Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Clark, Dennis & Dennis (Slim) (O2007.2) |
| Interviewee | Dennis Clark (DC) and Dennis Clark (‘Slim’) (S) |
| Interviewer | Eve Sangster (ES) |
| Date | 20/08/2007 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2007.2
Interviewee: Dennis Clark (DC) and Dennis Clark (‘Slim’) (S)
Date: 20th August, 2007
Venue: 25 West St, Hertford (the Sangster home)
Interviewer: Eve Sangster (ES)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Corin Jones
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
___________________________________________________________________________
Notes: Unfortunately the two men were very quietly spoken, sometimes just a whisper and so at times inaudible. Eve was rather close to the microphone. There was a pronounced hiss on the tape. This was a very difficult transcript; a lot was lost because of uneven volume. Apologies also if I have confused the two men’s voices (JR)
ES: This is Eve Sangster on Monday 20th August 2007 and I’m interviewing two chaps that used to work at Brickendonbury. They are both called Dennis Clark, one is going to be addressed by his nickname “Slim” and the other, we’ll be more formal with him. Can you say how you started at Brickendonbury, who you worked for and how old you were.
DC: Well I started on the 1st January 1946, and the day I started I was in fact at County Hall – I thought that was where I was going to work but they had decided that day to move me to Brickendonbury. And the job I had was a draughtsman on maps. And the boss I worked for JW Playton and the assistant was Stanley Parker. It was a fairly easy life taking the furniture that was there and replace with Civil Service (…inaudible) some of which were cut glass.
ES: Who had occupied the mansion before you?
DC: I don’t know but I remember asking who owned this place and they said Goner, who lived in Hoddesdon. Since then I’ve read about it and there was a shop? owned by a butcher of that name.
ES: OK. So how old were you?
DC: I was 18.
ES: What’s your date of birth?
DC: 28 February 1928.
ES: Did you actually work in the mansion?
DC: Well, I have photographs.
ES: Oh, good!
DC: I’m a very keen photographer. Do you want to talk about them now?
ES: Yes, yes.
DC: I took one, in the office, in fact. I told you we used to move outside the French windows and there’s my drawing board there and that was Slim’s.
ES: So you did actually work in the mansion.
DC: You can have that.
S: We were in – turn left, just below the staircase.
DC: These are the windows and here is the terrace which you may remember.
ES: Oh, actually these are quite good.
DC: You can have those – they’re copies.
ES: Oh, thank you. I was going to ask you how you got there but it looks as though you cycled (Yes). Did you, Slim?
S: No, I used to come mainly by lorry.
ES: Oh, how was that then?
S: The land girls had a lorry and it used to be parked outside the old Police Stn in St Andrew St.
ES: St Andrew St? Not Castle St?
S: Castle St.
ES: [After some discussion it was no.1 Queens Rd]
DC: Do you remember Botsford and Wightman? It was near there – [Parliament Sq.] But it was formerly a doctor’s surgery.
ES: No.17 is.
DC: Was it?
ES: He was our doctor. Wasn’t he a dear man? He died relatively young – he was a spina bifida.
S: So this lorry used to depart at quarter to nine every morning.
ES: You are saying there were still land girls.
S: Yes, on the first floor.
ES: Oh, the first floor at Brickendon. Did it just happen that you met outside the old police station?
S: That was the place it was going to be.
ES: It had no connection with the old Police Station? (No) And you were only 15. It must have been mildly exciting for you to travel in a lorry full of land girls.
S: It was for staff, there was only one land girl travelling.
DC: I remember once I started to walk there, a long walk to catch the lorry and it was full of land girls and I just got pounced on. To me they seemed quite older ladies, I was 18 and they were about 25. I’m not exaggerating when they were en masse…
ES: They were a pretty feral pack!
S: Should mention how you got there – top of Queens Rd and along Morgans Walk.
DC: Yes, I used to cycle home to lunch and I lived in Bengeo. And the route they took was Morgans Walk which was a straight drive.
S: It seems to have disappeared now.
ES: It hasn’t disappeared, Morgans Walk, but it’s no longer kept up. It seems to me that it’s completely neglected. In fact it now looks as if it’s nothing to do with Brickendonbury, and the gate to it is locked.
