s north.

HW: Anything else you want to know about the maltings?

JR: Let’s say something about the locality. When you came out of G&Ws was the Unicorn pub next door?

HW: The Unicorn was down further.

JR: Were there any cottages before the Unicorn or was that the first building?

HW: No.

ER: After Macs was a place where a bloke named Halls lived – was he the manager of Barbers – no McMullen’s seed shop – you know where the fish and chip shop is on Mill Bridge, well that was McMullen’s seed merchants and it was a nice house, it looked as though it’d been a pub because over the front door it’d got a cement bit. I’ve looked in my old directories and it doesn’t show.

JR: I think it was called the Red Inn, actually there was a pub down there before the Unicorn – yes [it was Gripper’s pub – the Tanners, built by Youngs].

HW: Talking about the house Danny Halls lived in.

ER: The daughter married a chap Medcalf/Metcalf, he worked at Macs.

HW: Lived near the bridge along Port Vale.

ER: They moved up to Fanshawe St and when the boys were about 16, he died.

JR: That’s not any longer there, that building is it – [Hartham Lane].

HW: No, but there were still two houses before the old Unicorn pub.

ER: Sid Brown lived in one, who had the [inaudible] sports. He had a television just after the war I remember my dad going down to Sid Brown’s watching the Cup Final on the television – Man Utd against Blackpool, 1949 and I had to sit in the shop with my grandad so he could go down there.

JR: So the houses, then the Unicorn pub, and it looks on this map, twenty more little houses.

ER: Yes, it went out to that siding.

JR: The people who worked at Grippers, were they very local people, or did they come in?

HW: Barry Medcalf, he lived down the Lane, Harry Chambers lived down there, he only worked there for a little while. But I remember years ago working there and men used to like a bet, 6d each way, and that was Freddie Whiting kept the Unicorn and we could go down the railway siding to go in the back of the pub to put our bets on, they’d only reap a couple of bob, half crown, something like that.

Reg Mead’d go in there. Reg Mead’d call round, and he’d always order half a beer and leave it on the counter, never drink it, the reason was in them days it was illegal for them to operate, that was the days when the Unicorn was still going, Freddy Whiting, Nudger Whiting. He married Nurse Pont.

ER: Nurse Page married Teddy Bugg and she changed their name to Major she didn’t want to be Mrs Bugg.

HW: Soon as she delivered a child Teddy was round – would you like [to take out] a penny policy on the new-born?

ER: Those two [nurses] they were legends, weren’t they?

HW: Yes, they covered the town.

ER: Old sit up and beg bikes, old leather bags – that’s where they brought the babies around!

JR: And that was Sister Major.

ER: Sister Page, as she was, and Sister Pont. And there was another one, dark-haired come a little bit later. Yes, I mean they were legendary, like Sister Lacey, when she was in charge of Queens Ward at the County Hospital, people who went in there and had their babies, you didn’t mess with then, did ya. And they was nearly always right.

HW: They were alright if they took to ya. But ma’s mother, they didn’t get on with her, ma’s mother had six children and for one reason or another they were like chalk and cheese - they didn’t get on al all. Ma’s mother didn’t like her at all.

JR: The Unicorn was a small pub, was it but it was quite popular I suppose, was it?

HW: As a malt raker you sweat a lot, the best thing you could do was drink a bit so we used to very often, a friend of mine, Bob Day, he married one of Tom Waller’s daughters and they lived a bit further along in Hartham Lane.

We used to have to do our fires up at 10 o’clock at night, although we finished at something like 5 o’clock, eventually it was almost like a working day whereas many years before, when I first started, you started at 6 o’clock, breakfast at 8, finish at 12, rake your pitch at 4, done your fires at 10 o’clock. Eventually it became start at 8, finish at 4 [overtalking]. You were tied there, if you wanted to do something on a Saturday you had to go to work first.

JR: Yes and be back.

HW: During the summer months you had to be a bit careful, make sure you were behaving yourself otherwise he was glad to get rid of you and save a few bob during the summer months.

JR: You did say at the beginning that malting was only a winter occupation, was that because of the temperature?

HW: We didn’t very often have windows as such but there were shutters, we used to have a wooden shutter that slotted into the window frame and a chain and a hook on that shutter. So if you wanted a little bit of air you hung the shutter on a chain. If you wanted a lot of air you hung it on the end of the chain and left the window open. If you wanted very little air you would put the shutter on the bottom of the window frame and just let it hang out a little bit at the top.

And because you worked at a crouch, not many of the buildings could you stand upright in. The last one I worked in 9 you could stand up but your head would be in between the big cross members. But I did have a period of time in one malting there, No6 was the second biggest one and on the top floor they had very big beams, going across supporting the roof and in the middle, about 15ft wide, was a runway where they used to bring the barley in by a hoist up the other end, run it down this long runway and I used to walk on the floor and each side of the runway you could stand up between the beams but when I used to drag the rake you got in the habit of going down under the beam and bobbing up and if you mistimed it, I had three scabs on my back all the time I worked there , it flattened you out.

There wasn’t many fat people worked there, it was that sort of job. You worked hard and you sweated hard and you were lean without being muscular. There were two blokes there that were over 65 and would still work on and the older ones would wear the old choker, the old red handkerchief round here [the neck] and you see them stripped to wash, no meat on the bones – they’re wiry, and it’s what you grown up doing.