DC: There was a case, I think I mentioned it to the Civic Society where there were tremendous floods. I think it was 1946 – there was no way of getting to Brickendonbury, in one of the photos the chap was sitting on the roof of his car. At Hornsmill there is a dip.
ES: Yes, that always, in our time there, probably in the first 20 years it’s the first place to flood just where Brickendon Lane meeting Essendon Rd and of course there’s that stream all the way along one side. You say about rumours of it being haunted. You never saw anything? (No) No because they are proper rumours. Of course there’s a notice up there now at the Queens Rd end saying that the trees were very largely destroyed in those October gales [1987].
DC: I’ve got several notes here – I think the landscaping at Brickendon was by Capability Brown or Inigo Jones.
ES: Oh! Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful. In fact I thought that when we were up there so much last September it was so beautiful – it was like being in an 18C print. Wonderful landscape, that’s why I wasn’t too keen to hear their plans for training Olympic athletes.
DC: I think they were fairly sensitive as to how Brickendon was treated.
ES: They have actually refurbished it well.
[Here the clattering of cups and the drop in volume of DC’s contribution made this section inaudible]
ES: This sugar is from Fortnum & Mason – I just bring this to your attention. Somebody gave it to us.
DC: Captain Richards at 76 held the record for being oldest man at Brickendon.
ES: What was he doing up there?
DC: He was a civil engineer. He’d lived his life in India some of the time. He lived in Ware and was a bachelor. He was killed in Ware by a car when he was crossing [the road?] when he was about 80. He would have gone on to 100 I think.
ES: You lived in Bengeo as a child.
DC: As a child I came from London – Bethnal Green. My parents thought it was too dangerous to live there the day before war was declared so they brought me to Hertford, the only place outside London that we had any connection with, we had relatives here. And so they went round the town to see who would take me, and I had a place in Chambers St. Mrs Cain, then I was here until I went back to London during the blitz.
ES: How old were you?
DC 11.
ES: Why did you go back during the blitz?
DC: No, not during the blitz, sorry, the phoney war. I went back at Christmas and then the whole family came back to Bengeo.
ES: And where did you go to school? I wonder who arranged it, a private place for you, these two women you were talking about [presumably pre-recording]. You said she used to work with you.
S: Peggy Worrin?
ES: Yes, and her sister.
DC: I didn’t know her sister was there.
ES: No, but one of them used to work in Hertford placing evacuees and taking them round. Did you get placed very easily?
DC: I think we went to my father’s uncle’s place that was in Chambers St. [It seems that uncle knew Archer’s the scrap-metal people in Balfour St].
ES: So what was your father’s connection with the Archers?
DC: My father’s uncle had a daughter who was Mabel Archer’s companion.
[So Mrs Cain must have taken Dennis in as a favour to the great uncle? DC also remembers that when war was declared the sirens were turned on for about half an hour, and that sent people into a panic]. Mrs Cain’s husband was a WW1 veteran, he came up with, no worries, it’s only a false alarm.
ES: Did you have cousins there? (No). So you were the only child in this house? (Yes). Which school did you go to?
DC: Well, I went to school in London, you went to a school that was closest to home.
ES: I just wondered which school you went to in Hertford.
DC: Oh, in Hertford – Longmore’s School for a time.
ES: [to Slim (S)] Where were you born?
S: I was born in London and we moved to Hoddesdon.
ES: So neither of you would have been aware of what was going on at Brickendonbury being a Special Operations Executive. And quite likely nobody knew in Hertford.
DC: Not only that, we weren’t aware of it when we worked there. None of us knew. The secret was kept right the way through.
ES: You were waiting for National service.
S: Yes, I went in 1949, and I went back there in 1951.
[Discussion over photos: The name of the chief executive was Airey and the cook was Mrs Shipham. Meals and tea had to be paid for]
S: I was there from 1946-1949 and then I went in the forces until 1951
ES: What was it actually doing? I gather you were in the drawing office, designing land drains?
S: No, we were drawing maps that plotted the drains. [An indistinct description of plotting, ditch digging and bridge-making, diversion of rivers etc]
ES: Did you say HAC – Herts Agricultural Committee? [correction] Hertfordshire War Executive Committee HWEC.