ER: Next to Gripper & Wightman, coming down to the river, Adams Wharf was virtually next to you, what was Adams, I remember it as a coal yard.

HW: I can’t remember much of it, only having seen it from Folly Bridge, but the Folly side of our building was a storage yard for Ilotts.

ER: I know you could take a boat up under Mill Bridge, but I think the bank was too high for it to have been of use to Ilotts to use as an unloading but I suppose that they would take it by car, down Hartham Lane and across to the mill [at Mill Bridge].

HW: I can remember the railway cutting, there was gates on there, down the Folly End, one of the Lawrences used to be the shunter and he used to bring the coal trucks up there ‘course the engine couldn’t come far.

ER: I think it could come just onto the road, then it had to let ‘em go and they’d go down into that…

HW: Used to have a bar they’d put under the wheel. When we emptied ‘em we could work ‘em back because we didn’t want them on our property, once you’d got them going there was a little bit of a slope that way, you could let them go down.

JR: Who’d be at the other end to…

HW: No, you’d got to go with them, just drop the brake down, get it out of our premises. It was a job and when they finished me that summertime the first year I went over to 100 Acre Estate which was all nurseries and I could have started the next day but you can’t do that now. I finished me time at Addis’s, drove for them for over 32 yrs. and when they closed down I’d still got 10 months of my time, I’d been a heavy goods driver for about 40 yrs., went to the dole – [they said] would you work in a shop?

I said well I suppose I might be able to do it, yes, where’s all the heavy goods driving jobs? All they offered me was work in a shop. Then they said you’ve only got two months’ severance pay still to come we can’t sign you on yet. So I said what will I get for signing on then? £49 as week. I said oh all right, I’ll go down and see my pension people at Addis and they tell me I can draw £73 a week as from then. And a few weeks later I had a letter to say that I wouldn’t be getting any money, it’d gone before arbitration and they didn’t think I was entitled. I never had any dole money all my working life.

ER: That happened to me when I retired – they were going to make it so complicated yet they were dolling out to all these youngsters who’d never worked, and I said well if that’s all you get for working 50 years…

HW: Two weeks ago I’ve had paperwork from Social Security to say that I was underpaid when I retired, I should have been getting £122 a week and I’ve got quite a few grand back pay. They give it to me in four (?) payments paid on three dates, 26th, 27th, 28th, nearly 15 grand paid in in three payments [sic].

But five years back pay is all that they can pay me, I think it should have been six and a half years. I’m waiting to hear how much tax they want. Sorry that Addis packed up.

ER: So you left Grippers and they packed up.

HW: So I drove a tipper for six years for a firm in Walthamstow, tipping work in London was alright during the summer months but soon as you come up to October, November the weather got a bit rough there weren’t much work about, they struggled to give you loads you needed for your wages and I had a family and I had a chance of working for Addis. I packed up working for this tipper, within a few months he’d sold out to St Ives Sand & Gravel and a few months after that they went [inaudible] and I’d only got 10 months to do when Addis’s closed down, we had a lump sum, we bought the house and everything’s lovely.

ER: So you knew blokes like Reg O’Smotherley?

HW: Oh he was my tutor.

JR: We haven’t got enough tape here now, but the museum are looking for people to tell about their lives at Addis’s – would you like to do another tape later? They’re going to do an exhibition next year and they want people who worked at Addis to tell them what it was like.

HW: Yes. I was in transport for 32½ years driving all over the country, artic work mostly, within 3 years I went on to ridges and local work, home every night which was durable. When I took the job, journey work we used to get 12/6d a night out, I think when they finished they was getting 15 quid a night out.

ER: I can remember Reg saying driving to places like Wales and having to wait your turn to unload and stuff like that.

HW: Well, Reg, I think he had hernia troubles – he went in hospital for an operation, anyway. He used to do the Swansea run, when he came out of hospital he decided he didn’t want to do Swansea so they put me on it, and I used to stay with the same people that Reg used to stay with, the son and daughter worked in the factory and the factory arranged it. I used to like it because you went down there one day and come back the next. I

n my latter days at Addis I went down to Swansea with an artic leaving Hertford at about 4 ‘clock in the morning, cleared the M25 before traffic, I’m down in Swansea by 8 o’clock, unloaded, while they’re unloading, because it’s all palletised, I’m on my break, then load up and I’m back the same day. When I used to do it, doing shop deliveries I started at Cheltenham, Cardiff, Newport going to the factory, offload stuff for the factory and they used to do paint brushes and nail brushed, Henderson Bros, when it belonged to Addis – they used to use all Heinz beans boxes and sometimes you’d pick them up and they used to come apart. Anyway, we’d load up with them, come back the next day.

We used to have some 3-ton BMCs then and I used to come up without a pile and it used to be a drag of about a mile and a half, I used to have to take the grill off the front of the motor because it would overheat. You wouldn’t have to do it now. When I finished we used to have lorries on hire, never owned our lorries. I had to go up to a garage up at Ponders End to collect an artic, do 80, and you’d got another four gears. You sit up here; you don’t realise how fast you’re travelling.

ER: So that would be all right for us – we’ll give you a bit of time to think about it.

JR: Yes, we could go onto Addis another time.

HW: You’ve got me phone number. I work on a bowling green up Bengeo Club Wednesday mornings, Friday mornings, so afternoons are better. Thursday the wife has her hair done and sometimes we go off out after that.

Recording Ends