DC: At first it was HAC. it was taken out straight away, then it was HAEC. But at first it was WH [this is very unclear] [Brickendonbury]
ES: [to DC] Was the moat filled in when we were up there?
DC: No, it’s dry now.
ES: I’m not sure.
S: There was a boathouse there, is that still there?
ES: We’re going up there in October it’s a friend of ours Ruby Wedding. If the time drags I shall go out and look for the boathouse.
[There were German prisoners of war - Hans, and Gunter, and Gunter married one of the land girls]
ES: And what were they doing there.
DC: They were doing chores, lighting fires etc.
ES: Why hadn’t they been repatriated?
S: I don’t know, they used to not say a word just kept working.
DC: They had dark brown uniforms with a big yellow circle on the back.
ES: I wonder where they lived.
DC: “they” used to come and collect them.
ES: Did they speak English?
DC: Not very well. But “he” translated for me because I wanted to go to France – I had contact with the French Embassy and “he” [name not heard] helped with that.
ES: Did it make you think, these are chaps just like us?
DC: Oh, yes.
S: There were lovely grounds there and recreation wise we used to play cricket every lunchtime.
ES: Was there actually a cricket [pitch]
S: No. We made it.
ES: Did you make romantic liaisons with any of the girls up there?
DC: There was in fact a girl.
ES: And was she from there?
DC: Oh yes. I can’t remember her name now. What was the name of the two of them – Diedre Gough and the other one.
ES: And what about you?
[Then a very indistinct phase which cannot be understood – the odd recognisable words don’t link up – something about someone remembering him at a reunion]
S: We used to have Christmas parties at the old Mayflower in Mill Close [now Cedar and Grange Closes].
DC: Did you see when you were there [at Brickendonbury] a large mirror at the foot of the staircase (Yes). [apparently someone mistook the mirror for another flight of stairs and banged into it]
ES: So you actually had quite a lot to do with the local population – farmers came in. And such wonderful surroundings.
DC: It’s only now that I can look back and say…
ES: Wasn’t I privileged!
DC: It’s strange going back there 60 years later, how little has changed. They had dances there.
[ES recalls an interviewee telling her that the floor in the ballroom used to revolve]
DC: Yes and we had a band.
ES: It wasn’t Langdon Bone was it?
S: One was a chap named Saunders and the other one Harry Corben/Corby. Ballroom dancing was very popular in those days.
ES: When you came out of the forces, then what did you do?
S: I came back, same job, for about six months at Brickendonbury then I went as a draughtsman to [inaudible, may be a firm at Enfield?]
[Transcribers note: then some talk of a bridge at Woodhall Park being built by POWs but the location is unknown and that Captain Richards insisted on an inscription not “we the undersigned…” but “us the undersigned” and then their names, as being correct English. So the bridge might be able to be identified.]
ES: When you came back from National Service.
DC: I didn’t do National Service.
ES: How did you escape?
DC: Well I never heard any more from them. I think National Service in those days. [I think he means not everyone had to serve]
ES: Your worked for the Civil Service – they were exempt.
DC: When Slim went, three years later, things had changed then.
S: Yes, there was a mass of people there. You had a written test and you had to pass the medical. I got into the RAF.
ES: And did you enjoy it?
S: Yes. I was stationed right down in [inaudible].
ES: So you didn’t see the world.
S: No, I wanted to. I joined the forces, I put down Germany as a posting but it didn’t happen. Something has just come to mind about my job I don’t know why they did it, but I went out with the assistant drainage officer armed with gelignite to blow up tree stumps…
ES: And where were you doing this.
S: The last place I remember was on the Hertingfordbury Rd going towards Essendon[?]
ES: I don’t know which road you mean.
S: Lower Hatfield Rd.
ES: This road? Well, the big house on the left–hand side is Bayfordbury.
S: Yes, that’s where it was.
ES: So you (DC) didn’t go into the forces, so where did you go to work afterwards?
DC: I went to work at Stevenage Development Corporation as a draughtsman. And then I went to County Hall. I was there as artist designer, in County Planning.
ES: Who did you work for there?
DC: Well, Doubleday was the chief planner but there was a chap called Panter this was about 1950 [sensitive material]. I was at County Hall for about five years then I went back to the Corporation and got promotion and from there I went to ICI as a graphic designer.
Form filling and end of interviews